So, it is Thanksgiving Thursday. Well, that would likely mean much, much more if I lived south of the border, but I still have been able to work while watching 3 absolute football blowouts, and the Senators hockey game on TV!
As it is Thanksgiving, it’s been fun to sit an watch Twitter, to see what people were talking of when they were tweeting about what they were thankful for. And, as I watched, it gave me an idea, especially with the previous post of all the Force.com applications. So, without further ado, here are five free force.com apps that I am thankful for.
1) Services Project Manager: While there are some really awesome applications for services companies using salesforce.com to utilize apex, visualforce, and all sorts of web wizardry to manage their business (which is projects!), the Force.com Services Project Manager makes great use of native functionality within salesforce.com to give you an easy, intuitive and scalable application to manage your work efforts. Many services-based clients have had this configured by xLerate for this, and it is what I have overhauled to run our business. Without a doubt, it is the most important application I use!
2) AppExchange Dashboard Pack: It amazed me how scared people are of reporting and dashboarding in Salesforce! It is like we’ve all been affected by years of the pains of Crystal Reports or something (grin…)! With each and every new client, I install this lovely application to give users an idea of what you can do. I have found that between the addition of custom reports and dashboards, and a training session on reporting and previous fears and conditionings disappear! Just a note, however – you need to have campaigns in your org to install this. If you do not, the application can be installed separately.
3) Auto Complete Lookups: As simple as it sounds. I am as lazy as the next person…the idea of having to click a lookup icon, type in some name, and click Go…well, it drives me batty. Enter the auto complete. Simply start typing in the object you wish to find, and….voila!
4) Opportunity Primary Contact Required: I absolutely believe that the Contact Role related list on the Opportunity is one of the most under-utilized lists in Salesforce. You may have an opportunity with an account (which is a required lookup), but you sell to people and the contact role list allows you to define this. I truly believe that all people should be forced to use the Contact Role – thus my love of this application. However, there seems to be a catch. After the critical update to the Opportunity save was released back in late summer, people cannot install this properly. I can tell you that you can deactivate the critical update, install the application and reactivate the critical update without issue. As of December 15, 2009, I am not sure what will happen.
5) PRM Home Page Components: OK, so this is not available publicly – you need to access it through the Partner Networks blog. But this application allows you to add a Lead Inbox table, Approval Request table and Channel Manager component to your PRM home page, and all of them are used by Visualforce!
So, there you have it – 5 apps that I am thankful for. And, in the spirit of Black Friday, the price is right for each one – they are absolutely free! Did I miss one you like? Let me know.
To end – Happy Thanksgiving, to all my American friends. I hope you had a safe, and filling holiday filled with family and friendship!
Nik
Nik
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