With Summer '09, Salesforce to Salesforce now supports sharing Cases and Case Comments. In Spring '09 we released Cases in the Partner Portal as well - so the Salesforce Partners product line completely supports Third-Party Service Management.

Some of the business processes supported include:

• End customer using Salesforce CRM directly logs Case with one or more vendors and service agents that also use Salesforce CRM
• Vendor shares Cases with other Vendors as well as Service agents and Resellers
• Partner logs Case with Vendor on their behalf
• Partner logs Case with Vendor on behalf of the end customer
• Sharing the same customer case with multiple stakeholders (i.e. Vendors, Resellers, Third-party service agents) and all parties receiving real-time visibility on changes to cases

The above processes can be supported using both Salesforce to Salesforce and Partner Portal. The former would be used if the stakeholder (Vendor, Partner or Customer) uses Salesforce CRM while the latter would be used if the stakeholder (Vendor, Partner) does not use Salesforce CRM. Customer portal should be used for end customers that do not use Salesforce CRM. Most use cases involve using a combination of Salesforce to Salesforce, partner portal and customer portal.

You can find more information on the Cases features on this blog

Remember, Salesforce to Salesforce is free for all customers including Group Edition. If customers have any questions or need help running a pilot feel free to contact Product Management at: s2s@salesforce.com