So, I've been given the task of writing a web application for constructing and submitting quotes for my company.
First off, I'm brand new to SalesForce, and I'm understanding it better and better every day, however I'm still fairly uncomfortable with what I need to do here. I do know that the REST API is what I want to use for this.
Now, I've gone through this REST/PHP example and what confuses me is, after authentication, I'm brought to the actual login page for SalesForce. From what I've read, this is my question - do I have to login with this just once in order to verify my webapp with the SalesForce application, and from here on out, I can just connect directly without having to actually login to SalesForce? That's kind of the gist I'm getting from some of the comments and forum posts I've read, but I'm not sure about that.
Next question is this. What is the best overall approach for what I want to do? Like I said, I'm new to SalesForce, and I'm getting a lot of pressure to get this app done. I don't have the time, unfortunately, at this juncture to read all the docs and write a bunch of test apps.
The application sounds simple, but as I'm getting more into this, I'm fearing this may end up being a bit more of a project than we originally anticipated.
The application is to be housed on our companies servers, and written in PHP. The idea is to allow specified customers to login to our application based on a custom field we've added to hold their password. They should remain completely on our server, and all data they see from SalesForce should solely be pulled using the REST API. So our app should, ideally, login to SF behind the scenes - server to server. When the user inputs their creds, it will pull them from the SF database, and check the validity. Once they are inside the application, they are presented with a sort of "step-by-step" product build process which uses the metrics of the pricing matrix in the SF database. After they finish their product build, they should then be able to submit it to the opportunities table in such a way that it will be assigned to the actual sales rep to whom that particular client has been assigned.
There are some other interesting problems as well. Some of the items in the pricing matrix are only compatible with certain others, which is currently being handled by the sales reps who actually know which is which and what 'set' of items can go together in any one particular formation. Is there a way to handle this with SalesForce or am I going to have to handle such logic in my app?
My main question is - how do I handle this in the best possible way? As in, what SF technologies do I need to use, and what specific aspects of each technology will I most likely be using? I'm just looking for broad suggestions.
Also - and I guess this would be important :P ... is this even possible, or are we barking up the wrong tree?
and as a side note: we've already cleared this with SalesForce, as far as TOS goes, there are no problems on that front.
Thanks all :)