CRM FYI

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)

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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. 

Talk seems to be forming around the “big announcements” coming next Monday from Salesforce.  TechCrunch says it has to do with more Google integration.  That’s cool….maybe it could have some of what I’ve beein hoping for.

If you look at the new ways you can integrate Google Gadgets into iGoogle with your Google Spreadsheets data, you’ll see some pretty good looking charts.  I’d like to see the ability to use Google Gadgets within a Salesforce Dashboard or Report. 

Appirio has done some cool stuff with Salesforce data secured in Google Gadgets on your iGoogle homepage.  Now I’d like to see the reverse and see some Google Chart Gadgets inside Salesforce. 

If you like the idea, please promote it here on the Idea Exchange.

Salesforce is ready to show us all they’ve got in the Spring 08 release!  Get on over to the site to see the Admin Preview, Release Notes, Ideas included in this release and get in to test drive it.

Spring ‘08 Release - salesforce.com

There are two relatively new Salesforce bloggers that you should get to know.  If you haven’t already read their blogs, I encourage you to check out The Admin Exchange and Salesforce Times.

The Admin Exchange is written by Matt Evans, a seasoned Salesforce admin from the Chicago area.  Mat has been a speaker at Dreamforce before so you may recognize him already.

Salesforce Times is written by Vancouver’s own Adam Killam.  Adam is a Salesforce User Group Leader so some of you might know him from there.

Wow, it’s been way too long since I’ve written.  For that I apologize.  I’m getting back in the saddle again and here’s what I’m working on.  I’ve been checking out several AppExchange partner apps that have some killer functionality.  They’re great ways of seeing your Salesforce data in a new and useful way.  They’re pretty cool and I think they’ve got huge potential.  Thanks for reading and I look forward to sharing this and much more with you soon.

The day is coming!  I just got notified that NA1 and NA5 will be upgraded to Winter 08 on November 2.  The maintenance window will be from 8:30 PM PDT to 1:30 AM PDT on November 3. 

To see what features are coming in Winter 08, just go to the Idea Exchange and search on “Coming in Winter 08.”  You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of these changes coming in Winter 08.

This is a very significant release and I really look forward to using it.  As admin previews and release notes are available, I’ll post links to them as well. 

UPDATE:  NA2, NA3, NA4, and EU0 will be upgraded on November 9 and 10.  (Thanks for the info Neal)  You can get all the detailed times at http://trust.salesforce.com/.

Successforce is the mack daddy source for info you need as a Salesforce user, developer, administrator, executive, or competitor.  (OK, you need some other bloggers too)  Not a walled garden, they’ve made Successforce open to all who want to read and even contribute to the content therein.  But how does Salesforce make it easy to find what you need?

The answer lies in Google Custom Search Business Edition.  Ryan Pollock, a Product Marketing guy from Google wrote a blog post and did a short video interview about Custom Search with Salesforce VP of Developer Relations, Adam Gross.  Adam talks about how easy it was to integrate the Google Custom Search across all their pages and ensure we find what we need, regardless of what technology their assets lie on in the Salesforce back end.

Looking a little deeper into the pricing model, it wouldn’t be hard to see a quick ROI with an inexpensive service like Google Custom Search. 

Custom Search Business Edition is available in a number of plans:

• Search less than 5,000 web pages: $100 per year
• Search less than 50,000 web pages: $500 per year
• Search less than 100,000 web pages: $850 per year
• Search less than 300,000 web pages: $2250 per year

It’s good to know Salesforce sees it important to draw together all their resources for us, across so many sites.  Site searches are often neglected due to our experience of them providing us little or no value.  I wonder how many corporate websites could use a quick, inexpensive search makeover like this and see their customers find some real value from all the content they’ve spent millions producing.

Idea: Salesforce, you’ve got a “Who We’re Reading” section on Successforce pointing to many blogs, including my own.  How about adding our sites to your Google Custom Search Results?  There’s some good content out there people would get value in finding. Salesforce heard my request, and they’ve updated the custom search to include my blog and others; proof that they’re listening.  Thanks!

Technorati Tags: successforce, salesforce.com, crm, google custom search

Imitation is a great form of flattery.  Last year at Dreamforce 06, Salesforce spent some bucks and came up with five well done videos highlighting the difference between an on demand application provider and the competition.  I had always wanted to see them again.  Guess which one is Salesforce and which one is the competition.

Actor Stephen Pawley has all five of them at his website. 

See the sessions you missed at Dreamforce 07.  They’re starting to show up on Google Video.  About 50 of the breakout sessions are available already and more will be added soon. 

To see what’s available now, search Google Video for Dreamforce and sort the results by Date.  If you’d like to know when new videos are posted, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for new videos with the Dreamforce tag.

You’ll also find some user submitted videos of the excitement of Dreamforce as well as some footage from the volunteer project run by the Salesforce Foundation held Saturday, September 15. 

As the keynote sessions are added, I’ll be sure to let you know as they are worth a second watch.

Technorati Tags: dreamforce07, force.com, salesforce.com, crm

Get all your Dreamforce 07 news from one location, live as it happens.  Numerous bloggers including myself are building out one gigantic news feed of all the happenings at Dreamforce, Salesforce.com’s annual user and developer conference here in San Francisco, California.

Tune into the Dreamforce Channel to see what’s happening all throughout the conference.  Subscribe to the RSS feed for it and you’ll for sure be in the know.  Feel free to leave your comments there as well.  On my blog, you can look to the right side to see the Jaiku channel rolling in the news.  To see the whole feed check out the whole channel.