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.

It’s almost like peanut butter and jelly; two things that taste great alone, but taste even better together. The announcement today of Salesforce for Google Apps is an exciting one for multiple reasons. Google and Salesforce are two of my favorite companies with some of my absolute favorite applications. The combination of them is a powerful offering. What we’ll now need to watch and see is how the rest of the world, the “not as geeky as me” crowd embraces this alliance.

Two great videos will explain this alliance. (Both are well produced and impressive in their own ways)

Now the main question I have is, “Will companies adopt this offering?” With the wide range of size of companies using Salesforce, it’s a natural fit for those who are smaller and already using Google Apps. The tie is natural and probably one that they’ve wanted for some time. How about the mid-size to large company though? Will Gmail replace the use of Exchange or Lotus Notes? That’s a harder one to picture happening, but maybe there has to be a shift in process to blend them somehow.

On the document front, I can guess that you may see quicker adoption when you start looking at the value of collaborative docs, spreadsheets, and presentations rather than email attachment nightmares like we all deal with today. Since Google offers significant amounts of storage space, it kind of alleviates the Salesforce document storage caps as well.

Probably the most exciting thing in this offering for me is the integration of Google Talk. I already use Google Talk to communicate with our Salesforce program team. Now that I can communicate with them from within Salesforce, which is that much better. One of the desires I’ve had for a long time is to have Salesforce deal with presence management or “who’s online now?” With the integration of Google Talk, you can better collaborate on the work you’re already doing in Salesforce and get quick answers to move deals along.

To find out more info about Salesforce for Google Apps, visit the product home page. You can also participate in the Live Webinar today at 12 PM PDT. If you’re a developer, check out the Developer Documentation.