CRM FYI

Salesforce is co-sponsoring a cross country bus tour Adobe is subtitling “Cross Country Coding.”  The On AIR tour consists of three months, eighteen US cities, a big red bus, and evangelism about Adobe AIR ((Adobe Integrated Runtime) formerly Apollo).  It’s a little hard to see, but to the left of the O’Reilly decal is the Salesforce logo.  You can see more pictures of the bus on Flickr.  I’m registered already for the Minneapolis event in September which should prove pretty interesting.

Put simply, AIR is a way to develop applications that give a rich, user experiences both in a browser and on a desktop, across platforms.  Developers don’t need to write different versions of their apps for Mac, PC, or Linux.  They can develop once and deploy widely, even across browsers without worry of compatibility issues. 

How’s that fit in with Salesforce?  Salesforce has been working with Adobe to provide developer resources that let you make unique, richer Salesforce applications both through your browser with your Salesforce data, but also through desktop apps that don’t look anything like your browser.  The Flex Toolkit for Apex is a storehouse of coding wizardry that extends your data in ways you could never work with your data before.  Rich graphics, smooth transitions, drag and drop data, fields, and columns are just a few of the things Flex offers to Salesforce users.  The Flex Toolkit works hand in hand with Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR to help create apps that may just blow your mind.  Give it time, there aren’t many apps out there yet, but watch and see.

The only publicly available, free AppExchange application built with some Flex code that you can download and try right now is Conference Manager.   Interestingly enough though, it’s also the app that Salesforce uses internally to manage Dreamforce.  I’ve installed it and it’s slick stuff.  It uses inline S-controls let you work with your data in a really unique way.  Take it for a Test Drive or install it in your own development org. 

If you want to get a taste of what AIR can do with your Salesforce data, check out Dave Carroll’s Salesforce Widget. 

Adobe is putting a lot into the launch of AIR and from what I’ve seen so far, AIR has a good shot at making some compelling apps, and ways to see and work with your data unlike you do today.  It looks like Salesforce is working very tightly with Adobe to make it that much easier for developers to work through Flex and AIR.  Salesforce folks will be at numerous bus tour events showing off what they’ve done.  Watch for the “coolness” of AIR both in standard Salesforce apps, widget like applications like Dave Carroll’s, and even in dashboards.

Between seeing what literally “develops” on the bus around America On AIR and what’s shown at Dreamforce 07, it looks like you’re going to be seeing Flex and AIR quite a lot before year-end.  (And that’s a good thing.)

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