OpenSpan has built a component that will allow you to integrate to Salesforce in under 5 minutes without writing a single line of code! That's a big difference compared to the "normal" integration path people take - starting your IDE, creating an empty project, configuring which libraries are required takes at least 5 minutes, then you've got to integrate the API in to your existing applications.
At OpenSpan we've created a component that wraps the web services API provided by Salesforce.com. This means that you can now integrate your existing applications in to the market leading cloud based CRM system, with only a few clicks.
The main data object is configured with the User ID and Password (which is encrypted) of your Salesforce.com API login - these can be statically assigned or dynamically added at runtime.
After assigning your credentials it's simply a matter of picking the data table you wish to interact with from the drop down list. You have access to all the standard data tables as well as any custom ones that you may have configured in your Salesforce setup. Now your ready to query the data held in the table - this is done using the Salesforce.com query language which is very similar to SQL.
The data object has a number helper methods to add a record, update a record, delete a record or simply select one. By dragging one of these methods on to an automation you will have access to your Salesforce.com data. The returned data object can also be pushed directly in to a data table for easy of integration in to a Windows form application control such as a DataGrid.
As well as this, there are is another component called GetRecords which can used to build a query visually, without having to understand the Salesforce.com query language. This component is built dynamically based upon the data table and the schema held within Salesforce.com, so not only does it work with the standard schema it also matches your schema!
In summary, OpenSpan provides a simple to use drag and drop interface that allows you to integrate virtually any application without writing any code. The platform is extensible and allows components to be added to the toolbox simply by using the IComponent interface to wrap any API, as explained in this post using Salesforce.com as an example. For more information and to try OpenSpan and our Salesforce components, you can register for a trial instance on our website here
