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Field Service Lightning Features and Use Cases - Encaptechno

Field Service Lightning Features And Use Cases

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The Field Service Lightning is actually an extension of the service cloud whose function is to offer a detailed view of workforce management. Essentially, it helps the organizations keep a better track of the customer service calls from the call center agent to the dispatcher console and then finally to a full-fledged service appointment by the mobile employee.

Field Service Lightning Features and Use Cases - Encaptechno

FSL Salesforce offers valuable insights so that everyone involved can work efficiently and at their absolute best. The dispatcher helps the field technicians to be ready for success by sending all the important technicians for fulfilling a particular job while keeping in mind the service time.

The field technicians have access to real time data right on the go, which helps in understanding the work that is usually requested and the tools that are needed to complete that work. They can also access knowledge articles for filling in any possible gaps if there is a need.

Besides, these leadership teams have detailed access to all the important data as the teams need it to spot the trends that improve operational processes. The customers can actually gain a seamless experience with a faster resolution time because the technician arrives with all prepared to complete the task that is at hand.

In this blog, we will understand all about Field Service Lightning and its use cases to gain a much better understanding.

What is Field Service Lightning?

What is Field Service Lightning

Field Service Lightning can be explained as an extension of the Salesforce Service Cloud that offers a comprehensive view of workforce management. In simple words, in case a customer orders for new cable service, the next step will be showing up to a cable guy. Now the field service lightning allows managing where the cable guy is, where he is going and what length of cable is in his van.

Field Service is a proven way to get a powerful, customizable, and mobile-friendly field service hub in Salesforce. Essentially, running a field service business signifies the management of different moving parts. With the help of field service, one can get the tools that are needed to manage the work orders, schedule efficiently and also work with the mobile workforce.

Some of the things that can effectively be done are:

  • Creating records that represent a field service worker, agent, and dispatcher while adding details about the worker’s skills, availability, and location.
  • Tracking the location and status of an inventory, warehouse, customer sites, and service vehicles.
  • Setting up of multilevel service territories that work to represent the areas where mobile workers can offer services.
  • Creating maintenance plans and templates for standardizing the field service tasks.
  • Generating service reports for keeping the customers informed about service progress
  • Scheduling one time or recurring work orders for the customers and adding details about worker preference and important skills.

What is Included in Field Service?

When the FSL Salesforce is enabled, one can gain access to a suite of standard objects that can be found in the Setup and as tabs in Salesforce. These are the objects that are responsible for making up the core field service features including the service appointments and work orders as well.

Managed Package: The managed package is built on the core features and includes a guided set-up for understanding all the customization settings. It also includes a scheduling optimizer that allocates the resources for various appointments in an efficient way by accounting for skill level, location, and travel time.

This managed package has a dynamic console that gives the dispatchers and supervisors a bigger view of all the scheduled appointments and team members. The process of scheduling processes and triggers helps in customizing the scheduling model and displaying the preferences.

Mobile App: Besides this, the offline friendly field service mobile apps for Android and iOS make working much simpler for mobile workers. All app users can update the work orders, gather customer signatures, track parts, and connect with the dispatchers from their mobile devices.

Features of Field Service Lightning

There are five main features offered by the field service lightning and we will be discussing them one after another:

1. Attaching Job Details to Work Orders: The work orders are pretty much at the foundation of the FSL Salesforce. When you are creating a work order, there is always an option to choose a prebuilt template. This automatically helps to populate the required information on the work order.

The work order line items also specify all tasks to be performed on the job and individual line items can be assigned to multiple crew members. You have an option to add the pricing to each line item. Adding all the required skills to the work orders helps in speeding up the entire scheduling process.

When you enable the match skill work rules, the system helps in pairing the work orders with the crew members who have the required abilities. Besides the required parts and skills, you can also attach the technical resources, specs, and best practices directly to the work order.

2. Streamlining Service Appointment Scheduling: The dispatcher console is considered as the central hub for scheduling the service appointments in the field service lightning. The Gannt view enables us to see every crew member’s scheduled appointments and the openings as well.

With the help of smart scheduling, you can configure the rules to help the dispatchers quickly to identify the best crew member for a job. These are the rules that include criteria like the crew members’ distance to the job site, skill levels, and the available equipment.

The map view charts all the scheduled appointments, the routes, and crew members’ locations along with the service territories.

3. Recording Labour Hours and Travel Times: The simple ability to report on the labor hours and the parts consumed makes it possible to calculate the overall job profitability.

FSL Salesforce allows the field crews to track the time with the timesheets. The crew members can enter the total amount of time spent on the work order and the work order of the line item while including any comments. It is also possible to record breaks and travel time.

4. Tracking Parts and Equipment: With the help of FSL, one can manage the equipment inventory. As the products keep getting used, one can monitor the reduction in inventory and report the cost of each job accurately at the same time.

This platform offers dispatchers visibility into the parts held by each crew member. The crews can request equipment through the FSL mobile app and product transfers can be created for keeping a record of the movement in inventory across the organization. One can manage the customer returns from return orders only.

5. In the Field Uses: Adopting the FSL mobile application effectively is an important factor in the success of the platform. This mobile app connects the field crews with in-office service teams. Through this app, field crew members can access all the work order details and assist the technical resources, get directions to client locations, and correspond with team members.

Furthermore, the app also has an offline capability that enables the crew members to use the platform while being in the outside service range. All the changes get saved once the connection gets re-established.

The crew members can in fact gather customer signatures through the application because they can generate the service reports with the customer signature types. Every signature is designed for a specific role, which is useful in cases where both the customer and technician are experienced for signing off on the work.

Now that we have understood FSL and its features, let us now discuss the use cases:

Use Case 1: Let’s say there is a team of technicians, project managers, and administratively responsible for fitting the water purifier manufacturer in different settings. Now, an increased difficulty that these people can face is to coordinate work orders between the field service staff and the dispatchers.

In this case, the managers can help in dispatching the field executives by allowing them to access real-time data on the go. As Salesforce is the central hub for all the service needs, it is possible to easily optimize the operations and dispatching process. From scheduling to getting customer service history and even resolving the case, everything can be done in one platform empowered with Service Cloud capabilities.

The field technicians can also manage routes, access the available appointments, and get a detailed understanding of all the issues that must be addressed. This considerably helps in increasing productivity and work efficiently.

Use Case 2: Let’s say that a service manager does not have any record of the work done by the mobile technician in the field.

Since the service managers are responsible for managing what the work of mobile technicians should be in the field, they should have an ability to see what the technician is fixing, what is already fixed, what tools or parts were used and in case the customers liked the work.

For doing this, the right step will be to click on the field service lightning app, click on the work orders, and select a work order that has a service appointment associated. After this, one should click on the related tab and the service report name to see a detailed report on all the work that was done, the parts that were used, and also if the customer signed the service report or not.

Wrapping Up

As a result of using the field service lightning, the customers can have an advanced reporting of the growth opportunities, process improvement, and optimization. Furthermore, the FSL integrates easily with the Salesforce Service Cloud when it is connected with accounting systems and operations.

The ERP integrations help in streamlining the invoicing process by syncing the completed work orders directly with the accounting system. These are the improvements that help a tea, fulfil more requests during the day while offering a much better customer experience.

In case you need any more information on the Salesforce Field Service Lightning then get in touch with the team of Encaptechno for expert assistance, today!

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Salesforce Winter 2021 Release Quick Highlights - Encaptechno

Salesforce Winter ’21 Release Quick Highlights

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Salesforce has released its Winter ’21 release while introducing many new features that offer various benefits. The CRM team has put together highlights from this new release so that they can help the developers in understanding and working with them in a better way. The features that have been introduced in the Salesforce Winter ’21 release are focused on enhancing the user experience with the sole objective to make everything more productive.

Salesforce Winter 2021 Release Quick Highlights - Encaptechno

One of the key differentiators of every Salesforce release is the innovation and feature upgrades that the company introduces. It is because of these changes that Salesforce attracts customers relentlessly. In case you are a Salesforce customer, you must use the new functionality available from every update to make the most out of what is available.

The core philosophy is to have a thriving CRM system by adopting a continuous improvement and leveraging upgrades that are delivered to make the most of the CRM investment. The only thing is that with the sheer number of fixes, changes, and additions, the Salesforce developers can often get overwhelmed when they are busy with everyday work.

In this blog, we will be listing some of the most important and top Salesforce Winter ’21 Release quick highlights for your attention:

1. Dynamic Forms

In the new release, the feature of Dynamic Forms helps the Salesforce instances for lightning. This offers multiple benefits because it enables the admins to form sections of a page and fields that can be used as components for the lightning app builder which then helps in configuring and giving the users access to sections and fields just as needed. There is no longer a need for blocks of fields on a record page.

The feature of Dynamic forms in the new Salesforce release helps in enhancing the way in which the users interact with the record pages. It increases the load time of the page, helps in easily managing the fields and sections on pages with no need for using the page layout editor, and also reduces the page layouts as needed. In the new feature, the dynamic forms are enabled for each org, so one can start setting them up from the lightning app builder.

In the component palette of the lightning app builder, the field section and the components of the field are now available to create the dynamic forms. You can begin by opening an existing record page in the lightning app builder and then clicking the upgrade now from the record detail properties to launch the Dynamic Forms migration wizard that helps to add fields and different field sections to pages. On the other hand, you can also create new pages from scratch.

It is recommended to reconsider your page design set up by leveraging the dynamic forms, particularly when you see multiple record types. You can get in touch with Salesforce implementation partners if you need assistance in setting up this feature or redesigning the pages.

2. Lightning Components

Many people have built Aura and Lightning Web Components by now and most of this logic runs on the Aura Enables Apex methods that reside in the controller classes. In the Salesforce Winter ’21 release, if you want to successfully communicate with the Apex method, the user should have an appropriate Apex class enabled on the profile or a permission set.

The fact this applies to all the components, even the new and the existing ones may require the profile changes to maintain great functionality. Fortunately, it is simple to add permissions. All you have to do is open up a profile or even permission to set and select the Apex Classes section to add the controller class to the list. In case you have been managing the profiles and permissions with the help of managed packages, the new release makes it great for you to begin.

3. Analyze Lightning Page

Analyzing the lightning page is a simple feature for the admins that helps them to utilize and vastly improve the loading time of the lightning pages. With the help of analyzing features, you can quickly understand what causes longer load times than usual.

Besides this, you can also receive quick recommendations for any improvements with a simple click of a button. For using this feature properly, you can go to the lightning app builder, click on the Analyze button so that the pages begin the evaluation. The pages are then analyzed based on the fields related to the list components and the metadata of a record page.

4. Apply Audience to the Record Detail Page

Many communities require additional customization because they are external facing. Due to this new update extending the customization to the record detail page, the previously customizable feature through the use of record types gets triumphed.

Additionally, you can now vary with what people see on a record detail page using the audience criteria based on the record fields. For instance; it is possible to display multiple theme layouts or different pages for high-value or low-value opportunities. Also, the record criterion is further moved from the advanced section to the main body of the editor section which helps in easy combination with user criteria to create the custom formulas.

5. Updated Highlights Panel

A simple but very useful update that can help the users to become considerably efficient is the updated highlights panel on the record page. It helps in making the users see more record information on a highlights panel when they move over a lookup relationship field. This is when you hover over the accounting field on an opportunity.

There isn’t a required setup for this kind of feature because it will be automatically turned and displayed in the first few fields on the compact layout. The users are no longer required to go to the related records for seeing more details.

6. Customizing User Search Results

With the new Salesforce release, Einstein search can help in personalizing all that is returned by the re-ranking of the results so that they can be made more relevant to the individual user.

The results are evaluated based on factors such as recent user activity, ownership of records, and geographic location. Anyone who uses performance, enterprise, professional and unlimited editions in lightning can begin using this feature.

For turning on the Salesforce Einstein Search, go to the quick find box in the setup and typing and selecting, “Enable Einstein Search”. Further, select all of the three checkboxes to enable the search. This feature is very quick, simple to turn on, and easily delivers personalized results to the users making everything more efficient.

7. Creating Engaging Email Templates

Creating Engaging Email Templates

The users can create engaging email templates very quickly by using the new email template builder offered by Salesforce. The new builder enables one to quickly build templates using the drag and drop functionality instead of the HTML code.

In addition, the drag and drop functionality also enhances the speed of the entire process of creating engaging and visually attractive email templates for the sales team that can be sent to the clients. The builder is now available for all editions of Sales Cloud in lightning as well as editions in Pardot using the Pardot Lightning app.

For accessing the builder or for creating and editing the email templates, the users should have access to lightning content builder or they should also be managing the content builder permissions.

8. Composite Graph APIs

This highlight is no less than a game-changer for anybody who is working with the Salesforce API. The new composite graph API helps the developers to create complex requests while combining numerous operations that don’t have to be related to each other within a single transaction.

It is also possible to define an all-or-nothing behaviour while not having to worry about any rolling back of data in case a multi-step operation fails midway. This only means that one can perform multiple actions in just a single API call and in just a single transaction. Some of the potential efficiency gains for the API heavy implementations are highly authentic.

9. Outlook Integration

Outlook Integration

Some of the important changes for email integration in the Winter 21 Salesforce release lead the Einstein Activity Capture to replace the lightning sync. In case you are already using the lightning sync, you can keep using the product. However, implementing Einstein will leverage improved integration and new functionality. The new Einstein Activity Capture features help in setting up and improving syncing behavior for ensuring the right record in automatic syncing.

Besides this, it is also possible to control sharing settings on emails by providing unlimited access. The insights dashboard empowered with analytics helps in diving into records syncing and creating email insights based on the information synced with Salesforce.

The Salesforce Einstein also helps in creating around ten custom insights as they look for keywords and highlight them in the activity panel. This is a great benefit because it helps the users to take action at a time when it is most relevant.

10. Displaying Survey Pages

The Salesforce Surveys allows an ability to create a unique customer journey by defining which survey page is used for skipping to next based on the Salesforce data.

You can let the data in the Salesforce org determine which survey page participants should view next. Besides this, variables can be used to define conditions in a page for branching logic. Further, using associated records merge field variables and participants record merge field variables help in defining the first level conditions. Using the org variables defines conditions based on org’s information and the custom variables define conditions based on values that one defines.

Conclusion

The Salesforce Winter ’21 release brings multiple features to the table that are extremely helpful. In case you need support with implementing any of the Winter ’21 releases, a Salesforce implementation partner like Encaptechno that comes with extensive knowledge, previous experience in facilitating customer success, and offering a comprehensive experience can help a lot.

Contact Encpatechno today to get immediate support in implementing the Salesforce winter release today and get things going.

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Tips for Establishing your App on Salesforce AppExchange - Encaptechno

Tips for Establishing your App on Salesforce AppExchange Successfully

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Tips for Establishing your App on Salesforce AppExchange - Encaptechno

AppExchange is actually a marketplace for all types of Salesforce products like Salesforce applications, flow solutions, lightning components, etc. It is considered the largest business application marketplace for app development and around 80% of Salesforce users utilize the valuable ecosystem that it offers for connecting with the key stakeholders and installing the applications in just a couple of clicks.

As the Salesforce implementation partners, some of the biggest and most successful SMEs and Fortune companies use the AppExchange marketplace for effectively integrating everything into just one system. It is quite useful in solving issues that are linked to building solutions from the beginning with a short time and third-party services that the users ask for integrating or any different problems that can be solved through Salesforce components.

It is best to consider Salesforce AppExchange as a community where the Salesforce partners, brands, or clients can interact and form solutions as different services. As for the lighting platform developers and consultants are concerned, the AppExchange helps in helping customers reach business solutions. On the other hand, the Salesforce AppExchange is used as a hub of talent and tools for uncovering maximum productivity.

After understanding what is Salesforce AppExchange, we will look at different ways in which the AppExchange works, you can use it and publish an application with it successfully. So let’s begin:

The Working of Salesforce AppExchange

For anyone who is looking for a marketing tool to establish and promote an app, the Salesforce AppExchange can be highly reliable. It enables a person to describe solutions, support, other details, and pricing which can then be used by the customers to find out if the services being offered are correct for them or not.

In addition, one can also be used to upload photos, videos, and different types of content for making it clear for the customers to nicely understand what is being delivered. On the basis of the information that is provided, the AppExchange is capable of organizing businesses into different areas such as sales, marketing, and analytics.

How to Create a Listing?

You can create a listing right after you have created a provider profile and uploaded the package in a rightful manner. You are also allowed to make just one listing per application or component. This is because having just one listing makes it simple to maintain and upgrade the offerings over a lifecycle.

It also assists in achieving a high rank because the metrics used by the AppExchange for ranking applications and components are not diluted all across the listings. Furthermore, this also proves to be beneficial for the customers because they can easily find your services and the reviews in one place only without having to get lost in multiple other listings.

It must also be remembered that the listings and components can be browsed by anybody who needs the services that are mentioned already. For installing the applications and components, it is best that one has the “Download Packages” information. For creating the package, you have to get the due permission to “Create Package” and for uploading that package to the Partner Community, you must get the permission to “Upload Package”.

Building an App for Salesforce AppExchange

There are five major steps involved in changing an idea into the Salesforce application development

1. Join the Partner Community

Join the Partner Community

The primary step for the app development process needed for AppExchange is to join the Salesforce Partner Community. For that, you have to follow the simple steps given in the ISV Basics Trailhead to become a part of the Partner Community.

An amazing and reliable source for collaborating within the Salesforce ecosystems with the help of groups, joining the Partner Community offers some great resources to learn the best practices. One can ask questions, stay updated with new features and tools for the partners, and also register for webinars and other events.

After joining the Partner Community, you will be receiving a free Partner Business Org that includes the business technology for growing and building with Salesforce. Within this Partner Business Org, there will also be access to the Channel Order App (COA), Environment Hub, License Management App, etc.

The LMA is very helpful in managing the leads and license for the AppExchange offerings and the COA allows one to create, submit, and track various orders with the help of Salesforce. The environment hub on the other hand gives access to a special kind of Development Org called a “Partner Development Org” only available to the partners with better limits and more permissions.

2. Building an App

Building an App

After joining the Salesforce Partner Community, it is time to start building the application with the help of the Salesforce application development. Before a person starts building anything, it is important to think about security. When you read ahead to the final step which the Security Review, you will understand that all apps on AppExchange are supposed to meet some standards before they can get listed.

For the Salesforce application development process to be successful, it is necessary to include the Security Review best practice into an application right from day one. Building an application while keeping security in mind enhances the process and enables them to get an app through the security review standards very quickly.

There might be a need to spin some of the different Orgs utilizing the Environment Hub which means moving on to the next step. The trailhead unit helps in walking through different Orgs you will wish to create. Irrespective of what you might be creating, it can make sense to change at least Orgs before starting, one for development and another for packaging. For signing up for a new org, you just have to click on the “Create Org” button in the Environment Hub application.

One of the handy tips is to earn the ISV app development module because this trailhead module covers the ISV development lifecycle, the detailed method of managing and creating Orgs, and following the correct approach for packaging and testing an application. In addition, it is also a great time to check out the Developer intermediate trail, expand the Salesforce developer skills and check out the lightning experience trail for learning about the lightning experience.

3. Package Your Application

Package Your Application

After the application has been built finally, it is time to package your application. A package can be described as a bundle of components that help in composing the application. The managed package provides intellectual property protection and enables the delivery of seamless upgrades while offering support for license enforcement features.

It is also only responsible to distribute the managed packages on the AppExchange and not the unmanaged packages. If you wish to get instructions on creating and uploading a managed package, you can log into your packaging org and reference the steps mentioned in the ISV force guide.

It is important to test your application before creating a managed package because many attributes of your components are locked once they are put in a managed released package. The trailhead unit helps in walking through packaging and testing an application as well.

4. Design

It is possible to attract the prospects after the app development with a compelling AppExchange listing that assists the customers to understand the values that you can offer with the help of screenshots, pricing, demos, and on the spot trails and installations.

You can also include an attractive header image, a screenshot, and a description rich with SEO keywords. This particular page of the ISVforce guide explains how to create and edit an AppExchange listing.

Begin this step by linking the managed package to your listing then go to the organization tab in the publishing console and click on “Connect Organization”. Follow the step given below of the ISVforce guide helps in connecting a packaging org to your AppExchange listing.

  • After linking your packaging to a listing, skip to the next step and submit for the security review. Submitting the security review, come back and complete the design of your listing. The steps 4 and 5 can be completed simultaneously.

5. Review

Protecting the customer data and maintaining trust is both a part of the Salesforce core values. The Security Review helps in establishing a reliability factor between you and your customers. All the apps that are published on the AppExchange have to go through a mandatory review so that assessing the app’s security posture is done in the right way.

You can prepare for it early right in your development process. What’s more is that Salesforce offers multiple free security resources for assisting you with the education, design, and development of applications.

Taking the advice of a Salesforce consultant can help a great deal in having a practical and a hands-on experience with the fundamentals of application security, testing tools and following instructions on submitting for Security Review. After you pass the security review, it will become possible to publish the app on AppExchange which will make it possible for the complete Salesforce ecosystem to see and interact with the listing that you have created.

Now that you have published the app, it is now time to market and promote it correctly. To do that, follow the steps mentioned below

1. Target Audience: We all know that the first step in marketing any product is to have a good knowledge of the audience that we are targeting. Go ahead and conduct appropriate client interviews to understand the needs much better and assess all functionalities that can be best implemented for the application.

Create a strategically strong marketing plan to target and attract an audience. When you know your customer needs and what attracts them the most, framing the app in a way that it attracts the audience also becomes easy.

2. Promoting the App: For promoting the application, you can take many routes. Begin by posting on social media accounts for promoting your app and reaching a wide audience. On the other hand, you can also create Salesforce specific events that can help in connecting face to face with the Salesforce customers and leaders. Staying updated with the Salesforce events pages will help you advertise with the right events.

Salesforce also provides funds for industry events and the promotion of these products through the conferences can be highly valuable. Build a network with the help of social media and events so that you can promote the app at an exponential rate.

3. Make a Demo and Collect Reviews: Making a demo for your customers can help greatly in increasing the sales process by answering an increasingly more number of questions that the customers may have about the functioning of an app. More information about a product helps a customer to become comfortable with it.

When you build more reviews, it will become possible to garner a good reputation and attract in future customers for your application. In addition, the leads will be able to receive valuable feedback for improving your services. Customer reviews are always important for the success of an application and help in increasing the sales of a product.

4. Striving for Continuous Improvement: After an application gets launched, the work does not get over. There will be important updates to release, problems to fix and taking care of the maintenance problems as well.

You will also be required to take the necessary steps that can help in preparing for any issues or changes that might come ahead. It can be a good idea to have a post implementation plan that can help a company in foreseeing any expected problems ahead while ensuring that you are prepared to face those problems.

Conclusion

All the steps that are mentioned above can help a great deal in ensuring the building, publishing and promotion of an application on the Salesforce AppExchange. Should you need any more help with the processes then the team of Encaptechno can be of immense help to you.

Irrespective of the fact if you are a customer or you are just looking to learn more about building on the AppExchange, our team dedicates to the goal of building the best for you. In case you wish to learn more about how to start building for achieving success on the AppExchange, feel free to get in touch with us. We will offer an in-depth session on how to start or where to go next.

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How to Publish Applications on Zoho Marketplace - Encaptechno

How To Publish Applications On Zoho Marketplace?

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How to Publish Applications on Zoho Marketplace - Encaptechno

The Zoho Marketplace is pretty much similar to an e-commerce website for the Zoho Marketplace developers and users. It enables the developers to build and publish a remarkable Zoho Creator app and for the users, it is like a store or a gallery to choose from a wide range of applications for a number of purposes.

All a user needs is a Zoho account and a strong understanding of Zoho Creator to become a developer. The developer then has an ability to access the Zoho Developer Portal for the purpose of creating applications and for privately sharing the applications with clients, publish them in the marketplace for free or on a paid basis for all the Zoho Creator users. The consumers can install the required application and make use of it for their business needs.

The Zoho Marketplace is a platform that enables one to sell business applications to millions of Zoho users. A collection of business applications that augment the productivity of the Zoho products are known as extensions. With the help of a simple development process and a well-defined user base, one can easily build and market the extensions to the right audience.

Benefits of publishing applications on Marketplace

Benefits Zoho Marketplace

1. Advanced Developer Platform:

The Zoho Marketplace helps in high-quality custom application development. Essentially, your applications can be created according to your own style. A sandbox enabled developer platform along with helpful documents, REST APIs, tutorials, and much more is offered. This helps in developing extensions in any way you want.

2. User-Friendly Publishing:

At the time when the final extension is ready to ship out, things should be seamless. Zoho offers an optimized process that makes sure the final product reaches the customers at the earliest.

3. Connecting Customers:

It is possible to use the social network pages and forums for determining the potential use cases and the user requirements along with communicating with the present and the potential customers.

4. Marketing Assistance:

After the extension has been built, the developer is offered all the necessary support in making a marketing plan that can be tailored to the target audience.

Partnering with Zoho is extremely hassle-free and rather beneficial. Just by developing an extension and publishing it in the marketplace, one can become a technology partner. There are three steps in which this works:

  • Build: The first step is to find the product that you wish to integrate with and check out which developer resources and tools are available. After the choice has been made, you can start the process of integrating.
  • Deliver:  After you have completed building the extension, it is time to submit it finally. This is when it gets reviewed by the technical team and gets published after the vetting process is completed.
  • Earn: After getting selected, your extension is going to be open to all possible users in the marketplace. You can leverage your GTM plans for making the most of the extensive user base.

Now that we have understood all about the Zoho Marketplace, its benefits, and the process that can be followed for partnering with it, it is time to create and publish the application.

The first and most important step is to access the Zoho Developer Portal. For any developer who wishes to develop applications for the marketplace, the primary step is to access the Zoho Developer Portal. There are two tabs on this portal namely Applications and Clients. In the applications tab, developers have the option to create applications that can be shared with the customers or published in the marketplace. In the client’s tab, developers have the option to invite clients with whom the applications can be shared privately.

Creating the Application

Creating the Application

To create a good application, the developers can integrate with the Zoho Developer Portal and follow the steps mentioned below:

  1. The foremost step is to click on the create an application.
  2. It is then time to decide a final name for the application and click on create.
  3. After the completion of these steps, you will instantly be taken to the “Application details” page. This page will further have four steps:
  • The tab application details will be displaying all the information that is needed in the application.
  • It is then the time to display clients who have been invited for sharing the application.
  • The third step is to develop an application.
  • The next and final step is to publish the application on the marketplace or share the application privately with the clients.
  1. The fourth step is to click on Develop app to begin the process of building the application.
  2. After all the changes have been made in the application, it is time to click on the “Back to app details” for returning to the application details page.

Invite Clients

The developers can invite clients for the purpose of sharing their applications with the clients in a safe and private way. After clicking on the “Application Details” page, the next step is to click on the back option (on the top left corner) to complete the navigation to Zoho Developer Portal. To add the clients from the Zoho Developer Portal:

  1. Begin by clicking on the Clients tab.
  2. The next step is to click on the Invite Clients tab. On the next page, you can mention the following details:
  • To: This is for mentioning the email address of the client to whom you wish to write the email. This email account should be linked with the Zoho account of the client.
  • Subject: This is for mentioning the subject of the invitation email. It is likely to be pre-populated with a subject message that can further be edited.
  • The From and Message boxes are most likely going to pre-populate and will not be edited.

Inviting the clients will be listed in the Clients tab with status as Pending in case the client has not accepted the invitation as yet. These clients can include the option of Re-invite, which can then be used to repeat the invitation.

Editing the Application

Editing the Application

The applications created by the developers are listed in the Zoho Developer Portal within the Applications tab and they can be edited whenever there is a need. For the purpose of editing an application, the developer can follow the steps given below:

  1. Click on Develop for the application that is required to be edited. You can click on Edit, after which you will be navigated to the “Application Details” page.
  2. On the “Application Details” page, the next step is to click on the Develop app so that the application gets edited.
  3. When the required changes are made in the application, click on Back to app details for returning to the “Application Details” page.

Publishing the App

Publishing the App

The app requires it to be published so that it can become possible to privately share with clients or to share them in the marketplace. To publish an application effectively, do the following:

  1. Navigate to the Zoho Developer Portal and then simply click on Publish for the required application or click on edit for the required application and right on the next page, click on Publish.
  2. This will directly take you to the “Publish Application” page. Any change that you make to the application will get listed here. You can begin by selecting the required changes and then you can click on Proceed.
  3. Next, you will navigate straight to the “Publish Details” page. For publishing the app to a client, set the “Publish to” option to the client.
  4. You can then set the “Client” option to the required client from the drop-down. Only those clients who have accepted the invitation can be listed in the dropdown. This is from where you can also invite to share the application. The developer and client should be using a similar version of Zoho Creator. For instance; if the developer is using the C4 version the client should also be using C4.
  5. Go ahead and mention the required application name. In case the app name is changed here, the new app name will get reflected on the client’s side and the old app name will get retained just like that in Zoho Developer Portal.
  6. Furthermore, the version name will also be automatically populated according to the release. For example; the first publication will contain “Version 1”, the second publication will contain “Version 2” and so on. The developers can edit the version name just as required.
  7. Within the description box only, you can describe multiple aspects of the app. For example; the changes that can be made to the version.
Conclusion:

Ever since the launch of the Zoho Marketplace, it can meet the demands of the users who wish to integrate with the third-party applications with Zoho applications, extend the Zoho applications with any additional features and automate the new processes with the custom applications.

Zoho Marketplace is contextually integrated within the supported application so the users can browse through a wide range of solutions, find the ones that can best fit the requirements, and install them without any need for leaving the application. In addition, the users can also browse and buy directly from the Zoho Marketplace only.

At present, the Zoho Marketplace provides extensions for the Zoho CRM and custom applications. It also offers a wide number of Zoho developed extensions for Zoho SalesIQ. In the future, it is expected that the Zoho Marketplace will provide more extensions as well.

If you are looking to create and publish custom applications on the Zoho Marketplace then you must collaborate with a Zoho consulting partner such as Encaptechno for high-quality guidance. They will assist you to go about the process with extraordinary precision.

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Salesforce Community Cloud and its Advantages - Encaptechno

What Is Salesforce Community Cloud And Its Advantages?

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Salesforce Community Cloud and its Advantages - Encaptechno

Salesforce is considered one of the most well-liked and renowned CRM tools all over the world. Amongst all the benefits that the use of Salesforce offers, a highly useful one is the management of business operations. It offers a relentless solution to business owners along with a wide number of features.

The innumerable benefits that Salesforce offers combined with an additional number of features that prove to be highly advantageous for business organizations. One such important add-on feature is called the Salesforce Community Cloud.

In this blog, we will be discussing all about the Salesforce Community Cloud and its advantages as well. However, before anything let us begin to understand what Salesforce Community Cloud is in detail.

What is Salesforce Community Cloud?

What is Salesforce Community Cloud

Before knowing what is community cloud, it is necessary that we understand why we need it? To begin with, Salesforce was launched to offer expert assistance to the sales team of an organization. It introduced a method to keep the sales of an organization on track with its customers.

Not long after the launch of Salesforce, there was an official launch of Salesforce Customer and Partner Portals for managing the relationship between customers and the sales team. Sometime later than this, the name of this community was kept as the Salesforce Community Cloud.

With the help of Salesforce Community Development, the developers were presented with an option to create and get assistance for their work. The users could share the information, communicate with the customers, and partner effectively for the completion of various projects in a more personalized manner.

There are four editions offered by the Salesforce Community Cloud known as Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and the Developer Salesforce editions. All in all, it can be said that the Salesforce Community Cloud is like a platform that can be used for sharing information without the necessary creation of any additional user that can sometimes become a costly affair.

It assists the users to create online and customized communities that can be optimized for mobile and on-brand activities. This is done very easily with the assistance and use of some scalable templates for which there is no need for coding. Some custom components and third-party users can help the users for creating customized and personalized communities that can meet the demands of different organizations.

What makes Salesforce Community Cloud a favorite of many organizations is the multiple features that it offers. We will be discussing all of them in detail one after another.

Advantages of the Salesforce Community Cloud

1. Excellent Community Experience

The use of the Salesforce Community helps to be an excellent interactive extension of a brand with the help of a user-friendly environment. It helps in the effective customization of the solutions that match with a brand for an online community experience.

Through the benefit of integration that can happen with the business data from any system, it is possible to centralize the customers, partners, and workers for getting the work done. Additionally, the Salesforce Community Cloud also helps with automatic recommendations made based on the individual needs, behaviors, and interests that connect the groups, content, and experts for deeper community participation.

One can access the community anywhere with the help of the Salesforce mobile app or any other browser for that matter with an objective to facilitate branded and device responsive collaboration.

2. Building Better Customer Relationships

Building Better Customer Relationships

Another very useful feature offered by the Salesforce Community Cloud is that the online portals can be populated with the FAQ tutorials built with the help of a community cloud.

In addition, you can also add tutorials, some commonly searched queries, and databases while answering multiple other things from where a customer can interact with another of an organization. Upon the combination of these various resources, there is a creation of a content-rich hub for the customers that enable them to share their own experiences and find important information.

The customers can also get a very friendly response from the customer representatives and a forum thread. Moreover, they can also get a suggested answer by a fellow user or from an integrated database. In essence, easily accessing the FAQs and other important information helps the customers in finding appropriate solutions independently while allowing working on important tasks.

The Salesforce Community Cloud development gives a good overview of agents while explaining who is more active and who can effectively endorse expertise and skills. Some other features include e-commerce, community engagement, and escalation.

3. Quick Sales Channels

The Salesforce community cloud helps to directly connect with the partners, resellers, and distributors while assisting in driving much better sales. It also helps in optimizing the sharing of leads and contacts, integrations with third-party systems, sharing records, and avoiding any channel conflicts.

One can immediately take prompt action in the process of lead conversion and the marketing funds approval directly in the feed itself. In addition, it also has data sharing, dashboards and reports for ensuring the alignment of goals.

4. Faster Development

The Salesforce Community Development allows building a portal in just a matter of 30 days. In the past, portals between the companies could be created individually by the programmers who needed time to learn the different intricacies of every stakeholder for the simple goal of developing the right application using Java, .NET or PHP.

By using the Salesforce cloud platform, one can have access to the multi-corporate portal technologies that can be built into the structure.

5. Saving Money

In order to build a good relationship with the customers and the partners, a sharp ended time and dedication are needed. With the help of a community cloud, the overall cost and time needed to maintain a customer relationship can be decreased to a great extent.

The customers are eligible to access important information in a way that as you wish to show them. Moreover, the content can be created with the existing users only. There is no need to spend a lot of time maintaining the information and content because it can be populated in a pre-organized way.

With the help of a well-managed community, you will need to spend much fewer emails and support calls. In this way, you will also spend less time working with the larger community website management.

An important amount of cost-saving has been highlighted with the help of online communities all across the world and organizations. It is important for the community to save the organizational revenues in some important factors that are like the revenue increments. They are better communications, enhanced employee engagements, business cost efficiency, marketing and public relations, and new services and products.

6. Product Enhancement

With the help of the Salesforce community cloud, it is possible to create three types of communities: a customer, employee community, and partners. These communities can play the role of a powerful research hub.

With streamlined collection of data that can be communicated and proper observation, you can get the most meaningful and uncommon data of the customers, employees and partners. It is also possible to offer and highlight some features of a product or a service which can be needed for a customer.

The customers can access the solutions of most asked and required questions very easily. It has been seen that online communities help many marketing and community leaders to effectively manage customer relationships and listen to what the customer needs.

7. Better Employee Productivity and Engagement

Different teams can be grouped together on the basis of events, campaigns, or projects for accessing relevant information with the help of structure.

With the help of syncing files in a centralized location, the employees can easily access the right files that are needed in a context that they get embedded with core business processes.

The Salesforce Community Cloud comes with tools that help in empowering and fostering an innovative workplace and collaborating ideas.

8. Enhanced Value and Support

The Salesforce Community Cloud is a pre-built framework that provides a considerable value for the process of developing a custom application that can be maintained and enhanced with time and with the help of some internal resources or the development tools.

The custom in-house solutions are also useful in increasing the cost of integration with the CRM, customer service solutions, and marketing automation programs. The support of a SaaS-based community cloud requires fewer resources and can be effectively handled with the help of a Salesforce administrator rather than the IT.

9. Integration Friendly

Integration Friendly

One can use the native integration to the Salesforce community or even build a custom API to another backend system for connecting the data in disparate systems so that the right users can access the right data in real-time.

One needs a complete view of the customers and partners for offering the best services at the right time and report the performance within a closed-loop approach.

10. Mobile-Enabled

Mobile-Enabled

Another highly useful feature of the Salesforce Community Cloud is that it is already mobile-enabled. This means that there is no need to create a different mobile component that can help in considerably increasing the cost.

It is important to keep in mind that there might be a need to streamline for mobility with responsive design while considering the customized branding, user experience, and process specific to the requirements.

With the expert assistance of a Salesforce Consultant Company, it becomes easy to gain expertise in mobile and community cloud deployment which is in itself considered important for the success of an application.

Conclusion

The reasons for building employee communities in Salesforce are more or less the same as the partner channels of sales and customer service. The Salesforce Community Cloud is known to offer a one-stop solution for asking questions, reviewing the schedules, different log cases, finding the training materials, managing expense reports, searching the knowledge database, and collaborating with the co-workers.

In case you are looking for a Salesforce consulting partner then Encaptechno can be a great choice for assisting you in implementing the CRM functionalities. Get in touch with the team of Encaptechno to learn more.

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Salesforce For Nonprofits - Encaptechno

Steps To Get The Most Out Of Salesforce For Nonprofits

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Salesforce For Nonprofits - Encaptechno

Salesforce is a popular customer relationship management application that allows organizations to efficiently manage their relations with stakeholders. As a well-renowned solution for for-profit businesses, Salesforce has garnered a great place as one of the best CRM software options available in the market. There are many companies that depend on salesforce for operations, sales, and marketing.

However, this is applicable to for-profit organizations. When this comes to nonprofits, the focus is usually shifted to individuals, clients, and beneficiaries, employees and volunteers, government and corporate houses, etc.

The use of salesforce for nonprofits enables charities to manage and synchronize the data relevant to the interactions with stakeholders for purposes such as increasing the charitable income, effectiveness of the program, resource allocation, and saving the associated costs.

The salesforce npsp programme is available at a special rate for the nonprofits and comes with all the important features. It is highly functional software that allows different departments of a non-profit organization to coordinate, communicate, and share important data that helps in achieving programs and fundraising objectives of an organization.

Using Salesforce For Non-Profit Organizations

Using Salesforce For Non-Profit Organizations

All Nonprofit organizations are initiatives that are created to assist members to achieve some goals that are not aimed at generating profits, rather goodwill and bringing a change. To make sure that these NPOs achieve their goals in the right way, they are in need of highly structured communications that help in both internal and external collaboration.

The nonprofit organizations can access Salesforce with the help of a charity concession that comes in the form of a nonprofit success pack. Regardless of whether a nonprofit is small or large, the salesforce npsp features help in customizing everything based on unique requirements.

While working with a partner, the nonprofits have a tendency to deploy a purpose-built system way quicker because a partner is seamlessly able to extend the already existing vast capabilities of the software that focus on the time consuming and resource-heavy tasks.

This further goes on to ensure that the software gets tooled around the specific requirements of a particular nonprofit organization. It also frees the nonprofit teams and enables them to spend much more time focusing on the insights, developing stronger communities, and delivering long-lasting impact with the aid of customized solutions.

 

Steps to Attain Maximum Benefits from Salesforce For NonProfit

1. Event Management

A fundamental thing that helps in running nonprofit organizations is the recurring fundraiser events. By just planning a variety of fundraisers, there will be a dire need for efficient management and being in control of factors such as logistics, marketing, guests, and much more.

By using the salesforce npsp programme, NPOs can have access to all the event management features combined with a comprehensive view of efforts that help in streamlining multiple event-related tasks.

Although some of the Salesforce built-in features can be used for planning and managing events, to get the best possible benefits, it is recommended that one uses the native Salesforce app so that the CRM functionality gets increased. With the use of the correct Salesforce application, it becomes possible to manage all the important elements without feeling any need to leave the CRM system.

With the salesforce npsp features such as event registration, logistics management, and guest experience, maximum benefits can be availed from the system.

2. Including Stakeholders

Including Stakeholders

It is extremely necessary to always be conscious of the knowledge that a tool is not supposed to define or drive a business process. However, it must facilitate, help, and automate the various business processes.

Oftentimes, there are many customers who include any inefficient processes in the final requirements. However, on due comprehension, it is always understood that the inefficiency is always a result of unnecessary limitations of the tools.

When the business processes are analyzed, it is suggested that the discussion of solutions must be kept out of the conversation in the initial times so that the focus is shifted on what is needed and not on the process by which the goal will be met.

With the salesforce npsp programme, it is possible to involve the stakeholders in building out and reviewing the business process maps. There can be no nuances to the business processes because all the end-users will always be aware of what is transpiring. Additionally, everyone can be included in the business processes while no need for anyone to be perceived as resistant.

3. Marketing and Communication

Marketing and Communication

Irrespective of whether an NPO is trying to market itself with the help of fundraising projects or it is inspiring the supporters to donate, the marketing and communications initiatives have a massive impact on the fundraising and engagement strategies.

With the implementation of Salesforce Nonprofit success pack with the help of salesforce cloud consultant, efficient communication is enabled. It can become overwhelming to communicate with so many channels because making the decision to connect with supporters and tracking efforts within a CRM becomes difficult.

What happens with Salesforce is that nonprofits are able to manage the marketing and communication in a holistic way while taking benefits of relevant and engaging channels like email marketing, direct mail, and social media.

Regardless of the kind of communication that is chosen to employ, the Salesforce for nonprofits makes it simple to organize and segment the recipient list, design professional marketing collateral, and track various responses and interactions.

4. Reports and Dashboard Management

Reports and Dashboard Management

With the data compilation done in the Salesforce, there is a need for a way that makes the stored information meaningful and helpful. The version of Salesforce for Nonprofits comes with a wide range of in-built reporting and dashboard management tools that ensure a comprehensive interpretation of different data sets.

Furthermore, Salesforce helps in posing questions that generate custom reports. This enables one to display the reports visually using the dashboards. In matters such as donor acquisition, survey responses, and fundraising progress, the reports and dashboard management proves to be of immense benefit.

With the reports generated by using the Salesforce for Nonprofits, one can have a clear view of how a non-profit is performing in all the important areas so that one can move ahead with a well-defined vision.

5. Integrated Data

Integrated Data

The fundamental purpose of Salesforce is to make sure that connectivity between internal and external aspects of the nonprofit business is made in a seamless manner. In doing this, the Salesforce for Nonprofits unites multiple stakeholders such as volunteers, partners, clients, and employees by the means of an accessible platform.

This further makes sure that a streamlined use of data, analytics, automation, and nonprofit tools that are an important part of the platform are used to deliver much more personalized services and fundraising campaigns.

When a brand is consistent in terms of making a brand presence, the relationships get strengthened, donors are encouraged to become long-lasting patrons and the overall efficiency in service delivery and program reporting gets increased.

With the help of the Nonprofit success, pack enables to manage the relationships, reporting, and fundraising. It is a great solution that is designed for your needs and helps in getting the maximum out of Salesforce.

Factors such as team collaboration and retention are known as important challenges for charities. The nonprofits can use Salesforce for personalizing the donor communication and building an ongoing relationship over all channels with a unified platform that employs all departments for sharing and accessing information, partnering, and achieving consistent messaging.

6. Monitoring Interactions

Monitoring Interactions

Another important benefit of tracking the interactions with the help of the Salesforce npsp programme is that it gives the employees an instant insight into the entire organization. The Salesforce for nonprofits deploys analytics that displays a wide range of data dashboards.

The dashboards offered can be used by the managers or the entire staff for seamless management of data, viewing the revenue funnels, and making decisions on which opportunities must be explored and the resources that should be used so that complete organizational strategies are realized.

7. Price

Price

The implementation of Salesforce for nonprofits comes with many benefits and attractive aspects. However, one of the most important ones is the price. The Salesforce software is offered for free for a nonprofit organization that has up to as many as ten users.

Even though the process of customization comes with various costs associated with it, a significant part of the financial burden is taken off from the NPO organizations. In addition, it is an amazing customizable solution.

Some of the most popular and experienced nonprofit organizations find Salesforce for Nonprofits to be immensely helpful software. These are the organizations that have spent a good period of time focusing on the needs of their organization. On the other hand, the matter is different from the small organizations on account of the fact that they experience major growth from time to time.

The development strategies make it way more difficult for smaller organizations to know and understand the configuration needs. Hence, investing in Salesforce and handling the customization of this software can sometimes seem difficult. The good news is however that despite the big or small size of an organization, the important step in the Salesforce configuration process is acquiring and implementing the Salesforce Nonprofit success pack.

Conclusion

Salesforce proves to be an exceptional tool for the nonprofits because it is configured in a manner that only the best meets the needs of any NPO. The implementation of the Salesforce tools helps in improving the effectiveness of a nonprofit organization, which is a powerful step in creating a better impact for any cause.

When non-profit organizations understand that they can use Salesforce as holistic support, they are able to get the maximum returns from the software application. The use of Salesforce with the support of the Salesforce cloud consultant leads the team to find the right money needed for spreading the word about a specific cause.

Encaptechno is an organization that can help in suitable adoption, persistent implementation, improved performance, and much better results obtained from the Salesforce for Non-profit . In case you are looking out of implementing the software application then get in touch with the team of Encaptechno to know more.

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