The Configero Blog

Suited for organizations with large numbers of activites, Configero's Activity Manager enables you to filter all activities by date, by subject, and by type --all on one screen. 

With Configero's Activity Manager you can:

 

Join Configero as we team up with Florida Salesforce.com users, administrators, developers, enthusiasts, and partners for the Third Annual Dreamforce to You event, Live in Orlando. This event will be a fun-filled day of networking, best practice, and an inside view of what's new and what's next in the Salesforce.com cloud platform. Taking place March 31, 2012, Dreamforce to You will serve as an incubator for the Salesforce. com community to engage with one another and to offer inside, expert-level knowledge in Salesforce.com best practices.

Guests are encouraged to keep the conservation going by tweeting using the hashtag #DF2UFL on twitter. 

For more information, and to register for Dreamforce to You visit: http://df2ufl-esli.eventbrite.com/ and http://www.DF2UFL.org. 

 

Developed by our team at Configero, Chat Roll Up is a Salesforce Chatter utlity that enables you to view all or some Chatter activity posted to a child object at the parent level. For example, you can create a rule to roll up all chatter posts at the Contact level to its related Account - enabling a holistic view of all Chatter activity for all Contacts related to that Account.

With Chat Roll Up you can:

• Roll up Chatter posts from child to parent
• View all Chatter activity at the parent level
• Fine tune which posts roll up and for which objects

Chat Roll Up includes an easy-to-use administration panel that lets you configure which posts roll up by filtering the body - by feed type, by user, by object, etc. 

 

Click here to download!

For more information on Chat Roll Up contact Configero at info@configero.com.

Configero is hosting the Atlanta Salesforce User Group meeting on November 8, 2011 at St. Joseph's Hospital.  Hope to see you there!

What is the Service Cloud?

The Service Cloud provides companies with a call center-like view that enables companies to create and track cases coming in from every channel, and automatically route and escalate what’s important. The Salesforce CRM-powered customer portal provides customers the ability to track their own cases 24 hours a day, includes a social networking plug-in that enables the user to join the conversation about their company on social networking websites, provides analytical tools and other services including email services, chatting tools, Google search, and access to customers' entitlement and contracts.

 

6 Steps to Data Integration in The Cloud

Allan Schwab, Informatica

Why integrate?

• Collaboration between departments and data centers
• Drive success of Salesforce
• Greater adoption
• Stronger connection
• More business value
• Make Salesforce more valuable by bringing in non-CRM data

What are the options of Salesforce.com integration?

• Hand Code
  • Advantages: Most Flexibility
  • Disadvantages: Maintenance Requirements
• Free Tools
  • Advantages: Free, Easiest Way
  • Disadvantages: Ad Hoc vs. Automated, Loading data is just one requirement
• On-premise tools for IT
  • Advantages: Mature, proven platform
  • Disadvantages: Not a tool for masses, takes specialized training to perform
• Cloud Services
  • Advantages: Rapid deployment, minimal training, seamless upgrades, fewer IT resources
  • Disadvantages: None!

Informatica has won AppExchange's Best of Apps for 3 years in a row

Demo:

• All access is through the browser
• Secure Agent is a one-time download
• Create tasks with easy-to-use wizard
• At runtime, Agent runs tasks, replicating data based on configuration of the task (full refresh, incremental, etc)
• Create connections, pointing services to your data
• For Salesforce connections, log in and everything else is after that is point and click
• Mapping can be auto
• matched or drag and drop
• Can concatenate 2 fields to map to one field
• Over 100 functions and operator lookups
• Can create formula that will perform lookups
• Can migrate tasks from Developer org to Production org

 

Using Formula Fields to Enhance Reports

James Martucci, Salesforce.com

• Exception reporting - used to show data that doesn't exist
  • i.e. Which Opportunity doesn't have Products?
• CRT (Custom Report Types) with or without framework don't show expectations
• Leverage roll-up summary fields in a Master-Detail relationship

EXAMPLE: Accounts without Opportunities

Setup - Customize - Accounts - Fields - Custom Fields

• Roll-Up summary, labeled 'Number of Opportunities'
• Use IF function for Opportunities < $100k

IF(Amount >100000, 1, 0)

• Create Opportunity field formula in report and summarize on "Deal over 100k" Value to identify all 0's
• Create comparison bar chart labeled "Large vs. Total Opportunities"

EXAMPLE: Reporting on Multiple Time Frames

"How did company do this August compared to last August in Sales?

• Create formula, MonthstoClose:

((YEAR(ClosedDate)

• (YEAR(Today())) X 12) + (MONTH(ClosedDate)
• MONTH (Today ()))

   

• Create report and filter "Months to Close" = 0 (Current Month), -1 (Last Month), -2 (Two months ago), -12 (Current Month last year), -13 (Last month last year), -14 (Two months ago last year)
• To make months lay beside each other in chart, add Month Value field (Jan = 1, Feb = 2) and sort by Month Value in report

Introduction to Salesforce Partner Portal

Venkat Polisetti, Fiserv

Setup - Create - Partners - Settings - New

• 2 types of licenses: Silver and Gold - you must purchase these licenses
• Can customize Portal to show company branding
• Single sign on available for Customer and Partner portal
• Need to set private security settings on data
• Look and Feel will reflect on their website after signon
• Portal Tab Set Editor - shows what tabs are available on portal website
• Clone standard portal profiles
• Create Account and Contact, then enable Account as Partner User (button titled "Work with Portal")
• Change email template to have sign-on URL

Thanks to all who attended June's Atlanta Salesforce.com User Group meeting! For those who weren't able to make it, here's some notes from the meeting. If you are interested in joining the group, please sign up here! Hope you see at the next meeting in August!

-Your CRM Superhero

Silverpop

Forest Yule - Alliance Manager at Silverpop

• 1500 customers, 2000 brands
• Email marketing and marketing automation Appexchange / isv w self service integrations Over 80m messages a day - largest marketing automation service

Buying process

• Less than 3% are ready to buy today, but 40% are ready to buy within 90 days
• Lead nurturing - lead assessment and scoring - lead routing to sales (qualified leads)

Digital footprints

• Anything you leave behind on the net, they require web integration
• 2 ways of tracking digital footprints: anonymous and identified

Landing pages

• Have short first fill out form to download white paper

Progressive Profiling

• Basic lead form: first name, last, e mail, company
• In next form, pre populate contact information that has already been populated, when downloading white paper, add job title and phone number to form

Messaging

• Make sure there is opt in and opt out
• Make sure they agree to your terms
• Have a dedicated IP and build your reputation
• Check spam scoring before sending email Inbox preview - what will it look like on all browsers?

Salesforce Flow Presentation

Darrel DeVeaux, Salesforce Customers from HealthDetail

Real-time approvals and workflows
Aka Visual Process Manager, Spark and Fire Fly (names before acquisition)

Flow can be applied in:

• Process driven UI (script and wizards)
• Extensible orchestration model
• Declarative business rules engine

Currently, Flow is set up as:

• Mash up style of integration
• Download onto computer and then upload into Salesforce

To get to Flow:

• Setup - Workflows and approvals – Flows (only customers with Flow will see this on the side bar)
• App Logix – to go Developer Force website to download Flow designer

How to Build an App on Appexchange

James Holmes - Code Science

Appexchange Availability per Edition:

• Contact manager - Cannot download app
• Group - 1 app
• Professional - 5 apps
• Enterprise - 10 apps
• Unlimited – Unlimited apps

Anyone can build an app free with a developer org

Two type of App packages:

Managed

• IP protection - no source code
• Support for upgrades - push patches
• LMA - Llicense Management and Administration
• Set up trials
• Track installs and licenses
• Extend, activate, suspend and expire licenses Aloha compatibility - Group and Professional editions

Unmanaged

• Limited to certain editions - no group or professional
• Source code visible
• Good for distributing open source code as an installable, cohesive unit
• Several free and available from Salesforce and others

Packaging an App

Beta package

• Can test before releasing
• Able to add subtract objects, fields, code, etc

Security review

• Run security scanner first
• Only scans code in package
• XXS – Cross Site Scripting

Publishing App

• Releasing the app

Distributing App

• Use Trialforce or Appexchange

Two Types of Upgrades

Minor upgrades

• Edits to existing code - Apex, Visualforce
• Cannot add objects or fields
• Creating patch org
• Push upgrade

Major

• Can change anytime
• Can't remove objects, fields, classes, or triggers (just deprecate)

Lessons Learned

Governor limits

• Optimize APIs for syncing data
• Beware of number of requests, payload sizes, executed scripts to parse data
• Beware of required fields and custom validations
• Code defensively for all inserts / updated to standard objects
• Can perform check during install and warn

Keep interface native

• Less jarring for users
• More seamless experience
• Refrain from custom UI widgets and graphics that don't match Salesforce
• Exception e mails -sent anytime an exception occurs -very little context of problem to work with -setup a group e mail

Summer '11 Release

Tad Travis, CSM Salesforce

Sales Cloud

• Calendar and Activity Enhancements
  • Cloud scheduler, new meeting request button, new visual display for schedules
  • Salesforce for outlook - sync tasks, support single sign on, users view and adjusts tasks syncing, new shortcut to my unresolved items, easier to find unresolved items
• Analytics enhancements
  • Report Builder Accelerators - Multi select in field tree, calendar date picker, green check button for fields that can be used
• Search enhancements
  • Query Independent Ranking (QIR)- Ranking based on how many times record has been accessed; new filter criteria, new multiple search terms
  • Administration Enhancements - Enhanced profile administration, new UI for user profiles , regrouped information for one single profile, mass edits from lists, find permissions in
  • Search lists, run set up auto trail

Service Cloud

• Contact icon replaces text label contact
• Custom sidebar components - visual force pages as components
• Knowledge - workflow

Chatter

• New chatter lists views

Thanks to everyone who signed-up for Cloudforce Atlanta and to all that stopped by our booth!

Configero is proud to announce their sponsorship with Cloudforce Atlanta, the biggest-ever cloud computing event in Atlanta—and you’re invited to experience all the social, mobile, and open innovations driving success in the Cloud 2 world!

Join Configero for a free, action-packed day where you’ll have the chance to network with local customers, partners and employees, pick up best practices, get hands-on experience with proven cloud technologies, and come away with new skills you can immediately put into action for even more Salesforce success.

Cloudforce Atlanta’s agenda is packed with content and networking opportunities, with plenty of time for networking and learning about partners and products associated with Salesforce.

• 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Registration & Expo
• 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Keynote Address

  (Keynote speaker George Hu, Executive Vice President, Platform and Marketing of Salesforce.com)

• 2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Break & Cloud Expo
• 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Breakout Sessions
• 4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Break & Cloud Expo
• 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Breakout Sessions
• 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. Networking Reception

Sign up today for this free event, and come by the Configero booth at the Expo!

See you there!
Your Configero Team

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