Managed Package Unknown Server Errors (Gacks)

Creating a Salesforce managed package and get a non-descript "Salesforce has encountered an Unknown error "8675309" code?  These are called gacks in Salesforce land.  The only way to decode these errors is to contact Salesforce support, or someone at Salesforce who can look up the gack for you.

Through a bit of trial and error, here are the reasons I've encountered gacks while uploading packages

1. Record Types or Business Processes have the same name (even though they are across different objects)  
1. The resolution for this is simple (hopefully) and involves renaming the record type or business process to be distinct, such as RecordTypeName_ObjectName
2. Invalidated class.  
1. The result of perhaps only deploying a subset of classes to the packaging org.  I deployed a change to a VF controller, but removed a method its test class was dependent on.  After fixing the issue, the package was successfully uploaded.
3. Permission Sets
1. Permission sets containing CRUD permissions on Standard objects fail with "Unknown error".  This is because Permission sets cannot by design update Contacts, Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, and other standard objects.  The fix for this issue is to modify the permission set to uncheck all permissions on standard objects, and update them manually when installed.

If you have any other gacks and resolutions to them you've come across, feel free to comment below, and I will update the list above.

POSTing sensitive data over VisualForce

The Problem

My current project has a requirement for passing credentials from SFDC to an external site for auto-logging in users.  The requirement is a bit different from SSO, as these are Sales support representatives needing to log in to their customer's orgs for troubleshooting purposes.  The credentials are inherently sensitive, since they are username and passwords.

The current legacy system simply posts the credentials to a Cold Fusion form over HTTPS.  To mimmick this functionality, making it slightly more secure I implemented the following:
  The client's integration into SFDC stores the username / password data in encrypted fields, only allowing the System Admin to view the password data.  Secondly, the auto login function does its best to obscure the private information.  Furthermore, the auto login must be an HTTP POST to a form, rather than an HTTP GET.

Posting from VisualForce

POSTing from Visualforce is a bit tricky.  There's no real good way of going about it.  I've gotten comments on twitter (@dancinllama, by the way) regarding using the action parameter to do a HTTP callout on load.  However, the VF action also has to redirect to the page keeping the user logged in.  When I attempted this route, the browser never maintained the session.  Perhaps I was doing something wrong here, but I decided to go with a different solution.

In order to POST from Visualforce, I created a simple form with a username and password field.  The form was a straight HTML form, not utilizing the standard VF component.  On page load, JavaScript submits the form (to an HTTPS URL) and auto-logins the user.

Security through Obfuscation

The form itself was simple, but lead to a potential security flaw:  What if a "hacker" viewed the HTML source?  Even though the form input utilizes type="password" for masking in the UI, any schmuck can view the source and see the password in plain text.  Ruh-roh.  The solution was to utilize @RemoteAction call to populate the password value before the form was submitted.

The Code

Below is the simple @RemoteAction method.  Since the method is static, I had to pass in three variables to perform a dynamic query for retrieving the password on the fly.

  @RemoteAction
  public static String getPass(String field, String apiName, String recordId){
    String ans = null;
    try{
      sObject sobj = Database.query('Select ' + field + ' From ' + apiName + ' Where Id=:recordId');
      ans = (String)sobj.get(field);
    }catch(Exception e){}
    return ans;
  }

The remote action is called on page load from the VisualForce page using javascript wizardry, which passes in the object api name, the field api name, and the id of the record to query.

<form method="post" id="uform" name="uform" action="{!url}">  <input type="text" name="username" value="{!username}" />  <input type="password" name="password" value="" />  <input type="submit" value="Submit" /></form>

<script type="text/javascript"> function getPass() {
   Visualforce.remoting.Manager.invokeAction(
     '{!$RemoteAction.MyClass.getPass}',        '{!passwordFieldName}',         '{!objectApiName}',         '{!recordId}',        function(result, event){
          if(event.status){
            document.getElementById('pass').value=result;
            document.uform.submit();
          }
        },
        {escape: true}
    );
}
if(window.attachEvent){
    window.attachEvent("onload",getPass);
}else{    window.addEventListener("load",getPass, false);
}
</script>

Although it's a bit clumodgeony, it gets the job done.  The end result is the user is redirected to "url" and if they have valid credentials, are logged into the external system.  If you have any questions, comments, or critiques, please leave them below or ping me on twitter (@dancinllama).

Overriding Approval Button Label

I had a recent need for override the label of the 'Submit for Approval' button, which is enabled by creating an approval process on an object out of the box in Salesforce.  Unfortunately, since the Submit for Approval is sort of generic across different objects, there is no way of overriding the label through Setup->Customize->Tab Names and Labels.

The solution is to implement a two line VF page and hook it up to it's own button, complete with the new label.  The VF page still uses standard out of the box functionality, and no apex was used nor harmed during this customization.  

The trick is to utilize the $Action global variable.  If you take a look at the Name of the Submit For Approval button on the page layout, you should find the name of the button/action is "Submit".  Going forward with this, I created the following simple Visualforce page:

<apex:page standardController="Case" action="{!URLFOR($Action.Case.Submit,case.Id)}">

apex:page>

Note that utilizing the action parameter is considered a CSR security risk and will be flagged if you depend on packaging up the Visualforce page.

After the Visuaforce page is created, the next step is to create a custom detail page button, opening the page in existing window with sidebar.  Set the label on the button to the text you desire.  Finally, modify the page layout(s) and replace the 'Submit for Approval' button with your custom VF button.

There you have it, an easy-peasy way to "override the label" using (mostly) out-of-the-box functionality.

Adding a default value for Campaign Standard Field

Scenario: Without needing to enter the Campaign Name field on the edit Campaign screen, have a trigger define the Campaign Name field based on a formula like criteria.


Problem:  The Name field is required on the Campaign, and saving the page layout fires a field validation rule before the before update trigger runs.  Furthermore, there is no option to provide a default value for the Name field unlike custom text fields.


Solution: Feed a dummy data value into the Campaign name through a custom Visualforce solution.  The solution involves overriding the New button on the Campaign and directing the user to the Campaign edit page with the Campaign name pre-populated, allowing the campaign to save and fire the trigger.


Step 1) Create a Controller extension to prepopulate the Campaign Name:

Apex controller extension (CampaignExtension.cls):

public with sharing class CampaignExtension {

  public CampaignExtension(ApexPages.StandardController stdController) { 

  }

  

  public PageReference gotoUrl(){

    PageReference pageRef = new PageReference('/701/e');

    Map params = pageRef.getParameters();

    params.put('nooverride','1');

    params.put('RecordType',recordType);
    //See notes below

    params.put('cpn1','Campaign Name');

    return pageRef;

  }

}

** Notes:  

The 'cpn1' parameter is related to whichever field to default.

Viewing the HTML source of the Campaign edit screen reveals that the HTML id of the Name field is 'cpn1', hence the cpn1 parameter for the Campaign Name field.

Step 2) Create a VF page:

<apex:page standardController="Campaign" 

  extensions="CampaignExtension" 

  action="{!gotoUrl}" />

Step 3) Override standard new button for Campaign:

1. Setup->Customize->Campaigns->Buttons and Links
2. Click Edit next the standard New button
3. Select the Visualforce Page radio button and select the Visualforce page from Step 2 above.
4. Validate that "Skip Record Type Selection Page" is unchecked. 
5. Save the override properties

Wa-la, you should have a mechanism to set the default value for a required standard field on a standard object.

Convert Credit Card Exp date to YYYY-MM-DD

Had a recent requirement to convert a credit card expiration date from MMYY to YYYY-MM-DD so that it could be sorted upon in Salesforce.  Fortunately, I only had to modify the view in Oracle to the following:

select
    DECODE(
      NVL(myColumn,'N/A'),
      'N/A',
      'N/A',
      to_char(last_day(to_date(myColumn,'MMYY')),'YYYY-MM-DD')
    )
  from myTable

Bug in Email templates with similar Standard and Custom field names

I've been working on several workflow and email alerts lately.  I recently came across a curious defect with email templates.  Honestly, I don't know if it's strictly limited to the templates.  The defect involves an object which has standard and custom fields with the same 'name'.

If the object has a Standard field name and a custom field Name__c, an email template will pick up the custom field.

Steps to recreate:
1) Go to Setup->Create and Create a custom object 'obj' with a custom field of Name.
2) Go to Setup->Create and Create a tab to the custom object.
3) Go to the custom object tab and populate the object with Name='AAA', Name__c='BBB'.
4) Go to Setup->Communication Templates and create a test email template with:
  Subject: Name should be AAA {!obj__c.Name}
  Body: Name 1 should be AAA: {!obj__c.Name}
  Name 2 should be BBB: {!obj__c.Name__c}

5) Save the email template.
6) On the template, click 'Send test and verify merge results'
7) Populate the template with a valid contact and your new obj__c object.
8) You will see the defect.  The subject will say: Name should be AAA: BBB

Leads, Campaigns, and Workflow

I have a requirement for a client that wishes to create a Web 2 Lead form and assign it to a campaign.
Once that is done, a workflow shall fire off a series of emails depending on what sort of campaign the lead is tied to.  This sounds easy enough to do with Salesforce's out of the box Web2Lead functionality and workflow, but there were some other tweaks we needed, so utilizing our own solution is the only way to go.

- The form -
Utilizing a jQuery modal, the user clicks a link and populates a small web to lead form.  When the user hits submit, sever side validation happens in a VF controller, so we can control the UI (messages and labels if a field is required for instance). 

- Allowing Portal users to use the web 2 lead form -
Once the form is submitted, it stores the lead in a custom lead object.  The custom lead object is needed, since leads cannot be created (owned) by Portal users.  When a portal user creates the mirrored lead object, it fires off a trigger calling an @future method to insert the lead and campaign member.

- Tricky workflows with Leads and Campaigns -
Here's the tricky part of the workflow.  When the lead is inserted, it doesn't have access to its related Campaign member and hence related Campaign (the Campaign member is a junction object to connect Campaigns to leads or contacts).  Our workflow needed to look at the Campaign Name field on the Campaign.  The lead doesn't have this when it is inserted, nor if the Campaign member is updated, does it update the lead.  Therefore, modifying the campaign member or campaign doesn't fire the workflow rule until the lead is updated next.  This is true even if the workflow rule is set to 'Created or did not previously meet the criteria'.

The solution is to create the workflow rule on the Campaign member and not the Lead.  When the Campaign Member junction is created, it should have access to both its Campaign and its Lead objects.  Thus, when the member is created, we can create a rule like 'Campaign Name equals My Name' and fire off a workflow when the Lead is assigned to the particular campaign.

Hope this helps others.