Archive for category SalesForce
Leaving Salesforce
Posted by clark in SalesForce on 2010/04/27
I’d done a few posts on Salesforce. However after giving it long and careful thought we’re dropping it. There were several reasons. One, it was difficult to tie samples or orders as a task and generate a report. I could get the full version of Salesforce with an API and then write them myself. But I realized at a certain point I would just be writing, in a fairly inefficient way, a full new system. The only other alternative would be to buy more expensive extra web apps.
The alternative is a FileMaker database a friend put together. It’ll do inventory, scheduling and a lot more. Best of all it’s easy to expand. So I’ll probably be doing a lot more FileMaker posts in the months ahead.
Displaying a SalesForce Contact’s Emails in Mail
Posted by clark in Applescript, Automation, Mail, Python, SalesForce on 2010/02/23
When I’m looking at a lead or contact though it would be nice to see a list of all our emails back and forth at a glance. The following script does that by creating a smart mailbox for the email address of the currently viewed lead or contact.
While I wrote this to access SalesForce it would be trivial to modify this to use a different source, such as Address Book.
Thoughts on SalesForce
Posted by clark in SalesForce on 2010/02/19
I’ve been using SalesForce.com along with one of our employees for a few weeks now. I really like it. As I mentioned I prefer it to the stand alone Mac apps I’ve used. (Primarily Daylight and Contactizer Pro) Surprisingly while both those programs offered nice Address Book and Calendar integration they just were confusing to use. (Daylight especially) I was actually about to buy Contactizer Pro, as my CRM of choice when my business partner announced he’d purchased a license for SalesForce.com. His concerns were pretty valid. He used a PC and thus didn’t want me to use a Mac-only program. Further he wanted to be able to access the sales info from his iPhone while on the road. That pretty well left Zoho CRM or SalesForce — in terms of the programs I’d used.
We’d been using Zoho CRM a bit with our prior salesperson but he didn’t utilize it as much as I’d have liked. I found SalesForce to be superior to Zoho in a few ways — primarily UI. (I really like SalesForce’s “ToDo” window) Although honestly they are very similar. For low use I think Zoho CRM is the better choice. SalesForce.com has a solid API though. Right now we’re using the “el cheapo” version though. Since we were restructuring sales going with SalesForce was an easy choice and offers more expansion in the future.
All that said, there are a few complaints folks ought be aware of.
Address Book to Sales Force
Posted by clark in Address Book, Applescript, Automation, Python, SalesForce on 2010/02/06
Here’s an other little script I wrote for using SalesForce.com. We take the selected contacts in Address Book, open up a new contact entry in SalesForce and then fill in the data. Now I could have made this a bit more advanced, copying in all the emails, addresses, phone numbers and so forth that are possible. But I rarely use those. So I can handle copying and pasting those or just modifying the script if they become more common.
Once again Apple’s optional develop menu in Safari is invaluable. I used to do all this with plugins for FireFox but I now actually prefer analyzing web pages in Safari. All you have to do is find the form name and then the id of the field you want to fill in. You then use JavaScript in Safari to set the value like this:
Safari.do_JavaScript("document.forms['form_name']['field_id'].value = \"" + myvalue + "\"", in_=FEdoc)
I’ve used this technique a lot in various scripts. So long as there aren’t logic bugs on the page (i.e. using an identical id multiple times) this approach works fantastic and is a rapid way to fill in forms.
SalesForce to FedEx
Posted by clark in Applescript, Automation, Automator, Python, SalesForce on 2010/02/06
A lot of my scripts are designed to make shipping easier. I usually use FedEx for my shipping and have discussed in the past filling out the packing forms in Safari in an automated way. I don’t know about you, but this saves me a lot of time. I’ve been using SalesForce a lot of late and one thing I do frequently is ship samples to leads or to existing contacts. Since I don’t (yet) have a safe syncing between my leads and Address Book I wanted a way to use a Service to print a FedEx packing slip for the displayed contact or lead.
This script makes a few assumptions. First it assumes you are logged into FedEx. (If you have an open window in Safari somewhere that’s sufficient) It then assumes the front window is your SalesForce window. It does check to ensure you are in a detail. If you’re not then it doesn’t do anything.
Copy Email Address Only
Posted by clark in SalesForce, System on 2010/02/04
OK, I’d mentioned this one in the sidebar several months ago. But I hadn’t actually done it myself. Now that I’m running SalesForce I find myself copying and pasting email addresses a lot. However under Snow Leopard the default for copying an email address is to include the name followed by the email address in braces. SalesForce really doesn’t like that format though. So what we want is just the email address to copy.
It’s easy enough to do.
Salesforce and the Mac
Posted by clark in Address Book, Automation, SalesForce, iCal on 2010/01/21
I just started using Salesforce for CRM. I’ll probably have some posts on automating stuff with SalesForce over the next few weeks..
One thing I already found is an open source Mac sync that looks quite useful. It syncs contacts, events and tasks from Address Book and iCal to Salesforce. What I’m not sure about is custom fields. However there is source. (And this might be a great way to delve into Cocoa) There’s also Maildrop for quickly associating mail in Mail or Entourage with contacts in Salesforce.
Salesforce appears to have a nice API so I might be able to put together some useful Python scripts. There’s actually a Python discussion board at Salesforce. So I should be having a lot of fun the next month or so getting this setup for our company.
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