Perspectives on Salesforce.com

I have to echo Jeff’s thoughts from crmfyi.com regarding running Safari on Windows to access Salesforce. It is a very good experience and Salesforce runs really really fast!

Apple released Safari for Windows last week. Hours after its arrival, reports of security holes came out and an update to the browser was already made. Because of those security concerns and due to its lack of Firefox-quality plugins (at this time), I won’t be switching away from Firefox.

However, I would recommend trying Safari out for use with Salesforce. Especially for the administrative side of things. Salesforce’s setup screens send my Firefox memory utilization up around 400MB after an hour or so and things really start to slow down. Using Safari, all of the screens fly. Some pages loaded so fast, I wasn’t even sure the browser recognized my command to navigate to a new page.

The latest version of the Info Center is up on AppExchange.

The only change in this version is that it utilizes the production version of the AJAX Toolkit, which should improve the performance for you.

If you have Info Center installed already

The Info Center is an unmanaged package, meaning it requires you to uninstall/reinstall it to get the new version. Uninstalling it deletes all of the custom objects and your data will get deleted! If you already have the Info Center installed in your org, I have created a different package for you, Info Center (s-Control Only) 1.0. As the name implies, this package only contains the new s-Control code. If you have Info Center installed and want to only upgrade the code, do the following:

1. Copy your current “IC Web Tab” s-Control code to a document just in case something goes wrong.
2. Install the Info Center (s-Control Only) 1.0 package.
3. Copy the “IC Web Tab 06072007” s-Control code to your clipboard.
4. Edit the “IC Web Tab” s-Control. Select all the existing code and delete it. Paste the code from your clipboard to this s-Control. Click Save.
5. Go to the Info Center tab and make sure the page renders nicely. If you have an issue, revert the “IC Web Tab” s-Control to the code from your document in step 1. You can contact me if you have an issue or add a comment to this post.
6. If all is good, then you can uninstall the Info Center (s-Control Only). You don’t have to uninstall it, but it isn’t providing a function for you anymore.
7. Enjoy! Hopefully performance will be improved for you

I haven’t been planning on making Info Center a managed package because it is meant to be a proof of concept and something that, hopefully, people will modify and make better. If it’s managed, then even the objects are locked down and you won’t be able to make any changes. Thus, it is staying unmanaged. There are arguments to be made on either side whether to make it a managed or unmanaged package. If you feel strongly about it, feel free to leave a comment.

The Auto vCard package was updated on the AppExchange. If you are using Auto vCard in your org, it is recommended that you uninstall the existing package and install the new one. The changes in the new version are:

• Custom Button: Rather than being a custom link, the new package uses a custom button. This looks much more professional and is more noticeable for users.
• Managed Package: The package was updated to be a “managed package”. This will allow future upgrades to be installed over the existing package and allow me to know who is running the package so I can better communicate future updates.

The functional changes in this version are minor. However, I plan on making changes over the next few months that will be much easier on you if you have a managed package installed. These changes include moving the scripts to a new URL and rewriting the logic so that the annoying window doesn’t pop up and force you to close it after every vCard you run. Having it be a managed package will let me communicate with you directly when it comes time to communicate those changes.

Salesforce recently told me that the Auto vCard package has 188 active customer installs and is one of the most installed partner applications on the AppExchange. That’s good news! The bad news is me not knowing who those Orgs are and not being able to communicate with you when the future changes take effect. That’s why it is recommended that you uninstall the existing package and install the new one.

Leave a comment if you have questions/concerns. If you want to contact me privately about it, you can use my support page.

• Get Auto vCard from the AppExchange. It’s free.
• Test Drive Auto vCard
• View the Auto vCard product page on arrowpointe.com
• Read the Auto vCard privacy policy to learn about how your information is handled in this application.

I came across a blog called CRM FYI as I was going through the Incoming Links on my WordPress Dashboard.

It’s written by Jeff Grosse out of St. Paul, MN. The tag line is “Good to know news, views, and stuff you can use about Salesforce.com“. It is well put together and has had some good posts already.

Welcome, Jeff!

Techcrunch is reporting that the big announcement tomorrow will be that Salesforce & Google have teamed up on

a marketing and distribution alliance that will tightly bind Google Adwords to existing Salesforce tools that track sales from online advertising.

Based upon the description in the Techcrunch post, it sounds like they are merely providing the existing Salesforce for Google Adwords functionality to users that wouldn’t otherwise have it via the “Group Edition”. Techcrunch provided this link to Salesforce’s site, but it was redirecting to the homepage when I tried it. It might work by the time you read this.

There is also an AP article discussing the announcement, which makes it sound like this alliance will make Salesforce for Google Adwords available to all customers, not just through a Group Edition.

Speculation: Perhaps the alliance is setup to subsidize the subscription to the service so all customers can use it with Salesforce & Google doing revenue sharing on the back end of the transactions so that its transparent to the Salesforce end customer? That setup would be of great benefit to a lot of companies looking to utilize Adwords and link it into Salesforce’s Lead Management module whereby the cost barriers to enable Salesforce’s functionality would be eliminated.

The AP and Techcrunch articles are written as if they have official information as opposed to speculation, but we won’t know for sure until the actual announcement or a press release direct from Salesforce.com or Google.

Click here for information on the announcement event and to listen to the webcast.