Below is the screenshot of salesforce customer communities from one of videos of salesforce ( http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/features/communities.jsp ).Can someone help me in customizing the look and feel of chatter part.How to built the entire chatter functionality like the one shown below
[SalesForce] Customize Salesforce customer communities
Related Solutions
I have recently been piloting Salesforce Communities to understand the impact on our Portals, and also (as an ISV) on our products.
Functionally, we can think of Salesforce Communities as an upgrade to Customer Portal / Partner Portal. However, Salesforce Communities represents a change in the positioning of "portal" functionality. There's a considerable gulf in user experience (look, feel and functionality) between internal org users and portal users. With Communities Salesforce is closing this gulf, making the experience across internal and external users seamless. We're familiar with the "App" selection menu which in a sense provides different perspectives within an org. Communities uses similar thinking - internal users will be able to switch their org perspective from "internal community" to "partner community" or to "customer community" or indeed any other Community they may have, from a Communities drop-down menu which is ever present at the top of the page. Within each community / perspective the experience will be very similar, and significantly this includes Chatter functionality.
Themes / Branding
Default styling is far prettier than default portal. There are some coarse customisation options: several colour schemes, override of 5 key colours, header (JPG, GIF, PNG or HTML) and footer (HTML) docs.
If you want to use an icon for a community theme: - an image has to be loaded as a document - the document has to be set as an "Externally Available Image"
Identification and Authentication
Authentication options for external users: Username/Password & SAML. When GA it should also support Auth Providers.
You can have pages that are accessible without requiring login.
Customer Chatter Groups
There is no connection / commonality between Customer Chatter Groups and Salesforce (Chatter) Communities. Chatter customers from private groups with customers can’t be added to communities.
Salesforce Communities and Chatter Customer Groups are complementary. Chatter Customer Groups is designed for ad hoc collaboration with external users on files and projects on a small scale. Salesforce Chatter Communities is designed to create a highly engaging and customized experience for anywhere from just a few hundred members to millions of members.
Ideas
Ideas with Communities are not supported in the pilot, but should available in the Summer 13 release.
Chatter Groups
Posts to Chatter Groups are accessible only within the Community in which the Group was created. This principle includes the "Internal Community".
Once Communities are enabled, an Internal Community is established which contains all the org’s existing groups.
It is not possible to create a Chatter Group which is accessible from multiple communities - e.g. by the internal community and the customer community.
The only way to post to a Chatter Group is to first switch into that community.
Customers can create their own Chatter Groups within their community.
Chatter On Records
It is possible to Chatter on records in Communities. You can configure which objects are accessible to which communities, and in addition you can employ sharing techniques for controlling access to specific records for an object.
However, it is important to note that if a user has access to a record, and Chatter is enabled for the object type, then that user also has access to the chatter feed for that record. Records and accompanying Chatter posts span communities.
Visualforce, HTML an CSS
I have seen no problems so far with Visualforce transitioned from Portal to Communities, though there appear to be some issues with custom HTML/CSS which will need to be investigated further.
Documentation
- Summer 13 Release Notes (see Chatter section)
- User Licence Types (as per techtrekker's comment)
- Getting Started With Communities (as per Mohith's answer)
That way it is branded can be a bit confusing, but Salesforce Communities and Chatter Communities are ultimately the same thing. There are different editions and pricing around a Customer Community and Partner Community, but that is more around pricing and some functionality differences.
Some key information:
What is Salesforce Communities?
Salesforce Communities is an online platform that enables rich collaboration between employees, customers, partners, suppliers and distributors. Organizations can create fully-branded public or private communities that connect members directly with each other – and with relevant content, data and business processes. Salesforce Communities is the only community platform that combines the power of social with mobile participation, trusted security, and direct connection to business processes.
What types of communities does Salesforce support?
Salesforce provides two general types of communities that can be used for a broad variety of purposes, from customer service to marketing or engagement of resellers, suppliers and partners.
Customer Communities deliver rich collaboration, mobile access and consistent branding for even the largest groups. For example, a service community enables customers to answer questions for other customers, quickly find the information they need, or work with service reps to resolve issues – decreasing time to resolution while increasing engagement and loyalty.
Partner Communities provide even greater ties to business process along with the added power of role-based security to segment the data that’s been shared with different members. For example, partner communities enable companies to manage reseller relationships by keeping some lead and funding information private, but enabling collaborative selling between partners, leading to more engaged partners and increased deal flow.
What are the key features of Salesforce Communities?
No other communities platform offers the same combination of capabilities along with deep integration into business process. Key Communities features include:
Business Process Integration: members can create and collaborate on support cases, sales opportunities or campaigns from within the community
Social Collaboration: members can interact, collaborate on goals and form groups to support their interests
Branding/Customization: companies can design their community to match their brand and website look and feel. Content and navigation structure is highly customizable.
Mobility: members can access the community from any device, anywhere
Social Intelligence: relevant content and resources are suggested to each member based on their interests and behavior
Security & scalability: leveraging the trusted Salesforce platform, all data and member information is always safe -- no matter how many members you have
If I don’t use Chatter, can I still use Communities?
Yes. Communities functionality is not dependent on the use of Chatter. You can still get the branding and mobile benefits of the solution along with other collaboration elements such as Ideas and Q & A.
Best Answer
From my experience, some of the marketing material put out around products like Communities and Site.com can be very liberal on what is "possible" on a public facing site. In this scenario, I believe you would need to custom code the entire Chatter feed to get that exact look and feel. You can achieve that using custom CSS/Javascript and the ConnectApi. I have done some work in the past (Chatter Image Gallery & Extended) with the ConnectApi Namespace and it isn't too bad to use if you want to go that route.
However, with that said, you can probably avoid all of that and just use the correct Visualforce Chatter tag. The only real difference between the standard Chatter feed and what you have in your screenshot above is the button. The Chatter button says Share, not Ask. In this scenario, I would use the
<chatter:feed>
tag:Note: In the past, I have seen Salesforce Communities used in conjunction with Force.com Sites to provide a public facing and authenticated facing site. In this scenario, this tag will not work on a Force.com Sites page.
For adding the other functionality (Message My Advisor for instance), look into Publisher Actions.
Note: You may find the Publisher Actions Implementation Guide useful.