It’s 2011- Time to Get Balanced
For some reason, I felt compelled to share this TED video. Perhaps it’s because I’m a new father and the ‘life’ part of work-life balance has been taken to a whole new level. Maybe it’s because today is Thursday which means that tomorrow I’ll see a slurry of TGIF status updates on Facebook. This kind of saddens me as it seems like there’s this prevalent mindset which is to spend five days a week doing something you dislike in order to pay for the two days of doing what you enjoy. That doesn’t seem very balanced. Balance doesn’t have to mean drastic changes, however. It can be as easy as simply paying attention to the little things. Just watch this video, it’s entertaining (and, hey, there’s a moral).
If you’re ever feeling a bit nostalgic about the mid-90′s I’ve got the cure for you. Go jump on the Salesforce IRC channel. Despite reminiscing about your teenage days sitting in your parents’ basement, tying up the phone line, and chatting online with babes (not that I did that), you might just learn a little something.
Pat Patterson (aka metadaddy) did a how-to post on the Developer Force blog to get you going in case you don’t remember how to access an IRC channel. I use an IRC client for the Mac called Colloquy.
There’s usually a good-sized crowd on the chat including some notable figures in the Salesforce community like @apexsutherland, @reidcarlberg, @metadaddy, @vnehess, @gokubi, @colinloretz, @fractastical, and a lot of other very smart folks who use Salesforce. Whether you’re stuck on a particular development problem and need help, or you’re wanting to contribute, or you just want to see who’s doing what with Salesforce – this is a great place to start. You’re always usually in for some lively discussion.
Recently, I’ve been toying with mashing up Salesforce and Twilio’s SMS capabilities. For those of you who don’t know what Twilio is, you should check it out. Twilio is a web service that gives you the ability to integrate voice and SMS into your apps and they have a simple API and documentation. This is a pretty handy service and there are a lot of use case scenarios where this functionality makes sense. For example:
- Text-based marketing to leads/contacts.
- Notification of certain events to sales reps or field personnel.
- A text-based web service that runs on Force.com.
Kyle Roche and Aslam Bari put together a great library to help developers use Twilio with the Force.com platform. You can find it here on the Force.com Code Share.
The best way to get started is to create a free Twilio trial account so you can get your API credentials and sandbox info. The API for sending texts is here, and with Kyle and Aslam’s library it is really simple to start sending texts from your Salesforce account.
It basically works like this.
If you’re already using Twilio to send SMS, have you set up a way to process an incoming message? Perhaps you’re sending info to prospects and you want them to reply “Yes” if they’re interested. Then, you want to trigger some workflow from that incoming text. Well, Twilio will accept incoming texts and you can configure where you want the SMS info to be sent. Basically, Twilio receives incoming SMS messages and then sends an HTTP request to you with a number of parameters. Three of the most important parameters are From (the number of the message sender), To (your Twilio number), and Body (the contents of the message). Here is the documentation for how Twilio handles incoming texts.
In order to process these incoming SMS messages you first need an Apex Controller and Visualforce page. The request will get sent to this page and the parameters will be stored. Using the stored parameters we’ll create a closed task and associate it with the appropriate Contact. The code for the Controller and VF page are below.
I do some consulting work for non-profit organizations that use Salesforce.com. There are so many non-profits that use Salesforce but many often lack the internal resources necessary to truly realize the benefits of adopting it. It is highly rewarding work and I would encourage you to check out the Salesforce Foundation as one way of getting involved with non-profits who use Salesforce.
The Salesforce Foundation has a very successful program that gives non-profits the ability to get 10 donated (free) Enterprise Edition user licenses. This is a great program that offers a huge benefit to non-profits. If you’re a non-profit you can learn more about how to apply for your licenses here. If you have experience in configuring, customizing, administering, consulting, and/or developing on the Force.com platform you can get involved by emailing foundation@salesforce.com and letting them know you’re interested in volunteering your time and expertise. This is a great first step towards getting involved.
With that being said I’d like to share a specific real world example for an Apex Trigger that might be helpful.
Use Case
Here’s the scenario.
How Do You Eat An Elephant?
First Of All, Why Would You Eat An Elephant?
As my friend and partner Bryan O’Rourke once said to me, “How do you eat an elephant?
I replied very intelligently, “Hmm…I don’t know.”
“One bite at a time”, he said.
“Oh”, I said, all the while thinking ‘Why the hell would I want to eat an elephant?’.
Of Elephants & CRM Implementations
Surprisingly, there may really be benefits to learning how to eat an elephant…
CRM implementation projects can be like elephants – large, hairy, and complex. Developing an initial strategy for how to best complete a successful implementation can be a daunting and overwhelming task when the project is viewed as a singular unit. This is where knowing how to eat elephants comes in handy. Learn to break down the project into bite-sized chunks. More importantly, if you’re in an outside consulting role, be sure to communicate this strategy to your clients. In previous posts I’ve talked about working with the client’s internal project manager on the implementation; it’s highly effective when you communicate this elephant-eating strategy to him or her. The reason is that taking on the task of implementing a new system like this not only involves a lot of work in process design and technical effort, but there is a great deal of change management that needs to occur which is often a source of frustration for a company’s leadership. Therefore, using a chunking strategy can create quick wins and help foster more rapid adoption.