The Official Salesforce Blog
The Official Salesforce Blog - November 2007
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Winter '08 Webinar - Now Available
Nov 14, 2007The new features from Winter ’08 are now live! One of the best ways to learn about all of the powerful new functionality is by listening to the Winter ‘08 webinar. The webinar is broken up into bite-sized chapters which are hosted by product managers – the people here at salesforce.com who build our products and new features. Each chapter is about 5-10 minutes and will give you a quick and easy glimpse into what is new in both our platform and our applications with Winter ‘08. You can learn about our exciting new force.com technology, Visualforce, which offers a revolutionary way to customize and build new user interfaces. Or you can check out our two brand new applications, Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas, which both harness the power of popular Web 2.0 technologies to leverage the wisdom of your communities. Last, but not least, you can learn all about the new usability and customization functionality we’ve added to our CRM applications. Watch the webinar by clicking here.
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New Process Map for Service and Support (PPT)
Nov 9, 2007Today we posted our third process map, this one for Service and Support.
It was a fun project to work on because this product has really grown up and I don’t think most people realize how powerful it is to run sales and support side-by-side.
I also think there are a good number of companies who are supporting customers over the phone and via email, but haven’t really formalized their processes yet. With this map you can start to think about all your various customer touch points, what can be automated, and what you need to measure.
This process map also introduces the new customer portal. The portal lets you provide 24/7 self-service support, letting customers check on cases and search the knowledgebase. It’s much more powerful than that though. You can expose Salesforce Ideas through the portal creating online community and even deploy custom tabs specific to your business.
Download the map, check it out, and let us know what you think.
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Securing Your Applications and Protecting Data Confidentiality
Nov 6, 2007At salesforce.com, your data security is our top priority. This committment includes providing you with the tools and education that you need in order to keep your data secure. We have created two online training presentations: one for Salesforce Administrators, and one for Salesforce End Users. Both presentations outline security measures available from within Salesforce, and include our best practice recommendations.
Keeping Your Enterprise Applications Secure details our recommended security best practices for Salesforce Administrators. It covers the following topics:
- Communicating with your IT Department
- Communicating with your Users
- Defining Roles
- Profile-based Access Controls (IP restrictions, login hours restrictions)
- Session Settings
- Password creation
Protecting Your Data Confidentiality focuses on how your Users can protect themselves and your organization against online attacks. This presentation covers:
- Salesforce user responsibilities
- Password creation
- Using anti-virus, anti-spyware, and hardware firewalls to add layers of protection
- Phishing: What it is, How to Recognize It, and How to Avoid Becoming a Victim
Tags: security, enterprise applications, data confidentiality
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New Process Map for Activity Management (PPT)
Nov 6, 2007Today we posted a new process map, the first in a series to be release over the next couple weeks.
(Download the PowerPoint or PDF)
We decided to start with Activity Management because it is one of the central building blocks for CRM. It allows you coordinate customer-facing activities and develop a compete view of the account.
Whether you are in account management, sales, or support, this process map answers three of the most basic questions.
- What do I do when I get a call from a customer?
- What do I do when I get an email from a customer?
- How do I manage my tasks and activities?
If you can get these concepts across everything else starts to fall in place. Reps realize that there is valuable information inside Salesforce so they login and keep information up to date. Because the information is up to date managers can run the reports and dashboards they need and get visibility into their business. When managers trust the information they begin to manage to the application, which in turn starts a self-perpetuating cycle.
Once your users understand this basic concept, you can introduce them to the Sales Process Map, or soon to be released Service and Support Process Map.
Since this map is brand new we’ll probably iterate it over the next couple weeks. If you ideas on how we can improve it, leave a comment below.
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