Utilization of static evaluation functions in chess
There are simple ways to do so but it may not be a very good heuristic. For example going off of current piece valuation is very simple but leads to poor aggressive behavior. There are many other things to account for in addition to piece valuation like centrality and pawn structure that when included, is subjectively simple. See https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Evaluation for more notes on evaluation and for general chess programming advice.

Regarding your side note: 'Those things' end based on your heuristic function. Yes you get a board valuation that is used to determine how good a move is, guiding your game tree search.