Formula Tips and Tricks at the UK Salesforce NfP Usergroup
Today I had the pleasure of presenting one of my favorite topics, and what is hopefully a favorite topic of lazy (er, I mean efficient…) Salesforce Admins the world over: Formulas. You can use Salesforce Fomulas to link to other databases and websites, to bring in images from the likes of Yahoo Finance and Google Charts, or even to help you auto-fill objects by adding / overriding a New Object button. The slide deck below references a tremendous wealth of further reading, videos, and documentation, including a Dreamforce video on using...
read moreSocial Enterprise Contests and Awards…and Coffee
Warning – this post contains strong language and nudity. Just joking – it’s only strong language. But you were a bit more interested for a second, weren’t you? I’m a bit of a coffee nut. I weigh my beans, grind them in a burr grinder, and make my coffee using either a double walled french press or a manual espresso pump – my dependable Presso. I’ve blind-tested Lavazza against Illi, and firmly rejected Lavazza. I then moved on to local coffee roasters, settling for a while on Square Mile Coffee...
read moreThird Sector IT’s Partnership with Convio / Common Ground
We’re very excited to be partnering with Convio and their cloud-based fundraising solution for Non-Profits, Common Ground! Common Ground is deeply integrated into Salesforce, and allows charities using Salesforce to do so much more. We’re one of three organisations picked as UK partners – and quite frankly, we’re the coolest of the three. Best of all, Common Ground will help us defeat Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge. What? Blackbaud buying Convio? Errr…long live our new Database Overlords. If you’d...
read moreTaking the ADM 301 and Sales Cloud Consultant exam
I’m not too sure why I thought it would be a good idea, other than saving me a trip to the exam center, but I scheduled two Salesforce Certification exams back to back yesterday. I knew this was a bit chancy, as if I had failed the first I wouldn’t have been in a great mood to take the second, but happily I passed both. This means it’s also time to go back to Inkscape and add my certifications to my business card! We designed our business cards so people could stack up their certifications under their name. The funny thing is...
read moreSalesforce Reports – undocumented feature
One of the reasons I love teaching our Intro to Reports class is that I learn something every time, without fail. The last time a student asked me what the text and picklist on the bottom of a report meant, and I answered, “I have no idea!” I now know both what it is and why I didn’t know before – it’s an undocumented feature that doesn’t appear in either Google or Salesforce Help search results. If you look on the bottom of a report (Summary and Matrix, but not Tabular) you will see the text, “Check...
read moreReview of the Salesforce – Eventbrite Connector for Event Management
Whether you are running paid or free events, first-name-basis events or huge events with barcode ticket-scanning for admission, Eventbrite will likely suit your needs. And if you run your organisation with Salesforce, then the Eventbrite Connector is the missing link, bringing happiness and clarity to your world. The connector itself is free, and fairly straightforward. It can do one-way syncing from Eventbrite to Salesforce, so Salesforce will be able to grab all the info about your attendees, and report on it. The connector can even create a...
read moreWebsite Relaunched!
It’s been an amazing month here at Third Sector IT. We finished our rebranding, which started with a new logo, which led to a whole new business card design, which led to a new website, which also gave us the opportunity to update our listed offerings, and turn some of our services into fixed price products. And, we have another person on the team, Sisu Berhane, who I am so excited to be working with! We also tried something new with the business cards, which was to emphasise both our consultants certifications and our partnership with...
read moreEvent Management for Salesforce.com: Eventbrite vs Acteva pricing for SME’s
Both Acteva and Eventbrite have pluggins allowing your event attendee information to easily sync to Salesforce. Whether you will want to use one or the other depends almost exclusively on the cost of your event per person and the number of attendees per event, and to a lesser extent, the number of events per year. For high prices and high volumes, Acteva is affordable, and sometimes beats Eventbrite. For lower volumes typical with SME’s, Acteva’s price structure is prohibitive. (While I live in the UK, Acteva charges in dollars, so...
read moreReview of MailChimp Connector for Salesforce
For over a year, MailChimp has had a beta connector in Salesforce’s App Exchange. I really like the MailChimp interface, and would like to use them, but wanted something that would connect with Salesforce. So when their connector left beta and became available, I was excited. Unfortunately, they have made the same mistake that other companies do – claiming that moving contacts back and forth equals integration. Yes, with the connector you can move the names and addresses of people on campaigns into Mailchimp very easily. And you...
read moreThe difference between ‘regular’ Salesforce and the NonProfit Starter Pack from Salesforce
A lot of people are unsure about what exactly non-profits get when they get Salesforce. It’s a bit tricky, because we are really discussing three things: features, pricing, and optional pre-configured customisations (that’s the NonProfit Starter Pack bit). Regular, for profit businesses can purchase different editions of Salesforce, each with their own features and pricing, ranging from a basic contact manager to the super-duper Unlimited edition. If a non-profit receives donated licenses from the Salesforce foundation, it receives...
read more