Salesforce Summer 11 New Features Announced

Salesforce has opened up the pre-release of Summer 11 and with that come the release notes describing all of the new features. We haven't seen a release date yet, but here's a look at what's coming in Summer 11:

• Chatter Enhancements - Lots and lots of new Chatter changes. This is the third release in a row that has been Chatter heavy, but that's not surprising considering the amount of effort salesforce has ut into it. Here are some of the Chatter highlights:

• Chatter Favorites - Finally a way to flag important Chatter announcements as a Favorite, and be able to find it quickly after
• Chatter in List Views - A handy feature that allows you to view the chatter feeds of records in a list view. Each view now has a toggle that allows you to switch between the view and the Chatter feeds from those records. You can also follow/un-follow records right from any view now
• Chatter Files - You now have the ability to allow a person or group to have collaborate permission on a file you share from Chatter.
  
• Dashboard & Report Enhancements - A few quick but good updates here:
• Multiple Field Selector - No more dragging and dropping one field at a time on the report builder. Thankfully you can now grab multiple ones and pull them into the report at the same time.
  
• Calendar Drop Downs - On filters, if it's a date field, we now have the calendar drop down
• Chatter Snapshots - We can now push Chatter Dashboard Snapshots to a group feed
• Speed Improvements - The report builder preview loads faster now too. It was a noticeable improvement
  
• Enhance Profile User Interface - We saw this at Dreamforce in December and nice to see it make it in. If you have a lot of profiles in your account, this will be a big time saver.
  
• Jigsaw - All accounts can now see a Jigsaw tab and do searching for Jigsaw contacts. You can't get at the phone or email info with the free version, but users can search to see what data is there. It's basically a free preview account in all instances.
  
• Sync Tasks with Salesforce for Outlook - You can now sync tasks with Salesforce for Outlook. There are some nice editable filters around the age of the tasks that let you customize what sync as well. We still don't have the Create Case button back. Vote to get that back on Ideas.
• Workflow and Approvals for KB Articles - This is useful especially if you're writing KB articles in a group. You can now use the approvals or workflow process before you submit KB articles for publication and support other flows.
  
• Custom Sidebar Components for the Service Cloud Console - We don't know a lot of accounts using this yet, but this will let you really extend out the Service Cloud Console which came out 2 releases ago. You can build new components using the Service Cloud Console Toolkit and visualforce.

Overall, not the biggest release we've seen, but there's some good stuff in here. I suspect there will be a big Winter 12 (or maybe even Fall 11) release on the heals of the next Dreamforce and that will be a big one.

Also, it's not part of the Summer 11 release, but they also just released Salesforce for Twitter and Facebook v4 app which now integrates Facebook posts into the Conversations object.

Follow everything related to your account with Account360 Chatter

Empower your Sales Representatives to be aware of everything happening related their accounts. Whether it's a high priority case being opened for their account, or a new opportunity being created by an overlay sales team, or even a maintenance contract expiring, they need to know of these changes so when they are speaking to that customer next, there are no surprises. Salesforce.com's Chatter is a perfect tool to receive the notifications, but currently they would need to follow not only the account, but all records associated with that account to get the Chatter feeds.

That's why we've developed Account360 Chatter. With Account360 Chatter, simply by following the account a user can:

• Receive Chatter notifications for any new record created on an account. This includes Cases, Opportunities, Assets, Contracts and even custom objects.
• Receive filtered Chatter notifications for updates to these related records. Only want to know about High or Critical cases? With Account360 Chatter, you can create a filter for that.

We've just released Account360 Chatter - Cases on the appexchange. Account360 Chatter - Cases is a free app that will create a Chatter feed for all new cases created for an account. Again, this is a free app, so please give it a try.

If you're interested in getting the full functionality of Account360 Chatter, please visit GearsCRM and we will get back to you within 24 hours or call us at 1-888-817-5764.

Lead Scoring with Salesforce.com

There are several ways to handle lead scoring in salesforce, including using formula fields or building apex triggers, but one of the easiest is the Force.com Lead Scoring App. This is a terrific app that Salesforce Labs have built, and best of all, it's free.


How does Lead Scoring work?
The Force.com Lead Scoring app is a simple packaged installation from the appexchange. Once you have it deployed in your instance, you'll see an app in the top right drop down for "Lead Scoring". Select this, and you can start.

The first step is to create Lead Scoring rules. The lead scoring app has a simple interface that allows you to enter in each rule and the criteria for the rule.

Entering in a Lead Scoring Rule

For each rule you create, you simply need to enter in the type of rule, how many points the rule is worth if it is met, and then the criteria for the rule. For example, if your company targets Technology companies, you could enter a rule that says if the Industry equals "High Tech" for a lead, that lead gets 25 points.

Now, one of the best features of the lead scoring app, is not only can you score off of values from the lead, but you can create scores based on Campaign Membership that the lead is associated with. Have a very important email campaign that you want to make sure the responses go to the top of the list? You can set the score so a Response to that campaign is worth any number of points and have it moved to the top of the call queue. The lead scoring is cumulative, so a lead can score across multiple rules. In total, the application supports up to 200 separate rules, counting both leads & campaign member rule types.

Overall, for a free application, this is a tough one to beat. The fact it can support lead & campaign member type rules, and can have up to 200 rules immediately makes it much more robust then something you can do with formula fields. The ease of which you can add new rules couple with an easy interface to activate and deactivate rules as needed makes it an easy choice over custom code if your business rules support it.

Parting Tips
If this is something that interests you, here are some quick tips we've found when deploying this with our clients.

• Get your business rules down first. This app makes lead scoring very easy to implement, but you still need to understand your business to come up with rules that make sense. Be sure to map that out before rolling this out. That said, you could easily implement this in stealth mode and use it as a way to collect data, before doing a full roll-out. 
• Don't try to be perfect the first time. While it's important to understand your business and roll out a good rule set, it doesn't need to be perfect. Lead Scoring inevitably leads to surprises and hidden gems of lead segments that you never realized were such high quality. A tool like this helps you adapt quickly as you uncover these changes. In addition, the lead scoring app includes a simple button that allows you to re-score all of your leads as you make lead scoring modifications. 
• While the interface for lead scoring only allows you to select one lead field at a time, you can create more complex logic by creating a formula field, and then referring to that with the lead scoring rule. If you have a rule that needs multiple criteria to be met (High Tech companies with over $1B in revenue for example) the formula field is the way to go for that
• The scores update each time you edit the lead. Be sure to include qualification data that your sales reps are trying to collect when they speak to your leads into the model. This way the score is adjusting as you learn more about your leads.
• Finally, don't be afraid to use negative score values. Sometimes the best result is knowing who not to call. If there is a segment that you know is not worth the resources to pursue, assign them with a negative score and have them removed from your call queues.