Here’s the rundown of what I want in a task application:

• Collaborative. I want to know what’s on my team members plates and I want them to see what’s on mine. I want team members to be able to assign me a task, and I want to dole out tasks to them.
• ios ready. It needs to have an interface (or application) that works on my iPhone or iPad.
• Simple. I want to open up the app and see my projects and tasks. At the core, I want a utility that focuses on projects and the tasks I need to complete to be successful. Everything else is gravy.

Well, when it rains it pours! Not only have a found one application that works, but I have found two quality applications that makes all the others look old fashioned. Both of these tools go above and beyond my requirements by offering threaded comments for tasks, beautiful web apps, and email integration. Sheesh! Now I have to eliminate one–and it pains me, because I like them both!

Orchestra To Do

Orchestra To-Do is an ios application and web application that instantly impressed me. It boasts a clean interface which makes it easy to share tasks and projects, a threaded view of comments and changes for each tasks, email integration, and a beautiful web application. I use it with my wife to keep grocery and other lists in sync.

The creation of tasks can be completed by typing into the interface, dictating to the iphone application, or by sending an email to tasks@orchestra.com. By sending the following text in an email to orchestra, you will create a task in the project called “party.”

Don’t forget to pick up the cake for the #party !anyone

The cool thing is that anyone who is a member of the party project has the ability to see the task and accept it as their own. (For more information about the nuances of using email to create tasks, see their handy instruction sheet here). The ability to throw a task “out there” for anyone to claim sets Orchestra apart from any of the other task apps I have seen. Just press the button “I’ll do it” and the task becomes your own!

Orchestra’s selling points

• Ability to create a task that any team member may claim.
• Language recognition.
• Robust email integration.

do.com

Do.com is Salesforce.com’s entry into task management. I’m a Salesforce fanboy, so I downloaded the application the day it was released. I have been using do.com at work for the last couple months and have found it to be easy to use and meets my needs. It easily fulfills my requirements of being collaborative, ios ready, and simple.

Aside from the basic requirements, it also lets you upload attachments to share with your teammates. These attachments can then be linked to tasks. It’s nice to be able to attach documents so they are easily accessible when you are reviewing your tasks. The attachment functionality is currently only available on the web application.

Also, do.com provides the ability to add notes to tasks and projects. So, meeting notes and jottings from telephone calls can be put right next to tasks in their respective projects. You can even send notes via email to do.com by sending to notes@do.com.

do.com’s selling points

• Ability to add attachments to tasks and projects.
• Ability to add notes to tasks and projects.
• Email integration (although not as robust as Orchestra).

I like these tools so much that I don’t think I’m going to eliminate either of them. Until one of these applications pulls away from the other, I’ll continue to use both. Do.com will continue to provide me direction at work while orchestra will help me organize my my personal tasks and lists.

A sales organization, for example, may want to keep track of friendly (or adversarial) customer stakeholders–especially when these stakeholders move from company to company. It would be useful to know where friendly contacts are moving to so the organization can leverage this information as they develop their sales strategies.

Organizations who capture information about elected officials may also want to know and track when elected officials end up in new posts. It could be advantageous to keep track of a lawmaker’s disposition toward your company throughout his/her career.

Interestingly, Salesforce does not offer the functionality to track contacts over time.  Yes, there is a way to track fields, but only for 18 months, which isn’t a sufficient length of time for the above requirement.  I’ve built a fairly simple solution to this problem that doesn’t involve any code.

Road map

This configuration has seen several iterations in my Salesforce environment, but I think we have arrived at a fairly simple and straightforward method to track contacts and their movements. The steps to setting up this configuration include.

• Create a new object called Contact Position.
• Develop validation rules to insure that only one contact position is active at any one time.

• Write a (cross-object) workflow so the Contact object will display the current position information.

The Contact Position Object

The most important step is to create an object called “Contact Position” which will be on the detail side of a Master-Detail relationship with the Contact object. The Contact Position object should hold whatever fields are useful in understanding each contact’s position. (e.g. name of position, description of position, and account/company).

Although the contact will always be connected to an account, you’ll be able to track the movement of that contact if you also have the account stored in the Contact Position. You’ll also want to include a boolean field called “Active” and/or effective dates.

To make this object shine, you can include some nifty validations to ensure that:

• the end date does not occur before the begin date. The error condition for this would simply be: begin data > end date.
• the “Active” checkbox does is not unchecked until an end date is entered. (i.e. An inactive position must have an end date.)

Validating that only one contact position is active at any one time

The requirements for this project state that only one contact position for any contact may be active at a time. To guard against multiple active contact positions, we would have to know if there are any other contact positions active. Although Salesforce is unable to make this computation from the contact position object, we can determine the number of Active positions from the Contact object. Here’s how to do it:

• Create a Roll Up Summary field on the Contact Object that counts the number contact positions for a given contact.

• Create the validation rule in the Contact Position to guard against there ever being more than one Active position. Here’s what I came up with (note the reference to the Roll Up summary field called Active_Positions__c).

And(OR( PRIORVALUE( Active__c )=FALSE, ISNEW()), Contact__r.Active_Positions__c>0, Active__c =TRUE)

Pushing the current Contact Position information to the Contact Object

Now that we have the Contact Position information connected to the Contact, and we make sure that these positions follow some basic rules, we can push the current Contact Position information to the Contact.

• Create a workflow rule that will run everytime a record is created or edited. The rule criteria is simple: if the Contact Position is Active, it should trigger an action. (e.g. Active__c=True)
• Than setup a field update action which updates the Contact object. By updating the Contact object from an action in the Contact Position, we have just setup “Cross Object Workflow” (new in Spring ’12 release). See below:

• Before clicking Save, setup the formula to update the field in the Contact Object.

That’s all there is to it. Now users will be able to keep track of their contacts when they move to other companies or positions! I had a fun time putting this together, and it allowed me to eliminate some code that was previously deployed to do the same thing. Please drop me a line if you have any suggestions or have questions.

Along came Salesforce.com, and we have been able to create solutions that can withstand the demands of many users and data, promote collaboration, and maintain data integrity in ways that departmental solutions have been unable to accomplish in the past. Below are a list of reasons why our business unit’s implementation of Salesforce (aka Force.com)  behaves like an enterprise application. (In the future, I’ll publish a list of Salesforce criticisms, but today I’m a fanboy).

1. Salesforce was an easy sell. With a greater percentage of the costs known up front, Salesforce takes some of the guesswork out of costing a solution. No hardware to purchase, no network engineers to engage, and no obtuse licensing makes Salesforce seem less of a fiscal gamble. In my case, I do all the development work, so we don’t even have to worry about a pricey consultant engagement.
2. Salesforce helps the business to easily share information between and among departments. I have found that sharing information has become one of the biggest selling points of implementing Salesforce. After we implemented our first application in Salesforce, we found that other departments within the business unit wanted to use that data to help satisfy their own business needs. Instead of generating spreadsheets to share with other departments, we immediately began bringing on other areas so they can share data at the source.
3. Salesforce provides the tools to quickly prototype, rollout, and change applications. Most business requirements can be met simply through a point and click interface. Although nothing replaces thorough analysis when developing an application, the basic concepts behind Salesforce administration is intuitive and its developer interface is streamlined. This shortens the cycle time for development and allows the business to see their changes implemented quickly.
4. Salesforce takes IT out of the equation. Departmental solutions always lose when they have to compete with enterprise applications. IT just doesn’t have the resources to take on all applications and solutions for all departments. Thus, the needs of smaller business units can not always be addressed in reasonable timeframes. Salesforce allows departments and business units that don’t have the attention of IT to effectively roll out solutions without IT resources.
5. Salesforce provides quick reports and dashboards to measure and communicate our accomplishments. A couple weeks ago, a business user asked me to generate a Salesforce report for the preceding fiscal year. It was in her inbox in about 5 minutes. The last year’s report took two days to gather the data and a day to crunch the numbers. Also, I’ve created dashboards that are visible at login that immediately remind users that their data actually means something in aggregate. With these types of reminders, managers and executives can’t argue with the benefit of Salesforce.
6. Salesforce makes it easy to engage users in the development process. After meeting with users in the morning, I can go into a developer sandbox, make a change, and show them the change by lunchtime. With that kind of speed, users stay engaged and feel comfortable asking for changes. The first thing I tell new user groups (after I tell them that Salesforce is NOT a sales application) is that the application is THEIR application and that we can work together to create an application that fits their needs.
7. Salesforce has a primetime feature set. Workflow, custom webpages, approvals, triggers, granular permissions, forms, reporting, dashboarding, and email parsing are all functionalities that we use in our departmental solutions–and we are just scratching the surface. These features have allowed my little department to develop applications that are producing real value to my business unit and the organization as a whole.

The above items (along with a lot of hard work) have helped to make Salesforce a valuable tool for my business unit. It’s not a perfect implementation (maybe I’ll write about that in the future), but we’ve been able to leverage the strengths of Salesforce to create departmental applications that provide enterprise-grade functionality and productivity.

Then, Barnes and Noble opened their nook app store.

Big mistake.

They turned my awesome reader into a tablet wannabe.

I loved my nook color, and I so much wanted to believe that my innovative little ereader from the big box bookstore had become a true tablet. I downloaded Angry Birds and a couple overpriced apps, but to my frustration, I never really found anything fun or useful. I knew, though, that I needed more apps. I went as far as pseudo transforming my nook color into a junior Android tablet using an n2a (nook2android) card. That made my once beloved nook color into a desperate attempt at joing the world of tablets. I now had access to a whole new world of apps that consistently crashed my poor inadequate tablet.

I wasn’t sure if android just had way too many configuration options, if the nook just wasn’t powerful enough to handle an unleashed android platform, or a little bit of both, but I did know that the iPad “grass” looked a whole lot greener.

Now that I’ve had my iPad for about a month, I’m ready to go out on a limb and declare it “amazing,” “revolutionary,” and (even) “productive.” AwesomeNote is just about awesome; zite is a beautiful and intelligent way to read my news; my email is delivered without a hitch. My bluetooth keyboard, has in effect, turned my iPad into a computer. Here’s the clincher: I’ve been on my iPad all day, it’s 10:00 at night, and I have only used 40% of the battery. WOW! It’s the best piece of hardware I’ve ever owned.

So, why do I miss my nook color? Well, I haven’t read one complete book since I bought my iPad. It’s too big and bright. I find that I can’t fall asleep after reading a couple chapters from a novel. I’ve tried turning on the black background and dimming the display, but it’s just too uncomfortable for me. So, althought I love my iPad and do not regret purchasing it, it is not a replacement for a good ereader.

I’m interested to see how the Kindle Fire is able to stand up to the iPad. If it’s a great ereader and a more fully baked tablet than the nook color, the iPad may no longer be king.

Steps:

1. Name your cells.  For every field that you’ll be using in your formula, name a corresponding cell in Excel with the name of that field. Don’t forget to include “__c” for custom fields (see below). 
2. Put some data into each of these named cells.
3. Build your formula, making sure to click on the named cells to insert into your formula.
4. Make sure the calculations work as designed.
5. Copy formula from Excel and paste into Salesforce!!

The power of being able to lead groups of peers without receiving clear delegated authority.

Project management. Self-management and the management of ideas, projects and people.

An insatiable desire (and the ability) to learn more. Forever.

Thinking back to my high school days in a top-notch high school with fantastic teachers, very few of these skills were explicitly addressed (except maybe public speaking, critical thinking, and the scientific method).  I’m sure some of the gifted teachers tried to impart some of the other ideas into our hard headed teenage brains, but there was no explicit discussion about most of the items in Seth’s list.

Few of the items on Seth’s list are controversial, but many of these skills are difficult to measure (e.g. how do you test for “self reliance?”)  In a climate of teaching to the test, we (parents, politicians, educators, etc.) should figure out how to address the life skills in Seth’s list while preparing our children for careers in the 21st century.

As a parent, I’m am helping my elementary school aged kids (why wait for high school?) to begin the process of chipping away at some of  the ideas on Seth’s list.  I hope we can find a way for our teachers and school districts to do the same.

1. Creating a method of passing data from Salesforce to Sharepoint. We completed this task in the previous post, by creating a button that sends the user to a document upload page in Sharepoint while passing Sharepoint some query string variables to help prepopulate the edit form.
2. Creating an object in Salesforce that will hold data about the document. (We created the object in Part I, but we’ll be updating this object to include the link to the sharepoint document in this post).
3. Creating a method to send Salesforce information about the newly uploaded document in Sharepoint. This is the task that we’ll be working through in this post.

There are four items covered in this post:

1. Setting up Email Services in Salesforce.
2. Setting up Sharepoint to send an email to Salesforce with the data to be parsed.
3. Writing the Apex class to parse the email.
4. Updating the Document Object in Salesforce to include the link back to Sharepoint.

Setting up Email Services in Salesforce

Email services in Salesforce is a handy way of accepting emails from people or systems and using those emails to create or update records in Salesforce. More information about email services can be found on the Salesforce developer site, and an excellent example code can be found here.

The first step in creating the email service is to create an Apex class. We won’t be writing the whole code now, but we’ll just create the placeholder for an Apex class called ProcessSPDocs:

global class processSPDocs {
}

Once the class is created, go to: Settings > Develop > Email Services > New Email Service.

Fill in the appropriate fields making sure to select the new Apex class we just created. The “Accept email from” field provides the ability to allow emails from certain domains or specific email addresses. Before completing this form, do NOT forget to check the “Active” checkbox!

After completing this form, press the button “Save and new email address.” In the subsequent page, identify the prefix of the email address (the part before the @) and press save. Copy the email address and have it handy for the next step.

Setting up Sharepoint to Send Data

For those familiar with Sharepoint workflows, this step is very straightforward. Using Sharepoint Designer create a workflow that will send an email to the address created in previous step. This workflow should fire as soon as a record is created (i.e. when the document has been uploaded). In the subject of the email insert the following pieces of information.

1. Document Name. The Document name will ultimately be used to create the link back to Sharepoint.
2. Salesforce ID. The Salesforce ID was originally sent to Sharepoint and stored in the document library. The Salesforce ID is needed to identify to which record the documents will be associated.
3. Document Type (Optional). If you’ll be storing a variety of document types, you may want to categorize them by document types (e.g. Contract, MOU, Other, etc).

The email will be sent to Sharepoint in the following format:

Apple Contract,002R000000ILiP7,Final Contract

Writing the Apex class

Using the Apex class you created above insert the code below (or something similar). This Apex class will be parsing the email that we just created in the previous step.

The Code used to parse the email and create a new record in the Document object is below.

global class processSPDocs implements
Messaging.InboundEmailHandler {

Document__c[] newDocument = new Document__c[0];

global Messaging.InboundEmailResult handleInboundEmail(
Messaging.InboundEmail email,
Messaging.InboundEnvelope envelope) {
Messaging.InboundEmailResult result =
new Messaging.InboundEmailresult();

String[] emailsub = email.subject.split(',',0);
String spDocName = emailsub[0];
String sfID = emailsub[1];
String spDocType = emailsub[2];

try
{
newDocument.add(new Document__c(Sharepoint_Document_Name__c=spDocName,
Account=sfID,
Document_Type__c=spDocType));
insert newDocument;
}
catch (System.dmlException e)
{
System.debug('ERROR: Not able to create Document: ' + e);
}
return result;
}
}

Updating the Document Object in Salesforce to include the link back to Sharepoint

The process is almost complete. The only thing left (which I forgot to include in Part I) is to put a url field into the Document object that will link back to the Sharepoint document. To do this, create a formula field with the following:

HYPERLINK("FULL SHAREPOINTPATH BEFORE THE DOCUMENT NAME"&
Sharepoint_Document_Name__c,Sharepoint_Document_Name__c ,"_blank")

Wrapup

Although it takes a number of steps to get here, this project should successfully integrate Salesforce and Sharepoint without needing any backend Sharepoint development or webservice development. Below is an example of how the new Documents object will look as a related object. Clicking on the link will open a PDF, and the average user will not even know that they are pulling the document from Sharepoint!

On several occasions, I have expressed my desire for Salesforce and Sharepoint to talk to each other, but apparently it’s not that easy to do without developing web services or purchasing off the shelf solutions. Both of these paths are currently off the table for my small team, so we went a different direction with the tools that are available in Salesforce and Sharepoint.

Background

We have been using attachments functionality in Salesforce to keep documents with their corresponding records, but we have found that attachments are a less than optimal way to manage documents, because they are not searchable and they are difficult to export en masse if we need to move to a different Salesforce instance (we will soon).    We have also looked at Salesforce Content Management, but it takes too many clicks for users to upload files and attach the files to a record.  (We could do some custom stuff to make this work, but we don’t have the time or resources).

Solution

So, we decided to use Sharepoint as our document manager and provide links in Salesforce that reference the Sharepoint documents.  We figured out a relatively quick and easy way of doing this that includes the following steps.  Only the first two steps are manual. (see below).

The ingredients needed to make this work include:

Starting in Sharepoint:

• Create a Document Library in Sharepoint with at least a field to house the Salesforce ID and Salesforce Name.  We also created a Document Type field (e.g. Contract, MOU, Application, etc).
• Create a custom edit form (copy the editform.aspx), and place a Content Editor Webpart below the form.  In the CEWP add a javascript that parses a query string. (See below – Thanks to Josh for putting this together).

 // 

• Make the Custom Edit Form the default Edit Form for that library.

Moving to Salesforce:

• Create a custom object called Document and include Document Type as a field and a lookup field to the object to which you will be attaching the documents. (e.g. If the document library will be housing documents related to Accounts, then add a lookup field to Accounts object.)
• Create a “New Document” button in the Document object with a URL to directed to Sharepoint. You can get the beginning part of the URL by uploading a new document into your Sharepoint List and copying the URL in the address bar. It will look something like this:

http://SiteCollectionName/SiteName/_layouts/Upload.aspx?List=%7BD9F024A7%2D3E1D%2D4475%2D890F%2D973E19D5E997%7D&Root Folder=%2SiteName%2FSalesforceDocuments&Source=http%3A%2F%2F newsource%2Eapollogrp%2Eedu%2FGovtAffairs%2FGATeam%2F SalesforceDocuments%2FForms%2FAllItems%2Easpx%3FFilterField1%3D SalesforceID%26FilterValue1%3D{!Account.Id}&SalesforceID{!Account.Id}& SalesforceName={!Account.Name}

This will generate the url that will be parsed by the code above in the Sharepoint CustomEditForm.

• Go to the Account Object Page Layout (or whichever related object to which you will be attaching your documents) and make sure that the Documents Object is showing as a related list.  In the Document Object, select the new button that you created in the previous step.

Congratulations, you just created a way to upload new documents Sharepoint from Salesforce.   Give it a try.  Go to an account and click the “New Document” button, and you’ll be taken to your Sharepoint site, where you can upload a new document.  The Salesforce ID and Document Types should have been passed to the Sharepoint form as well.

But we are not done yet!  Next we’ll learn how to send back the Document information from Sharepoint to the Document Object in Salesforce using workflow in Sharepoint and Email Services in Salesforce.  Once complete, the document information will show up in the Account Page Layout on the related Document list with a link directly to the actual document in Sharepoint.

Read Part II.

Jeff Winston, a troubled Radio News Producer dies at the young age of 43 in the first pages of Replay by Keith Grimwood and immediately wakes up in his 18 year old body in 1963. He remembers everything from his previous life and decides very early on that he will not make this new life a copy of the last go around.  He capitalizes on his knowledge of current events and his
lessons already learned. By the time he dies again in 1988, he leaves a legacy much different from his previous life.

This cycle continues (with a some powerful wrinkles along the way) with Jeff taking different paths each time.  I read the last page (on my new nookcolor) over a week ago, but I keep thinking about the plot twists in the book as well as my own life’s plot twists.  What decisions would I make if I was all of a sudden 18 again?

Replay is so thought provoking because it weaves so many themes into the relatively short book.  In fact, the one major criticism I have of this book is that it is too short.  There was one part of this book that foreshadowed some potentially sinister events, but was not addressed in subsequent lifetimes.  Also, there was one specific relationship that was not resolved, but showed promise for even more twists and turns.

Nonetheless, this book is page turner that keeps on turning even after the last pages are done.