Perspectives on Salesforce.com

Dreamforce is just around the corner and Arrowpointe will be there.  There are a number of ways to learn about Arrowpointe’s apps and also to contact Scott Hemmeter.

• Arrowpointe has a Dreamforce booth in the Expo.  Find it at…

• Scott is presenting in the “Advanced Force.com Code (Apex) Development and Performance Considerations” session. Several opportunities to attend.
  • 1:15pm on Monday, December 6 at Cloudstock (Moscone West)
  • 3:45pm on Tuesday, December 7 at Dreamforce (Moscone West 2003) (follow in DF Chatter App)
  • 11:00am on Thursday, December 9 at Dreamforce (Moscone West 2004) (follow in DF Chatter App)
• Follow Scott Hemmeter in the Dreamforce Chatter App
• Follow Arrowpointe in the Dreamforce Chatter App
• Follow @arrowpointe on Twitter

Dreamforce looks to be very exciting and full of good information.  Whether you are a customer, developer, partner, prospective customer, journalist or just a techie at heart, there is content for you at Dreamforce.

If you are attending the show and have not yet gotten involved in the Dreamforce Chatter app, be sure and participate in that.  It has already changed the pre-conference experience and added to the excitement significantly.

See you there!

Geopointe 1.6 has been released on AppExchange.  The Update History page has the full list of changes in this release.  Below are highlights of the major changes, especially those that will impact end users’ experience with the application.  You should make your users aware of these changes.

Ad-Hoc Filtering

You can now apply filters to your queries from the Map page. You are no longer required to create and save a data set to get a filtered look at your data. You can still create and use Data Sets like before and this filter feature on the map page is a way to apply additional filters to the query. This feature should significantly reduce the number of data sets you require to have pre-created.

Coloring Markers

A new option called “Color Markers By” is available when mapping. This drop-down will list the fields you have available on the object. Selecting a field prior to clicking the map button tells Geopointe to ensure unique values from that field are put into a unique color. There are 20 pre-defined colors right now and they are the same colors used in Salesforce Dashboards.

Child Object Filters

You have always been able to filter on parent records (e.g. show Opportunities linked to Accounts with an Account Type = Customer).  Now you can use Child Relationships to filter parent objects.  For example, the image below is for an Account data set and is filters for Accounts with:

• Account Type starting with “Customer”
• Opportunities that have been Won and are of an Amount > 10,000

Enhanced Data Tables

The table below the map was significantly enhanced to allow pagination, searching, improved sorting and better rendering of values based upon data type.

Numbered Map Markers

This feature can be enabled via a User Preference on the My Settings page. It will add a number of each pin on the map and the same icon will display in the table so you can easily see the relationship between the table and the map.

Draggable MapQuest Routes

MapQuest routes are now draggable.  Once you generate a route, drag the route line around the page to tell it you want to go a different way.

View State Issue Is Gone!

Previous versions could throw an error regarding “View State” if too many records were added to the map.  This issue has been eliminated.  As a result of this, performance on the page should also be greatly improved.

Additional Items

• Added a user preference to hide the Salesforce Sidebar from the Map & Visualize page. By default, the sidebar is displayed.
• Many performance and optimizations enhancements

The Software Advice Blog updated their post Oracle OpenWorld CRM Smackdown! with the results of a survey they conducted regarding CRM and, especially, Oracle vs. Salesforce. They asked about the leadership position in the area and questions related to the possibility of Oracle purchasing Salesforce.  See the results at their updated blog post.

I was working with someone recently who saw how I converted 15 character IDs to 18 character IDs in Apex and thought it was clever. I always thought it was something everyone knew, but just in case, I’m posting it.

All I am doing is using the ID datatype, which does it for you automatically. You just have to trap the StringException in case you get passed a string that isn’t an ID. Anyone else do it another way?

string s = '0013000000K7WW2';
try{
   ID sID = s;
   // if we get here, it's a valid ID and the sID field is an 18 character one
} catch (System.StringException e){
   // if it goes here, it's not an ID. Do something if you need to.
}

The Geopointe 1.4 release includes a feature called Add To Campaign. This feature will sense whether leads or contacts are on the map and, if the running user has the authority to manage campaign members, an Add To Campaign button will appear, allowing them to add those leads and contacts to an existing Salesforce campaign.

Watch the video below for a demonstration of this functionality.