Interested in Force.com App Development?  Be sure to join us at the free Cloudforce2 event on June 22, 2010, in San Jose California. 

Force.com Labs apps work in two ways.  First, they’re great apps on their own. Second, Force.com Labs apps are often great bases to build your own apps on top of.  Here are 3 examples.

Action Plans is a great example of how to manage the creation and editing of a master record along with n number of detail lines.  It also includes batch creation of tasks, task dependency management and a number of other useful functions.  Side note: on Friday, I saw an early preview of a partner app that uses an adapted version of this master-detail create-edit pattern.  Very exciting!

Google Alerts to Chatter is a great example of how to interact with a third party web service and how to build Chatter posts based on the results.  The basic app includes an easy to understand configuration screen, outbound messaging that handles Google Alert subscription, and an Email2Apex class that converts alerts into Chatter posts related to an Account.  This is a very popular Chatter Labs app.

CMSForce is a great example how to build dynamic pages that you can then publish on Force.com Sites.  It includes the ability to create templates, to put either text content or an input form on a page, and more.  The input form generation is fantastic – it uses standard Visualforce and org metadata to help you gather almost any kind of information from either anonymous or authenticated users.  CMSForce is also a great example of how you can integrate Force.com Sites into your overall web operations.

This is not a definitive list – there are lots of great Force.com Labs apps on the AppExchange which you can use as they are or as part of your next creation.  And if you’re interested in Chatter development, you should check out both the complete Chatter Labs apps collection as well as the submissions for the Chatter Developer Challenge — really interesting stuff.

Can't get enough Force.com Labs?  Neither can I.  Join me on July 13 as Sara Varni and I update you on all things Force.com Labs.  Register now.

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