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The hotel room shortage is so bad at Dreamforce this year that they booking people on a cruise ship that will be parked downtown for the duration of the event.
Looks like Salesforce are already reacting by offering their customers additional modal clauses for data processing
The narrative of tech companies being overwhelmingly white men being pushed by the media and certain activist groups ignores the actual, maybe inconvenient, reality that Asians make a large portion of most tech companies in the Bay Area. Below are figures for overall racial diversity at three of the largest tech companies here.
- Google: 60% white, 31% asian
- Facebook: 55% white, 36% asian
- Salesforce: 67% white, 23% asian
Maybe "dominate" was too strong a word choice, but the reality is Asians (East and South) makes up a significant group of people in tech companies, to the point where whites (making up 77% of the overall American population) are often under-represented.
Page 3 on here has a chart: http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/misc/BP_Admins.pdf
1-30 users: <1 full-time admin
31-74 users: 1+ full-time admin
75-149 users: 1 senior admin, 1 jr admin
140 - 499 users: 1 business analyst, 2-4 admins
500 - 750 users: 1-2 business analysts, 2-4 admins
750+: depends on a variety of factors
I'm the sole admin at around 80 users - those users are a mix of services and sales. Management has just started talking about the possibility of bringing on another admin but I don't think we are there yet (I still have capacity).
At least one tech company does this every day, but you don't hear about it in the headlines.
Salesforce pioneered the 1-1-1 program -- 1% of revenue is returned to the community in the form of grants and charitable donation, 1% of employee time is paid volunteer time, and 1% of the company's product is offered to charitable organizations for free.
http://www.salesforce.com/company/salesforceorg/
This is, of course, on top of the jobs that they've created and the taxes generated from that wealth.
Salesforce takes the fucking cake
- They're a software (SaaS) company with the slogan "no software"
- They're cautious to remind you that other "cloud" offerings may in fact be false cloud > if you have to buy and manage hardware and software, what you’re looking at isn’t really cloud computing but a false cloud.
- They're a step ahead. They've got social mobile cloud 2 > The latest innovations in cloud computing are making our business applications even more mobile and collaborative, similar to popular consumer apps like Facebook and Twitter... With Cloud 2, keeping up with your work is as easy as keeping up with your personal life on Facebook.
If you are trying to do a join query IE traverse down the tables, you need to do something liek this for the field you want as part of the fields you are querying.
> Customer__r.Name
What this means is __r is a lookup field and you are going into a different record. This will go from a child record to a parent record.
More documentation can be found here: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dbcom_soql_sosl/Content/sforce_api_calls_soql_relationships.htm
CRM software. Basically the SA collected your email address and puts it into the platform alongside any relevant info (purchases, brief story, whaetver). They can then share that data throughout the entire organisation and use it to personalise any further communication they have with you, alongside setting themselves reminders to email you have a set period of time has elapsed (or to automate that email).
I work in marketing, so I'm a pessimist when it comes to stuff like this. It works though.
A lot of it is SaaS (Software as a Service).
If you visit the websites for most of these companies, you'll find out.
Salesforce: Customer Relationship Management software
No, not just Answers...though a lot of the top Answer's are MVP's.
It is a lot of people that are very active anywhere in the Salesforce ecosystem. That means Success site, StackExchage, LinkedIn, Blogs, etc... Think of people that want to help others and give a lot to help others.
There is no hard rules on becoming a MVP. You should be active for awhile and not just a short time. Loving Salesforce and being an evangelist is important, of course.
This page will give a high level overview - http://www.salesforce.com/mvp/
If you have specific questions AMA.
5 Year Sys Admin Here, 5 more as a user.
First, create a Dev org account. Recognize that "Developer" to Salesforce can mean point and click (Declarative) and Code (Programmatic). Do not shy away from the word "Developer" because you think it's an advanced area. https://developer.salesforce.com/signup
Then read and do the exercises in Force.com Fundamentals. You learn a ton from doing. Take notes as you go. http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/fundamentals/salesforce_creating_on_demand_apps.pdf
After that, find some Pro Profs exams. Ignore the answers, focus on the questions. Don't know something? Write down the topic and then look it up on Salesforce help. Take notes on that topic.
Every time you read anything about Salesforce, whether it be Fundamentals, developer handbook, or Salesforce Help topics, TAKE NOTES! Writing this stuff down helps burn it into your brain.
Pay special attention to the limitations of everything.
FYI - Certified Admin, Advanced Admin, Developer, and Sales Cloud Consultant have a lot of overlapping topics.
To answer your last question: If you aren't certified, you have very little chance of being hired anywhere. Years ago, sure, but not now. Your competition is getting certified.
Which workbook? They have a boatload. I've said this before in this sub, but what you need to do first is take the 8-12 hours required to go through the Force.com Platform Fundamentals.. It's a 400-page PDF that is 100% exercise-based, and builds on itself from start to finish. You can do it in a dev org and if you go through it you will fully "get" Salesforce. It's a perfect foundation point to build on, and it's free. Do that, then seek other resources to expand on what you get from the Fundamentals.
The one thing it WON'T go into a great deal of detail about is actual CRM functionality. You need at least a working knowledge of leads, lead conversion, opportunities, products, queues, leads, etc. as they relate to Customer Relationship Management.
The biggest problem with a dev org is that it's very difficult to experiment with security. You only get two users, and one has to be your admin, so if you want to experiment with different roles, profiles, sharing rules, permission sets, etc (which is a HUGE part of the platform), you're going to be editing and saving one of your two users a bunch to be able to see the effects.
Salesforce has a shitload of great documentation for free. Get a two monitor setup if you don't have one already, and go through the PDFs they have that way.
They have lots of questions that are "pick the best 2 out of 5", and there is no partial scoring. The questions cover the breadth of the application (except for VisualForce/Apex/Programming stuff), and so there's a lot. The more familiar you can get with the app itself the better off you'll be, because then you can make the most of process of elimination/following logic when answering any questions you don't know the answer to.
> giving pre-quote prices doesn't seem to be the ticket
yes. obviously these high quality software vendors know more about how to quote prices than puny little outfits like... I dunno...
http://www.salesforce.com/crm/editions-pricing.jsp
I know, I know... totally a cheap shot since they're running a SaaS model and not actually selling JUST software you install yourself. like... I dunno...
http://www.splunk.com/en_us/products/pricing.html
but obviously, as you said, SOMEONE has to make money, and if the devil himself can start his own company and become the most infamous hated company/person on earth, simply by withholding pricing information until they've had time to butter up potential clients, you and I both know that larry fucking ellison and ora-fucking-cle would be that two-headed company/person. Except the devil himself has public pricing available.
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/price-lists/index.html
if only these 3 fly-by-night operations could understand how much money they're leaving on the table by providing pre-quote prices, amirite?
Unfortunately, you're mistaken. The transition exam is $100 and will only give you the Platform App Builder certification; this is essentially the "new" 401 (i.e. declarative development). The only way you can transition into Platform Dev I is if you have your 501 certification. If OP is going for a true dev cert, the Platform Developer I (and eventually II) is the one worth getting. In order to get that, you have to pass the full exam.
401 transition: http://www.salesforce.com/campaigns/success-services/certified-force-developers.jsp 501 transition: http://www.salesforce.com/campaigns/success-services/advanced-force-developer-certification.jsp
I f*cked up, it was Honeywell's distributed heating systems in the homes and businesses which is the case study. Of especial note to those organisations in hospitality who require heating maintenance. Again via Salesforce.
http://www.salesforce.com/customers/stories/honeywell.jsp
The gist of it is:
Honeywell has intelligent units which can communicate back-to-base
If there is an error or outage, this is flagged as a ticket within a system
The customer services team rank / manage and distribute options to a first Service tier, which can either be a distributor or a local contractor
Contractor then goes in and services the unit, logging everything through a custom app
If issues are experienced during services, the app can be hooked up to the device camera so a remote tech can diagnose and inform of service options.
What's interesting about this method is that it's people-free, the devices handle their own outages and the servicing happens without an intervention. I guess where I thought this could be applicable is in the TV part but there's going to have to be an account manager or site manager for nearly each of the hotels or regions. Agree pretty much with /u/sendmorewhisky above.
I'm sure you are on either Professional or Enterprise Edition - very very likely Enterprise. http://www.salesforce.com/ap/crm/editions-pricing.jsp
Focus on learning Reports - help.salesforce.com is a great resource for basically everything. If you have paid support, that unlocks ton of tutorials and learning guides.
I'm not sure where you are located but if you are brand new to Salesforce I would recommend trying to get out to Dreamforce (their annual user conference) that will take place in Mid-October
SOQL is bascially like SQL but without any of the powerful abilities. On the bright side Salesforce has plenty of comprehensive tutorials. I's start by going here: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dbcom_soql_sosl/index_Left.htm#CSHID=sforce_api_calls_soql_select.htm|StartTopic=Content%2Fsforce_api_calls_soql_select.htm|SkinName=webhelp
To start with, for some reason instead of using "TOP X" syntax you put "LIMIT X" at the end. You can't alias anything or perform any kind of math or concatenation in the query. If you need anything "fancy" done it has to be in a custom field on the object that has the formula in it. You can select date ranges like "CreatedDate = LAST_WEEK" which is handy. You can't join, but you can sub-query tables that have established relationships. Custom Fields are always suffixed with "c" (two underscores and c) and custom relationships are always suffixed with "r" (two underscores and r).
Generally SOQL is a basic record selection sub-language and if you want to do anything fancy like rolling sums you have to do it in an APEX loop.
But you can pull some cool stunts like this:
SELECT Id, Name, (SELECT Id, Name FROM Billing_Contacts__r) FROM Account WHERE CreatedDate = YESTERDAY.
In this case if Contacts has a custom relationship in Accounts as a parent you can query the object and related fields in that relationship. If you find any of this useful can see if I can share some of my favorite bookmarks to guides that cover the major bases.
May I suggest a different approach?
I think the drawback of the DSL you describe is that in trying to abstract out the differences between SQL servers, you lose the ability to use server specific features which are often the most interesting ones.
What I would like to see is support for easily creating SQL queries and working with parameters and results. This would work without abstraction layer, i.e. the DSL maps 1:1 to a database specific SQL. You loose database portability, but that's not something I value as I usually don't switch implementation. But I get full control over queries and I can use all advanced features that are specific to the current implementation.
This approach is taken by the salesforce.com Apex language. It allows you to embed SQL queries straight into the language, if you put them between square brackets. The query can refer to Apex variables directly from the query. Of all the ways I've worked with SQL (ORM, DSL and straight SQL query strings), this has been the most productive for me. See a link here:
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/langCon_apex_SOQL.htm
I'm not familiar with the Rust macro system, but is it possible to automatically stringify tokens so that I could write:
sql!(select * from table where id > :foo)
where :foo is a Rust variable, and it would create a query string for me and execute it?
Salesforce has significant runtime support for determining argument and return types. I think it actually parses the SQL because it can give errors at compile time if e.g. you allocate the result of "select * from account" to a "person". Not sure how feasible this would be if you have to support > 1 database.
Go through the Force.com Platform Fundamentals.. It's a 400-ish page PDF that is essentially one long, very well-written exercise, that you can do in a developer edition organization. It's not technical documentation. It's step-by-step exercises that you follow that explains as you go. It covers EVERYTHING about declarative app development in Salesforce, in addition to reporting and analytics. I can't believe the resource is free. If you take your time with it, you'll learn just as much as you would in the ADM201 course (and a lot of great stuff that you wouldn't). Just have it up on one monitor/computer while you do the steps in a developer org on another. It's maybe 80% of what is on the test, learned by doing.
What is NOT covered is the standard CRM stuff, understanding leads and conversion and opportunities and quotas and sales teams.
Also, if you're a nonprofit (probably not, but just in case you are), all the Salesforce classes are 50% off... so call them if that's the case. But seriously, do the fundamentals book. It'll take you probably 10-12 hours to do the whole thing, and you will LEARN Salesforce in the process, and it's free. Nothing better in your price range.
I was actually in a similar situation only about a month ago.
I ended up getting Admin certified without any live Salesforce experience -- the only experience I had was with the developer edition that you can sign up for free here: http://developer.force.com/
After you get your dev org, go through this workbook: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/workbook/forcecom_workbook.pdf
It is very very helpful to follow this entire workbook before doing anything else, because it is a hands-on training experience with all of the most common functions of the platform. Even if a section doesn't really make sense to you, you are still getting a really good gist of the topic just by doing it.
Next, to study for your Admin certification exam, utilize this AWESOME site: http://certifiedondemand.com/ Don't pay for the official ADM201 class which costs a couple thousand. This site has a one time cost of around $40 to access all the material (but he still provides a good chunk of material for free). I went through all of the material (I skipped some of the optional LONG articles/videos) within 2 weeks, then took my test the following weekend and passed. Note that I did dedicate 4-5 hours a day every day to studying the material and messing around with the dev org.
Feel free to ask me any questions or if you want more clarification on anything I mentioned.
I know it's late. But I just got the same request. And I am 99% convinced it's a scam.
They contacted my client first, a woman called Joice (from a Philippines number, not registered as an official google support number) talked with my client and asked a few safe questions and said a special team will contact their web developer(me).
Scam alarm at 50%
Later they sent me a letter for a google hangout meetup from the email address mentioned above and then rang me at an agreed time. After a few back and forth they asked to confirm my adword id. I declined and asked them if they could verify they are real google employees or actually working for Google.
Scam Alarm at 90%
In the CC header, there was an email joice****@google.com. They asked me to email her to confirm all that. I sent her an email. and got back a reply from the `web-implementation-support-***@google.com` not from joice****@google.com, although acting like it was her. The reply email looks very similar to regular google support emails, in addition, the writing had mistakes and typos.
Scam Alarm at 99%
Technically you can create a google group with any name you want. e.g. [email protected] and use it as a sender.
Header `X-mail_abuse_inquiries: http://www.salesforce.com/company/abuse.jsp ` is normally used by Google, but I didn't see any of their third-party vendors using it. Also, it is used a lot for phishing attacks to trick you.
If it is real google, then they did a very bad job to make it look legit. This is one of the reasons why big companies don't do such things, like ringing you out of blue and offering to tweak your site and Adwords, It's really hard to not expose yourself to being copied and abused.
Be safe
There should be plenty of basic admin sessions, just search through them here. Also if a session that you really want is full, don't wait in the long line of people who couldn't sign up just show up like 10 minutes late, it's worked for me in the past.
I know you're a new admin but they usually have some sessions for "advancing your career" kind of stuff. You should always be thinking of where you go next.
Pay attention to where your sessions are. Some locations are a 15-20 minute walk apart so don't set yourself up for back to back sessions that you can't get to.
Don't completely pack your days. There is a ton of other things to do at Dreamforce, things like Keynotes, to spending time on the conference floor talking to vendors (and collecting swag), random bands playing, and vendor sponsored lunches.
Leave room in your bag for the aforementioned swag. Last year i came home with like 12 t-shirts, 3 pairs of headphones, a bunch of chachkis, a quadcopter (yes really) and of course the annual Dreamforce backpack.
Someone has probably made an app for finding/registering for the vendor parties. Find it and have some fun at night.
Wear comfy shoes, you will be walking a lot.
Have fun.
There are two tracks of certification: admin and dev. If you are looking to sharpen user skills, there are some end-user training classes, but they don't give you any type of certification:
http://www.salesforce.com/services-training/training_certification/training.jsp#end
I came to second CertifiedonDemand.com- it provides a great framework for both learning about Salesforce and recognizing your weaknesses.
How are they teaching themselves the fundamentals? Have they gone through the Force.com workbook and/or Force.com platform fundamentals workbook?
You can do everything you are describing with Apex.
For the scheduling, you will need to implement the Scheduleable interface. http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_scheduler.htm
Here's an article on sending outbound emails. Example code at the bottom. https://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_forcecom_email_outbound.htm
All that remains is to figure out your queries. Sounds like there may be some challenges there. You may need to add custom fields that function as flags so you can query then easily and avoid counting them multiple times. What I mean is if you were planning to use LastModifiedDate as a key part of your query, you might be include the same record again and again as it is updated by users. In these situations you could use a datetime field and have a workflow set it when whatever condition you are looking for is met.
Reiterating what brookesy2 said: HUGE help to have a contact on the inside. Don't have one? Stalk the Salesforce Events lineup and go to an event in your area. Atlanta should have at least a couple during the year.
Salesforce.com is an online cloud-based customer resource management (CRM) platform. It's pretty huge and, while I know it isn't used everywhere, I've never worked at a company whose marketing and sales teams didn't use Salesforce.
Salesforce.com has information about their online training options.
On a similar note, hubspot.com offers a free "inbound marketing" certificate that includes training in how to use their marketing automation platform. If you have any interest in doing sales or marketing, it's worth getting the certificate and HubSpot's platform is not super distinct from any other email marketing automation platform I've ever used. Definitely helpful if you're looking for work in marketing that isn't direct-sales scammy shit.
My personal experience
Write an extension class. For example AccountExtension.cls. I can then extend the class in visualforce along with the standard class.
In the Visualforce page markup, standard controller references the Account Standard object, and the AccountExt.cls extends it.
<apex:page standardController="Account" extensions="AccountExtension"> </apex:page>
And the class.
public with sharing class AccountExtension{ public AccountExt(ApexPages.StandardController controller){ } }
As pflaumen said, you learn better by doing than reading, so I would suggest getting started with the workbooks. And this force.com workbook does exactly that - takes you through the basic stuff in a structured way (which I think is very important while trying to pick something up new). You can go at your own pace, and come back to it after a break and pick up exactly where you left off.
After being a power user for a few years, I've moved into consulting, and the workbooks along with other free resources online is what helped me make the transition.
Good luck, and welcome to the community!
There are a few ways to achieve this goal of yours. If you only want to add these fields to your edit page, just populate the value yourself using javascript and Id's to find your input field.
IE: if you are using jquery
$('input[id$=MyCustomHTMLTagId]').val('myValue');
An alternative since you are currently using javascript is using the Apex ActionFunction Tag which will let you make a call to a method within your controller if you need to do any sort of processing.
Lastly, if you want, you can also make the callout from your controller and assign the value at that point in time. Feel free to respond to my post if you need anything else or PM me. Also, though I don't visit this subreddit much anymore, there is more activity at for these types of questions and I tend to answer more there.
http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/
Username: Double A
My honest opinion is save yourself the trouble, and use Salesforce CRM. The Salesforce Foundation for nonprofits has created a perfect CRM for nonprofit organizations; and thousands of them are implementing it. The cost cut is extremely generous and really lets the nonprofit get top notch technology and the ability to really focus on their organization’s business and carry out their goals. Here’s a youtube vid ‘Why Salesforce for Nonprofits?’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ZfUraRY80 Best of luck!
It looks like firefox is just adding www.\_\_\_\_whatever\_\_\_.com, and salesforce own that website:
$ curl -I www.customersupport.com HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently ... Location: http://www.salesforce.com
Found this with some googling. The section under Termination looks like they can terminate with x days written notice to you. http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/misc/forcedotcom_Free_Edition_Agreement.pdf
Platform Dev I, Admin, Adv Admin, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Mobile Solutions Architecture Designer, Data Architecture & Management Designer, Sharing and Visibility Designer
Last 3 are the new Architect certs.
I should start looking or sit down with my boss. Never asked for a raise before, and the raise I got after my first year (20%) was way more than I expected.
This is one of our organizations WordPress sites: https://shine365.marshfieldclinic.org . However, we've created our public web site with SharePoint 2013: https://www.marshfieldclinic.org
Choosing a platform is hard. I think WordPress is good for pushing content out to people. One of the really hard things is keeping up with the security updates, so we have a professional WordPress host, WPEngine.com, handle that for us. However, they don't keep you from using infected or vulnerable plug-ins, so security is almost a full-time job.
A full system requires more than a server to host your web site. You have to have the security and networking skills as well. That may speak for using a platform as a service, where they take care of all of these details for you. Salesforce has something like that. An example of Salesforce Communities is here: http://www.salesforce.com/communities/overview/ We had a vendor demo this for us though we took a different route.
I think that the other people working in web development would tell you that you don't choose your platform until you have a clear understanding of what your requirements are.
I've done web development of many types for 17 years. Although I could only contribute a few hours here and there, I'd be glad to help with what I can.
Agreed, but also any experience as admin?
http://www.salesforce.com/events/worldtour/dallas/ link for the lazy
Just got back from the ATL world tour and it was great. Networking but also learning more.
There are separate licenses for community licenses and this is slightly expensive IMO, depending on the number of licenses.
http://www.salesforce.com/crm/editions-pricing-communities.jsp
I recommend that you get in touch with Salesforce and see what's the best rate they can offer.
I don't know, but that does sound a bit sketchy. Force.com belongs to salesforce.com, which provides Customer Relationship Management systems. I don't see Amazon on their 'customer success stories' page, though that doesn't necessarily mean they're not a customer.
If I were in your shoes, I'd contact amazon through any means listed on their main portal and ask them if the position / website is legit.
Based on your experience I think you should have no problem getting interviews (depending on where you live and especially if you're willing to relocate). If you want to start getting contacted by recruiters (and I mean often, even after you get a job), make sure your resume is attractive and post it on monster.com and/or indeed.com. That's all I did and I've had tons of calls since then, even months after taking it off both sites unfortunately.
I don't have any specific recommendations beyond that. If you are looking for a job at Salesforce itself (they have offices in San Francisco, Portland, Indianapolis, Ireland, and elsewhere) they have their own internal recruiters that handle that. If that's something you're interested in send me a PM and I'll see if I can dig up an email address for you. You can also browse their job postings here: http://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/
>you can pay for Communities per login, so you get a certain number external logins to your communities for a fixed price. For example, 20k logins per month, instead of paying per user.
Is this in addition to the $500 or $700/month price? I'm trying to find the info I need, but this is all I've found so far: http://www.salesforce.com/communities/pricing/
>You can make the screens in Communities look however you want. I have a health care client that is using Salesforce Communities in an aggressively marketed/branded patient portal.
Very different scenario, but that's very similar to what we're looking for, in terms of function and form (pun not intended). Would you mind if I reached out to you to ask you a few questions based on your experience doing it this way?
Congrats on your exam prep. It's not an easy test.
Perhaps taking the cert prep course could've helped: Prepare for Your Salesforce Administrator Certification. I think the next offering will be at DF. http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF15/training.jsp
He's on the Board of Directors, and a reason he has been prevalent --> "“General Powell is an extraordinary leader who has inspired and influenced me during more than 15 years of friendship. He was also instrumental in shaping salesforce.com’s integrated philanthropic model and the formation of the Salesforce.com Foundation many years ago. We couldn’t be happier to have him join our Board.”
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2014/03/140314.jsp
> Date Literals
hmm.. gave that a shot and it looks like it's just giving me a bunch of stuff about code.. like this Link
Love this idea and downloading the app. Awesome work.
I sound like a broken record here, but you should really should push to present this to Salesforce Ventures. Not affiliated with them, but an employee of the company in general.
Would like to see an AppExchange / Salesforce login capability so that companies and customers can connect with the same idea. Integrate it into Salesforce1 mobile app as an ISV app. You would have a million downloads and retire after a few years after being bought out.
You are solving a very simple problem everyone has. Will be trying this out more.
Another awesome idea to pitch to Salesforce Ventures this should be an ISV app / service that can get bolted on through the AppExchange to Salesforce customers.
Look also to InsideSales.com who (as you probably know) cater to the smaller businesses (at least they used to at first), as they have made it out from building the user base from small to very large.
Love the idea of using Stripe and Salesforce, however the value prop and demo are really difficult to understand here. You should ask "Why would anyone want to use us or need us" and give them that info in front of their face with customer testimonials upfront and center.
Anywho. Awesome work and wanted to commend you on creating an awesome idea and company! Keep it up!
> SignupLab.com
I love this idea guys. Love your website, and that your service caters to SaaS-based companies. Definitely a need there. Think that you should present your company to Salesforce Ventures (I am an employee / peon)
Awesome work and keep it up!
12 * (1 + MOD(contract_end_c - contract_start_c, 365)) would work with all the years. Wouldn't handle leap years though. The truly funky stuff gets complicated quickly.
does this link help? http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dataLoader/index_Left.htm#StartTopic=Content/supported_data_types.htm
in short: We recommend you specify dates in the format yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.SSS+/-HHmm: yyyy is the four-digit year MM is the two-digit month (01-12) dd is the two-digit day (01-31) HH is the two-digit hour (00-23) mm is the two-digit minute (00-59) ss is the two-digit seconds (00-59) SSS is the three-digit milliseconds (000-999) +/-HHmm is the Zulu (UTC) time zone offset
The following date formats are also supported: yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z' yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS Pacific Standard Time yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSPacific Standard Time yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS PST yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSPST yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS GMT-08:00 yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSGMT-08:00 yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS -800 yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS-800 yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss yyyyMMdd'T'HH:mm:ss yyyy-MM-dd MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss MM/dd/yyyy yyyyMMdd
Salesforce is a huge company with many different jobs, many (or most) of which are non-admin/non-developer type jobs. So it all depends on what kind of skills you have. Marketing, sales, HR, IT... coffee barista?
Are you purchasing the contacts or just copy and pasting the information out of data.com into your XLS? You can use the API to purchase (get) the contacts BUT you need the Contact ID (from data.com) in order to do this. You would probably also need help from a developer. Technical detail below.
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/datadotcom_api_dev_guide/datadotcom_api_dev_guide.pdf
If this is still a valid issue, it may help to know that the annual Salesforce conference is happening right now in San Francisco.
To make sure I don't butcher anything via the phone, please look at the 2 reference links below about intro into apex
https://developer.salesforce.com/page/An_Introduction_to_Apex
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_intro_learning_apex.htm
Second link had work books which you can code live samples to get you started hands on
There is a limit on standard controllers. One option is to implement pagination to display the next group of 20 records. You can also create a new controller to set the pageSize to override the default 20 record behavior. Also keep in mind that when your are saving these records, it will update ALL the records on the page, so, if you want to display a large number of records I would recommend implementing a wrapper class so that only the Accounts you select will be the ones updated. Example here
yikes, not an easy answer here. It sounds like you are mixing up license types (Sales, Service, Platform(force.com)) with User profiles.
The license type determines what a user could possibly have access to, very general and universally the same out-of-the-box.
User Profiles contain permissions and access settings for individual users. There are standard, default profiles and you should be cloning the standard template and then give specific access to your employees (giving additional or taking away access of certain things in salesforce; fields, objects, etc.), as necessary - then assign it to specific users.
Basically the difference with Service Cloud and Sales Cloud is that Service Cloud is slightly more expensive (in Enterprise) and provides Customer Service-Specific tools for managing cases that do not come with Sales Cloud. Besides that, they are basically the same and have the same access.
Platform licenses are completely different and give you limited access or no access to certain objects: http://www.salesforce.com/pricing/platform/
I know this didn't answer your question but hopefully a little more background like this can get you a more detailed question for what the issue is
Accounts have nothing to do with Campaigns fortunately, try not to fall into this trap. Campaigns cover Contacts and Leads, which are both individuals.
But yes, contact roles are what you should use, along with campaign influence.
Have a read of this, its quite comprehensive, but if you are serious, its a good read: http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/misc/BP_MrktngMngrs.pdf
The problem is StartSSL refusing to issue a certificate for your domain because it's too close to a well known brand (http://www.salesforce.com). This is to prevent people creating fraudulent domains and using StartSSL to get a valid certificate.
i.e. say there was www.legitbank.com, if StartSSL didn't put checks in place, someone could register www.legitbank.co.uk or www.legitbank-whatever.com, get a valid SSL certificate and create a very authentic looking site complete with a lovely padlock to make it look authentic and then potentially scam people.
You have two choices: either buy a new domain that doesn't have "salesforce" in the name or attempt to buy an SSL certificate from another provider and hope they don't also block the name - of course, this does mean paying, but the fact that you're paying may be enough to convince them to allow it.
Apex (Salesforces propriety coding language) is based largely off Java, so starting with JAva might help. It's a heavily typed language (must declare variable types, etc), so if you have any experience in c/c++/Java/VBA, then that will help you along. Salesforce does run some training courses, and their documentation is usually full of examples, so those can really help.
With salesforce, you actually want to steer away from code/development where you can, and where it makes sense to. Whatever you write in code is always more prone to failure than using the standard UI. IMO, you should only ever code something if you can't do it in configuration.
Some links for some starting resources http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/index_Left.htm https://developer.salesforce.com/docs
This is not due to the edition you have, it's because your company subscribes to the Premiere Success Plan support package. Also, LUCKY!!!!
No problem, I recommend you sign up for a free developer org here:
https://developer.salesforce.com/signup
Also take a look at there training and certification stuff:
http://www.salesforce.com/services-training/training_certification/
What sort of functionality do you want to extend/leverage? If you create a custom object in salesforce, then in your apex code it will already inherit from the sObject class, so all of the methods in the sObject class will be available to you.
SalesForce World Tour Live - April 24th, 2014 - http://www.salesforce.com/events/details/sf1wt14-chi/soc-live.jsp?r=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FG3aULbqskf&r=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FG3aULbqskf&d=70130000000lh5E&s_tnt=68010:1:0
Are you changing ownership right before converting? Do think this could help if so?
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_dml_convertLead.htm
It does have functions available for not sending emails on ownership change etc. I have not tested this however.
hmmm, it looks like your needs may be getting a bit beyond Zoho's free version.
If you do find yourself being forced to invest a bit in your CRM software, my personal favorite is Dynamics CRM. Their cloud based version is extremely customizable. Salesforce.com is a close second as far as my favorite CRM systems go. Their support is better than Microsoft's, but I've found the product itself isn't quite as customizable from an Admin's point of view.
My biggest piece of advice is to go with one of those two options, and not waste your time on a smaller, more proprietary system. These two are both fairly cheap and won't cause you the headaches as you scale up and grow like you'd probably experience if you went with ACT! or somebody less well known.
You probably don't want cms (content management system) but CRM (customer relationship management) unless you are looking for publishing your data.
I would suggest looking at open source (free) platform like sugarcrm or some commercial application like salesforce.
http://www.sugarforge.org/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=347