After helping our customers launch 100+ products on the AppExchange, CodeScience understands the critical milestones to go from idea to app. Leverage our insider knowledge to your advantage. This webinar shares our best tips on how to succeed and what pitfalls to avoid.
3. Who is CodeScience?
● Founding partner in the Salesforce Product Development
Outsourcing (PDO) Program since 2008
● PDO Program provides app development services to ISVs for
Salesforce AppExchange
● Partnered with many clients in various industries to assist in
building 100+ apps on the AppExchange
● Certified as PDO Master in 2017
● Clients range from 3 person start-ups to a Fortune 3 company
4. Sign Up for the Partner
Community
MILESTONES TO LAUNCH
1
5. What is it? 1. Sign Up for the Partner Community
6. Why is it important?
It’s the hub for all partner activity: education,
tools, news & events, connecting with other partners,
where you submit your cases, certifications, success
stories, and administer your AppExchange listing
1. Sign Up for the Partner Community
7. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 1. Sign Up for the Partner Community
Decide which email
address to use for log in
Fill out your profile Log in at least once
a week
Set Group email subscriptions
to at least once a week
Subscribe to Groups
8. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 1. Sign Up for the Partner Community
Alerts for Partners
Official Partner Community
Roadmap for Partners
Partner Marketing
Questions & Answers
Security Review
AppExchange & Technical
Enablement for Partners
Dreamforce for Partners
Releases for Partners
Here are some good ones:
11. Why is it important?
Easiest way to learn Salesforce for you and your team
Track back into org to see success and training of your employees
An incredible FREE resource and much more than just Salesforce:
learn best practices on management consulting, Agile, SaaS, and
many other business topics to help you succeed.
2. Take Advantage of Trailhead
12. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 2. Take Advantage of Trailhead
Still building content Information changes -
you should keep up to date
Technical focuses on
Force.com, very little Heroku
Log in via Facebook or use a
personal email
It’s addictive - how many
badges do you have?
15. Why is it important?
Consider the BDR as your gateway to the Salesforce
ecosystem to help you understand if your product is in
sync with the platform, licensing models and more.
3. Connect with Your BDR
16. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 3. Connect with Your BDR
Be prepared to answer:
● Target Market (who will use your product?)
● Growth Strategy (what are your projections for growing your business?)
● Pricing Considerations (how much would someone pay for your product?)
● Business Development Plan (how do you plan to a attract customers?)
● Project Plan (what are the key milestones, timeline, and resources needed for getting your
product to market?)
● Key Differentiators (how is your product different from other products?)
● Dependencies (does your app depend on other organizations or services, like 3rd party
integrations, vendors, etc.?)
Look for a new onboarding wizard and tools launching this Fall to fast
track the process of getting listed on the AppExchange.
19. Why is it important?
Ensures your product is designed to work within the constraints
of Salesforce
Highlights any pitfalls in your design
Ensure that your business agreement is in-line with what your
product is actually doing
Surfaces best practices for Salesforce product development
4. Technical Review
20. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 4. Technical Review
Be prepared for the following types of questions and more:
● Which Salesforce Clouds will you leverage?
● What Standard Objects will you leverage?
● Does your application integrate with systems outside of Force.com?
● Forecast of API request volume?
● Forecast of average number of users per client and maximum?
● What are your expected data volumes?
You will need to be prepared to answer technical questions concerning the
architecture of your proposed app. For this reason, it is important that your
Technical Architect or Lead Software Engineer be part of this process.
Don’t wait until your product is built - this should be done in the design phase
23. Why is it important?
These are your commercial terms for your business
going forward
Defines things like billing/payment terms, floors,
licensing/reselling agreements, and IP
5. Sign Your Partner Agreement
24. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 5. Sign Your Partner Agreement
Anecdotal reviews show many of the custom clauses negotiated are never actually
used in day to day business.
KISS - the more convoluted your pricing model, types of ways you want to sell
app, the more redlines, more non standard requests extends time. Don’t
overthink. Just get to market and iterate.
Safe harbor - this will change by the end of the year with click through
terms
26. What is it? 6. Configure Your AppExchange Listing
27. Why is it important?
Provides potential customers with the ability to become
educated on your application through documentation, videos,
and screenshots.
Reviews are a way for the community of users of rating your
application. So a clear engagement strategy should be
leveraged, to avoid getting low reviews.
6. Configure Your AppExchange Listing
28. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 6. Configure Your AppExchange Listing
Reviews are a way for the community of users of rating your application.
So a clear engagement strategy should be leveraged, to avoid getting low reviews.
The reviews can be magnets for negative reviews.
Provide several outlets for users with difficulty setting up, or using, your
application to communicate to you. Don’t let them vent their frustrations via
your reviews before you hear them.
31. Why is it important?
Assures customers that your app or component works securely with Salesforce.
Helps you deliver apps and components that span multiple systems and meet the
needs of AppExchange customers.
Allows Salesforce to facilitate open relationships between customers, developers,
and providers by providing a secure ecosystem.
Nothing is more important than trust. It increases the likelihood that all
companies - including Fortune 50 - will install and try your app.
7. Pass Security Review
32. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 7. Pass Security Review
● Security is a constantly shifting goal post
● This involves not only your code, but also any applications (web, mobile, and desktop) that your app
integrates with.
● Plan on this process taking about 6 to 8 weeks, with a lot of submissions being kicked back due to
security issues.
● The Security Review team is actually very reasonable, if you can clearly explain that a raised issue is a
false positive they are quite accommodating to accept that.
● The hardest issue we’ve faced is never the actual application, it’s your web app. You should test every
endpoint your submitted application will be touching while you’re actually still building the application.
This way your web app is ready when your Salesforce app is.
● Patience and a fast response to any rejected submissions is the key to success here. You’ll never win
arguing with the Security Review team. It’s their playground, so it’s their rules.
35. Why is it important?
Every company needs a CRM system to run their business and operations.
For ISV Partners, the Partner Business Org enables you to publish and manage the
sale and distribution of your app.
Salesforce will provide you with tools to manage the Leads your application
generates and the manage the orders you receive from the AppExchange.
8. Establish Your Business Org
36. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 8. Establish Your Business Org
After you pass Security Review, install the License Management App and Channel
Order App as needed. Be sure to train your team on the usage of those applications
and review documentation in the Partner Community on common usage and issues.
Raise a case in the Partner Community to get your free Business Org.
Note: there must be a signed partnership agreement in order to qualify
for this benefit.
38. What is it? 9. GO LIVE!
Congratulations!
You cleared the gauntlet.
While you may have “passed”, your listing is
not live until you go into the Partner Portal
and click the “Publish” button. Once you’ve
published, you are live on the AppExchange.
39. Why is it important?
You should have a support strategy in place before you “publish” your application.
Be prepared to take on customer queries, complaints, and issues. Make sure that a user has several ways of
communicating an issue to you, and none of those ways involves publishing a review.
Build your community of users separate from your web-app users, since Salesforce users
operate in a world with completely different rules and limitations than web-app users.
Salesforce users have become accustomed to listened to, because that’s how Salesforce
is so successful; they listen to their community and provide them with a voice.
Make sure your community of users always feels heard.
Make sure your community of users always feels they have a place at the table when it
comes to roadmap decisions.
9. GO LIVE!
40. Potential Pitfalls / How to be Successful 9. GO LIVE!
Managing a Salesforce application is different than a web-app, since you do not
control the environment you’re building in. This can make setting up a product
roadmap difficult, since there are three new releases each year from Salesforce,
each with the possibility of revealing new features and components that could
magnify your application’s potential.
If you have an active engagement strategy with your community, they’ll understand
and often times will provide key insights for you. Remember, you’re learning here too.
Avoid becoming reactive to issues. This is the same risk with a web-app,
however, with the Salesforce environment changing so frequently throughout
the year; you need to stay engaged with the changing landscape to insure
technical debt does not overcome your product roadmap.