My Dreamforce'14 Experience

Magnificent, Mind-blowing and Magnanimous!!! is how I would coin my experience. Its been a month but the hangover still continues and have been spending couple of hours every week since DF'14 planning for DF'15.


Complete process oriented. Such simple and hassle free. 

Arrived

Sharing is Caring

My Contribution towards One Million Meals. Just love the 1:1:1 concept - 1% of Equity, 1% of Product and 1% of Time - Imagine this philanthropic approach being adopted across the globe " World would be a better place to live"

You can read more about this here
SALESFORCE FOUNDATION

Also I would encourage individuals and companies to take the pledge and make the world a better place.


Take-The-1/1/1/ -Pledge







Loved the way people in blue T-shirts greeted us with a smile and patiently answered all our queries.  The T-shirt with " I LOVE SF" written on it was awesome connecting San Francisco and Sales Force :)

Registrations!! - "I Love SF"

Feels like the whole world is out here. 150,000 + people  which is 1/6th population of the San Francisco.

Towards Developer & Admin Zone

After a long wait we finally get to witness the keynote live, something which I have been watching on YOUTUBE for past many years now.

Waiting for Product Keynote to Begin

THE GRAND KEYNOTE

More than 1400 sessions!! Phew!! Managed around 20 sessions revolving around Partners, Wave, IOT, wish could have attended more.

Start Startups Sharing Secrets

Session on Analytics

Met Old Friends and Made New Ones!! DF is about a lot of Networking too. Thanks to Murali for introducing us to this wonderful group. This group were all from different parts of the world with shitloads of energy and enthusiam.

Mingling with Solo riding group

A "Moment" to be remembered. Watching Mr.Benioff and Mrs. Clinton at arm's length distance was dream come true. Have only been watching them in newspapers and videos.

Kodak Moment

Well here we are hanging out with sassy, over a cup of coffee.

Starbucks with Sassy

Big Guys, have had an opportunity to work and learn with some of these brands directly or indirectly.

Will feature my startup on this board soon!!

I would keep the PARTY, After PARTY and After After PARTY pics to myself for now!!! You can see them offline when we meet in person ;)

Boost your Career with Salesforce.com

Welcome to the world of Salesforce.com!!

Are you stuck in a mundane routine job and looking for a career boost on a disruptive technology?

Are you a student contemplating among multiple platforms to start your career on?

Time and again I have been getting request from my peers and social connections asking me how to start learning Salesforce.com.

Below is an attempt to answer that first basic question i.e. How can I learn Salesforce? and help you with information which will get you self started.

Lets review few definitions before we begin:

·       What is SALESFORCE?

o   SALESFORCE is an online web based CRM application that runs in the cloud allowing users to manage and perform nearly every detail of your job. Located in San Francisco California, Salesforce was founded by Mark Benioff and Parker Harris in 1999. It started out as a business software company distributing its products on a subscription basis now it has evolved into the number one CRM solution in the world. 

·       What is CRM?

o   CRM is short for customer relationship management. CRM started out as a strategy for managing the companies interactions with clients and future sales prospects, but has expanded over the last few years to become a kind of one-stop shop for all of the company's business processes as well. The most widely recognised CRM solution on the market today Salesforce.com which runs on Cloud.

·       What is CLOUD?

o   Cloud is basically a metaphor for Internet. If an application runs on the cloud it means the user can access it anywhere through an internet connected computer or a mobile device. All information is stored on groups of online servers located in various parts of the world. The advent of cloud computing has initiated the no software movement where in companies are moving away from traditional software in favour of online applications and websites.

·       What does NO SOFTWARE mean?

o   In a typical computing environment software programs (such as Dot net or java installed onto your computers) are used to accomplish certain tasks but in a no software environment web-based applications are used to accomplish those tasks. Some examples you may already be familiar with are Gmail and Salesforce.

·       What if the CLOUD goes down?

o   Theoretically, the cloud could go down but it's not likely. The reason the cloud is so secure is because it is located on multiple servers in multiple locations around the world and majority of the servers would have to go down all at one time in order for the cloud to stop working. The other scenarios for the cloud being down is if your company's Internet went down, in which case you wouldn't be able to access the cloud but the cloud itself would still be up and working. But don't be too alarmed at not being able to access the cloud, studies show that Cloud is far more reliable than any traditional server software solution.

courtesy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0RsU8oPoFw 

So now that we have had defined the basic jargons and what they mean, lets move on to how can one start learning Salesforce.

One can divide the learning into two parts:

• Configuration: Comprises of all click based, declarative solutions (No coding involved, you need not be a computer science engineer)

• Customization: Comprises of programmatic solutions (Involves coding – if you are one with good understanding of OOPS concepts and JAVA then it would be pretty easy to learn APEX)

Steps to self start the learning:

1.      Goto www.developer.force.com  and click on the SIGNUP (on top right corner) and fill in the signup form to get an access to a Salesforce FREE developer edition with two licenses. Let me repeat, this is FREE FREE FREE for lifetime.
2.       Browse the LIBRARY tab on www.developer.force.com  and goto Workbook Tutorials where in you would find multiple workbooks covering various topics. As a starter lets pick up the Force.com Workbook which consists of series of short step by step tutorials that show you how to use the application and build your own on-demand applications.
3.       Goto http://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTHome and access the Quick Starts videos (here is a direct link : http://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTPopularTopicsDetail ) to access the same and complete all the videos.
4.       Join community https://success.salesforce.com/ (for admins and consultants) &  https://developer.salesforce.com/forums (for developers) and connect with 1000’s of experts out there who are available 24/7  to help you clarify your queries. (remember you are not the first one learning and there have been people who might have had asked similar questions – hence, chances are high that you would find such answers or discussion already available to your aid)                                                                                                                 Note: Many prefer watching the videos first and then starting hands-on, where as I prefer the other way around. As watching something being explained which you already have had tried yourself helps in understanding better and retaining it for long.  So I leave it to you to swap between 2 or 3.                                                                                                                                     
5. Now that you have fair understanding of Salesforce.com, the next step would be to plan for certifications. Coz that is how you become indispensable. Goto http://certification.salesforce.com/  and click on the Credentials tab to access the details about the certification. As a starter you should aim for ADMIN 201 & Dev 401. Access the Podcasts for tutorial videos. Also below are two awesome blogs from experts detailing on how to plan for the certifications:

o   Prepare for ADMIN201 by Sharif Shaalan (Salesforce Principal consultant and MVP) 

o   Prepare for DEV401  by Hari Krishnan (Certified Salesforce Expert) 

Note: Salesforce.com is evolving rapidly and some links or topics on the preparation blogs listed above might have been obsolete or merged with new ones. There are tonnes of other websites, flashcards, blogs listing out the same but the above blogs are something which helped me when I was planning for my certifications.

6.  Share & Care:  Salesforce.com will not be what it is today without its million member community. To fortify your learning and to learn more I would request you to visit the forums regularly and help others by providing answers and ideas.

Wishing you loads of success in building a Career on SALESFORCE.com

You can find me on community Anshul Jain and check my credentials on Certifications.

If you liked this article , please do like, share or comment. Also feel free to post your ideas if you want me to write on any specific topic related to Salesforce.com.

Define Opportunity Stages in Salesforce.com (How to Design & Train Users on Opportunity Stages)

• How should I name my Opportunities in Salesforce.com
• How shall I decide which Opportunity stage is relevant

Every Organization has one or more Sales Teams, and every Sales Team has a Sales Processes to follow. Every Sales Processes then is defined with a set of Opportunity Stages each having an Entry and Exit point. 

Over the years, having implemented numerous Sales Cloud projects, I have learnt that Opportunity stages without Exit and Entry points defined can be very confusing and users end up selecting a stage going by their intuition and gut feel which at times is right but for a considerable amount of times it is not. Undefined Stages leads to multiple perceptions and influences the user behavior. Thus, reflecting in Reports & dashboard and impacting Forecasting too.

To quote an example:  If a user sees Opportunity stages like - 

• Open, Considered, Qualified, Demo (OR)
• Order Process Started, Order Probably coming, Order being Processed, Order Processed 

it becomes highly confusing for a User to pick one when on the field unless clear entry and exit points are defined for each.

Let me outline a small  Entry and Exit excercise for each Opportunity Stage which I would highly recommend for every organization to map themselves against and share the same standardized process down the line with all the Sales Teams.

OPPORTUNITY NAMING CONVENTION

Organizations should follow a standard naming convention for ease of recognition and data consistency. Below is a widely used example:

1. Short version of the Account name (10 characters or less)

2. Brief description of what the Opportunity is for (10 characters or less)

3. Date you created the Opportunity (DD.MM.YYYY)

                             Example: ABSYZ INC- PRODUCTABC - 02.02.2014

OPPORTUNITY  STAGE ENTRY & EXIT POINTS

 The stages above are self explanatory, the notes within each will help you define the Entry and Exit points for your Opportunity Processes.

Winter '14 Release Sneak PeeK - Start Zooming In

Dealing with CONTACTS – Salesforce.com

• What to do if a contact moves from one account to another account? What if a contact becomes inactive?
• How can I mass rearrange the contacts? (Resulting out of an organizational restructure)
• Can I build a custom Contact object? What OOTB features will I lose?

Contacts are an essential part of any application and needs to be managed effectively. During solution design and training's I have come across variety of questions revolving around how to deal with contacts in a given scenario.

This pushed me to put together some notes on managing Contacts, few of the best answers from community  and few apps on app-exchange to help manage Contacts efficiently in your Salesforce org.

Managing Contacts Effectively (experts opinion)

• Never move a Contact from one Account to another; this would have the effect of "dragging" over history records that are totally unrelated to the new Account and confusing users.
• Create a custom Checkbox field named “Active” (default =checked) to identify if the contact is currently employed with at the account. Should the contact shift to another Account (also present in your org) then create a new contact record and mark it active and remember to mark the previous record as Inactive.
• Going a step further, you might go ahead and build some Validation Rules to prevent user from adding activities on Inactive accounts. Or creating separate Record Types and Page Layouts for active and inactive Contacts, and building a Workflow Rule with a Field Update which would update the Contact record type and page layout (this would make the contact record inaccessible to users)
• Inactive Contacts – Check the standard “Email Opt Out” checkbox field. This will prevent users from adding them in an email a campaign.

Mass Update Contacts (Re-parenting)

• Create a Report and Export the Account and Contact data you need.
• Make sure you have the following Columns Account. Name, Account.ID, Contact. Name, Contact.ID, Contact.AccountID
• "Re-parent" the Contact.AccountID with the value of the "new" account, then update the Contact object using the Data Loader.

Standard Contact Object vs. Custom Contact Object

There are instances where people run out of field limits and workflow rules on a standard contact object and start contemplating on creating a Custom Object to handle the same. Well this is STRICTLY not advisable as you would be losing a lot of OOTB functionalities, increasing the technical debt in your system, creating an unintuitive data structure for users and invest huge efforts in administering the same. Some major OOTB functionalities which you would lose:

• Mass email
• Convert
• Task & Events
• Outlook integration
•  Integrations with 3rd party apps
•  Campaigns and campaign members
•  Roll up contact tasks to account
•  Lose on all current and future contact functionality
• Automatically change contact owners when changing account owners, without a master-detail relationship

Consider reaching out to Salesforce.com before planning to recreate something which is already provided. Salesforce.com is pretty receptive to such requests.

Few FREE Contact related Apps on AppExchange:

• DupeCatcher  enables Salesforce users to identify, block and dedupe leads, accounts, and contacts in real-time at the point-of-entry. Retain full control of the identification and merging process, eliminating any fear of loss while cleansing data.
• Opportunity Contact Roles Validation Require Opportunity to have identified Contact Role or Primary Contact Assigned at a certain stage in the Opportunity Selling Process. Easily customizable validation rule to fit your specific selling methodology.
• CLAM (Merge contacts) Provides 2 methods of merging Contact, Lead and Account objects – single merging allows the user to manually merge together 2 records at the click of a button. Multiple merging allows the user to merge multiple sets of 2 or more duplicate objects.
• Mass Update Contact Address Copy the account's billing address to selected contacts within that account using a Visualforce interface. Because it uses Apex, no API access is required. Mass Update Contact Address now supports column sorting!

Security Model of an ORG and the Marketing + Sales Process are two main parameter considering which you decide on what kind of contact management methodology you would want to use. There is no single Salesforce best practice for Contact management, so you should always select a solution that meets your business needs.

Should you have a specific scenario you are looking a solution for, please feel free to leave a comment or drop an email.

Courtesy:

Steve Molis            https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000gtKgAAI

Steve Molis            https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000h0RBAAY

David "wOOt!" Liu    https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000hC5aAAE