The DOs and DON'Ts of ICS

Question

Written by:  Sumit Jain  After working extensively on Informatica Cloud, I have collected some to dos and guidelines of the Informatica Cloud product. You may know them before hand, but I thought to compile a list and share it with a wider audience:  1. Create a Naming Conventions document detailing the standard naming conventions for different types of Connections, Tasks, Taskflows and schedules within Informatica Cloud. All the developers should rigorously follow these naming conventions. It has been observed that when multiple people are working simultaneously, they tend to follow their own naming standards and at the end, there are lot of tasks and it is very difficult to identify tasks and administrator has to spend a good amount of time identifying the correct tasks.   2. Add meaningful description to all your tasks, connections, taskflows and schedules in such a way that they convey the purpose of their use and thus do not create confusion to other users.   3. The machine the Informatica Cloud Secure Agent runs on must always be on. It must not be in a sleep mode or in “idle”. This might be indicated when the Agent status fluctuates between an active/inactive state. Make sure this computer is on or re-install the agent on a computer that stays on continuously.   4. If you are using the CSV files as source or target, make sure that you match up the date format in the associated connection for flat files, by dropping down the Date Format list and choosing the matching format. And If there isn’t a matching format in the drop down list, then you will need to explicitly format the date in Step 5 of Data Synchronization task by using a transformation function called TO_DATE.   5. If there is a requirement of performing a lookup on Salesforce objects, then do not create a direct lookup. A direct lookup on Salesforce object will call the Salesforce object for each record processed and thus performance will decrease considerably. Instead, write the data of Salesforce object in a flat file and then use the flat file for doing the lookup.    6. For incremental processing, use the “$LastRunTime” and “$LastRunDate” variables in conjunction with a source field of “date” type. Informatica Cloud supports and maintains these variables automatically. For example, if your source has a field called LASTMODIFIEDDATE, you could set up your filter such that LASTMODIFIEDDATE > $LastRunTime. If your schedule then runs the task on a daily basis, that means each day you will only have to deal with the new/changed records from the previous day, instead of worrying about ALL records.   7. If the Informatica Cloud Secure Agent is running on a linux or unix server, it will not support MS SQL Server as source or target.   8. In a multi-user environment where the number of tasks to be created is very high, create Views based on logical groups for viewing similar group task in a single task view. Similarly you can create views for connection and taskflows.   9. SYSDATE is the current datetime you can use to denote the current date and time.   10. Use logical operators like IIF and DECODE to encode conditional logic in the expression in Step 5 of Data Synchronization task.  This has been posted on the community page as well. https://community.informatica.com/docs/DOC-3772 What are some of your best practices? Please share with us on the comment section below. Thanks!

Answer 1

Overview In part 1 of this series, I discussed why I thought that the new app platform from Salesforce.com ("Salesforce 1") was far from perfect and described this as "the App Gap". Sure, Salesforce 1 is a vastly improved mobile experience for every Salesforce user, but it still provides no help in two crucial areas.  Namely:There is no ability for business users to quickly deploy mobile apps by themselves.There is no automation to help users efficiently complete more than one salesforce activity at a time.   I also explained in part 1 that these shortcomings can be easily addressed by adding Informatica Cloud Extend to any Salesforce 1 implementation.  So for the  remainder of this article I'll explain how to configure your Salesforce org to leverage Informatica Cloud Extend.  Then you'll be closing the Salesforce 1 'App Gap' in no time.  Step 1. Modify VisualForce Launch Pages  It turns out that Informatica Cloud Extend guides can run easily from Salesforce 1. This is because Salesforce 1 now lets the user navigate to an object within the mobile app, and then the user can run a Cloud Extend guide from that object. But in order to get a Cloud Extend guide to run in Salesforce 1, the VisualForce page for launching CE guides must be modified first. VisualForce pages have an option for “Available for Salesforce mobile apps”:  So check that option. Step 2. Replace 'Managed' Cloud Extend VisualForce Pages  The VisualForce pages for standard Salesforce objects are part of the Cloud Extend managed package, so users cannot edit them (we manage these pages in order to improve your Cloud Extend experience.  In addition we also update them as needed with new Cloud Extend releases).  However that doesn't mean that can't replace the relevant VisualForce pages. So that's what we're going to do.  The doc on how to do so is here:   http://help.cloudextend.com/salesforce/documentation/#UserGuide/AdministeringCloudExtend/CustomizingStandardPages.htm So for  our example, let's replace the Opportunities VisualForce page.   Below is an screenshot of an example replacement VisualForce page: The VisualForce markup for the page is:  <apex:page standardController="Opportunity">    <ce4sf20_001:AeSalesGuides objectType="Opportunity"  objectId="{!Opportunity.Id}"  extraInfo="{!JSENCODE(Opportunity.Name)}  ({!JSENCODE(Opportunity.Account.Name)})"/>                  </apex:page>  To replace this page, I first went to the Opportunity screen layout editor and removed the existing VisualForce page for Cloud Extend guides.  Then I replaced it with the “mobile-enabled” VisualForce page that I just created.  Step 3. Testing that it Works!  The final step is to test that it works.  So now open the Salesforce 1 app and navigate to an Opportunity object:  The Cloud Extend guide launcher appears (I only had the “Update Selected Opportunity” guide published for smartphones.  If there were other Cloud Extend mobile guides published for Opportunities, they would have also appeared in this list). Next I click the “Update Selected Opportunity” and a new window within Salesforce 1 launches: Clicking on the Cloud Extend "Update Selected Opportunity" guide again starts the guide running: When the guide finished, I clicked the arrow in the top left of Salesforce 1 to take me back to the Opportunity object that first initiated the Cloud Extend guide. So there you have it!  A a quick way to integrate Informatica Cloud Extend working in the new Salesforce 1 application. Of course there may be other ways to integrate Cloud Extend into Salesforce 1 and we will certainly be looking at those options going forward.