Dependent Package

Question

I have a package for an app and we are close to the security review, the app that we are creating needs a Salesforce Non Profit Starter Package called Affiliations, is there a way that we can make our package dependent to that Affiliations package or do they have to be both installed separately? If so, how can we let the people in the Appexchange that the Affiliations package needs to be installed?

Answer 1

If you want users to install your package from AppExchange into their existing Salesforce org, you will need to have some warning / info message in your App's description to let them know that the NPSP Affiliations package is required --- otherwise, what will happen is they go to install your app, and after logging in and clicking through several screens, a warning message will come up saying something like "Required Package Missing: Affiliations". You want to avoid this --- nip this frustration in the bud, and add a warning message to your App on the AppExchange. Unfortunately, there's no other way --- Salesforce has been saying for years that they're working on an "App Bundling" technology which would let you install a package and any prerequisite packages that are not installed yet, all at once, but this has not materialized (yet).

Now, if you're trying to sell to new Salesforce customers, or just trying to let people do a trial of your app, you have the option of using Trialforce, which lets you configure a "template" org which can come preloaded with all apps you want and sample data, e.g. it could have NPSP Affiliations and your app preinstalled in it.

But for existing Salesforce users, you're just going to have to tell them, from your AppExchange page, to make sure to install NPSP Affiliations first.