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QMEQME 

Salesforce ISV/OEM Portals & Self-Service

I have a couple of questions regarding the use of the customer portal / partner portal / force.com sites – as it pertains to an ISV and channel partner self-service.  Background:a. We are an ISV/OEM in the process of building a standalone native application embedded in force.com WITHOUT any integration into SFDC CRM objects.b. Our application will be created as a managed package using the “Distributed Org” model (where our customers can install the application into their own production environments / orgs).c. We plan on using the CRM for ISV with the 2 free Enterprise Edition licenses with the LMA installed to track licenses of our Trialforce downloads and our live production customers.   Application:Our customers manufacture parts, and distribute them thru distributors/resellers.  Our goal is to have these distributors/resellers login (username + password), to our native application installed at our customers orgs so that the distributors/resellers can view their data stored in the custom objects of our application. Scenarios:Reseller ABC logs into our Customer 123 to view their data stored in custom objectsReseller ABC logs into our Customer 456 to view their data stored in custom objectsReseller DEF logs into our Customer 456 to view their data stored in custom objects    Questions: (Please note: These questions are from the perspective of a Salesforce.com ISV/OEM ecosystem partner). 1) In order to achieve the scenarios described above for our application, should we use the SFDC delivered customer portal, partner portal, force.com sites, self-service.  Will any of these work?? OR do we have to build our own portal type solution as a part of our delivered application?? 2) If 1 of our customers (eg Customer 123) has 10 employees that use our application internally and 1000 distributors that login to view (read-only) their data, and the license fee charged by SFDC is $15/user/month for the “combined solution” (i.e. force.com + our native app), does that mean we (as the SFDC ISV/OEM partner) have to pay salesforce.com $150/month + $15,000/month for a total of $15150/month….. – (btw: at this point our solution won’t sell).  OR do we have to pay SFDC $150/month for the 10 internal employees that use our application? I have combed thru the help documentation, partner portal info + discussion forums and have been unable to find any concrete information that sheds light on a solution & pricing, that enables an ISV/OEM’s customer(s) to allow their channel partners (ie distributors/resellers) to login via the web into the ISV’s native application to view data stored in custom objects. Thank you kindly.
aalbertaalbert

For starters, please make sure you register as a Salesforce Partner if you haven't done so here.

 

Secondly, from what I understand, the reseller's would likely access the application through Force.com Sites + Customer Portal. Sites would allow Customer 123 to host a public website that their reseller's can access (again, publically available). Then from that Site, users can login or possibly even self-register. Force.com Sites provides seamlessly authentication to either Customer Portal or Partner Portal. From your description, it sounds like Customer Portal is the right solution. Depending on how simply or complex the sharing model is, you might be able to take advantage of the Authenticated Website license or High Volume Customer Portal license (vs the standard Customer Portal license types).

 

In terms of the pricing and OEM licensing, please register as a partner and a Salesforce rep will contact you.

QMEQME
We've adopted a separate approach using webservices and an html page w/ javascript to solve our problem. We are already registered as an ISV partner. Thanks!!
aalbertaalbert

Now I'm just curious....

 

Are you using a Visualforce page with HTML/javascript to invoke Force.com web services? Or are you hosting an external page somewhere? How do the resellers authenticate? What type of user license?

QMEQME

Are you using a Visualforce page with HTML/javascript to invoke Force.com web services?

-Yes

 

We will put this html page on a web server inside the firewall of our customer (we are an ISV) within their secure area.  The resellers that deal with our customer will login thru our customer's existing on-line partner portal and will be authenticated at that point.  This way we can restrict the login by IP address when invoking our webservice for additional security