Posted by Cathy Boudreau on Wed, Aug 25, 2010
Say "Aloha" to new apps on the Salesforce AppExchange!
Aloha Apps is the new unlimited app category from salesforce.com. Aloha Apps don’t count against your system limits for apps, tabs, and objects—no matter which salesforce.com edition you’re using. With more than 500 Aloha Apps to choose from, you’re in for an “all-you-can-app” experience. More apps plus more access equals more success!
Top Aloha Apps include:
- SalesView - Drive Sales Productivity with Integrated Sales Intelligence
- VerticalResponse for AppExchange - Send marketing emails & postcards from Salesforce in minutes.
- Skype for Salesforce - Adds full Skype integration to your Salesforce organization.
- Draggin' Role - Manage your role hierarchy with ease! Now you can drag and drop your way through any hierarchy modifications.
- Conga Composer - One click to proposals, account plans, contracts and more from multiple objects and related lists.
- Click here to browse for more Aloha Apps!
Need more information on Aloha Apps? Please feel free to comment here!
Posted by Cathy Boudreau on Tue, Jul 13, 2010
Salesforce recently introduced Salesforce Chatter -- real-time enterprise collaboration. With the launch of Chatter comes Chatter Exchange -- a world where enterprise apps are as easy to use as Facebook. You can stay on top of what's happening in your company with real-time updates on people, groups, documents, and your application data. Chatter Apps include profiles, status updates, and real-time feeds, which make it easy to stay on top of what’s important to you and collaborate quickly across your organization. All of it fueling smarter-and faster-business decisions.
Top Chatter Apps include:
- ServiceMax Suite - Field Service On Demand: Control, monitor, and track all field service activities to increase service revenue, control costs, and turn post-sales service into a competitive advantage.
- Google Alerts to Chatter: This application requests Google Alerts for your accounts, then turns those Alert emails into posts on that account's chatter feed.
- ChatMetrix + Chatter: ChatMetrix answers the question "What's Hot In My Chatter Network Lately?" with such tools as a tag cloud, a dynamic graph, and a bar chart showing how frequently words are appearing in your Chatter feed.
- FinancialForce Accounting: Sales and Finance collaboration - Chatter integration moves Finance into the heart of the business, to avoid problems and improve customer service.
- Appirio Professional Services Enterprise: Manage your people, customers, projects and transactions with an end-to-end services management application. Chatter-enabled to bring real-time collaboration to your services teams.
To review and demo more Chatter Apps, please visit: http://sites.force.com/appexchange/results?type=Apps&filter=a0L30000002WuiyEAC&sort=6
Have questions or comments? Post them below!
Posted by Jay Rivard on Fri, Jun 11, 2010
Using My Domain, your organization can select a custom Salesforce.com domain name that highlights your brand, or a different term that represents your business. Using a custom domain name provides other important advantages, such as increased security and better support for single sign-on.
Your domain name will use the standard URL format, including:
- The protocol: https://
- The subdomain prefix: your brand or term
- The domain: my.salesforce.com
For example, the login URL for a company called Universal Containers would be: https://universalcontainers.my.salesforce.com/. You can use up to 40 characters.
It's a snap to set up a custom domain name. After you decide on the name or term you want to use, My Domain checks to make sure your subdomain is available. Then it registers the domain name and publishes it to the internet. After a brief period, you'll receive an email to let you know your new domain name is ready for testing. Log in using the new URL and test the URLs for other pages in the application.
Please note: My Domain is currently available through a limited release program. All customers can select and register a domain name, but some customers will be required to wait for permission from salesforce.com before they can roll it out to users.
For questions and more information, please feel free to post below.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Wed, May 19, 2010
Salesforce has acquired JigSaw. Jigsaw Data Fusion provides automated data hygiene and management with unlimited access to millions of business contacts. And now that Jigsaw is a salesforce.com company, Jigsaw Data Fusion's power to keep your data clean and provide new leads will only get better!
Jigsaw has a reputation for having the most accurate and complete company data available. This is a perfect fit for most of us. I suspect that there will be a much tighter integration between Salesforce and Jigsaw and possibly some reduction in cost as well.
Here are some comments from Salesforce web site:
- "Salesforce.com is excited to bring the data services industry into the era of Cloud 2," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "With Jigsaw, we'll make it as easy as Wikipedia to source data, as easy as iTunes to buy data and as easy as Facebook to stay updated as the data changes."
- "Companies are utilizing crowd-sourced data services in the cloud more than ever because it offers the best quality information," said Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw. "This is an exciting opportunity for all of us at Jigsaw, and will help us accelerate our ability to bring cloud-based data services to a wider audience."
With Jigsaw Data Fusion you can:
- Turn previously unusable records into new leads.
- Stay on top of the changes to your business contact data by automatically synchronizing updates to individual or company records.
- Keep your pipeline full with unlimited access to fresh, accurate business leads.
Questions or comments on this acquisition? Post them below!
Posted by Bill Goulette on Mon, Apr 26, 2010
Some Salesforce CRM users have discovered this already, but it bears repeating.
The Spring '09 release made the Mobile Lite version available for all editions. Salesforce has recently upgraded their free version of their mobile offering to include more objects and functionality. Currently, Mobile Lite users can view, create, edit, and delete accounts, assets, contacts, leads, opportunities, events, tasks, cases, and solutions. They also have access to their dashboards and Salesforce Chatter feeds. Many of these objects were read-only until recently.
Setup of this client is exceptionally easy. Less than 5 minutes of your administrator's time and about the same per device and the end user is enjoying the freedom that makes the PDA device worth the intrusion into one's personal life.
Take a couple minutes to view this link for a quick peek at the Salesforce.com mobile client of today.
In the interest of full disclosure, you would still have to purchase the full version if you are in need of making custom objects available on your team's mobile devices or if you are interested refining or differentiating the mobile interface for one or more users. Regardless, the free, Mobile Lite version is amazing and adds huge value for the end user who asks the question, "why do I want to use Salesforce?".
Posted by Jay Rivard on Thu, Apr 22, 2010
Recently salesforce.com did a follow-up to the Chatter announcement at the last DreamForce. I have to admit that I did not really understand the value of the Chatter product at the time. This is in part due to the fact that I am not a heavy Facebook user. To be honest I never have the time or the interest to spend my free time in front of a computer.
The April event, however, has opened my eyes to the possibilities that this product offers. It truly is a game changer for most of our customers in the way that they use Salesforce. The following is a list of reasons why I believe this to be true.
- A large majority of our customers are Facebook users and are used to social networking. They understand the terminology, it's navigation, and its benefits. Adoption of Chatter will be easy for them.
- In almost every single engagement that I am involved with management is looking for the ability to see what's going on within the enterprise and to be notified of any changes that may be considered mission-critical. They wanted to be quickly streamed in and they also want to be able to opt in or out of discussions that they deem important. Chatter does this like no other product I've ever seen.
- This social networking environment would be available on the desktop and on Salesforce Mobile as well. You will be able to stay in touch regardless of your location.
- Companies are always looking to find one application to bring the whole enterprise in to work collaboratively. Whether you're in sales, customer service, finance, engineering, or any other business unit your ability to be part of this social net will positively affect customer satisfaction, profitability, product or service delivery etc.
If you are interested in learning more about Chatter please feel free to post a comment below. Now is the time to start planning for the next major shift in the way that you do business -- I do not believe that I'm understating its importance. You will see more about this in my future blogs.
Posted by Cathy Boudreau on Wed, Apr 14, 2010
The salesforce.com Summer '10 release is quickly approaching and soon you'll be able to take advantage of great new features! As a Force.com Sandbox customer, you have the opportunity to get early access to Summer '10 in your sandbox and test new customizations and features before your production organization is upgraded. We want to make you aware of the options available to you during this time.
The Sandbox Preview Window for Summer ‘10 is scheduled for May 14, 2010 through June 12, 2010.
You may need to take action to ensure your Sandbox will either participate in the Summer '10 Preview or opt out and remain on Spring '10 during the window. The specific server instance on which your Sandbox resides determines when it will upgrade to Summer ‘10.
To determine which server instance your Sandbox is on, log into your Sandbox and examine the URL in your browser address bar.
Once you have located your instance, use the chart below to determine what action you want to take.
Have questions regarding the Summer '10 Sandbox? Post them here!
Posted by Bill Goulette on Tue, Apr 06, 2010
I get asked frequently all sorts of questions on how to use Salesforce CRM. Recently the same question came up twice in regard to using the account hierarchy. The question is: should I use the account hierarchy and why is it valuable?
Let me answer the second part first. Account hierarchy will allow you to view your accounts in a visual hierarchy. This will allow you to see which objects like contacts, opportunities, and activities are associated with a specific site. There are some disadvantages though. If you want to see all the contacts for an entire organization combined you would have to create a report. In addition it does require a little more diligence to maintain. Finally, you have the issue of a contact being associated with more than one site.
The answer to the first part of the question is that it depends your industry and your commitment to maintaining the database. There are also other considerations such as if you actively use the partner portal. I recommend talking it through with your staff. If you need additional assist feel free to contact us or post a comment below.
Posted by Cathy Boudreau on Tue, Mar 23, 2010
Did you know that you have the ability to upload a custom logo that displays in the Salesforce CRM meeting request emails and on meeting response pages that invitees see when you invite them to a group event? To add your logo, go to Setup | Customize | Activities | Activity Settings. Select the "Show Custom Logo in Meeting Requests" checkbox (see image below).
When adding your logo, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- The image must be in GIF, JPEG, or PNG format and be less than 20 KB.
- For best results, use an image that is no more than 130 pixels wide by 100 pixels high at 72 pixels per inch. Images that are larger than these dimensions may not display correctly in some email clients due to automatic resizing.
- You must first upload your logo to the Documents tab and make it externally available. Documents marked Internal Use Only can't be used as a logo.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Thu, Mar 18, 2010
The vast majority of our clients use Salesforce CRM in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook. The Outlook Connector Client is very robust and has proven itself to be reliable. That is not to say that there are not minor bugs that show up from time to time. In response to this, salesforce.com updates it quite frequently. In the "Desktop Integration" section under "Setup" you will notice an option to check for updates. We recommend that you do this once every month. If there is an update you will see the release notes associated with it. If the changes are significant you should upgrade to that new release.