On the heals of the announcement of the release date for the Apple Watch, Salesforce has announced three products for developers interested in leveraging the new technology. These include the Salesforce Analytics Cloud for Apple Watch, Salesforce1 for Apple Watch and Salesforce Wear Developer Pack for Apple Watch.
Salesforce Analytics Cloud for Apple Watch
Salesforce Analytics Cloud for Apple Watch can leverage data from a wide range of sources in addition to Salesforce and presents it in a mobile interface. It provides a personal way for users to explore data, uncover new insights and take action with dashboards and lenses. Users will also be able to swipe to get a glance of the most recently viewed dashboard, or use Handoff to transition between an Apple Watch and an iPhone. In addition, users will be able to query via Voice Search to surface a report, view a dashboard or find other information. The app is free with a paid license of Salesforce Analytics Cloud and is expected to be generally available in April 2015.
Salesforce1 for Apple Watch
Salesforce1 for Apple Watch delivers personal notifications to bring all Chatter, CRM, custom apps, and business processes together in a unified experience. Example business use cases include allowing sales managers to receive a discount approval request and take action right from the watch. Customer service managers can receive alerts if a critical case is escalated or if call wait times are about to exceed thresholds. Digital marketers can be alerted when a marketing campaign surpasses a goal. And employees can receive updates on key topics they follow in their communities. Salesforce1 for Apple Watch notifications are expected to be generally available the third quarter of this year.
Salesforce Wear Developer Pack for Apple Watch
With the Salesforce Wear Developer Pack for Apple Watch, developers using Salesforce1 can build enterprise apps for Apple Watch that connect directly to the Salesforce1 Platform. It offers a collection of open-source starter apps that let developers design and build wearable apps that connect to the Salesforce1 Platform. With the Developer Pack, developers can focus on the user experience utilizing the identity, security and other shared services of the Salesforce1 Platform. The Developer Pack for Apple Watch provides enterprise developers with sample code, documentation, demonstrations and reference apps.
Developers can build apps, or specifically extensions to apps running on their iPhone, using WatchKit, Apple’s developer SDK. WatchKit manages communication, bundlings of apps, and user interactions. The Salesforce Developer Kit for Apple Watch leverages WatchKit, and the Swift programming language to provide a starter project for extending Salesforce Mobile SDK apps onto Apple Watch. The Developer Kit provides implementations and typical patterns for enterprise authentication, Salesforce API notifications and working with Mobile SDK response objects.