When to Use the Salesforce Console Integration Toolkit

The Salesforce Console Integration Toolkit helps advanced administrators and developers implement custom functionality for the Salesforce console. For example, you can use the Salesforce Console Integration Toolkit to display Visualforce pages or third-party content as tabs in the Salesforce console. The Salesforce Console Integration Toolkit is an API that uses browsers as clients to display pages in the console.

Your organization may have complex business processes that are unsupported by Salesforce Console Integration Toolkit functionality. Not to worry. When this is the case, the Force.com platform offers advanced administrators and developers several ways to implement custom functionality.

The following table lists additional features that developers can use to implement custom functionality for Salesforce organizations.

Feature	Description
SOAP API	Use standard SOAP API calls if you want to add functionality to a composite application that processes only one type of record at a time and does not require any transactional control (such as setting a Savepoint or rolling back changes). For more information, see the SOAP API Developer's Guide.
Visualforce	Visualforce consists of a tag-based markup language that gives developers a more powerful way of building applications and customizing the Salesforce user interface. With Visualforce you can: Build wizards and other multistep processes. Create your own custom flow control through an application. Define navigation patterns and data-specific rules for optimal, efficient application interaction. For more information, see the Visualforce Developer's Guide.
Apex	Use Apex if you want to: Create Web services. Create email services. Perform complex validation over multiple objects. Create complex business processes that are not supported by workflow. Create custom transactional logic (logic that occurs over the entire transaction, not just with a single record or object). Attach custom logic to another operation, such as saving a record, so that it occurs whenever the operation is executed, regardless of whether it originates in the user interface, a Visualforce page, or from SOAP API. For more information, see the Apex Developer Guide.

Feature

Description

SOAP API

Use standard SOAP API calls if you want to add functionality to a composite application that processes only one type of record at a time and does not require any transactional control (such as setting a Savepoint or rolling back changes).

For more information, see the SOAP API Developer's Guide.

Visualforce

Visualforce consists of a tag-based markup language that gives developers a more powerful way of building applications and customizing the Salesforce user interface. With Visualforce you can:

Build wizards and other multistep processes.
Create your own custom flow control through an application.
Define navigation patterns and data-specific rules for optimal, efficient application interaction.

For more information, see the Visualforce Developer's Guide.

Apex

Use Apex if you want to:

Create Web services.
Create email services.
Perform complex validation over multiple objects.
Create complex business processes that are not supported by workflow.
Create custom transactional logic (logic that occurs over the entire transaction, not just with a single record or object).
Attach custom logic to another operation, such as saving a record, so that it occurs whenever the operation is executed, regardless of whether it originates in the user interface, a Visualforce page, or from SOAP API.

For more information, see the Apex Developer Guide.

Salesforce Console Developer Guide

When to Use the Salesforce Console Integration Toolkit