It's true, I would suggest all you guys to stay alert and load the latest firewall in your brain, else the SFDC will get to you. Well if you don't want to load a firewall don't get into SDFC. You plug yourself into SFDC that's it for you, you'll be lost in what these guys have come up with. For guys who don't know what SFDC is, well SFDC is an on-demand, multitenant, application for managing your Customers, to be very precise it's an on-demand CRM Application
Currently I'm working in CRM, I'm an Oracle PeopleSoft CRM Consultant. For the last three years I've been working on PeopleSoft CRM, it was by far the best CRM application that I’ve ever seen. It's a very huge application with loads of functionality, integrations built into it. The other part that made PeopleSoft so customer friendly is it's PIA Framework. I would even like to say this would be one of the first Enterprise Applications which has a application framework built on the Active Record Pattern (Now popularized by the Ruby on Rails Project), to build and customize the application. This whole trait of active record pattern gives PeopleSoft Applications the flexibility to expose APIs for other applications to integrate with PeopleSoft. The first of the
Now the how...
Because they can... not only do they have they this awesome CRM application with features and dashboards that would put the even huge and complex on premise applications to shame. The Application is so simple, the data that is stored is also very simple, which is very evident from their number of fields they have to store an address. The simplicity is amplified with a very simple concept of basing an Object/transaction on one record. The objects/transactions that are cross related and displayed under related lists. The Salesforce application is based out of a platform that they call the Force.com Platform- which basically transforms to a meta-data repository. Now Force.com platform is powered by this framework to customize existing Applications (a logical grouping of Objects- eg Sales, Marketing) and Build new Apps, these apps that you customize and build can all be exposed as Force.com APIs for integrating. I think i'm going a bit off-track, well not really, now you know how much this SFDC has hacked into my brain.
Now for the what?.... what did they steal and what was the idea? Well for the new user it's just on-Demand CRM with the various applications like Sales, marketing and all. That’s when I was thinking of building a whole Customer Self Service Portal actually a Customer's Customer Self Service Portal, on top of the Salesforce App. It was all fine; I started to profile a few Customer Portals. But all of this being fine ended with me stumbling upon a link about 'Pentaho' a Commercial Open Source BI Suite, if you check out their customer portal, check what opens up.... Salesforce Self Service. I'm totally devastated well it wouldn't have so much if wasn't so user friendly. So that lead me to investigating this new found feature (horror for me) in Sales Force.
Like Self Service wasn't scary enough
Setup with a proper wizard and a jump start option
WYSIWYG Editor
Don't mind the pix, that's Vasu's work
Merge with your own Data
Pimp up your portal with customizable themes
Handful of delivered themes
User Management
Enable and Edit your users
We ain't finished yet,add sections to your existing 'Log a case' page in your Portal
Here's your Login URL for your very own Customer Portal
Now the worst part... It Works!!!! Login Page
It is so user friendly, it lets you setup your Portal, and totally let you customize it within the browser WYSIWYG tools to design the Portal, insert pictures. Change colors, lets you place and format custom messages. As of now the only thing missing is, we don't have this feature to add more pages to Portal, other than the ones delivered, which I'm sure would be delivered in future releases. And I know that they won't stop with just this, they'll better it. Damn you SFDC!!!!
So now what next... Well i'm not aware about other guys who are causalities of Idea hacks. After all these atrocities this app has done to me, I've painfully decided to forgive it. SFDC is like that evil villainess in all Bond Movies, you know that she's trying to get to your brain, but there is definite attraction, so I'll be working on my attraction with SFDC. As for you my readers, if you are new to SFDC, unfortunately nobody can be told what SDFC is; you’ll have to see it for yourself. So what's it going to be the red pill or the blue pill?
SFDC: to be or not to be? Oh yes definitely to be
