Join us for a high-level overview of the different available options that currently exist for building a community (configurable tabs, Visualforce, Community Templates), along with the tradeoffs. In addition, a brief demo of each style of community build will be shown.

1. Creating a Salesforce Community:
Code vs Configuration
Michael Welburn
Senior Technical Architect, 7Summits
michael.welburn@7summitsinc.com
@MichaelWelburn

2. Michael Welburn
Senior Technical Architect, 7Summits

3. What are Communities?
Salesforce Community Cloud offers a place for your employees, customers, and partners to connect
outside the scope of your internal systems (but controlled and managed via your Salesforce org).
Objects and records can be shared from your internal users with the community users
Chatter Groups and Messaging are scoped to the Community
Collaboration and self-service are some of the primary use cases
Communities can be spun up and configured in a variety of different manners depending on level of
customization necessary.

4. Standard tabs & page layouts
Can configure light branding,
including header & footer
Configuration over code
WYSIWYG editor
Ability to leverage existing
widgets
Configuration over code
Customize business logic with
Apex & Visualforce
Full use of custom HTML / CSS /
Javascript
Code in addition to configuration
Salesforce Tabs Community Templates Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce
Any CommunityEmployee / Partner Community Self-Service / Customer Community
Implementation Options

5. Communities Architecture

6. Salesforce Tabs
Out-of-the-box Salesforce tabs, list views, & page layouts. Supports standard platform self-service
functionality.
Pros:
Basic theming options available out-of-the-box for tabs (including custom header)
Support for all sales, service, marketing, and platform features (depending on license)
Full Force.com platform capability
Cons:
Visualforce is the preferred approach for better customization, yet Visualforce requires coding
capability
Requires some knowledge of the Force.com platform

7. Salesforce Tabs Demo

8. Community Templates
Can choose preconfigured templates for creating your community that leverages a WYSIWYG user
interface editor. Alternatively, can leverage Site.com Studio for more granular edits.
Pros:
Out-of-box app targeted at self-service communities
More CSS styles available
Great for a quick rollout of a simple self-service community user case
Cons:
Limited to self-service functionality today (cases, Salesforce Knowledge, Chatter Answers)
Doesn’t support other sales, service, or platform use cases
Doesn’t have full platform capability

9. Community Templates Demo

10. Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce
Mix out-of-the-box Salesforce tabs, list views, and page layouts with custom Visualforce pages.
Pros:
Full support for interface and business logic customization
Support for all sales, service, marketing, and platform features (depending on license)
Full Force.com platform capability
Cons:
Requires development background for Apex & Visualforce customization
Requires knowledge of the Force.com platform

11. Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce Demo

12. Portal for users familiar with
Salesforce UI
Can leverage existing Salesforce
infrastructure (workflows,
validations, etc.)
No ability to implement page-
level customizations beyond
page layout modifications
Currently geared towards self-
service
Prettier, more extensible version
of Salesforce Tabs (future)
Doesn’t yet have the full featured
customization of Salesforce Tabs
+ Visualforce
Supports complex, page-driven
business logic
Complete customization of the
interface is possible
Salesforce Tabs Community Templates Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce
Any CommunityEmployee / Partner Community Self-Service / Customer Community
Summary

13. Thank you

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