Force.com Platform Fundamentals

Clouds with binary code floating aboveCloud with binary code floating above

No Results

Search Tips:

  • Please consider misspellings
  • Try different search keywords
PDF

Newer Version Available

This content describes an older version of this product. View Latest

Becoming Familiar with the Setup Area

Since we’re going to spend most of our time working in the Setup area of the platform, let’s first become familiar with what it is and how to navigate to it.

The Setup area is a place to build and customize applications and to administer and monitor organizations and users, all in one. We perform almost every task we need to create our app in the Setup area, so most of the “Try It Out” sections of the book are going to start with an instruction like “From Setup, click Create | Apps.” This is a short way of saying:
  1. Depending on your organization settings, you’ll access the Setup area in one of two ways. Look at the header at the top of the page.

    If you see Setup in the header, click it.

    The Setup link in the user interface header

    If you don’t see Setup in the header, click your name, then select Setup.

    The username menu, with Setup highlighted

  2. Once you’re in the Setup area, you’ll see a menu on the left side of the page. From that menu, click Create | Apps.

The final link that you click (in this example, Apps) will change depending on the task you’re performing, but you get the general idea.

The Setup Area The Setup menu
Similar to the other parts of the application, the Setup area consists of a tab bar, a navigational sidebar, and a main window.
  • The tab bar is made up of the same tabs that appear in the regular application. Just click on any one of the tabs to exit the Setup area and go to that tab in the main application.
  • The navigational sidebar includes expandable lists of all the tools that are available in the Setup area. The tools include options for setting up, maintaining, and customizing your organization, as well as building, extending, and managing apps.
  • The main window is where the navigational links or a selected setup tool are actually displayed.

Since you’ll be developing apps in Force.com, you might want to make the Setup area your default landing page when you log in. To do this:

  1. At the top of the page, click the down arrow next to your name. From the menu under your name, select My Settings or Setup—whichever one appears.
  2. From the left pane, select one of the following:
  3. Select Make Setup My Default Landing Page.
  4. Click Save.
  • If you clicked My Settings, select Display & Layout | Customize My Pages.
  • If you clicked Setup, select My Personal Information | Personal Information, then click Edit.

Tip

Now that we know what we’re looking at, let’s start creating our simple app.