Perspectives on Salesforce.com

It had always bothered me that activities generated from Mass Emails only had a subject of “Mass Email:” and nothing in the body.  I couldn’t tell what I mass emailed to someone!

Deep inside the forums, I found the trick to get some meaning into those activities.  The best you can do is get the Subject filled in, but that’s something.  The subject for a Mass Email = “Mass Email: Email Template Description“.  Giving your email templates a description is the only way to get a meaningful mass email activity.  The Description is an often overlooked field on Email Template because it’s not required, so go make sure you have it filled in.

Once you do this, the next Mass Email you send can start having some meaning.

I created an idea on Idea Exchange for what I think a better design would be.  Vote on it and comment there to improve the recommendation.

A new Salesforce related blog popped up recently by X-Squared On Demand, a Salesforce partner.  It’s written by David Schach.

Check it out at http://www.x2od.com/blog/

If you use Arrowpointe Maps and would like to get started with the new Search Nearby (proximity searching) feature, a getting started guide was published in our knowledge base.

Click here to get started.

In the Arrowpointe Knowledge Base, I just posted the definitive list of countries that Arrowpointe Maps supports.  This list will continue to evolve as MapQuest improves their geographic coverage.

Version 1.2 of Arrowpointe Maps was just released. You can read about all the improvements on the Change History page.

The changes most applicable to end users are:

• Released the new “Search Nearby” feature to allow for proximity searching.  This has been the #1 requirement from users since the day the application went live.  Search near any Lead, Account, Contact, Opportunity or Case and look for other Leads/Accounts/Contacts within a user-provided proximity.
  • Leads, Accounts, Contacts can all be included on the map at the same time.
  • Supports the ability to search within subsets of Leads/Accounts/Contacts that your administrator pre-defines (e.g. “Our Customers”, “Our Service Centers”, “Gold Partners”, etc.)
  • Use miles or kilometers
  • Ties into the Routing module
  • Future blog posts will explain this functionality in more depth and also provide video demonstrations.
  • IMPORTANT NOTE:  This functionality requires an update to your AppExchange package and Salesforce has not yet published this update on AppExchange.  Until they do, the feature has been disabled in Arrowpointe Maps so that users can’t click on things and get errors.  Once Salesforce publishes the updated package, this feature will be enabled.  When that happens, a new blog post will be published, an email will be sent to all admins and a note will be displayed at the top of the application front page.
• Support for multi-select picklist fields on Map Pages.
• Users can specify multiple filter criteria for a single field on a Map Page.  This applies to any text, picklist or multi-picklist field.  Values should be separated with a semi-colon.
• Added a Default Country value for every customer.  This feature will allow every organization to specify a country for Arrowpointe Maps to assume their data is in unless it is specifically entered on the record.  This can be edited on the Org Info page in the Admin area.
• Translate your country values to valid ISO country values when searching for data in the Routing screen.  This helps ensure better accuracy in geocoding.
• Fixed a bug occurring in Internet Explorer 6 where the records selected to route were not being pre-populated on the routing page.
• Added a “Remove from Map” option inside the map marker bubbles.
• Added a confirmation before removing a record from the map.
• Added an “Add To Route” icon to the data table.  This eliminates the need for users to open the map marker bubble for every record that needs adding to a route.

About Arrowpointe Maps

Arrowpointe Maps is an on-demand mapping platform that facilitates a conversation between Salesforce.com & MapQuest allowing for easy deployment of mapping capabilities in your organization and providing end-users a simple means for mapping their data. Arrowpointe Maps is configurable and can be tailored to your organization, so that your users can work with their information in a meaningful way.

The official location for information on Arrowpointe Maps is its product page at http://www.arrowpointe.com/maps. There, you will find answers to the most frequently asked questions, screencasts and links to its AppExchange page.