by Mike Walsh | Jul 9, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
As part of the Summer ‘19 Release of Salesforce, a standard option has been built into the system to help encourage user adoption and let your team celebrate a little bit.
You can now set up the system to shower the user with onscreen confetti and celebrate the little things. This functionality can be built around a wide variety of objects, status changes, and fields.
To set up confetti on your system, start by opening up the setup menu and typing Path Settings into the quick find box. Once you are there, edit the path settings.
Step 1: On the first screen you can define the name of the path functionality, which object you want it to run off of, and the record type and picklist
Step 2: Next you select the fields you want to appear, and can also add specific comments, directions or descriptions.
Step 3: Finally, use the slider to enable option A, and get the confetti party started.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Jun 7, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Are you familiar with Salesforce Quick text? Quick text lets users insert predefined messages into emails, tasks, events, chats, and more to save time and increase standardization.
As a part of the Winter ‘19 Release, Quick Text has gotten a simple but powerful expansion. Tasks and events previously did not allow quick text, however, that is now a thing of the past. So users can create and save common descriptions like, “Follow up in 2 days” or “Left voicemail”, and quickly insert them rather than typing it out every time.
In addition, Salesforce has added more ways to use the Quick Text predefined messages. Users can now add their messages from a keyboard shortcut, a button in a rich-text editor toolbar, or a popup button next to supported text fields.
If you are already using Lightning Experience, then Quick Text is enabled by default in all orgs. For those of you still using Classic, remember that all orgs will be required to upgrade to Lightning later this year, so you too will soon have Quick Text enabled by default. If you want to enable Quick Text in Classic, you are just a simple setting change away.
Want to learn how to set up your own quick text message? Click here
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
Want to get started with Salesforce?
Need some custom consulting or development to enhance the Salesforce you already have?
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CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
![Determining the True Cost of CRM Ownership]()
by Mike Walsh | May 15, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
When considering taking on the initiative to implement a new CRM for your business, it is always a good idea to consider the many factors that combine to form the “True Cost of Ownership”.
When most people think of the cost of ownership, they will often consider only the upfront price of the software or hardware and look no further.
However, this is not the whole story. Price alone does not take into account many of the harder to define (but absolutely real) costs associated with a new CRM solution, such as maintenance, support, training, user adoption, and efficiency. When you add in all of these other factors, the true cost of ownership becomes clear, and it may be dramatically different than you expected!
Generally speaking, there are 3 main ways we can break down the cost of ownership: Purchasing Cost, Implementation Cost, and Support Cost
Purchasing Cost
To illustrate the different factors, let’s take the example of purchasing, implementing and maintaining Salesforce. We begin with what people typically think of in terms of cost, the price. Of course, this is simply the price you pay to buy and use the software. The purchase here will be your Salesforce licenses and the products you are interested in, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or Marketing Cloud.
Also, because Salesforce has so many different options and products available, the planning, research, and negotiation usually take a couple of weeks. This time and effort should also be factored into your purchase cost. This may even include hiring a consultant to help you find the best solution.
Additionally, your purchasing cost may include the necessary pre-conditions to enable the new technology to function properly, such as new hardware or upgrades to existing hardware and software. Salesforce, being cloud-based, doesn’t have significant hardware costs, but we don’t recommend trying it with a 15-year-old computer. Altogether, any one-time purchase would be counted towards the purchasing cost of the technology.
Implementation Cost
Once Salesforce has been purchased, it needs to be set up and made usable. If your company has a very knowledgeable Salesforce Admin and only needs a basic setup of the system, you may be able to get away with not hiring an implementation partner. So your costs here would again be the time and effort cost.
However, if you are like most companies, you will want to take advantage of the Salesforce tools to the fullest, and won’t have enough knowledgeable staff to handle this. So you will need to hire a consultant. Costs here can vary significantly, depending on how much custom development you need and what solutions the consultant offers.
Additionally, you should include the cost of training users on the new technology and the changes in both short-term and long-term efficiency. Most companies who implement a new CRM see a dip in efficiency right away, but overall improvements in the long term as the employees get the hang of things. In many cases with Salesforce, the day to day processes become significantly more efficient int he long term than they were before adopting the CRM.
This is also why choosing the right CRM is important, because if you don’t end up with good rates of user adoption, you may see overall decreases in your business efficiency in the long term, which would be a significant and unintended cost.
Support Cost
Finally, when considering the true cost of CRM ownership, we turn to the support cost. If you have gone with a cloud CRM like Salesforce, you do not have to worry about updates, upgrades and bug fixes, they will all be taken care of. But you will, of course, have to pay Salesforce a monthly fee for that service. If you have a local CRM but a support plan from the developer, that will also be a recurring fee, or if you have a local CRM, built in-house, then you will have costs associated with IT staffing and overhead.
Other support costs that may come into play are support contracts with external vendors, ongoing licenses and the potential costs of adding new features or enhancements. In the end, these all add up to allowing you to scale (or not). If you have a flexible system that can change and grow with you, you will be able to minimize many of these support costs down the road. However, if the system doesn’t have that ability then your support and maintenance costs will grow significantly down the road, and may eventually force you to replace the whole system.
So, when it comes to evaluating the true cost of CRM ownership, sometimes a system with a larger price tag, will actually cost less in the long run when you take the other factors into consideration. Salesforce is a great example, because while the system is admittedly not the cheapest option on the market, it can help you save money down the road due to high rates of user adoption, more efficient processes and simply put, if you get it set up right the first time, you will likely never need to buy and implement another CRM again.
No matter which direction you choose to go with your CRM, proper planning or budgeting using all of the above criteria will help you out significantly. Nobody wants to spend a lot of money on a system that they outgrow in a couple of years, and by taking into account the various factors of purchasing costs, implementation cost and support cost, you will be able to get a better idea of how to spend your money
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
Want to get started with Salesforce?
Need some custom consulting or development to enhance the Salesforce you already have?
Contact us
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
![Things to know about Einstein Activity Capture]()
by Mike Walsh | May 10, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Salesforce has put a lot of energy into promoting Einstein Analytics in 2019. And for good reason, the predictive AI software is pretty powerful and integrated with Salesforce, it can give a big boost to your company. Einstein can be applied to many areas of CRM, from analyzing your pipeline to automating workflows. A less glamorous, but certainly valuable feature, is Einstein Activity Capture.
What is Einstein Activity Capture?
Einstein Activity Capture is a tool that lets you easily sync up your email, calendar, and Salesforce. It works in two ways, 1) capturing email and events from either your Microsoft or Google account, and then adds them to the activity timeline of any related records in Salesforce, thus saving you the step of manually entering activities into Salesforce. And 2) syncing events and contacts between Salesforce and your Microsoft or Google account.
These two features work hand in hand. Capture grabs the data and holds it for a brief period of time so you can see and use it, sync, when setup, then saves and stores the data in the system.
Sounds pretty great right? And it is, however, it isn’t as easy as snapping your fingers. Activity capture requires some setup and a bit of admin work to make sure it works the way you want it to.
Considerations for Activity Capture
There are a number of technical considerations and restrictions you need to be aware of before diving into Activity Capture. We highlight some of the key elements below, however, for a complete list, click here.
General
- By default, Einstein Activity Capture configurations capture emails and events. But you decide whether to sync contacts and events and in what direction.
- The capture functionality of Einstein Activity Capture is supported in sandbox environments but sync is not. After you set up Einstein Activity Capture in sandbox, any sandbox refresh turns off Einstein Activity Capture and removes all connected accounts from the sandbox.
Capture
- Custom objects aren’t supported. When emails are sent from a custom object, the email is logged on the activity timeline of the associated contact.
- Activities added to Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture are stored outside of Salesforce and don’t affect your Salesforce data allocations. There’s no additional costs for this storage.
- The Last Activity field on accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and person accounts doesn’t reflect emails and events added to Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture.
Sync
- Recurring events aren’t synced.
- You can sync contacts and events with Einstein Activity Capture or Lightning sync, but not both.
- If you turn off Einstein Activity Capture, we stop syncing events. If you turn on Einstein Activity Capture later, events that you created while Einstein Activity Capture was off don’t appear on Salesforce calendar. This condition is true even if the events occur in the future.
Analytics
- Because activities added to Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture aren’t stored in Salesforce, they don’t show up in standard Salesforce reports. However, Einstein Activity Capture provides access to the Activities dashboard, which summarizes sales activities added to Salesforce manually and by Einstein Activity Capture.
- To access the Activities dashboard, API access is required. If you use Professional Edition, you must purchase API access. If you use Salesforce Essentials, you can’t access the Activities dashboard because API access isn’t available.
Click here to see the Activty Capture setup guide
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-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
Want to get started with Salesforce?
Need some custom consulting or development to enhance the Salesforce you already have?
Contact us
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | May 2, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
For this weeks’ blog post, we would like to help you add some lighthearted fun to your Salesforce org. With just a few easy steps, you can add custom, fun sounds to play when a big deal closes! So let’s get into it.
There are 4 primary steps needed to setup your custom sounds. Rather than re-invent the wheel and type up the whole process, we have some fantastic resources from Salesforce to guide you through it from start to finish.
As for the sounds themselves – there are plenty of websites databases with free sound files to download. This blog post lists some of the best options for researching the perfect sound effects for you and your team.
That should be everything you need to add sound effects to your Salesforce Org, just keep it work appropriate ok? If this works for you, reply below. We would like to see what you come up with! Happy noisemaking!
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
Want to get started with Salesforce?
Need some custom consulting or development to enhance the Salesforce org. you already have?
Contact us
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
