Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Net Promoter webinar...

More and more Salesforce customers are using Clicktools as part of their Net Promoter initiative. To explain more about the way that Clicktools supports Net Promoter, we now have a webinar available at:

www.clicktools.com/help/webinars/ct4aenp/player.html

The Net Promoter extension is available to all Clicktools for AppExchange customers at no charge.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Required information

When creating information in Salesforce, there are 'required' pieces of information that must be included in the form. The table below gives you a list of required fields for some common objects in a standard Salesforce implementation:

Account: Name

Contact: Last Name

Lead: Last Name, Company

Campaign: Name

CampaignMember: (i.e. Adding a Contact to a Campaign): Contact ID, Event ID, Status

Event: Subject, Date, Time, Duration (usually defaults)

Task: Subject, Priority, Status

Opportunity: Name, Close Date, Stage

Case: Status (usually defaults to New), Origin

Solution: Solution Title

Product: Product Name

In terms of some common AppExchange applications, here is the required information for a few popular installed Salesforce Lab Apps:

Class Enrollment:
Class: Class Name
Enrollment: Class ID, Contact ID

Project/Issue Management:
Project: Project Number
Issue: Project ID

Recruiting Manager:
Candidate: Candidate Name:
Applicants: Applicant Name

I hope you find this useful. Don't forget, this includes the information you MUST include, you are likely to want to include much more than this...

Monday, April 09, 2007

When responses don't auto-synch...

Sometimes, it's possible that form/survey responses don't auto-synch. Unfortunately, it's really not possible to guarantee 100% auto-synchronization 100% of the time. The main reasons for this, in order from most to least likely, are:

1. The mapping is incorrect or some information is missing. Try the manual synch to see what is causing the error.
2. The person does not complete the survey and does not press the submit button. When this happens the response will sit in the manual queue waiting for completion or you to manually synchronize.
3. None of the information that is required for synchronization is completed. Note - If this happens then the survey is 'tagged' as being synched and will not be placed in the manual queue.
4. The credentials (username and password) against the survey instance are incorrect (or have changed - this is common when, for example, a password is changed).
5. You have exceeded the maximum number of API calls your organisation is allowed to make during one day.
6. The Salesforce API is not available and we cannot 'activate' a session (i.e. login) to automatically synch.
7. You have exceeded your Clicktools licensed responses and so responses are not available for auto-synching.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Using Vertical Response to send Clicktools surveys...

Many of our customers use Vertical Response to send emails from Salesforce. And, finally, I have got round to documenting how to use the two tools together!

It's actually quite simple and involves two changes in your email template:

There are two important rules to be aware of:

  1. Use 'nr_' in front of the 'http' in any Clicktools survey link.
    Any link to a Clicktools survey should begin "nr_http://...". This simply switches off the redirect from within VR and enables the merge field values to work correctly. This only stops tracking on the Clicktools link not the rest of your tracking (e.g. opens, bounces, etc.).
  2. Use VR merge field values.
    Most importanty, to pass any value you must use the corresponding VR merge field value. Importantly, to pass across the ID of a Contact or Lead you must use the special VR value of '{salesforce_id}'. So, for example, a standard Salesforce template would have &q1={Contact.ID} at the end to pass across the Contact ID. In Vertical Response this would read &q1={salesforce_id}.

Remember: These merge fields will not work in any 'test' messages that are sent!

Note: If you are using Clicktools surveys to update campaign records then you would use the special merge value for the campaign member status record which is {sf_campaign_member_id}. Unfortunately, I don't think any other IDs (e.g. Account) can be included.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Analysts review of Clicktools for AppExchange

Please find below a review of Clicktools for AppExchange by Infiniti Research.

Infiniti Review

We score a strong 4.5 out of 5 with the only highlighted weakness being the omission of 'standard' surveys. Interestingly, this is something we used to include but we removed them as 90% of our customers had their own.

We do have sample surveys coming out of our ears so, as a result of this feedback, we will be including some standard surveys that map to Salesforce objects in our starter kit.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Clicktools get wizzy!

We have today launched our latest addition to Clicktools for AppExchange - the Form Wizard.

The Form Wizard uses a simple concept to simplify the process of building, deploying forms, surveys and landing pages that are fully integrated with Salesforce.

You basically select the fields you want and, hey presto, the form is built for you. You can build forms to create/update multiple objects (e.g. Accounts AND a Contact AND an Opportunity) and a form can be presented according to ANY brand guidelines.

The Form Wizard provides several benefits:

  • No html skills required
  • No need to wait for Web/IT teams to host your form

You can build and deploy a form in minutes. We think it's a leap forwards in the functionality available to Salesforce users.

Here are a couple of webinars to get you excited:

Introduction to Form Wizard

Advanced Form Wizard webinar

Friday, January 19, 2007

More webinars live...

3 more webinars are now on-line. Whilst the first three focused on functionality, these three focus on real world applications:

The first focuses on implementing case/support satisfaction surveys, the second on how to use Clicktools to manage event invites and other campaigns to automatically update campaign member status records and thirdly, we look at how you can use Clicktools to manage the email opt-out field in Salesforce.

Each webinar includes details of any Salesforce customizations, the forms/surveys required and how they can be deployed.

Have fun.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Clicktools gets incubated!

I am very pleased to announce that Clicktools will be taking one of the "cubes" within the Salesforce.com Incubator in San Mateo. This will become the base for our US operations.

More details to follow on the web site and here but you can read the Salesforce press release here:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,44900.shtml

Thursday, January 11, 2007

More webinars on-line...

I am pleased to say that we now have another couple of webinars available.

The first covers passing information from Salesforce in to forms and surveys, the second how you set up mappings to transfer information from completed forms and surveys back in to Salesforce.

Both take about five minutes so go grab that coffee...

More will be on-line very soon to cover both learning how to use Clicktools for AppExchange as well as real-worl examples.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Auto-sync is live!

You've been asking for it and it's here - All Clicktools for AppExchange customers now have the ability to define automatic synchronization to Salesforce.

Uniquely, this contains the ability to:

  1. Select either manual and automatic synchronization
    - Different types of forms will require different settings, stay-in-touch for example may be best left as Manual so you can review findings before synching back in to Salesforce)
  2. Use different users for different survey synchronizations
    - This was specifically asked for by you and means that you can more closely track updates in Salesforce to individuals not just one id. Of course, you can use the same credentials for all synchronization if required.
  3. Fix forms/surveys with errors and re-synch
    - Any forms that do not successfully synchronize are placed in the manual queue so you can examine exact errors and fix or delete as required.

This is something we only used to offer as a custom service but it's now part of the standard subscription. Forgive me for blowing our own trumpet but again, I think ths raises the bar on form/survey integration with Salesforce.

You can see more by looking at the following webinar http://www.clicktools.com/help/webinars/ct4aeautosync/player.html

There will be more exciting functionality coming soon so keep an eye on the blog.

 

Andrew