Tools

Evernote – The Salesforce Admin and Developer’s Other Brain

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Jeff Grosse in Productivity, Tips, Tools | 31 Comments

Arguably, if you have a brain, you need Evernote. We’ve all got the one in the cranium that works really well, but truthfully, it tends to fail us in many ways when it comes to recalling the details. That’s why you need an external brain; a place where all the other stuff you work on in life, from Salesforce to sandcastles and formulas to fondue go. That’s Evernote.

Evernote is a web service that securely stores your memories and gives you immediate recall of them from anywhere, and at any time. Capture a picture or audio from your phone, a clipping from your browser, a file from our computer or a an email you receive. Once you capture it, it automatically syncs between your phone, the web, and any computer you want. And search is a snap. Even text in images, documents and handwritten notes are made searchable automatically. Search using words, tags, or even by location. It’s right there anytime you need it.

So how does this help the Salesforce administrator or developer? You’ve got a lot on your plate to work with. Release notes, writing formulas, creating validation rules, outlining workflows and approval processes, taking screenshots, gathering documentation, writing Apex classes, creating SOQL statements, reading blogs, remembering tips from friends on Twitter, the Salesforce Community site or the Force.com Developer forums. Where do you store all those memories?

You could use notepads, printouts, text files, Post-It Notes, cocktail napkins, Google Docs, emails to yourself, shared drives, your arm, stone tablets, file cabinets, CD-ROMs, bookmarks, MS Office documents, the deep-dark corners of your laptop bag or just your cranium. The trouble is, where do you look when the thing you thought was so obvious you’d never forget it isn’t where you thought it would be. Can you find it on your phone, your Mac, your Android tablet, your iPad or your Mom’s PC? If you put it in Evernote, you could, and you’d have just one place to search, anytime, anywhere.

Need to email that thing to your boss, a coworker, your wife or your lawyer? You’re just a couple of clicks away from sending it privately. Need to preview that PDF on your iPhone? You can do it. Need to print a note from your iPad or iPhone? You can do it.

What do I put in Evernote?

Formulas – That crazy formula I made way back when will always be with me, no matter where I work in the future.
Tips I learn from smart bloggers – When I see something I may EVER want to look at again, I read it, clip it, and know it’s there if I ever want to look at it again or share it.
Release notes – I used to have folders where I stored them, but now I put all of them in a notebook in Evernote and they’re completely searchable as well. On top of that, I’ve shared the notebook publicly so anyone who wants to can link my notebook to their Evernote account. It doesn’t take up any of their monthly upload limits and it’s always available to them.
Old versions of files – Just the other day I was discussing an issue with the Apex Data Loader on Twitter and someone asked if I had an older version of the Apex Data Loader that I could share with them. I gathered all the ones I had (versions 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, and 21) and put them into a shared notebook on Evernote so now anyone can grab them when they want.
Press releases – I have a rule setup in Google Apps Gmail that whenever a press release from Salesforce is delivered to my Inbox, it immediately gets forwarded to Evernote so I have a full archive of all press releases at hand.
Writing documents – I can start writing via the web interface at work, continue it on my iPhone, and later finish it on my laptop at home. It’s syncs automatically and effortlessly.
Whiteboards – When we have a meeting that leads to a wall full of diagrams, ideas, flows, tasks, and inspiration, I snap a picture of it with my phone and put it right in Evernote.
Business Cards – As soon as I receive a business card from someone, I take a picture of it, put it in Evernote with some details about the person and I’ve got it forever.
Presentations – When I see a slide I like at a local Salesforce user group meeting from one of my fellow user group members or from a vendor, I take a picture of the slide and throw it in Evernote. Since I used my phone to take the picture, Evernote even knows the location of where I was when I took that picture using the GPS data.
Dreamforce – I start a notebook for Dreamforce that includes all my travel details, information on where my friends are staying in San Francisco, the restaurants I want to try while I’m there, reminders of things I have to do while I’m there, and anything else I could possibly want to know, reference, show my friends, or think about while I’m at Dreamforce.
Offline reading – Individual notes and entire notebooks can be taken offline and stored locally on your phone and iPad to read on the plane, away from the Internet, or on the beach. The desktop version of Evernote is completely available offline so you don’t need the Internet unless you want to sync.

So how does it work? Evernote has a web clipper that works in almost every browser on the planet. It lets you clip a word, picture or even the whole page with just a click. Tag it if you want to. Put a description if you want to, and you’re done. Not only is the part of the webpage you wanted saved in Evernote, the URL of the page you got it from is saved as well so you never have to wonder where you clipped something from. On your phone, take a picture, record some audio, type some text and hit Save. In your email, forward a message to the unique address Evernote assigns you and that email is immediately in Evernote. Drag files from your desktop to the Evernote icon and they’re added. Have a flatbed scanner? Scan in your handwritten notes, agendas, and meeting handouts to have them at hand forever.

How much can I store? If you’re a Free user, you can upload 60 MB per month of whatever you want. If you’re a Premium user, you get to add up to 1 GB per month. Suppose you want to add a bunch of notes in one month, pay $5 to go Premium for that month, add a gig of stuff, then go back to Free. All your stuff is still there for you to access. The other great thing is, your space is cumulative so as compared to some web services that offer you 2 GB of synced storage and that’s it, the possible size of your Evernote storage is constantly growing.

So how do you get started? Creating an account with Evernote is free and always will be. Phil Libin, their CEO is known for saying, “We want you to keep your memories forever in Evernote for Free. If you someday decide you want to pay us a little money once in awhile for using the service, that’s great, but we’re not going to ask you to.”

How does Evernote make money? According to Phil Libin, their business model was built with a goal of 1% conversion to Premium accounts would equal break even financially. What they find though is that the longer people use Evernote, the more likely they are to go Premium and their conversion rates are anywhere from 5% to even more than 12% when people have used Evernote for more than a year.

What about security? Evernote uses SSL encryption for all user authentication and data transfer. Your data is your data. When you use a desktop version of Evernote, your data is stored on that machine and you always have access to it, whether you’re connected to the Internet or not. There are also import and export mechanisms built into Evernote desktop that allow you to move your memories.

Does Evernote have a following? Their user growth has been stunning. I started with Evernote when it was still in beta back in March of 2008. They now have more than 7 million registered users and the number of days between each million is now less than 50.

So what’s stopping you? You’ve got a brain. You use it a lot. Make use of an external brain with Evernote. You’ll be amazed at how much it will transform everything you need to remember. Administration and development on Salesforce will never be the same when you know where to go, to get all the bits and pieces you’ve collected that make you smarter.

To learn more about Evernote, check out their website. To get started, create your account today. If you’re already a user just log in.

When Hit or Miss Research Just Doesn’t Cut It in Business, You Need To Try Gist

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Integration, News, Sales, Social Networking, Tools | 7 Comments

When Shane Mac at Gist approached me for a quick guest blog post on how I use Gist, I jumped at the opportunity. It’s easy to talk about companies and products that make your life better. Today my post hit their blog and you can certainly read more about it here. Just as a bonus feature for Salesforce enthusiasts, I figured I’d give you a couple more insights on why I like Gist.

A one-sentence description of Gist is “Aggregated intelligence of the people I do business and life with, stack-ranked in light of electronic and real-life communication.” Essentially, I look to Gist as my master contact list that knows the phone number and address of the people I know, but more than that, it pulls together what’s happening with them across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, websites and the emails I exchange with them. Gist also searches for news and blog posts about more than just people, but also the companies I track in Gist.

Getting ready for a meeting, I look to Gist to see what people I’m going to meet with have been up to. If I’m meeting someone for the first time, I use Gist to learn about them in one place. That leeds to more meaningful conversation and stronger business relationships. After meetings, I can also take notes for myself about the person or company and even use tags to find similar topics, people or companies in the future.

Finding Gist information is completely easy. I can always go to their website and look up both people and companies as well as view my dashboard of who’s most important to me according to Gist and according to me. Since it’s a website, I can get it from any computer. I’m not locked into one place. I can access the same information through a mobile app for iPhone, iPad or Android. Also available are Gist plugins for Gmail for Google Apps, Outlook or Lotus Notes.

And where else would you like to see Gist? Of course, you need to see it in Salesforce. You can do exactly that with almost no effort. Setup Gist as a Visualforce Component and then you can get the Gist of people and companies right on your Salesforce Account, Contact or Lead page. It’s that simple.

Instead of searching all over the Internet to help me build deeper business relationships, I let Gist bring the search to me. I rely on Gist and it’s proven itself valuable, day in and day out. It’s completely worth trying out. I’m also using Gist as a digital business card (on steroids). Check out the Gist on me.

Gist in 90 Seconds

Gist overview by CEO T.A. McCann from Robert Pease on Vimeo.

The Day the Earth was Chatterized

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Chatter, News, Productivity, Social Networking, Tools | 12 Comments

Can you think of a significant day in the history of software? I’m looking for a day that a single company changed the way millions of people do business and made them more productive. I’m guessing there have been a few; but honestly none of them quickly come to mind. From this point forward though, June 22, 2010 ought to stick in your mind as “The Day the Earth was Chatterized. “

Salesforce Chatter is a collaboration platform for business that’s as intuitive to use as Facebook, more contextual than email, more alive than SharePoint, and runs on a secure, private, and trusted infrastructure already delivering billions of transactions each week.

From the first public mention of the word “Chatter” by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, to the day it went live for 77,300+ customers, only 216 days passed. And in just 125 days, the Chatter private beta went from 100 to more than 5,000 customers. During the beta, more than 100,000 people used Chatter, and polled recently, 90% of them would recommend Chatter to others. Words like “amazing”, “crazy cool”, “fantastic”, and “monstrous win” are how users describe the Chatter experience. That’s impressive for a feature that can be enabled and deployed in under one minute, with just five clicks of the mouse, with nothing to install; no hardware, no software.

The Veil on Salesforce Data Lifted
While Chatter and Salesforce CRM data are both available to everyone with a Salesforce license today, Salesforce revealed a new version of Chatter licensing which helps extend Chatter and even basic Salesforce data to all enterprise employees at a significantly reduced price. This Chatter-only license offers

Profiles
Status Updates
Real Time Feeds
Content and File Sharing
Groups
Ideas
Read Only Access to Accounts and Contacts
Limited Access to the Force.com Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform

Priced at $15 per user, per month, Chatter-only users will be able to utilize corporate data like Accounts and Contacts which have previously been completely off-limits without a full-Salesforce license. Additionally, each Chatter-only user is allocated up to 600 MB of storage space for Chatter content sharing while Enterprise and Unlimited Edition users get a storage bump from 500 MB per user to 1 GB. Professional Edition users get 600 MB of content storage.

Not that long ago, a single add-on license for Salesforce Content was $35 per user per month. Now all Salesforce users get Content included in their licensing and Chatter-only users get tremendously more than just Content was, and at less than half that original price.

While Chatter, file, and content collaboration is a great reason to get these new Chatter-only licenses, I can imagine a fair number of them will also be sold for the sheer fact that it allows read-only access to to Accounts and Contacts, some of the key data in any company.

Additionally, organizations will be able to share one custom application from the Force.com platform with their Chatter-only users.

As if adding Chatter to every Salesforce org wasn’t exciting enough, Salesforce also revealed that there are 30 new ChatterExchange apps available today to bring the Chatter add-on ecosystem to 60 apps. While every one of 160,000 customer designed apps are also Chatterized, these new ChatterExchange apps extend the usefulness of Chatter beyond what even Salesforce imagined. The thing I really like about the ChatterExchange is that this ecosystem is only beginning. Developer preview only began 99 days ago and already we see apps to Chatter when conference room lights are turned on, save and rate Chatter, auto-refresh group and individual status updates, bring in outside collaborators through Google Wave, map out where service reps are and reassign them on-the-fly, Chatter analytics and tons more. Considering Dreamforce 10 is still 23 weeks away, we’re going to see some fantastic new Chatter add-ons before the big show.

For information on getting started with Chatter, visit the new Getting Started page at Salesforce. There you’ll find easy to use resources like:

Admin activation guide
Sample email template for rolling out Chatter
Interactive user training
Use cases for Chatter
Customer case studies
FAQs
Customer testimonials
Customer survey results

Chatter customers really say it best.

Salesforce Users Reach Critical Mass on Twitter and Validate the Extent of the Salesforce Outage Today Live

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Jeff Grosse in News, Social Networking, Tools | 2 Comments

It’s days like this that you can hopefully see a great reason to at least pay attention to Twitter, even if you don’t yet have an account there and participate. This afternoon, I was adding notes to an internal support case on my ever-so-faithful Salesforce.com Case tab. I hit Save, and it started chugging…..and chugging….and eventually, just got hung. My first reaction was to fire up Tweetdeck (IMHO, the best Twitter interface out there) and I looked at my continual search of all Tweets, worldwide for the word “salesforce.” And sure enough, right there, users started asking the same question to the world, “Is Salesforce.com down for you?” We saw immediate validation that we all experienced the same problem.

Enough of Salesforce.com’s 1.1 million users are on Twitter and many of their first reactions were to do the exact same thing. Unfortunately, today’s outage took out the http://trust.salesforce.com site as well so many were wondering how extensive the whole thing was. Humor even came into play as people suggested it’s time for a worldwide coffee break. Someone even mentioned that it would have been really cool if Starbucks had caught onto the outage quickly and offered a coffee special for people who mention that Salesforce was down. I thought it was funny.

For the most part, Salesforce has been really solid and we’ve not experienced many outages for quite some time. This is really a compliment to Salesforce making availability such an important issue. The fact is though; it will go down again sometime again. It’s just going to happen.

Here are my suggestions to you to be prepared for the next time.

Check the Trust site. http://trust.salesforce.com/
Check Trust SaaS http://trustsaas.com/ – They monitor the uptime of Salesforce servers as well as other services like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Typepad.
Try a Twitter Search – This URL finds all Tweets containing salesforce.com, salesforce, or sfdc. You don’t have to have a Twitter account to look at all these Tweets and know whether people are experiencing issues too.
Join Twitter and ask the question. If you put “salesforce” in it, oodles of people like me are going to see it and respond to you. If you post that you’re having trouble with Salesforce, include which server “your Salesforce” is on. It’s in the URL of any of your Salesforce pages. It’s either NA1, NA2, NA3, NA4, NA5, NA6, AP0 or EU0. Participate in this one more facet of the Salesforce community.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter. http://twitter.com/CRMFYI

Salesforce.com CEO, Marc Benioff Earns a “Bozo?”

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in AppExchange, Competitors, Force.com, Integration, Tools | 2 Comments

bozo I found it interesting to read Bill Snyder of Computerworld put Salesforce.com CEO, Marc Benioff in what Snyder calls, “our Bozo Hall of Fame.” He walks the reader through the drama that unfurled about a year ago when Salesforce.com began some type of talks with Zoho’s CEO, Sridhar Vembu about bringing the Zoho productivity suite to the Salesforce AppExchange. Snyder attributes the “award” to Benioff for how the whole process went down and eventually fizzled to nothing. What adds to the intrigue of this story is the timing of Salesforce’s strategic alliance with Google over the past year. Though we don’t have many details from the article, here’s kind of what I’m kind of thinking went on.

Going back even a little further than this story recounts, I remember having a discussion with Salesforce back in 2006 about Zoho. At the time, we had a Salesforce product manager and a few services guys in our office to discuss a project. Off the cuff, I asked if the product manager had ever seen Zoho CRM. Since he hadn’t seen it, I decided to take a few minutes and show him what I’d seen in it by getting a free Zoho CRM license. We walked through the app a bit and honestly, we had a good laugh about just how similar Zoho and Salesforce really were, once you strip away the on-screen formatting. While you can’t say that Zoho had nearly the features that Salesforce had at the time, it was still striking how much it appeared that Zoho emulated Salesforce CRM. The Salesforce guys kind of laughed it off as imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

We also found the Zoho CRM logo humorous. Notice how the Zoho blocks are similar to the Salesforce “S Cube” logo which appears to now be retired. And notice that the font of “CRM” appears to be strikingly like the signature logo of the company formerly known as Siebel. What a coincidence?

Now fast forward to 2007. The Google / Salesforce alliance gets it’s kickoff on June 5. That alliance really started with Google Adwords and the launch of Salesforce Group Edition. I’m going to guess that more than just AdWords talks had taken place during that year, though nothing more was released. No doubt, talks about Google Apps were happening too

Then, according to Snyder, sometime before Dreamforce 07, Salesforce asked Zoho to put development effort into integrating with Salesforce and offering it on the AppExchange. Salesforce still had no office suite that was fully integrated to Salesforce CRM, so Zoho seemed to make sense. Salesforce knew full-well that Zoho had a CRM product that would compete, but they wanted to see the office suite integration. A later meeting between Salesforce and Zoho brought them to putting a stop to the offer to bring it to the AppExchange due to the competing CRM. Salesforce then offered to buy Zoho out, though Zoho’s CEO refused. Vembu wrote on the Zoho Blog on November 4 with the headline, “Mr. Benioff, Tear Down That Wall.” Now if Zoho CRM had defined their company, I can see them being a little miffed at their flagship being absorbed (or annihilated) by a merger, but their many products defined Zoho, not just their CRM.

Move forward to April 2008 and the launch of the full Google Apps suite, fully integrated with Salesforce. That was a huge announcement which led to tons of possibilities and speculation. While I know Google and Salesforce have become best pals, I wonder where that Google alliance would be today if Vembu had accepted Benioff’s offer to buyout Zoho. Frankly, I’m glad Zoho walked away, but I wonder what Dreamforce 08 would have been like if Salesforce had it’s own office suite.

Though I can’t point to just when, I really thought I remember Marc Benioff being complimentary to Zoho in the past, on a quarterly earnings call when talk of office productivity suites came up. Either way, now he gets to be complimentary to Google instead.

Regarding Snyder’s “Bozo” award, I can’t really say that I think it’s deserved. Think of every corporate merger and buyout that happens. If there are competing products in both the former companies, it’s not so unreasonable to expect the stronger one to win dominance and drive the other to obsolescence. That’s business. Not everyone will like it, but that’s the way it works. Now he may be wishing that Salesforce had just let Zoho go out on the AppExchange as is. But think about which one will drive more revenue to Salesforce. Zoho on the AppExchange or Google Apps native in Salesforce? We know the answer, and that’s the way Marc Benioff has chosen to take his company. Good for us.

Marc Benioff to join TechCrunch 50 Expert Panel

Posted on August 5, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in Integration, News, Predictions, Tools | Leave a comment

Marc Benioff is no stranger to Web 2.0, but it’s interesting that he’s not only going to watch TechCrunch 50 next month, he’s joining the panel of experts who will sort through the best of the best Web 2.0 companies and ideas.

TechCrunch 50 is a mini-conference of 50 hand-picked startup companies that get to pitch their products and ideas to a team of experts, advisors, and investors. It started last year as TechCrunch 20 40 where personal finance service Mint.com was crowned the winner.

I have no doubt Marc will provide some great advice and feedback to these companies he talks to. He really started his own Web 2.0 revolution. What I find more interesting though is that Marc will also be looking for his next acquisition target. What better place to seek a product or idea to augment Salesforce.com than a best of the best startup conference.

Just about two years ago, Koral did it’s pitch at Demo 06 and within nine months, Salesforce bought them and made the product known as Salesforce Content.

What will it be next? I’m anxious to see.

Find out more about the panel of experts and TechCrunch 50 at TechCrunch.

Introducing Featured Ideas on CRMFYI

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in Ideas, News, Tools | 1 Comment

Thumbs 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.

An Easy and Effective Way to Get Your Targeted Message Across in Salesforce

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in AppExchange, Tools | Leave a comment

Messaging 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.

Expense Reporting Just Got Sexy with Expense2GO for iPhone

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in AppExchange, Integration, Mobile, News, Productivity, Tools | 7 Comments

Expense2GO Trip Detail 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.

Expense2GO Splash Expense2GO Trip Detail Expense2GO Detail Expense2GO Camera Expense2GO Synchronize Expense2GO Settings e2go_6

Google / Salesforce Alliance will Prove Itself in Adoption

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in Integration, Tools | Leave a comment

Ban4_googleapps_ovw 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.

Tags: Google, Integration, Partner, Productivity, Tools