The Official Salesforce Blog
The Official Salesforce Blog - Data Quality
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Merging Two Salesforce.com Instances
May 5, 2006
If you have more than one instance of salesforce.com in your company as a result of separate business units, or a merger, this presentation on how to combine two separate salesforce.com accounts into one is for you. This presentation will help you identify and understand some of the complexities, tricks and tools related to this type of migration. This is a complicated initiative, and one that we strongly recommend you consider getting some assistance with.
Updated as of: Winter 07 Release -
Merging Two Salesforce.com Instances
May 5, 2006
If you have more than one instance of salesforce.com in your company as a result of separate business units, or a merger, this presentation on how to combine two separate salesforce.com accounts into one is for you. This presentation will help you identify and understand some of the complexities, tricks and tools related to this type of migration. This is a complicated initiative, and one that we strongly recommend you consider getting some assistance with.
Updated as of: Winter 07 Release -
Post Your Questions about the Excel Connector on the Discussion Boards
Apr 28, 2006Our earlier post about the Excel Connector has attracted a steady stream of comments about it's usage, so we decided to create a new discussion board just for it:The Excel Connector Discussion.
For all three of you who don't know about it, the Excel Connector is a useful tool to easily import data, insert new records into both standard and custom objects, query data from salesforce and perform mass updates in Excel. It's available for both, Professional and Enterprise Edition cutomers. Though it's not officially supported, several Salesforce.com gurus, including Benji Jasik and Ron Hess (the original author of the connector), frequent the Successforce boards, making it a much better place to discuss it. I've also copied the comments from the earlier post onto the board so that everything is in one place.
Technorati Tags: salesforce.com, excel, open source, integration -
Importing Attachments Using the Sforce Data Loader
Aug 23, 2005Here is a great solution by Chris Bonacore
Some of you have asked for details on importing attachments via the Data Loader so I thought it may help for everyone.
If you want to migrate from one org to another, then you first need to get a Weekly Export Service download. Make sure you check the "Include attachments" box. You will get an attachments.csv and the actual attachments.
The key to importing attachments is a little known feature inside Data Loader. The part that is not documented is that the import wants the actual filename in the BODY field. So for example, the attachments themselves have a ID name, let's say its 123456789 and it is on your hard drive in the C:\Export folder. So in the BODY field you need to put C:\Export\123456789. -
Excel Connector Available for Professional Edition Customers
Jul 25, 2005Update: We've created a new message board for discussing the Excel Connector. Please continue this conversation there.
Professional Edition customers have asked how to load custom objects. We've made a version of the popular open source Sforce Excel Connector available for Professional Edition Customers.
Click here to download the connector and view the documentation. Please note that you must download Office Edition first for this tool to work.
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Mass Uploading Products to a Price Book
Apr 27, 2005
There’s a
great post on the message boards about adding products to a standard
price book using Ron Hess’s Excel
Sforce Connector. The highlights are below but you can also click here to read the full thread.
To add products to the Standard Price Book, you have to add entries to the 'PricebookEntry' table.
The table contains three id fields:
Price Book Entry ID
Price Book ID
Product ID
The Pricebook ID is of the Standard Price Book which you can get from querying the Pricebook2 table. The Product ID is of the Product you want to add and you can get that from the Product2 table. The Pricebook Entry ID value is 'new'.
Fill out the rest of the table as needed (List Price, Active, Use Standard Price, Currency). If you need a product with 2 currencies, add the product again to the PriceBook Entry book and just change the currency field. -
Creating a WIL for Merging Duplicate Accounts
Apr 6, 2005Have you every found an account record that's a duplicate and wanted to launch the account merge form right from that account? Here are the general steps.
Create a Web Link for the account object as: https://na1.salesforce.com/merge/accmergewizard.jsp?srch={!Account_Name}
Add that Web link to your page layout call it "Find Duplicates." Now go to an account and fire off your new WIL.
You may have to adjust the account name to pick up the duplicate, however you now skip that mess of going to the accounts tab.
I 'WIL' have to admit I didn't think of this one on my own. It was passed to me from one of the SFDC professional services guys. Thanks.
Fifedog
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Excel Sforce Connector
Mar 21, 2005Update: We have created a new discussion board to discuss this product:The Excel Connector Discussion. The AppExchange Data Loader is another tool that is helpful when doing similar tasks.
For those of you who haven’t discovered the Sforce Excel Connector built by Ron Hess, it’s a fantastic open source tool.
The connector allows you to import records from Excel directly into Salesforce.com. It also allows you to perform mass updates which can be very handy for data cleansing projects.
The Sforce Connector uses the API and is therefore only available to Enterprise Edition Customers. While this tool is easy to install and easy to use, you need to be careful anytime you’re manipulating large amounts of live data. Click on the links below to learn more.
Excel Sforce Connector | Best Practice Presentation by Ron Hess | The Excel Connector Discussion
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If it's not in salesforce.com, it doesn't exist
Mar 1, 2005For the past several months salesforce.com has been traveling the country holding local events where customers speak about what’s made their CRM implementation a success. Today at the city tour event in New York, Rob Grossberg, the VP of Sales Operations at DoubleClick was presenting and he put the following quote on the screen.
The thought is that if you can transform your culture into this mindset; collaboration takes off, data quality improves, and executives have newfound visibility into their business.This theme has become so pervasive amongst successful salesforce.com customers than when John Merrill from Cablevision saw the quote he turned to the person sitting next to him to say, “That’s on my presentation too.”
If your organization lives by a similar saying we'd love to hear how it's changed the corporate culture. To tell your story, add a comment below.
Download the image for your PowerPoint presentation
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Importing Accounts with Complex Hierarchies
Mar 1, 2005Salesforce.com supports importing of Accounts through its import wizard. During this process it can associate accounts in a hierarchical relationship by matching a parent account name in the import file to an existing account. However, frequently data is linked in other systems using another relationship e.g. an id and parent id field. In this situation, there is no easy way to make the import wizards set up the hierarchy correctly.
A solution is to run the import without mapping the parent account name and then updating the records in Salesforce after the import. In order for the update to occur, you must import the extra fields which link the accounts. These values can be stored in standard fields such as ACCOUNT_NUMBER and SIC_CODE or into custom fields.
Once the data is imported, the update can be performed. One quick and easy way to do this is using Excel and the Sforce connector for Excel. The steps are:
1/ Run an Account query using the connector to retrieve all accounts
2/ Use the Excel VLOOKUP function to populate the parent account according to your preference
3/ Update the Accounts back to Salesforce using the connector update
The hardest part of making this work is understanding the VLOOKUP function. The documentation in Excel for this function is fairly clear but here is an example
=IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(D5,A:B,2,FALSE)),"",VLOOKUP(D5,A:B,2,FALSE))
The core of this function is the VLOOKUP(D5,A:B,2,FALSE) expression. This means find the value in D5 in the A column and, if a match is found, return the value in B5. As you paste this function into other rows, the relative references will update i.e. D5 becomes E5
Sometimes this function will not return a match and then returns an error which breaks the Salesforce update. The solution is to enclose the VLOOKUP with an ISERROR check so that a non-match will return the empty string and this then updates the Salesforce field correctly.
This is a fairly simple example where the hierarchy is controlled by separate ids but it can be extended to implement any relationship. Happy importing…
Steve Buikhuizen | Sales Engineer | Salesforce.com Asia Pacific
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Mass Transferring Contacts
Feb 4, 2005
If you have Enterprise Edition, you could use the sforce Connector to do this type of transfer.Say Ralph1 and Bob2 were the original sales team, with Ralph1 the primary one. Now they've been replaced with Mary1 and Sue2. The reassignment of accounts from Ralph1 to Mary1 could also transfer all the contacts owned by Ralph, in his accounts, to Mary. You're left with some other contacts owned by the old Bob2.
You could produce a report of contacts owned by Bob2 (possibly limited to accounts owned by Mary1). Then change the owner of these contacts to either Mary or Sue, as desired. The change is done by overlaying the Bob2 ownerid with Mary1, highlighting these cells, and requesting "Update selected cells". -Scot
http://forums.crmsuccess.com/sforce/board/message?board.id=discuss&message.id=620#M620 -
Best Practices for Naming Opportunities
Jan 28, 2005
A recommendation I wanted to share on a best practice for Opportunity Naming is that you include the Account Name in the Opportunity naming. An example would be: "Account Name"-"Opportunity Identifier"
The Opportunity Identifier would be something that would help identify what this specific deal is for (i.e., product name + quantity, order date, service name). So your Opportunity Name might look something like:
Company A - 20 Widgets
Company A - June OrderThe reasons why this is recommend are as follows:
Multiple Opportunities: if you have more than one opportunity with an account (i.e., 2004 order/2005 order, product a/service a) you will literally have to click into each Opportunity to find the information about it to understand what it is for
Search and Navigation: if you look on your recent items tab, and you name your Opportunities by product/service only, you will see a bunch of Opportunities named the same, and will not be able to easily find the one you are looking for
Reporting: for Summary and Matrix reports, you have a limited number of “Group By” options (3 on Summary Reports, 2 on Matrix reports). This is more relevant for Matrix reports, if you wanted to see Pipeline by Rep, Account and Opportunity – or Rep, Account, Product … you can’t. With only two Group By filters, you won’t be able to display all this information on one report
Forecast: the forecast tab displays the Opportunity name only, so in order to know which deal is which, you will have to click into each, unless of course you can identify which is which by the Opportunity Name
Lead Conversion: when converting a Lead record, the system defaults the Opportunity Name to be created to “(Account Name)-“, helping you enforce this type of naming convention.
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Improving Data Quality
Jan 28, 2005
Preparing and Improving Data Quality
Phil Barker (salesforce.com), Carol Parker (Orange), Jodi Hrbek (Protivity)
Filtering Out Dirty Data
Phil Barker (salesforce.com), Chris Badger (Inside Scoop), Trevor Wilmont (Sirva)
Filtering Out Dirty Data (R)
Phil Barker (salesforce.com), Glenn Wilson (CRMfusion), Theresa DeRycke (salesforce.com)Naming Convention Best Practices
This worksheet provides guidelines for corporate names and abbreviations so you can establish consistent data which will help with searching and reporting....Below are three partner solutions that I'd highly recommend for imporving data quality.
Data Quality: Inside Scoop
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Salesforce.com Office Edition
Jan 27, 2005
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Ten Common CRM Mistakes
Jan 27, 2005
CRM can add significant value to an organization, but many
implementations fail due to a few basic mistakes. This presentation
addresses ten of the most common pitfalls companies face and provides
guidance to help ensure your CRM rollout is a success.
This presentation is available in Breeze (13 mins), PowerPoint and PDF format.
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Data Quality Dashboard
Jan 27, 2005
One
critical element of managing a team is watch over workload and data quality. The first of the three dashboards pictured tracks open leads. We have committed ourselves to a 24 hour response time so I know that if any rep has more than 50 open leads, we aren’t following up as fast as we should be. To make sure this is more than an idle threat, we spell it out at the top of the dashboard, “>50 Leads = Lead Router Turned Off.” Since this is their lifeblood, you can bet that they pay attention to it.
The second dashboard depicts open tasks. It’s very easy for reps to get in the habit of setting tasks and never closing them out. This hurts collaboration in a significant way because when a task list becomes unrulely it’s very likely a rep will miss a new task assigned to them. It also means that someone at some point in time is going to have to delete the task for them. In any event, that’s why we decided to crack down and put in place a policy where in there should never be more than 100 overdue task.
The last dashboard is an example of an exception report. When a field isn’t filled out or an account is assigned to the wrong person, you can put their name up on the wall of shame.
All three of these elements are visible to the reps and gone over inside the application during team meetings to reinforce the desired behavior.
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Sticks and Carrots to Improve Adoption
Jan 27, 2005
Strong user adoption is critical for any CRM initiative because it
directly impacts collaboration, data quality, and executive reporting.
This presentation presents techniques for administrators and executive
sponsors to help them drive adoption across their organizations. This presentation is available in Breeze (9 mins).
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Adoption Dashboards
Jan 27, 2005
Administrators need to find tangible metrics to help monitor and
improve user adoption across their organizations. This presentation
shows you how to set up dashboards in salesforce.com to track user
logins, call activity, and data quality. This presentation is available in Breeze (8 mins).
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