The salesforce.com Winter '09 release is quickly approaching and soon you'll be able to take advantage of great new features! In preparation for the release, a Sandbox Upgrade Window is scheduled for 12:01 AM PST September 16th, 2008, through October 11th, 2008. You can continue to use your Sandbox throughout the Sandbox Upgrade Window to test new customizations or features before rolling them out to users.
As a Force.com Sandbox customer, we want to make you aware of the options available to you during this time.To determine whether there is any additional action you need to take to prepare for the Sandbox Upgrade Window please review the choices below and click on the associated link to understand the action you need to take for each:
1. If you would you like to participate in the Winter '09 Preview on your Sandbox instance during the Sandbox Upgrade Window please click here.
2. If you would like your Sandbox instance to retain the existing Summer '08 functionality until October 11th, 2008 please click here.
3. If you have multiple Sandboxes please click here.
4. If you plan to upload and/or install any AppExchange packages to or from your Sandbox instance during the Sandbox Upgrade Window please click here.
5. If you plan to take no action with your Sandbox instance during the upgrade window please click here.
Please click through the links to access the information you need depending on your answers to the above questions. If you have additional questions about your Sandbox options in conjunction with the Winter '09 release, please contact the salesforce.com Customer Support team.
Continue reading "How to Participate in Force.com Winter '09 Sandbox Preview" »
Marc Benioff's guest blog post on what Web 3.0 is was just published on TechCrunch IT. Marc expands on the idea that while Web 1.0 was about distributed transactions, and Web 2.0 is about distributed participation, Web 3.0 will be about democratizing the power to innovate. It's a very important and insightful essay, so I highly recommend that you check it out.
Hello! It's your friendly Salesforce product manager here, with some great news to share about an awesome feature being delivered in the Summer '08 release - Enhanced Lists!
Last year, we gave you inline editing on record detail pages. While I knew it would be a hit (or, at least, I certainly hoped it would be), I also knew that it would only be a matter of time before the requests would start pouring in for inline editing from list views. Sure enough, Tannic didn't waste any time, and 6 days after the Winter '08 release, an idea was logged. :-)
I'm happy to announce that the new Enhanced List feature in the Summer '08 release offers you powerful, easy-to-use tools to quickly display, customize (and even edit!) lists of records imperative for your day-to-day work routine.
The sensational new editing capabilities we've included allow you to edit a single record, or multiple - up to 200 - records, directly from a list, never leaving the page. And with a wide range of new navigation options - for example, displaying the record count (up to 2000), specifying number of records displayed per page, jump to a specific page, and first & last page links - you can find the information you’re looking for in no time.
We also included drag-and-drop support for moving columns around, as well as changing a column's width by dragging the right side of the column header.
For those of you who have created custom mass action buttons to act on multiple records in a list view, we also now remember selections across multiple pages. Gone are the days of selecting records on a single page, then clicking the action button, then going to the next page, selecting more records, etc.
In order to realize the full benefit of this feature, administrators must turn on both the "Enable Inline Editing" and "Enable Enhanced Lists" preferences from the Setup | Customize | User Interface page.
Full Disclosure: There are also some things about this new feature that we want to improve upon in the near future. For one, the fields excluded from inline editing on list views are the same ones excluded on detail pages (Opportunity Stage, Opportunity Forecast Category, Contract Status, most Task and Event fields) with the addition of Opportunity Amount, Opportunity Quantity, Lead Status, and Case Status. The good news is that we're working closely with other teams internally to get these fields enabled for you as soon as we can. (Note that some of these fields already have mass action buttons on list views so you still have a way to edit them.) Also, for companies using record types, the list view has to have filter criteria specified that restricts the result set to one record type in order for editing to be available. There are similar filter restrictions for tasks and events as well, but you can read all about it in both the Summer '08 release notes, as well as the online help. Just navigate to any list view, and click the "Help for this Page" link in the upper right.
We know we still have some work to do, but hopefully you'll find these new enhancements to be both time-saving and fun to use. Everyone have a great summer, and keep those ideas coming!
-- Eric
Need the tools to be prepared for the Summer '08 release? Look no further than this one-stop shop for everything Summer '08 related!
Find links for everything Summer '08 related:
Continue reading "How can I prepare for the Summer '08 Release?" »
Summer '08 Release Update
The latest release is just around the corner, and we know everyone is eager to know more about upcoming Summer '08 release features!
We wanted to highlight some of the exciting new features you can expect from our force.com platform and SaaS applications. If you haven't done so already, be sure to check out the Summer '08 Admin Preview for an overview of upcoming features.
Some highlights from the Summer '08 release:
Salesforce.com now has a LinkedIn group with nearly 1,000 members! Join the Salesforce Professional Network today by visiting this web page.
The Salesforce.com Professional Network connects former and present salesforce.com users, administrators and employees, allowing them to expand their professional development, exchange ideas, network and continue to be a part of the Salesforce.com community.
As a group member, you'll have the option to make your profile available to other group members. You'll also have a Salesforce Professional Network badge on your LinkedIn profile.
The salesforce.com Summer '08 release is just around the corner and soon you'll be able to take advantage of great new features!
In preparation for the release, a Sandbox Upgrade Window is scheduled for 12:01 AM PST May 13th 2008, through June 14th, 2008. You can continue to use your Sandbox throughout the Sandbox Upgrade Window to test new customizations or features before rolling them out to users.
As a Force.com Sandbox customer we want to make you aware of the options available to you during this time.To determine whether there is any additional action you need to take to prepare for the Sandbox Upgrade Window please review the choices below and click on the associated link to understand the action you need to take for each:
Please click through the links to access the information you need depending on your answers to the above questions.
If you have additional questions about your Sandbox options in conjunction with the Summer 08 release, please contact the salesforce.com Customer Support team.
Continue reading "How to participate in the Force.com Summer '08 Sandbox Preview" »
Today we are excited to announce that we have expanded our partnership with Google and together have delivered an industry-changing new product called Salesforce for Google Apps. It went live last night at 11pm PST to all salesforce.com customers. Salesforce for Google Apps is a simple, yet powerful combination of Web-based business applications that streamline communication and collaboration and have the power to change the way you work.
With Salesforce for Google Apps, you can now run your favorite desktop applications and your Salesforce applications side by side by accessing Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs all seamlessly from within Salesforce. Watch the product tour or if you’re already a Salesforce customer, you can get started now.
Salesforce and Gmail - Send Gmail to contacts from inside Salesforce or log emails in Salesforce from Gmail
Salesforce and Google Talk - Chat with colleagues right from within Salesforce
Salesforce and Google Docs - Create and attach Google Docs to records inside Salesforce for real time collaboration
Salesforce and Google Calendar - Synchronize your Salesforce meetings, campaigns, and events with Google Calendar
Salesforce and Google Start Page - Access your most
important business information, including Salesforce dashboards, and search the
Web from a single page.
Industry analyst Beagle Research Group has announced its 2008 WizKid Award winners - and six of them are AppExchange partners, including Firepond, InsideView, LucidEra, Marketo, TerrAlign, and Verticals onDemand.
From the report, available here, “This year’s class of WizKids represents a diverse group and one thing that holds the group together, beyond leverage of the on-demand model, is their orientation to helping companies to present to their customers a face that is easier to do business with.”
More than 40,000 customer
installs and 285,000 test drives have taken place on the AppExchange, as customers find and deploy partner applications to extend the benefits of SaaS throughout their enterprises.
Additional coverage can be found at CRM Buyer.
Congrats to the WizKid Award winners on their business success via the AppExchange and this great industry recognition from Beagle Research!
Salesforce.com was nominated for the
2008
Webware 100 in the Productivity category!
The Webware 100 is an annual awards program where users vote for their favorite
Web 2.0 apps. Finalists were chosen by the editors
of CNET Webware.com, and winners are then
determined by online votes. Winners will be announced on April 21st,
the day before the Web 2.0 Expo opens, and there will be a party to celebrate
the winners during the Web 2.0 Expo booth crawl, on April 24.
Voting is done online by the community and is open now until March 31st. Cast your vote for salesforce.com now!
We’re thrilled to announce that Intelligent Enterprise Magazine has given salesforce.com a 2008 Editors’ Choice Award and named it to the “Intelligent Enterprise Dozen”. 
In naming its Award recipients, Intelligent Enterprise described salesforce.com as
the David in an IT industry full of Goliaths
and went on to say the company had
given rise to the SaaS market almost single-handedly, whacking SAP and Oracle with a few rocks in the process.
The publication also remarked that salesforce.com “is showing the IT world what SaaS can and should be, and the entire industry has taken notice."
This marks the third year in a row salesforce.com has received the the Editors' Choice Award, which recognizes companies for exceptional vision, technology innovation and customer leadership in attaining strategic objectives.
The full article can be found here.
Salesforce.com's Spring '08 release is just around the corner, so we wanted to highlight some of the exciting new features you can expect from our force.com platform and SaaS applications. If you haven't done so already, be sure to check out the Spring '08 preview and the feature detail pages. And if you're curious about when you'll see these changes in your org, keep checking trust.salesforce.com for the latest release schedule.
The attached PowerPoint slides provide a great overview of how CRM can be applied to businesses of all shapes and sizes; helping you attract new customers, manage accounts, and provide outstanding service and support.
Whether
you are exploring Salesforce for your company or training new employees, this is a valuable resource to get your head around key concepts and illustrate the value of CRM.
Streamline your Call Centers & Service & Support
Also note that these slides are companion pieces to the detailed process maps we created for Sales and Marketing, Activity Management, Service and Support, and PRM.
The Salesforce.com 'What is CRM?' section includes an great introduction to CRM. If you're interested in finding out more about Salesforce on-demand CRM please visit the CRM Software as a Service applications section on www.salesforce.com.
We are looking for feedback from the community on whether our
current tagline encapsulates what salesforce.com is all about.
Leave a comment below. We’d love to hear what you think.
For the first time since I got into this business in 1988, I find myself on the outside of an industry awards process -- instead of being one of the people who decides who gets in. At least the Force.com platform has managed to get within sight of the door, as one of Developer.com's finalists for Product of the Year in the category of Web Service Development Tool or Add-in.
If it weren't for Force.com, I'd still be writing pithy encomia for annual honorees (or their polar opposites) at eWEEK. Instead, almost a year ago, I left my eWEEK job of giving my opinions for a living -- because, almost four years ago, I found Force.com (not yet known by that name) to be a compelling new model of how applications could be developed in the Web, instead of being built (with a previous generation of tools) for cumbersome deployment to the Web.
I have insider's knowledge, to say the least, of how difficult a process it can be to come up with a useful short list of potential honorees. Even being a finalist is no small honor, and the list of finalists at Developer.com is a valuable guide to the most game-changing tools available to developers today.
I encourage you to review that slate -- and while you're there, to consider a click (no later than the deadline of Friday, December 21) to cast your vote for Force.com.
