I’ve been working with Salesforce.com for just over a year and it is no where near the same system it was when I started working at Twelve Horses. In the past year, I have seen the CRM evolve to include a full developer platform, Force.com, with Apex code allowing developers to create complex business logic for data manipulation, maintaining data quality and the ability to communicate with external services [see Google Data API/Toolkit below]. Force.com then grew to include Visualforce, which grants users the ability to create custom interfaces that use Salesforce.com metadata. Combining Salesforce objects, Apex code and Visualforce, developers are now able to develop in the model-view-controller (MVC) architectural pattern. Simply, MVC allows for the developer to separate their code into layers for ease of maintenance and further development.

I just got back from Tour de Force, which featured a few exciting announcements, especially the Google Data API Toolkit, which allows developers to create, manipulate and pull data from Google applications like YouTube, Calendar, Spreadsheets, Docs and more.

I’ve been developing a project management application through Twelve Horses. Dreamforce 2008 is fast approaching and I would love to be able to package the application and make it available via the AppExchange before then.