Become a Rockstar Admin with App Mashups

As Admins the bombardment of requests is spectacular. We attempt to solve these challenges with our ingenuity and using the tools that Salesforce delivers to us. The reality is that there is an AppExchange chock full of apps to assist us with extending salesforce around particular challenges. Literally thousands of apps and extensions live on that site to solve everything from celebrating sales victories to quoting to sport brackets. One day I believe there will be an app to track the quality of vacuuming in different rooms of where you live…

Many of these apps are spectacular but what most don’t realize is that an app is rarely standalone. Instead the best solutions to solve business problems usually occur when you mash these apps together to create intelligent processes. We could talk about using APEX triggers and JavaScript with some JQuery but this is ButtonClickAdmin and honestly most smart integrations don’t require such frivolity. Instead let’s talk with our old friend the URL hack to solve these problems.

Custom URL’s – a Primer

For those new to salesforce.com or looking for a refresher, many admins use these custom URLs with custom buttons and links. A simple one custom button would be: https://na5.salesforce.com/{!Account.id}

The above is a simple command to tell salesforce.com to send the user to the account record specified from the page currently in front of us. Let’s make this even simpler:

//{!Account.id}

Since we all live in a shared world and some of us play in sandboxes using the full domain name is typically a no-no unless you need to. So that link is relative. I’m not talking about your third-aunt Cheryl but web browsers are smart enough to inject the site we are on with this. This means our link works in our Production salesforce.com environment even when we developed it in the Sandbox or if salesforce.com moves your system from one instance (na7.salesforce.com) to another (na19.salesforce.com). Unless you have to, relative links are the preferred method of creating custom URL’s.

App Mashups

With all that said let’s talk apps. I’m going to highlight 4 apps in particular because: many orgs already use these apps, their usage with custom URL’s is typical of other apps, and they tell a great story.

For this post I’m using TaskRay, GridBuddy, Geopointe, and Drawloop.

Scenario: Sending Introductory Letters and Setting Appointments to a Specific Region

Many of us live in a digital world but the power of a letter is still a powerful and a worthy tool. In this example the protagonist is a field representative trying to plan a trip to Chicago and they have a team back in the office who can help schedule appointments other sales tasks. Since I’m researching Accounts in a region I open up Geopointe and search a region.

Geopointe has a function called actions where URL’s are inserted for and customized. In this case I have two custom actions. One that sends the user to the creation of a TaskRay Task so that my inside sales team can attempt to get a meeting and another action that sends the user an introductory letter.

By clicking on the link Drawloop can ask additional questions through its interface and create the letter customized to the Account and Contact information contained within Salesforce. If desired with Drawloop the document could be generated and then a field updated on the Account to signal that the document was created and a sales process started. We’re trying to save steps here as well as enhance our system’s data collection.

If your firm is dealing with a great many of these scheduling or document creation requests, perhaps its time to use a tool like TaskRay instead of the standard task object? Yes its a project management tool but who is to say you must have a project in the traditional sense to use it? For example, an Admin could create a project for Sales Call Meeting Requests and use the Geopointe action to create TaskRay tasks for the call requests.

Scenario: Managing Tasks and Projects with TaskRay and GridBuddy

I delivered a blog post a while back that combined TaskRay and GridBuddy together to make an uber app. Since that post went live, the two companies have joined ranks and released an even stronger integration between the two. This is great news and I hope more companies follow their lead. Instead of listening to me drone on about mashing these two apps, read the post and try it out yourself.

Here are the basics before you install and try it out:

• Grids are created by the Admin that contain the columns and summarization. Think of these as super list views.
• When the user visits a TaskRay Project record, the grid specified loads as a section on the page layout.
• But because of the URL information contained in the setup, GridBuddy knows which Project record is loading and so only show tasks related to it. Talk about build once, reuse many!

Scenario: Connection to a Custom App

Maybe you, being the awesome admin that you are, built your own app! This URL trickery is applicable to those apps as well. For example we internally have a time entry system that is tied to TaskRay. We use a formula field to send the user to a time entry screen with most of the fields filled out appropriately. Its a massive time saver. We use a formula but a custom button would have worked as well. The formula field was used to allow a user within the custom TaskRay interface to gain access to the solution.

If your app is a single custom object or a cavalcade of Salesforce wizardary, keep thinking about the fastest way for users to complete their tasks. If that is hopping from one app to another and bypassing the standard salesforce UI then do it!

About the Authors

Brad Gross is the President at Information Logistics, a Salesforce.com consulting partner. He is a Salesforce MVP, and Pittsburgh Salesforce User Group Leader.

Blakely Graham is a Co-founder at Bracket Labs, Certified Salesforce Administrator and Salesforce MVP.