Appirio Product Blog

Appirio Cloud Sync April 2012 Release

2012-04-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

Summary:
In this release, there are several fixes to Calendar Sync, improvements to Contact Sync, and a platform enhancement.

Details:

Calendar Sync improvements:

Cloud Sync now successfully syncs recurring meetings when there is a bulk trigger on the Salesforce Event object.
This is a workaround for the Salesforce issue described here: http://boards.developerforce.com/t5/Apex-Code-Development/Bulk-triggers-in-recurring-event/td-p/83781
Fix for I-6102/I-16559: Recurring meetings that end by a certain date are no longer duplicated if the calendar sync configuration is deleted and recreated.
Fix for I-8898: Events where the duration is longer than one day and marked as All Day Events are now synchronized with the correct duration.
Fix for I-14590: Recurring events that start more than 1 month in the past but that have occurrences within the sync window will now be synchronized.

Contact Sync improvements:

Number of records supported per contact sync configuration is increased to 5,000 from 1,000.

Note: due to Google throttling, synchronization of data sets above 3,000 can result in longer initial sync times . This can in turn cause the synchronization admin page to become unresponsive while it's waiting for the sync to complete.

Contact sync duplication prevention now checks all Salesforce contact records for matching email addresses before allowing insert/update of new contacts from Google.

This will reduce the chance of creating duplicate records previously caused when the contact sync configuration only considered a subset of Salesforce data based on visibility settings, field-level filters, or the number of records exceeding the 1000 record cap.

Contact sync now allows users to configure which Google group to synchronize to.

Previously, sync automatically put Salesforce Contacts into the Other Contacts group when synchronizing them to Google and if users wanted to have the data sync onward to their mobile device, they needed to manually move the contact to the My Contacts group after the data synchronized.
Now, new Contact sync configurations support an Advanced Setting called "Sync Salesforce to Google group" that controls what group the contacts will be added to. This defaults to My Contacts to make it easier for users that want the contacts from Salesforce to be available on their mobile devices.
Existing configurations continue to use the Other Contacts group until edited.
Note: data sync'd previously will not be moved from Other Contacts to the My Contacts group with this new setting, users will need to move the existing data manually, but when using a sync configuration with the new setting, any new contact records synchronized to Google will be associated with the My Contacts group.

Contact sync supports a new visibility filter which is the default setting on new contact sync configurations e.g. "Contacts owned by me or related to Accounts owned by me". As the name suggests, the setting will synchronize contacts owned by the user, as well as contacts related to accounts owned by the user

All new contact sync configurations will use this setting as the default visibility filter.
Existing configurations continue to use their current visibility filter until edited.

Platform improvements:

Cloud Sync will retry after getting a login failure or license expired failure up to 10 times, each time sending an email notification to the user. On the 10th consecutive failure, Cloud Sync will inactivate all of the user's sync configurations.

To recover, the user will need to correct the login failure or extend the subscription, click Start and then Sync Now on the appropriate Inactive sync configuration.

For more information about Appirio Cloud Sync please visit http://www.appirio.com/technology/CloudSync.php. For technical support please visit the Appirio Support portal and knowledge base or contact Appirio support via email at: support@appirio.com

Appirio Cloud Sync November 2011 Release

2011-11-29T10:33:00.000-08:00

By Wes Barkwill, Appirio Product Management

Appirio is pleased to announce the most recent update to its Google-Salesforce Calendar and Contact synchronization products - consolidating and rebranding previous products as Appirio Cloud Sync, and delivering technical enhancements to improve the speed and reliability of synchronization. A few highlights about this release and related changes:

Cloud Sync is a public cloud-based, multi-tenant application so users of previous incarnations of Cloud Sync - free sync editions Appirio Calendar and Contact Sync, and paid edition Premium Sync automatically have access to the new features without any upgrade effort.
With the consolidation of the Appirio sync apps into a single Cloud Sync application, previous editions Appirio Calendar Sync, Appirio Contact Sync, and Appirio Premium Sync are no longer available to install from the Salesforce.com AppExchange. Customers on free sync editions will continue to have access and be supported by Appirio without cost.
Improving reliability was a core tenet of the release so enhancements were made to upgrade support for current Google Data APIs, improve handling for larger sets of contacts data, and change options for sync frequency and the window of calendar sync to optimize the availability of the service.
Please review the release notes for more details on the changes delivered.

More about Appirio Cloud Sync:

Appirio Cloud Sync allows organizations that use Google Apps and Salesforce.com to easily keep their calendars and contact lists in sync. The application is available for download from the Salesforce.com AppExchange, can be used on a trial basis free for 30 days, and afterward is $4/user/month. The November 2011 Cloud Sync release builds on Appirio's 4 years of experience delivering Google and Salesforce.com Calendar and Contact synchronization technology to over 20,000 users across thousands of organizations.

To learn more about Cloud Sync please visit http://www.appirio.com/technology/CloudSync.php or contact us via support@appirio.com.

CloudWorks September Update Arrives, Delivers More Benefits for SFDC and Gmail Users

2011-09-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

By Wes Barkwill, CloudWorks Product Manager, Appirio

Does your business use both Gmail and Salesforce.com as part of the toolset for interacting with customers every day? Do you waste time going back and forth between the two apps preparing for a meeting or an email response, to save the details of an important email or a call, or to update a contact? Would you prefer if this was much easier to do?

If you said 'yes' to any of these questions, then Appirio CloudWorks is the answer.

CloudWorks helps accelerate productivity of organizations that use Gmail and SFDC by displaying Sales, Service, and Collaboration cloud content directly in the Gmail interface. We do this with cloud-to-cloud integration, not browser plug-ins or other client-side installs. This simple idea provides powerful benefits:

Be More Effective: CloudWorks displays relevant SFDC content in the context of emails and meetings you manage in Gmail and Google Calendar. You use that improved customer awareness to sell more and deliver better service.
Be More Efficient: CloudWorks allows you to view and edit existing SFDC Sales, Service, and Collaboration content, and even create new content without leaving Gmail. The time you save allows you to focus on the important work of building customer relationships.
Be More Social: CloudWorks delivers your Salesforce Chatter feed throughout Gmail so you never miss an opportunity to collaborate when working outside SFDC. You can access and add new posts and comments to the Chatter feed for individual Sales and Service records, your entire Chatter feed, and individual Chatter notification emails you receive.
Be More Agile: CloudWorks components are configurable and metadata driven so new fields in SFDC are recognized and can be surfaced in Gmail easily. Users see the changes immediately, there is no additional deployment effort or overhead. Cycles that typically took IT weeks or months can be delegated to business unit admin users and done in minutes.

CloudWorks has delivered these benefits since debuting earlier this year and the September update includes improvements that -

Make it easier to capture customer interactions:

Common actions like Record Email, Log a Call, and Create Task are available on Sent Emails and all Sales and Service objects now.
Email attachments can be saved back to SFDC in addition to the rest of the email.
Emails from prospects can be used to create Leads or Contacts now.

Provide a more consistent application experience with SFDC and a more robust platform:

Picklist field default values behave consistently with SFDC field-level configuration, and support a --None-- value now.
Required fields behave consistently with SFDC field-level configuration, hardcoded required fields have been removed.
Checkbox and lookup fields are now supported in the CloudWorks field layout editor, and will behave as expected at runtime in CloudWorks UI components.
Other infrastructure improvements deliver a more scalable, secure, and faster CloudWorks experience.

For those of you already on CloudWorks we're excited to continually improve what you already know and use every day, the next update is scheduled for mid-October. For those of you not using CloudWorks yet, please contact us, we'd love to get you setup to start receiving the benefits mentioned above.

For more detailed information about the features, fixes, and known issues in each CloudWorks release, please see our Release Notes.

For more information and to get started with CloudWorks today, please contact us at sales@appirio.com or visit http://www.appirio.com/technology/CloudWorks.php.

CloudWorks Summer Updates 2011

2011-08-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

From expanding our configuration capability, and allowing users to comment directly on Chatter notification emails in GMail, to improving application load times and administration console look-and-feel, the CloudWorks team has been busy this summer releasing significant improvements in June and August.

June highlights include:

For Service Cloud users, the ability to create a new Case from an inbound email
Configurability of fields for edit and/or display on Cases, Leads, and Campaigns
New "Reply to Chatter" app that shows you the full Chatter post/comment stream for emails that contain links to Chatter (e.g. auto-notifications from SFDC)
Pre-population of more fields when adding emails and new contacts to SFDC
Totally new CloudWorks Console look-and-feel user interface
Admins can now selectively license only certain users to see CloudWorks, instead of their entire email domain
Ability to override "matches" logic that determines if and when CloudWorks standard apps should fire, making it easier to substitute your own business-specific logic

August highlights include:

Performance optimizations to the CloudWorks platform will result in substantially faster load times for the Contact application after initial caching.
For the first time, CloudWorks now supports Internet Explorer 8 and 9.
Several improvements have been made to the Record Email feature to more accurately capture email details in salesforce.com
Log a Call and Create Task actions now allow users to set more fields.
Tenants can now restore the original 'factory default' CloudWorks application field layout and stream configurations when necessary.
Dozens of other UI and platform fixes improve usability, security, and reliability throughout CloudWorks.

For more detailed information about the features, fixes, and known issues in each CloudWorks release, please see our Release Notes.

Each release of CloudWorks improves the ability to make your workforce more effective and productive. Your staff has the benefit of having the right information when and where they need it in their email and calendar applications, are smarter about their customers and have better interactions as a result, and can easily capture outcomes and make necessary changes to keep your business information current.

For more information and to get started with CloudWorks today, please contact us at sales@appirio.com or visit http://www.appirio.com/technology/CloudWorks.php.

CloudWorks May 2011 Release

2011-05-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

By Glenn Weinstein, CTO, Appirio

Appirio's CloudWorks May 2011 release is now officially available! All tenants will automatically see all of our new features.

Please see the May 2011 Release Notes, on the "Documentation" tab of the CloudWorks console, for a comprehensive review of what's included in this release. Highlights include:
Configurable fields - you can now select which standard or custom Salesforce fields for display and edit on the Contact, Account, and Opportunity apps
Activity stream - you can optionally display latest Activities, instead of latest Chatter, for record details
App Chooser - allows users to select other CloudWorks apps in addition to the currently displayed matching app
Create a Contact - you can now specify Title, Phone, and Mobile
Debug mode, which allows users and Appirio support personnel to see detailed debug info to help diagnose problems
Prototype versions of CloudWorks apps for Box.net and Jive
Support for Salesforce orgs that enforce IP range restrictions
Better handling of situations that previously required users to clear their browser cache
"Quick Start" configuration for newly created CloudWorks tenants, to make it easier to create demo or test tenants
The Getting Started guide should be helpful for onboarding new users.

We believe CloudWorks is an industry-changing product for companies that are moving significant portions of technology to the public cloud, via leaders such as Salesforce.com and Google Apps. Please contact us at sales@appirio.com, or visit http://appirio.com/cloudworks for more information about getting started with CloudWorks!

Check It Out - The CloudWorks April 2011 Release

2011-04-16T19:53:00.000-07:00

By Glenn Weinstein, CTO, Appirio

Yesterday, we went live with the April 2011 release of CloudWorks!

If your company uses Salesforce.com for CRM, and you're using Google Apps for email and calendar, then you need CloudWorks.

It's fun to be part of an R&D team building a true multi-tenant SaaS application. We are running five-week sprints, culminating in regular releases that each contain great new features and enhancements that make our customers more productive. The bad old days of 1-2 releases a year (at best) are a distant memory! And when we release, all customers get the improvements immediately. Our release notes say nothing about how to "install" the new version. It's a relief to not have to worry about all the permutations of upgrade scenarios our customers may face. Another ancient memory of an older era in software.

You can read the April 2011 Release Notes for the gory details, including lots of screen shots and explanations. It's avaialble straight from the "Documentation" tab of your CloudWorks console. Highlights include:

"Edit" button on contact, account, opportunity, lead, and campaign details
Case app, for showing details about a support case inside any email with a thread id
"Push to Salesforce" button on Google Calendar sidebar app, to copy an event into SFDC and tie it to the appropriate records
Support for connecting to multiple SFDC orgs
Support for multiple email domains, if they are being managed centrally in one Google Apps control panel
Gmail app "decider" logic, allowing admins to configure which apps to show, when, and to which users (this moves more control from custom programming, to admin configuration)
Use of SFDC REST API
Black tabs, allowing Appirio support personnel to administer customer tenants

The Getting Started guide gives step-by-step instructions for onboarding new users.

We look forward to your feedback.

CloudWorks March 2011 Release Is Here!

2011-03-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

Appirio's Cloud Technology Group is very pleased to announce the March 2011 release of CloudWorks.

CloudWorks is our innovative technology for surfacing cloud-based data - specifically, your Salesforce.com CRM and custom Force.com data - in a meaningful business context, such as your Gmail or Google Calendar.

Customers use CloudWorks to improve sales productivity through their CRM systems via better data quality, more updated pipelines, easy activity creation, and realtime information when and where users need it. They also use CloudWorks to incorporate custom processes, such as recruiting, timecards, expenses, even idea voting - right into their mail and calendar apps.

Put simply, if you have SFDC and you have Google Apps, you need CloudWorks.

The March 2011 release is a significant step forward:

We now have a full-fledged administration console, available from the More > menu in Gmail, or directly at http://cloudworks.appirio.net. Here, we've consolidated all of the developer and admin functions, as well as a new "My Settings" tab that allows individual users to inspect their SFDC Oauth tokens, and de-authorize or re-authorize to a new org.
We've added an email contextual app for Leads and Campaigns. Now, if you receive an email from a sender who's not a contact in your SFDC CRM, we check to see if that person is a Lead, and if so, we'll show you the relevant info.
You can now create a Contact in SFDC right from Gmail, anytime you receive an email from someone who's not listed anywhere in your CRM.
This is our first release of production-quality documentation, including a Getting Started guide for end users, a Standard Apps guide, a developer's guide for Building Custom Apps in CloudWorks, and much more.

Of course, CloudWorks is delivered as a secure, multi-tenant SaaS application, so there's nothing to install or maintain.

Please contact us today if you have SFDC and Google Apps and want to try CloudWorks, or even if you have SFDC and are thinking about a move to Google Apps!

Updates to Professional Services Enterprise (PS Enterprise)

2010-12-14T23:39:00.001-08:00

Appirio is thrilled to announce the newest upgrade to the Professional Services Enterprise (PSE) product, which contains several exciting new features.

Read more here...

Note: As of Jan 1, 2011, Professional Services Enterprise, an application formerly provided by Appirio Inc. on Force.com, is now owned, developed and supported by FinancialForce.com.

Cloud Ecosystem Map, Release 2.0 Notes

2010-09-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

By Nitin Jain and Mark Koenig

This week, Appirio introduced the next generation of our interactive Cloud Ecosystem Map. This post is intended to explain how to use the map, as well as how we used Force.com to integrate the Ecosystem Map into our computing environment. For more information on why we felt it was time for an update to the map, please visit our CIO Blog here.

We've retained the by-now-familiar three-by-three sorting of the ecosystem, as we have heard from our customers and readers that it is an easily accessible mechanism for understanding the dimensions of the cloud. At the same time, we’ve also made more explicit groupings of those vendors who we consider to be “major players,” as well as other players who are contributing to the richness of the cloud ecosystem.

These categorizations are shown in the graphic above:

The primary sort is by type of solution. The public cloud group is reserved for solutions that are multi-tenant, single instance. The next group is reserved for vendor hosted solutions that are either single-tenant or multi-instance - a different architecture than what's behind the public cloud. The third and final grouping is reserved for what's being called the "private cloud"- any technology that brings some of the benefits of the private cloud into your on-premise data center.
The secondary sorting is by layer of the technology stack, in keeping with the emerging consensus around the 3 major layers of the cloud: applications (SaaS), application platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure (IaaS).
The tertiary sort separates out those vendors with multiple offerings in a section of the cloud, as compared with those who are specializing in a particular category within a particular layer.

How To Use the Map

Landing Page: When you start at the front page, you will see an overview of the cloud ecosystem. It will provide a glimpse of one of the segments of the cloud ecosystem map, A cloud segment is defined as combination of the cloud type and service layer. For example, the Public Cloud - Applications segment defines applications (SaaS) in the public cloud.

Interactive Map: Click on the cloud ecosystem preview image on the landing page to drill down to interactive cloud ecosystem map.

You will start with the Public Cloud - Applications - Major players tab. This tab contains the vendors we believe have the greatest influence on the public cloud, based primarily on number of offerings and market penetration. The Other Players tab contains either the smaller or the more point-solution focused providers. That's a guideline, not a rule -- appearance in the other players tab does not necessarily denote lack of power or size!
You can jump directly to any cloud segment by clicking on the top row of tabs (cloud types) or second row of tabs to navigate across different service categories like Applications, Platforms and Infrastructure. Should you wish to go,to the main page, simply click the back button on your browser.
For some of the data you will find click-able links. These links will take you directly to the service provider’s website (or in some cases to a specific page describing the offering from the vendor). Thus far, this data has been added mostly to the vertically-integrated Major Players in the Public Cloud. We'll be adding more of these links over time.
Over time, we anticipate adding more features, such as search by offering or provider name.

How We Used Force.com to Build the Map

One of our goals in refreshing the cloud ecosystem map was to move from a presentation based on Adobe Flash, which gave us tremendous interactivity, but was relatively static when it came time to change the underlying data. Going forward, we wanted something that would preserve the interactivity, but that would be more dynamic and database-driven, and that we could maintain ourselves. For these reasons, the current version of the ecosystem map is built on the Force.com platform and feeds information into an interactive web page.

Here’s how we did it...

Force.com uses a Model-View-Controller design paradigm for building custom applications.

Robust and Extensible data model: Force.com provides a robust and easy to build data model. Using just point-and-click we built a data model to store offering, cloud segment and vendor information and create relationships among them. Here is the Entity relationship diagram for the Cloud Ecosystem.

Force.com View and Controller: The Force.com platform also provides a simple way to develop a user interface. The UI uses Visuaforce pages and a built-in controller based on standard and custom objects (or you can write a custom controller from scratch). For the Ecosystem Map, we quickly put together an interactive UI based on ExtJS framework and wrote our own custom controller to get the data from custom objects and pass it to the Visualforce page as a JSON array. The ExtJS framework took the JSON data to create a data store and fed it into the data grids.

Now that we have it in our environment, we’ve realized that there are other ways we can use the data to improve the performance of our sales and delivery teams. We’ll be working on building out those capabilities next, and we’ll keep you up-to-date on our progress.

We’d like to thank the following Appirians who contributed their efforts to helping us with the refresh of the ecosystem map: Lori Asburry, Kirk Crenshaw, Eric Czerner, Nirav Doctor, Balakrishna Narasimhan, Bipin Nepani, Ryan Nichols, Huy Nguyen, Yamini Rangan, Michelle Swan, Jennifer Taylor, Mark Tognetti.

Thanks!
Nitin, Mark and the entire Appirio team.

Professional Services Enterprise Winter '10 Release Notes

2009-12-28T08:53:00.001-08:00

By Todd Bursey

Note: As of Jan 1, 2011, Professional Services Enterprise, an application formerly provided by Appirio Inc. on Force.com, is now owned, developed and supported by FinancialForce.com.

Appirio launches the Winter '10 release of its Professional Services Enterprise (PS Enterprise) product. We have added a wide range of exciting new features and enhancements based on feedback from customer implementations of the Fall '09 release. Timecards, expenses, projects, resourcing and billing have been enhanced. And, a major feature called Vendor Management has been added to integrate vendor invoicing into PS Enterprise.

New Vendor Management Features

PS Enterprise has new functionality that allows a customer's vendors to proactively manage their own invoices and budgets on projects. This provides a level of transparency to allow vendors to add value in the process, not just throw an invoice over the wall. This will help reduce budget overruns on projects, increase efficiency in the process and provide checks and balances between operations and vendors. Also, this will reduce the work needed on the customer end to review submitted items and reconcile vendor invoices, and help prevent duplicate invoicing.

Vendors can create invoices directly through the Partner Portal. After creating an invoice, vendor users can search for un-invoiced items by account, and PS Enterprise automatically adds them as line items to the invoice. PS Enterprise customer operations personnel can manually approve invoices for payment, or set up Salesforce approval processes as desired.

Vendors can access reports and views to help manage the services management process:

All items submitted and the links to the invoices
Status of invoices submitted
Un-invoiced business records
Invoiced business records
Report on all budgets assigned and the remaining amounts

Vendors can also attach a file with the vendor’s own previously created invoice instead of searching for and adding line items. Customer operations personnel would need to manually reconcile items in this case.

Other notes on Vendor invoices:

Once an item is chosen to be on an invoice, it cannot be added to another invoice, preventing duplicate invoices.
The status of an invoice can be updated, and communicated to the vendor, as desired.
Vendors can submit a single invoice for a many projects, or a single project per invoice.
Vendors can submit a single invoice for line items that span budgets.

Timecard Enhancements

These enhancements have been added to Timecard functionality:

An option to move specific fields from the “Notes” section of the Timecard to the main screen (Phase, Methodology and Milestone Fields)
The ability to specify which Timecards will appear on the Missing Timecard Report, based on Timecard status
An option to set which Timecards are used for the Estimates Vs. Actuals reporting, based on Timecard status
More assignments displayed on the Timecard screen drop down menu, configurable

Expense Reporting Enhancements

These enhancements have been added to Expense Reporting functionality:

The ability to enter Expenses in multiple currencies, using either the Salesforce or PSE Advanced Multi Currency function for dated exchange rates
The ability to enter expenses directly against project Milestones

Projects

These enhancements have been added to Project functionality:

The ability to choose Milestones when creating a Project from a template
The ability to automatically create Project budgets from product line Items on an Opportunity
Advanced searching and filtering of Resources by role in the Project Planner

Resource Assignments and Staffing

These enhancements have been added to Resource Assignments and Staffing functionality:

The ability to create multiple assignments instead of one at a time: Resources to Projects, and Projects to Resources
Resource Planner enhancements: open a Resource or Assignment from the Resource Planner; perform advanced searches on Resources
Staffer enhancements: expanded search, view and grouping capabilities; True/False value usage improvements

Forecasts

These enhancements have been added to Forecasts functionality:

Forecast worksheet separates actuals for internal and external resources
Forecast against planned revenue or billings
Forecasting for Projects
Forecast audit history for unscheduled backlog and Milestones
Forecast numbers displayed in user's currency
Forecast revenue and open time report, exportable to Excel

Billing

These enhancements have been added to Billing functionality:

Pre-billed amounts tracked at Project level
Billing events optionally generated for past time periods
Ability to: manually stop specific billable items from billing event generation; filter billing events by transaction categories; manage billing events before processing; and remove billing event batches and specific events

Thanks! We look forward to everyone's feedback as we roll out these new features and enhancements.

- Todd and the entire Appirio team

Cloud Ecosystem Map - Release Notes

2009-11-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

By Troy Angrignon

Today, Appirio launched an interactive cloud ecosystem map on appirio.com/ecosystem, using the map I produced in March as a base, and building on it based on Appirio's experience helping move thousands of companies to the cloud. This post is intended to explain this new release of the cloud ecosystem map and how to use it.

What's on the map:
It sometimes seems as though EVERYTHING is being described as "cloud": SaaS apps, hosted apps, hosting companies... even on-premise virtualization platforms - all are described as "cloud" by some vendors. No wonder there's market confusion. We wanted to sort through the hundreds of offerings being described as "cloud" and put them into some sort of taxonomy so that customers could make sense of this rapidly expanding marketplace.

We've done 2 types of sorting:

The first sorting is vertically, by layer of the technology stack. There seems to be emerging consensus around the 3 major layers of the cloud: applications, application platforms, and infrastructure. Within each of these layers, however, are dozens of different types of solutions. Most are not true "layers" of technology, but we made a rough attempt to sort them by their level of abstraction in order to make clear what's running on what.

The second sorting is horizontally, by type of solution. The underlying architecture of a solution matters, because it drives the economics available to the customer. Our first column is reserved for solutions that are multi-tenant, single instance-- what we'll call true public cloud. The second column is reserved for vendor hosted solutions that are either single-tenant or multi-instance-- a different architecture than what's behind the public cloud. The third column is reserved for what's being called the "private cloud"-- any technology that brings some of the benefits of the private cloud into your on-premise data center.

How to use the map:

Macro view:When you start at the front page, you will see a 3 x 3 box, defined by the dimensions above. From this view, you can see the overall landscape of apps, platforms, and infrastructure of all three types: public, hosted, and private. You can also see the major players here and glance at their lines to see where they play overall. For example, you'll note that Salesforce provides things at all three layers but that some of that functionality is directly accessible to the user (black lines) and some is not (denoted with grey lines). Depending on whether you are focusing on higher levels of abstraction and business value and less on hands-on IT, you will consider that a benefit or a curse.

Zoomed View: To dig deeper, click any of the 9 sub-boxes in order to enter that box.

Once inside a given box, there are two pages (left and right) that will give you the full view of all data. The first page contains the largest or most vertically integrated players in the category. The second page contains either the smaller or the more point-solution focused providers. That's a guideline, not a rule-- appearance in the right hand page does not denote lack of power or size!
You will also find a miniature nine-box navigation icon in the upper left corner. You can use that to jump directly from any section to any other section by clicking on the appropriate square in that navigation icon. Should you wish to go to the main page, simply click on our logo or on "Home."
For some of the data you will find clickable links. This data has been mostly added to the vertically integrated major players in Column 1: Public Cloud / Multi-tenant. We'll be adding more of these links over time.
You will also see green dots throughout the document. Those are connection points horizontally across the landscape. It means that there is a partnership connection or that that offering connects within a column or between major columns. A great example is the Finance row where Salesforce.com has deep integrations with external partners. There are many of those cross-column, cross-cloud, and public/private bridging mechanisms. We believe there will be a lot of innovation in this area and we sometimes refer to them as "bridging" technologies.

How to contribute:
Please note that this is very much a work-in-progress. It is not and was not intended to be 100% comprehensive. It is intended to be a "very good sketch", not a super high resolution photo of the landscape. Our goal is really to note the 20% that covers 80% of the cases, particularly in the platform and infrastructure layers. The Saas marketplace has been covered very well already by the likes of Jeff Kaplan's SaaS Showplace. Having said that, feel free to send us submissions for consideration in future updates as it is intended to be a dynamic, living, breathing work.

Please explore the document and give us your feedback, thoughts, ideas, and company suggestions by clicking on the "feedback" link on the map or emailing us at cloud@appirio.com.

We'd like to give a nod to those who have already contributed their valuable time and energy to this project: This map began a year ago and at the time it was heavily built upon the work of the following amazing people: Peter Laird, Kent Dixon, Christofer Hoff, Opencrowd.com, Michael Sheehan, Sam Charrington, Robert W. Anderson, Matias Wiloski, John M. Willis, James Urquhart, David Berlind, Randy Bias, and Jean-Lou Dupont. I then expanded it through the involvement and sponsorship of Dealmaker Media and the Under the Radar Clarity in the Cloud program and it was published kindly by Sandhill.com. Recently I have been lucky enough to work with some of the top thinkers in cloud today - my colleagues here at Appirio - many of whom I got to research, white-board, argue, debate, and create with. During this time we pushed ourselves to re-evaluate the nine-box approach and the overall taxonomic structure to make sure it stood up to review. I'm convinced that because of this work, this version of the map is the best yet. Now we are sharing it out, in the hopes that you will come and help make it even better. We hope that this piece of work will contribute in some small way as a tool to help people understand the complexities of public cloud, hosted services, and private clouds and the interplay between them all.

Thanks!
Troy and the entire Appirio team.

Using Facebook And Salesforce For Viral Marketing - Webinar FAQ

2009-05-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

We've just finished compiling and answering the questions received during the Facebook Webinar a few weeks ago.

If you wish to discuss any of the topics in more detail, or wish to dive into how to use Facebook specifically for your business, please contact us at products@appirio.com!

Category	FAQ	Answer
1. General	Can businesses have pages on Facebook?	Businesses can now create pages (which are now very similar to profiles), groups, and applications. Each has a role in engaging with a community
1. General	How can a big company start to use Facebook ?	Facebook can be a very effective component of an overall marketing strategy for companies of all sizes, but big companies often get their first experience with Facebook through unofficial, "bottom up" experimentation that works.
1. General	For very small companies who are just starting and don't have salesforce.com how can Facebook be best utilized?	Get started by creating your company's Facebook page-- see here for some tips on how to get started: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/12/09/inside-facebook-marketing-bible-24-ways-to-market-your-brand-company-product-or-service-in-facebook/
1. General	Could you suggest a major company that is really taking advantage of social networking for marketing ?	Coke, Pringles, Adidas, Apple, and Starbucks are the top brands on Facebook... check out http://www.facebook.com/marketing for examples of how these brands and others are using Facebook to drive business results
1. General	Are people really making money on Facebook?	Even though Facebook itself is still refining its business model, there are lots of copmanies who have run successful social marketing campaigns on Facebook (Coke and Nutella each over 3M fans on Facebook)
1. General	Is Facebook better suited for B2B or B2C marketing?	We have seen Social Marketing work in both B2B and B2C contexts. Cisco and Intuit have used social marketing very effectively to market to businesses. Thinking specifically about word-of-mouth, it's equally applicable in B2B or B2C. As an example from our own industry, the majority of technology buyers rely on their peer network when making big buying decisions and reference calls are often what closes the deal. What Appirio's Referral Management solution provides is a way for businesses to encourage, manage and measure word-of-mouth referrals, which is equally applicable to all types of businesses.
1. General	Do you have any examples of B2B companies using Facebook?	There are lots of examples of B2B companies on Facebook. Two interesting examples are Hubspot and Salesforce. Hubspot, is an inbound marketing company that helps companies build online marketing campaigns. They use Facebook and Twitter in very creative ways to drive their business. Salesforce is experimenting with persona-based marketing on their Facebook page. Most of the big companies, Cisco, IBM, etc, are on Facebook. The problem right now is turning presence into something more, which we hope solutions like ours will help to accelerate.
1. General	I'm a Sales Manager. How can I use facebook professionally to keep in contact with customers while keeping information private?	If you do use Facebook to connect with your customers, the information they share with you using Facebook mail will only be visible to you. If they write on your wall or interact in other more public ways, it'll be visible to you and your friends but not to the public. Facebook is platform for sharing information with trusted groups of friends, so only the information you or your customers choose to expose will be public. For more tips on using Facebook at Work, check our blog (http://productblog.appirio.com/2008/12/appirio-product-tip-how-to-use-facebook.html).
1. General	How should companies engage with their community on Facebook? Is there a risk of employees taking relationships with them when they leave?	Facebook allows businesses to maintain Pages that can have fans and many of the same properties as individuals on FB. You're right that each person owns their own network, but that's no different than what happens in the offline world. The difference is that using Facebook pages, companies can start build 1-1 relationships with their customers and maintain and nurture those relationships over time.
1. General	How are people using Facebook vs. LinkedIn?	Facebook is a great platform for engaging with professional contacts, many of whom become your friends over time. LinkedIn is a great service but it's thusfar not been as immersive or engaging as Facebook. In Facebook, you can maintain some separation of personas by following these tips (http://productblog.appirio.com/2008/12/appirio-product-tip-how-to-use-facebook.html)
1. General	Are there apps that connect Salesforce to LinkedIn or Twitter?	Salesforce's Service Cloud integrates Twitter and Salesforce. LinkedIn does not have a generally available API, so no similar applications are available at this time
1. General	Do you have any insights into what the next step AFTER Facebook will be?	I wish we had a good answer for this question! Facebook has proven that its an agile platform able adapt very quickly to new trends-- our expectation is that it will remain a powerful platform for engaging with a community for a long time to come.
1. General	What age groups are impacted by Facebook?	Many are surprised by the growing age diversity among Facebook users-- the fastest growing demographic is women over 55. Read more here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/? fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102973
1. General	Are people ready to purchase when they are on Facebook?	Not always-- that's why traditional advertising may not be the most effective way to engage with people in Facebook. People are on Facebook to share with their friends-- that's why we think the most effective way for a brand to market itself on Facebook is by encouraging word of mouth referrals.
1. General	Aren't you one click away from all your competitors in Facebook?	That's true everywhere on the internet! You need to build a community in Facebook precisely because all your competitors are there.
1. General	Is Facebook allowing external parties to access all private data?	Facebook does not allow external parties to access private data. The only data that is available outside Facebook is that which the user chooses to make public.
1. General	Is it possible to bring Facebook data into Salesforce leads?	Facebook data cannot be stored outside of Facebook-- we only bring into Salesforce information that a user chooses to share when they express interest in what your brand has to offer.
1. General	My company primarily sells to companies with very strict rules about what can be viewed on the web. Can I use Facebook?	Since key employees of your prospective customers are still most likely using Facebook outside work, and making recommendations to their friends, there may still be an opportunity to use Facebook.
1. General	Do people other than college students have time for all this?	~50% of Facebook users are over 25 and 35+ is the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook (http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009-facebook-demographics-and-statistics-report-276-growth-in-35-54-year-old-users/), so it's most definitely not just for college students.
1. General	How much time does the average Facebook User spend on the site?	We don't have exact usage statistics but Facebook is a highly engaging service with over 50% of users returning every day.
1. General	What are your thoughts on setting up a separate page for business and keeping the personal profile a little more private/selective?	It is completely up to each user and business. Every business should set up a Facebook page and start engaging directly with their community. In terms of personal profiles, we absolutely believe that these should be as private as the user wants it to be. This control is what differentiates Facebook and gives applications like ours their power. The fact that something was recommended to me by a friend is what makes me take action where a mass email does not.
1. General	What do you say to those who are questioning how Facebook will monetize its HUGE audience? Is this a concern?	Facebook's monetization strategy is a concern only in so far as it affects their viability as a business. Given the strength of their management team, their investors and their user base, we have no doubts about their future.
1. General	What percent of people use Facebook for business versus personal?	If your customers are on Facebook, you and your company need to be on Facebook, regardless of where you choose do your professional networking. People are pretty early in their adoption of Facebook and other social networks and these types of behavioral norms are evolving rapidly. However, given that the boundaries of business and personal life are quite blurred, we're not sure it's even possible to calculate such a %.
1. General	Will using Facebook for marketting purposes backfire and force users to abanden it?	Facebook users have a lot of control over how they are marketed to within the social network. If a company or brand abuses the trust of their fans, they will quickly lose their fan base. That's why its so important to use Facebook carefully for viral marketing.
1. General	What apps are needed to do what was demonstrated?	If you already have Salesforce, you will need Faceconnector if you want to view Facebook profiles within Salesforce and Appirio's Referral Management Solution if you'd like to run word-of-mouth marketing campaigns on Facebook
1. General	Where can I find the products shown in the webinar?	Appirio's Referal Management system can be found at www.appirio.com/facebook. Faceconnector can be found at http://salesbookapp.com/faceconnector/
1. General	Can I view these slides again?	The entire webinar can be viewed again at http://www.appirio.com/landing/fb_webinar.php
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Can you summarize the steps of Appirio's Referal Management Solution?	Fans add the application, brands publish information to their fans, the application suggests friends of your fans who might be interested, those friends take action on the content, and all this activity is measured in Salesforce.com
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	What's the difference between using Facebook for branding vs. Facebook for lead generation?	Branding is typically about driving impressions. Our approach of driving word-of-mouth, is by it's very nature not about impressions but about driving relevant action. For example, if I think an Appirio webinar on cloud strategy is relevant to my friend Sarah, who runs app dev for a large company, I'll recommend it to her using our application. Since she trusts me, she'll most likely register for the webinar and thus become a lead for us. So, our WOM campaign may only generate 1/10 the number of impressions as a display ad, but we're generating concrete results because of the highly personalized and targeted nature of the referrals
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	How do you distinguish your Facebook applications from the thousands of other, sometimes lower quality, applications available?	Our Facebook application helps businesses drive leads by connecting more closely with their customers and encouraging word-of-mouth referrals. We distinguish ourselves by providing our customers with the ability to measure the effectiveness of their word-of-mouth campaigns. By linking Salesforce with Facebook, our customers can see which campaigns perform best, e.g., a tradeshow or a word-of-mouth campaign, and make their own decisiosn
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Could you talk about the benefits of groups vs. pages vs. apps?	While groups of individuals can form and manage a group, pages and apps require a sponsor. Every brand should have a page to showcase what they have to say, and our perspective is that creating an app is a high engagement complement to your page. 95% of Facebook users have installed an application.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Do we need to rely on passive word of mouth in order to get our product name out there?	Passive WOM is a great thing but what we're trying to do with our app is encourage active WOM. By making relevant suggestions to people about what might appeal to their friends, we're encouraging them to make the shift from being passive to being active and making recommendations
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Aren't you asking people to push your brand for you?	You're right that any word-of-mouth approach relies on the user feeling strongly enough about a product or service to recommend it to their friends.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Does the application only have access to your network?	By installing the app, each user gives the app permission to "look through" their network and make recommendations to them based on the keywords in their friends profile. Maintaining the trust of the network is critical so we're very careful that we only use information that the user grants us access to, and, we encourage the user to take action, the app never sends out email or other messages directly.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Facebook allows you to track and monitor fans of your page-- how does it help to connect to Salesforce?	Connecting Facebook to Salesforce gives you a lot more flexibility in how you manage your community. You can see who refers whom, measure a referral through your lead pipeline, and integrate Facebook with your other marketing efforts.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	What about B2B marketing? [Lots of questions on this topic]	Even B2B companies sell to individuals at the end of the day... individuals who are oftentimes actively exploring their interests in Facebook. Facebook can be a powerful way to make a more powerful, personal connections with the people you work with at your important accounts....and Facebook gives you a good set of tools to help you keep your work life seperate from your personal life! Marketing on Facebook is not a replacement for personal connections on professional networking sites like LinkedIn. But your customers are also very likely to be among the 200 M users of Facebook-- few brands can afford not to be part of this rich community.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	I am the national marketing coordinator for a franchised company. Is there a way via facebook, to connect with all the networks of all my franchises?	Only through their friends-- that's why its important to engage a community in Facebook, and provide content that people are eager to pass along to the people they work with.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Do we have to subscribe to salesforce to use Appirio's application?	Yes: Salesforce is the backend to Appirio's application. But you don't need to be an existing SFA customer-- some customers just purchase 1 seat for the marketing analyst who will be managing their Facebook campaigns.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Does Appirio require the Campaigns feature in Salesforce to aggregate information?	Appirio's Referal Management System is based on campaigns by default, but can also be configured to work with custom objects. Unfortuntaley, at this time the application does not work with Salesforce Professional Edition
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Is this application available for organizations using the Non-profit version of Salesforce?	Yes, and we are excited to offer a 50% discount on our products to non-profits
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	What about security?	Salesforce and Facebook can be used together in a highly secure way. Communication between the 2 is handled via the standard Salesforce API, and all login information is encrypted both at rest and over the wire. No Facebook data is stored outside of our Facebook application without permission, reducing the risk of compromised personal security.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	What about integration with marketing automation solutions like Marketo and Eloqua?	Integration is in the works with marketing solutions powered by Salesforce.com-- please stay tuned for more details. Contact sales@appirio.com if you have a particular solution you'd like to connect with.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	What about audio and video?	Facebook makes it easy to share multi-media through a newsfeed-- we're working on supporting this feature within our Referral Management System.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Is your application available in other languages?	At this time, our application only supports English language Facebook applications
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	You showed pulling up a Facebook profile for an existing contact within Salesforce... can I also find new leads based on Facebook profiles?	Faceconnector and Appirio's Referal Management solution complement each other in exactly this way. Faceconnector shows you information from Facebook for your existing contacts-- Appirio helps you find new leads in Facebook by encouraging word of mouth referrals.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Do you have LinkedIn connectivity or comments about opportunities with LinkedIn as well?	LinkedIn is also a powerful social network, especially for job hunters. But it is not yet as powerful a platform for building custom applications for your business, or for engaging with a community who is not in job-hunting mode.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Do you find that the trust is stronger with one network more than another?	At the end of the day, people trust their friends. That's why we're so excited about Facebook-- the level of friend-to-friend communication is so high. Participating in that dialog in an authentic way is very powerful for any brand... that's what we're trying to enable with our applications.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	What about Twitter?	Unlike Facebook, Twitter is very public medium that is used to engage in conversations with large groups of people. Our approach of encouraging trusted, word-of-mouth referrals is much better suited to Facebook which is what people use to engage with their friends rather than Twitter which people typically use to engage with strangers.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	I know a lot of people don't accept Facebook intro's if they are not really friends. How can I use Facebook as a prospecting tool?	Reaching out to someone you don't know on Facebook is poor form-- that's why the key to effective marketing on Facebook is to reach people through the people that they are already friends with. That's what we aim to do with our Referral Management system-- encourage, manage, and measure word of mouth referrals.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Are there issues with ownership of the information stored in facebook?	There has been a lot of press on Facebook's terms of service-- our view is that you should not post confidential company information on Facebook. That's why it is so powerful to hook Facebook up to Salesforce.com-- you can manage your confidential information in Salesforce and publish what's meant to be public on Facebook.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	How do you find your target market (title, size of comany, etc...) on Facebook?	There are two ways to find your target market. With Facebook advertising, it's possible to segment your audience based on very detailed profiling variables. If you're using a word-of-mouth approach we demonstrated, your community is doing the targeting based on what they know about their friends, which is clearly a lot more targeted than even the best segmentation!
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	Which messages go to news feeds vs. notifications vs. invites?	The application sends notifications directly to users. Users send private invitations to their friends, and post public invitations on their profile.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	How is having this different than just creating a pages account on facebook?	A pages account helps you distribute information out to your community but does not encourage them take the next step of actively promoting your company's offerings. Our referral management solution enables companies to go beyond mere information distribution and passive word of mouth to active, measurable promotion.
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	You mentioned valuing influencers and investing in their loyalty, do you have any suggetions on ways to provide them with reciprocal value?	There are many different ways to provide value to your influencers. This can range from giving them financial incentives to giving them privileged access to information or offers. It completely depends on the type of company and how creative they want to get!
2. Appirio's Referal Management Solution	What is the business relationship between Appirio and Salesforce.com?	Appirio is Salesforce's fastest growing partner. We've completed professional service engagements at over 150 enterprises including some of Salesforce's largest customers. We help enterprises customize and deploy Salesforce, as well as build custom applications on the Salesforce platform. We've also built a portfolio of products on the Salesforce platform, including the Referral Management Application you saw in the webinar and many more including 3 top 10 apps on the App Exchange.
3. The Facebook Era / Faceconnector	How does Faceconnector make matches with Salesforce?	Since email addresses are protected in Facebook, Faceconnector makes matches based on first and last name
3. The Facebook Era / Faceconnector	Does advertising through Faceconnector leave traces in the Contacts etc related lists, e.g. Activities?	There is no advertising in Faceconnector, and Faceconnector activity is not tracked as an activity
3. The Facebook Era / Faceconnector	How do Faceconnector and Appirio's apps interface?	Faceconnector and Appirio's Referral Management System are both built and connect using Salesforce.com's lead and contact objects
3. The Facebook Era / Faceconnector	Is there a book on Facebook and utilizing social networking to promote your business?	The leading book on the subject is The Facebook Era, co-presentor on this webinar! You can get her book at: http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Era-Networks-Products-Audiences
3. The Facebook Era / Faceconnector	I just purchased Clara's book on Amazon for my Kindle. Is the promotion still afforded to me?	Contact jaemi@thefacebookera.com for questions about the promotion

Recording - Using Facebook and Salesforce for Viral Marketing

2009-04-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

In case you missed our recent Webinar on using Facebook and Salesforce for Viral Marketing, please note that our recording is now available here.

For more direct information, please find our landing page here.

If you wish to discuss any of the topics in more detail, or wish to dive into how to use Facebook specifically for your business, please contact us at products@appirio.com!

Appirio Sync - Proxy Resolved

2009-04-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

In regards to our earlier message this morning, our production server is back online as of today at 11:02am PST.

All pending syncs will be processed and all contacts and events created during the downtime will be synchronized. We apologize for any inconvenience.

If you have any additional questions, please contact us at support@appirio.com.

Appirio Sync - Proxy Error

2009-04-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

Our production server is currently being manually reset to address a global issue. The reset will take a few hours to complete. You may notice this error in the meantime:

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Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /sync/premium/index.jsp.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

Apache/2.2.4 (Fedora) Server at www.appirio.net Port 443
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Please note that once the server is back online, all pending syncs will be processed and all contacts and events created during the downtime will be synchronized. We will post again to confirm once the server is online. We apologize for any inconvenience.

If you have any additional questions, please contact us at support@appirio.com.

Appirio Referral Management - New Facebook App Release

2009-04-13T08:57:00.000-07:00

Appirio Referral Management Solution Connects Social Networks with Business Applications to Encourage, Manage and Measure Word-of-Mouth Referrals.

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We've gone live with a new version of our Referral Management Application for Facebook, with new added features and a cleaner integration.

Here's a quick tour of the new functionality, and how to get started with this free extension to our Referral Management solution:

1. How to install - If you haven't already, click here to add the application to your Facebook profile (be sure to click the buttons pictured below to add a bookmark, give the application offline access, and add to your profile home page):

2. Notifications - The notification feature is now enabled to notify you when there are new items in your feed to share with your community:

3. Newsfeed - Along with making individual recommendations, you can now post directly to your newsfeed for your entire network to see. Click this button and tell all your friends about an event you think they'll be interested in, a new job your company is recruiting for, or a sales opportunity. When you refer a friend, you'll also now see that on your newsfeed:

4. Custom Event Pages - Now we don't need to take your friends outside of Facebook for them to sign up for an event. We've created customized, social event pages, right within Facebook:

Example here:

If you have any questions about this new release, or our Referral Management Solution, please contact us.

Appirio Sync - Important Update

2009-04-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

Due to the immense popularity of our Sync products for Salesforce and Google, we are going to update our infrastructure to help confirm that continued usage of our products remains seamless. Part of our installation process requires that our customer either (1) Whitelist our IP address, or (2) Login with the Salesforce Security Token, to activate the product. Salesforce security measures require this activation. A few of our longstanding accounts may be currently activated via whitelisting a legacy server IP address that we will be taking offline. To ensure continued success with Appirio's sync products, please note our following user solution: Appirio Sync - Granting Access. This guide will detail how to grant access to Appirio's products by whitelisting the correct IP address, or using your Salesforce Security Token.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We've Updated to the New Blogger...

2009-03-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

We've just moved this blog to the latest and greatest version of Blogger to take advantage of some of the additional capabilities that it offers. The look will remain largely the same, but over time we will be adding features/functionality that will enhance the experience for our readers. No action needed on your part - we've made sure that the RSS feeds and redirects are taken care of.

So please continue to leave comments, pass on stuff you find interesting, and be part of the dialogue.

Release Notes: Appirio Professional Service Essentials - V 1.1.4

2009-02-23T11:59:00.000-08:00

Appirio PS Essentials leverages Salesforce.com's On-Demand Platform to offer core PSA functionality at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions.

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Appirio Professional Service Essentials - Version 1.1.4

Added Functionality

Updated the Resource Skills Matrix:

Notes entry and viewing now available per Skill Entry
Improved security: new "Skills Entry Privilege" setting on Resource: (Option to "Enter for Self", "Everyone", or "No One")
Improved the expand/collapse capability for skills hierarchy

Known Issues Addressed

Created Project Planner notification regarding Assignments without a specified Resource
Fixed Utilization Report issue related to date range selection anomaly

Update to the Appirio Product Portfolio

2009-02-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

Appirio saw enormous success in 2008 with our "connecting the cloud" products-- we have 2,500 organizations using our applications, and have created 3 of the top 10 apps on AppExchange. We continue to be excited about the value of connecting the cloud, and continue to expand on that portfolio (e..g, our connectors to Facebook).

In 2009, you'll see us build on that success with a focused set of applications for use by enterprises looking for solutions to specific business problems. Appirio is now offering a portfolio of 3 enteprise solutions that extend the core capabilities of leading on-demand leading platforms to high-value, outward-facing business processes like marketing, sales, profesisonal services, support, and recruiting.

1. Services Management Services teams in every industry struggle to put the right people on the right projects for successful delivery to internal and external customers. Appirio has created a professional service automation (PSA) Solution to more effectively manage what's core to every services business: your people, your customers, your projects, and your transactions. This application is built 100% on Force.com to provide key integration to your CRM, and seamless communication between Sales, Services, and Finance, all at a lower TCO than traditional solutions.

Our executive team has managed large services teams at companies like Borland, WebMethods, and NetSuite. We know that traditional PSA applications are monolithic point solutions that are difficult to integrate with the rest of your business. They are hard-coded, difficult to personalize, and not built to work in today's boundary-less enterprise.

That's why we used a different approach at Appirio. We built a set of core PSA functionality on Force.com to support the growth of our own services business-- that application has supported a four-fold increase in employees over the last 18 months. We now offer that application on the AppExchange, available today as PS Essentials.

2. Referral Management - Connecting to Facebook's 150 million users in a way that impacts the bottom line requires that your organization actively engage with the community. But while some organizations have established a basic presence on Facebook, all lack adequate tools to build and maintain these relationships. Appirio brings together Facebook and Salesforce to encourage referrals from employees, customers, and partners for viral marketing and recruiting:

Referral Management for Viral Marketing. Encourage your community to refer your offerings to friends in Facebook, manage and measure the effectiveness of word of mouth referrals in Salesforce.
Referral Management for Viral Recruiting connects Facebook and Salesforce so you can suggest job referrals to your employees that wouldn't otherwise have been made. Encourage employees to refer their friends using Facebook, manage and monitor employee referrals in Salesforce.

3. Collaborative Sales & Support - Combine Salesforce and Google to allow your users to share data, documents, and events across your company and your ecosystem. Our solution uses Google dashboards, calendars, and collaborative pages to share business data with non-Salesforce users and enable ad-hoc collaboration between heavy Salesforce users.

To find out more, feel free to contact us at products@appirio.com, or (707) 215-4132.

Release Notes: Appirio Sync Products - 02/10/2009

2009-02-11T08:37:00.000-08:00

Appirio Cloud Connectors - This release was automatically rolled out to all Appirio users of the relevant products below.

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Added Functionality:

Support for Multiday Events - Salesforce recently added support for calendar events of up to 14 days in duration. Users of Salesforce with Multiday Events enabled (Setup > Customize > Activities) can now sync Salesforce with their multiday calendar events from Google (note that the duration of recurring event instances is limited to 24 hours). (Products: Personal Sync, Premium Sync, Calendar Sync)

Allow Marketing User Access to All Campaign Timelines - The Marketing User can now see all the Campaign Timelines configured for the organization. This includes their own Campaign Timelines as well as those created by other users. (Products: Campaign Timelines)

Sort Filter and Display Fields in Alphanumeric Order by Label - (Products: Personal Sync, Premium Sync, Contact Sync, Campaign Timelines)

Known Issues Addressed:

Fix for Contacts with Empty Email Address - Contacts without email addresses cannot be synced. However, after a contact that previously had no email address was updated to include an email address, it was not synced. (Products: Personal Sync, Premium Sync, Contact Sync)

Fix for Conditions reset after Preview - After a preview, filters set to "not equal to" were changed to "equal to". (Products: Personal Sync, Premium Sync, Contact Sync)

Fix to Allow Change in Sync Direction, Calendar - Sync was not properly responding to changes in sync direction or calendar unless it was deleted and recreated. (Products: Personal Sync, Premium Sync, Calendar Sync)

Fix for Deleted Google Contact Group - After contact sync was configured to filter by Google contact group, the user was unable to revert to syncing all groups. (Products: Personal Sync, Premium Sync, Contact Sync)

Fix to Allow Change in Sync Direction, Calendar - Sync was not properly responding to changes in sync direction or calendar unless it was deleted and recreated. (Products: Personal Sync, Premium Sync, Calendar Sync)

Release Notes: Appirio Professional Service Essentials - V 1.1

2009-01-29T16:02:00.000-08:00

Now available - Project-Centric Planner for Assignments, showing Projects on the left-side pane that can be drilled into (this is the inverse of the Resource Planner, which is Resource-Centric)
Resources can now be assigned to a Project in the drill-down
The Resource layout now contains an embedded "Assignments Control"
The Project layout now contains an embedded "Assignments Control"
Added global PS Config wrapper Apex methods
Added more configuration functionality to Assignments for Timecards via PSE Config values
Added a configurable trigger to prevent duplicate Resources being created for the same Salesforce user (currently Timecard and Expense UIs rely on there being no more than one Resource per User)
Added a "Allow Timecards without Assignments" checkbox to the Project object (checking the checkbox enables Timecards to be entered for these Projects as "Global Projects")

Known Issues Addressed:

Addressed a Resource Planner Flex issue that was causing left (Resource) panel to come up blank on certain actions

Release Notes: Appirio Professional Service Essentials - V 0.9.2

2009-01-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

Resource Planner Additions:

The "Drag-and-drop" assignment of Open Assignments to Resources on the Resource drill-down screen
Open Assignment sorting on the main Resource Planner page
A Refresh Button
Configurable Tooltips
Configurable Resource sorting via new sort field on Resource (to keep open assignments on the top of the page)

Known Issues Addressed:

Fixed Apex Test "Governor issues" related to the installation by streamlining Apex triggers

These issues arose after v0.8.6 when we introduced apex config lookups in each trigger
'CloseAssignmentsWhenProjectCompletes' (after Project update): list of assignments is only updated via DML if list size is greater than zero
'UpdateHoursOnAssignment' (after Timecard insert/update): assignments whose hours change are added to the update list and DML update only executes if list size is greater than zero

Release Notes: Appirio Professional Service Essentials - V 0.9.1

2009-01-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

Added the 'Project Manager' lookup field to the Assignment object on the Resource record and Resource page layout
Removed the existing 'Project Manager' lookup to the Contact object from the Resource page layout
Added an Apex wrapper class with internal utility methods
Added an Apex test method for PSe Config utility methods
Added PSe Config values to control 6 of 7 PS Essentials Apex triggers, and updated those triggers to check config values to determine whether to run

Known Issues Addressed:

Removed 'Request Deletion' button from other page layouts (Assignment, Project)

Appirio Product Tip: How to use Facebook at Work

2008-12-19T08:15:00.000-08:00

As the enterprise begins to take note of social media like Facebook, and look for ways to get involved, you may find your work life encroaching on sensitive personal information.

To address this, we've created this quick guide to keeping your Facebook personal and Facebook work life separate. Enjoy!

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How can you use Facebook at work while still maintaining privacy over your personal life? For example:

Do you want to control who sees photos of you, even when they are tagged with your name?
Do you want to keep your colleagues from seeing your frequent and personal status updates?

Believe it or not, you can do all these things in Facebook. There are two steps. First, sort your Facebook friends between work friends and personal friends. Then, determine which parts of your Facebook profile will be visible to which set of friends.

Here's how:

Login to Facebook, click on "Friends," and "make a new list" of friends. You'll be prompted to type in the names of friends you'd like to add to this list. You want to create a list for every group of friends from which you want to hide some part of what you do on Facebook.

In the upper right of your screen, click settings / privacy settings, and configure each element of your Facebook Profile. Click "Profile." Then, select "customize" under each element of your profile, and select to "exclude" your work friends list from the portions of your profile you'd like to keep private.

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That's it! Now you can maximize the benefits of leveraging your expansive and fun-to-use social network for work use, with defined barriers between the two.

To find out more about our work connecting Facebook and the enterprise, check out our current projects below, and follow us on Twitter for our future releases.