There is not really an easy answer to this question.  Its almost best to handle the question on a case by case  basis. 

The ShoreTel call center integration uses a feature that Salesforce has been expanding recently.   We are following suit, and in our winter 2014 release we will support phone number - softphone integration.  This release will be announced later this week.  Using it, and configuring your users as call center users will enable them to click on any phone number in Skuid pages to start a phone call. 

Generally however, if the app exchange app introduces new custom objects and builds standard layouts for those objects then Skuid will work perfectly with these apps. You will be able to access the objects and create Skuid layouts with them. 

If the app does additional customization, doing things like embedding javascript into custom buttons, or connecting with external applications, using Skuid will be a bit more challenging and may require some additional development. 

Hopefully this answers your immediate question and provides a framework for evaluating other app exchange items.  Let us know if you have further questions. 

Yes it does and thank you for the quick response

So I am assuming that to get the ShoreTel integration for now we would have to write code to a custom button or something of that sort?

Don’t jump on the custom code bandwagon just yet.  We hope to have a solution in place to the contact center issue in a package you can review later this week. 

Rob,

I apologize for posting this publicly, but I found no means on your site to communicate privately.  Feel free to delete this from your community and contact me directly at the number and address below concerning my issue. 
 
I own SalesReach Software.  We have several apps on the appexchange.  One of our customers has chosen to use skuid.  They made this decision as new users of Salesforce.com, not fully understanding the intricacies of how Managed Packages are designed to work.  I do not know if they found Skuid themselves or it was recommended by another.  They told us they did this but we interpeted their comments as having done some minor layout issues. In fact the entirely changed our apps user interface.  The custom mentioned a few things that seemed to be issues relating to features we had not yet fully completed on our side. So I discounted them thinking there was some validity to their comments and knowing we were adding functionality to address what I was hearing.  I never personally logged on to their system until this morning.  Well I made a mistake.  It seems the issues were not entirely due to improvements we needed to make, but also to some degree to the implementation of Skuid changes to our Managed Package.

Our app SalesReach Telecom (https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000009uo9BEAQ)  is very large with over 600 components, much apex, java script, visualforce, salesforce to salesforce and salesforce1 functionality.  It is a highly complex end to end vertical market app that transforms a naked Salesforce org into a fully customized - ready to go business process management tool for the Telecom industry.  
  
The customer is experiencing great difficulty in doing basic functions in our app such as commission processing, quoting, asset creation and other functions as a result of the skuid layouts they built without our involvement.  I am inclined to tell them to remove skuid from any page layouts needed for our app. But before I do I want to get your perspective.

In essence the way they re-engineered our Manage Package using skuid has reduced, hidden or eliminated  functionality.  Re-engineering our managed package is a legal problem too potentially violating copyrights and patents pending, but thats not my concern.  Nothing was done intentionally to violate our copyrights; they are not trying to re-package our app.  They are just trying to find the best way to allow them to run their business. My concern is getting our shared customer all the functionality they pay us both for, in the use of our app, while still being able to support it.

I saw on your web site you are the Director of Professional Services and User Experience. So your concerns are the same as mine here I suspect.  How do we help our shared customer to get the best overall user experience?

Please call me at (843) 321-4216 to discuss this today.  I am copying this and sending it to my customer so they are fully informed.

Thanks, 
Pete

Pete Keane
President 
SalesReach Software  
pete@salesreachsoftware.com