Spring’12 Release Features

March 14th, 2012 Posted in Cloud, Force.com, Salesforce, Salesforce.com
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Prepared by: Fahad Akhtar, Danial Ahmed & Nageen Hussain

Force.com Enhancements and New Features

SYSTEM OVERVIEW PAGE
Force.com System overview page shows important usage data and limits of the organization.
There are four sections on System Overview page, namely:

  •      Schema
  •      API Usage
  •      Business Logic
  •      User Interface

System Overview Schema section contains details of custom object and data storage usage. A warning message is displayed when a certain usage limit is reached.

SCHEMA BUILDER ENHANCEMENTS
Schema Builder now allows user to create custom objects, create fields and relationships. The objects or fields and relationships created will be immediately added to schema.
Schema Builder relationships are now displayed in standard Crow’s Feet notation.
VISUAL WORKFLOW ENHANCEMENTS

With spring’12 cloud Flow designer is now generally available. Cloud Based Flow can now be included in Change Set, Managed and Unmanaged packages. We can also create flow using Metadata API.

SITEFORCE ENHANCEMENTS

In Spring’ 12 Salesforce has incorporated Salesforce with Siteforce and now data can be retrieved from standard and custom objects of Salesforce to show on a website.
Website Publisher are also site designers, they will create dynamic Siteforce page to display customer facing data. Website contributors are responsible for site data, they change data in objects and it reflects in live site.
Siteforce data services allow user to collect data on website such as feedback. In Spring ’12 a new Siteforce Overview page has been launched. Now user can create a clone of his/her existing site.

VISUAL FORCE ENHANCEMENTS
With Spring’12 dynamic Visualforce components are generally available. Major Spring ’12 Visualforce enhancements are:

New Visualforce Components

  • Chatter Answers
  • Chatter new feeds
  • Social Account and Contacts
  • Live Agent

Performance Enhancements

  • Single View State
  • PDF Optimization and limits

APEX ENHANCEMENTS
Data Partitioning has been introduced in Spring’ 12 released. Now when test class is saved developer will no longer have access to org data, they will have to create own data for testing as a best practice However by using SeeAllData=true, they can still access org data.

  •      Custom REST web services can now be implemented in Apex.
  •      Maximum number of schedules apex classes as been increased from 10-25.
  •      Salesforce Mobile SDK is now generally available.
  •      Enhancements for single sign on supported enhancement provider for Facebook and Janrain.
  •      Cross Object formula fields is also a new feature which allows user to update fields on multiple objects with some limitations.

FORCE.COM Messages
Force.com Messages can be configured to get alerts and warning messages. Usually the messages cover usage details.

 Data.com Enhancements and New Features

  •      Enhancement to data.com includes additional tabs to offer richer information.
  •      User can now add a contact directly under data.com account.
  •      Checks for duplicate records before creating new records.
  •      Beta field as clean status on records to sync records with Data.com

 Chatter Enhancements and New Features

The new features in Chatter are:

  •      Chatter contribution bar on profiles—showing how ‘active influencer’ the chatter user is.
  •      Added ability to share chatter post! Also comment or view can be added to post before sharing it.
  •      Now posts can be bookmarked on Chatter!
  •      Criteria based list view feeds can now be created.
  •      While uploading videos from Youtube.com user can give custom titles. If no title is given then by default the title that’s on youtube.com will appear.
  •      Now user can invite coworkers from 200 unique domains to use chatter.
  •      Smart Global search allows user to search the most frequently used objects. User can now even ‘pin’ these objects.

 Sales Cloud

  •      Social Contacts have been enhanced and are now called Social Account and Contacts.
  •      Social Networks are now incorporated in Account, Contacts and Leads. Developer can use Visualforce component to integrate social account & contact if Visualforce page is being used for these objects.  Else user can simply use settings to configure social account and contacts for out of the box pages.

Service Cloud

  •      Live agent is an addition to the Service cloud; it adds real time web chat to customer service channel. Live agent is now generally available as a Salesforce.com product.
  •      A dedicated console has been introduced that will manage chat.
  •      Live chat reports and live chat dashboard can also be created now.
  •      In chatter answers, now we can integrate cases, answers, Force.com, Portal and knowledge. Chatter Answers is a new self-service portal application. Chatter Answers allow quickly searching for answers and has chatter like look and feel instead of case deflection. It offers Crowdsourced answers, Corporate Knowledge base answers and Support agent case answers.
  •      With spring’12 Console users can now open and share links to console tabs.

Analytics

  •      Spring’12 introduce bucket fields to quickly categorize a record on a report for grouping and filtering.
  •      Cross filters create with or without filters using child records.
  •      Joined reports combine multiple views of a data in a single report.
  •      User can have up to 5 bucket fields on a report each with up to 20 buckets.
  •      There can only be 3 cross filters on a report each with up to 5 sub filters.
  •      User can filter each block independently on the other block add columns and summaries. User can have up to 5 blocks and 15 reports types on joined reports.
  •      With cross filters manager can quickly create exception reports. In Spring’ 12 report filters limits have been increased to 20.

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.Net Web Service with Salesforce.com

January 16th, 2012 Posted in .Net, API's, Cloud, Force.com, Integration, Salesforce.com
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Prepared by: Ali Zafar, Huma Zafar & Salman Zafar

Let’s suppose we have to update some fields in Contact, Opportunities, Cases or any other standard or custom object. When some event occurs in Account object it will update fields in related objects.  Field can be either Lookup or any text or number field.

We can do this for standard fields but here we are going to do this by creating Custom fields. So in first step we will create some custom Fields. We will divide this App into two parts. In the 1st Parts we will simply check how to Query data using .net webservice and update existing Data through it. While in the 2nd part we will modified this App so that an outbound message can send a record Id and we perform that update Process which was performed in the 1st Part using a hardcoded Value.

So Let’s Move on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Part 1 – Update Salesforce Recod using .Net Application

  • Step 1:
    • Create a field TestAccount [Text] in Account.
    • Step 2:
      • Create a .Net application that extracts salesforce’s objects records (In this case, Accounts) and update TestAccount field with its Parent Account field.
      • You have to add Web Reference of your enterprise WSDL in this .Net Application.
      • To generate WSDL:  Setup | Develop | API| Generate Enterprise WSDL | Generate.
      • Right Click on it and Save Enterprise WSDL and Import into you .net Application using Webrefernce.
        • If you don’t know how to add Webrefernce. (Click here)
  • Now Refer to “Walk Through the Sample Code” in Web Services API Developer’s Guide : http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/apex_api.pdf
  • This Walkthorugh Application is a very simple app you can easily query data from the querySample() method. So Query that record by passing a hardcoded record Id e.g. :
    • QueryResult qr = null;
    • string recordId = “01pP00000004kUC”; //SampleID
    • qr = binding.query(“SELECT Id, Name, ParentId FROM Account where Id = ‘” + recordId + “‘”);
  • In The 2nd part of this App we will update this recordId which will get Id from Outbound Message.
  • To update record we need to use SaveResult and sObject to Update. Here is a sample code to update it. This will Update TestAccount field and populate the Value of ParentId into it.
    • for (int i = 0; i < qr.records.Length; i++)
    • {
    •    Account acc = (Account)qr.records[i];
    •    acc.TestAccount__c = acc.ParentId;
    •    SaveResult[] saveResults = binding.update(new sObject[] { acc }); // updating results in salesforce.
    • }
  • Now Run and Test it whether it is Updating that record or not.
  • How to Import WSDL into .net APP
    • In Solution Explorer Right Click on Application name and click on Add Service Reference.
    • Now Click Advanced a new window will pop up and Now Click on Add Web Reference.
    • Again a window will pop up here you need to specify the path of you Enterprise WSDL e.g. : C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\enterprise.wsdl
    • Now Click on Add reference and that’s it your webrefernce is added into you App.
    • In order to use it you have to add a name space e.g. :  using ApplicationName.WebserviceName;

Part 2 – Outbound Message to invoke .Net Application

Step 3:

Create a Web Service that calls your .Net Application.

Add reference of your .Net application to the Web Service.

Sample Code:

Below is the code of web service file .asmx that implements class WebService in namespace testWebservice

<%@ WebService Language=”C#” CodeBehind=”~/App_Code/WebService.cs” %>

Below is the code of a Class Webservice

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Services;
using ConsoleApplication5;

namespace testWebservice
{
    [WebService(Namespace = "http://theinsidecloud.org/")]
    [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
    public class WebService : System.Web.Services.WebService
    {
        public WebService()
        {
            //Uncomment the following line if using designed components
            //InitializeComponent();
        }
        [WebMethod]
        public void HelloWorld(String id)
        {
            Program app = new Program();
            app.Accountid = id;
            app.run();
        }
    }
}

 

Step 4:

  • Now host this Web Service.

Step 5:

  • Create a workflow to send an outbound message that will send Account Id. Specify end point URL where you have hosted your web service.
  • Select a field to be sent as a parameter for the Web Service.

Step 6: 

  • After saving the out bound message you will have its detail page. Click on Click for WSDL.
  • Add web reference of this WSDL in your Web Service.
  • After Adding WSDL to your WebService , Host the updated application to the Web.

So whenever your Workflow fires, it will hit the hosted Web Service with some parameter (in this case Id). Web Service will call .Net application and update a particular record that matches with the parameter.

 

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Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 Innovation Pack

January 14th, 2012 Posted in Cloud, Oracle CRM On-demand
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Hi all, Finally back, and guess what Innovation Pack for Release 19 For CRM On Demand is here. Oracle corporation formally announced about  the innovation pack and its fetures on 4th  October  during Oracle Open World.

I will Dicuss More about Each of the new exiting features in seperate Blog Posts, Sumirizing the Innovation Pack updates:

  • Demonstrating Oracle’s ongoing commitment to innovation, Release 19 Innovation Pack introduces industry-leading hosted call center and enterprise-marketing capabilities designed to drive revenue and productivity, reduce costs and improve the customer experience.
  • Unlike other industry solutions, Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 Innovation Pack offers organizations a Hosted Contact Center and important enterprise marketing features without reliance on outside partners or other providers.
  • Performance and scalability enhancements within Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 Innovation Pack extend Oracle CRM On Demand with faster processing and reliability.
  • With the new Hosted Contact Center, existing hosted voice, voicemail, email and customizable IVR and ACD capabilities are augmented with chat, co-browsing, response libraries, multi-party conferencing, suggested email responses and a pre-built integration interface for third-party telephone hardware and software companies.
  • The Hosted Contact Center creates a cutting-edge dynamic for sales and service agents to quickly and efficiently deliver answers to customer questions, within the same system and without additional investments.
  • Oracle CRM On Demand  Release 5.4 is included within Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 Innovation Pack, providing new capabilities that deliver an enhanced user experience and more deployment flexibility.
  • To further increase marketing team efficiency, Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing Release 5.4 simplifies the process for marketing professionals to build and manage campaigns, websites and customer-facing documents.
  • Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing Release 5.4 features enhanced list management that creates highly specific segments to target the right content to the right customer, as well as new role management capabilities that allow marketers to tailor Oracle CRM On Demand to unique business processes and to market individually to each user.
  • New deployment options in Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing Release 5.4 enables companies to implement easily either department-level or global instances, creating the opportunity to expand usage over time while minimizing costs.

Also Following are some quotes of a couple of organization that have implemented the Innovation Pack

  • “With Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing, we now have a unified solution to consolidate our sales and marketing processes,” said Allan Murphy Bruun at Ambu. “The system has significantly improved our marketing productivity and has provided new capabilities to demonstrate ROI. We have observed a 20% improvement in lead quality within 4 weeks of deploying the solution.”

Also Oracle Corporation Quoted that:

  • “The release of Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 Innovation Pack with Hosted Contact Center and Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing Release 5.4 heralds a new opportunity for organizations to reduce the cost and dependency on outside partners for individual features and services,” said Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM. “Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 is yet another example of how Oracle executes on our vision to innovate and improve organization-wide business value with lowest total cost of ownership.”

 

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Setting Up Scripted Data Loader

December 1st, 2011 Posted in Cloud, Force.com, Integration, Salesforce, Salesforce.com
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Apex Data Loader is a common tool for data migration purpose in Salesforce.com. The data is sent from a csv file format to Salesforce.com. This all process is done manually by running apex data loader and importing, mapping fields than sending data over to Salesforce.com. Now, if you want to automate this process, and make the data transfer happen sometime in the overnight, you can use the scripted data loader functionality. Scripted data loader basically works using command line interface, you can run the process from command line, save it in .bat format and schedule on windows task scheduler. I will give you an overview of how to use scripted data loader

Go to the folder where your apex data loader resides, you will find conf, data, mapping, status, bin etc folders inside it, usually your apex data loader is installed in C:\Program Files\salesforce.com\Apex data loader… The conf folder contains the main process-conf.xml file, which contains different Beans.

The above bean is written to upsert Accounts in Salesforce.com, whose mapping file resides in \Mapping\ folder, mapping file can be created on notepad, but format should be .sdl or you can map it using apex data loader and save the mapping file. The bean process gets the data file form \Data\inbound\ folder. You can have multiple beans in process-conf file, each bean defines the data integration process for one object with operation either extract, upsert, insert, update or delete.  You need to add your salesforce username in this bean process, make sure your password and security token  is encrypted correctly, to encrypt salesforce password please refer to my post regarding encrypting salesforce password. Once you set up the mapping file, data file and process file, test your process from command line interface

 

Run command line, go to bin folder in your apex data loader, execute command process ../conf UpsertAccount

After testing in command line, create a batch file by writing the command line syntax in text file and save it in .bat format. Now, save this batch file in windows task scheduler to execute it on a given schedule time.

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Salesforce – Social Contacts

November 24th, 2011 Posted in Cloud, Force.com, Salesforce, Salesforce.com
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The winter’12 release of Salesforce introduced a powerful media tool called “Social Contacts”. It enables the Sales Reps to elaborate their customer search and establish their links via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

People are adapting to social networking at a stunning pace and for business it is very hard to keep track of their customers. The key is to implement an effective strategy to what is becoming as a “Social CRM”. The main focus of it is to strengthen relationships with customers, improving and maintaining them through more and more interactions. Just as Social CRM is an extension of CRM itself. Twitter CRM and Facebook CRM is an extension of Salesforce CRM. What do they all have in common? They all live in the cloud. So if you are a Salesforce service cloud or Sales Cloud user; you are already positioned in the best of all possible worlds.

How to enable Social Contacts in Salesforce?

In order to enable the Social Contacts tool on your Account you need to go to the setup on the upper right half of your page and click “Setup” then go to Customize and click on Social Contacts then click on “Settings”.

After clicking Settings, the Social Contacts Settings page will be displayed. Check the Enable Social Contacts box and check Enable Facebook, Enable LinkedIn and Enable Twitter boxes and click the “Save” button.

In order to view social profile of a contact a user must have Read access on Contact and in order to associate a social network profile on a Contact the user must have Read & Edit access on Contact. There are two settings associated with Social Contacts like Chatter, there is one organization wide setting and another one is User Level settings. User level settings can be accessed from;

All the details are current in social contact as you cannot import social network information for a contact.

Our credentials are not exposed to Salesforce because Salesforce uses OAuth for authentication. It allows the user to grant access to your private resources on one site to another site.

Social CRM is expanding its horizons at a breathtaking pace and Social Contacts is one of the breakthrough changes in Salesforce as it would provide efficiency and convenience to the Sales Reps in tracking their customers with their current information.

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Winter’12 Release Exam Notes

November 21st, 2011 Posted in Force.com, Integration, Salesforce, Salesforce.com
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Collaboration Cloud

  • New feature includes Approvals into chatter, customers into private groups and private messages and a powerful tab.
  • Approver can receive a chatter feed with the defined template of feeds on chatter and the approver can approve or reject record right from the chatter post.
  • Feed tracking should be enabled for the object on which the user wants to create an approval process.
  • Define a post template and select fields which you want to see in your chatter feed of approval process.
  • Enable Approval Processes for chatter.
  • Enabling Approval Process within the chatter will help busy executives and sales rep to see the status of the approvals.
  • All chatter groups and their respective users must be aware that guests are there in groups and Salesforce shows that on-group picture and member list and also mentions in clearly that members are in the group.
  • A chatter group with allowed customers is designed to show the users that customers are in group and once the access is defined to customers it cannot be revoked.
  • Any file within the chatter now can be shared with external user with “Share via Link” option and for that both content delivery and chatter file sharing must be enabled with appropriate permission from profile is also required.
  • Starting winter’12 files tab is replacing the documents tab but using the default tabs option documents tab can be added back.
  • User with “Manage Chatter Message Permission” can see all users’ messages.
  • New chatter API object, some new fields are available and chatter REST API is now GA, which means that  chatter can now be within the organization intranet.
  • Hovers also got new pop up for almost every link, E.g. Files, Users and groups.

Sales Cloud

Social Contacts

  • With winter’12 linkedin, twitter and facebook are integrated with Salesforce now and sales reps can see the details of a user on these social networks.
  • Social contacts need to be enabled for your organization.
  • User need edit permission in order to attach social contact to a user and need read permission in order to see the contact’s social network.
  • All the details are current in social contact as you cannot import social network information for a contact.
  • Social Contacts settings are also available on user level.
  • Your credentials are not exposed to salesforce because salesforce uses OAuth for Authentication.

Outlook Enhancements

  • Outlook enhancements allow you to edit records in batch edit mood which help users solving unresolved items.
  • Add up to 10 emails to outlook at a time.
  • Combination of batch edit and recommendations help a lot in solving the unresolved Items.

Forecasting

  • New version of forecast is only available to new customers old customers will continue to use the previous version.
  • New version supports multiple currencies.
  • Opportunities will be pulled dynamically on forecast selection.
  • With new Forecast adjustments to the subordinates forecast are east to make.
  • Forecast dates can be defined by administrator and forecast category can be changed to align with Organization’s business processes,

Data.com

  • Instead of the jigsaw tab there will now be a data.com tab.
  • Data.com will be enhanced and will add more contacts from another data company.
  • Data.com includes some new features like you can save your search criteria, you can export contact and company data right from data.com, you can exclude, include or opt for an exact match in search now, New list user is available for data.com.
  • Saved searches are limited to 25 companies and contact searches at a time.
  • Exporting company and contacts are limited to 50K.
  • You cannot add more than your monthly limit and assigned credit from you admin.
  • New icons for added contact and inactive contacts.
  • When you export and add the same record it only counts once.
  • If you want to exclude something from title fields you have to use title; prefix.
  • In future, release titles field will be separated for search.
  • Every field of search can contain 128 characters.
  • You can now assign a data.com “list user” to your users and they can use the monthly pool of the organization rather than personal user limit to make sure that any of the limits doesn’t go to waste.

Analytics

  • With winter’12 dashboard can have filters and can be applied to a single field and each user can choose from up to 10 filters, without dashboard filter we would have to create multiple dashboards.
  • Using filters having a single dashboard can serve multiple purposes.
  • Dashboard can only have a single filter and filter can only be based on pick list, lookup, and a text value.
  • Dashboard with visualforce cannot use filters.
  • Scheduled or emailed dashboard and chatter snapshot are unfiltered.
  • Filter cannot be used on dynamic dashboard and filtered component cannot be followed in chatter.
  • In the following releases filter will be available in dynamic dashboards as well.
  • Enhanced reports tab helps you to locate your most recently viewed reports.
  • User objects can now be the primary object in a custom report type and user can have child object based on the relationship he wants.

Force.com

Cloud Based Flow Designer

  • Cloud based flow designer to design business processes faster and efficient.
  • Apex plugins can also be used within the cloud based flow designer.
  • Currently it only supports English language.
  • Ability to convert leads and send emails.
  • API calls made by the desktop version of flow designer count against your API limit.

 

Siteforce

  • With winter’12 Site force is generally available and with site force you can create pixel free highly scalable site.
  • Siteforce is created by keeping a website publisher in mind it could be a new job for an organization, Publisher creates website and maintain the overall look and content of the website.Create template and pages, Modify layout and design and publish to a live site
  • Web contributor import assets, edit content and images, preview pages
  •  With siteforce publisher and contributor can work together to produce agile websites.
  • Siteforce in coming release will be integrated with force.om

 

Productivity Enhancements with Force.com

  • With winter’12 new home page layout, quick application create and a floating force.com setup.
  • We can now make setup page our landing page from user information.

Database.com

  • Database.com is a multitenant database as service and can serve with multiple applications including Java, Heroku, mobile and social apps.
  • Database.com included with Force.com Developer, Enterprise and unlimited editions and can also be purchased as a standalone service with secure data storage, tuning scaling, backups and recovery is also available with database.com
  • Database.com is a subset of what we have used on force.com platform.
  • We can create our database using custom objects, formula and validation rules.
  • Standard objects are not available in database.com
  • We can also write triggers and apex classes which fires on all seven events.
  • We can also create workflow rules which have all four same actions as force.com
  • Wizard and data loader is also available or we can write our own data loader application.
  • Sandbox and force.com IDE can also be used for development on Database.com
  • Your program can interact with force.com using any of the API you are familiar with, SOAP based API , REST API and Bulk API.
  • The Database.com Java SDK is a set of pre complied classes which make sure that you quickly developed and have a secure connection and you can also use OAUTH.
  • The database.com Java SDK can also be used with any salesforce.com with API Enabled.

 

Permission Set

  • Permission sets allow you to grant more access on top of your profile settings and without modifying your existing profiles.
  • If you want to give permission to a user of a profile but not to other who have the same profile you can use permission sets.
  • Traditionally in order to do that you create more profiles and it increases the number of profiles drastically.
  • With permission sets you can add more permission to whatever their profiles already provide.
  • Profile+ permission set 1+ permission set 2=user access.
  • We can assign 1000 permission set per user.
  • Permission set can only be used to give access to user not to deny access.
  • With permission sets users can be given responsibilities, deploy new phases and give specific application access.
  • Permission sets needs to be created through user records.
  • Permission set cannot be defined for a group of users.
  • Reporting is not available on permissions set.
  • Each permission set can be reused to other users

 

Schema Builder

  • Schema Builder provides a visual representation of salesforce.com Objects and relationships.
  • Required field color code, Color code for lookup and master detail relationship and schema view organizer.
  • In future schema builder will be enhanced with adding SObjects and Fields directly from schema builder.

 

Chatter REST API

  • The chatter REST API is a tool to integrate chatter with non-Salesforce Application.
  • It returns feed items structured for rendering in on websites and mobile devices.
  • Data automatically localize for users time zone and language.
  • Chatter REST API will be used to build social applications.
  • Integrate chatter with twitter and facebook.

 

Apex Enhancements

  • Apex has received a number of enhancements this release
  • On major enhancements is Native JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) support, JSON has become the standard of data transfer via API.it is very concise and with winter’12 we can use built-in JSON classes to parse data within APEX.
  • We can serialize SObject into JSON to send a data to an external system.
  • Other Enhancements to Apex includes new system methods IsBatch, IsScheduled and IsFuture, Allow the determination of in which code it was invoked
  • You can branch you code on the context of the code.
  • Governor limits are raised for batch and future methods.
  • SOQL Queries raised from 100 to 200
  • Code statements raised from 200000 to 10,00000
  • Heap size rises from 3MB to 6MB.
  • @Readonly notation for web services and Schedulable interface allows unrestricted database queries and prevents any DML operations
  • API for asynchronous test runs, allows developer to asynchronous test runs
  • Test classes can now be public no longer needs to be private; this allows creation of reusable test classes for common test data creation.
  • Force.com Developer console is now renamed as System log console, continued improvement and addition of new tools.

 

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How to Pass Salesforce.com Certified Sales Cloud Consultant Exam

October 13th, 2011 Posted in Cloud, Force.com, Salesforce, Salesforce.com
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Hi,

I recently passed Salesforce.com certified consultant exam and following are my recommendations for preparation

There are 60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions in total, allotted time is 105 min and passing score is 72%.

I took the following trainings from Partner trainings and successfully completed the case study as well:

  • Implementing CRM Essentials
  • Implementing the Sales Cloud
  • Implementation Case Study: Deal Registration
  • Reporting for Sales Managers
  • Forecasting for Administrators
  • Forecasting for Sales Reps and Managers
  • Getting a Head Start with Chatter

Salesforce recommends that you must have 2-5 years of experience in Salesforce.com but I think if you have done any complex implementation in Sales Cloud and have fair amount of knowledge of features and theirs differences you have very high chances of passing this exam.

These are the following features I would recommend you to master before attempting Sales Cloud.

  • Review all out of the box reports related to opportunities to identify Sales Metrics and KPIs
  • You must have good idea about territories what you can do with them and their limitation
  • understand SDLC completely
  • How to create campaigns and how can you relate them with opportunities
  • Experience a complete Sales Generation to Deal closer process starting from campaign.
  •  From Security point of view learn the difference between account team, sales team and territory and their effects on visibility, access and reporting.
  • Connect two organizations using Salesforce to Salesforce and see how that works.
  • how to calculate ROI for campaigns.
  •  Lead Scoring and Lead Data Quality.
  • Complete data model of Sales Cloud and Security setting including Private, Public and Controlled by parent.
  • Impact of having account hierarchy from security perspective.
  • Explain the  implications of implementing person accounts
  • Impact of Forecast Category, Stage and Pipeline.
  • Relationship between all the object related to Sales Cloud mentioned in the study guide.
  • use cases for chatter and chatter feeds.
  • uses and impact of using content and the difference between content and other features.
  • uses cases for enabling portals and sites and impact of enabling partner portal, Partner Role Hierarchy and Hierarchy Visibility.
  • Impact of enabling mulit-currency on Reports, Dashboards and Products.
  • Uses cases and consideration for data migration and Integration.

If your organization is salesforce partner go to partner portal–>Content and there is plenty of material related to functional knowledge.

You can download study guide from here go through complete study guide configure each and everything included in the study guide and Search and study about all Apex Exchange Application mentioned.

Best of Luck for your exam!!!:)

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Invoking Boomi Process from Salesforce Outbound Message

October 13th, 2011 Posted in Cloud, Dell Boomi, Force.com, Integration, Salesforce, Salesforce.com
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Invoking Boomi Integration process in possible via sending SOAP/HTTP request to Boomi Atom from client applications that triggers the web service enabled in Boomi Integration process.  Here I will give you an example of invoking Boomi process using Salesforce Outbound message.  You require an Endpoint URL to invoke your Boomi Atom, Boomi Atom could be on Cloud or locally deployed on your server, this example explain how to do it with the Atom on Cloud.

Salesforce Outbound Message:

First of all define a new outbound message

  • Setup->Create->Workflow & Approvals->Outbound Messages
  • Create a New Outbound Message
  • Choose your Object
  • Choose your Fields
  • Choose Endpoint URL
  • Define Workflow
    • Configure Rules for triggering of Outbound Message
    • Can be based on the modification of fields inside SFDC.

End point URL is the link to your atom, here we are considering Boomi Cloud Atom, so to create url see Cloud URL section below.

The above image shows the Salesforce outbound message screen, for Endpoint URL see Cloud URL section below in this post.

The Boomi Process:

Create a new Boomi Process with the following components:

  • Choose Web Service Server from connector picklist
  • Choose Listen as Action
  • Define Operation
    • Choose Action and Object name
    • Choose Single XML as Input
    • Choose Single XML as Output
    • Ignore Profiles for the moment
    • Set Result Content Type to application/xml

Boomi Process Start Shape

  • Add a ‘Message’ component to generate an XML document for the acknowledgment.
    • Upon successful completion, your Process will need to send an acknowledgment back to Salesforce to close the loop for the outbound message. You can simply copy and paste the XML below into a Message step before the Return Documents step.
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soapenv:Body>
    <notificationsResponse xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2005/09/outbound">
      <Ack>true</Ack>
    </notificationsResponse>
  </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

This image shows a simple boomi process that listen to a outbound call from Salesforce and return a basic Acknowledgment XML of the Outbound message.

Deploy Boomi Process:

You cannot use Test mode to receive data since the web server need to be deployed in order to listen real time.

  • Deploy the process in cloud atom or your local atom
  • Trigger Salesforce Workflow that sends outbound message to Atom Endpoint URL.
  • After sending an outbound message open manage tab in Boomi and review the inbound document data.
  • Save a copy of the inbound XML request data to a local file.

 

Review Integration Process Execution

Integration Process Building

After successfully listen outbound call from Salesforce in Boomi, move further with your integration process,

  • Configure Start Step
    • Edit Web Services Server Operation
    • Create a new Request XML Profile and use the XML Import Wizard to build a profile structure based on a saved copy of the Test Data received from Salesforce
    • Create a new Response XML Profile and use the XML Import Wizard to build a profile structure based on a saved copy of the Acknowledgment XMLdefined below
  • Add the branch node and start developing your integration process from the second node of the brach component.

Cloud URL

  • Salesforce does not allow authentication for their Web Service Call.
  • AtomSphere Cloud requires HTTP Basic Authentication
  • A custom authentication URL has been enabled to allow connect.boomi.com to perform the authentication. All authentication details are in the URL:

https://connect.boomi.com/<OperationURL>;boomi_auth=<AuthString>

  • OperationURL - From the Web Services Server Operation URL, which will start with /ws/…
  • AuthString - A Base64 encoded value of – <AccountID>:<Security Token>
  •  Creating the AuthString parameter also requires the Base64 encoding of the colon between the AccountId and Security Token, so basically the entire string as whole.
  • Account ID - ID available under Setup >> Account Information
  • Security Token - Generated in Atom Management >> Shared Web Server Configuration >> My Authentication
  • Remenber to encode AccountID:Security token combination in Base 64, initially I did this mistake when I was first time invoking the process.

Hope this helps you.

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How to Pass Salesforce.com Certified Admin and Service Cloud Consultant Exam.

October 7th, 2011 Posted in Cloud, Force.com, Salesforce, Salesforce.com
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Recently I passed Salesforce.com Certified Administrator and Salesforce.com Certified Service Cloud Consultant Certification so I thought I should go ahead and blog how to prepare for both exams.

For Salesforce.com Certified Administrator

There are 60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions in total, allotted time is 90 min and passing score is 60%.

The Exam is all about how well you can configure Salesforce.com and How In depth your knowledge is about different features and their differences.

if your organization have premium support, you can access premium training from help & training.I would recommend all training related to Beginning administrator.

Follwing training are highly recommended from Premium Training

  • Administration Basic:Setting up Salesforce CRM
  • Administration Essential
  • Automating your Service Cloud
  • Analyze your data you way with Reports
  • Customizing profile to align your business needs
  • Getting a head start with chatter
  • Managing data for Administrator
  • Securing your Salesforce Organization

You can download study guide from here go through complete study guide configure each and everything included in the study guide and hopefully you will crack this exam.

For Salesforce.com Certified Service Cloud Consultant

For This Exam Salesforce.com recommends that you must have 2-5 Years of Salesforce Experience.

There are 60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions in total, allotted time is 105 min and passing score is 73%.

This Exam is not about configuration of service cloud, Most of the exam is related to functional knowledge of support process.

In Most of the questions all answers were right you being a consultant would have to identify what is the recommended solution.

For techincail Knowlege of diffrent features you can take following trainings available on partner training:

  • Implementing CRM Essentials
  • Implementing the Service Cloud
  • Implementation Case Study: Service Cloud
  • Automating Your Service Cloud
  • Launch Your Own Customer Portal
  • Administering Salesforce Knowledge
  • Publishing Articles With Knowledge
  • Force.com Connect for CTI
  • Reporting for Call Center Managers

If your organization is salesforce partner go to partner portal–>Content and there is plenty of material related to functional knowledge.

You can download study guide from here go through complete study guide configure each and everything included in the study guide and Search and study about all Apex Exchange Application mentioned.

Best of Luck for your exam!!!:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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CRM ondemand Intro (Continued Part 2)

October 2nd, 2011 Posted in Oracle CRM On-demand
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This blog posting is the continuation of the Blog Post Oracle CRM On-demand Intro, (This article was written by By Edy Henao at http://www.crmsoftware360.com). This part discusses about the products, services, solution and there prices offered by Oracle in Oracle CRM On-demand.  Hope you like it

video:

Get Smarter and More Productive with Oracle CRM On Demand

(This video is from Oracles public youtube channel)

Products and Prices

Oracle’s CRM OnDemand is offered in two different hosting delivery options. The CRM solution was designed to be hosted and delivered as a shared services, multi-tenant database configuration, which means that multiple companies will share the same database, servers, and network connectivity. More recently, Oracle has begun to offer an isolated tenancy model, which provides separate and distinct database environments for each customer, for those customers which prefer or demand greater data segregation for privacy and security purposes (which is common with industries such as government and financial services as well as larger enterprise customers).

The multi-tenant hosting service has a list price of approximately $70 USD per user per month. Oracle generally discounts this price based on volume of seats and the ‘status’ of the customer. For example, Oracle often uses discounts to acquire customers with marquee names. Our experience and research suggests that, like many other publicly traded software manufacturers, the end of a fiscal quarter and the fiscal year end are by far the best time to negotiate software procurements with Oracle as the software giant is highly focused on each period’s earnings. While Oracle has a history of discounting its traditional on-premise software solutions by 50% and more, the software as a service CRM solution simply does not offer the same margin for those types of aggressive discounts. Realistically, the SaaS CRM price is seldom discounted below $60 per user per month, and that concession often comes with the requirement of a multiple year subscription contract. Oracle’s subscription pricing is on par with other CRM providers for sales force automation (SFA) functionality only. Recognizing that SFA is CRM OnDemand’s strong suit, this is an affordable option as long as marketing and customer service functionality are not essential to your CRM deployment.

For enterprises that demand more autonomous security and greater performance of a dedicated environment, Oracle’s CRM OnDemand is offered as an isolated tenancy hosting option however the advantages of this deployment method come at a steep price. The isolated tenancy hosting option adds approximately $55 USD per user per month to bring the total list price to an hefty $120 USD per user per month. This pricing premium is aimed at competing with the majority of SaaS CRM providers that do not offer this more secure option. For example, Salesforce.com, a recognized industry leader in SaaS CRM, does not offer this option. However, as a comparison point, other SaaS CRM solutions with similar feature sets and which also offer isolated tenancy include SAP (price unknown at the time of this writing as SaaS product is yet to be delivered) and Aplicor ($89 per user per month). While isolated tenancy appeals to larger firms, the incremental investment with no real gain in functionality, result in a much more costly solution.

If you are unsure whether a hosted solution or on premise solution is right for your organization, you are not alone. Oracle’s own sales teams seem to struggle in positioning the on premise CRM products versus the on demand systems. This difficulty, coupled with Oracle’s larger issues of rationalizing the myriad of industry players that Oracle has acquired (PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Vantive, etc.), leaves little doubt why many of Oracle’s customers and prospects have redubbed their Fusion vision as ‘Confusion’ (a term first coined by competitor Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff). As one might predict from a traditional software company not anxious to cannibalize its flagship products and bulk of the company’s revenue stream, Oracle is not known to promote the SaaS CRM model as quickly as it may propose the (much more costly) on premise solutions. In many ways, Oracle’s CRM OnDemand is viewed as a defensive play aimed at slowing the attrition of Oracle enterprise customers migrating to SaaS solutions. Ideally, Oracle seems to prefer clients procuring and operating on premise CRM but will offer the on demand solution in order to keep customers from adopting another vendor’s product. We’ve heard of more than one large firm that has followed this path, only to convert to the on premise version or to another vendor’s product when the shortcomings of CRM OnDemand became evident.

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