Amber Butler - Salesforce News and Notes

Users can't access Visualforce pages?

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:30:00 GMT

A coworker came to me yesterday with a frustrating question - why can't non-system adminstrator users see a new Visualforce page that had just been created? Instead they see the "Insufficient Privileges" error. I remembered struggling with the exact same problem when I first started working with Visualforce. The answer is available in the Visualforce discussion boards, but is difficult to find. So, here is a quick summary:

Access to Visualforce pages and Apex classes is determined by user profile. There are two ways to change the access levels.

1 - To view or change the access levels for a single profile, go to the view screen of the profile and scroll down to find the following two related lists: Enable Apex Class Access and Enable Visualforce Page Access.

2 - Or, set the access level for multiple profiles by going to the Apex class and Visualforce page lists in Setup. Click the Security link beside each class or page name and select the profiles that need access.

Initial thoughts about Spring '09

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:59:00 GMT

The Spring '09 release of Salesforce and Force.com is scheduled to go live over the first two weekends in February. View the maintenance schedule if you'd like to see exactly when your SF instance will be ugraded.

Be sure to check out the full release notes to get all of the details, but here are a few of the new features that we are most excited about:

Enhanced Page Layout Editor: After just a few minutes of experimenting with the new page layout editor in our pre-release org, I believe this update is my favorite new feature. Some highlights: fewer clicks to do just about anything, lots of “drag and drop”, add blank spaces for better field alignment (I’ve wished for this capability forever), and the toolbar floats as you scroll vertically.

But the absolute best part of this enhancement is the ability to click “Edit Layout” directly from a record (without going to Setup) and make any changes. Click Save and then you are taken directly BACK to the record you were working on … without being dumped back into Setup. Perfect!

(This feature will be enabled automatically for all orgs, so no need to do anything … but if you want to revert back to the old editor, go to Setup > User Interface.)

Content Delivery: Pretty cool - you can convert your documents (PPTs, Word docs, etc.) into a web page and then track how often the content is viewed or downloaded. Allows you to make a doc only available for a specified period of time, and lets you set permissions as to whether or not the doc can be downloaded. One potential drawback is that hyperlinks within the document won't work on the delivered web page.

Email-to-Case: It's now available as a service using the Force.com email server, rather than having to host it yourself.

Campaign Enhancements: Changes make it easier to manage campaign members, including a “Campaign Members” related list on the campaign detail page and a new “Manage Members” page.

New Features for Custom Summary Formula Fields: Two new functions are available to use for custom summary formulas for summary reports. In addition, you can choose where you want custom summary formulas to appear in reports (i.e. you may want summary totals for individual groupings, but not a grand total).

Critical Updates: This new section in Setup shows any updates that may affect your existing customizations. Admins will also see a notice when they click on Setup. During the opt-in period for each update, you can manually activate and deactivate the updates while you test out your customizations.

Dashboard/Report Folder Access: Until now, folders that were not shared with anyone (including the folder owner) were inaccessible. Please tell me I’m not the only one that has ever “lost” a folder because of making this mistake! Thankfully, these unshared folders will now be visible to any users who have the “View All Data” permission.

Suggested Duplicates for Ideas: When a user enters the title of a new idea, a list of possible duplicates is automatically generated.

Salesforce Mobile Enhancements: Lots of new mobile enhancements, mostly centered around the iPhone application.

“Time-Picker” for Events: When you click inside the start time and end time fields, you get a nice little drop-down with half-hour increments.

QuickTip: Configuring Custom Links

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:24:00 GMT

Beware of the man who won't be bothered with details.
-William Feather

Sometimes the simplest customizations can have the biggest impact on the success of your CRM implementation. Organizations typically think in terms of broad strokes (i.e. "let's implement marketing campaigns" or "it's time for the service department to start using cases to track service requests" and so on). But often it's the details that can drastically affect the overall usability - and ultimately, the success - of your CRM system.

With that in mind, the following "QuickTip" centers around a small customization that can drastically improve the way users navigate within Salesforce. We always like to think about minimizing keystrokes - that is the number of clicks it takes a user to get to commonly-used information. The "Custom Links" functionality is one very simple way to put the most common tasks right at the user's fingertips. Once configured, Custom Links are displayed in the sidebar on almost every tab within Salesforce. They can be used to provide quick access to any number of items ... an admin, for example, may appreciate Custom Links to "Add/Remove Users", "Import Contacts", or "Manage Email Templates", while a sales user may benefit from Custom Links to important Opportunity reports or Lead views. Custom Links can also be used to provide quick access to any website, even outside of Salesforce (such as your corporate website or your company's intranet).

Before creating your Custom Links, give some serious thought to what shortcuts will be most beneficial to your users - and which make the most sense. Once you're ready, view the short tutorial below to have your Custom Links configured in a matter of minutes.

Are you using Email to Salesforce?

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:15:00 GMT

I recently did an informal poll of a handful of Salesforce.com users and realized that NONE of them were even aware of Email to Salesforce. Trust me ... it's something worth knowing about and, most likely, something you'll want to think about implementing in your organization.

After enabling Email to Salesforce, you can add a Salesforce-provided email address to the bcc line of any email you send and the email will appear in the activity history related list of the correct lead or contact in Salesforce. What if there isn't a match? No problem - a task will be created instead, which you can then handle in Salesforce.

To learn how to easily setup this functionality, just search for "email to salesforce" in the Help and Training section of Salesforce.

And Outlook users can even take it one step further ... some simple code can added that will eliminate the need to add the address to the bcc line - instead, each time you send an email, you'll receive a message asking "Add to Salesforce?". Click yes and your unique address will automatically be added to the bcc line.

Getting Started with Summer '08 ... Cross-Object Formulas

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:38:00 GMT

Check out your new orange creamsicle logo in Salesforce! I'll highlight some of the updates in the Summer '08 release in the next few blog entries.

One of the highest impact features is the ability to create Cross-Object Formulas - meaning you can use parent record fields on a child record. FINALLY! Prior to this release, various workarounds had to be used ... such as creating workflow to copy a value over, embedding an s-control, etc. Now cross-object formulas will solve the problem.

Some standard real-world examples of this functionality are placing the Account Number on the Opportunity, or creating a Discounted Amount formula on the Opportunity referencing a Discount Percentage on the Account.

Here's a cross-object formula I just created for a client. They used a different commission percentage based on whether the account was a new or repeat buyer. So, on the commission custom object, I referenced the "# of Opportunities" roll-up summary field on the Account to determine whether or not the account had previously purchased and then used that information to determine the commission rate.

My formula took me from the Commission custom object to Opportunity to Account - but you can reference up to five relationships. Here's my resulting formula:

IF(Opportunity__r.Account.Num_of_Opportunities__c>1, 5/100, 6/100)

Check it out and let us know if you have any of your own cool uses for cross-object formulas.

Rollout Schedule for Summer '08

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:20:00 GMT

The Summer '08 release schedule is up at trust.salesforce.com. Looks like June 6th for instances on NA0 and NA1, and June 13th for the others.

Summer '08 is around the corner

Tue, 06 May 2008 20:36:00 GMT

Thanks to gokubi (a really great blog that I read often - it's written by a CRM consultant for non-profits, but has tons of good info for any Salesforce.com user), I just found out that the Summer '08 landing page and release notes are live! Multiday calendar events, inline editing on list views, filtered lookups, and lead conversion improvements are just a few of the many highlights. More info to come ...

Part 2 - What ELSE are you missing out on?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:43:00 GMT

If you are wondering why in the world I’m blogging about something from 5 months ago, please read my previous blog post. That said, below is a quick snapshot of some of things you don't want to be missing out on from the Winter '08 release.

Opportunity Rollups: If your Opportunities typically have multiple line items, this new feature allows you to create custom fields that aggregate each line item. So you can see the total quantity, total discount, etc. of all line items directly on the Opportunity record.
Relational Business Rules: This high-impact update enables you to reference fields in related objects for validation, workflow, approval, and assignment rules. Real world example: we had a client that needed to require an “Assigned Service Rep” for any Opportunity that belonged to a premier Account. With this new functionality, we were able to reference the “Premier” field on the Account level to determine if the “Assigned Service Rep” was required or not.
Inline Editing: We hosted a Salesforce.com event a while back and I was shocked to realize how many Salesforce admins and power users weren’t aware of inline editing. Once turned on, inline editing uses Web 2.0 technology to let users double-click on a field to edit it directly on the detail page – saving all the steps of going to the edit page, making your changes, and then clicking save to return to the detail page. Inline editing is available for all editions, but it does need to be turned on by an administrator by going to Customize > User Interface. (Shameless plug for Customer Connect … check out our DotNetNuke blog to learn more ways we can make Web 2.0 work for you.)
Salesforce Ideas: In the spirit of maximizing both user adoption and the overall effectiveness of a CRM implementation, our clients often have a need to allow users to record bugs, feature requests, and other suggestions within Salesforce. In the past, we’ve created a “CRM Suggestions” custom object to handle this need fairly effectively. But now Salesforce has released something much more powerful – Salesforce Ideas lets you create an online community where users can submit, vote, and provide feedback on ideas. If you are using the Customer Portal, you can even open up Salesforce ideas to your customers and partners. Plus, it’s super easy to setup, so your org could be up and running with the Ideas app in minutes. (This is pretty cool … click here to see how Starbucks just started using Salesforce Ideas.)
Group Tasks: Do you ever need to assign the same task to a group of users … an “update hours for March” reminder to all salespeople, for example? Now you can create a task and assign it to group of users. But there is a common misunderstanding with this feature – each individual receives a separate task assigned to him or her, so you can’t create a single task that only needs to be completed by one member of the group.
Printable Lists: In the “useful but way too easy to overlook” category, make sure you notice the new “Printable View” link in the top right corner of your list views.

Want more info? Check out the Winter '08 blog or download the detailed release notes.

What are you missing out on?

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:38:00 GMT

The last two Salesforce releases - Winter '08 and Spring '08 - were rolled out in rapid-fire last November and February, respectively. Maybe because of the large number of new features in each release, or maybe because of the holidays in between, I've just realized during conversations with a couple of different clients that many folks aren't aware of some of the great new functionality. With the Summer '08 release right around the corner, I wanted to provide a couple of quick refresher courses to make sure you aren't missing out on any of the functionality that's already out there. I'll focus on the Spring '08 release below, and will go back in time even more to cover the Winter '08 release in my next blog entry.

(By the way ... there are many, many more features that were rolled out the past two releases and I don't mean to short-change all of the others, but the ones I'll cover are some that will give you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of low implementation time and high impact for your org.)

Dashboard Scheduling: This is one of the most useful updates in ages, especially if you are one of the many of us who have ever looked at a dashboard in disbelief before finally realizing that the information is from a month ago and you need to refresh (don't lie, you know you've done it!). Now you can schedule automatic refreshes (daily, weekly, or monthly) and, even better, you can have the entire dashboard emailed to you or other users each time it is refreshed. If you use dashboards and haven't enabled this feature yet, do so immediately! Just go to your dashboards tab and click the arrow on the refresh button.
Outer Joins Reporting: While it still doesn’t enable exception reporting (i.e. Campaigns WITHOUT Members or Accounts WITHOUT Contacts), outer joins reporting does provide the ability to report on data in a useful way that wasn’t available before. Now you can create a report that shows all Campaigns and their associated members, if any exist. Check out custom report types to start building reports with outer joins. But read on for a way to finally do true exception reporting for Accounts without Opportunities …
Opportunity Rollups on Accounts: I can’t tell you how useful this feature is. You can finally create custom formula fields on accounts that aggregate Opportunity data. There are many possibilities for rollups, such as seeing the number of opportunities for each account, the total value of all deals for an account, etc. Most importantly, you can do exception reporting – create an rollup summary field that counts the number of opportunities for each account and then report on all accounts that have zero.
Advanced Validation Rule Functions: For those of you using validation rules (and just about everyone should be in order to enforce some data quality), three new functions are available for building complex rules – VLOOKUP, ISNUMBER, and REGEX. The VLOOKUP is especially helpful, allowing you to lookup data in another object to use as a basis for validation. As suggested by Salesforce, you could validate the zip code in an address by using VLOOKUP to search for a match in a custom object containing valid zip codes. Even more exciting, according to Eric Bezar of Force.com product management, Salesforce is planning to allow VLOOKUP in more places in the future, like maybe workflow field updates and custom formula fields. Bring it on!
List View Builder: Some small enhancements have been made to the list view builder, making it easier to select and order columns. “Created by” and “Last Modified by” information is also included now.
Activity Enhancements: Drag-and-drop Calendaring lets you reschedule events by dragging them to a new time or day on the single-user calendar view. Also, spell check is now available for notes and comments on activities.

If I've peaked your interest enough, you can get more details on the Spring '08 release blog or you can download the detailed release notes.