Developing Applications with Salesforce Chatter : Book Review

Early in 2013 I was invited by Packt Publishing to write a book about developing apps with Salesforce Chatter. Unfortunately due to other writing engagements I was unable to accept the offer but thought it was a very good idea for a book.

The book has since been written by the authors Rakesh Gupta & Sagar Pareek and I have been invited by Packt Publishing to write a review which I have been keen to accept and discover what has been written.

In reviewing their book Developing Applications with Salesforce Chatter the chapters that I found most useful are Chapters 2, 3 and 4.

I found the configuration and set up of Chatter which is covered in Chapter 2 (Configuring and Setting Up Chatter) which offers step-by-step instructions to be very well researched and were explained well. Here I found the detailed use of screen shots particularly helpful.

The code samples for Chatter are provided in Chapter 3 (An Introduction to Development with Chatter) and Chapter 4 (Building the Chatter Application and Cleaning) are quite comprehensive and are described in a very straightforward manner and will be very useful for developers and admins to enhance their company’s use of Chatter.

Chapter 5 takes a look at the Chatter REST API. It is suitable as an overview for the topic and I feel the chapter would have benefitted from more detail and sample code.

Chapter 1 (Introducing Salesforce Chatter) is less clear than the other chapters and seems to go a little off topic. It first provides an overview of cloud computing and salesforce.com and then covers the general topic of collaboration (albeit with some clumsy use of language).

Chapter 1 then covers the benefits of Chatter along with a look at the Chatter data model. The above sections seem fine however the sections: Maximizing your customer satisfaction and Improving your ROI are difficult to read and not particularly useful.

In summary I enjoyed reading this book and found the practical elements, such as the configuration and code samples for Chatter very useful and I found them to be very well described. The more theoretical and conceptual sections (as found in Chapter 1) were far less useful and were not described particularly well.

To find out more visit the Packt Publishing website: Developing Applications with Salesforce Chatter