I know my latest post said that we would next meet in May, but I just had a note from Jeanine Thorp of Salesforce.com, asking if we'd be interested in co-locating our next meeting with Salesforce.com's 'CRM Essentials' breakfast seminar being held June 16, 2006 at the Westin South Coast Plaza.  Of course, I said 'yes!'  So mark your calendars now ~ details to follow soon!

It's been brought to my attention that I'm not very good at keeping this blog up to date.  Guilty as charged.  I will make a real effort to do that from now on...

We had a terrific meeting this morning! Thanks to the WizMagic / Online Training Academy Team for the use of their facility and the thought-provoking presentation.  For those of you who missed it, WizMagic has done an amazing job integrating the many aspects of Online Trading Academy's business into their Salesforce.com implementation.  WizMagic is a certified Salesforce.com partner, by the way.  Feel free to contact them if you need any assistance with YOUR implementation.

Following the presentation, we broke into Birds-of-a-Feather groups:  Sales, Marketing, New Admins, and Advanced Admins.  I am pleased with the results!  Many thanks to Tiffany Caruthers (Saleforce.com), Tim Dunlea (Eloqua), Brandy Colmer (Cetco) and Darcy Golubovic (SalesGenie) who moderated the discussions. This is definitely a format we plan to stick with.  I don't know what happened in the other groups, but some of the things we discussed in the Advanced Admin Group included the Spring 09 release features, Master-Detail relationships, and using Field Update Workflow.

I mentioned that we have a Group on Facebook - I'm working on changing that to a 'Fan Page' which I think will better serve our needs.  Give me a day or two to get this up (I have to do my *real* job :)) and, if you are a member of Facebook, join us.  Look for "Salesforce.com Orange County User Group."

I think that's it for now.  Our next meeting will be scheduled for May!

Barbara Kuntz
Leader
Salesforce.com Orange County User Group

Hi OC User Group Members (and Prospective Members)!

The next meeting of the Salesforce.com Orange County User Group is scheduled for Wednesday morning, December 10, 2008 from 8:30am- 10:30am. Refreshments provided (come hungy)!

As discussed last time, the topic for this meeting is Data / Document Storage Strategies.

Even though Salesforce.com recently increased storage limits, it's only a matter of time before you begin receiving those 'nearing capacity' email alerts. What can you do now to get the most out of the storage allotted to your organization?

We'll have two speakers at this month's meeting: Nancye Michaelian, (CSM Salesforce.com), will present "Best Practices for Managing Your Storage Usage" and Vincent Cabral from Drawloop Technologies will present their Document Services solution which "allows companies to dynamically pass Saleforce data from any Object(s) into their existing Word, Excel and Powerpoint files and package in one PDF file. Automating quotes, proposals, service contracts or any document(s) saves time, reduces errors and leverages both data and files the most Salesforce user already have and use."

Don't miss this great opportunity to learn how to better plan for your Salesforce.com storage needs. Please join us! Bring a friend / co-worker with you!


Date: December 10, 2008 (Wednesday)
Time: 8:30am - 10:30am
Location: HireRight Inc.
5151 California Ave.
Irvine, CA 92617

Directions: http://www.hireright.com/directions.html

Please note that for security reasons, you will be asked to show ID when you arrive at HireRight, and will be escorted to the conference room for the meeting.


Sponsor: Drawloop Technologies

Meeting Agenda:
8:00am - 8:30am - Arrivals and Mingling
8:30am - 9:15am - Storage Best Practices
9:15am - 10:00am - "Static Documents to DDPs (Dynamic Document Packages)"

About the sponsor for this meeting:
Businesses rely on Drawloop to help them automate the creation of proposals, sales quotes, presentations and any other document set critical to selling or servicing a product. Our on-demand services will allow you to deliver a web-based process for the creation of Dynamic Document Packages (DDPs). We are your solution to deliver document creation on-demand.

Drawloop Technologies has changed the way people create and package documents used to sell and service their products. With our enterprise subscription services, we have helped our customers achieve document automation by eliminating the number of additional work steps and hours involved in creating the required documents to fulfill a business process.

Ease of use, control of deliverables, and powerful customization make our service a compelling document solution for your sales reps, service reps, marketing managers and executives.

Originally founded as agentLIFE, Drawloop Technologies was conceived as a result of a conversation between Todd Mezrah and Jim Roberson. Todd and Jim asked the simple question, “Where can people go to quickly and efficiently create the documents they need to be successful?”

Todd and Jim launched Drawloop on November 1, 2002.

Drawloop Technologies can be found on the web at http://www.drawloop.com

RSVP now by sending me a quick email at barbara.kuntz@muc.miyachi.com.  See you next week!

p.s. In an effort to give you all a forum in which to discuss things with your peers right here in Orange County, I've created a group on Facebook called (what else?) 'Salesforce.com Orange County User's Group'  If you're on FB, please join us.  If not, get on!

Save the date!

The next meeting of the Salesforce.com Orange County User Group is scheduled for Wednesday morning, April 23, 2008 from 8:30am - 10:30am.  Continental breakfast included!  Morning meetings have produced great results for other local User Groups, so we're going to give it a try here in Orange County. 

The topic for this meeting is one that is - I'm sure - near and dear to all of us:  User Adoption & Productivity.

Are you in Sales, Marketing, or Management and looking for ways to improve Salesforce adoption in your organization?  Are you an Administrator tasked with evaluating adoption in your organization?  If so, you don't want to miss this meeting! 

Our sponsor, Voice2insight will present its incredible sales enablement tool which "allows field sales professionals from any industry to update SalesForce by leaving voice messages. You have to see this!  The typical sales professional spends several hours per week entering data rather than selling.  V2i’s solution enables these professionals to spend more time selling and driving revenue while still maintaining updated info in SalesForce”  "Voice2insight is considered the "Must Have" for increased SFA/CRM success as it addresses the "user adoption - good or bad" / "people" / "no time" issues with CRM which are the most critical components of CRM success...data (gas) to make the CRM (engine) perform to client's expectations." 

We will also have a short training session for anyone who wants to learn more about creating and managing Adoption Dashboards. 

Please join us!  And, if possible, bring an executive and sales/marketing user with you!

Date:  April 23, 2008 (Wednesday)

Time:   8:30 AM – 10:30 AM

Location: HireRight Inc.

5151 California Ave.

Irvine, CA 92617

Directions: http://www.hireright.com/directions.html

Please note that for security reasons, you will be asked to show ID when you arrive at HireRight, and will be escorted to the conference room for the meeting.

Sponsor: Voice2insight

Meeting Agenda: 

8:30 - 9:00    Arrivals and Mingling

9:00 - 9:45    Voice2insight - Improve User Adoption & Productivity

9:45 - 10:15  Adoption Dashboard How-to

10:15 - 10:30 Q&A, Wrap Up

Future meeting dates - put them on your calendar now:  June 11, August 13, October 22, December 10

About the sponsor for this meeting: 

Voice2insight is a privately held company established in 1994 to assist organizations with their strategic development and now serves a national clientele. Clients included Allergan, Phoenix Life, FFF Enterprises, HP, Regent Seven Seas, 3M, Procter & Gamble, Philips Lighting and many more.

Today, (their) team of skilled technical and management leaders is poised to change the way organizations communicate customer information and make strategic decisions.

Voice2insight is a Salesforce.com Certified and App Exchange Partner. 

US Corporate Headquarters is located at 12244 South Business Park Drive, Suite 115

Draper, UT 84020.  Phone: 1.800.665.6803  Website:  www.voice2insight.com.

The next Orange County User Group meeting will be held Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at the Paciolan, Inc. office:

5171 California, Ave.

Ste 200 (2nd floor)

Irvine, CA 92617

Paciolan is located at the NW corner of Bison and California Ave - right off the 73 freeway at Bison.  Lots of FREE parking available!

Meeting Agenda:

3:00pm - 3:45pm - 'Visibility on Demand' Chris Haase & Darren Cunningham, LucidEra
3:45pm - 4:30pm - Dreamforce recap, Open issues/demos from members 
4:30pm - 5:30pm - 'Happy Hour'

As always, please come prepared with questions or your own personal 'lessons learned based on experience.'  Sharing those experiences is the real benefit of these users groups!

This meeting is being sponsored by LucidEra.  Founded in 2005, LucidEra delivers focused analytic solutions built on the industry’s first complete on-demand business intelligence platform.  Their Sales Cycle Analysis solution is available on the AppExchange where it received an average user rating of 5 out of 5 stars! 

Please RSVP if you’re planning to attend the meeting by emailing me or adding a comment on the blog. I look forward to hearing from you!

This is just a reminder that Salesforce.com’s 2006 Success On Demand Tour is coming to our home - Orange County - this Wednesday afternoon!  Event details below.  Seating is limited -- be sure to get there early to reserve your spot. And don’t forget to bring your business cards…

Thursday, June 8th
Registration 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Seminar 2:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Reception 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach
21500 Pacific Coast Highway
Huntington Beach, CA 92648
P: 714-698-1234   
F: 714-845-4990
http://huntingtonbeach.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/ 

Haven't yet registered?  Want to bring a friend or colleague? No problem! You can register on-site.

Hope to see you there!

Barbara Kuntz
Group Leader
Orange County User Group

I'm a little tardy in posting this wrap up, so I'm going to get right to the good stuff.  Our last meeting, held March 22, was attended by about 15 people, many of whom were attending for the first time.  Participation from the group was good - nice for me as I get tired of listening to myself talk.  Topics of discussion included:

OC User Group Charter
A place to network, share, and learn with other Salesforce.com users and administrators in Orange County:
    -Explore unused features of Salesforce.com
    -Share best practices
The goal of the group as a whole - in combination with the other user groups worldwide - is to use our collective knowledge to influence the direction of future releases.

AppExchange
We spent quite a bit of time talking about the AppExchange - what's available, what it costs (if anything), and how incredibly easy it is to implement new apps in our individual production environments.  Matt Moye, CSM for Salesforce.com gave us a high-level AppExchange overview and then we dove right into looking at some "apps that might be useful TODAY:"

Mass Update Opportunity Close Dates - a simple tool which allows your salespeople to update all of their opportunity close dates in one screen.  This app is available free from Salesforce.com.

Mass Update Address Change - ever notice that when you change the address on an account it does NOT automatically update the addresses of the associated contacts?  Simplify the update with process with this free-from-Salesforce.com tool which allows you to quickly update contact addresses.  Note that the tool defaults to pulling the billing address from the account, so if you use the shipping address (as my company does) you'll need to modify the html a bit before implementing.  Or, better yet, just call me and I'll send you a copy the file I modified to use the shipping address.

Marketing Influence Report - an interesting report which shows you all the ways that an account has been touched by campaigns leading up to the opportunity.  Over time, will give you some good data re: what kinds of campaigns are most effective?  How many times do you need to touch an account/contact before he is ready to buy?  Good for your marketing folks!  And, of course, FREE from Salesforce.com.

Vertical Response
At the first meeting, many people expressed an interest in learning more about running successful campaigns using Salesforce.com.  One of my favorite tools is Vertical Response for mass email blasts.  So we dedicated the last half hour of the meeting to an online demo of the product with a representative Vertical Response.  Here's the good stuff:  1.  You can download the app at no cost from the AppExchange.  2. The product is not available on a license basis, but rather, pay as you go (very cost effective)  3.  It is very inexpensive.  I sent about 30,000 emails last year using Vertical Response and the total cost to my company was less than $300!  4.  The best part - low maintenance!  The program is completely integrated with Salesforce.com campaigns, so you don't have to manually update any member statuses, and it is self-policing, meaning that it won't allow you to send to someone who requested to be removed from the list (you're protected where SPAM laws are concerned), or to an address that previously bounced (saving you money).  Give it a go today!

I was planning to schedule our next meeting near the end of this month, but since we have the User Group City Tour coming to Huntington Beach on June 8, I would like to encourage all of you to attend that event, and we'll schedule a follow-up meeting near the end of June.  If you've not registered for the HB event yet, visit http://www.salesforce.com/crm-success-tour/citytours.jsp?ct_session=x1&ct_tab=&eid=70130000000CEJC&d=70130000000CEJW and do so today!

Looking forward to seeing you all on June 8!

Barbara
barbara.kuntz@miyachiunitek.com
626-930-8560

With about 15 attendees from 13 differenct companies, I think I can call our first user group meeting a resounding success!  Thank you to each and every one of you for your participation in that meeting and for providing me with plenty of ideas for future meetings.  Among the things we discussed:

www.crmsuccess.com - Have you visited crmsuccess.com yet?  If not, do take some time to visit.  There are message boards full of users with solutions to your Salesforce.com challenges. You'll also find Salesforce.com's published tips & tricks, videos of presentations from Dreamforce, and, of course, the Orange County User Group blog!

Dependent Picklists - make entering data in Salesforce simpler and more efficient by minimizing the sometimes massive drop-down lists that grow, as we do, in our use of the product.  Available in all editions, dependencies are defined at the field level.  Custom fields may be either controlling for dependent fields, but standard fields may only be controlling.  We demonstrated the creation of a dependency during the meeting.  For more information, see 'Dependent Field Considertions' in the online help.

Campaign Builder - the coolest new tool for marketing folks like me. This tool enables you to skip the report-export-import exercise we used to have to go through to add contacts to a campaign.  Now, you can add members quickly and easily by creating a view within the campaign 'manage members' tab!  You can also mass update member status. If you prefer to do it from a report you've created - you can!  Simply open you  report and click 'add to campaign.'  It's really that easy!  Campaign Builder is available in Enterprise, Professional, and Developer Editions.

Formula Fields & AppExchange - we were lucky to have Randy Case, Sr. Sales Engineer with Salesforce.com in attendance at the meeting.  He spent some time showing us how to create and use formula fields on page layouts and in reports.  He also took some time to show us around the AppExchange.  Many expressed interest in learning more about the AppExchange in upcoming meetings.

One thing we kind of discussed, but didn't really resolve is what our charter as a group might be.  In reviewing the forms you all filled out I see that we are a pretty equal split of Professional and Enterprise users, many of us are administrators, and most of us are interested in the User Group as a place to bring our challenges and have them addressed by others who have been there. 

We did have a brief discussion on how often we should meet and while we initially said 'quarterly' I think we should try every other month for a while and see how that works.  If it's too much, we can cut it back to quarterly.  I will send out the next meeting date to all soon.  We didn't have any volunteers for meeting space (I would offer my office, but I don't think you all want to drive up to Monrovia!), so we will continue to meet at the Salesforce.com office for as long as they will allow and can accommodate us.

If you have anything in particular that you'd like the group to address at the next meeting, please email me at barbara.kuntz@miyachiunitek.com or post a reply to this blog!  Looking foward to seeing you all in March.

Barbara

Just a reminder that the next Orange County Users Group Meeting will be held this Wednesday, January 27 at 3pm.  See previous post for address.  One of our key discussions will center on the "charter" for our group - that which will determine the direction of future meetings - so think about what you, personally want to get out of your participation and let us know!

See you all on Wednesday!

Barbara