For example, the following email addresses will all go to myemail@gmail.com.

• myemail@gmail.com
• myemail+adn@gmail.com
• myemail+developer@gmail.com
• myemail+app1@gmail.com
• myemail+app2@gmail.com
• myemail+client1@gmail.com
• myemail+client2@gmail.com
• myemail+client3@gmail.com

This works for gMail as well as Google Apps for Your Domain.

The main reason I bring it up is that it’s a handy way to create new Salesforce usernames without needing to take an extra step and setup a new email address for yourself. Also, it’s a handy way to keep your email organized because you can use Gmail’s Filters to do so.

Part 1 is a screencast overview of your integration options (ADN login is required to view it). If you are getting started with Salesforce integration or maintaining a curriculum for people in your company, this is a good place to point them to. Part 1 should help you visualize the various options and segment them in your mind, so you can figure out the integration method that works best to address your needs.

Part 2 is called “Next Generation Integration Services”, which will talk about new capabilities in store for the platform. No date is published for it. Just that it’s “coming soon”.

Visit the Enterprise Integration Series on ADN.

I updated my original post with the a link to part 3. You can get to all of them from there.

Part 1 of 3 – An Introduction to Salesforce.com’s AppExchange: Tony lays out the basic information that any developer should know to get started. This article provides some context and points to how a developer can get their hands on a free Developer Edition account.

Part 2 of 3 – Using the Salesforce.com API: Tony explains how the Salesforce API works by creating a PERL script that automatically creates Salesforce.com Leads for every comment posted on a blog. This is a well-rounded example because it explains how to use the API and also how it impacts the back-end (inside Salesforce).

Part 3 of 3 – Packaging for Salesforce.com’s AppExchange: Tony continues building the blog-to-lead application by walking through the process of packaging and uploading to the Salesforce AppExchange.

He also references a site I’d never heard of called welldesignedurls.org. Here’s a link to the Salesforce page on that site.

I would encourage anyone to sign up that is currently managing a Salesforce.com environment, responsible for analyzing the product as a potential customer or who is a developer that needs a playground environment. It’s a great tool to have at your disposal for a variety of reasons.

To sign up, you are joining the “Appexchange Developer Network”, which has some other benefits too (like the ability to post in the forums). Visit the sign up page for more info.

For more information on getting started with Salesforce.com, check out one of my first posts.

As you might have read about by now, Salesforce.com has made their system status page public. It is located here. I think it is great that they are doing this and it is very interesting to see this information.

Across the top, you see the current status. Each server (AP, EMEA, NA1 and SSL (used for PE edition only, i think)) is listed and a red/yellow/green status indicator is there telling you the system status. I would expect, should the status be yellow or red, that there would be an explanation of the problem. It will be interesting to see how they handle this during actual outages. Will the explanation be there in real-time or will those be delivered after the fact? Ideally, there will not only be explanation on the problem, but information on which parts of the application are down (API vs. GUI) and the expected time to come back online.

Then they show historical status. As you can see in the picture, clicking on the red status from 02/09 on NA1, they give a detailed explanation of the problem that occurred. Also interesting in the historical section are the number of transactions and avg. speed. It gives some appreciation as to the size of the application and what they are dealing with over there. Kind of makes you wish that NA2, NA3, NA4, etc. all existed for failover purposes.

To do this, you want to start your bookmark’s URL with the standard login page. Make sure and use HTTPS.

https://www.salesforce.com/login.jsp

If you want to access the salesforce sandbox, you should use https://test.salesforce.com/login.jsp

You can then add parameters for your username and password. For example, if your login in scott@example.com and your password is qwerty, the rest of your bookmark’s URL will contain the following:

?pw=qwerty&un=scott@example.com

The ? is used to start tell the browser that name/value pairs follow. You should put a & between each name/value pair. pw is the name for the password parameter and un is the name for the username parameter.

Putting it all together, your bookmark’s URL would be:

https://www.salesforce.com/login.jsp?pw=qwerty&un=scott@example.com

NOTE: Do not save these bookmarks on sites like del.icio.us. Since your password is in the URL, everyone could see it. Del.icio.us is a public bookmarking system. Keep these bookmarks closely held.

Below are a few recommendations on getting started with Salesforce.com:

1. Gain an understanding of CRM and the On-Demand software movement
Refer to sources such as Gartner, Forrester to get an understanding of CRM and the implementation best practices associated with it. There are 100s of sources, but those two are pretty good. Forrester recently did an analysis on the top on-demand CRM packages, which has some very good information in there. If you do not have a subscription to those services, I suggest going to the web sites of many Salesforce.com partners to understand the various approaches and philosophies they have on CRM.

Blogs and newsfeeds are also an excellent way to understand the market.

2. Understand the Salesforce.com Product line
Peruse the Salesforce.com website to gain this understanding. Check out the demos and presentations about the products on that site.

3. Understand the implementation methodology
Traditional best practices such as aligning a project to a CRM vision, creating success metrics and having a strong communication plan apply to Salesforce.com implementations. However, delivering an on-demand solution is different than implementing an on-premise product. For example, the dilineation between requirements and design is a bit blurred with Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com requires more of a JAD (joint application design) approach than the traditional approach. This helps these projects move much more quickly. The CRM Success website is probably the best place to learn about the methodology and best practices.

4. Create a Salesforce.com account
You have 2 options here. You can setup a 30-day trial or go to Sforce.com and create a Developer Editions account. I recommend the latter. A Developer Edition account never expires. It allows you 2 licenses (an admin and a test user acccount, for example) to play around with. This is a great way to prototype what you learn and always maintain a copy of it.

5. Immerse yourself
Now that you have an account, you need to take time to learn about how the application works. I recommend 3 things:

• Online Training

Go to the Help and Training link in the upper-right of the application. Go to the Training tab. There are a lot of very good online training course that will help you get up to speed on things like Fundaments, basic SFA, reporting, Campaign management, etc. If you cannot see the Training tab in the Developer Edition, you may need to do a 30 day trial for this purpose.

• Play Around

I recommend configuring each module very simply and walk through them as if you are selling to and supporting a customer. I recommend starting with Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Activities and Reporting. Then move onto the Support side with Cases & Solutions. Once you get the basics, take it to the next level with Products, Opportunity Line Items and Forecasting. Then onto the web tools like Web to Lead and the Self-Service portal.

• User Guide

In the Help section, there is a little Adobe Acrobat icon. That is a link to a PDF version of the User Guide. I recommend downloading that and walking through it as you continue to play with the application.

6. Take it to the next level
Check out other resources to learn the tricks of the trade. Good places to start are:

• This blog and others like it (see the sidebar for links to other blogs)
• CRM Success Best Practices blog
• Sforce Connector – This is probably the best utility out there for messing around with Salesforce.com data. For people like me that are semi-techie, but not great coders, this is a fantastics tool. It does the heavy lifting of working with the API and still provides flexibility in working with the data. This is a great tool for an administrator to perform data cleansing or for a small data migration effort.

User Guide
Download Page

7. Learn the API
The Sforce website is the place. Here you will find toolkits, API documentation, tech notes and more. Use the platform of your choice (VB, Java, Perl, etc.) to get going. If you are not super-techie, I’d recommend using Office to get started. Either MS Excel or Access will work great.

8. Join the community
Get involved in the community of Salesforce.com developers and users. Participate in the Sforce community forums, comment on blog postings, start your own blog, let me know how I can improve this one, etc.