Building Mobile Apps Using Salesforce Geolocation Features
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The document discusses how DDR Corp and NTT Centerstance built mobile apps using Salesforce geolocation features. It demonstrates apps that visualize DDR shopping center locations on a map, search for nearby centers and retailers, and manage incident locations. The apps use technologies like Visualforce, Apex, SOQL geolocation functions, and Google Maps APIs. Real use cases show how geolocation improves portfolio management and mobile experiences.
Building Mobile Apps Using Salesforce Geolocation Features
- 1. Building mobile apps using Salesforce geolocation features Christopher Barrett, DDR Corp, Senior Manager of Business Applications @DDR_IT_CBarrett Benjamin Pirih, NTT Centerstance, Senior Consultant @BenjaminPirih
- 2. Salesforce Safe harbor Safe harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This presentation may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If any such uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, the results of salesforce.com, inc. could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. All statements other than statements of historical fact could be deemed forward-looking, including any projections of product or service availability, subscriber growth, earnings, revenues, or other financial items and any statements regarding strategies or plans of management for future operations, statements of belief, any statements concerning new, planned, or upgraded services or technology developments and customer contracts or use of our services. The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with developing and delivering new functionality for our service, new products and services, our new business model, our past operating losses, possible fluctuations in our operating results and rate of growth, interruptions or delays in our Web hosting, breach of our security measures, the outcome of any litigation, risks associated with completed and any possible mergers and acquisitions, the immature market in which we operate, our relatively limited operating history, our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, new releases of our service and successful customer deployment, our limited history reselling non-salesforce.com products, and utilization and selling to larger enterprise customers. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of salesforce.com, inc. is included in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year and in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the most recent fiscal quarter. These documents and others containing important disclosures are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor Information section of our Web site. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other presentations, press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our services should make the purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com, inc. assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.
- 3. DDR Corp. Safe harbor DDR considers portions of the information in this presentation to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, both as amended, with respect to the Company's expectation for future periods. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved. For this purpose, any statements contained herein that are not historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause our results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including, among other factors, local conditions such as oversupply of space or a reduction in demand for real estate in the area; competition from other available space; dependence on rental income from real property; the loss of, significant downsizing of or bankruptcy of a major tenant; constructing properties or expansions that produce a desired yield on investment; our ability to buy or sell assets on commercially reasonable terms; our ability to complete acquisitions or dispositions of assets under contract; our ability to secure equity or debt financing on commercially acceptable terms or at all; our ability to enter into definitive agreements with regard to our financing and joint venture arrangements or our failure to satisfy conditions to the completion of these arrangements; and the success of our capital recycling strategy. For additional factors that could cause the results of the Company to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012, as amended. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof.
- 4. Christopher Barrett DDR Corp Senior Manager of Business Applications @DDR_IT_CBarrett
- 5. All about DDR Corp. DDR Corp. owns and manages approximately 440 retail properties in the continental United States, Puerto Rico and Brazil. Our prime portfolio primarily features open-air, valueoriented shopping centers in high barrier-to-entry markets with stable populations and high growth potential. ▪ DDR Corp. aspires to be the most admired provider of retail destinations and the first consideration for retailers, investors, partners and employees. ▪ The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DDR. More information: http://www.ddr.com
- 6. Benjamin Pirih NTT Centerstance Senior Consultant @BenjaminPirih
- 7. All about NTT Centerstance NTT Centerstance is a consulting company specializing in business transformation through process improvement and application of cloud technologies. ▪ Platinum Cloud Alliance Partner with salesforce.com with one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings ▪ Ranked in top ten "Best of the Best" professional services firms by SPI research two years running ▪ 110+ employees with extensive management consulting, technology and business process experience More information http://www.nttcenterstance.com
- 8. Geolocation for DDR We use this technology to enhance our mobile applications: ▪ AdvancedSearch • Visualize DDR shopping center locations • Display locations of nearby DDR shopping centers • Search and display locations of nearby retailers ▪ LocationPicker • Better manage our portfolio of shopping centers through geolocation tagging of shopping center incident locations
- 9. Geolocation in Salesforce How to store geolocation information ▪ Before winter 13 release stored latitude and longitude as text fields • Consumed two fields • No location-based searching ▪ Winter 13 release created new geolocation field type • Compound field that contains both latitude and longitude • Supports Degree or Decimal notation • WITHIN operator for list views based on location • Location-based search on Salesforce objects using Distance and Geolocation
- 10. Technology Overview The following technologies were used in our applications: ▪ Visualforce and Apex ▪ SOQL Geolocation functions ▪ Visualforce Javascript remoting ▪ Google Maps Javascript API v3 ▪ Google Static Maps API v2 ▪ Google Places API ▪ jQuery
- 11. Demo - Visualize DDR shopping center locations
- 12. Query Geolocation Fields Perform SOQL query to return location based information ▪ New query syntax
- 13. Shopping Center Visualization Implementation Apex Controller retrieved location information via SOQL query Defined public property for our result in visualforce controller class JSON Encoded query
- 14. Shopping Center Visualization Implementation In Javascript render a Google Maps Marker
- 15. Demo - Display locations of nearby DDR shopping centers
- 16. Visualize Nearby Shopping Centers How did we search for nearby centers? ▪ Winter 13 Supports the Distance and Geolocation SOQL Functions • Distance Function calculates the distance between two locations in miles or kilometers • Geolocation Function returns a location based on the provided latitude and longitude – Must be used with Distance Function
- 17. Performing Distance Based Query Use SOQL to construct query
- 18. Google Places Search vs. Salesforce Location Query Ability to search and display locations of nearby retailers ▪ Used Google Places API to retrieve business information • No way to filter results for specific business types • Results were misleading / incorrect • Usage limits ▪ Create custom Salesforce object to mange retailer location information • Allowed complete control over search results • Can filter based on object fields in SOQL • Location-based search on Salesforce objects
- 19. Demo - Search and display locations of nearby retailers
- 20. Google Places Search vs. Salesforce Location Query Calling Google Places ▪ Used Google Places API Rest to access retailer information
- 21. Google Places Search vs. Salesforce Location Query Calling Salesforce geolocation Query
- 22. Incident Management Using Geolocation DDR wanted to better manage Shopping Center Incidents ▪ Constructed a custom object to store incident information ▪ Used Google Maps to plot incident locations and store in Salesforce ▪ Developed the capability to capture static map images
- 23. Demo – LocationPicker for Incident Management
- 24. Incident Management Using Geolocation Define a method with the @Remote Action attribute in Controller Perform Javascript Remoting call to Apex Method
- 25. Incident Management Static Maps API Usage Retrieve Incidents and construct URL to Google Static Maps API
- 26. Incident Management Static Maps API Usage Make HTTP Request and Return Image Result
- 27. Incident Management Static Maps API Usage Save Http Result Blob as Attachment
- 28. Conclusion 1. Demonstrated DDR’s business benefits from the usage of native geolocation functionality. 2. Demonstrated real world mobile applications showcasing native geolocation functionality. 3. Explained the core technologies and methodologies used when working with geolocation fields. We would encourage you to develop applications using this technology.