by Cloud for Good Blog | Jun 2, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. Standard Salesforce reporting works fairly well for many people. Unfortunately, for those users with more complex analytics requirements, even the addition of joined reports to the Salesforce toolkit doesn’t quite fit the bill. The problem is essentially that we are still looking primarily at one object and its directly adjacent relationships. For example, all cases grouped by Priority and listed by Status, or all Opportunities grouped by Owner and listed by Stage (see more examples here). But what if you wanted to show the top 10 most frequently sold Products by the 5 users with the highest total Closed-Won Opportunity value this year? Now, you see, the limitations of standard reporting are becoming clearer. Where to turn now? I’d recommend trying out Apsona Multi-Step Reporting (fondly referred to as MSR). What’s Apsona Multi-Step Reporting? If you haven’t heard about Apsona, Francis wrote a great overview post just a couple months ago. The two sentence summary is this: Apsona is a great app that sits directly inside of Salesforce and provides users some powerful options for querying, updating, importing and exporting, and reporting on their Salesforce data. It even has a mail merge add-on that Dylan wrote about last month! The best thing is that Apsona donates free licenses to non-profits for Apsona for Salesforce, so those organizations only ever pay for the extras, like Email and Document Merge or MSR. [To learn more, sign up for our Apsona webinar later this year, led by Cloud For Good CEO Tal Frankfurt.] If Apsona for Salesforce allows for reporting, why would I pay extra for the Multi-Step Reporting add-on? The reporting capabilities of Apsona for Salesforce are awesome, especially when...
by Cloud for Good Blog | May 26, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. Just about everyone wishes they had ESP (extrasensory perception) when it came to choosing an appropriate ESP (Email Service Provider) for their organization. We hear all the time from our clients that this is a difficult process since they just do not know how to begin comparing. My first response is generally, “You are correct, choosing an ESP can be challenging.” This may not be the answer someone wishes to hear but there are several factors that come into play when needing to make this decision. Each ESP has its strengths, weaknesses, and even unknowns. As with any new tool, it is difficult to understand how it can be used or more importantly, how it was intended to be used. Of course comparing ESPs is a bit like trying to compare apples to oranges or beer to wine. Here are a few basics to help get you started on your search for the ESP that best fits and meets your needs. Basic Terminology Global Opt Out – When an email recipient selects “Unsubscribe” from an email, they are opting out of receiving ALL emails from you, the sending organization. (Some ESPs only supports global opt out with their salesforce integration). Native Salesforce Application – An application built entirely on the salesforce.com platform. These applications live inside your salesforce environment and there is no need for you to log into another providers portal or environment. User Licenses – Who can access the application? Is there a cost associated to each user who will need to build, design, and send...
by Cloud for Good Blog | May 19, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. This is the moment you have been planning and thinking about for the past 12/24/36 months. Your organization has finally made a decision and pulled the trigger. You choose a platform, signed with an awesome implementation partner who can translate your needs into technology, and you are extremely excited to get started. Wait… are you really ready to start the implementation? From our experience at Cloud for Good this is not always the case. Many organizations want to start the implementation immediately after they chose their implementation partner. Everyone wants to get up and running on the new system as soon as possible. To make sure that you and your organization are ready, you should review and answer the questions below. 1. Do you have an executive sponsor? The executive sponsor lends his or her influence to the project by becoming its champion. Having that person’s full support and participation—from the planning stage until the go-live date and beyond—is absolutely critical. Executive Sponsor Name: _______________________________ 2. Who will be the project manager? The project manager (PM) will own the implementation process and will guide the project to successful completion. S/he should be a person who understands the relevant business process and can effectively communicate with both the implementation partner and the rest of the organization. The PM needs to have an authority, whether explicit or through influence to marshal resources. We’ve all run into situations where the project manager is committed and talented, but cannot influence the rest of the organization. This person should have at least 30% of their...
by Cloud for Good Blog | May 12, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. Looking back over the last several months since I joined the Cloud For Good team, I’ve noticed that some of the biggest angst for my clients comes at the end of a project. Wrapping up an implementation brings all sorts of mixed feelings: pride and excitement, but also a fair share of trepidation. This seems even more common with Quickstarts, forty-hour projects designed to get you into Salesforce as quickly as possible. After all, we’ve gotten you up and running in just a few short weeks, and suddenly you’re the proud owner of your very own Salesforce org. It can be thrilling – and overwhelming. It’s no surprise the that separation anxiety can rear its head when you least expect it, right at the tail end when you realize that your “one last question” is more like several hundred last questions. To make matters worse, your end users may feel the same way. Despite our best efforts, it’s impossible to fit in a truly exhaustive training for everyone, and even in the best circumstances, many people are intimidated by changes to systems and processes. So how do you conquer your anxiety and jump-start user adoption? Here are a few of my suggestions: My first words of advice are always to calm down and take a deep breath. You’ve got this; you really do. Make a couple lists to capture the things you want to do next and the questions you have about the system. That’s it. Your first step is just to write down all those thoughts and...
by Cloud for Good Blog | May 5, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. If your organization is like most of the millions of non-profits operating today you are concerned about increasing your access and engagements within your constituent base. Inevitably, while developing a strategy to engage your constituents on multiple levels and manage those relationships, you have asked yourself: “Should we start using a CRM tool?” Before discussing best practices, or if your organization should implement a CRM solution, lets first answer the question: What is a CRM solution? Constituent relationship management (CRM) is software that makes it easier for organizations to maintain relationships with supporters/stakeholders (donors, foundations, volunteers, clients, etc) by doing the following: Track the relationships with individual supporters and donors. Target and/or customize appeals, invitations to events, etc. Targeted appeals based on personal interests. Post on-line acknowledgments. Record all communications and transactions. Strengthen connections. Offer insight by aiding you to evaluate your approaches and results. As a former Program Manager and eventually a System Administrator for an upstart nonprofit, I was directly involved in the decision making process when determining if we should implement a CRM solution. During that time I was able to experience the pitfalls and hurdles that need to be overcome when deciding on implementing a CRM. In my current role as an Account Executive at Cloud for Good, I get to regularly interact with organizations that are trying to decide if it is the right time to implement a CRM solution. These experiences have added a new perspective for me and allowed me to identify some of the key questions that an organization needs...
by Cloud for Good Blog | Apr 28, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. Earlier this week a friend wanted to know how best to troubleshoot an error message he, and his users, were getting. Every time anyone tried to access ANY record, they got an error that looked like this: “UNABLE_TO_LOCK_ROW : unable to obtain exclusive access to this record” That’s bad! No one could work inside Salesforce! This meant that somewhere, something had changed to cause all the records in their org to be locked. How does my friend figure out what changed so he can quickly un-do it? The Audit Trail to the rescue!! WHAT IS IT? The Audit Trail helps you track the recent Setup changes that you and other administrators have made to your organization. This is especially useful in organizations with multiple administrators. The setup Audit Trail history shows you the 20 most recent Setup changes made to your organization. It lists: The date and time (with timezone) of the change. Who made it (by username). What the change was. Here’s an example: To view the setup Audit Trail history, click Setup –> Security Controls –> View Setup Audit Trail. WHAT PERMISSIONS DO I NEED TO VIEW THE AUDIT TRAIL? In order to view the Audit Trail, you’ll need “View Setup and Configuration” permission. WHAT DOES IT TRACK? The Audit Trail tracks lots of things. For example: changing a page layout, changing tab names, or changing activity settings. Click here for a complete list of all the thing the Audit Trail tracks. WHY WOULD I NEED THIS? The Audit Trail is useful for troubleshooting. Because it captures date/time,...
by Cloud for Good Blog | Apr 21, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. Each Salesforce organization is housed at one of Salesforce’s data centers. Salesforce calls these groupings of clients instances and it is a good practice as a system administrator to be aware of which instance your organization is on. You can find your Salesforce instance by looking at the URL once you’re logged into your Salesforce organization. Your instance is the combination of letters and numbers after “https://” and before “Salesforce.com.” If you’re a client in North America it will start with “na” followed by a number. Why is this bit of information useful? This is what you need to look up the system status for your Salesforce organization if you’re experiencing issues. Salesforce posts the system health for each instance on a daily basis, noting if there are any known service disruptions or performance issues. You can find that information by clicking here. Also when Salesforce rolls out a new release, the date and time your organization will get the release is determined by your Salesforce instance. Because of the rapid growth of Salesforce, there are times when a particular instance’s performance starts to be impacted. When Salesforce observes this negative performance they take action by moving the instance to a new data center to better accommodate the growth and bring service performance back up to their performance standards. Salesforce has just announced that all organizations on instance NA10 are going to be migrated to a new data center in January, 2014. If your organization is on NA10 your system administrator should have received an email from...
by Cloud for Good Blog | Apr 14, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. At Dreamforce 2013, I had the opportunity to spend time with our fantastic Cloud for Good team, see some great sessions, meet some of our amazing customers and co-present two separate sessions. One of those sessions was entitled ‘Growing Pains: Scaling Your Salesforce Implementation’ and I worked with fellow MVP’s Mary Pustejovsky and Brian Kwong to discuss some of the issues and considerations that customers of any sort should take into account when expanding their use of Salesforce (you can see the session slides and here the audio on YouTube here). I thought it might be useful to expand on one of the topics covered in more detail: Establishing Good Governance. If you Google/Bing/Yahoo the term Governance, you will be presented with a variety of definitions, but fundamentally they boil down to ‘a method or system of government or management’. In non-profit (and even general corporate) terms governance is most often referred to in terms of the relationship between the Board of Directors and the organization and the rules that establish how organizations will function. When working with Salesforce.com (or any system for that matter), following the principles of good governance can make life easier for administrators and users alike by providing a clear and consistent framework to manage change over time and defining processes to resolve conflicting requirements. In our experience, governance is often an evolutionary process, consisting of three stages: Monarchy, Democracy and Republic Stage 1: Monarchy For many organizations, nonprofits in particular, the use of the system often starts off in a very limited fashion, supporting...
by Cloud for Good Blog | Apr 7, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. Filters are kinda sorta great… What’s the first thing I do whenever I open a new spreadsheet? I filter it. Why? Because filtering is a great way to quickly analyze your data. Need to see which columns are and aren’t populated? Filtering is for you. Have users who don’t like to enter the same value, the same way twice? Use a filter to locate the inconsistencies. You may have used Sorts to handle similar scenarios, but filters give you more control. Using them, you can also avoid having to constantly rearrange the rows of your data, lowering the odds of making a mistake. What cool things can you do with filters? Say Goodbye to Empty Columns – A column with no data in it is a column you don’t need to import. I like a lean import file, and that means removing the clutter of blank columns. Spot a Bad Date or Phone – Filtering is a great way to quickly spot bad or missing dates, which can cause those pesky import errors. It can also clue you in to phone numbers that are inconsistently formatted. Make Sure It’s the Right List You’re Picking – Picklists in Salesforce are not very forgiving. It may be a small dot, but “Jr” and “Jr.” are not the same suffix. Filters can help you see those data vagaries. Then, a Find and Replace will equal a sparkly clean picklist. Work the Combinations – Filters are also a great way to check consistency across columns, for example, to check the data integrity...
by Cloud for Good Blog | Mar 31, 2015 | Blog
This is a cross post from the Cloud for Good blog. So, you’ve set up an online form. Now you’re ready to rake in the data! But maybe the responses (i.e., the filled-out forms) aren’t pouring in as quickly as you thought they would. When you check what’s going on through the analytics, you notice that the completion rate is low, and the dropout rate is high. Which means most of the people who open your form don’t fill it out — they just close the tab and leave. Why? Your visitors might be confused and frustrated. There could be obstacles in the form that you’re not aware of. Picture this: You’re driving somewhere. You’re the only car on the road. The drive is smooth and effortless. But the road gets rocky and uneven, so your drive becomes more and more unpleasant. Then you approach a cluster of giant potholes in the road. You stop. They’re so deep that you might actually get stuck if you try to cross. Are you going to risk it? Or are you going to make a U-turn and try another road? Yep, you can see where this is going. It might be silly to compare a form to a road, but most visitors will take the easy route. If your form presents any sort of obstacle, you’re going to lose respondents. On the other hand, if you make it easy to fill out a form, your respondents will be happier — and more likely to keep going. The main thing you should keep in mind is that a form should be easy to...
