Make your Salesforce Project More Successful by Inviting a BA to the Party (Or Thinking Like One)

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Jeff Grosse in Guest Bloggers | 13 Comments

Today I welcome my good friend, Garry Polmateer as a guest blogger at CRMFYI. Garry is not only a Salesforce community rockstar, but he’s planned and executed some great Salesforce implementations, especially in the nonprofit arena. It’s always great to learn from the successes of others and I know you’ll pick up something from his ideas here.

Stop. Drop. Roll. You remember the drill from elementary school, if you happen to find yourself on fire, Stop. Drop. Roll. Now don’t get me wrong, Salesforce.com is an amazing, fast, and nimble platform to make things happen for your business, but with great power comes great responsibility. As the system administrator, sometimes your answer is “yes”, sometimes it is “no”, and sometimes (and often) it should be “Let’s think about what you’re really asking first”

I propose the following maxim: Stop. Think. Do. It’s easy to say “Sure, I can do that”, and then wire new functionality into your system, but did you stop and think about all of the ramifications, dependencies, maintenance, training, and things that can go wrong with your proposed solution?

Let’s put our Business Analyst (BA) hats on and dissect, the simple act of making coffee. Before you proceed any further, take a minute and write down how to make a cup of coffee with your favorite coffee machine. It probably goes something like this:

Fill the carafe with water, dump it in the machine, put in a new filter, add 3 scoops, push the red button, wait, pour, flavor to taste.

These are great instructions if you’re telling someone how to do something and they are familiar with making coffee. What you are not doing is building a process so that someone who does not even know what coffee is can understand it. You are making gross assumptions about the abilities of the user and all systems involved. Any breakage in these systems will cause a total failure because the weaknesses have not been identified, nor have contingency plans.

Here’s a few questions I’d ask regarding the coffee making process:

What kind of water are we starting with? (Tap Water, Filtered Water, Distilled Water)
What is the ambient temperature of the water?
What type of machine are we using?
Are we using bleached, unbleached, or screen filters?
What variety of coffee do we use?
Are we using whole bean or pre-ground coffee?
How much is a “Scoop?” Is it rounded or flat?
How long do we have to wait until the coffee is done?
What are we pouring the coffee into?
What substances, and in what quantities are we using to flavor the coffee?
How much do you stir the coffee when you put the flavorings in it?
What type of vessel do you use to hold the finished coffee?

And these are just unknowns about the materials and process when things are working properly! What about when things are not working properly, then what happens?

What happens if you turn on the faucet and no water comes out?
What if the water is contaminated?
What if you have no electricity in the house?
What if the coffee is expired?
What if you have whole bean coffee and your grinder is broken?
What if you have no filters left?
What if you drop the Carafe!

Making a cup of coffee is pretty forgiving, generally the process works. Sometimes it tastes good, and sometimes it tastes bad, but you still usually wind up with something resembling coffee. However, in Salesforce, or any IT project, when something “Tastes Bad”, it generally does not work at all. Instead of being in a gray zone, we’re stuck with zeroes and ones. If any step of the process is short of perfect, it will break the entire process.

So let’s try to make sense of the coffee making process from a simple Business Analyst tool called a Use Case. In short, a Use Case is a software modeling tool that creates a path of an interaction between system components with a useful outcome. Click Here to read the full wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case

A short overview of some simple use case terms:

Title: What is this use case called
Primary Actors: Who or what is involved
Level: What level is this use case directed to (Business process, user level, system level)
Main Success Scenario (MSS): Defines the path of optimal success
Extensions: What could go wrong, and how to address the issue

With this in mind, I’ll share one lightweight example of the coffee making process at a user level:

UC0 - Make the Perfect Cup of Coffee
Primary Actors: User, Coffee Machine
Level: User
Main Success Scenario:

User completes the following tasks:
1. Fill Carafe with Water
2. Get 3 scoops of Coffee
3. Replace Filter in Coffee Machine
4. Press Brew Button
Coffee Machine Brews Coffee
User completes the following tasks
1. Remove carafe from machine
2. Fill Coffee Vessel
3. Flavor and Agitate Coffee
Coffee Machine Warms Remaining Coffee

Extensions
1.1a. No water in tap
1. User sources bottled water and fills carafe with bottled water
1.1b. Contaminated water
1. User sources bottled water and fills carafe with bottled water
4a. User presses brew button but nothing happens
1. User checks electrical supply to coffee machine
2. User inspects coffee machine settings to assure everything is set to operate
etc. etc..

One note – bold text indicates a reference to another use case. So, filling the carafe with water could be its own use case with multiple sub steps, each sub step having its own set of extensions.

What is the advantage of documenting requirements in this format?

During my consulting practice, using this format of noting requirements has a few major advantages:

It is relatively fast (or should be). We usually collaborate through a first draft use case in 15-30 minutes. If it takes longer you’re reading too deeply into things.
It forces you to consider the interaction between the systems. Each use case step is one party adding to the dialogue and identify missing steps. In a development effort, a missing step could bring an entire project to its knees, blow budgets and time-frames and ultimately make a project fail.
It forces you to consider failure. No system is bulletproof. Each step always has an opportunity for a failure. These should be considered and reviewed. If an extension has a very complicated success scenario, you know that effort will be needed to mitigate the risk of this interaction.
Use cases are easily read by most developers. They are a great medium for communicating with other parties
Use cases work great as the beginnings of documentation and training materials. Hey, you’ve already outlined your business process and system interactions! Now just blow them out a little bit and add some screenshots of the finished product and you have instructions complete with failure scenarios!

A few final tips for use case writing and resources

The best use case is the one that actually gets read. With this in mind, don’t get too caught up in the form. Do whatever possible to keep it simple and yet still have enough detail to communicate the requirements effectively. This balance is often contingent on your team and their experience working with each other. If you’re outsourcing a large development project to people unfamiliar with your business, much more explicit detail may be required. If it’s for an internal project, you may be fine with a lightweight version.
Use cases are always a dialogue. Each major step should be by a different Actor. If a use case step 1-6 is all user input, it is a one sided conversation not a dialogue. Combine 1-6 into one step, or add sub steps like above. The first word(s) of each step should be a reference to the actor.
Keep it short. If a use case is more than 10-15 steps or contains multiple sub steps, it’s probably too broad. Break it up into smaller use cases.
Steps should not contain the word “IF”. Use extensions instead to identify each condition and possible sub use cases. Using IF complicates the dialogue. Remember the Main Success Scenario is your optimal path where everything goes perfect. Therefore, any IFs should be considered extensions off of the optimal path
Some extensions can be implied. If you’re using a computer, theoretically every step could have an extension “Computer loses power”. While it is worth addressing these global concerns, if they are being repeated over and over it may be overkill and does not help communicate the process.
If anyone is seriously interested in this topic, I can’t recommend this book highly enough – Writing Effective Use Cases by Alastair Cockburn. http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Effective-Cases-Alistair-Cockburn/dp/0201702258

Thanks everyone for reading, would love to hear if you have ever written documentation with Use Cases and what your results were, and if you have any tips or resources to add to the above.

-Garry

Garry Polmateer, CAE
Solutions Consultant
Certified Salesforce Administrator & Consultant
NimbleUser
Follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/DarthGarry

Chatter-vantage #1 – No Need to Rush the Stage

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Chatter, Dreamforce | 6 Comments

This is the first in a series of brief posts to highlight the advantages Chatter is bringing to the Dreamforce 10 conference. In summer 2010, Salesforce.com opened up an attendee portal for their Dreamforce event to connect customers to each other as well as Salesforce employees and partners.

Chatter-vantage #1 – No Need to Rush the Stage

When you attend a session, you’ll often find yourself wanting to ask additional questions of the speaker or want to exchange contact information with them so you can connect after the conference. What typically happens is that you stand in line to talk to that person, you’re watching the clock to ensure you get to the next session on time, and then when you finally get to them, they’ve run out of business cards. You may never connect with them again.

With Chatter in the Dreamforce attendee portal, you can connect to speakers before, during, and after the conference. Ask questions ahead of time to help speakers tailor their content to what the audience wants. Introduce yourself to them ahead of time or even send them a thank you after the session.

No matter what, you’ve got an advantage no other conference you’ve ever attended has had. Chatter makes the conference experience better and more meaningful because you can readily connect with speakers and get to your next session without worry.

I Need You; to Join The Salesforce Channel Community

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in News | 6 Comments

If you follow me on Twitter, it’s hard to miss my regular status updates like, “21 videos were posted to The Salesforce Channel today,” but what’s that all about? The Salesforce Channel is a website where I curate Salesforce videos from all over the Internet into one place so you don’t have to do the searching. My motto is, “Your single source for Salesforce video.”

I found that while many videos about Salesforce.com exist in large repositories like YouTube, searching for Salesforce-specific videos can be rather daunting and downright difficult. You may find a user or playlist with some videos you like, but how do you look for more? Salesforce embeds many of their videos into sites like their main site and the Community site, yet, there wasn’t a great place for user generated content from administrators, developers, or AppExchange partners anywhere I looked.

The Salesforce Channel is now that one place to find it all. There I collect Salesforce related videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, eHow, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Howcast and many more sites. I tag them with full names, companies, topics, features and more. I organize them into playlists and groups as well as publish more than a dozen different RSS feeds to help you stay on top of what’s current. (For example, the RSS feed and playlist of 100 videos in Japanese)

The Salesforce Channel, by the numbers

Videos available in September 2009 – 1,200
Videos available in May 2010 – 2,731
Videos “in queue,” yet to be published – 439
Playlists available – 71
Unique tags on videos – 5,907
Videos viewed in April 2010 – 4,485

As you can see, The Salesforce Channel has grown tremendously in the last 8 months and that’s why I need you. Come join The Salesforce Channel Community and take on the role of either a Reviewer or Editor.

A Reviewer watches videos, puts a rating on the best ones and puts comments or reviews on individual videos to add value to the rest of the community. They can also create playlists to further organize videos and even group their favorites.

An Editor helps search for videos, tags them, reviews them, and finally publishes them. As you can tell from the huge addition of videos in the past 8 months as well as the number of videos I have “on deck” waiting to be published, this is where I could really use the help. I’ll provide you with a wiki and help on how to do it all. Joining me this way and helping publish more videos, make them easier to search, better organized, and contributing to the overall Salesforce.com global community would be a fantastic way I’d like to get you involved.

It’s easy to get started

There’s a lot of video to watch; a lot to curate; and a lot of information, knowledge and education contained in this one site. Please help spread the word about “Your single source for Salesforce video.”

If you come across more videos about Salesforce that you’d like to add, you can submit them one of two ways. Use the Submit page to link to your video or drop the bookmarklet on your browser and simply click it when you’re viewing a video you’d like to add to The Salesforce Channel.

If you’re a developer and have some great ideas on ways to use video from The Salesforce Channel in creative ways, there’s also an API available that we can discuss the possibilities of utilizing. I’d like to brainstorm with you about possible ways to extend the reach and value of these videos. Just email me at jeff<at>crmfyi<dot>com to check it out.

Calling All Heroes! You Belong at Dreamforce

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Dreamforce, Ideas | 3 Comments

Earlier this year, I wrote about being a hero to your users, and the gist of it was that through social media, you can surround yourself with fantastic people who will make you a hero to your users. I know for a fact that many of you have done extremely heroic things for your Salesforce users and have something that you should share with the rest of us.

The time has come for you to step up and share that spark of brilliance with the global community through the venue of Dreamforce. Right now is your chance to offer up your expertise through a presentation at the next Dreamforce event in December.

To gather all these ideas in one place, the Dreamforce Ideas site is now open. It’s not hard to browse current papers and submit your own. People will appreciate that you shared what you’ve done. The time is now to step up and submit what you’ve got to share. Papers are being accepted through May 31. As a bonus, if you are chosen to present, conference registration for you, is free.

Step up and share. People like you are what make the Salesforce Community of users, administrators and developers strong. We want to hear from you.

The Higher Ed Cloud; Studentforce + Chatter = Brilliant

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Chatter, Force.com, Mobile, News | 248 Comments

Today’s guest post is by Ed Schlesinger, better known as @studentforcenow on Twitter. Ed is a father and a businessman who has an incredible vision for the possibilities of cloud computing to help higher education. His brainchild, Studentforce is a unique portal for universities which connects students to faculty and administration to everyone. With the announcement of Chatter, Ed immediately saw the amazing potential that Chatter would have on Studentforce and I want you to hear what he’s poured his heart into. Let it spur you on to think of new and deeper uses for Chatter in your daily work and life.

The Higher Ed Cloud

Salesforce.com and its forward thinking management, employees and partners whose efforts have sparked the revolution that is happening NOW; even as I type this response, should be lauded for its accomplishments. However, while having a ‘great’ idea; one that resonates with all of us and becomes just plain common sense should be celebrated, its the execution on that idea that is the true measure of a game changing technological, financial and sociological success that is the shift that benefits us all. That is the true accomplishment salesforce.com can beat its chest about – execution.

In order to reinforce that momentum and truly democratize the availability and use of powerful enterprise class SaaS, studentforce endeavors to place the platform in the hands of those who truly know how it can be used – students. Delivering on Don Tapscott’s 1998 prognostication “… that the most revolutionary force for change is the students themselves. Give children [students] the tools they need and they will be the single most important source of guidance on how to make the schools relevant and effective” is a tall order made possible by the force.com platform; and, more recently, the introduction of Chatter – a secure medium by which students collaborate with one another; faculty do the same; and, each group shares with one another. Student Chatter + Faculty Chatter creates a dimension of conversation and collaboration never before available.

Recently published studies report that faculty (80%) use social medium; and, a growing number (30%) use collaboration tools, available as a service to communicate with their students incorporated into lesson plans. We already know that students (and others) have already enthusiastically embraced social medium and its growth is accelerating throughout the world. But there still exists a disconnect between faculty, students and staff on campus. As the further ‘commercialization’ (by no means a bad thing) of collaboration platforms evolve it seems to be at the expense of PRIVACY. That will inhibit the execution of a great idea. Ironically, security and privacy must be intact so that collaboration and sharing can occur. Think about it – strange; right?

With Chatter layered within the force.com architecture, we now have a platform that is secure; private where necessary; and, holds the promise of exponentially increasing the transfer of ideas …. so the execution of those ideas can occur. Chatter also ” … brings the data alive” by automating the notification of important events as they occur and delivering them specifically relevant to the tasks they are associated with. And its MOBILE; available on my Blackberry, iPhone, iPad and yeah – future mobile devices.

What better audience is there to take a wonderful idea (SaaS + Collaboration + Mobile); effectively executed for businesses, non profits and individuals than those who have grown up using these tools? And, by giving students ” … the tools they need” a generation of productive, knowledge seeking students will be able to execute on the ideas that have not yet been thought of as they become citizens participating in business, teaching and life long learning.

Studentforce Chatter Use Cases

Here are a few possible use cases for Chatter in the Higher Ed space off the top of my head. There are probably many, many more that I have not thought of or have not yet been even considered until Chatter has been deployed among students, faculty and university admins.

Admissions/student recruiting would be able to identify the ‘right’ fit applicant for the school and engage them through the process. Instead of marketing “TO” the student the school is “ENGAGING” the student applicant through Chatter – all branded with the Universities’ materials
The boarding process for new admitted students can be accomplished through single sign on and documents, workflow, etc. can be accomplished through an appealing interface with drag and drop (think eSignatures, etc.). There would be a significant return on investment once this is implemented including, but not limited to: postage savings, printed materials, labor to print and send documents from varied departments at the university, reduction in duplication of effort, significant reduction of errors
Even if Chatter was limited ONLY to engaging students from time to time in an efficient manner retention will be dramatically increased
Documents, links, events, other information can be shared among user; or, IT designated GROUPS facilitating the transfer of documents, video (‘Lectures On Demand) information securely
Faculty can distribute assignments to students in their classes and students can submit completed assignments securely; same with grades or any other information between secure groups. This is a DRAMATIC increase from Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Blackboard. There is a significant ROI for this application as universities will NO LONGER be captive to expensive maintenance contracts from Client Server based systems. With that said universities that have signed long term contracts with these providers can still improve their users’ experience and increase the return on investment of those systems by front ending them with Studentforce equipped with Chatter
Career services will be able to notify students of specific internship opportunities based upon their interests, major, skills, specific qualifications etc. and students will be able to apply to university partners with drag and drop capabilities. Similarly, companies that hire from Universities through specific programs can have access to the PROFILE available in Chatter through Portal or S2S deployment – again; in a secure manner
Study Abroad processes will be vastly improved whether it be the student application process where numerous documents are required to be exchanged between students, the home school Study Abroad Office, Scholarship Vendors, Student Loan Vendors, and the Study Abroad school’s admissions, registrar and bursar departments
Documents, events, can be shared among students who are Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors; students who share a major; share an association with a specific school (IT, Arts & Sciences, etc.) and the combinations of those. Therefore ALL Juniors in IT; or ALL Seniors in Arts & Sciences.
References and recommendations required by hiring companies or graduate schools can be transferred through Chatter
Financial Aid and other government required documents that require secure transmission (completed tax forms of students that are required by Financial Aid offices; signed Master Agreements for Loans required by banks and government entities, etc.)
Emergency Notification and unified communication across campus

Ed Schlesinger
Studentforce

Chatter Takes a Starring Role with Cloud 2 and the New ChatterExchange

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Chatter, News | 8 Comments

The future of business applications is upon us. It’s a world where your data comes alive, those who log into your applications are people, not just users, your team’s past work is leveraged into future solutions and even proactively fed to those who need it, and you truly collaborate with not just your direct coworkers, but people from across the company in a way never before possible. This world is Cloud 2 and it’s not imaginary; it’s the reality that 100+ companies, 3,800+ developers, and Salesforce themselves have been experiencing for the past two months. What makes this future possible is Chatter. It’s the game changer that is quickly becoming the best thing Salesforce has ever developed and will be available to all paid editions of Salesforce sometime this year.

What makes Chatter revolutionary though? Aren’t business apps working just fine the way they are today in small and large organizations alike? Isn’t email collaboration enough? Aren’t portals and knowledge management systems and content repositories and legacy, home-grown apps cutting it? The fundamental ingredient those systems lack is context. On their own, they accomplish something important, but they tend to live in their own disconnected worlds. Though integration appliances and services exist, most companies never get to the point of tying it all together. What those applications lack is connecting people together with their ever-changing data, in the midst of their spreadsheets, documents, and collateral, with one tool as a hub for business. That hub is Cloud 2 and whether you use Customer Relationship Management out-of-the-box from Salesforce or you want to create an application that’s the farthest thing from CRM, Cloud 2 is the platform for it all, and the star of the show is Chatter.

So for the quick purpose of definition, what is Chatter? Chatter is a social layer to business applications that fosters effortless collaboration to get your daily work done. It’s built on a secure, trusted, reliable framework that 72,500+ companies are already using today to run their business. Chatter does not require a server, or software, or even some additional licensing from Salesforce. When it’s ready for release, it will be provisioned immediately to all Salesforce customers for rollout when they’re ready.

A new breed of AppExchange

With the introduction of Cloud 2 comes AppExchange 2 and a new section, the ChatterExchange. Introduced today are 20 Chatter applications built by Salesforce partners like Appirio, Echosign, FinancialForce.com, Genius.com, ServiceMax, and more. These new apps leverage the power of Chatter’s social layer, using profiles, status updates, and real time feeds to extend their apps directly in front of business users, right in the context of their work. Add to that 15+ more Force.com Labs apps created by the developer community and this amounts to a fantastic start to a new realm of business collaboration. Not only will Chatter be utilized with core CRM functionality, but the ChatterExchange will extend it beyond what many of us even imagine today. Check out the screenshots and video below for some idea of these new ChatterExchange apps and watch the live Cloudforce 2 presentation on April 8 for live demos.

The emphasis on service

You may recall that in 2009, Salesforce put a big emphasis on the fastest growing segment of their business, Service and Support. With the release of Service Cloud 2, we saw how companies could now monitor their brand via Twitter within Salesforce, look to the wisdom of crowds with a solution like Answers, and build public and private knowledgebases that bring solutions to consumers where they tend to look first, the Internet.

Today, Salesforce is expanding the private beta of Chatter from 100 to 500 customers, of which 250 use Service Cloud 2. Early indications from the first beta customers have been overwhelmingly positive in regards to not only the ease of Chatter’s use, but also in improving overall communications and collaboration.

So what will Chatter do to push the Service Cloud envelope? Picture this. A service rep is having trouble reproducing a problem reported by their customer. In the past, escalating that case only notified the rep’s manager so they would help assign more resources to the issue. With Chatter, that escalation can automatically add the product manager, a technical lead, two subject matter experts, and the rep’s manager as followers of the case and notify them with what’s going on. They’re given a link directly back into the case and they begin resolving it with full visibility to what’s going on within that case via the Chatter feed. Soon the issue is resolved and instead of a slew of emails being typed and sent manually, outside of the context of that case, now everyone is kept in the loop with Chatter. It’s automated, it’s in context, it involved the right people.

I worked in support for an enterprise software company for nine years and I can only imagine how a tool like Chatter could have cut down on our call times, increased quality answers in our knowledgebase, gotten the right people involved with cases early on, eliminated email runaround, and bottom line, led to happier customers and a more profitable bottom line.

To learn more about Cloud 2, be sure to watch the Cloudforce 2 event live from New York City on April 8, at 10 AM EST. The event is free and will be offered as a recorded session later as well. If you write your thoughts about Cloud 2 on Twitter, be sure to use the hashtag #cloud2.

Appirio PSA with Chatter

Chatterbox by FinancialForce.com

ServiceMax for Chatter

Salesforce Chatter Goes Private Beta for 100 Customers

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Chatter, News | 35 Comments

Amid all the hoopla around Google Buzz, Salesforce is making some buzz themselves in the Enterprise space with the announcement of a Chatter private beta to 100 customers today.

When Salesforce began looking for customers to start kicking the tires on Chatter, the response was overwhelming. More than 2,500 companies enthusiastically volunteered for the beta. From that, 100 were chosen across many industries including financial services, manufacturing, high tech, and professional services.

So what really is Chatter? Well, if you’re one of the 400 million people who have joined Facebook already, you already have a little familiarity with what it’s about. Chatter is streams of information, files, comments, photos, snippets, videos, data, and intelligence, fed to you directly in context of where you already work. Chatter takes the work out of finding this information and instead puts it in front of you, knowing what you need to know about and letting you customize and filter your feeds to be most relevant.

Chatter is the culmination of numerous business functions that we can all benefit from. It’s part content management system, part team report card, part data field history viewer, part chat client, part message board, part workflow notifier, and part get-to-know-the-people-you-work-with social network. It makes data come alive, whether that’s letting you know an important deal just closed, a new product catalog was published, a competitor just had a bad earnings call, your co-worker needs help with their presentation, or one of your customers is late in paying an invoice to you. Chatter brings all that together in one place so you can make better decisions, help others on your team, and easily publish news with just a few clicks

Much of the information you’ll get in Chatter is timely and important, so Salesforce needed to find a way to provide you that information even when you don’t have your browser open with Salesforce. That’s why along with Chatter, they’re introducing a new Chatter client for the desktop that is built on Adobe Air. Much the same way TweetDeck provides you background popups with relevant tweets you decide you want to know about, Chatter will provide you that immediate feedback on your computer, regardless of what application you’re running and what’s in the foreground. Since this Chatter client runs on Adobe Air, it works on both Mac and PC using the same code.

When you’re away from the desktop, you don’t have to miss out on Chatter there either. Chatter will include dedicated iPhone and BlackBerry apps right out of the chute. No more hauling out the laptop to see what your team has been doing to move deals forward. Information is served to you in real time. No waiting for an email that a deal closed, just follow it on Chatter and you’ll know.

Among the biggest benefits of Chatter is the fact that it’s built on a solid, secure infrastructure that you don’t need to worry about. Just know it’s there, it’s secure, it’s scalable, and it’s out of sight. You won’t pay for a server upgrade, you won’t patch a database, you won’t buy a firewall, you won’t add a hard drive, you won’t have to do load balancing, you won’t have to tweak a kernel, you just go about your work and leave the rest to Salesforce. And because Chatter is just an extension of the applications you’ve already setup, all the data security that’s already in place just works, out of the box for Chatter.

It’s almost like Chatter is putting a human side on CRM. Today, we converse in the halls, in meetings, on the phone, and through email, but we don’t exchange more than limited amounts of data about ourselves, the projects we’re working on, the deals we’re closing, or the scoop we learned. We occasionally share information using Salesforce itself, but we rarely see the data come to life. Chatter brings the insights to you. Even the fact that all users of Salesforce will have a profile page which can contain a photo, bio, stream of what they’re doing, the groups they are members of, the documents they update, and the people who they follow tells immensely more than just passing in the hall or during a meeting.

As Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce pointed out back in November, with Facebook, I can know what movie my friends have been gone to, but I don’t have just as easy access to what deals that same person is moving forward in my pipeline. It doesn’t have to be that way. Chatter will offer prescribed and subscribed content to keep you in-the-know about anything in Salesforce.

I can see it now. Chatter streams will eventually become the topic of conversation throughout the halls of companies around the globe. Have you noticed how often Facebook and Twitter are mentioned in the news, television shows, and even in the lunch room? When people begin seeing the value of sharing, collaborating, informing, assisting, building, and broadcasting, in context, it will change the way we work.

The private beta is a great sign of progress and getting Chatter ready for prime-time. Remember, Salesforce unveiled the concept of Chatter only three months ago at Dreamforce 09. It’s anticipated that Chatter will be available for all Salesforce customers during 2010. While it’s an aggressive timeline to go from 100 customers on Chatter to nearly 70,000 by the end of 2010, that go-live will be a pivotal moment in enterprise computing. It will set the standard by which other collaboration tools will be judged. And while it will be a new concept for it’s users, it’s also going to feel like something they already know. There won’t have to be a day-long class to teach users how to use Chatter. It will come quite naturally, and when it does, watch what will happen in companies; as their data comes alive, reps are enabled, managers are informed, and the company hub becomes Salesforce and Chatter.

To learn more about Chatter, attend the live Chatter event today (February 17) at 12 PM PST.

Salesforce Setup; Now Even Easier

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in News | 34 Comments

Staples may have the corner on that “Easy button” thing, but Salesforce now has an “Easy box.” It’s called Setup Enhancer for Salesforce and it’s about to make navigating the Setup tree a whole lot easier.

Setup Enhancer for Salesforce is a Greasemonkey script that helps you find just what you’re looking for in Setup with a minimal number of keystrokes. Looking for Account Validation Rules? Don’t hit all those plus signs out there and scroll down endlessly. Type “val” and you’ll have one list of just validation rules. To learn more, check out the video.

All you need to run Setup Enhancer for Salesforce is

This is the Salesforce administrator’s new best friend. If you try it and like it, please leave a five-star review of it at UserScripts and leave some feedback.