Powerful Time-saving IDE for Salesforce Development

Last Updated on June 1, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta

Finding a perfect tool for Salesforce development isn’t as easy as it first might have seemed, as you have to find a tool, or even worse, some set of tools that fit your working process the best, and drives you nuts the least.

There is a rescue for those who want to have a powerful supported tool for writing code, working with declarative development, troubleshooting, and maintaining Salesforce-based projects, and which is still developer-friendly.

The Welkin Suite IDE after 50+ releases, which have added up to 100+ features, is getting closer to its goal – to become the “Perfect” (a tool that fits the user’s working process the best, and drives them nuts the least) IDE for Salesforce development!

So what makes The Welkin Suite IDE so different from all the other tools for Salesforce development that it should be given a try?

Let’s consider the most important criteria by which we usually say, “I like” or “I hate” a tool that we are using – available features, user interface, and customer support.

So what’s cool about The Welkin Suite is that it’s good for both highly experienced Apex coders,  and also for those who do mainly point-and-click development. In the IDE, you will be able to work with integrated editors like Apex, Lightning, Visualforce, HTML/CSS/Javascript/XML, and declarative (point and click) development.

We are sure you picked up on the five words “declarative (point and click) development” in that last paragraph, and you might have said to yourself, “declarative development in an IDE?” Yes, that is right, so let’s take a look at some features for declarative  development and administration of organizations in The Welkin Suite that will help save a lot of time:

There is a possibility to manage field-level security permissions for the fields of all your profiles in just one place, you can filter them and change their settings with just a few clicks within the IDE’s Field Level Security editor.

Another great feature is the sObjects Fields Inspector, this neat feature empowers you to view and analyze fields and to quickly create new ones.

And if you need a fast way to create your SOQL queries, with just clicks and no coding, there is a handy SOQL Builder to get your working process with queries well-organized.

All these features are great time-savers, but there are much more.

Here are some of the coolest time-savers that developers who do a lot of coding will definitely like:

The Code Completion feature increases developers’ coding velocity and reduces the number of possible mistakes in the code by providing the best suggestions and filtering the scope of list members by their types, so there is no need to remember them, as well as all the classes, and objects.

TWS totally rebuilt the Code Completion for Apex in its last release – Bloom R1. Now it covers different types of files with Apex code – not only regular classes but Triggers and Anonymous Apex files as well. It also gives more context-tailored completions, as well as it removes all items that are irrelevant to the current context suggestions.

Another great time-saver is the powerful Apex Retrospective Debugger. It can get all the necessary data about the execution of your code and various processes in the org, so you can really watch all the operations being executed step-by-step and quickly detect and fix the problem spots very fast. Another cool thing about the Debugger is that for using it, you don’t need any extra license from Salesforce.

Another cool functionality for getting rid of bugs faster is using The Welkin Suites Debug logs viewer to analyze the Debug Logs with a great option to be able to filter them to display only those that match the criteria you have specified – all these things help you debug your code much faster. And, what is even more convenient, you can just with a click have the IDE navigate from the debug log event, directly to the line of source code that generates the log with a cool go-to source function.

Again, if you’re dealing with writing code, then you know that unit tests are one of the most important aspects of Salesforce development. The Welkin Suite provides you with the functionality for running your unit tests while you keep on coding, it all is working at the same time along with some other features, like Code Coverage, Apex Tests Runner, and more, which help you analyze the results in a blink. Isn’t all of this a wow?

As you can see, The Welkin Suite has a lot of features to help you with your tasks, no matter what role you perform, admin, declarative development, or hardcore coding.

So with this huge handy functionality, is this tool really developer-friendly?

Yes, it is!

Despite having all the tools you need in one IDE, you are able to personalize your tool as you like or need: there are functional moving panels and customizable hotkeys. When you arrange your panels, TWS remembers the layout for you. Also, you can show or hide tool panels automatically, dock them against the edges of the IDE and display any window on some other monitor!

The tool is so flexible that you can even add external third-party tools in the IDE and use them from the menu and/or hotkey. It’s very easy to customize TWS, so not only will you be able to easily navigate within your code with this tool’s help, but you can easily navigate within the IDE itself.

Even more to this, The Welkin Suite has multiple project support so you can work on different organizations and simultaneously test the unrelated functionality. When accessing several projects at the same time, you can make use of the majority of features in The Welkin Suite IDE: from running tests to creating Lightning Bundles, examining the log files, and more.

TWS gives you another great opportunity to have comfortable development – to organize the structure of your files and folders in the IDE, the way you, want using a simple drag and drop approach.

Another thing that makes TWS loved by developers is that they quit having to worry about archiving and unpacking Static Resource files, as TWS does this automatically each time when pulling data from Salesforce or sending it there.

Here are some other questions that a Salesforce developer might ask:

Does The Welkin Suite track Salesforce’s updates?

Yes, it does.

The Welkin Suite keeps up with Salesforce’s continuous updates and supports the Salesforce technologies that are needed. Let’s talk about the support for lightning as an example. You can develop great Lightning applications and components, and preview the results of your work with them directly in the IDE.

Can I use The Welkin Suite as a team? Sure!

TWS has integrated Git support and a Local History panel – a Git-like version control system that helps track changes in the files, compares file versions and restores to the version the user wants in a single click. Even more, you can share your project structure with your colleagues and work simultaneously.

And finally, is The Welkin Suite a supported tool?

Yes, support is available for both single developers and teams!

There are a few ways to get help: to write directly to the support team by email, to report a something inside the IDE itself, to leave a comment on a forum or blog, and for Enterprise subscriptions, there is one more option – to use a ticketing system and track the status of your request/issue.