Getting the Most out of the Dreamforce App

With Dreamforce around the corner, the "Dreamforce App" just received its annual refresh.  This article is for those who just registered, or have attended DF10 or DF11 and have not visited the org in a while.  If you haven't, it's worth the trip back.

I think there is something special about the Dreamforce App, and it makes Dreamforce special.  We are given a private, event-centric social network.  This is HUGE if you think about it.  You have become part of a massive conversation about Dreamforce, Salesforce, San Francisco, and many other fun and peripherally related topics.

The goal of this blog is to give you a few places to check out, things to do, and jump start, or rekindle your participation in the application.

Starters - Setup your profile!

Since the Dreamforce org is a social environment (like Facebook, but probably better), it's worth a few minutes to setup your profile so that other people know who you are.  Even if you're an old hat to Dreamforce, it's worth a few minutes to refresh things.  To modify your profile, click your name in the upper right hand and click "My Profile".  

From there, click the pencil icon to modify each section and mouse over the picture to upload a new headshot.

Once your profile is in order, it's time to move onto the next exciting part of getting into the Dreamforce App:

Following Stuff

Since the Dreamforce App is based on Chatter, all the same rules apply as normal Chatter settings.  There is a recommendation engine which shows on your homepage, it's worth giving that some attention and following some people.  Just pick a handful to start with, it'll grow organically later.

 Now that you've followed a few recommendations, the next thing to explore are groups.  Groups can be found by going to your Chatter page, and following down the left column, you will see the Groups icon.  Click that to go to the groups listing.

A few of my favorite groups:

"Awesome People" - Lightweight group that has general conversation and usually an "Awesome question of the day".  (Disclaimer - it's my group)

"Challenge Us" - Group for a bunch of Salesforce Ninjas to problem solve.  Great techs in there eager to help people out.  Highly recommended.

"Dreamforce App Feedback" - Got problems with the Dreamforce app?  Answers can be had there.  Salesforce is a social enterprise and I'd wager you'll get help there faster than any other channel.

Set your Preferences

There's a lot of notification options with Chatter and Direct Messages.  It's best to set your preferences early so you don't find yourself annoyed and turned off by too many emails.  To set your preferences, click your name, go to setup, click "My Chatter Settings", and click "Chatter Email Settings".  From there, you have a granular listing of each activity and group, and how you want them to email to you.  It's worth spending a few minutes on this, believe me.

Okay, so I did all of this, now what?

Now you actually need to go out and talk to people.  I would recommend a 5-10 minute workout each day.  Here's a few things you can do: 

• Go answer the latest question on the #Awesome People group
• Ask a technical question to the Challenge Us Group
• Update your status and declare your undying fandom of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Did I mention they are playing at Dreamforce?)
• Search for people with similar interests to you and follow them
• Browse your feed which should have some conversations based on who you followed and respond to a few.
• Just go like some posts.
• Share a photo of something great you did last weekend.

The Dreamforce Application is only in its infancy now, over the next few months, we will see many updates and changes.  While I don't know the specifics, based on historical events, you can expect the following:

• Interactive Agenda Builder
• New Mobile version to build upon this version
• A crecendo of activity which will peak the week before dreamforce.  

What are you waiting for?

Join the conversation, be involved, make friends, and never be alone at Dreamforce.  We're all in this together, and if you spend a few minutes a day in the app socializing, you will have the most fun, most productive Dreamforce ever, and that's a promise.

If you have any other ideas or tips for Dreamforce app users, please comment below, I'd love to hear them!

-Garry

Chatter List Views - Pretty Neat

I love list views.  I touched on this subject a little bit before in this blog post.  I think list views are a todo list that the system generates for me.  Show me my new leads, show me opportunities that are closing this week.  Show me accounts that have no activity in the last month.  With the increase of Chatter usage in my org and many others, combining Chatter and list views seemed like a no brainer.

So, Salesforce did it!  They introduced Chatter List Views not too long ago.  Go to a list view, and click the Chatter button to see all the chatter about the data.  What's nice about this is it gives you a way to see what's bubbling up to the top, in the order of the most recent Chatter activity, and only on the data of the list view you are looking at.

Favorites also allow you to flag list views as a favorite, which shows up in a special area on my Chatter page.  So, my thought was, why not favorite my daily list views, and then it gives me a simple list of lists to peruse during my daily lap through Salesforce?  It's yet another way to view and interact with my data and my co-workers.  I love how the system keeps giving me more options!

If you like it, you don't need to bother your Salesforce administrator to do this.  (unless Chatter is not enabled, in which case you should beg them for Chatter, but that's another blog post).  

Here's how to do it:

1. Open your favorite list view.
2. Click the "Chatter" button.  And if you like, click "Add to favorites" to add it to your favorites list.

Access the Chatter Favorites from your Chatter tab.

 

So there you have it, Chatter about all the data in a list view.  Yet another way you can interact with your data.  How do you use Chatter list views?  Any stories about ways they make you more efficient in Salesforce?

Dreamforce Recap - Platform Enhancements

Since Tom and I are deeply involved with multiple Force.com development projects at any given time, my favorite part of the Dreamforce Keynote focuses on platform enhancements.  I'm going to give a high level overview of each bullet point of the press release, what it means for Red Argyle, and what it means for You, as well as a link to some snazzy information.  We're going to still be following up with a few more blogs, there's too much to cover in one post!

Before I totally geek out, I'll review what the Force.com platform is - Force.com is "Salesforce.com without the sales", or the suite of infrastructure that Salesforce offeres developers to deeply customize.  Database schema, user interfaces, social plugins, and integrations all fall within the auspices of Force.com.  Okay, shall we proceed?

Chatter Connect -

Chatter connect is a suite of enhancements that extend Chatter.  It allows 3rd party ap developers to deeply integrate Chatter into other applications such as Instant Messaging applications, web portals, intranets (yes, even Sharepoint!).  

What this means for Red Argyle - When crafting solutions for our customers that need to be social, our level of effort to "socialize" applications suddenly became much, much lower.

What this means for YOU - Want to ditch Google Chat and have everything within Chatter?  Want to add Chatter Widgets to your intranet?  - It is now possible!

Touch.salesforce.com - 

The line is blurring between what is mobile and what is.. uh.. "unmobile".  Maintaining a multitude of mobile apps for Blackberries, iPads, iPhones, Androids... etc, has become unweildy.  Salesforce decided to take this head on and leverage HTML5 technology which makes a mobile user interface ubiquitous.  UI, now being based on HTML5 standards will enable companies to take the jump to mobile with ease.

What this means for Red Argyle - In the short term, we probably will not be full scale embracing this addon due to its lack of support for VisualForce components, although they are "coming shortly" from what we were told.  However, we are very excited about what opportunities this application will offer, in the future we will be able to incorporate gestures into our UI designs.  Exciting stuff.

What this means for YOU - As you continue planning your corporate IT strategy and using Mobile technology, consider using touch.salesforce.com as a way to distribute mobile data access.  It could potentially save a lot of effort and budget by using Touch instead of developing your own custom mobile applications.

Here's a great video demonstrating Touch functionality.  Even supports some offline ability!

Visual Workflow Cloud Designer - 

Salesforce has been quietly imporoving a technology called "Flow" which is a visual workflow process within the force.com platform.  One big hurdle for many is that it only worked in the past with a 3rd party flow designer application which had to be installed on a local machine, and it would not work on a Mac, only PC.

What this means to Red Argyle - While this is not rocking our world, it does make our lives easier.  Less software to maintain, no more messing around with parallels and 3rd party app installations to use Flow.  Moving forward, it's a great enhancement and another demonstration of Salesforce's committment to the cloud.

What this means to YOU - Using Salesforce Visual Workflow just got that much easier for you, and more importantly, for your users.  Your administrators will find it much easier to deploy and train on this in the future.

Here's a decent video describing what Visual Workflow can do for your organization.

Siteforce - 

Siteforce is now added as an extension to the Force.com platform.  In short, Siteforce is a web content management system for managing all a company's websites from within Salesforce.  It is now generally available and native to the force.com platform.

What this means to Red Argyle - Going with the theme fo these releases, Salesforce is giving us more options and more ways to solve our customers' challenges.  Siteforce is a great tool and for some, will be a great way to get content posted to the web, allow non technical staff to post content, and rapidly develop and prototype deeply integrated websites.

What this means for YOU - If you have Salesforce, it just also became a content manager.  It is fully possible that you could, from your Salesforce.com instance, manage your internal data AND manage your public facing website & data.  AND, since they are both running out of the same salesforce database, there is no more integration required, they are already ONE database.  This could offer a lot of flexibility where deep functionality is required between the public side and the internal side.

Here's a video demonstrating the Siteforce authoring environment

Conclusion -

This blog post only covers about 25% of the news from Dreamforce.  Tom and I will be circling back with other enhancemnts that we are exccited about, particularly in regards to the Social Profile, Database.com, Data.com, and Heroku.  We're excited about all of this, and want to share our thoughts.  Overall, we were impressed by what Salesforce brought to the table this year and we now have the most robust, flexible, and fast set of tools that we have EVER had available to help you solve your business challenges.  Stay Awesome!

Garry