CRM FYI

Get ready for a great show Monday night, November 3 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Journey will be taking the stage at this year’s Global Gala, for a great time of food, drink, and rock & roll.

If you needed another reason to go to Dreamforce 08, add joining 10,000 other people for a private concert with Journey to the list. It should be great.

Catch part of their show earlier this year below.

Journey with Arnel Pineda at Chile – Open Arms

Kudos to Aaron for posting this Idea.

When you create a dashboard component from a Summary Report, you often times want to see not only the parts which made up that report, but you’d like to see a grand total tool.

While it was noted that you can create another dashboard component and put it directly beneath your first component to list the grand total, it would be great to not have to waste another component for it, let alone make changes to two reports when you need to tweak it.

Drop by the IdeaExchange and read more about this Idea, leave your own comments, or vote it up!

Since its introduction in 2006, the Salesforce IdeaExchange has been a powerful source of customer involvement in improving Salesforce.com. Part of the success of the IdeaExchange has been opening the mic and letting every person have their say. Another part of that success though is the involvement Salesforce has mandated on their Product Management teams to be on the IdeaExchange and knowing what people want from each of their products.

One thing I’ve struggled with though is getting my favorite Ideas to the top. I want to spread the word and get enough votes around features I’d really like to see. That’s why I’m introducing a new feature on CRMFYI to highlight great Ideas from the IdeaExchange, some old, some new. I want to help you find some great Ideas that could benefit us all and bump them up in popularity.

Watch for Ideas and participate in the community. Seriously, not that many companies you work with really want to know what you think. But here, you not only have a voice, you’re part of building the next generation of Salesforce.com apps and platform.

If you’ve got an Idea you’d like to see promoted, please send me a link at jeff<at>crmfyi<dot>com.

How do you communicate with your Salesforce Users?  Email, newsletters, a “News” section within the Salesforce sidebar or Home Page?  Each can have it’s appropriate time and place, but how do you manage it all?  You want to target your message to the right teams, at the right time.  Especially when it comes to a change in process or functionality within Salesforce, you want to provide a way they can see that message easily, without having to dig too deep.  About four months ago, I bought an app off the AppExchange that has revolutionized how I communicate with my hundreds of Salesforce users.  It was extremely inexpensive and has more than paid for itself already. Here’s the lowdown on Home Tab Messaging, by Interactive Ties.

Home Tab Messaging is a set of s-controls that deliver a home page component that will house all your messages to users.  Where the power comes in is in how you can make those messages appear and to whom.  You can define an effective date and end date for your messages.  No more making a note for yourself to remember to publish a message when it’s time.  Your message will be shown exactly when you need it.  You can design your message from simple text or make it rich with HTML. You can give your users the power to delete the message from their screen, but they can always get back to the ones they’ve deleted by viewing them from the Deleted dropdown.  Finally, you can target your message to exactly who you want by adjusting the visibility of messages based on Salesforce Profiles.   Here’s how it works.

You can setup any user to be a message author with a quick checkbox on their User account.   As an author can manager all your messages in a single list.  You can then create a new message and either type away or write HTML and paste it in.  Choose the date you want the message to appear and when you want it to disappear.  Choose which profiles from the list need to see the message, and it will only be shown to those you wanted.  You can even see an Opt-Out list of users who chose to delete your message.   From a user’s side of things, deleting a message only keeps it from showing on their homepage message box.  They can easily view a deleted message again by just switching their message view from Active to Deleted.

While some people might look at this tool and just write it themselves using s-controls or Apex, the one time price-point of $500, makes it a really compelling buy.  A quick walk through the Google Checkout will get this app running for you in Salesforce in almost no time at all.  To be honest, it was almost instant ROI for me because I no longer had to write emails and figure out who needed to be included when I sent it.  The messages are shown on time and when they’re needed.  I put the Message box right at the top of the right column on the Homepage and people notice it.  They can browse the headlines and click into any message for all the details they need.  Check out the video walkthrough or try a quick demo as a user or as an admin right now.

When you travel, why is it that in spite of the fact that you want your money back quickly, submitting your expense report is not the top activity on your mind? So far, for most of us, it’s because we’ve been stuck in a tedious processes of gathering receipts, taping them to paper, inputting data on either a spreadsheet or online app, then either dropping them in an envelope to Accounting. We put off submitting that expense report because it’s not fun and we have more valuable things to do with our time.  Model Metrics just changed the expense reporting game for us though. Weary travelers, get ready for the first and only expense report app you’ll likely ever enjoy. Get ready for Expense2GO.

Starting today in the Apple App Store on iTunes (v 7.7), you can download Expense2GO, the first native iPhone expense reporting app that lets you enter expenses on the go, online or offline and sync them securely to an expense management system in Salesforce.com with full workflow capabilities.

Model Metrics has built Expense2GO from the ground up on the iPhone platform.  They utilized the iPhone camera as a part of the app and integrated the whole process back to Salesforce.com and the workflow and approvals available from the Force.com platform.  From your iPhone, you can incur an expense and literally moments later, it could be approved by your boss and you’re on to more productive work.  At initial launch, the online interface for expenses will be a non-Visualforce application, but later this summer, the full Visualforce user interface will be released.

Part of the game-changing nature of Expense2GO is how you enter your expenses. As you get a receipt, take a quick picture of it with the built-in iPhone camera. Attach it to a visit or trip, put in a note or two and hit the sync button. It’s really that simple. But to say it’s that simple really doesn’t live up to the headline I gave it above, saying that expense reporting is sexy. To understand why I say that, you really have to see the video demo and the screenshots below.  It’s really quite elegant.

The benefits of Expense2GO seem huge.

• Instantly digitize receipts
• Online and offline data entry allows you to report an expense literally anywhere
• Interface utilizes iPhone multi-touch to make data entry extremely easy
• Security is built-in and enterprise class
• Workflow is built-in, customizable, and approvals can be done through the iPhone
• Integration through web services allows deep ties to be built to your back office
• Entering an expense report is fun for the first time

The cost of Expense2GO is $10 per month, per user, regardless of whether you use Salesforce.com already or not.  Salesforce.com CRM licensing is not required.

I heard someone once say that Apple makes the sexiest looking rectangles in the world and it’s true.  Apple makes some of the simplest, yet most elegant designs in their products.  The iPhone demonstrates that and now there’s a way to leverage that elegance in a business process that nobody liked, until now.  Model Metrics is pushing the envelope with the interfaces they’ve built to Salesforce.  Along with the iPhone 3G enhancements that are breaking down barriers to corporate acceptance of the iPhone, Model Metrics is showing us that the iPhone is not just a good looking device, it can really be leveraged to solve a big problem for travelers.

To download Expense2GO, you’ll need iTunes 7.7.  Then head to the iTunes Store and search Expense2GO.  While you can download the app today, you won’t be able to run it on the iPhone or iPod Touch until the iPhone 2.0 sofware update is released on July 11.

As Dreamforce 08 approaches, so does choosing a band for the Monday night Global Gala. Salesforce has asked a group of customers for their opinions on the entertainment choices. Though I’m sworn to secrecy as to who they’re thinking of, I’d like to open up a survey to you and see who you’d like to perform this year.

Last year they had INXS who put on a pretty good show. This year, who will it be? Maybe it’s just who you want. I can tell you it won’t be my first choice. I voted for the real U2 instead of just the CD at the opening Salesforce events. The CD is good, but I wanted the real thing.

Please take one quick second to nominate your favorite entertainment choice on my one question survey. I’ll pass the results along to the Dreamforce team and you’ll know that your voice will be heard.

Count on Salesforce to use their own tools to the n’th degree. They’ve launched a new Ideas portal that’s designed specifically for making Dreamforce sessions exactly what you want to learn about. They call it Help Create The Conference. It’s a new way they’re using their Ideas product for the conference and I think it’s a great idea.

Be sure to add the sessions you want and vote on those you feel passionate about. One thing to remember is that since you can’t possibly go to all 250 of the sessions, you’ll still be able to benefit from them after the conference. Almost every one of them is published afterwords on Google Video and Successforce.

The Dreamforce 08 portal has been opened for registration.  The conference is later than usual this year as they’re having it November 2–5.  It’s in beautiful San Francisco and without a doubt, you need to go.

I’ll be writing more later about reasons you should go, but check out the portal and get yourself registered today.  Take advantage of the $200 off early bird registration discount by registering before September 5, and be sure to check out discounted group rates as well.

Just one note on cool stuff they’re adding this year.  Remember the Developer Lounge they had last year?  It was a nice place to relax and connect with developer gurus from Salesforce and the community at-large.  Well, Salesforce heard that many other attendees had “lounge envy” and this year, there are adding lounges for admin heroes, sales experts, marketing gurus, and more.  NICE!

Get yourself registered and I’ll see you there!