Get developing advanced UX fast and free with Salesforce and Skuid

I always appreciate it when a technology provider offers a free entry path for developers to get their hands on their product, to have a play, poke around and see what it can do. I can't think of a better marketing tool than letting the people who will be responsible for deploying a product familiarise themselves with it first, and if it's any good - potentially become advocates and inadvertent salespeople themselves.

Skuid and Salesforce are brilliant example of this. If you want to try your hand at developing on the Salesforce platform, all it takes in 3 minutes and an e-mail address. If you then want to try your hand at building some of the most glamorous and productive user interfaces using Skuid, you can be equally up and running within the time it takes to boil a kettle too.

Here is my quick low down on how to do that.

First, get yourself a Salesforce Developer Edition. Navigate your browser to

https://developer.salesforce.com/signup

and fill in the easy form. Remember the beauty of Salesforce Usernames is that they have to be in the form of an e-mail address; but not an actual e-mail address. They also have to be unique across all of Salesforce, so I normally go for a clever little intuitive trick like "simon.lawrence@myfirstskuid.com" - pretty guaranteed to be unique, memorable, and in the form of an e-mail.

So, now you have a Salesforce instance so you just need to get Skuid in there and working. For this get yourself another tab (tabs are fun) and navigate to the AppExchange page for Skuid: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000009wyDjEAI

Click

At the bottom of the page and install Skuid in a Production Org. Make sure you are not logged into any other Salesforce orgs! There is a confirmation page showing where it will be installed, and sometimes you are forced to re-authenticate to be sure. Install it for all users (probably) and wait a few minutes for it to chun over (this is the moment to boil that kettle).

It might tell you it will e-mail you when it's finished, or it might just take you to your Installed Packages, depending on how fast the Cloud is feeling.

Either way, just sip your tea/coffee/vodka and and in a few minutes Skuid will be there.

Once it's installed, click on the App Manager icon (loads of little dots) and then select "Skuid Central" from your "All Items" list.

You are now up and running in Skuid! You will see the "Lets Get Started" page and the black banner that will soon become your best friend.

But that's not quite it!

You only have a 30 day trial at the moment, and you are not going to want to lose all your hard Skuiding (* not an official verb) in a months time... so...

...here's my favorite bit, if you head to the Skuid sign up page at https://www.skuid.com/free-trial/, there is a link at the bottom to turn your 30 day trial into an unlimited, full installation to play in forever.

Click that link and fill in the form (change the radio button to Salesforce when it asks you what type of licence you want) - this will contact Skuid, and very shortly someone will flip the switch to make your Skuid licence endless and all-powerful (you don't need to wait for that though).

FYI your OrgId is shown on the "Company Information" page - available from the Setup menu:

So you are away! Get back over to that Salesforce tab and start writing Bespoke UX at Blazing Speed!