Hi bla(?),

When approaching sforce controls, it is helpful to think in terms of the browser.  By this I mean an sforce control is html.  Sounds simplistic and limited at first.  HTML is very flexible in that it can refernce other objects and have them rendered in the browser.  So if you are building an sforce control that is at all interesting, you need to find some medium that can use the hosting capabilities of the browser.  This can be java script, dhtml, applets, activex, flash or other emerging technologies.

So, then, to do more than just write static html and actually consume data from salesforce.com or another web service or, possibly, even a back office system, the medium needs to be able to send and recieve requests in this browser page context.  The important concept is that what ever you create your sforce control "out of", it needs to be able to be hosted by the browser.

As an example, consider a simple activex control that displays salesforce.com data in a grid.  To build and test this you would create an activex control project in Visual Studio, add a grid, add some code to use msxml or wininet to consume web services, add some public properties to allow the browser to pass intialization information to the control and away you go.  Testing would be done in an html page that acts as a container.

I mentioned initializaiton information.  When creating an sforce control it is created in the context of one of the objects in salesforce.com.  This means that at the end of the day, the link that will invoke the control will live on a contact page, or an account page or whatever.  When creating the sforce control you have a merge like capability that you can take advantage of when the control is invoked.  The way this is used is like a mail merge, but the target document is the html that is hosting your control.  In this way you can get the context in which to run the control.  You have access to all the fields on the particular object that your control is related to as well as other non-object specific fields such as sessionID and userID and serverURL etc.

In the coming weeks we will be publishing more detailed samples and information on creating and use sforce controls, so, be patient, creative and stay tuned.

 

Thank you very much for the response. I think I am beginning to understand a bit more. Am I correct then in assuming that I can only access, or call my scontrol from a link in, for example, a contact? Is there any way to add a UI component that isn't necessarily contained in a salesforce object? Something that is viewable regardless of where I am looking at a lead, a contact, a task, etc.

thanks again.

The scontrol itself does not have to access a particular sforce object, but it can only be referenced/accessed from a WIL appearing within the "useful links" section of a layout.

Adam is correct.  So, one way to make a link available across objects is to add the same WIL to a bunch of different objects.

So I have an "OCX" file, created from VB6.0 as an active X control, is that the file which I upload as single file in the scontrol edit page?

Whatever binary you would normally use to manage your applet/control (JAR, CAB, etc) is what you would upload.

I think you need to package the OCX in a CAB, no?  I'd also recommend signing the CAB (even with a fake/test cert) as IE frowns on unsigned CABs.

Hi Ron,

You should use the Package and Deploy wizard in vb 6 to create a cab file.  Upload this cab file in the scontrol and reference it in the object tag for the code base.

If I have an ActiveX control as a .cab file, what should the codebase attribute be for the Object tag?

Given object.cab that I uploaded to sforce as a control.

should it be

codebase="http:object.cab"?

Hi Michael S,

There is a merge field available that points back to the cab file that you use as a code base.

 

<OBJECT ID="collateralList" HEIGHT=100% WIDTH=100%
CLASSID="clsid:C37EEBCE-F222-4AF9-961E-945A7ED5F66E"
CODEBASE="{!Scontrol_URL}#version=1,0,0,0">

Have the examples and samples of scontrols been made available yet?

Can Scontrols access data from sforce custom objects?  How do you reference the fields?

You reply said "You have access to all the fields on the particular object that your control is related to and..".   What does this mean?   How do you specify or know which fields a control is related to?