Adoption Tools
Desktop Integration
Users love having access to all of their information in one place. In addition to making users more productive and driving adoption, integrating with desktop applications lets you capture and make part of your corporate knowledge base information previously trapped in your reps' personal computers.
To make users more productive, Salesforce CRM is tightly integrated with Microsoft Outlook so that Salesforce CRM and Outlook can work hand-in-hand for:
- Email integration - Add emails from Outlook to a Contact or Lead record inside Salesforce CRM. Salesforce CRM will look up the Contact based on an email match and give you the option of associating it with an Opportunity as well. In this way you can catalog important emails and provide a tremendous boost to effective collaboration.
- Address book integration - When sending an email from Outlook you can look up a Contact from inside Salesforce and add it to the To line of your email.
- Contacts and calendar synchronization - Force.com for Microsoft Outlook lets you to select which Contacts and calendar events you want to synch with Salesforce CRM. Synching can be automated at scheduled intervals; a dynamic icon indicates whether a record is up to date.
- To integrate Outlook with Salesforce CRM, you first have to install Force.com for Microsoft Outlook .
- For step-by-step instructions, see the " Installing Connect for Outlook" online Help topic.
- See also the Force.com for Microsoft Outlook training segment.
- For additional tips for both users and administrators, see Using Force.com for Microsoft Outlook and Administering Force.com for Microsoft Outlook .
Salesforce.com Community
Salesforce CRM users—including business users, developers, and administrators—may belong to different communities based on their jobs and interests. Salesforce.com provides community sites for all types of users to find information, share ideas, respond to and rate content, and ask questions.
In addition, salesforce.com supports local user groups across the country and around the world. Join fellow users at local meetings and attend "city tours" near you, special events, and salesforce.com's yearly blowout event: Dreamforce.
Check out and join these community sites:
- Salesforce.com Community – If you’re reading this information, you found the Salesforce.com Community site. Explore the CRM Best Practices tab for a wealth of resources. See the most popular content and cast your vote. Participate in discussion forums, contribute to the Salesforce.com IdeaExchange to see your ideas become part of Salesforce CRM, and find out about local user groups and events in your area.
- Developer Force – The Force.com Developer Network is for the technically inclined. Here you'll find wikis for all aspects of the Force.com platform, downloads of popular books, and the chance to get a free Developer Edition account.
Dashboards & Templates
Users love templates and dashboards because they boost productivity and help track progress and communicate key business information in a way that's easy to understand. Dashboards are great for visualizing complex information and keeping everyone on the same page-and on their toes.
- Get your teams to identify their key performance indicators (KPIs). Then build dashboards that show, in real time, how the KPIs are performing.
- Email templates are easy to set up and use. With these templates, users can send out consistent, high-quality, personalized HTML or text emails.
- For step-by-step instructions, see the " Managing Email Templates" and " Creating and Editing Dashboard Properties" online Help topic.
- For tips on HTML email templates, see Tips for Using HTML Email Templates.
