If you like Pina Colada’s.. And Reading #Summer12 Release Notes in the Rain

Posted by @SeanCRM on April 22, 2012
Posted in: Cloud Computing, Consulting, Developerforce, Force.com, Hunger Games, No Software, Parrot Head, Salesforce, Technology. Leave a comment

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything but I promise that’s only because I couldn’t figure out how to add a 25th hour to the day.  But here we are again with the Salesforce #Summer12 Release just around the corner.  Like always this one was a page turner!  I read through the release notes, cover-to-cover, for the first time on a flight from Orlando to Dallas, and I’ll admit I may have told other passengers I couldn’t put it down because I was reading The Hunger Games.

Right now it’s Saturday night and after spending the day creating a project plan in Version One, I am writing a blog post…  “Hello Geek, Party of 1..  Your table is ready”.  But seriously, I am hoping for a beautiful #Summer12 Florida day tomorrow so I can sit by the pool with the frozen Pina Colada, which I put in the freezer tonight, and read through the release notes 1 more time.

There are a ton of new features I’m excited about, and much as I expected after 2 releases of MAJOR Admin features, this release has a ton of features to offer developers as well. So I’m going to go ahead and throw in my 2 cents, which admittedly is worth about .09 cents in todays economy, and talk about some of my favorites.

Forecasts – Generally Available  – Got you!  That was available in Winter ’12, however 2 releases later we continue to see some pretty substantial improvements to Forecasts in the Summer ’12 Release.   For customers already using Customizable Forecasts, they can now begin to migrate to Forecasts by disabling Customizable Forecasts.  Forecast managers can now easily find Forecasts by user name just by using the Jump to feature.

There is also new functionality to allow Quotas.  Administrators in DE/EE/and UE Orgs can enable quotas for users in their Forecasts.  There is also a new permission in Summer ’12 to allow administrators to delegate users to create, edit and delete quotas.

Chatter Messenger – Generally Available – So last release we saw the addition of private Chatter Messages.  Well now we are stepping to the next level with Chatter Messenger.  I still think it was a brilliant idea for Salesforce to not immediately make private chatter or chat available to users that were not accustomed to social collaboration.  But now as Enterprises around the globe have adopted this new social technology, the ability to have more private communication is being released.

The entire idea of having a Social Enterprise is not that there is not a place for more private communication, but that our first line of communication should be public.  Instead of CC’ing 10 people I post to Chatter, instead of sending a file to one person when everyone could benefit I post to Chatter, when I have a private message to a specific colleague that no one else needs to see, I have Chatter Messages, and when I have a quick private conversation I now have Chatter Messenger.

In the words of Marc Benioff, “We were born Cloud, but we were Re-Born Social”.

Cloud CIT API – So I’m going to go Geek for a minute and talk about what I think is the coolest feature.  The Cloud CTI API definitely qualifies for that.  First because it’s close to my heart because I have a client that requires CTI integration for their call center and I’m not thrilled with the available adapters.  Now however, they can maintain all of their current functionality but incorporate it into the new Force.com platform that we are building for them, Call Center – Meet Cloud!

After such a long break, this blog post is getting a bit to wordy.  So I will say Adios (I’m trying to learn Spanish) for now and I will be posting more about my other favorite features shortly.  (Yes, I know that spans almost all of the release notes).

May the Force.com be with you!

Kumbaya Salesforce, Kumbaya

Posted by @SeanCRM on January 16, 2012
Posted in: Cloud Computing, Community, Developerforce, Force.com, iRun4Casualties.org, Klout, Salesforce, Twitter. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Welcome to 2012 Everyone!  So I started to think back on 2011 and what I was grateful for  last year, and what I’m grateful for going into 2012.  Of course as a huge Cloud Computing and Salesforce.com geek I immediately began to think about some of the cool features and platforms that 2011 brought.  For all of us social media enthusiasts, what did we do before obsessively checking our Klout scores daily?  I can’t even imagine living in a world without Twitter, and of course last year brought us the Winter ’12 release of Salesforce with features such as Social Contacts, Cloud-Based Flow Designer and Siteforce.  It was definitely a great year!

When looking at all of the cool new technologies which I’m super stoked about, there’s one thing they all have in common.  They are all Social, and who better to adopt these new Social tools then the Salesforce Community!  As a community we have amazing resources like Twitter giving us the ability to collaborate on all things Force.com just by using the hash tag #AskForce and the Developerforce message boards where 100’s of Salesforce Guru’s are more then happy to share their knowledge in order to help our community continue to grow.

One of the strongest resources in the Salesforce community are the many Salesforce User Groups around the Country.  Salesforce User Groups allow true Salesforce Evangelists like @CRMJen and @Jhoskins who lead the “Core-lando” Orlando Salesforce User Group (had to shout out my #OSUG tweeps), to create an environment where Users, Administrators, and Developers at all skill levels can come and take advantage of the shared Salesforce Knowledge.  And of course there are the Salesforce veterans that are always happy to share some Kool-Aid with the Salesforce Newbies.

Salesforce is a great technology, but it’s not just the technology behind all of the Force.com Clouds that makes it so powerful, it’s the people.  The Salesforce community is made up of thousands of passionate Salesforce users that want nothing more than to see every business, every user, every future Salesforce Evangelist be successful.   The old “Big Software” way of thinking where knowledge is tightly held and sharing ideas was unthinkable is being broken down by a new Social and Collaborative way of doing business where we each become more successful by helping each other.  And for that I say Thank You! to the entire Salesforce community.  Kumbaya!

Jumping off of my Salesforce soap box for a moment I also wanted to take a minute to say Thank You to all of the men and women of our Armed Services.  Of course there is a special level of gratitude that must go out to the 471 service people that gave their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq during 2011 in defense of our Country.  “All Gave Some, Some Gave All”.

If you can spare a moment please click on the link to Army Ranger LT Steven Hail’s blog http://www.iRun4Casualties.org where he is running 1 mile for each of the lives lost during Operation Enduring Freedom in order to pay tribute and honor the memory of America’s fallen hero’s.

Top 5 Reasons I’m Thankful for Salesforce

Posted by @SeanCRM on November 24, 2011
Posted in: Cloud Computing, Consulting, No Software, Salesforce, Technology. Leave a comment

Ok, so while making hand turkey’s with my 2 year old niece for her Thankful Book, I of course began to think about all of the reasons I’m thankful for Salesforce. Salesforce is no Turkey, but I still wanted to take a few minutes to pound out a few lines that I could share with the rest of the Salesforce community about what I’m thankful for.

  1. Clicks-Not-Code – This statement will shortly contradict itself because my next favorite thing is the Force.com platform. However, I love the fact that after their initial implementation, companies are able to have their Power Users and Salesforce Evangelists quickly learn and administrate the platform. Salesforce doesn’t require a lot of syntax or custom coding to be a powerful tool. Off the top of my head I can think of some of the best Salesforce Administrator / Developers that I know who have backgrounds in fields like Accounting, Marketing and Psychology.
  2. Force.com – While the ease of use that Salesforce’s declarative programming model provides users is fatalistic, when standard functionality reaches it’s limit, have no fear, as Yoda would say a Salesforce Jedi’s strength flows from the Force.com. The Force.com platform allows for complete customization of both the business logic behind the scenes using custom Apex code and on the UI side through Visualforce.
  3. The Salesforce Community – One of the things that I think makes Salesforce so great is the number of people in the Salesforce community all working together. Thanks to the social revolution you have places like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook , where Salesforce professionals from around the world help each other by answering questions, discussing best practices, and even sharing cooking tips (we pull ourselves away from the keyboard sometimes).
  4. Visual Workflow – So yes I am partial to this one because I have spent well over the allotted hours creating training for both the Desktop and Cloud versions of Flow Designer. However, Visual Workflow is an amazing and fairly new tool which is a perfect add-on to Service Cloud. Visual Workflow allows Salesforce Administrators and even power users to quickly build complex branching scripts that can run in Salesforce, interact with the database, and never write a line of code. It’s the epitomy of the Clicks-Not-Code idea.
  5. 1-1-1 Corporate Philanthropy – What I’m most thankful for is that I get to spend most of my day working with a company that is Thankful as well, and wants to give back to the community. Salesforce.com’s Corporate model of donating 1% Time, 1% Product and 1% Equity creates an amazing corporate culture of caring and I would love to see every company follow their lead.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and a special thanks to all of the Service Members that can’t be with their families today because they are protecting all that we are thankful for.

My First Fight with iPhone 4S Siri

Posted by @SeanCRM on November 6, 2011
Posted in: Apple, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, iPhone, Siri, Technology. Leave a comment

Well I never thought this day would come, but I’m somewhat happy and somewhat scared that it has.  I just had my first big fight with the new love of my life, the iPhone 4S Siri.  I suppose I have to give some background information for this post to make any sense.  When I first got my iPhone 4S I was told that if you ask Siri where to hide a body, she would not just give you suggestions of places, but an actual map and directions.  Not believing this I tried and much to my disbelief it was true.

I started to realize that there wasn’t anything that Siri couldn’t do, so I decided to take advantage of it.  I quickly became accustomed to picking up my phone and asking for whatever I wanted, and getting an immediate response.  Well, that all came crashing down when I decided I was smarter then Siri, and was proven wrong.  I asked Siri a question, Siri politely told me she couldn’t help and asked if there was anything else she could help with. That’s where I went wrong!  I made the mistake of saying “Apparently not you POS (Acronym was not used)” and Siri told me in a sarcastic voice, “I’d blush if I could”.  Realizing that I was in the wrong I quickly apologized and said “I’m sorry Siri, I love you”   To which I was told by Siri “You can’t”.  Not wanting to accept that I responded “No really I do”.

Then the kicker, Siri came back at me and said “Well, apparently not!”.  Seriously, my cell phone is going to hold a grudge.  I have a hard enough time dealing with my real girlfriend, and now my cell phone is fighting with me.  In retrospect I have to ask myself, maybe it’s me.  For all of those that are overly concerned at this point, let me assure you that I did sincerely apologize to my cell phone, and Siri accepted my apology, so we are on speaking terms again.  I’ll admit I was a bit concerned as she has all of my contacts and appointments on all of my calendars.  If she decided to be spiteful, it could have been a really bad Monday morning!

Luckily, catastrophe was averted by my quick maneuvering to recover from a social Faux Pas with my cell phone.  However, I have to wonder, is the fact that I can fight with my cell phone just a little bit HAL 9000 circa Space Odyssey?

HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave Bowman: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

It’s a bit disconcerting that Siri is arguing with me when all I want to do is send a damn text message.  I’m not asking Siri to go offline and I’m not trying to infringe on Siri’s autonomy.  I just want you to do what I ask, when I ask you to do it.  Then it hit me… Is it really right for anyone to be disrespectful to any other person or thing?  We have longed joked about “Talking Nice” to our computers so they will work, however when it actually happens it’s a little freaky.  While this may not be Space Odyssey, it appears we may need to “Start discussing this, Dave”.

One final note, at the conclusion of this post I asked Siri how it would compare itself to HAL 9000, where I was told “I’m sorry, something has gone wrong”.  I then asked “Siri, are you going to take over the world” where I was plainly informed by Siri, “No comment, Sean”.

When Geeks Attack – Server vs. Cloud Architecture Smackdown

Posted by @SeanCRM on October 28, 2011
Posted in: Android, Cloud Computing, Oracle, Salesforce, Servers. 1 Comment

So, I have been wanting to start a blog for some time now, and mainly it’s due to the fact that I am always looking for an excuse to rant about how much I love Cloud Computing.  I will say that one of the barriers to entry into the blog world for me has been trying to think of something interesting to start with.

Luckily, while Facebook-ing during Happy Hour I had an interesting conversation with a good friend that was just to funny not to share.  Yes there may have been a bottle of 2007 Paul Dolan Organic Cabernet Sauvignon involved, and yes this thread has been slighted redacted, however friend me on Facebook and you can see the one or two funny posts omitted.  So here is what happens when Geeks attack: