The Salesforce.com customer message boards used to be available only to customers, but not anymore! Bowing to popular demand, we opened up the message boards last week to anyone with a web browser, an internet connection and a need to connect with the Salesforce.com user community. What does this mean for you?

Browse the Boards
Now you can visit the forums and read about what's going on without first passing through a login page. Just bookmark http://forums.crmsuccess.com/ or copy and paste the address. You will only need to login to post a message.

Link Directly to Posts
Opening up the boards also makes it easer for you to share links. For example, if you find an interesting post you can post it on your blog or email it to a friend knowing that they'll be able to read it. 

Subscribe to Feeds
This is the most exciting feature for me and Scott Mark Mangano has already blogged about this. The new RSS feature allows you to subscribe to a board or a thread and view the most recent posts on your personalized homepage or within your feed reader. Of course you know all about feeds (RSS and Atom) already, but if you don't, they are technologies that let you keep track of many websites without actually visiting them.

Search
With the boards open, search works a whole lot better. Google is starting to index the content and no longer will you get a sign-in page when you click on one of the search results.

This is an exciting development for the salesforce.com community and we look forward to rolling out further enhancements to the message boards.

The Salesforce.com customer message boards used to be available only to customers, but not anymore! Bowing to popular demand, we opened up the message boards last week to anyone with a web browser, an internet connection and a need to connect with the Salesforce.com user community. What does this mean for you?

Browse the Boards
Now you can visit the forums and read about what's going on without first passing through a login page. Just bookmark http://forums.crmsuccess.com/ or copy and paste the address. You will only need to login to post a message.

Link Directly to Posts
Opening up the boards also makes it easer for you to share links. For example, if you find an interesting post you can post it on your blog or email it to a friend knowing that they'll be able to read it. 

Subscribe to Feeds
This is the most exciting feature for me and Scott Mark Mangano has already blogged about this. The new RSS feature allows you to subscribe to a board or a thread and view the most recent posts on your personalized homepage or within your feed reader. Of course you know all about feeds (RSS and Atom) already, but if you don't, they are technologies that let you keep track of many websites without actually visiting them.

Search
With the boards open, search works a whole lot better. Google is starting to index the content and no longer will you get a sign-in page when you click on one of the search results.

This is an exciting development for the salesforce.com community and we look forward to rolling out further enhancements to the message boards.

There have been some really interesting best practice ideas emerging from customer and partner blogs. This week Scott Hemmeter wrote about how you could use dependent picklists to create dynamically required picklists.  

The example he used was a field to capture reason lost, a field that often appears on the opportunity page layout. Are you loosing deals based upon company viability, features, price, lack of references? This is valuable information. The challenge that most companies face is that they can’t make it a required field because the rep won’t know the reason for the loss until it’s closed. On the flip side they can’t ensure that it’s filled out consistently without it being a required.

His simple solution makes the reason for a loss required only when the stage is equal to closed lost. To learn how it’s done, visit Perspectives on Salesforce. Scott great work!

There have been some really interesting best practice ideas emerging from customer and partner blogs. This week Scott Hemmeter wrote about how you could use dependent picklists to create dynamically required picklists.  

The example he used was a field to capture reason lost, a field that often appears on the opportunity page layout. Are you loosing deals based upon company viability, features, price, lack of references? This is valuable information. The challenge that most companies face is that they can’t make it a required field because the rep won’t know the reason for the loss until it’s closed. On the flip side they can’t ensure that it’s filled out consistently without it being a required.

His simple solution makes the reason for a loss required only when the stage is equal to closed lost. To learn how it’s done, visit Perspectives on Salesforce. Scott great work!

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.

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.