Demand Chain Systems

Salesforce.com’s support of IE6

2010-04-09T14:30:00.002-05:00

As of Q1 2011 IE6 support will shift to maintenance mode and will no longer receive full support from Salesforce.com. What does that mean? Simply put, Salesforce.com functionality available prior to the Spring ‘10 release will function and will receive limited support. New functionality made available with the Spring ‘10 release such as…

New UI theme
Answers
Chatter (note this is a limited release)

…will not be supported in IE6.

The reasons why IE6 is not going to be supported by Salesforce.com follows:

Security vulnerabilities
Browser speed / performance
The standards used to develop the browser limit the ability to develop ‘rich internet’ applications

Salesforce.com recommends that customers migrate off of IE6 by the end of 2010. Customers will not be cut off from using Salesforce.com if they cannot migrate browsers by that time although (as detailed above) they will not be able to utilize new functionality moving forward.

Integrating Clouds: Amazon Web Services and CRM

2010-02-26T08:25:00.004-06:00

“Cloud this” and “cloud that” is all that seems to be uttered these days when it comes to business applications and their supporting infrastructure. I would argue for good reason. Cloud based platforms can enable IT resources to focus more on adding value to the business they support (for example – developing system / process enhancements) instead of focusing on keeping the preverbal IT ‘lights on’ by maintaining servers and the software that the business applications run on. Furthermore, cloud based platforms can free up dollars that would be spent on traditional IT functions (servers / utilities (power, cooling) / maintenance of hardware & software…) enabling the business to invest those dollars elsewhere.

An example of integrating two cloud based platforms can be demonstrated by leveraging cloud based CRM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver an on-demand CRM integration.

AWS: Cloud Based Computing

I am going to assume that you are already familiar with cloud based CRM and thus will not detail it here. That said, simply put, AWS is a cloud based web services platform. The platform exposes several services that make cloud based computing and integration possible. For our example we will make use of the following AWS services (note that each service listed below carries its own charge):

Machine Instance (AMI): the server image that contains the integration design
Data Transfer: volume of data transferred during a process
S3 Storage: storage of the AMI and any relevant data
Elastic IP Addressing: reservation of a static IP address for your AMI

The cost model presented by AWS is appealing. Add to that that the services can be activated on-demand adds to the beauty of leveraging AWS. In other words, it is possible to spin up and shut down the AMI (read server) on demand. Being the AMI is charged based on up time you are only paying for the actual time a process is run and not paying for the time the process is idle.

Cloud Integration: Real World Experience

What I detail above is based on actual experience. We have been leveraging AWS to house CRM integrations for clients that:

Delivers selected CRM data to the client’s data warehouse
Cleanses unneeded data from the client’s CRM database

The integration I mention is based on this model. Note that the ‘Integration Engine’ referenced in the model is stored on and leverages AWS.

Since moving this process to the cloud our clients have saved time and expense on the maintenance and utility cost of housing an integration server on-site.

Granted, each company is different and due diligence (cost & volume analysis, business & IT analysis) needs to be done before moving integrations to the cloud. In the right situations, it has been a rewarding proposition for our clients.

Dreamforce 2009: Days Two & Three Highlights

2009-11-20T13:17:00.002-06:00

As in most conferences, the big exiting things are divulged in day one. Despite that, days two and three were still packed with over a hundred breakout sessions, a keynote with Marc Benioff (where among other things he announced a $2 million donation to the University of California San Francisco for a new children’s hospital) and a much-anticipated keynote with retired US General Colin Powell.

Days two and three dove deeper into the newly announced Collaboration Cloud with demonstrations and examples of Chatter. While the initial Chatter announcement was met with some disappointment by much of the attending public, further demonstrations showed more promise in how Chatter could be used to solve real problems and raise awareness of important happenings inside your business.

While DCS will delve more deeply into Chatter in future blog entries, a few simple examples where Chatter might be useful to you could be:

Using the status updates to quickly know where your coworkers are and what they’re working on (and whether they need on something NOW!)
Implementation of Chatter alerts that notify you that your partner has logged in to the partner portal and modified the stage and close data of a large opportunity you were working on together
Create a group where members of your sales team can subscribe to and facilitate idea sharing on how to succeed in winning against your competitors
Notification from your manufacturing system that the delivery of an important product to a key customer has been delayed due to a problem with a component

While these examples are ideas that could be solved using alerts or workflow today, the main difference is the context where this information is presented. Today, most companies overuse email as the delivery mechanism for this type of information, leading to important messages getting lost in the static of the Inbox. Chatter changes that by moving this information into a news feed inside of salesforce.com while also relating the news feed to the object (contact, opportunity, custom object) where it originated. Additionally, Chatter alerts can be generated by happenings both inside and outside of salesforce.com.

Aside from Chatter, many other ideas and concepts were covered in the sessions. While far too many to cover them all here, some of the things that were discussed that might be of interest to you include:

A new salesforce.com user interface, coming in 2010, that features a more Facebook-like skin with useful reorganizations of controls to be more intuitive and easier to use. Also, the inclusion of a Facebook-like news feed is prominently featured.
The recently released bulk API allows you to better accommodate integrations to systems with hundreds of thousands or millions of records. Handled asynchronously, not only does the system allow for much higher load limits (5 million records per rolling 24 hours) but also allows integrations to perform multiple tasks at once rather than keeping tasks in a single-file line.
The newly previewed Apex scheduler (currently in limited preview) which will allow you to create tasks (similar to cron jobs in UNIX parlance) to kick off at scheduled times of the day

Overall, another successful conference! Demand Chain Systems has been attending Dreamforce from the very beginning and always uses the event as an incubator to conceive new ideas that will better solve your business problems.

We welcome the opportunity to talk with you at more length about the ideas and topics discussed at Dreamforce! Whether you weren’t able to attend or you just couldn’t make it to all the sessions you wanted to, please let us know if we can help!

Dreamforce 2009: Day One Highlights

2009-11-18T23:36:00.002-06:00

If there were any questions as to whether the economy was going to affect this year’s Dreamforce conference, wonder no more. The answer is a resounding ‘No’. Long lines, people everywhere and music blaring from every speaker welcomed every one of the almost 19,000 attendees to day one of the conference. The day started with a keynote session, delivered by Marc Benihoff and several Salesforce.com executives then transitioned into a handful of breakout sessions, separated by track and areas of interest. Here are some items we picked up on day one:

Much discussion was dedicated to the next generation of salesforce.com’s sales related application, dubbed Sales Cloud2. Some functionality has been delivered while some is still coming, Sales Cloud2 touts many enhancements including:
Similar to the Sales Cloud, there are many new enhancements for the next version of the customer service side of the application, called Service Cloud2. Among them:
Aside from the Sales and Service Cloud enhancements, the big news was the creation of a new cloud, called the Collaboration Cloud. Slated to be available in early 2010, this is salesforce.com’s newest initiative and the first offering is called Salesforce.com Chatter.

- Chatter borrows heavily from the Facebook and Twitter platforms and allows users to subscribe to get updates on enterprise data that they care about. All salesforce.com native and custom objects can generate real-time feed updates, more visibility to important information allowing for better business decisions.

Salesforce.com Annual Conference - Dreamforce 2009

2009-11-18T09:56:00.002-06:00

Demand Chain Systems is attending Salesforce.com’s annual conference again this year and will be posting items we think are valuable to our customers..

While this conference is just one of the many events held by CRM vendors, Dreamforce is more than just a CRM conference and is a forum for cloud computing in general. Stay tuned, day one is just starting!

Cloud computing 101...

2009-11-04T10:55:00.002-06:00

Ever have your eye's glaze over when you hear the words "Cloud Computing" or all your data is in the "Cloud"? I stumbled upon this video today at CNN.com which does a good (and humorous)job of answering the question..."What is Cloud Computing?"

Get more value from your CRM system and increase sales without spending an arm and a leg

2009-11-03T10:23:00.002-06:00

It's no secret that many companies are unhappy with the value they're getting out of their CRM systems. One of the chief complaints we hear is that sales teams resist their adoption. Even when sales reps do use CRM daily, it doesn't seem to have much impact on their productivity. Sales managers can easily track their time and activities, but are sales reps actually selling more? Often, the answer is "no." And who gets the blame? The CRM system.

So what to do? Start all over with a new system? Overhaul your current system? Not many companies in today's economy can afford such choices. But don't give up on your CRM system. There are numerous things you can do right now to get more value from it, and many can be implemented quickly at a relatively low cost.

Make it sales-friendly

Sales teams' resistance to CRM technology shouldn't be so surprising. If sales reps perceive your system as something that just tracks their time and activities for the convenience of sales managers—like Big Brother looking over their shoulders—and doesn’t actually help them sell better, they’ll naturally be wary of it.

The best CRM implementations are sales-focused rather than management-focused. They give sales reps all the data they need to maximize sales calls or other customer interactions. Take a hard look at your system. Is it primarily a management tool used to collect data and track resources? Or is it a tool that gathers every bit of information about prospects and customers in your financials and other systems and presents this information to sales reps in the field as they plan their week and prioritize their activities?

You likely already have this information. But if you keep it locked away in accounting or transactional databases and don’t push it out to sales rep in the field through your CRM system—often a feature of CRM technology that isn’t enabled—you’re missing out on what may be the most powerful capability of the system. Integrations between CRM and financial systems vary in their complexity and cost, but many tools are available to make this possible without a massive development effort.

Take advantage of add-on tools

Leading CRM systems have legions of independent application developers and partners who have developed hundreds value-enhancing tools and add-on applications. Consider, for example, voice-to-text applications. With this technology, calls, voice memos and voicemail flow into CRM systems, eliminating manual typing updates and allowing sales reps to better capture and share customer information. There are literally hundreds of valuable add-ons like this that range in price from free to several thousand dollars (see the links below for examples). If you haven’t checked out what’s available, you’re probably missing out on one of the easiest ways to add value to your CRM system.

http://sites.force.com/appexchange/home
http://crm.dynamics.com/partners/find-a-partner.aspx
http://saleslogix.qisys.com/saleslogix_addons

Don’t forget data quality and integrity

Nothing undermines the value of a CRM system more than bad data—duplicate, out of date or just plain inaccurate. Sales reps won't trust the system, and your administrative burden increases. Luckily, there are plenty of tools available that can help keep your CRM database clean. Typically, these are administrative toolkits for a variety of data quality needs, including merging duplicate records, batch normalization, duplicate prevention, and comparing external data to data in CRM databases. Costs vary, but often they are as little as $50 per user per year, a small price compared to the loss of confidence that dirty data causes.

Streamline through workflow

If you're not using the customizable workflows built into most CRM systems, functionality you've already paid for, you're missing out on a zero-cost way to get more value from your CRM investment.

Built-in CRM workflows can often eliminate 90 percent of repetitive tasks—things people do every day in the same way. But many organizations don’t take advantage of CRM workflows because they implement the basic features and think they’re done. Other organizations don’t have the money and a long-term strategy to develop more advanced CRM features after their initial implementation. Don’t fall into either of these traps. You’ll lose an easy opportunity to get more value from your CRM system.

Stay informed

Did you know that some organizations are using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as part of their CRM strategies? It may be a little premature to discuss the value of these sites as sales tools in the general market, but the phenomenon helps illustrate a point. CRM is a journey, not a destination, and if the system you have in place a year or two from now only does the same thing it's currently doing, you’re probably never going to get the maximum value from your investment. That's why it’s important to pay attention to what's happening in the evolving CRM marketplace. One good way to do this is to stay in regular touch with an implementation partner like DCS. It's our job to pay attention to what's happening in the marketplace, and we're more than happy to share this knowledge with you.

Summer Salesforce.com Developer Challenge: Taking Force.com to the next level...

2009-10-22T11:44:00.001-05:00

This summer Salesforce.com threw down the gauntlet again and put on their second Cloud Developer Challenge. After our success with the last challenge we thought we would throw our hat in the ring and see what we could come up with. Our goal this time around was to use the Force.com platform (Sites, Visualforce, Apex, and Salesforce.com) to create an online application that displays the richness of the Force.com platform while looking nothing like a standard Salesforce.com app.

After some power brainstorming we decided that we would combine our love for Salesforce.com and endurance sports to create an online portal for users to set goals and track their workouts online. Our concept grew into an online tool that a person could use to set a goal, plan/enter their workouts, blog/twitter about their workouts and get real-time analytics of their progress towards that goal.

The result

The result of our effort was enduranceAthlete...an online application that is built on the Force.com platform and leverages some of the latest Cloud and Web 2.0 best practices. You can log in to our application to demo it:

http://workout-developer-edition.na7.force.com/SiteLogin

Below are some of the highlights of enduranceAthlete...

Data model and User Interface are built all on the Force.com platform:

Calendar that leverages jQuery to display workouts:

Integration with Active.com API to pull in information on local races:

Integration with major social networks Twitter and Blogger:

Integration with Google Analytics:

Salesforce.com honors us with a win!

We are very pleased to announce that Salesforce.com selected us as one of the three winners for the Summer Developer Challenge of which there were over 1,000 applications. Full article…

Conclusion

It is clear that with the addition of Sites that Salesforce has taken the Force.com platform to the next level. enduranceAthlete is a great example of how you can really create any online application using their platform…the sky is now the limit. I feel like we can finally say to our clients that “We can do anything on Salesforce.com”.

Winter ‘10 New Features

2009-10-12T14:43:00.004-05:00

The Winter ‘10 release is upon us. Following are quick glances at a few of the system advances provided with this release:

SALES:	Real-Time Quotes: Real-Time Quotes allow sales reps to use Salesforce CRM to create sales quotes to complete the deal lifecycle. Real-Time Quotes automatically populate quotes with relevant customer data so reps can generate and send a quote PDF with just a few clicks: Available in: Developer, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions Dashboard Microscope: Dashboard Microscope enables selectively drilling into a chart’s grouping and viewing only the data that supports said grouping - simply by clicking the chart segment. In addition, with Dashboard Microscope, one can hover over any chart type and a window will appear containing a summary of the underlying information. For companies that want full visibility into their funnel, pie, and donut chart data—no matter how small—Dashboard Microscope prevents small data points from being grouped into a larger “Other” category on a chart. Available in: All editions
SERVICE:	Salesforce for Twitter: Now the Service Cloud lets you join in with Salesforce for Twitter. You can search for phrases or keywords, pull “tweets” into Salesforce CRM when you spot something relevant, or even let your customers create a case directly from Twitter. Your agents can respond from within Salesforce CRM using the same tools and business processes they do with other channels. Follow this link: Social CRM: What's the Hype? to an earlier post discussing social CRM and how Twitter integrates with Salesforce.com. Available in: Developer, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions via free download from the AppExchange
FORCE.COM:	Batch Code Processor: For the techies in the audience - have you ever wanted to build a process to validate account addresses? Or, perhaps create a background process iterating through millions of records creating object relationships based on complex logic? The Batch Code Processor releases the power of asynchronous batch processing to build and deploy complex business processes, operating over entire data sets: Available in: Developer, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions
	As mentioned earlier, these are just a few of the system enhancements for this release. Click the following link for a complete representation of the Winter ‘10 system updates: Winter '10 Updates

Social CRM: What’s the Hype?

2009-09-24T11:08:00.002-05:00

Social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have shifted how individuals interact and communicate with each other. A simple Facebook post or a Twitter tweet can quickly reach a large group of people half a world away. To put some perspective on ‘large group’, according to Facebook, it alone has 250 million active users…and that number is growing. Quite an interconnected audience…which includes customers and potential customers. Those people all carry opinions, likes, dislikes, experiences and they have the capability to propagate those thoughts via an incredibly efficient channel to a wide audience.

Enter CRM. What use would a CRM system have for a social platform? The following two statements, I think, capture a decent holistic definition of that use:

“…a strategy and applications approach to harness the power of online branded customer communities, broader social networks, and traditional CRM systems. By bringing customers into your processes, your business can effectively multiply resources and reach by 100 times, 1000 times, and more. Your customers and advocates become your competitive advantage.” (Lithium – social CRM vendor)

- * -

“Social CRM captures both the tools AND the processes around the tools to leverage crowdsourcing customer ideas, apply the wisdom of crowds to those ideas, create a public customer ecosystem, take the customer experience and communication to the time, place and method the customer prefers, increase customer intimacy and empowerment”. Michael Fauscette

A simpler way to look at it…a picture can be worth a thousand words:

It is interesting to note that a good portion of the social benefits (viral marketing | real time interactions about product(s) / service(s)) are derived not from the CRM systems and processes themselves, but rather from the social technologies and their users voluntary behavior.

How about a tangible example? The following demonstrates how Salesforce.com’s customer service functionality and Twitter interface to provide a real time customer service experience:

Some reading I have done regarding social CRM lends itself to the thinking that companies are treating the integration with social platforms as a fad. Specifically, they are reacting to the social platform hype by jumping on the social bandwagon and leveraging a social platform while not adopting the technology to the companies business processes. Sound familiar? As mentioned in earlier posts, thought / process / training need to be wrapped around a technology (regardless of the technology source / channel) in order for it to provide value to an organization. Technology is the enabler – not the answer. Thus, don’t fall for the hype. Have a plan for harnessing the social wave. Be clear on how to manage the ad hoc / unstructured nature of the social experience with the structured / process driven nature of your CRM system.

I close this post with a statement from Paul Greenberg (noted CRM author / speaker / blogger) that pertains to how social CRM should be perceived within an organization:

“The lesson for business, in terms of Social CRM, is that we are now at a point that the customers' expectations are so great and their demands so empowered that our social CRM business strategy needs to be built around collaboration and customer engagement, not traditional operational customer management.”

Flex plus Salesforce.com APEX Webservice

2009-04-15T13:00:00.005-05:00

Flex plus Salesforce.com APEX Webservice:

The following post will lay out a basic “Hello World” example of how to create a Flex application using a webservice call to a Force.com APEX webservice method. This example will show you how to create a Force.com Apex webservice and cal l it from Flex. While this is just a simple hello world example you should quickly be able to see how you could leverage the power of both Flex and the Force.com platform to create rich client applications.

In this post I will be building on the Salesforce.com tutorial on how to connect Flex and Salesforce.com. Here is a link to that post: Salesforce/Flex Tutorial

Step 1 Salesforce: Create the APEX class

The first step will be for us to create the logic that will run our application. We will do this by creating an Apex class in our Salesforce.com org using Eclipse. This class is what will be called by the Flex end of application. Creating this class is like creating any other class except we will define the class as “global” and define all the methods within it as “webService”.

You will see that our class is named “helloWorldWebService” and it contains one function “helloWorldCall” which accepts one parameter “world” and returns the parameter “world” with ‘Hello’ on the front of it when called.

Step 2 Flex: Create the Flex End of the Application

Next we will need to create a Flex application to consume this webservice we created. As mentioned earlier we will assume that you already have downloaded the Salesforce library and have included it in your Flex library (Here is a link to a simple tutorial: Salesforce/Flex Tutorial).

The first part of the Flex application will be writing the user interface side of the code. In our example we will have a simple text field for input and a button that will fire the function that will log us into Salesforce.com, call the webservice, and return the results to the screen.

In the few lines of code above we create a panel to hold our fields and then add the input field, button and output field. Below is what our UI will look like.

The text field will allow us to enter a string which once we press the “Go” button will be displayed on the screen with “Hello” concatenated on the front of it by our Salesforce webservice.

Next we will move on to the meat of the application. Above we see that when the button is clicked it calls the “login()” function. This function is a simple login function that accepts a username and password and logs into Salesforce.com with those credentials. Below is the code for the login() function:

Once this function successfully logs into salesforce.com it will call our “callHelloWorld” function. This is the function that will pass our variable to our webservice and return the results to our screen.

Our function has three major sections to it. The first lines 40-41 are defining the parameters that we will pass to our webservice. In our example we are just passing one string. We get this by grabbing whatever the user entered into the “helloInput” text box.

Next on lines 42-49 we define the function that will be called once the webservice is run and returns data. In our example we take the result of the call and stick it into our webserviceOutput field.

Lastly on lines 51-57 we call the webservice. This call accepts four parameters webservice name (line53), method being called (line 54), parameters passed (line 55) and function to call on complete (line 54).

The result:

Below is a screenshot of the finished state of our hello world application.

Salesforce.com Developer Challenge

2009-03-04T16:18:00.003-06:00

Back in December, Salesforce.com issued a challenge to its developer community: Build a site or application on the newly released Sites platform. Sites was announced at Dreamforce 08 and is currently in development release only.

At Demand Chain Systems (a CRM consulting and implementation firm in Minneapolis), we decided to take up this challenge, viewing it as a great opportunity to learn the Sites technology -- and hopefully to win one of the Ipod Touches Salesforce.com was offering. Our goal was to see how easy it would be to move our corporate website to the new technology and create a first-generation content management system (CMS) that we could use to update it from Salesforce.

Salesforce recently announced the winners, and we were thrilled to learn we were an honorable mention. We would like to share our experience creating our application and some thoughts along the way. We have also included a short video of the application in action.

Lessons learned

The first thing we learned was that using the Sites technology is fairly straightforward. We were able to move our corporate site from a standard HTML/CSS/PHP platform to the Sites platform in a couple of hours. It took a little digging to understand how to host the images and set up the Visualforce templates; but once we got the first couple pages up, the rest were pretty simple. It took us ~5 hours to migrate our basic site to the platform and meet the first half of our goal.

The second half our goal was to create a first-generation CMS for our site. Using a combination of Force.com technology (Visualforce, APEX, Custom Objects), we were able to architect a system in ~10-15 hours that functioned as a CMS. We added an “Edit” button to the live site so people could see it in action, knowing that if we ever moved it to production, we would have to add some additional security around that end of the CMS.

Here is a brief video of the end product we submitted for the challenge:

Here is a link to the working prototype (As you can see the Salesforce.com community has updated some of the content themselves):

http://demandchainsystems-developer-edition.na6.force.com/subPage?page=index

We at Demand Chain Systems are always excited to get our hands dirty with new Salesforce.com technology, and the Salesforce.com Sites Developer Challenge was a great opportunity to do just that. Please feel free to contact me with any additional questions/comments regarding our entry. I would love to hear feedback and enhancement ideas!

Tim Inman – tim.inman@demandchainsystems.com

Dreamforce Session: Key Winter ’09 Feature Highlights

2008-11-12T11:23:00.029-06:00

On September 8, we posted a listing of some of the features that were coming in the Winter ’09 release of Salesforce.com. While at Dreamforce we attended a session dedicated to highlighting these features. The following details several of the enhancements we thought could bring immediate value to users:

Scheduling and Emailing Reports:
This might be the biggest enhancement for this version. Users have been requesting the ability to have reports delivered via email for a long time. Now, a report can be scheduled to run and be delivered to a user or group of users. Within a report look for the little arrow that is part of the “Run Report” button:

When the arrow is clicked a user will be presented with two options - choose 'Schedule Future Runs...'. The user will be taken to the report scheduling screen where they can define the parameters for report delivery. Be aware that the report can be delivered based on a “Run As” user. However, when the user clicks the report in the email and goes into Salesforce, user security will be enforced.

NOTE: For reports to be delivered, the user must have access to the folder where the report resides.

Click to Create Calendar Interactions:
When viewing a weekly calendar, a user can now double click a time slot and an event schedule will pop up set to the time the user selected. This feature is not enabled by default, it must be activated by going to Setup Customize User Interface and checking the appropriate boxes. This is also true for the next feature, Drag and Drop scheduling.

Drag and Drop Scheduling on Enhanced List Views:
If you have enabled enhanced list views and Drag and Drop scheduling in your user interface preferences, you will now be able to display your weekly calendar in the Lead, Account and Contact list views. After activating the features, go to one of your Lead, Account or Contact list views and look in the bottom right corner. You will see the following link:

Click the 'Open Calendar' link to display a view of your calendar underneath the list. Then, drag records from the list to time slots on the calendar to create events associated with the records.

Campaign Influences:
Until now, users have only been able to associate one campaign with an opportunity. With the addition of the “Campaign Influences” related list, users can add multiple campaigns to one opportunity while designating a primary. You may ask,”What campaigns get linked?”. By default, all campaign responses associated with contacts of the opportunity are brought over to the new list. In the Campaign Influences settings, users can define rules for what campaigns should be automatically linked.

Case Teams:
Cases can now be assigned to “teams” of users just like accounts or opportunities. Users can set up default teams in the settings area or include team members on the fly.

Rule Based Sharing:
Until now, records had to be manually shared. Users can now set rules to share accounts so that an account is shared automatically when it satisfies a filter criteria or rule.

Creating a Visualforce custom component with jQuery

2008-11-12T09:35:00.000-06:00

Recently at the latest Salesforce.com Dreamforce event I attended a session on creating custom components in Visualforce. The best way to think about custom components is to think of them as reusable "widgets" that can be used in any Visualforce page with mininal duplicate coding. I recently also discovered jQuery...a very powerful javascript library. One of my "homework" assignments I assigned myself at Dreamforce was to create some custom components that leverage the jQuery library.

Why use jQuery to create a Visualforce component?

jQuery is a fast and concise cross-browser JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. To learn more about the power of jQuery visit their site at: http://jquery.com/

Combining jQuery with Salesforce.com allows us to leverage the proven UI components of the library with the power of Salesforce.com. The new Visualforce functionality in Salesforce.com allows us to create reusable components that we can insert in any other Visualforce page.

In the following example we will walk through getting jQuery, creating a static resource, creating a custom component, and finally adding that custom component to a visual force page.

Steps 1: Get jQuery

jQuery is a lightweight javascript library that comes with a bunch of very stable UI elements (Dialog boxes, accordion widget, spinners, etc).

Get the latest build of jQuery from the jQuery website. http://jquery.com/

Steps 2: Zip it up

Once you have downloaded the latest build of the jQuery library .zip it up for upload to Salesforce.com. That is right...we will be able to reference all the files in the .zip file from within the custom component we will create. No need to upload all the files individually.

Steps 3: Create a static resource

Next we will log into Salesforce.com and create a static resource calling it "JQuery_UI". Upload the jQuery .zip file to this resource and save it for reference in your custom component.

Steps 4: Create the custom component

Next we will write the code for the reusable Visualforce custom component. Remember that the value of creating a custom component is that you only have to create the code once and you will be able to reuse the component with one line of code in any Visualforce page. Also the static resource will only be loaded once per page no matter how many times you call the custom component in a Visualforce page (reducing page load times).

Below is the simple code for our custom component. It could be extended to accept and pass variables however, our component will be a stand-alone component that simply displays a nicely formatted jQuery dialog box with a message in it for the user.

Items to note in the code:

Lines 5-7: You will see in the code that we simply reference the files in the static resource we created.

Lines 12-24: Creating the architecture of the dialog box

Lines 30-34: Invoking the jQuery library to make the dialog box appear.

Steps 5: Include custom component in a Visualforce page

The last step is to include the custom component on any Visualforce page. As we see below it as easy as adding one tag.

Step 6: Call your Visualforce page

So now we call the Visualfoce page and we see our "mashup" of jQuery and Salesforce.com Visualforce code.

For more information see:

Salesforce.com - http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Apex_and_Visualforce

jQuery -http://jquery.com/

Cloud Office Productivity: Integrations and Considerations

2008-11-03T21:04:00.087-06:00

Migration from client server to hosted office productivity tools is occurring at an increasing rate. According to Google (purveyors of Google Apps - Google's cloud office productivity platform) as of early November '08 they have 10 million users leveraging Google Apps. In terms of companies, Google states on average 3000 new companies a day are signing up to use Google Apps.

As an earlier post announced, Salesforce.com recognized this trend and has made available the capability for Google Apps to integrate with their platform (see video below for details).

Functionally, as the video demonstrates, the Google Apps integration with Salesforce.com enables application synergies through:

Real time document collaboration

Shared calendaring

Online chat

Email integration

In addition, operationally, leveraging a cloud office productivity platform eliminates the pain and cost of software upgrades while at the same time ensuring all employees share the same software version.

Note that due diligence needs to be done if a company is considering migrating to cloud office productivity. Items to consider:

Google Apps Edition: Ensure the edition of Google Apps aligns with your business needs - Premiere ($50 / user / yr) or Standard (free) edition.

Regulatory Compliance: Certain industries (financial and health care for example) are bound by regulations concerning storage transfer and privacy of data. Ensure your company is in alignment with these regulations before making the jump.

Data Model Comfort: Persuading companies to store sensitive data on a server housed and owned by Google takes a good amount of trust. On top of that, even if company executives are fine with the cloud model, customers may not be.

Google Apps is Evolving: Functionality gaps may exist between the two flavors of applications. Understand how end users are utilizing their office productivity suite's features and capabilities. Map that understanding against what Google Apps delivers. Will desired features be taken away by transitioning to the cloud?

No Offline Access: Web-based applications are useless when the user isn't connected to the internet - although Google Gears may potentially be able to help address this shortcoming.

More to come on this topic as the model and technology (and more than likely laws) mature(s)...

Data Loader Memory Allocation

2008-10-30T20:37:00.012-05:00

ISSUE:
Extracts using Data Loader that are called via the command line constantly fail after pulling the first 1000 to 2000 records.

RESOLUTION:
If the extract is pulling many columns that include Description or long text fields with lots of data you may be running into a memory issue related to the Java default heap size being set too low. To increase the heap size edit the code that calls the Data Loader .jar file and add the switch expanding the heap size (see bold text in example below):

java -version:1.6.0_07 -ms32m -mx128m -Dsalesforce.config.dir=...

Refer to this article for details on Java heap sizes.

Salesforce.com | Windows Live Toolbar Conflict

2008-10-07T14:52:00.012-05:00

ISSUE:
Clicking a lookup fields 'spyglass' button results in the corresponding lookups dialog box appearing for approximately 1 second before closing thereby rendering the lookup useless.

RESOLUTION:

Salesforce.com support states that there is a conflict between Salesforce.com and the Windows Live Toolbar. They recommend uninstalling the Windows Live Toolbar so that full lookup functionality can be restored.

Not Just a Glorified Rolodex

2008-10-03T14:11:00.010-05:00

I have heard the statement describing this post countless times ("I do not want my CRM system to be a glorified rolodex.") throughout my years of implementing CRM systems. The concern is legitimate but with foresight and planning can be mitigated. One of the most effective strategies that can be adopted to help ensure that the implementation does not result in a high-tech rolodex is to provide end users relevant customer data in a timely fashion within the CRM system (note this post speaks to Salesforce.com). Providing such data can:

Enable accurate / efficient customer strategies through providing a more holistic view of a customer

Ensuring system adoption by driving users to the application

Concerns abound (read: data security / sensitivity, bandwidth, data volume) about ease of integration between in-house legacy systems to a SaaS CRM application that sits in the 'cloud'. Take heart, coupling your foresight and planning with access to the CRM application's API can enable the concerns to be overcome allowing system integration to be done (and done rather quickly which translates into being cost effective).

As with any integration, requirements and planning need to take place before the actual integration can be designed. Some questions that need to be addressed in this phase are:

How will the legacy data be compiled and delivered for integration?

How will the legacy data be displayed in the CRM system?

How often will the integration occur?

Once requirements are gathered and validated the integration framework can be implemented. Below I have included a link to a general template that we have followed when integrating legacy systems with Salesforce.com:

Integration Workflow Template

Note that the element entitled 'Integration Engine' is comprised of the following primary components:

Database engine

Salesforce.com API and database engine interface layer

Scheduler

Notifier (SMTP, web service, SNMP, etc.)

Once the integration is providing data between the systems the attention now turns to presenting the integrated data in a meaningful manner to the end user. The mode in which to present the data usually depends on the scope of data to be displayed. Data presentation options can consist of:

Embedding integrated data within the related record (usually done with smaller data sets)

Rendering integrated data within a separate dialog box initiated via a user action - via a click of a button for example (usually done with larger data sets)

Presenting integrated data via a mash-up

Either of the above listed can be accomplished using 'native' Salesforce.com technologies. Below I have included a link to an example of displaying integrated data embedded within an object - in this case a contact. The data displayed details unit volume sold per contact per product per week in a rolling week fashion:

Integration Display Example

I am fairly confident that rolodex cannot do that.

Winter '09 New Features

2008-09-08T14:29:00.006-05:00

The Winter '09 release is here. We thought we would provide you with a sampling of some of the system enhancements:

Scheduling and emailing reports
Custom objects available offline regardless of object relationships
Opportunity splitting (assign split % to sales team)
Click and create events
Salesforce Mobile for partners
Calendar and events for partners

Please follow the link for a complete listing of the Winter '09 system enhancements: Winter '09 Release Notes

Avoiding CRM Pitfalls

2008-09-08T13:24:00.009-05:00

I just read an article entitled 'You Can Avoid CRM's Pitfalls'. Although the article first appeared in February of 2002 (yes, in today's terms 2002 is ancient history) the thoughts laid out in the article still ring true today. The remainder of this post details the articles contents:

'You Can Avoid CRM's Pitfalls' by Kathleen Melymuka - Computerworld - 2/11/2002

Why do so many CRM projects fail, and how can you increase your odds of success? Darrell K. Rigby, a director at Bain & Co. in Boston, tackles those questions with colleagues Frederick F. Reichheld and Phil Schefter in February's Harvard Business Review. Rigby spoke with Computerworld's Kathleen Melymuka about the perils of CRM.

Q: What is it that executives don't understand about CRM?
A: The biggest problem is they confuse strategy with software. A lot of executives don't understand what they're implementing, let alone how much it will cost or how long it will take.

Q: What is CRM really about?
A: CRM aligns business processes with customer strategies to build customer loyalty and increase profits over time. You'll notice that definition doesn't even include the words technology or software.

Q: Who should be in charge of a CRM effort?
A: Somebody who is as close as possible to the customer. In some organizations that may be the CEO, and in others [it] may be the head of marketing. But it needs to be someone who is going to use this information to improve the value and loyalty of customers, so they have to understand customers intimately.

Q: You say that many companies implement CRM without creating a customer strategy. What are they thinking?
A: They are thinking that software will make their lives easier. They look at the potential for automation and the improved speed, reduced cost, superior targeting and say, "Maybe a weapon like this is the answer to all my problems." It turns out, it's not.

Q: How do I develop a customer strategy?
A: Start with these questions: "How must our value proposition change to earn greater customer loyalty? What are we going to do to make the customer want to do more business with us? How much customization is appropriate and profitable for our strategy?" A lot of companies are enticed by the idea of mass customization, but many find it adds more costs in the process than customers appreciate. Getting that right is crucial.

Q: Then what?
A: Ask, "What is the potential value of increasing the loyalty of customers, and how much does it vary by customer segment?" Some customer segments are extraordinarily profitable, and some are unprofitable. The last thing you want to do is spend additional money to attract and retain unprofitable customers.

Q: Once I've got a customer strategy, I'm ready to develop my CRM technology, right?
A: Well, you're closer. Strategy is the first step. But changing the organization to match that strategy needs to be done before you're ready to roll.

Q: Why does the organization need to change?
A: Companies that don't redefine people's jobs and change performance measures, compensation systems and training programs often introduce CRM programs but get no traction from them at all.

Q: How do these changes work?
A: A while back, USAA [financial services firm] managers invested in a device to measure the average wait experienced by customers calling into their phone teams. A digital scoreboard tracked this. As a result, phone reps began to focus more on getting customers off the phone quickly than on customer service. [Management] realized the potential effect, took down the digital signs and started tracking the percentage of customers who completed their business on the first call. This raises the issue of what kind of performance you're looking for. You have to get the right measures and set people's compensation to help employees want this as much as you do. Then give them training to enable them to achieve it.

Q: These organizational changes can take months or years, but CEOs and boards are looking for results tomorrow. What's a CRM team to do?
A: The best results come from implementing CRM programs in a modular fashion. You start with the areas where you know you can get the organization on board and that will lead to quick results and encourage additional investment to get the remaining results.

Q: Is CRM worth all this trouble?
A: It really is. When it works, CRM allows companies to gather customer data efficiently, identifies their most valuable customers over time, increases loyalty by offering customers products and services they want, reduces the cost of providing those and makes it easier to acquire similar customers down the road. The benefits are enormous.

Salesforce.com Mobile BlackBerry Client v10.0.1

2008-08-20T08:59:00.003-05:00

The Salesforce.com v10.0.1 mobile client is now available for download. Enhancements included in this release follow:

Creation of All Day Event from the Day View: The creation of an all-day event now functions properly
Labels on Web Maps Selection: User-defined labels are now shown properly when selecting the 'Billing Address' or 'Shipping Address' from Accounts when launching Web Maps
Web Maps and Users on Legacy Console: The Web Maps menu item has been correctly disabled for users set on the Legacy Console
Custom Views with Filters on Date Type: Custom Views with filters on date fields now display records in the range starting from 'today' and ending to the date specified in the 'equal to' field
Person Accounts in the Account List View: Person Accounts are now shown properly when Contacts are not mobilized or when the relative Contact is not available on the device

For users on v10.0.0 the upgrade can be initiated from the 'System Info' page by clicking on the menu item 'Upgrade'.

All users can obtain the client by navigating to http://mobile.salesforce.com/setup from your device browser.

Salesforce Mobile for iPhone Is Released

2008-07-11T13:26:00.006-05:00

Salesforce Mobile for the iPhone (and iPod touch) are here! Salesforce Mobile for iPhone is based on the same architecture of the other Salesforce Mobile clients. Below lists a few highlights of the most common functionalities:

Online and Offline Access to Records - Salesforce Mobile stores data locally on the device for fast access! Information is refreshed every time connectivity is available.
Support for Native and Custom Objects and Fields - Users have access to Accounts, Contacts and all the native objects, as well as to any Custom Objects and Fields that are available on the web application.

Search - The Search functionality allows mobile users easy access also to data not currently available on the device.
Integration with phone, email and browser - Any phone number, URL, mail and email address can be clicked to launch the proper application (phone, browser, email client).

Note you will need the iPhone Operating System v2.0. This is a free upgrade for older iPhones, while the new iPhones 3G already have that version. A small fee will be charged by Apple for upgrading iPod touch devices.

Salesforce Mobile iPhone Home Page: Salesforce Mobile iPhone Home Page

Salesforce Mobile iPhone Documentation: Salesforce Mobile iPhone Documentation

The Near Term Future State of CRM

2008-07-11T08:24:00.011-05:00

AMR Research released a report ('The Customer Management Market Sizing Report, 2007-2012') speaking to the near term future state of the CRM marketspace. The following lists four primary concepts I came away with upon my review of the documentation surrounding this report:

1) CONTINUED SHIFT TO SAAS PLATFORM

The analysts predict that within the next four years SaaS "will continue to dramatically outpace the perpetual license software market by double digit margins". The AMR Research survey data supports "a universal preference" for the subscription software model in customer management, regardless of company size.

2) CRM VIABILITY IN A TOUGH ECONOMY

While the AMR analysts concede that funding for customer-enhancing systems can be tight in a down economy, smart organizations will continue to invest in CRM systems because of the wealth of insights such systems can provide.

"An almost universal trend around customer-centricity and customer experience management will fuel continued customer management investments regardless of economic conditions," write the AMR analysts. Those organizations that "streamlined operational and supply chain efficiencies through the last economic downturn, leaving the customer experience as the most important potential competitive weapon," will drive even more investment in CRM systems.

3) SOFTWARE IS NOT THE SOLUTION

A disturbing trend that the AMR analysts note is that "CRM failure rates remain high". "Although vendors are improving user interfaces and technologies to combat this problem, it only puts a bandage on the situation."

*Personal note, this is an important item to dwell on. Software alone is not the solution. A combination of ensuring the application addresses the business issue(s) at hand coupled with training and continuous improvement will enable higher adoption and in the end an implementation success.

4) THE PLAYERS

The analysts contend that Microsoft and Salesforce.com will continue to push into larger enterprises and "see success competing directly with SAP and Oracle."

Salesforce.com Mobile BlackBerry Client v10.0

2008-07-03T12:45:00.003-05:00

The Salesforce.com v10.0 mobile client is now available for download. Enhancements included in this release follow:

Support for Person Accounts - Full support for creating and using Person Accounts is now available on BlackBerry!
Support for Contact Roles - Opportunity Contact Roles are now available (as related lists) with default views to find the right contact more quickly.
Log Calls and Emails as Events - With this release, it is possible to log calls and/or emails as events, and not only as tasks.
Log a Call from Call History - A "Log Call to Salesforce" menu item is available on the BlackBerry phone application.
Integration with Web Maps - Accounts, Contacts, and Leads can be mapped with the browser!
JAD Deployment - Deployment made fast! The deployment process has been redesigned and there is now an 'Upgrade' menu item (in the System Info page).

The client can be obtained by navigating to http://mobile.salesforce.com/setup from your device browser.

User Record Locale Setting & STATE Address Fields

2008-06-09T15:32:00.007-05:00

For international implementations be aware that the STATE address fields at both the account (billing and shipping) and contact (mailing and other) levels are not accessible when certain user record locales are applied. Thus, if an international user would need to leverage the native Salesforce.com state address fields ensure that the applied user locale provides the necessary access.

Best Practices Implementing SaaS CRM

2008-06-04T08:59:00.044-05:00

Following is a brief overview of a recently released Forrester report entitled 'Best Practices: The Smart Way To Implement CRM'. The authors William Brand and Peter Marston initially discuss how SaaS CRM is becoming an accepted platform for delivering CRM applications. They state:
“CRM SaaS implementations have moved beyond their previous status as a specialized deployment option and into the mainstream. With more frequent upgrades, faster deployment, lower upfront costs and high acceptance by employee end users, customer demand for CRM SaaS applications shows no signs of slowing down."

They go on to detail that SaaS CRM implementations need to consider multiple factors in order to help ensure success:

1) BUILD THE RIGHT BUSINESS CASE

Fully understand your desire to shift to an SaaS platform. Cost should not be the only factor. Ensure you have a firm grasp on your business needs as well.

In addition, also consider how your SaaS implementation can integrate with your legacy applications. To be effective, a CRM application needs to share and consume data from other systems. "If you are concerned about how easy it is to integrate the solution into your environment, ask for a list of partners that have integration expertise that you can leverage.” advise Brand and Marston.

2) FOLLOW THE RIGHT IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH

"Eventhough one of the advantages of an SaaS CRM implementation is speed you still need to approach the implementation methodically." Brand and Marston state. They go on to say, "(a) successful implementation and integration requires that you follow sound practices...". Those practices include:

Build an implementation team: The team should comprise of: an executive sponsor, a steering committee including a user group representative, a CRM SaaS solutions administrator, and a CRM SaaS vendor developer or consultant.
Define an implementation timeline: Set expectations appropriately with both project team members as well as end users. Set and manage towards task and milestone dates.
Configure the solution for user relevance: Ensure the end result solves the defined business issues.

3) ESTABLISH THE RIGHT SUPPORT STRUCTURE

More often than not an implementation contains custom design and integration supporting unique business needs. Typically, the CRM vendor's support staff provides support for the application's core functionality...not custom system enhancements. In cases where custom enhancements exist ensure to assign responsibility as to who supports what. There are three paths that can be taken when assigning support responsibility:

Vendor Support: If the vendor is to support custom functionality ensure that the vendor's support staff is versed on the customizations.
Internal IT Support: Here too, assuming your IT staff did not develop the custom functionality, ensure that they possess the needed knowledge so as to provide effective support for the customizations.
Consultant Support: Enact a support agreement with the consultancy in the case that a consultant designed and implemented the custom functionality.

All in all, words of wisdom to consider when implementing not only CRM on a SaaS platform but also CRM on an on-premise platform as well.

AppExchange Listing

2008-05-30T10:09:00.004-05:00

RecordLock with Inline Messaging! was officially added to the AppExchange today.

It is a simple app that allows a user to lock any record in Salesforce.com and display an inline message with a custom error.

Here is the link to the AppExchange listing:

RecordLock with Inline Messaging

Here is a link to a quick video overview:

RecordLock with Inline Messaging Demo

Enjoy!

Update inline s-control height dynamically

2008-05-07T10:07:00.001-05:00

Salesforce.com recently released the functionality allowing us to place s-controls directly on page layouts just like any other standard or custom fields.

Having the ability to embed s-controls on a page layout allows us to add some pretty cool functionality to the standard page layouts (Charts, graphs, images, behind the scenes business logic, etc). Something that was severely lacking previously.

Part of the process of adding the s-control to the page layout is defining the height of that s-control. Which is really the height setting of the Iframe that the s-control is loaded into. If you do not specify a height then it is defaulted to 200px.

But what if your s-control should be different height based on different factors? Lets refer back to our previous post "Use Google charts to add visual elements to Salesforce.com data". In this post we showed how you could roll up unit sales information from a related list into a Google Chart and then display that in an inline s-control at the top of a page layout which is 150px high.

This is great if the account has unit sales, but what if there is no unit sales for that account? Then the charts would just be blank.

To save real-estate we can dynamically set the s-control height from within and if there is no unit sales to display then shrink the height to 25px and display a simple message.

"There are no Unit Sales for this account to display"

So how do you dynamically control an s-control's height from within? It is actually very simple. To completely understand lets walk through how the s-control is rendered on the page. As I stated earlier when the s-control is loaded it is actually pulled into an Iframe on the page. The name and id tag of this Iframe are the s-control's Id.

So all we have to do is adjust the Iframe's height based on weather unit sales are present. Below is the sample code to accomplish this. This code assumes that the "unitSales" variable has already been determined.

if(unitSales = 0) {

var hgt = 25;

/// Display no Unit Sales message

} else {

var hgt = 150;

// Display graphs

}

/// Get the current Iframe and store in an object
var sframe=top.document.getElementById(window.name);

// Set the height to the passed value.
sframe.style.height= hgt + "px";

Using the last lines of this code you can dynamically adjust the height of any inline s-control you display on your page.

API Query Request Time Limit: ERROR

2008-05-05T13:44:00.009-05:00

Note that SFDC sets a default time limit for API queries to execute/run. In some instances, if a processes is running against a large data set it could evoke a situation where it exceeds the default API query request time allotment. If this happens your process may return an error to the effect of:

'Error 5124: Your query request was running for too long'

If you do receive such an error submit a case to SFDC stating:

SUBJECT: "Error: your query request was running for too long"
BODY: The code that was running when the error occurred

SFDC support has the ability to increase the default time limit for API queries to execute/run. This increase should provide your process the needed time to execute successfully.

Summer '08 New Features

2008-05-05T09:48:00.009-05:00

The Summer '08 release is here! We thought we would provide you with a sampling of some of the system enhancements:

Many to many object relationships

Cross object formula fields

List view enhancements (ex. in-line editing)

History tracking at the opportunity level

Lookup enhancements (ex. filtered lookups)

Customizable User Object

Please follow the link for a complete listing of the Summer '08 system enhancements: Summer 08 Release Notes

Use Google charts to add visual elements to Salesforce.com data

2008-04-28T14:43:00.002-05:00

As a visual learner I am always looking for different ways to represent data that is more appealing to the eye and easier for types like me to understand. The dashboards in Salesforce.com are a great way to visualize data unfortunately they can only be displayed in limited locations within Salesforce.com.

This is where Google enters the picture with a free API that accepts any data set and returns a chart that you can embed in any webpage. It allows you to create multiple chart types (Line, Pie, Bar, Bubble, etc) as well as world and local maps. Lets walk through a scenario in which we can "mash-up" Salesforce.com and the Google Charts API.

First we will start with something that takes place in over half of our Salesforce.com implementations. A company wants to integrate with a back end system and pull in monthly sales data to display at the account level. The sales data is generally imported into a related list and buried somewhere at the bottom of the page like this:

Not very pretty and easily missed by most users. With Google charts you can take that sales data and mash it up with a cool looking chart and get something that looks like this:

...or this...

Once you have your chart parameters defined you can create an s-control in Salesforce.com that queries the UnitSales__c object and feeds the account specific data elements to the Google chart. Then finally you can insert that s-control as an inline s-control on your account page layout. Turning the boring data from a related list into a visual element that is sure to catch any salesperson's attention (especially if sales are going down).

Create a dynamic picklist in Salesforce.com in an s-control using JavaScript

2008-04-25T14:59:00.004-05:00

A common task that I am asked to complete is to create an s-control that allows a user to input/edit data that will be stored back to the database. This ends up essentially being an html form that reflects the data elements in Salesforce. Below is the code that I use to render pick list fields dynamically in my forms.

In this example we will dynamically replicate the “Type” picklist field from the Account object in an s-control. This example assumes that you have an s-control and a web tab in Salesforce pointing to this s-control. We will also assume that you want to generate this picklist on the Body OnLoad event. These functions could be reworked to run at any point in your scripts.

Click here to download the JavaScript source code for this example

First: Create the div tag that will hold the picklist. In our example we use the name of the field as the Name and Id of the div tag. This Div tag should reside in the body of your HTML doc.

Next: Add the “addTypePicklist()” to your Body OnLoad event.

<body onload="addTypePicklist()" >
<div id="typeField" name="typeField"></div>
</body>

Next: Add the “addTypePicklist()”, "createPicklist()" and "getPicklistValues()" functions to your JavaScript in your header:

The addTypePicklist() function has four steps that we will walk through that reference the other two functions.

Step 1: The first step is to do a Describe Object on the object where the field is. In our example the Type field is on the Account object. The Describe Object call will give us a list of all fields and their attributes that are on that object.
Step 2: The second step is to pass the results of the describe object and the name of the field to the "getPicklistValues(nameOfField, describeObjectResults)" function. The field name passed is that name of the picklist value that you want to dynamically recreate. This function will return an array of all the picklist values available for that field. This is the "picklistVal" array in our example.
Step 3: Pass this array and what you want the Id of the picklist to be to the "createPicklist(arrayOfValues, idOfNewField)" function. This function will return the complete HTML for the picklist. This is the "pickHTML" variable in our example.
Step 4: Pass the results of the previous function to the innerHTML of the div that we created in the beginning.

That's it! You will have a dynamically created picklist in your form.

Salesforce Mobile for Windows Mobile v9.1 now available

2008-04-17T22:47:00.005-05:00

Salesforce Mobile for Windows Mobile v9.1 has been released. Two items of note with this release are:

Support for Moto Q9
Support for Person Accounts

Please follow the link to the article: Support for Windows Mobile 9.1

Salesforce.com for Google Apps

2008-04-16T10:51:00.002-05:00

Google Apps is now integrated with Salesforce.com. With this release Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs can be seamlessly leveraged within Salesforce.com.

Please follow the link to view the complete article: Salesforce integration with Google Apps

Spring '08 New Features

2008-04-11T15:57:00.003-05:00

The Spring '08 upgrade is now live. The following is a compilation of new features that we believe could provide immediate impact:

Drag & Drop Calendaring: Details

Dashboard Refresh Scheduling / Email: Details

Outer Joins Reporting: Details

Opportunity Rollups at Account Level: Details

Follow the link for the complete list of the Spring '08 features: Spring '08 Features

Reporting With Special Date Variables

2008-04-10T12:55:00.002-05:00

When creating filters in reports and list views, customize your own special value for dates by entering "NEXT DAYS" or "LAST DAYS" and inserting the number of days. For example, use "NEXT 7 DAYS" to include each day in the following week. Insert any number greater than zero without commas.

Examples of special date variables:

Yesterday
Today
Tomorrow
Last Week
This Week
Next Week
Last Month
This Month
Next Month
Last 90 Days
Next 90 Days

Example filtering on a date range:

Filter 1: Date = Last 60 Days
Filter 2: Date <> 30 Days

Result returns dates 31 to 60 days ago.

Salesforce.com Mobile iPhone Development Kit

2008-04-09T21:57:00.002-05:00

Salesforce.com announces iPhone SDK.

Please follow link for further details: iPhone SDK

Salesforce.com Mobile BlackBerry Client v9.0.2

2008-04-08T15:42:00.002-05:00

A new Salesforce.com Mobile BlackBerry client (v9.0.2) is availalbe. Fixes available in this build include:

Custom Views for Events - Sorting and filtering on the custom views for events (created either in the Mobile Administration Console or on the Client) did not work.
Task Preferences Screen – An error ("Null Pointer Exception") was shown when opening the preferences screen for tasks when events were not mobilized.
Lookup Fields – Lookup fields could not be cleared when editing a record. If the field was previously populated, the user couldn't delete the entry in that field.
Picklist Values – When working with a record type and multiple picklists, the application didn't correctly handle picklist values removed through the Salesforce website.
Removing Objects from Mobile Configurations – An error ("Null Pointer Exception") was shown when removing objects from mobile configurations.
Recent Items List on the Home Page – When an object was removed from a mobile configuration, any recent items on the home page with that object type were not deleted; instead, the relative rows were blank.

Please follow the link for the complete article: BlackBerry Mobile Client v9.0.2