January 2006 - Successforce Blog

Sales Quote with Product Line Items

Today there was a new application posted on the AppExchange for Sales Quotes with Product Line Items. This free App built by two salesforce.com sales engineers with some help from Ron Hess is really pretty impressive.

Quotes

It allows you to quickly create quotes that have multiple product line items and relate them to a single opportunity. There is also a simple approval process so that managers can review quotes before they are presented to customers.

If you’ve been looking for a quoting tool, take a test drive and see how it works.

Sales Quote with Product Line Items

Today there was a new application posted on the AppExchange for Sales Quotes with Product Line Items. This free App built by two salesforce.com sales engineers with some help from Ron Hess is really pretty impressive.

Quotes

It allows you to quickly create quotes that have multiple product line items and relate them to a single opportunity. There is also a simple approval process so that managers can review quotes before they are presented to customers.

If you’ve been looking for a quoting tool, take a test drive and see how it works.

A Faster Way to Customize

Over the past couple of days I’ve been spending a good bit of time building out some new custom tabs and custom objects, and I figured there’s got to be a faster way to bounce between a record and the customize screen.

The solution that I came up with was to create a very simple web link which directs you to the corresponding page in setup. This cut my clicks from four to just one. Now that might seem like a lot but it really adds up. It's also nice not to have to think about where you have to navigate. Rather than Setup, Build, Custom Object, Select Custom Object... it's just Customize.

If you have a fairly large monitor I also suggest launching the setup page inside the Salesforce window with the sidebar. This might seem awkward at first it makes it very easy to get back to the record you were customizing, saving you yet another click.

A Faster Way to Customize

Over the past couple of days I’ve been spending a good bit of time building out some new custom tabs and custom objects, and I figured there’s got to be a faster way to bounce between a record and the customize screen.

The solution that I came up with was to create a very simple web link which directs you to the corresponding page in setup. This cut my clicks from four to just one. Now that might seem like a lot but it really adds up. It's also nice not to have to think about where you have to navigate. Rather than Setup, Build, Custom Object, Select Custom Object... it's just Customize.

If you have a fairly large monitor I also suggest launching the setup page inside the Salesforce window with the sidebar. This might seem awkward at first it makes it very easy to get back to the record you were customizing, saving you yet another click.

Publishing My First AppExchange App

Over the past couple of months there has been a significant amount of hype about the AppExchange, so this week I figured I’d find out for myself just how it worked.

In a trial account I created nine image fields on a stand alone custom tab. The thought was that if I could package it up as a component on the AppExchange, administrators could install it in their account in a matter of minutes and see how this exciting new feature works.

The process of creating the package was incredibly easy. It was no time before I had a link for my AppExchange package that I could readily share with friends and coworkers. While publishing my app I also kicked off the process for creating a read only demo account to show off my creation. This also proved very straightforward. I did have to login with my admin credentials to add demo data into the account. It’s important to note that neither the AppExchange package nor the test drive account carry over your data, so none of the information in your account will be compromised. When I had the test drive set up the way I wanted it, I was able to add my read only login credentials to my AppExchange page turning the test drive button for grey to red.

Publishing My First AppExchange App

Over the past couple of months there has been a significant amount of hype about the AppExchange, so this week I figured I’d find out for myself just how it worked.

In a trial account I created nine image fields on a stand alone custom tab. The thought was that if I could package it up as a component on the AppExchange, administrators could install it in their account in a matter of minutes and see how this exciting new feature works.

The process of creating the package was incredibly easy. It was no time before I had a link for my AppExchange package that I could readily share with friends and coworkers. While publishing my app I also kicked off the process for creating a read only demo account to show off my creation. This also proved very straightforward. I did have to login with my admin credentials to add demo data into the account. It’s important to note that neither the AppExchange package nor the test drive account carry over your data, so none of the information in your account will be compromised. When I had the test drive set up the way I wanted it, I was able to add my read only login credentials to my AppExchange page turning the test drive button for grey to red.

Pre-Built Image Fields Available on the AppExchange

To help people experience the power of image fields, I created a very simple AppExchange component which allows you to quickly install nine working examples ranging from priority flags, to product photos, to stock charts.

This free component takes less than two minutes to install and it’s built on a stand-alone custom tab so you can add it to your account without affecting any of your users. One thing to note, when you install this component, you'll have to fill in the blanks (score, ticker, image url) for some of the images to appear.

The idea is that once you have these sample formulas in your account, you can reapply the them to any of your other objects. Give it a try!