Perspectives on Salesforce.com

Following Steve’s lead, I tried my own cross-object formula using the Summer ’08 pre-release org I get to use as an AppExchange partner.

One of my (and probably your) pressing needs is the ability to display fields from related objects (e.g. show the Account Number on the Opportunity page). Before Summer ’08, you had to either use Workflow to copy a value over, embed an s-Control to pretend the field is actually on your object or tell users to use the hovers.

Cross Object formulas take care of this.  I decided to see how far it went. To start my test, I added a custom Lookup field from Accounts to Cases. I then created a Formula field on the Licenses custom object that I have in my org. My formula traversed the following relationship path:

1. From License
2. To Contact
3. To Account
4. To Case
5. To Contact
6. To Account – finally displaying the City from this Account

It worked! My resulting formula was:

sfLma__Contact__r.Account.Case__r.Contact.Account.BillingCity

I could’ve kept going through more relationships too.  The field selector that’s provided made this simple.  Just click click click and you’re done.

This fills a huge gap in the product.  This simple addition eliminates a big reason for having needed external reporting tools.  This handles the traversing “up” relationships (from detail to master), while the custom Report Types rolled out last release handled the traversing “down” relationships (from master to detail).  Combined, they solve a lot of reporting problems.

I can’t begin to tell you the headaches this bit of functionality will cure.

Ribbit has officially released its “voiceware” application that integrates with Salesforce.com.

• Main Product Page
• Overview Video
• AppExchange Listing

I have been using Ribbit with Salesforce for ~3 weeks now and have been pleased. More important than anything for me was simply getting my voicemail digitally. Ribbit handles this for me. All I needed to do to activate it was call a special number on my cell, which sent AT&T a command to forward my voicemail to Ribbit (the Ribbit documentation says how to undo this change if you ever need to).

When someone leaves a voicemail, I can get it in a couple of ways:

Email

I opted to have Ribbit notify me of my new voicemails via Email. This way, I get an attachment with the file and can play it right on my Blackberry. The voicemail is also archived in my Google Apps account for reference purposes should I ever need it (even if I am no longer using Ribbit, I can still have that voicemail. It’s just a WAV file.). The downside of moving voicemail to Ribbit is that I no longer have visual notification that I have voicemail on my Blackberry. Getting it emailed to me eliminates the need for me to call in and check it. SMS is another option, but I wouldn’t be getting the file attached that way.

Salesforce

When I log into Salesforce, I see a nice message window on my homepage. All my voicemails are right there. The audio file itself is stored on Ribbit servers, but a record of the call is in a Messages object in Salesforce.com. This has call information as well as a text transcription. From the home page, I am able to tag my messages for easy searching later and I can also associate them to a Salesforce record. When I associate it to a Salesforce record, Ribbit creates an Activity with a link to the message file and a copy of the text transcription.

On the sidebar is a small message window and a dialpad. One of the biggest benefits of Ribbit is that of a “cell phone backup”. When a call comes to my cell and I send it to voicemail, the sidebar softphone rings. I have a chance to answer the call right from the Salesforce UI and talk through my PC. Alternatively, I can let it go through to voicemail. I am able to make outbound calls too, which is nice in the event that I don’t have cell coverage or just want click to call convenience.

Pros

The benefits are all about productivity:

• Digitize your voicemail – You have the data and can do with it what you please.
• Cell Phone Backup – Use the Ribbit softphone in Salesforce and put your cell phone away.
• Link voicemails to your Leads/Contacts – you get a nice record of the call with a text transcription
• Voice to text transcription is above average. It is by no means stellar, but it’s good enough to use as a reference for what the call was about without having to listen to it. Accents and slang tend to mess it up.

Cons

• Cost – If you compare the cost to Salesforce licenses, it ain’t cheap. $25/user/month. If you compare the cost to your cell phone bill and think of the added benefit you get, it starts to make sense. Individual purchasers will likely compare it to their cell phone bill and it’ll make sense for them. Enterprise purchasers will likely compare it to the cost of Salesforce and that will be a harder sell. If you want voice to text transcriptions (which are extremely useful), it’s even more money.  What’s harder to quantify is the productivity benefits you might get out of such an application.  Productivity improvements is an area of cost savings that should further justify the price.
• Can Slow page loads a bit – Even with the flash objects cached in my browser, the experience of loading my home page is slower with Ribbit on there. In my install, I decided to keep the Ribbit components on the homepage only and not have them follow me around Salesforce on the sidebar.  On Lead/Contact detail pages, you have a choice of the Flash component or a Messages related list.  l opted to put the Messages related list on my Lead & Contact for performance reasons and also for consistency sake.
• You give Ribbit your login credentials – In order to have your voicemails there when you login, Ribbit needs to do background processing. This makes sense, but it requires you giving Ribbit a login to your system. Many company’s can’t afford a new license just for Ribbit, so they’ll end of giving them the admin login. I trust Ribbit with the login info, but it’s a risk to hand anyone login credentials. Ribbit doesn’t have much choice, though, if they want to get the data populated and ready for users when they login.  I think this issue could be eliminated if Salesforce allowed for a special user to be created for this purpose that did not take a hit on the customer’s license count. This is how Salesforce does it with their License Manager application. This should be a benefit of being a partner with a certified application.

Ribbit is definitely a nice product and their thinking is beyond just Salesforce.  It’s really a new platform for “voiceware” applications. Salesforce was their first target for a specific application aimed at the Enterprise. I would expect to see more.

You can get a free trial on their AppExchange listing.

Have you tried it? What do you think?

Steve twittered today that the Summer ’08 Release Notes were published. More so than the Summer ’08 Ideas, the Release Notes provide exactly what’s happening in the next release leaving very little to the imagination.

(UPDATE: The Summer 08 Landing Page was published).

I suggest you check it out. Some new functionality that I find particularly intriguing:

Visualforce is Generally Available

Visualforce is now available for all organizations in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions.

This is huge. There is A LOT to learn in this area.

Analytic Snapshots

Analytic snapshots enable users to run a tabular report and save the report results to fields on a custom object … and schedule when to run the report to load the custom object’s fields with the report’s data.

It sounds kind of like exporting the data to Excel, but will instead let you export it to a custom object. This is cool because you can then report on data “at a point in time”.

MultiDay Events

Users can now create events that end more than one day (24 hours) after they start, lasting up to 14 days.

This is a new convenience for end users. Hopefully it syncs well with Outlook calendar.

Enhanced List Views

Inline Editing

If your administrator has enabled inline editing for your organization, you can now edit single records directly from a list view by double-clicking on individual field values. If your administrator has granted you the “Mass Inline Edit from Lists” user profile permission, you can also edit up to 200 records at a time with inline editing.

Custom Paging

You can now change the number of records displayed per page of list results by clicking the record count indicator in the lower left corner of the list and selecting the desired setting.

Drag-and-Drop Customization

You can now change the order in which a column is displayed by dragging the entire column heading with your mouse to the desired position.

Customizable User Object

Finally, we can have page layouts, set field level security and more on the User object.

Cross-Object Formulas

Refer to fields on related objects in your formulas. Even use the formulas to display fields from related objects right on the UI. For example, put the Account Number field on the Opportunity page.

Apex Enhancements

Lots of stuff here. Read the release notes for details.

Many-to-Many Object Relationships

In Summer ’08, you can now create two master-detail relationships on a single junction object to make it easier to represent a many-to-many relationship in your data model.

This will help in development. These junction objects have always been tricky from a user experience standpoint.

Lots of things to digest here. I only captured a handful of things that stood out to me personally. Go see for yourself.

Now that Salesforce has rolled out their Google Apps integration, I am curious how people are using it.  The curiosity period is past and you should have some anecdotes as to how/whether it has actually improved your productivity.  It’s still early to tell, but any war stories are welcome.

Please comment and let everyone know what you think so far.

• How has the integration affected your day to day use of Salesforce?
• What components are really making a difference for you now?
• What components do you feel will make a big difference once you are able to get its use ingrained in your culture?
• What (if any) applications have you stopped using as a result of the integration?
• Have you changed any business processes as a result?  What has improved?
• What components are “complete” functionality and what is “not quite there yet”?

My experience so far…

The Salesforce Google Apps integration hasn’t changed anything in my day to day use of Salesforce yet.  I’ve been a Google Apps user for about a year, so I was the perfect candidate for it.  What doesn’t make me the perfect candidate is that my collaboration needs are low.  Outlook still dominates my email/calendar life and this new integration hasn’t equaled or beat the existing Salesforce-Outlook integration can do.  My current setup is Outlook as my hub.  Contacts are synced with Salesforce.  Calendar is synced with Google via Google’s Outlook Sync product (it’s crashes/errors too much, but my Google Calendar is not a priority to me).  Email is synced with Google since I connect via IMAP.  The occasional calendar item is synced from Outlook to Salesforce so I can have a record of it there, but I avoid the Salesforce Calendar if I can.  Using Outlook also lets me sync easily with my Blackberry.

Once the gMail integration can do things like link the logged activities to the “What” relationship (Accounts, Opportunities, Cases) as well as the “Who” (Leads & Contacts), I will be much more likely to use it.  Also, something needs adding in the gMail client to save an existing email from Google to Salesforce, including its attachments.  The convenience just isn’t there for me quite yet.

The Google Docs integration is most immediately useful to me.  However, it hasn’t fit into a specific use case for me yet, but I can envision it doing so.  It could be a bit better in keeping things in sync like if I delete the doc from Google, it should delete from Salesforce, but I think that’s asking a bit much right now and I understand why it doesn’t do that.

The report export to Google Docs is interesting to me too and I am sure I will use that at some point.  I know its there and I’ll install it when I need it.  Reality, though, is that Excel is so entrenched in the corporate world and most recipients I work with would rather get an Excel file than a link to a Google Spreadsheet.  I rarely, if ever, am collaborating on a document where it requires mutual updates.  Generally, everyone else is just a viewer.  Thus, emailing an Excel file works for me.

Regarding Google Talk.  It’s nice that it’s there.  I use Trillian on my PC, so I am connected to like 7 different IM accounts at once (3 Google ones).  Having access to one of my Google ones isn’t that big of a help, but it’s nice to know it’s there if I need it.  I keep it on my sidebar, but collapsed.

What about you?

No matter where you store your data, it is always good practice to maintain backups. After all, it is your data and you need to be responsible for it, although we trust 3rd parties to keep it safe and backed up for us too.

When it comes to Salesforce, are you maintaining backups? If so, how? Please comment and enlighten the community on some good options you’ve deployed. Some that spring to mind for me are:

• Weekly Data Export – Inside Salesforce, Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers (for a fee, Professional Edition can do this) can request a weekly export of their data. The result is a ZIP of CSV files containing the raw data for each Salesforce object.
• Custom Script – Write custom code to access Salesforce via the API and grab all the data into your own database. Mike Simonds has some scripts to help get you started if you use PHP.
• AppExchange Application – Use an AppExchange application to do the dirty work to automate this process. Visit the AppExchange to read about the various solutions.
  • Sesame Software – I find this tool very easy to use and can get your Salesforce data into Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, etc. in a hurry.
  • CRM Fusion – They have a feature to backup your data directly into MS Access.
  • Other Data Loading/Moving Tool – Pervasive, Informatica, Bluewolf, Apatar and others have solutions to move data from place to place with a connector to Salesforce built in.
• Do Nothing – Let Salesforce take care of it. They have a proven track record of keeping your data from disaster.
• Something else?

I wish I personally had a better answer, but I am currently using the “Do Nothing” approach and occasionally make backups to MS Access using Demand Tools “just in case”.

How about you? Experiences, recommendations and general thoughts are welcome in the comments.