The Official Salesforce Blog - In the News

• Announcing Force.com Checkout: Buy AppExchange Apps in Clicks

  Clara Shih Dec 13, 2008

  (From The AppExchange Blog)

  Exciting news! Starting this week, customers and partners can buy and sell AppExchange apps online anytime, anywhere, from a browser.

  

  On Monday, we officially launched Force.com Checkout to a standing-room only audience at our Cloudforce Event in New York. With Checkout, it is easier than ever for customers to do business with salesforce.com and our partners. Customers now have a "one stop shop" where you can trial, pay for, start using, and manage subscriptions of Salesforce CRM and some of your favorite AppExchange partner apps.

  Here is what CRM Buyer had to say:

  “On Monday, Salesforce.com announced some of the remaining pieces of the grand puzzle when it introduced Checkout…a necessary component that, though its focus is financial rather than technical, enables the technology to fully function. It appears to me that with Checkout, Salesforce now has deployed a new closed-loop business process for cloud computing that starts with development, moves through distribution and sales, and culminates in the transaction and payment….This is cool stuff.” 

  All Checkout partner applications are natively built and run on Force.com, which means you can rest assured they have the same security, reliability, and performance of applications from salesforce.com. And it's not just CRM applications. The majority of Checkout apps and new AppExchange apps are extending the SaaS model beyond just your sales, marketing, and customer service functions to other important areas in your company: human resources, IT, finance, operations, you name it. Here is the full list:

  • Financials and accounting ERP from CODA
  • Non-profit constituent relationship management from Convio
  • Fleet management solutions from Datasul
  • Order management ERP solutions from Glovia, a subsidiary of Fujitsu
  • Staffing solutions from Jobscience
  • Mobile expense reporting from Model Metrics
  • Recruiting from Riptide
  • Real estate management from Riptide
  • Customer reference tracking from Riptide
  • Risk management from StakeWare
  • Financial relationship management from StraightThrough
  • Productivity tools from Appirio
  • Compensation management from Callidus
  • Salesforce CRM administrator tools from DrivEnable

  Existing customers, you can start using Checkout today from your dropdown menu inside the app. Everyone else, learn more here.

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• Looking in the rear view mirror

  Scott Morrison Nov 18, 2008

  I started my recruiting programs gig at salesforce.com in Summer 2005. Five years prior I had ridden a similar wave at Clarify where we were always looking in the rear view mirror at Siebel. In Fall 2005, Oracle acquired Siebel and in typical salesforce.com fashion, it was "game on". We launched a “Siebel Survivor” recruitment campaign targeting Siebel employees and hired more than 30 employees worldwide. 2 weeks ago, after we all drank more of the Dreamforce user community kool-aid, one of our Technology leaders sent me an email asking about doing it again. With all the gloom in today’s media and tech in general, it’s clear that we are in a unique position as a growing company and hiring “A-players”—in Technology, Sales, and more. What better way to let the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Tech Community know?
  

  
  

  Starting Monday 11/17, we launched a mobile billboard campaign from San Francisco to San Jose Download RouteOverviewmap.pdf promoting “life changing careers; game-changing technology” and on Friday, November 21 we’ll have it in downtown San Francisco at our 1 Market Street headquarters during the lunch hour passing out recruiting swag and ice cream. I feel very fortunate to be a part of a company that sees this economic time as a tipping point in our favor (much like in 2001) and recruiting top talent as a competitive advantage.

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• Now Your Other Computer is a Data Center

  Kingsley Joseph Aug 1, 2008

  Marc Benioff's guest blog post on what Web 3.0 is was just published on TechCrunch IT. Marc expands on the idea that while Web 1.0 was about distributed transactions, and Web 2.0 is about distributed participation, Web 3.0 will be about democratizing the power to innovate. It's a very important and insightful essay, so I highly recommend that you check it out.

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• Join the Salesforce Professional Network on LinkedIn

  Katie Kollitz Apr 25, 2008

  
  Salesforce.com now has a LinkedIn group with nearly 1,000 members! Join the Salesforce Professional Network today by visiting this web page.

  The Salesforce.com Professional Network connects former and present salesforce.com users, administrators and employees, allowing them to expand their professional development, exchange ideas, network and continue to be a part of the Salesforce.com community.

  As a group member, you'll have the option to make your profile available to other group members. You'll also have a Salesforce Professional Network badge on your LinkedIn profile.

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• Salesforce.com Receives Intelligent Enterprise 2008 Editors’ Choice Award

  Gordon Evans Feb 7, 2008

  We’re thrilled to announce that Intelligent Enterprise Magazine has given salesforce.com a 2008 Editors’ Choice Award and named it to the “Intelligent Enterprise Dozen”. 

  In naming its Award recipients, Intelligent Enterprise described salesforce.com as

  the David in an IT industry full of Goliaths

  and went on to say the company had

  given rise to the SaaS market almost single-handedly, whacking SAP and Oracle with a few rocks in the process.

  The publication also remarked that salesforce.com “is showing the IT world what SaaS can and should be, and the entire industry has taken notice."

  This marks the third year in a row salesforce.com has received the the Editors' Choice Award, which recognizes companies for exceptional vision, technology innovation and customer leadership in attaining strategic objectives.

  The full article can be found here.

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• Spring '08 Release Update

  Katie Kollitz Jan 16, 2008

  Salesforce.com's Spring '08 release is just around the corner, so we wanted to highlight some of the exciting new features you can expect from our force.com platform and SaaS applications. If you haven't done so already, be sure to check out the Spring '08 preview and the feature detail pages. And if you're curious about when you'll see these changes in your org, keep checking trust.salesforce.com for the latest release schedule.

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• Winter '08 Release Update

  Katie Kollitz Oct 18, 2007

        
  The long-anticipated Winter '08 release is just around the corner!  Winter '08 is our 24th generation release and comes with some pretty exciting announcements. First, we've renamed our platform to Force.com to represent all of the new advancements we've made, the most exciting of which is Visualforce, our new user-interface as a service! In addition to the new platform features, we'll also release two brand new applications: Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas. Finally, we have (of course) made many exciting enhancements to all of our CRM applications. 

  Those of you who attended Dreamforce have already seen an impressive preview of all the new features we've delivered since the summer release in August -- but for a closer look, be sure to check out the Feature Detail Pages.
  
  In the mean time, here are the top features I'd like to highlight in the Winter '08 release:

  • Visualforce: Visualforce lets you create any application, with any user interface, for any device, all running on demand on salesforce.com's servers.  This new functionality is incredibly powerful for all the developers and partners who want to build exciting new applications.  And for end users, it means that there are endless possibilities now for more customized applications that look and work exactly as you want them to.  And since these new applications are being built on the Force.com platform, they will integrate with your existing Salesforce applications and come with all the benefits of our multi-tenant infrastructure.
  • Tagging and Inline Editing : Both of these two web 2.0 features leverage the force.com platform and make all your Salesforce applications even easier to use -- which means you'll see increases in adoption, data quality, and productivity.
  • Content: One of the newest additions to the Salesforce suite of applications, Salesforce Content helps you share and manage documents, presentations, multi-media files and other business content by harnessing popular Web 2.0 functionality like tagging, rating, subscriptions and full-text search. No more calling and emailing around the office looking for the latest presentation -- Salesforce Content will place those important documents right at your fingertips.
  • Ideas: Another brand-new application, Salesforce Ideas helps you get connected to your communities by providing an interactive, online community delivered as a service.  As with every Salesforce application, there's no software or hardware to manage.  Great ideas can come from anywhere, and Salesforce Ideas lets your communities post and vote on ideas so that the best ideas get bubbled to the top.  Start collecting innovative ideas, holding discussions and watching the best ideas from your communities shape your business. 
  • Campaign Hierarchies: Marketers often employ multiple tactics to generate demand for a particular product or program--SEM, Direct Mail, Events, etc--with Campaign Hierarchies, you can easily associate these tactical campaigns to a parent campaign, up to five levels deep, and see roll-up performance metrics. This feature gets my vote for most exciting--for us marketers here at salesforce.com, it's been nothing less than life-changing.
  • Salesforce to Salesforce: Collaborating with your partners reaches new heights with Salesforce to Salesforce. If your partners also use Salesforce, you can now directly and securely exchange data such as leads, opportunities, and custom objects through Salesforce.  Improve efficiency and be assured that your data--and your partner's data--is always up to date.

  Winter '08 is one of our biggest releases yet and delivers way more features than I can cover here.  Be sure to check out the Admin Preview for an overview of all the great new functionality you've come to expect from our releases.  Be sure to keep checking this blog for more resources, including the release schedule, the Winter '08 Video tour and the Release notes.  Finally, our pre-release program is now available so sign up to try out the new features in your own test environment.

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• Summer '07 Release Update

  Ainsley Tai Jul 16, 2007

  In Australia today, we announced the Salesforce Summer ’07 release. We’re very proud of this release not just because it is the 23rd generation of Salesforce and is our 3rd major release this year, but also because it is a big leap forward for IT-ready platform-as-a-service. Check out the new features… it’s full of goodness for CRM and platform customers alike!

  Some of the top features I’d like to highlight are:

  • Apex Code – This long-anticipated functionality is now available to Unlimited customers! With Apex Code, you can use the power of programming without the burdens of software.
  • Intelligent Workflow –Now you can model and enforce any business process you wish with more dynamic workflow, including the use of formulas in workflow and approval rules.
  • Multiple Sandboxes – Summer ’07 allows you to have multiple test environments running at the same time… create a sandbox for developers, testers, training, and more.
  • Customer Portal – The Customer Portal is generally available! You now have a platform to collaborate with your customers - personalize the portal for different users segments, and share any custom application or mash-ups with your customers.

  Summer ‘07 delivers a ton more popularly requested features that you can learn more about in our Admin Preview, or our Summer ’07 Release Tour. To prepare yourself for the release, browse our Top Five Ways to Prepare for Summer 07 post. If you’re ready to get hands-on, you can sign up for our pre-release program.

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• Top Five Things to Do to Get Ready for Winter '07

  Jamie Grenney Dec 28, 2006

  What better way to start off the New Year than with the excitement of salesforce.com’s Winter ’07 release! As with all of salesforce.com's releases, the upgrade path is seamless. When you log in on Monday morning all the popularly requested features of Winter '07 will be right there at your fingertips. 

  Make sure your organization is ready for the new release with our prep list:   

  1. Educate yourself on the new features and functionality in the Winter '07 release 

  • Watch the Winter '07 Release Video Tour for a walk through of the new features
  • Visit the Feature Detail pages on Successforce.com for an overview of what’s new
  • Dig into the Release Notes for more detail on new features
  • Consider a New Feature Workshop

  2. Identify which features your company should consider adopting and pitch them to the appropriate executives. 

  • Potential features might include Salesforce Console, Popup reminders, or Embedded Mashups 
  • Learn from customer experts how to turn change management into a reality and successfully manage salesforce.com releases 
  • Get ahead of the curve and learn tools to drive adoption across your user base

  3. Highlight two or three new features which will help make your reps more productive and find ways to drive adoption

  • Potential features might include Lotus Notes, Enhanced Activity Management, or the new UI customization. 
  • To introduce these exciting features to your team you might refer to the best practice post on creating a monthly newsletter as well as the post on sending mass emails to your users from within Salesforce.

  4. Check out the Winter ’07 Apex Platform and the new features it enables

  • The Salesforce Console enables a Business Web Desktop for higher productivity—check out our Tip Sheet on using the Salesforce Console
  • Apex allows for Mashups— Mashups use features of other web applications combined with your Salesforce application. You can now embed mashups in dashboards and your detail page layouts such as Accounts or Contacts. Find out more on custom s-controls with this tutorial and check out some great examples from Dreamforce ‘06 in Business Mashups: Best of the Web
  • Work Flow and approvals can help you automate even more business processes. Read Getting Started with the Approvals Process and view useful approval process examples

   

  5. Browse the AppExchange directory for additional on-demand apps you might want to install

  • Potential AppExchange apps might include SalesSleuth, Diamond Data, Net Documents and Shipping 2.0 for partners who are taking advantage of new Winter ’07 functionality
  • Watch the overview on how to install new applications into your Salesforce account.
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• Winter ’07 Upgrade Schedule

  Jamie Grenney Dec 28, 2006

  Over the first two weekends in January, salesforce.com will be rolling out the exciting new Winter ’07 release. In order to ensure the highest performance with the release, we’ll be upgrading our servers on a rolling basis. Want to know when you’ll get your hands on all the popularly requested features? Follow these steps:   

  1. Log in to Salesforce.com as you normally do.

  2. Look at the address bar—your server name is located in the area circled in red.   

  

  3. Next, visit http://trust.salesforce.com to view the upgrade schedule for your server.

   

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• Successforce.com Gets Ready for Dreamforce

  Jamie Grenney Oct 3, 2006

  It’s hard to believe but Dreamforce is less than a week away!

  In preparation for salesforce.com’s biggest event of the year, we’ve cataloged all 150 breakout sessions on the Successforce.com site.  

  
  

  During the conference you can use this guide to plan your day. You can navigate by track or choose between the various session offered during a given time slot. On the session detail pages you’ll find a list of speakers and their respective companies. We also have a spot where you can leave comments about the session, or post questions you’d like to see the presenter cover. (Dreamforce Comments Feed)

  To bring Dreamforce to those who can't make it, we try to post much of the content online. Last year we had over 50k downloads after the conference, and this year we expect a dramatic increase this year as we introduce video. In each of the 12 breakout rooms we’ll be recording video so you can connect with the presenter and see all the amazing product demos. The first video will be posted on Wednesday October 11^th with additional sessions posted to the site as they are produced. For those looking for immediate gratification, we are also planning on posting the PowerPoint slides and other resources referenced in the presentation on the session detail pages.
  

  
  

  We’ve got a fantastic week ahead. You won’t want to miss it. Make your last minute travel plans and get registered today!

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• Introducing Salesforce for Google AdWords

  Jamie Grenney Aug 22, 2006

  We're excited to announce the newest addition to our product line up, Salesforce for Google AdWords. It is based on technology acquired from Kieden, a company we are fond of mentioning on this blog.

  The new offering delivers seamless integration with Google's advertising platform, allowing users to buy keywords and instantly create ads directly within Salesforce that are compliant with Google's editorial policies. With Salesforce for Google AdWords, companies can easily correlate ad clicks with sales metrics such as leads, opportunities, deals, and revenue.

  

  You can sign up for a free trial, download the data sheet or take a look at the demo.

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• Salesforce Launches New Community Site

  Jamie Grenney Jul 21, 2006

  This afternoon we quietly launched the new Successforce.com site, an exciting step forward for the Salesforce.com community. The blogs and message boards are fully integrated, and there are a number of really slick tools like the Google Ajax search in the sidebar.
  

  We’ll tell you more about it on Monday, but if you come across any broken links over the weekend send us an email or add comments below.
  

  Also note that the old CRMSuccess site isn’t going away just yet. Over the next 30 days we’ll be transitioning over so you can continue to visit www.crmsuccess.com.
  

  

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• People are talking about the Salesforce Sandbox

  Jager McConnell, Senior Manager, Product Marketing Jul 6, 2006

  As you’ve probably noticed by now, we enjoy talking about our features and getting the word out about our latest innovations. One of the innovations that I’m particularly fond of is the Salesforce Sandbox. Once our customers start using it, they tell us they can’t imagine living without it.

  What I’ve found interesting is the sheer number of creative ways that our customers have been utilizing it. Some exciting examples are:

  • Shortening their integration and CRM deployment times
  • Protecting their live operating environments during testing
  • Experimenting with new AppExchange applications – exploring new areas of functionality
  • Training new users in a safe environment that exactly mimics their production deployment
  • Trying out extensive customizations without any fear of making a mistake that would impact productivity of their end users
  • And many others…

  But what we’re particularly excited to see is when the press and analysts talk to our customers and validate what we’ve been saying. The folks over at Nucleus Research did just that and have recently written an article on the benefits of Salesforce Sandbox.

  If you're curious about what they found after speaking with customers and doing their own research, feel free to download the article.

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• Salesforce and Google OneBox for Enterprise

  Jamie Grenney Apr 19, 2006

  Today we announced a partnership with Google to make it even easier to access information stored in Salesforce and AppExchange applications. Google OneBox for Enterprise is a new feature of the Google Search Appliance, a piece of hardware you can purchase from Google and install behind your firewall.

  

  Now, in the same way that you can find information on stock tickers or weather on Google.com, you can use the Salesforce OneBox modules to quickly look up Account, Contact, or Opportunity information from inside Salesforce, using search modules codeveloped by salesforce.com and Google.

  For more information you can, read the press release, visit the landing page on salesforce.com, watch an online presentation explaining how it works for salesforce.com customers, or visit the Google Search Appliance page.

  Update: "Here's more on the announcement from the Google Enterprise blog.  They've also put together a video of their partners discussing the Google search box." Via Salesforcewatch.com

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• Winter '06 marks salesforce.com's launch of The Business Web

  Jamie Grenney Jan 18, 2006

  This hour long video from yesterday's Winter ’06 Launch in San Francisco features Marc Benioff, the Chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, along with customers and partners who have built applications on top of the AppExchange. There are a number of great demos during this presentation including integration with Google Maps, Skype, Adobe, Tata, and Business Objects. Find out what all the excitement is about.

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• The Personalized Account Review - Now with Success Benchmarking

  Jamie Grenney Jun 22, 2005

  

  The Personalized Account Review is a powerful tool that offers detailed metrics about how an organization might be using salesforce.com. Since launching it last year, many customers have asked us how they are doing relative to other companies their same size.
  

  This month we've added a component for tracking activity management, the first in a series of Personalized Success Benchmarks that we will send to customers. Activity management works pretty well as a benchmark because unlike sales opportunities or cases, it is closely correlated to the number of users vs. a particular business model. When you plot the data as shown below, it’s also pretty clear that those who use tasks heavily end up at the top of the success ladder.
  

  Click here to find out more about this metric and what you can do to help your company achieve CRM Success.

  

  For instructions on how to subscribe to the Personalized Account Review, Click Here. 

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• Customforce Day in New York City

  Jamie Grenney May 25, 2005

  On Tuesday Salesforce.com held Customforce Day in New York City. There were three very exciting announcements. 

  • Salesforce introduced Customforce 2.0, with significant advances in custom analytics, custom formulas, custom business processes, and custom forecasting.
  • Merrill Lynch signed up 5,000 employees in its private client group, a significant win for salesforce.com and validation of how far the on-demand model has come.
  • Accenture announced a strategic partnership with managing partner John Freeland saying he “continues to be astounded” with how popular Salesforce.com is with big companies Accenture serves.

  To learn more about all the day’s event’s you can view the video rebroadcast or read through some of the press coverage:  News.com | ZDNet | eWeek | Reuters | BusinessWeek
  
  

  
  

  Throughout the afternoon there were several hundred customers and prospects attending breakout sessions, networking with one another, and learning about partner applications. 

  Ron Hess from Neoforma said that he was particularly excited about the Conditional Highlighting feature. He pointed out that the person who sets those thresholds, whether it is the administrator or a manager, has the ability to mold behavior. For example, if you’re name is in the red vs. being in the green, that’s a very powerful motivation tool.

  I also talked to John Merrill from Lightpath about CRMSuccess.com. He said he was very excited about Community Boards where customers can post questions and join discussions. He said that he’s found 3-4 breakthrough ideas which he’s been able to apply at his organization.

  There were many, many other great stories that were told at the event. If you have a story you’d like to share, please add it to the comment section below.

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• How Salesforce.com Uses Macromedia Breeze

  Jamie Grenney May 12, 2005

  Many customers have asked about our use of Macromedia Breeze on the CRMSuccess Web site. We’ve found it to be a fantastic product allowing us to the deliver over 150,000 presentation views in just under a year. This short customer success story featured on Macromedia’s Web site explains what lead us to use their technology and how it fits into our customer communication strategy. 

  
  

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• See What's Coming in the Summer '05 Release

  Jamie Grenney May 11, 2005

  

  Today we posted the Admin Preview and Feature Detail Pages for the Summer '05 Release on CRMSuccess.com. With the 18^th generation of our on-demand solution, salesforce.com is investing in our core CRM applications - Salesforce and Supportforce - as well as unveiling powerful new capabilities to extend CRM and go well beyond it. The Summer ’05 release marks the debut of Multiforce, salesforce.com’s new on-demand operating system that allows companies to create, manage, and share all their business applications in a single environment. Browse through the site and let us know what feature you’re most excited about.

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• Integrationforce Day

  Jamie Grenney Apr 13, 2005

  

  Yesterday, several hundred customers, as well as press and analysts joined Salesforce.com for Integrationfroce Day in San Francisco. 

  During the keynote, there was an exciting demonstration of the new Summer ’05 release including Multiforce and Sforce 6.0.  
  
  View Video Recording | View Slides

  The afternoon was jam-packed with best practices sessions, customer speakers, panels, sneak peaks, success clinics and much more. In the coming weeks, we’ll try to post several of the sessions online.
  

  Here is some of the press coverage from yesterday's event.
  

  News.com | CRM Daily | Internet News | eWeek
  

  Here are some pictures from the event at Ruby Sky.

  Photo Gallery
   

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• New Multiforce Application Environment

  Jamie Grenney Mar 9, 2005

  In New York today, Salesforce.com announced new customization capabilities that will be offered in the Summer ‘05 release. At the core will be the new Multiforce application environment, a feature allowing Salesforce subscribers to multi-task between different on-demand applications, all running in the same environment. With Multiforce, companies will be able to use the same data model, security system, and user interface for any on-demand application built by customers or partners for the sforce platform and with the Customforce tools. Eliminating "data silos" and deployment issues that have traditionally plagued enterprise application efforts, Multiforce will change the economics of customization and allow companies to create applications in as little as a few minutes, and without any code. Much like the way salesforce.com revolutionized application deployment, the company is now redefining application development and customization.

  
  
  In conjunction with this announcement, the new Customforce website was unveiled along with a contest to show your force. This is your chance to win free passes to Dreamforce ’05 in September.

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• Personalized Account Review 2.0

  Jamie Grenney Feb 18, 2005

  

  On Friday CRMSuccess.com released the newest version of the Personalized Account Review, providing even more granular metrics to help organizations easily assess how they are using salesforce.com. This was a very big step forward with over 40 personalization points covering the full breath of the application. It’s our hope that by providing this information in an easily digestible format, customers can drive adoption within their organization and make use of all the features which are being added to salesforce.com.

  For example, as an administrator I can see from the usage metrics below that only 10 of my 180 users are using Outlook Edition. I can click on the link to learn about the feature, watch a best practice presentation, and get the link to download the plug-in. From there I might send a mass email to my users encouraging them to download the plug-in. Next month when I receive my next personalized account review I can see if more of my users and now using the utility.

  Click Here to find out more out the Personalized Account Review. 

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• Salesforce.com for Dummies

  Jamie Grenney Feb 4, 2005

  Salesforce.com for Dummies was released this week and shot up to the #1 spot in Amazon.com's computer and internet section
  

  

  
  
  
  

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