Now that Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com has been released we are starting to see some of the fruits from this joint venture. Salesforce.com released a beta version of the Force.com Explorer on Adobe Air a couple of days ago and I caught an interesting tweet from Jeff Grosse about a new video on the Salesforce Channel. James Ward developed a Flash app with the tool that pulls down accounts and contacts from Salesforce.com and allows you to update records. This might be the preferred method of development for Android devices since:

1. Android now runs Flash 10.1
2. Android does not support Axis Web services natively (i.e., no Partner API love)
3. There is no secure REST API for Force.com

So now you can write Android apps with Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com that uses the same Web services API that you are familiar with.

The video is pretty slick and the source code is available if you would like to start hacking up your own implementation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIUwh6wk8cY

Salesforce.com invited me to attend Cloudforce last Tuesday to demo my Salesforce Chatter for Android app. The reception was incredible and there is a big push to get a Salesforce.com app running on Android. Parker Harris (Co-founder & EVP, Technology) even made the statement in the keynote that, “I do have a team working on a native Android Chatter application that will be out later this year….”. At that point, Narinder promptly tweeted:

Well that created a lot of buzz so over the last couple of days I’ve had an amazing number of people email, tweet and post chatter asking me how people can run the Chatter for Android app on their own phones. I checked with Kris Muller at salesforce.com and we’ve decided to let anyone install the app and try it out. The functionality is limited (you can only view the Chatter feed and post an update) and it is connected to a DE org so you can’t really screw anything up. If you install the app, please drop me a line and let me know what you think of it and if you have any suggestions.

So here’s a little background and how it get started. The application is combination of the Force.com platform, Google App Engine and a Google Android mobile handset. It utilizes Force.com Remote Access Applications with 3-legged OAuth for security allowing App Engine to fetch chatter feeds and post new status updates using the Force.com Web Services Connector running on App Engine. The Google App Engine app runs at https://chatter-android-demo.appspot.com.

The Android client makes a request to refresh it’s chatter feed and makes a call to this endpoint on App Engine. The WSC queries Salesforce for the chatter feed and returns the feed as a series of JSON objects. The Android client consumes the JSON objects and stores them in the local SQLite database. When the feed list is displayed on the Android client, the images are download lazily from App Engine when needed. You may see a slight lag while new threads are spawned and the images are downloaded. If the images do not display quickly, try scrolling through the list back and forth for them to display. Part of the roadmap is to store these images in the local database instead of downloading them each time.

Installation Instructions

To install the app on your own phone:

• Download either the original 2.1 application or a 1.6+ version that runs on older handsets to your desktop
• On your phone, install eoeAppInstaller from the Android Market.
• Mount your phone to your computer via your USB cable so that you can access the SD card on your phone from Finder.
• Drop the .apk file into the root of your SD card
• Unmount your phone and disconnect your USB cable
• Go to Settings -> Applications and check “Unknown Sources” to allow installation of non-Market applications
• Launch eoeAppInstaller and it should display the Salesforce Chatter app
• Long press the app and select “Install this apk”

When you launch the application, simply click anywhere on the white Android/Chatter logo to display the chatter feed. The first time you run the application there will be no chatter updates. You will need to hit Menu -> Refresh to populate the local database with updates. The app is currently set to only return the last 15 updates. The app runs as the user Scott Thompson and you cannot switch to a different user.

If you want to see Salesforce come to the Android platform, please vote for this idea.

If you live in the Bay Area and are not coming to Cloudforce 2010 on June 22 in San Jose…. change your plans and come. Perhaps there will be some kind of announcement made at the event? In addition to the 18 breakout sessions and 50+ live demos, I’ll be working the Appirio booth in the Develoer Campground demoing my Salesforce Chatter for Android app. Stop by and chat for a second.

I wasn’t planning on attending Cloudforce 2010 but my Salesforce Chatter for Android app has garnered a lot of attention inside Salesforce.com. I’ve met with a number of the Mobile PMs and some of the marketing guys for the event. After a couple of demos I was invited to work the Campground showing off the app. I’ve heard from our marketing guys that Marc is actually the one that spotted my video when I posted it. Apparently he has a Google Alert set up for “chatter” and “android” or something.

I’ve slimmed down the Android app a bit for Cloudforce and made some enhancements requested by the marketing department. I’ll try to post a video of the new app shortly and some of the challenges I faced. A few people have emailed me with questions so there is some interest out there in the interwebs.

If you haven’t already done so, PLEASE VOTE for my Salesforce Chatter for Android app!!

My blog has been a little quiet since I left for Google IO a few weeks ago and this is primarily the reason why. In addition to my day job I’ve been working on getting up-to-speed on Android development. Google sent me a Droid about a month before the conference and I started playing around with some tutorials and writing a few apps before IO (smart idea to send out 5K Droids to spur development). I really caught the Android bug at the event and thought that the Chatter Developer Challenge would be a great way to kill two birds with the proverbial one stone.

So here is the demo of the application that I just submitted for the Chatter Developer Challenge. It is a Salesforce Chatter for Android app running on a combination of the Force.com platform, Google App Engine and a Google Android mobile handset. It utilizes Force.com Remote Access Applications with 3-legged OAuth for security. The Android application has the following functionality:

• Display your Chatter NewsFeed
• Update your User status
• Refresh your Chatter NewsFeed and store it in the local SQLite database
• Choose a project (custom object) that you are following and view its Chatter Feed
• Update the project’s status
• Refresh the Chatter Feed for the project (including field changes to the record) and store it in the local SQLite database

The app does not include the functionality to reply to posts. Since Chatter is running in a Developer Edition and they are only allowed to have 1 user, it seemed rather pointless to respond to my own posts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KggRjco6bs

Here are some screenshots of the application in case you want to skip the video.

[Show as slideshow]

I use Google App Engine to tie all of this applications together and provide a coherent security model. So I wrote a small App Engine app that uses OAuth to authorize access to Force.com and my Chatter feeds using Force.com Remote Access Application. Once authorized the Force.com Web Services Connector, running on App Engine, performs the interactions with SFDC such as submitting new status updates, fetching my feeds and displaying them as JSON objects.

App Engine recently started supporting 2-legged OAuth in combination with Google Accounts so that any App Engine application can become an OAuth service provider. Since OAuth support is baked into the Android platform I tried to hook up the Android handset as an OAuth consumer but could not finish in time to submit my entry to the Developer Challenge.

Since Android doesn’t play well with SOAP-based Web Services I think this approach in combination with JSON makes an appealing option. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them. I expect to write some more apps for Salesforce.com as the Android platform is fairly easy to grok. If you are familiar with using Eclipse with Force.com, App Engine, GWT or Java in general it seems much faster to get an app up and running with Android than with Objective-C for the iPhone. Just my $.02.