Northern Trail Outfitters, DreamHouse and DreamInvest are sample applications that demonstrate the power of the Salesforce Platform, the Lightning Component Framework, and Salesforce DX to build modern apps fast. In this blog post, I share the latest version of these sample applications updated for Winter ’18.

Building apps on the Salesforce platform

Like most business applications, Northern Trail Outfitters, DreamHouse, and DreamInvest are built around the customer: the consumer or retailer in Northern Trail, the buyer or seller in DreamHouse, and the investor in DreamInvest. In the age of the customer, what’s unique about building apps on the Salesforce platform is that you are building on top of the world’s leading CRM platform, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to put the customer at the center of your application. Like every application, Northern Trail Outfitters, DreamHouse, and DreamInvest also have a set of core requirements: identity management, data security, data entry, analytics, process automation, mobile, social integration, and AI. Here again, the Salesforce platform provides a state-of-the-art, metadata-driven, and trusted implementation of these application services. As a developer, that means you can focus on high-value features and innovation, not commoditized features and infrastructure.

Northern Trail Outfitters

Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) is a sample retail application. The application allows NTO, a fictional outdoor clothing company, to manage their relationship with retailers and consumers. For example, NTO account reps can create “merchandise mixes” for their large retailers. A merchandise mix is a collection of products a retailer carries for a season. These merchandise mixes are then submitted to the manufacturing division of the company to let them know how many of each product to produce.

Key features demonstrated in the NTO sample app include:

1. Custom Lightning Components with rich interactions (drag and drop, etc)
2. Process automation with Process Builder
3. Third-party Javascript libraries
4. Integration with Platform Events
5. Einstein vision and Einstein language (sentiment and intent)
6. Heroku interoperability

This new version includes several Winter ’18 features, including:

1. The new Trailhead-based theme
2. New Base Lightning Components: datatable (in the MerchandiseMix component), accordion (in the MerchandiseFilter component), slider (in the MerchandiseFilter component)
3. Dynamic Lightning Pages: In the Merchandise Mix record page, the MerchandiseFilter and MerchandiseList components are rendered only if the Merchandise Mix status is “Draft” (you can’t add merchandise to a mix that has already been submitted to manufacturing).

Resources:

1. Github repository: Northern Salesforce DX project updated for Winter ’18
2. Blog post: Northern Trail sample application
3. Blog post: Northern Trail integration with platform events
4. Github repository: Northern Trail Manufacturing app (Heroku app integrating with the Salesforce app using platform events)

DreamHouse

Dreamhouse is a sample real estate application. It allows brokers to manage customers (buyers or sellers) and properties.

Key features demonstrated in the DreamHouse sample app include:

1. Custom Lightning Components
2. Process automation with Process Builder
3. Employee-facing mobile application with the Salesforce1 mobile app
4. Customer-facing mobile application with the Salesforce Mobile SDK (Ionic and React Native)
5. Bot integration (Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Alexa)
6. IoT integration (smart lights, smart locks, smart thermostat)
7. Einstein Vision (Image-based search)

Resources:

1. Github repository: DreamHouse Salesforce DX project updated for Winter ’18
2. DreamHouse microsite

DreamInvest

DreamInvest is a sample financial services application. It illustrates standard coding practices and solutions to common problems when building applications with the Lightning Component Framework. For example:

1. Caching data with storable actions
2. Caching data with a custom cache
3. Creating a dropdown box from picklist values
4. Creating a dropdown box from a list of records
5. Event bubbling
6. Using application events
7. Using component events
8. Using a third-party JavaScript library
9. Using bound vs unbound expressions
10. Building admin-friendly components

Resources:

1. Github repository: DreamInvest Salesforce DX project updated for Winter ’18
2. Blog post: DreamInvest sample application

Summary

Exploring sample applications is a great way to learn a new platform or the new features of a platform. Whether you are just getting started with the Salesforce platform or are looking for advanced techniques and best practices, the NTO, DreamHouse, and DreamInvest sample apps have you covered with lots of examples ranging from simple Lightning Components to bot, IoT, and platform event integration.

Trailhead Modules

• App Development with Salesforce DX
• Platform Events Basics
• Lightning Components Basics