Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Cloudy's Chalkboard: Tracking the stars in your salesforce universe - Part 1

Who are the STARS in your salesforce.com org?
Who are your 
STAR clients?

Are any of those 
relationships at risk?

If you are using salesforce.com CRM, you understand the idea of Customer Relationship Management: you want to track the relationships and transactions of your customers or constituents and gain a 360 degree view of your business. You know that you can look at a single contact record and see all of their information, including lifetime transactions, campaign involvement, and activity history. 

But how do you leverage that information at a higher level?


Let's learn how to create a complex dashboard table that displays critical relationship updates at a fictitious nonprofit organization called Cartoon.org:



Donor Relationship Dashboard
This example relies on some fields that are standard
in the salesforce.com Non Profit Starter Pack.
A for-profit company can create a metric to fit their business
using the same basic process described here.
Cartoon.org puts a high value on two types of donors:

1) Those who have donated more than $2,000 in their lifetime.


2) Those who have donated more than 5 times in their lifetime, regardless of amount.


These donors have shown, either by the amount OR frequency of their donations, that they are invested in the mission of Cartoon.org: it would be unwise to let those relationships founder!


The head of development at Cartoon.org wants to see a table of these high-value donors who HAVE NOT DONATED in the last six months. She will use this information to target these donors with some special attention to make sure they don't forget about their favorite charitable organization!



This two-part demo will show you how to create this report and dashboard for your organization.


Step 1: Create a new report


Go to Reports>New Report>Accounts & Contacts>Contacts & Accounts>Create

("Accounts" may be renamed "Organizations" in your org!)

Step 2: Set Filters and Filter Logic



Standard Filters:
Show = All Accounts (/All Organizations)
Date Field = Created Date
Range = All Time
Custom Filters:
Total Number of Gifts >= 5
Total Gifts >= $2,000
Last Gift Date < "6 MONTHS AGO"

(**NOTE: You will probably need to adjust the custom filter values to reflect donation totals, donation frequency, and time frames that are meaningful to your organization!)


Finding at-risk relationships
Filter Logic:
Adjust the filter logic by clicking the little down arrow next to "Filters" and select "Filter Logic".
The default logic that is displayed will be "1 AND 2 AND 3".
Edit it to be "(1 OR 2) AND 3" as shown above.

Step 3: Set Columns and Summarize


You can quickly clear the default columns by clicking "Remove All Columns" Link



reporting in salesforce.com

Add the four columns we need for this report: 

Name, Last Gift Date, Total Number of Gifts, and Total Gifts

Summarize the two "Total" columns:

Hover over the column header, click the down arrow, select "Summarize this Field" and click "Sum" on the dialogue box.

Step 4: Add report groupings


Group by "Last Gift Date" and "Name":

Hover over the column header, click the down arrow and select "Group by this Field" for both columns.
Report grouping in salesforce.com

Run the report; it should look like this: 

salesforce.com run report


Step 5: Save your report


Click "Save" and save your report with a meaningful name and description.  


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This report is ready to be shared 
with your development team: 

These are your most important at-risk donors.


Make a plan to follow up with them!


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Tune in next week to create a handy dashboard component with this information.



If you would like help creating more meaningful reports and dashboards for your organization, Contact Us!



More dashboard tutorials from Cloudy:

Cloudy's Chalkboard: Creating Dashboards




Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Cloudy's Chalkboard: Use a Workflow to send an Email

Using workflows in salesforce.com to automate your business processes saves you time, money and frustrating busywork. Today, we will set up a workflow to send an email. Emails can be automatically sent not only to salesforce.com users, but to other employees, business partners, and customers. Merge fields in the email template can bring in the recipient's name as well as other information from their record.

If you are not yet using workflows, you might not know when you should use one! Here are some examples of when you might use a workflow to send an email:


-When an Opportunity worth more than $50k is Closed-Lost, the sales manager should be notified for follow-up.

-When a Sales Rep completes a demo with a client, a Thank You email should be sent to the client.
-When a new Account is created in a given geographic location, the regional manager should be notified.

These specific examples might not apply to your business, but can help you start thinking about the kinds of events and processes in your org that should trigger an automatic email or alert.



****************

Let's use the example of the Thank You note after a demo. After completing a product demo with a contact, the Sales Rep marks a custom checkbox called "Demo Participant"  on the contact records of the participants.  When this box is checked, we want to automatically send out a personalized thank you email to that contact.
Step 1: Create the Email Template


The Merge Fields on your template should be related to "Contact." For step-by-step instructions to create an email template, check out Cloudy's Chalkboard: How to Create an Email Template. Be sure to mark the "Available for Use" checkbox before you are done!


Step 2: Create the Workflow Rule

  • Go to Setup>Create>Workflow & Approvals>Workflow Rules and click "New."
  • Select the object where the trigger action will occur. (In this case, "Contact".) Click "Next".
  • Name and describe the rule. As a best practice, begin the rule name with the name of the object, or an abbreviation thereof. (When you have a lot of workflows, this helps keep related rules grouped together in the list.)
  • Under Evaluation Criteria, choose "created, and any time it's edited to subsequently meet criteria".
  • Under Rule Criteria, define the field values or formula test that will trigger the action. For this example "Contact: Demo Participant" + "equals" + "TRUE"
  • Click "Save & Next"



Step 3: Add the Workflow Action


  • Select "New Email Alert" from the Add Workflow Action menu. A new screen will appear.
  • Add a short description (the unique name will auto-pupulate based on the description).
  • Select your email template from the lookup.
  • Under Recipient Type, select "Email Field" and from the dual panes below, select the correct contact email address.
  • Click "Save." On the final screen that appears, click "Activate".
You are ready to test your workflow!

If you would like help adding process automation to your salesforce.com, Contact Us!

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Cloudy's Chalkboard: Email Template Pro Tips!

Salesforce Pro Tips
In Cloudy's last two posts, you learned how to set up salesforce.com email letterheads and templates. Once you get started with email templates, you won't want to quit! The possibilities for saving time and streamlining processes are many, but you will encounter questions and roadblocks as your imagination kicks in. Here are a couple of Cloudy's favorite Pro Tips for getting the most out of Email Templates:

Pro Tip #1: Merging information from related records

You may have noticed that unlike elsewhere in salesforce.com (such as in the advanced formula editor), the Merge Field menu does not allow you to navigate through layers of related records to grab the Merge Field you want. For instance, if you are sending a Contact-related email, you cannot insert a field from their related Account record.

Get around this by adding a formula field to the Contact record which captures the related Account field that you need for your email! You don't have to put this field on your page layout, and you may want to give it a distinctive name and description so that you and other administrators can easily remember its function.  ie. "THIS IS AN EMAIL TEMPLATE FORMULA FIELD!"

Pro Tip #2: "Sending User" Information


If you have numerous reps all using the same Template to email Contacts, you may want a way for each rep's contact information to populate in the template automatically - for instance, as a personalized "signature".


Simply select "Sending User Fields" from the "Select Field Type" picklist.  Whereas most of your template merge fields must come from the Object that the email will be related to (ie. "Contact"), the Sending User fields are an exception.
This merge field will allow the recipient to easily call the rep who sent the email.
**IF YOUR "SENDING USER" MERGE FIELDS ARE NOT POPULATING CORRECTLY: check that the correct user information is entered on the User record!

Pro Tip #3: Dynamic URLs

You can add a basic URL link by:

1: Type the text as you would like it to appear and highlight it.
2: Click the LINK icon on the tool bar.
3: Enter the web url in the box that appears.


But what if you don't want to link to a STATIC website, and instead you want to send a dynamic/individualized URL based on the record you are sending from?

Simply create a URL field on the primary object, and populate it with your individualized URL links. Then on your template, follow the same steps as above but paste the MERGE FIELD for your new URL field in the text box.
You now have a dynamic URL link that will change based on the record it is sent from!

These are just a few of Cloudy's favorite email template tips.  If you have more questions about advanced functionality with salesforce.com email templates, Contact Us!

Related Posts:

Cloudy's Chalkboard: How to Create an Email Letterhead

Cloudy's Chalkboard: How to Create an Email Template