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30
points
Free Best Practice Webinars - United States

Best Practices Webinars are exclusively for salesforce.com customers. With thousands of companies using salesforce.com, there are a lot of great ideas out there. This is our opportunity to share best practices discovered and developed by customers just like you. These sessions are meant to be interactive, so come prepared to participate; ask questions and share your success stories.

To attend any of these meetings on the appropriate day:

1) Go to: https://www.gotomeeting.com/join/418660800

2) Enter the meeting number: 418-660-800

3) Enter your name, email, and the password: crmsuccess

4) Dial: 1-866-393-8073 (North America); Or: 7205871473 (International)

5) Meeting number *2582794*

FRIDAYS @ 11:00 a.m. PST

Topic: Tips & Tricks

Time Saving tips for Administrators and Users

Explore custom fields, mashups & buttons

Leverage efficiency tools to help increase adoption

Learn and get more from the AppExchange

0 Comments • Posted by Erica Kuhl to For Administrators 2 days ago
130
points
AppExchange App(s) of the Week: CVM Solutions

Patience is not my strong suit so I’ve been chomping at the bit to feature this week’s app(s) of the week. CVM provides supplier management solutions for a who’s who of Fortune 1000 companies and has now launched 3 native solutions on the AppExchange, CVM Data Enrichment, Supplier Central and Supplier Locator.

On average, it typically costs $1000+/yr just to manage one supplier!   If you're a large company with hundreds of suppliers this can quickly add up.   CVM allows you to “connect the dots” on your suppliers.   This could mean cleaning up data on existing suppliers, identifying redundant suppliers across your organization or finding net new suppliers based on what your peers in the industry are doing.

CVM’s three solutions on the AppExchange can be used together or on their own.     Here’s the breakdown:

Data Enrichment
This solution allows you to complete missing or incomplete data as well as append additional data such as corporate family linkage and diversity status.   CVM takes your existing supplier data and runs it against its extensive database of supplier information, then updates this information within Salesforce.    Customers typically refresh this data quarterly and sign up for a multi-year subscription to keep the data continually updated.

Supplier Central
With Supplier Central, you can take things a step further and collect and manage additional info directly from the suppliers themselves.   Using salesforce.com’s partner portal, you can collect more company specific info like insurance details or info security forms.    Also, you can take this data and run extensive reports to analyze supplier info across your organization.

Supplier Distribution by Country--Supplier Central

Supplier Locator
Finally, Supplier Locator provides you directory-like access to CVM’s database of millions of small and diverse suppliers. This allows you to quickly and efficiently expand your sources of supply so you can lower costs and mitigate risk.

Directory View--Supplier Locator

On top of delivering great functionality, these apps are easy to use, incorporate Chatter and have a very slick GUI that uses Flex and Flash.   Check out these three great listings today.    You’re sure to be impressed!

1 Comment •  Posted by Sara Varni Bright  to For Administrators, AppExchange 3 days ago
210
points
How Salesforce uses AppExchange apps: iLinc web conferencing

Nothing is more disappointing than spending hours preparing an online presentation only to have it result in a trickle of leads. On the flip side, it can be overwhelming when you have too many leads to follow up with and no way to easily prioritize them.

Enter iLinc.   With iLinc for Salesforce from the AppExchange you can launch web meetings from within Salesforce CRM and optimize them by analyzing attendee data.   You can see which prospects attended your session and even more compelling, how long they attended.

When someone interacts with an iLinc session, they can automatically be added to a campaign and/or their campaign status can be updated. Additionally, if a new prospect attends your session that doesn’t already exist within Salesforce, iLinc will automatically create a new lead.

Here at Salesforce, our Sales Engineering team uses iLinc to deliver webinars for our prospects and customers.   By using the iLinc integration they were able to uncover new information that they hadn’t been able to see in the past.    For example, they were able to determine the best day of the week to hold these events and also that recorded sessions were just as effective as delivering them live.   Rich Kline, a Manager of Sales Engineering, had this to say about the solution, “iLinc has helped us replace many manual processes and allows us to fine tune our online programs so that we can make the best use of everyone’s time.”

Check out iLinc on the AppExchange to see how you can invite and track webinar attendees from within Salesforce, optimize your online presentations and ensure more traction with your customers and prospects.

0 Comments •  Posted by Sara Varni Bright  to For Administrators, AppExchange 3 days ago
140
points
AppExchange All-Star: Rhonda Ross, Audatex

Rhonda is the lead Salesforce administrator at Audatex, a Solera Company that delivers technology solutions, shared services, and consulting for the insurance and claims industries. She's an Advanced Salesforce Administrator and Certified Developer, and active in the Salesforce Community using the nickname rpr2. She's also the co-leader of the San Diego Salesforce.com User Group.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the system administrator at an organization with a diverse group of over 200 users, I’m always on the lookout for packages on the AppExchange that can save me development time and avoid the need to “reinvent the wheel.” Recently, when I was looking through my organization’s user log I decided to graph my AppExchange logins (yes, I’m a data freak) and discovered that I log into AppExchange at least twice a month. This doesn’t even capture the times that I’m just browsing the site without logging in.

In April, I was busy gathering requirements from a new group of users. Because of items I found on AppExchange, all customizations, development, and testing got completed by June. I keep returning to the AppExchange site because I find so much of value there.

Many of my favorite apps have already been written about in previous months – Demand Tools, DupeBlocker, Vertical Response, and Exact Targetto name just a few.

There’s also many wonderful apps that have been published on AppExchange that are free. The number keeps growing and is currently at 468. I’d like to highlight a few of the free apps that I use, where not only is the price perfect and functionality great, but so is the support that I’ve received. Almost all of the free apps are going to be listed as having “no support”, but my experience has been that many of the authors of these apps have provided great support – often proactively, sometimes after a posting on a community site such as the discussion board for Force.com Labs Development and Projects or the Answers site.

Publisher: Force.com Labs
App: Security Health Check
Function: Scans your system's security-related settings and produces a report with areas of possible exposure and remediation recommendations.
Support Experience: Contacted directly by the author after having a problem during the install. Issue (a bug) was quickly resolved. Also, very responsive in finding a solution to the app using up multiple tabs in the "pre-aloha app" days.

Publisher: Sales Optimizer
App: Activities Tab
Function: Simply adds a tab for easy access to activities. Such a simple thing that can make such a big difference in usability and productivity.
Support Experience: Was proactively contacted by the company after I installed the app. I did have one question which the salesperson researched with the developer and quickly responded to me.

Publisher: Print Sf
App: Print Sf Free Edition - Print & Mail On Demand
Function: The free edition has much functionality, but I have used only 1 feature thus far -- the ability to standardize mailing address information to US Post Office specifications. Experience with the free edition led me to use other offerings from this company.
Support Experience: A few times when I uploaded certain lists, I got an error. This triggered an alert to the publisher who immediately contacted me and resolved the issue. Service has been super from PrintSf for both the free and contracted services/products.

Publisher: Kugamon
App: Account/Contact Address Manager w/Automatic Sync & Update
Function: My latest find (published 7/2/10). Another piece of my toolset for keeping our address data as accurate and up-to-date as possible. This gem updates the shipping address and contact address when the billing address changes, if they had all been the same prior to the billing address change.
Support Experience: Was proactively contacted by the company after I installed the app. I had a suggestion for a further feature (update of contact phone number if account phone number is changed) which is now being considered for a future release!

Publisher: Arrowpointe
App: User Adoption Dashboard
Function: A great dashboard for monitoring user adoption. Can easily be tweaked to meet your exact needs.
Support Experience: While I didn’t need any support when customizing or using the dashboard, this made my list anyway. It’s the only free Arrowpointe app that we use in my organization, but we use other code samples that Scott Hemmeter has contributed on his blog. For some of those I have needed help with when tweaking and he’s always been extremely responsive and helpful.

My closing piece of advice is to make visiting the site a monthly habit. The AppExchange is a resource that no admin should live without!

0 Comments • Posted by Sara Varni Bright to For Administrators, AppExchange 3 days ago
60
points
Salesforce.com's Social Media Policy

With the rise of Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter, virtually every employee is engaged in some form of social media. And regardless of the activity, the line between your personal identity and your professional identity is blurring, especially when you publish something in the public domain.

We created a Social Media Policy for salesforce.com employees to help define what’s in-bounds, out-of-bounds, and who to escalate things to. We wanted employees to be able to participate across our social media channels in safe and productive ways. By providing training and encouraging participation, we also have the opportunity to build an even more vibrant and healthy community.

We decided to publish the social media policy and training deck in the public domain so that other companies might be able to use it to formulate a policy and training program of their own. On the Altimeter Group site there is a listof social media policies from other companies you can also use as a reference.

For salesforce employees, Erica Kuhl does an live training once a month and we’re working on some new recorded training. If you have questions or comments you can post them to the new Social Media Policy Chatter Group. You'll also find updates there for things like upcoming training.
Salesforce Social Media Policy Training
View more presentations from Salesforce.com.

0 Comments • Posted by Jamie Grenney to Social Media Jul 22, 2010
70
points
AppExchange App of the Week: Salesforce for Twitter 2

More and more, customers are using Twitter to get the answers they need about YOUR products and services.   This week’s App of the Week, Salesforce for Twitter 2, lets you collect all of these inquiries within your instance of Salesforce and be more responsive by creating cases, contacts or leads from tweets.

We originally launched this app last September but just published version two last week.   Here is a sampling of some of the new awesome features you can use:
Schedule Twitter Searches
Automatically bring Tweets, Contacts & Leads into your instance of Salesforce
Auto-Associate Contacts & Leads to Campaigns
Create a Twitter search and automatically associate any new Contacts or Leads to a Campaign
Find Twitter Username
Search for and select the Twitter username of existing Contacts and Leads, then import their Twitter information into Salesforce

Check out this brief presentation which walks you through an end-to-end service cloud scenario.   This app is super powerful and FREE on the AppExchange!   Install it today.

3 Comments •  Posted by Sara Varni Bright  to For Administrators, For Customer Service, AppExchange Jul 20, 2010
90
points
Vote for Your Favorite Winter '11 Logo

7/23/10 Update: The Winter '11 Logo Voting has now closed. Thank you for your votes and comments. Click here to see the winning logo: Skiis

================================================================

It's time for you to weigh-in on which logo should represent Spring '10. Vote now!

Log on to the IdeaExchange and start posting, voting and commenting on Ideas! Watch our Dreamforce '08 breakout session to learn more about how you can use the IdeaExchange to influence our product roadmap.

~IdeaExchange Program Manager

11 Comments • Posted by marilynl to Community Announcements Jul 20, 2010
30
points
Chatter Keeps INTTRA in Sync from Shanghai to South Africa to Mumbai

Since Salesforce Chatter became available worldwide on June 22, we have shared success stories with you from salesforce.com customers who participated in the Chatter private beta and who are now currently using Chatter in their enterprises. In last week’s post, Steve Weber described how Chatter quickly spreads knowledge and expertise within DeMatteo Monness, a New York-based research and brokerage firm. This week we bring you a piece from INTTRA, a firm providing an e-commerce platform for global shipping with more than 270 employees located in thirteen countries. INTTRA uses Chatter with the Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2 to keep everyone in sync, eliminate time zones and stay on top of daunting logistical challenges. Here John Debenedette, head of commercial, shares his thoughts on how real-time collaboration via Chatter is making an impact at INTTRA:

INTTRA is the e-business cloud for the ocean shipping industry. Our vision is to connect all the shippers and carriers in one collaborative network to do business together easily and save time and money. Our solutions replace inefficient email, fax and phone orders with electronic transactions. Over 300,000 container orders are initiated on the INTTRA platform each week, representing more than 10 percent of global container trade.

We began using the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud in 2008. Salesforce.com has since become key to our global operations. As a shipping company, we have to follow the sun. Our 300 people cover 27 countries. Efficient collaboration is crucial to our success.

With salesforce.com, it is the little things that make a big difference. For example, having all the information about an account in one place lets everyone work smarter. Our employees are much happier using salesforce.com, and that translates into increased customer satisfaction.

I think Chatter is a fantastically disruptive way to increase the efficiency of collaboration. It is particularly helpful for a small company, like ours, with a large global footprint. We have people in Shanghai, in Mumbai, and on the West Coast of the United Sates all collaborating in real-time to make e-commerce happen for the container-shipping industry. We are working with some of the most complicated supply chains in the world. To be effective, we have to eliminate the time zones. Chatter lets us do that.

It used to take weeks to get all the stakeholders in a particular shipment aligned. You needed to make sure everyone from the coordinating freight forwarder to the import freight forwarder, the shipping lines and the recipient of the cargo were on the same page. Now it all happens in real-time.

-- John Debenedette, head of commercial, INTTRA

0 Comments • Posted by Phil Novack to For Customer Service, For Sales, Chatter Best Practices Jul 14, 2010
20
points
Report Builder webinar July 22nd

I'll be talking about the new Report Builder - how to use it, how it's set up, and how things will change in the future with the Builder, on July 22nd. Sign up for the webinar on the developerforce site. If you don't already have one, just signing up for the Webinar will get you a developer account, where you can configure and change things as much as you want in a salesforce.com org, for free, forever, and without ruining anybody's day!.
We'll be also talking about how the Report Builder will be changing in the next few releases, how the Report Builder and Dashboard Builder work together, how to turn them on, and how to set up CRTs to appear in the Report Builder.
So go sign up now!

4 Comments • Posted by ttobin1.2603124394562744E12 to For Analytics Jul 13, 2010
10
points
Spring '10 Patch Release: iPhone 4.3.1 Available

Salesforce Mobile 4.3.1 is now available from Apple's AppStore.

The recently released 4.0 version of iOS created an issue where the on-screen keyboard was not completely visible in some cases.

This release resolves the issue and can be found at the link below.

http://itunes.com/app/SalesforceMobile

0 Comments • Posted by Joshua_Schneyer to For Mobile Jul 10, 2010
30
points
Distributed Administration using Sandbox and Change Sets
One of the primary use cases I hear with distributed administration is the ability to delegate customization access to some setup (metadata) components. This often includes components like objects, fields, record types, page layouts, workflow rules, etc. that the business wants to control and have a quick turnaround in production. The source of frustration for the business is that it usually has to wait for a bandwidth challenged System Administrator to make all of their changes. The challenge for the System Administrator is how to ensure that the business doesn't do something that could damage other users, such as deleting a field required in an integration.

While the Customize Application permission governs a user's rights to manage these setup components, and it's possible to distribute this right over a custom object using Delegated Administration, there aren't many options for managing custom components on standard objects or non-object configurations from setup that ensure the level of control and testing that most System Administrators require.

As an alternative to granting the Customize Application permission to the business users or having the business communicating all of their changes in detail for the System Administrator to make, it is possible to use a developer sandbox to distribute the rights necessary for business users or delegated administrators to manage their components. You would not want to give them a full sandbox copy because the System Administrator profile will ignore all sharing configurations and give those delegated administrators access to *all* data within the org.

When a business user wants to manage some aspect of the application, you would:

Create a developer sandbox for the request (don't reuse a sandbox that was created for a separate purpose).
Name the sandbox after the user/business group making the request.
Activate the sandbox.
Give the business user the System Administrator profile making them a delegated administrator over this one sandbox.
Train the distributed administrator how to make changes in the sandbox and create a change set.
Let the distributed administrator make changes to their sandbox setup.
Have the distributed administrator upload their change set to production.
Review the changes that the user has included in the change set to ensure they do not disrupt anything like an integration or Apex.
Deploy the change set to production.
Make any additional changes that weren't included in the change set (for instance, a change to the role hierarchy or sharing rules).

The advantages of this solution are:

You can grant full administrative rights to a user in a controlled environment without giving them access to *all* data or full administrative rights in production.
You can review any changes to ensure the integrity of the production org, which is a benefit to the distributed administrator who made the changes (after all, if something were to break as a result of the distributed administrator's changes, they may be affected as well).
The change set remains active in the org for a period of time allowing for an audit of changes (beyond the setup audit trail).
This process is an optimization over the existing one where you have to create an efficient communication channel for the business to describe all of the changes that need to be made. So a slight delay between when the delegated admin uploads their change set and when it's been reviewed/deployed, is still less time than if the delegated admin had to document all of the changes and communicate them, especially where the changes are routine (i.e. creating several fields or modifying a page layout).

The disadvantages of this solution are:

There is a slight delay between when the business uploads the change set and when it gets deployed after being reviewed. While maintaining the integrity of the org make senses, it can be frustrating when the change is perceived by the business to be minor, such as adding a field or changing a field property on a page layout.
Not all metadata is supported in the metadata API which means some manual changes may need to be made in the production org.
To enable the distributed administrator to upload a change set, you need to give them full rights in that sandbox, including the ability to manage users or modify all data.

What other practices have you found helpful distributing administrative rights?

Feel free to share them in the comments of this blog!

If you have suggestions for additional distributed administration features, please post them on the ideaexchange (http://sites.force.com/ideaexchange/ideaHome?c=09a30000000D9xt).
0 Comments • Posted by adamtorman to For Administrators, For IT, Cloud Platform Jul 9, 2010
30
points
AppExchange App of the Week: Chatter Collaborative Feedback
I want to start this week’s post by encouraging everyone to sign up for our Force.com Labs webinar which is taking place this Tuesday at 10:00 PT. You’ll get a great overview of our Force.com and Chatter Labs apps and also see three demos, including one for this week’s app of the week: Chatter Collaborative Feedback.

I won’t steal too much thunder from Reid Carlberg who runs our Labs program and will be demoing this app in all of its glory but here are the basics:

As the name suggests, Chatter Collaborative Feedback lets you solicit feedback from your team members about projects or performance.
The solicitor of feedback chooses a user in Salesforce and then can select up to three topics (with a summary description) on which he or she would like them to provide information. An email will then be sent to that user requesting feedback.
The responses are collected via a private feedback group in Chatter that the requestor can then review.

Check out the listing here or better yet, sign up for our webinar and see it live in action!
0 Comments • Posted by Sara Varni Bright to For Administrators, AppExchange Jul 8, 2010
100
points
Help crowdsource a Solution to the Gulf Oil Crisis! www.gulfcrisis2010.com

Vince Lombardi once said “individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

As the global community has watched the BP oil spill in the Gulf continue over the past several months, we’ve seen the devastation in the water and on land, and we’ve watched the multiple attempts to control the oil. The time has come to get the global community involved. With this aim, we’re launching GulfCrisis2010.com and calling for experts across the world to collaborate to openly share ideas, discuss advantages and disadvantages and vote on solutions that can assist in the clean-up of both the environment and the economy.

Gulfcrisis2010.com has been created to “crowdsource” global ideas from individuals and experts on solutions that can help tackle the environmental and economic impact of the oil spill. By using the Internet to create an open, transparent dialog, we hope to help experts collaborate to construct the resolution by providing a platform for discussion. We know the solution is not going to be quick and simple, it will be long term and have multiple levels of complexity.

Crowdsourcing is a means to allow the global community to post, discuss and vote for ideas. The more people that promote an idea, the higher up on the list it goes. The best ideas bubble up to the top. This approach has been used successfully in the past by corporations such as Dell IdeaStorm, and My Starbucks Ideas and the GreenXchange. It's also been used in politics with the Obama-Biden Transition Team’s Citizen’s Briefing Book and in the most recent British election at Debate2010.

Please take a moment to visit Gulfcrisis2010.com, contribute your ideas, and share the site with your community to help alleviate the destruction of the Gulf environment and economy. There is no limit to what we can achieve as a global community. We’ve also setup a Facebook page to help promote this.

Please join us in spreading the word!

0 Comments • Posted by Sue Amar to Cloud Platform, Press & News, Foundation Jul 7, 2010
80
points
Want a FREE Flip Camera?

In celebration of reaching 8,000 Facebook fans, we kicked off a contest giving you a chance to win a Flip Camera! In order to win, submit your response (as a comment to the Facebook post) to the question: “What is your favorite Summer ’10 feature and why?”
Once the contest wraps on July 23rd, we will randomly select winners and announce them on our Facebook page on July 28th. Thank you to all our fans for your support and GOOD LUCK!

NOTE: Full Facebook Contest Rules available if necessary.

4 Comments • Posted by Erica Kuhl to Community Announcements, Social Media Jul 7, 2010
20
points
Chatter Quickly Spreads Expertise within DeMatteo Monness

In the past couple weeks we brought you two posts in a series where we have asked salesforce.com customers who participated in the Salesforce Chatter private beta to share a few thoughts with us on their Chatter experiences. In last week’s post, Rick Wanstall of Art Technology Group described how Chatter gave quick visibility into his company’s pipelines and cut down the amount of e-mail sent within the company. This week we bring you a piece from DeMatteo Monness, a New York-based research and brokerage firm using Chatter with the Sales Cloud 2 to quickly spread its employees’ expertise within the enterprise. Here Steve Weber, director of strategic development, shares his thoughts on how Chatter is improving how information is shared at DeMatteo Monness through real-time collaboration:

DeMatteo Monness is a boutique brokerage firm based out of New York. Our clients include some of the most respected asset managers in the businesses.

One of the areas where salesforce.com and Chatter has really helped us is in the research department.

A large part of our business is finding experts on a specific topic for our customers. We may reach out to several dozen people to find that one person who has the expertise we are seeking. At any time, our researchers could be looking for 15 to 20 experts, which means they are following hundreds of leads. That’s easy to manage with salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud. But the piece that was missing was how to efficiently let the rest of the company know what was happening with a particular request.

Our sales people are the ones who talk to our clients and receive the requests for expertise. But before Chatter they had no easy way of knowing if a request had been filled by the research department. Sales and research needed to be in touch, but they weren’t.

The real “aha” moment came when we set up each request for expertise as an object that could be tracked in Chatter. Now our sales people know exactly what is happening with their clients’ requests.

Chatter is certainly better than anything else, including IM. It’s already had a huge impact on the productivity of many of our people.

If I was forced to choose between Chatter and email, I would absolutely choose Chatter. It’s clear that this kind of communication is the future. Five years from now email going to be the new Lotus Notes. Chatter is the bleeding edge of enterprise collaboration and will only get better.

-- Steve Weber, director of strategic development, DeMatteo Monness

0 Comments • Posted by Phil Novack to For Sales, For Financial Services, Chatter Best Practices Jul 7, 2010
10
points
Best Practice: 5 steps to a successful implementation Best Practice

Whether you’re just starting out or are in the middle of an implementation, this document can help guide you to success.
BP_StepstoSuccessfulImp_2010-05-17

0 Comments • Posted by slehnen11202007 to For Administrators, For IT, Cloud Platform Jun 30, 2010
0
points
Best Practice: Create powerful Web sites on Force.com Best Practice

Use Force.com sites functionality to build and run public, unauthenticated Web sites on the Force.com cloud platform. Learn about common use cases, needed skills, and considerations.
BP_Sites_2010-06-08

0 Comments • Posted by slehnen11202007 to For Administrators, For Small Business, Cloud Platform Jun 30, 2010
0
points
Best Practice: Track the 5 most important call center metrics Best Practice

You’ve got your hands on the wheel, but the only way to get from 0 to 60 is to have your eyes on the dashboard. Visibility is as critical for your agents as it is for management. Find out about the top 5 service metrics identified by your peers.
BP_ServiceMetrics_2010-06-10

0 Comments • Posted by slehnen11202007 to For Customer Service, For Small Business Jun 30, 2010
10
points
Best Practice: 7 tips for creating upsell opportunities from your call center Best Practice

Turn your call center into a revenue center by enlisting your customer service agents to up-sell and cross-sell as part of their jobs.
BP_Upsell_2010-04-28

0 Comments • Posted by slehnen11202007 to For Customer Service, For Small Business Jun 30, 2010
10
points
Best Practice: 8 steps to creating a social media strategy Best Practice

Find out how to use social media tools for business—and how to tie in Salesforce CRM.
BP_SocialMedia_2010-05-17

0 Comments • Posted by slehnen11202007 to For Marketing, For Sales, For Small Business, Social Media Jun 30, 2010