Salesforce Communities FAQ

What is Salesforce Communities?
Now any company can create private social communities to connect with customers, partners, suppliers and distributors in entirely new ways. Salesforce Communities is the only community platform that combines the power of social networking with business processes for breakthrough collaboration and productivity.

• Salesforce Communities offers:
• social collaboration for employees, customers, and partners
• deep integration with sales, service, and marketing business processes
• custom branding and application development
• multi-community access
• trusted security and scalability

What makes Salesforce Communities different?
Unlike other communities products, Salesforce Communities offers social collaboration in the context of business processes and workflows -- all wrapped in your own pixel-perfect branding. Salesforce Communities is 100% cloud-based and backed by the trusted reputation of salesforce.com.

• What can I do with Salesforce Communities?
• Connect with Customers: Salesforce Communities will help social enterprises combine knowledge-driven, peer-assisted and agent-assisted customer service communities into a single unified experience giving customers better and faster service, every time. Companies will also be able to create a variety of marketing communities around events, campaigns or even spin up focus groups on the fly.
• Connect with Partners: Companies along with their partners, suppliers and distributors, can create custom communities to drive more sales through seamless deal registration, access to proven sales tools and collaboration with the right experts.
• Connect with Any Community: Deploy communities to support any business process - from franchises sharing best practices, to high-end retailers delivering custom shopping experiences, to universities looking to connect students with alumni.

What if I am an existing Portals customer?
Once Salesforce Communities is generally available existing Portals customers can enable the community functionality to their service and partner portal licenses at no additional cost. There is no data migration or changes in sharing rules.

How can I participate in the pilot for Salesforce Communities?
You can submit your request to participate in the Salesforce Communities pilot here.

When will Salesforce Communities be available?
Salesforce Communities is available in a limited pilot in Fall 2012 and is expected to be generally available in the second half of 2013.

How much will Salesforce Communities cost?
Pricing of Salesforce Communities will be announced at general availability.