Site.com Data Services Overview

Site.com data services combine many features that let you connect to standard and custom Salesforce objects. Retrieve data from your organization’s objects and dynamically display it on your site pages, or alternatively, gather and submit data from your customers. And when you update data in your Salesforce object, the changes are reflected automatically on the live site—no site updates required!

Available for purchase in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

Available (with limitations) in: Developer Edition

Here are a few ways you can use Site.com data services:

Publish a catalog of products—List your company's products and include information, such as model numbers and prices, pulled dynamically from your organization.
Post company press releases—Publish your company’s press releases and sort by publication date.
Create a realtor website—Display current listings filtered by city or price.
Create a recruiting website—Post job openings to a public site and allow visitors to submit applications and resumes.

So how does it all work? Several data-bound page elements let you retrieve and display your data, or collect data from your site visitors.

Data tables connect to Salesforce objects, retrieve a data set based on the filter criteria that you specify, and display one or more record as rows in the table.

Data Repeaters and data elements combine to let you connect to standard and custom objects, retrieve data, and dynamically display it on your site’s pages. Together, the data repeater and data elements result in a "repeating template" that offers you the greatest flexibility for displaying one or more records on the page.

Data functions let you perform calculations on data retrieved from objects and display the result on the page. For example, for a particular field in an object, you can use a data function to calculate the total value or the average amount of all returned records.

Nested repeaters let you retrieve data from objects with a parent-to-child relationship.

Forms and form fields combine to let you collect data from your site visitors and submit the data to standard or custom Salesforce objects. Create web-to-lead forms, capture customer details, or gather feedback on your products or services.

Data Services Considerations

To allow guest users to view the data in or submit data to a Salesforce object, you must set the object’s data access permissions.
When working with assets, the easiest way to take advantage of Site.com data services is to import the files into your website, and store a relative URL to these assets in your standard or custom object. See Storing Assets to Use with Salesforce Objects.
If you add a data-bound page element to your site and then subsequently change a field type in the Salesforce object it’s connected to—for example, changing a text field to a picklist—the data-bound page element will no longer work. You must reconfigure the data-bound page element to reference the updated field.
If you update data in an object that’s connected to a data table, data repeater, or data function, the changes are reflected automatically on the live site. To control this, you can add a picklist field to the object to specify when a record is approved to go live. Then you can use the field to filter the records by approved status, so only approved records appear on the live site.