Perspectives on Salesforce.com

If you install any of the above apps, they will not count towards your app/object/tab limits:

Salesforce is currently running their Best of ’09 AppExchange awards.  The awards are solely based upon 2009 4-star and 5-star reviews.  If you use an Arrowpointe application, I encourage you to leave a review.  In addition to helping with awards, it’s the best way to give me your feedback and to help fellow Salesforce users know what’s quality and what is not.

Links to the Arrowpointe AppExchange listings are below:

• Arrowpointe Maps
• Auto vCard
• Spam Check
• Info Center
• User Adoption Dashboard

Thank you for your feedback!

Auto vCard 2.0 was released in January of this year with major functionality improvements, one of which was it running native on the force.com platform.  The older 1.x versions of Auto vCard used scripts running on Arrowpointe web servers.

The 1.x scripts are being retired.  If you are running a 1.x version of Auto vCard (go to your Setup | View Installed Packages page in Salesforce to check), you should be aware of the following changes taking place.

• Beginning  Tuesday, June 16, 2009, the behavior of the 1.x version will be changed.  Instead of the app automatically giving users the option to open/save the vCard, a link will be available on the popup window to get the vCard file.  Also, a new browser window will open directing them to this page explaining that they are on an older version that is set to expire.  Initially, this new behavior will only occur once every 2 days, but it will be more frequent as the July 31 date approaches.

• Auto vCard 1.x is expiring July 31, 2009.  At that time, anyone on version 1.x will start receiving an error message when creating a vCard.

• You can avoid issues related to either of the above 2 bullet points by upgrading your Auto vCard installation now.

To learn more about version 2.0, you can visit the product page on our website or the AppExchange listing.  Version 2.0 offers a free 60 day, 5 user trial.  After that, it is $1/user/month to subscribe and you can subscribe any number of your Salesforce users to it.  Non-profits can use it for free.

I had the privilege of being asked to present to the San Diego Salesforce User Group this past Friday.  The topic for the day was Appexchange Applications, Tools, and Components that you can download for Free!

I presented on a number of Arrowpointe Products as well as some 3rd party ones that, over the years, I have come to really appreciate.  I included apps that are both free and ones I consider well worth the money.  The list is not exhaustive and there are lots of good candidates.  For 3rd party apps, I tried to pick ones that were useful to all Salesforce Customers and not ones that were focused on specific business processes or technologies to be integrated with.  That pares down the list quite a bit.

If you are interested, you can download my slides.  For each app I presented on, there are links on the slides to learn more about them.

Thank you San Diego User Group for being a great group to present to and I hope to make it down that way again soon!

Salesforce has announced the Best Apps of 2008 and I am pleased to report that Auto vCard was named Best Productivity Application!  The “Best App” honor is given to the application in each AppExchange category receiving the most 4 and 5 star reviews.

In case you didn’t hear, Auto vCard 2.0 was released.  This is a major improvement to the app, allowing for total flexibilty and configurability in the creation of vCards from Salesforce data.  In fact, you can now create vCards from any object, pass any field through, use International characters and it all runs on the force.com platform!

To learn more…

• Auto vCard 2.0 Announcement
• Auto vCard on AppExchange
• Auto vCard Info on arrowpointe.com
• All Arrowpointe Products