Currency Fields in Conga (aka WHERE'S MY COMMA???)

I received a case a week or so ago, asking me to add commas to the invoice template that we are using with Conga.

I looked at the template, and checked the field from which it was pulling the data within Salesforce.com.

I checked the "view data" on the Conga Dialog window, and it had a comma, I checked the "template builder" and yep - it had a comma.

Looks fine to me.

So I pulled the template - sure enough.. it's not showing up with commas!

Today, I will show you how to fix this problem. It's super easy-peasy, and you'll be a hero, and let's just be honest. Everyone wants to be a hero every once in a while.

First, let's take a look at our original template.  Notice that whoever created the original, apparently realized that the formatting was "wrong" because they added a dollar sign as a static element.

Well, it looks like that was "okay" for a couple of years, but not so much any more. 

So, I did a quick web search, and found this Conga help document called How to Format Number or Currency Values in Word Templates.   *Disclaimer: This method happens to be for Version 7, and I have not yet tested it for any other version. Version 7 is the version that is in use in my org. 

This page gives a really good overview of the different number formatting styles that can be used in a MS Word Template, so if you need to format your number in another way, take a look at that page.

There is a cool format that can change the number to words, which I want to play with, just for the novelty... but I digress! Let's fix our template to format as currency.

Now, right click on your merge field, and choose "Edit Field".

Click in the field name, and hit "End" to bring your cursor to the end of the name. (End is a button on your keyboard)

Then, type or paste in the following:

\#Currency

When you are finished, it will look something like this:

Now click "OK".

Do this for every field that should be formatted as currency. AND - don't forget to take off any static formatting that was on the template, such as the dollar sign that was on my original template. The formatting that we put into the merge field name, will add the dollar sign and the comma!

Now, test your template!

You need to follow your standard process of uploading to Conga Templates, or saving wherever you keep your templates, but now... You're done!

OMG MY SEARCH BAR IS GONE!!!

Seriously... this is funny to me. As a Salesforce.com Admin/BA for two different companies now, I've seen this happen countless times. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to start a running count on how many times it happens...

Yep, that's right... we don't have Chatter enabled right now. We're a big company, and getting software "changes" approved at least as far as social networking stuff is concerned is big. We're working on it, but we aren't quite there yet.

Here is the scenario:

New users are added... they log on for the first time and they get that pop up. You know the one... it's tricky right? You log on for the first time ever, you have no clue what you're doing, and BAM!

Well... you know... nothing here says anything about it completely changing the way stuff looks... or that it's going to do this for every single person in the company! It's free, and hey, it looks cool... so why not....You click the button

And you're like... hmmm okay cool!!!!  Suddenly people all over the room are yelling!!!

HEY... 

                              Where's my search bar... 

                                                         hey Shannon, our search bar is gone... 

what's going on?  

and... me, in my little office with no windows... 

Phones start ringing, cases are coming in by the bucket full... and I'm thinking oh my gosh... what is going on...

Then I realize... someone has turned on Chatter again!!!

Some of you are super lucky, you don't have to do this, because you've had Chatter from it's inception. I've got to do this about once a month. But... it's an easy fix, which means quick, and I can close out a BUNCH of tickets and everyone loves me for about 12 seconds. :-)

But... I'm a tiny bit twisted... so... I actually kind of enjoy waiting for people to start screaming about their search box being gone, and just saying.. ."oh hold on a second... okay hit refresh... BAM fixed it for you".

MUAH!

A little ray of light...

The Rainy Day

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary; 
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,

And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,

But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

*~~***~~*

In my last post, I was just seriously down. I'd been having some bad times... it kept going!!!!  I ended up in a terrible accident (I was not at fault btw), and my vehicle was totaled. I was truly lucky to be alive.  

The day following my car accident, my mother had surgery to clear out that carotid artery that caused her strokes right after Christmas. Three days later, the day after she came home from the hospital, she started having seizures, and I had to call 911 again. She was rushed to the hospital, then life-flighted to another hospital. Then, after she got out of ICU from that, and was in her second day of inpatient physical therapy, she had a heart attack, and her heart completely stopped beating. They performed CPR and such and brought her back. A few days, later, they implanted a internal defibrillator, and she went through another round of inpatient physical therapy. She's been home for about a month now, and is learning to walk all over again. This makes the third time just this year! Last Thursday, my son calls, and he's driving himself to the ER, he's "darn near cut both his fingers off".

Please note, that those were his words, not mine. He is fine, it took 10 stitches, but he didn't sever any nerves, and went back to work after one day of recovery.

Mom is walking more and more every day, I finally got a new car, it sure is pretty, and it's starting to look a bit more like there is some good times on the way.

I'd say that I'm finally starting to see some daylight.

Now... I am working for this trend to continue. I honestly am not up to any more drama this year. 

2014 Has Been Rough (crybaby alert)

For those of you who may not know me via Facebook or in person, my parents (mom and stepdad) retired and moved in with me three years ago. I've been struggling a bit trying to keep everything under "control" at home, working long hours, trying to get part time jobs, selling off possessions that I didn't need, etc. In September of last year, I finally started feeling like I was accomplishing some of my goals.

Well the day after Christmas, my mother had a stroke, two days later my step dad and I both ended up with the flu, then he developed pneumonia, and ended up in the hospital too. Mom was in one hospital, Step-dad in another one. So I was bouncing back and forth between hospitals, while trying to recover from the lovely affliction that is the FLU!!!

Step-dad came home three days ago, Mom was in the hospital until yesterday. Now we're attempting to get physical therapy and occupational therapy and home health visits, and medical equipment and everything all lined up for Mom, and follow up doctor's appointments etc. for everyone else.

When I checked my email this morning, I got the news that I wasn't renewed for another term as a Salesforce.com MVP. I have to tell you guys, 2014 has already been seriously rough for me, and that news just makes my heart hurt.

This is a fantastic program, it's one of the most fun things I've ever been a part of. It's also a seriously humbling experience to be grouped with the people that are a part of this program.

Thank you everyone for the ride, it was bumpy but worth it. Now I'm going to go and have a bit of a pity party, and cry a bit. Then, I'm going to come back strong.

Dreamforce Sessions you HAVE to go to.

Allright, after reading so many posts about who to meet at Dreamforce, and the best tech sessions and so forth... Here is my list of Dreamforce '13 Sessions that you MUST attend (if you can get a seat). Now, this list is not all-inclusive, as there's only so much time in a day to get to sessions. So if there's a session that you think SHOULD be on here.. please comment and add a link!

The below links go directly to the agenda builder in the Dreamforce org. If you haven't booked your seat at Dreamforce yet... do so NOW. And then pray that you can get a hotel room withing 100 miles of San Francisco. Then... chastise yourself for being a procrastinator, and block of the time for next year's Dreamforce so you never make the same mistake again!!! Oh, and use the MVP Dreamforce Referral Code $100 off D13MVPREF

MONDAY

Salary Negotiations, Knowing your Worth and Not Settling For Less 

This one is hosted by Melanie Quandt & Geraldine Gray. (Yet another one of my personal friends)

The job market is tough, but you are tougher. The key is knowing what you bring to the table and what the fair value is for your contribution. Join us in the Success Community Zone for an informal talk on how to hone your brand, know your worth, and negotiate for the salary, raise, or situation you deserve.

Women in Technology Table Talk: Becoming a Powerful Communicator

Often, as a woman, it's hard to effectively communicate with authority and presence without being perceived negatively. How can we take a seat at the table with other developers and make sure our ideas are heard? Join us in the Women in Technology Salon for an informal talk on how to get your message across positively, with confidence and persuasion.

MVP THROWDOWN - Bring it ON! 

 Join Salesforce's MVPs as they share stories of their success, brainstorm cool ways to use technology, and even bring the (friendly) heat to salesforce.com product managers in the dreaded dunk tank of doom -- actually more of a chair.

Be a Groupie! (Why You Should Get Involved With a Salesforce.com User Group)

Join User Group Leaders with nearly 25 years of combined experience running Salesforce.com user groups, many of whom are also Salesforce MVPs, as they debunk the myth that user groups are nothing more than social groups. They will answer questions such as: What is a user group, what kinds are there, and who runs them? Where can I find them and how do I join one? And most importantly, What's in it for me? Find your local user group at https://success.salesforce.com/usergroups ... And keep the Dreamforce excitement going all year long! Community-Led Session

Salesforce Fundamentals: Strategy for Campaign and Lead Management
Led by Maria Belli, Bryan Boroughf, Deepa Patel & Shell Black (ALL SUPER MVP’s!!!)  Join us as we provide you with an understanding of how Campaigns and Leads are managed in Salesforce and how you can see real ROI with your marketing efforts. Community-Led Session

TUESDAY

Workshop 300: Code Custom App Logic (with Apex)

Code the cloud! In this hands-on workshop you’ll take a tour of the cloud-based and desktop development tools at your disposal. Along the way you’ll learn how to query with SOQL and SOSL, create stored procedures and database triggers, and write unit tests.

Analytics Snapshots: Common Use Cases That Everyone Can Utilize

My MVP "Sister" Launa Saunders, Rhonda Ross and Elizabeth Shephard are hosting this one. It promises to be worth your time in spades! Have you heard about Analytic Snapshots, but been intimidated about setting your first one up? Or, are you simply unsure of how you can use them? Join us as we show you how setting up a snapshot can be as simple as performing three easy steps. Several use cases that virtually every organization can take advantage of will be discussed, such as tracking user logins over time, measuring Chatter adoption, reporting on changes to key fields, and more! Step-by-step instructions for setting up your own snapshots will be available so you can put what you learn into practice immediately. Community-Led Session

DUH the Dreamforce Gala with Green Day and Blondie

Hello... Blondie and Green Day... Nuff Said right?

WEDNESDAY

2nd Annual Comedy of Clouds

Hosted by some of my friends, @DarthGary, @SteveMoForce, @MichaelForce et al. A full hour of Salesforce.com comedy skits. Here's a link to last years session video. If you are easily offended, please don't watch this video, or come to the session. I can't guarantee that we are going to be completely PC. Don't get me wrong, we are going to try... but... if you are confused about this session... this is the SNL of Dreamforce (and yes, I'll be performing)

The Power of the Community

Hosted by myself, Denise Carbone, Steve Mo (Molis), Cicle Horsky, Gina Skocilich & Jackie Travieso
Have you ever wondered how other administrators and organizations handle what seems to be a simple objective or even a more complex project? You’ve read through the Help & Training, you just don’t know where to start or how to get over a technological hump? You are not alone - we have all been there! In this session, learn where to go for guidance and about the power of the Salesforce Community, how users help other users in this panel of Salesforce Community MVPs and User Group Leaders who use the exact same resources to problem solve, brainstorm creative work-arounds, research, and so much more! This is your opportunity to ask someone who has been there, done that…and is willing to share their experience. It’s called COMMUNITY and you need to be a part of it too! Community-Led Session

How Advocacy Programs Drive Scalable Success - Inside the Salesforce.com MVP Program

Hear how focusing on your top online community & social media contributors can help drive large scale engagement, build raving brand advocates and increase product loyalty.

AND... those are my picks. Of course I am reserving the right to add more later as I discover them.



Have a great day, and look me up at Dreamforce!!!

Change is GOOD

Good morning!

Taking a page from Martin Luther King Junior, "Something is happening in Houston, something is happening in our world." I've moved on from the company that was the genesis of my Salesforce.com revolution. It was a sad day on Friday. After ten years, I received an offer that I "couldn't refuse". And so, I bid adieu to my home away from home MRC, and say bonjour to my new home away from home NRGEnergy.

This morning, I have been here for four days, but it still feels like the first day. Everything is new and exciting, and I can't wait to get to work! I feel like a schoolkid at a new school where they are able to reinvent themselves as the "cool kid".

As we ramp up in preparation of Dreamforce '13, and as I am adjusting to my new job and new commute and new office and new co-workers, I can't help reflecting on the past while I am preparing for the future. Change is good my friends, never allow yourself to stagnate!

Two quotes about change for today...

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." ~ Maya Angelou

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." ~ Anatole France

MVP Summit - Amazingness

I'm just now getting around to blogging about the Salesforce.com MVP Summit. I feel a bit lazy about it, since there were some of us that were blogging it out on the airplane on the way home. I needed to take some time to organize my thoughts after the whirlwind of awesomeness.

I'm not going to run on and on about every cool thing that happened, most of the details are under NDA, so I can't share the exact discussions.

I can tell you that the co-founder of Salesforce.com, Parker Harris was there the entire day, and spoke very frequently and very forthrightly  in response to our questions and comments.

I can tell you that it was an amazing experience, spending two days with this many others who are as passionate about Salesforce.com as I am!

Having breakfast with Parker Harris (@parkerharris) and Peter Coffee (@petercoffee) was amazing. Having Charlie Isaacs (@charlieisaacs) treat us to dinner and drinks on Friday Night... amazing.

Discussing our thoughts and wishes for Salesforce.com with a room full of executives and product managers that were actually interested in hearing them, seeing some demos of new features that will be released at Dreamforce, and knowing that Salesforce.com actually cares deeply about what their community thinks about them, was the biggest amazing feature of the entire event.

Thank you Salesforce.com, Charlie Issacs, Peter Coffee, and Parker Harris for making us feel like superstars!

AND - A HUGE thank you to Matt & Erica for pulling this all together, and herding us for three days.

Matt - you are a "harsh taskmaster" and so good at what you do!

I am proud beyond words to be a part of the "Kuhl Kids".

There are several terrifc blog posts out there, and here are the links:

http://redargyle.squarespace.com/blog/2013/9/1/thoughts-on-the-salesforce-community-mvp-summit.html

http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2013/08/30/recap-2013-salesforce-mvp-summit/

http://limitexception.herod.net/2013/08/31/mvp-summit-san-francisco-thank-you/

http://ericforcefield.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/history-was-made/

http://www.shellblack.com/salesforce/community/mvp-summit-2013-recap/

http://adminhero.com/2013/09/02/2013-mvp-summit/

Life is Time Consuming

OMG. I've been so busy with "Life" that I've neglected this blog for too long. MVPship is a 2nd job, and it's AWESOME.

I've also started a new lifestyle change. I've been working out, walking eating nutritionally sound all that jazz. I've lost about 5 pounds, but I'm still going strong. I've decided to do Couch to 5K, so maybe by next year I'll be able to actually participate in some organized 5K's.

For the Month of April, our company is participating in "Light It Up Blue" for Autism.  And I organized our Development team to decorate our office, and wear blue!!

My Salesforce MVP and Building my "Brand"

Like so many others, this year I made the decision to build my "brand". Yeah right, honestly - I didn't even know what my "brand" was until I read an article on "careergirlnetwork.com" about it!

This year I actually just promised myself that I would work diligently on learning as much about development on the Force.com platfrom as possible. That I would attend as many webinars and seminars and online training courses as I could, find a charitable organization that uses Salesforce.com and donate some of my time. I wanted to get as involved in the community as possible both online and in real life, and just be the best "me" that I could possibly be.

I have this undeniable habit of over-committing myself, I schedule just about every evening and every weekend doing something. If I don't, then I feel like I haven't accomplished anything.

I really do need to learn to take some time for myself, just to lounge around the house (or maybe clean it? nah.) I just know myself well enough by now to know that if I do - then I'm going to get bored, and pick up yet another hobby!

This year, I have done so very many incredible things, I've completely followed my plan of action as far as my career goes (with the exception of getting my Advanced Dev certification, however I still need some formal training to get that, so I'm putting that lower on the list, and moving training up to the top!)

The one thing that I have to change is the fact that I don't take my vacation time. Yeah, that sounds crazy... but honestly I'm just dedicated I guess. I have a full PTO bank, and now I've got 10 days of vacation that I have to take before December 15th, or I lose it. So I'll be sitting at home for 10 days, with basically nothing to do! I plan on catching up with some housework, and doing some of the work for the non-profit that needs to be done.

Right now, I've been just concentrating on my work work, (as opposed to my fun work) and thinking about a question that my friend Geraldine asked... "What are you going to do with your new MVP super powers?"

I want to help elevate others, I want to be a Salesforce.com advocate and evangelist, convincing one person at a time to drink that Kool-aid.

I know how to spell "TAPING"!! :-)

I'm sending out this blog to hopefully clear up some misconceptions about me.

I know you guys don't know me that well, so I'm just letting you know right now:

               1. I don't send links to Facebook.
               2. I generally have better grammar.

I have no clue how I got "hacked" twice now. I first received the same DM from someone else, and since it was right after Dreamforce, I actually thought that I may have missed Appirio trying to give me $1000 bucks for wearing their shirt.

NO! I was a fool... the "how did u not seee them tapping u" message was a bad bad thing to click. I figured it out pretty quick and changed my password immediately. BUT - whatever it is, it apparently "embedded" itself into my iPhone, and this morning when I logged on to Twitter with my phone - those stupid DM's started going out to my followers AGAIN.

I looked like a complete moron, and I really hate that.

So, I messaged every single person on my Twitter list and told them to NOT open anything with a Facebook link, that I was hacked, and I think I've fixed the problem and I apologized for the weird messages.

I changed my password 3 times today, and revoked access for every single app that had access to my Twitter account. I then revoked access to twitter on my iPhone.

Now, that being said - if I missed telling anyone I'm sorry - I'm sorry. I swear that I will be more careful about what I do going forward!

And, if you are interested in how to recover from this Twitter Phishing scandle, this is an EXCELLENT blog about it:


http://chelpixie.com/2009/11/recovering-from-twitter-phishing/

P.S. what r u doing in thes videos & how did u not seee them tapping u??

Back to work...

Well, it's back to work today... Dreamforce 12 is over. I had a great time, though it's super hard to get back in the swing of things here in hot hot HOT Texas. I miss wearing my boots and tights!

Everyone is blogging about their experiences, and I'm reading as many of them as I can!

So without adieu here are a few of my favorite things from #DF12:

Monday night the #GirlyGeeks DF Chatter group teamed up with the Salesforce.com Women's Network, and had a Women in Tech panel. I ran the EventBrite sign up, and helped coordinate. There were 755 women signed up!

Jill Rowley of Eloqua (@Jill_Rowley) was the moderator, and did a FANTASTIC job! We also had:

Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, President, Commercial/SMB Business Unit, Salesforce.com
Geraldine Gray (@GeraldineGray), Senior Consultant, Appirio & Founder of the GirlyGeeks
Rachel Thornton, Vice President, Dreamforce, Salesforce.com
Penny Herscher (@PennyHerscher), CEO, FirstRain
Sarah Friar (@thefriley), CFO, Square
Deepa Patel, President, Halak Consulting

These fantastic and inspiring ladies were sitting on our panel... it was terrific, and I have to say that I'm sincerely honored to have been a part of this!

Tuesday I hosted a session with Mary Scotton (@rockchick32204) called "Building Business Apps - Coding Optional", and sort of choked a bit... LOL but Mary says that no one knew it other than she and I, and Shannon Hale (@shannonsans) so it wasn't that big of a deal. I did a repeat on Friday and did MUCH better. I hope that I get another chance at presenting!

Wednesday I did a little shopping at Macy's, and got some killer boots, then had dinner with a bunch of the #GirlyGeeks before the @ChiliPeppers show and then went to the @Appirio party! I met a bunch of people, and I'm sure I missed someone on my list that I posted on Twitter earlier this week... and if I missed mentioning you, and you read this... Let me know and I'll send a shout out to you!

Friday was sad, and someone stole my old iPhone3 at the airport, but I made it home finally at about midnight CST. I slept most of the day on Saturday, and then spent a lot of time with icy hot and heating pads on my shinsplints and aching feet!

Today, it's back to the real world, and while I love my job, and my house and the fantastic city of Houston... there's still a part of me that wishes that I was independently wealthy and could just spend as much time in San Francisco as I wanted! I've been there three times now, and not yet have I really spent any time being a tourist!

I'm trying to save up enough money so that next year, I can go up a day ahead of time, and come back a day late! I want to do some stalking of my imaginary boyfriend @JamesFancoTV, and visit the redwood at Muir Woods, and ride a cable car and go over the Golden Gate Bridge!

So now I'm off home from the office, after answering about 200 emails and closing about 15 cases today!

And if anyone wants to start planning meeting up at DF13, let's schedule it now so we don't run out of time!

XOXO
Shannon

DREAMFORCE IS COMING!!!!!

Hi guys, I decided I needed to bust out a blog post before things get even crazier than they already are!

I'm still doing the volunteer work with www. SARDAA.org, and I'm helping to manage the GirlyGeeks chatter group, and my latest announcement is... (drumroll please)

I'm co-presenting a session, with the terrific Mary Scotton aka @rockchick322004!

It's called "Building Business Apps: Coding Optional", and it's already full, and there was so much interest they added a second session on Friday! (REPEAT!)

I'm so excited I can hardly stand myself.

Geekend!

Today I just want to share how much of a TRUE GEEK I really am.


Geek Out #1: I got an email from an undisclosed employee of Salesforce.com letting me know that he recommended me to Pluralsight as a potential contributor to their upcoming video series on Force.com!


I spoke to Megan with Pluralsight the other day, and now I'm planning on what my video audition is going to be, and I'm going to record it this weekend.


For those of you who aren't familiar with  Pluralsight , they bill themselves as "hardcore developer training". It's a subscription site for learning how to do .NET, and C# and HTML5 and RUBY and well, lots of other programming languages.


They don't have a Force.com section yet, so they asked me (based on my recommendation from the "unknown" employee of Salesforce.com) to do a ten minute audition video.


It needs to be something that can actually be learned within ten minutes, not just a ten minute portion of a larger training. I'm leaning towards "Creating Custom Buttons" right now, but I'd be happy to take some suggestions if any of you have some ideas!


Geek Out #2: I'm coordinating some volunteer time with our local area user group leader Rachel Rogers. (Houston Area User Group aka HUG). 


At my suggestion, Rachel reached out to the community, and gathered a group of us who would like to volunteer training, or development or even data entry for a Non-Profit Organization that uses Salesforce.com 


We heard back from the Board of Directors Chair with the Schizophrenia and Related Disorders Alliance of America here in Houston, and we are getting ready to start meeting with her to get started helping them out! 


I'm really excited about that, I love donating my time to help those in need, and I love working in Salesforce.com, so this is just right up my alley!

Local Time!

I was sincerely surprised that SFDC doesn't have native functionality to determine what the current time is at the Account's location. It seemed like pretty "basic" functionality to me.... AND THEN...

I figured it out... I was SUPER surprised at how very difficult this task really is, especially when you start considering that some states have multiple time zones, and some don't observer daylight savings time, and that's not even considering any of the overseas countries!

I had this brilliant plan though. I built a Visualforce page, that simply pulled in an online time clock and replaced some of their parameters with the data from my Salesforce org, then dropped it into the account page layout and TADA! It's beautiful... and even ticks like a real clock and changes the seconds and everything!

Houston, Texas, US

© The Time Now

Okay, so here's the bad news...

After I did this in my sandbox (yet another reason to use the sandbox ALWAYS when testing) I discovered that a lot of the cities and states weren't programmed on that website/service. So, unfortunately that's not going to be my final iteration.

Yes, I've found quite a couple of apps on the appexchange that do this and Local Time v1.9 looks pretty good...


Go Local looks pretty good too... but it's $100 bucks a month for unlimited users!?!

I haven't found a way to pull VF components into a report... and I can't in good consciousness recommend a component that doesn't do everything we want that costs $1200 dollars a year. (we've got 350 standard users, 1503 portal users, and 29 partner users.)

So, now I'm going back to the drawing board. Just because this didn't meet my users requirements doesn't mean that someone out there might not want to use it. So here's the code!

I'm sure that there are other ways to do this... but here's the one I personally cobbled together.

<apex:page standardController="Account" renderAs="{!$CurrentPage.parameters.renderAs}">
<div style="position:relative;width:200px;">
<iframe src="http://www.thetimenow.com/clock/{!Account.Country_Full_Name__c}/{!Account.ShippingCity}/{!Account.State_Full_Name__c}?t=n
&embed=1&text=15&textdate=15&format=12&digitalclock=36&analogclock=60&letter_spacing=-2
&bordersize=1&bordercolor=BCE2F7&bgcolor=EBF8FF&colorloc=000000&colordigital=2C8EBF
&colordate=000000&styleloc=normal&styledigital=normal
&styledate=normal&right=0" frameborder="0" width="200" height="90" scrolling="no">
</iframe>
<a href="http://www.thetimenow.com/{!Account.Country_Full_Name__c}/{!Account.ShippingCity}/{!Account.State_Full_Name__c}" 
style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; display:inline-block; width:200px; height:90px; z-index:50;" 
target="_blank"><span style="display:none;">{!Account.ShippingCity}, {!Account.State_Full_Name__c}, {!Account.Country_Full_Name__c}</span></a>
<div style="margin:0;padding:1px;font-size:11px;color:#666;text-align:center;">
&copy; <a href="http://www.thetimenow.com" target="_blank" style="color:#666;text-decoration:none;">
The Time Now</a>
</div></div>
</apex:page>

To explain, I noticed that the specific time clock that I was using had full names for the country and the state, even though in my SFDC org, we were using the USPS abbreviations. 

I created two formula fields, one for the Country Full Name, and one for State Full Name.

They look like this:

Country Full Name
CASE( ShippingCountry ,
"US", "United States",
"USA","United States",
"CA", "Canada",
"UK", "United Kingdom",
"SZ", "Swaziland",
"ET","Ethiopia",
"MEX", "Mexico",
"IS", "Iceland",
"GU", "Guam",
"GB", "Great Britain",
"GR", "Greece",
"IE", "Ireland",
"DE", "Denmark",
"FR", "France",
"PE", "Peru",
"CAN", "Canada",
"JM", "Jamaica",
"MISSING")


State Full Name
CASE( ShippingState ,
"AL","Alabama",
"AK","Alaska",
"AZ","Arizonan",
"AR","Arkansas",
"CA","California",
"CO","Colorado",
"CT","Connecticut",
"DE","Delaware",
"FL","Florida",
"GA","Georgia",
"HI","Hawaii",
"ID","Idaho",
"IL","Illinois",
"IN","Indiana",
"IA","Iowa",
"KS","Kansas",
"KY","Kentucky",
"LA","Louisiana",
"ME","Maine",
"MD","Maryland",
"MA","Massachusetts",
"MI","Michigan",
"MN","Minnesota",
"MS","Mississippi",
"MO","Missouri",
"MT","Montana",
"NE","Nebraska",
"NV","Nevada",
"NH","New Hampshire",
"NJ","New Jersey",
"NM","New Mexico",
"NY","New York",
"NC","North Carolina",
"ND","North Dakota",
"OH","Ohio",
"OK","Oklahoma",
"OR","Oregon",
"PA","Pennsylvania",
"RI","Rhode Island",
"SC","South Carolina",
"SD","South Dakota",
"TN","Tennessee",
"TX","Texas",
"UT","Utah",
"VT","Vermont",
"VA","Virginia",
"WA","Washington",
"WV","West Virginia",
"WI","Wisconsin",
"WY","Wyoming",
"MISSING")

You don't have to put them on any page layouts, but they do need to be visible to at least the system administrator profile.

Good Luck, and feel free to hit me up with questions, or give me some answers!

Errors That Disappear on Their Own

My absolute favorite thing is when I get 5 or 6 cases, all of them for the same error with a system. But... by the time the user puts in the ticket, and I go look... the error has disappeared.

Personally, I think that's just Karma's way of humbling the users, and tweaking the nerves of developers/helpdesk support.

I'm SuperGirl.

On Monday I received an email from my friend Erin, who is the Marketing Communications Manager. The CEO wanted to make our company meeting more interactive, and would like for us to "stream" some chatter comments during the meeting on Wednesday (yep 2 days away) a la' Dreamforce.

Now, my first thought was... holy moly... the CEO must think I'm magic! (then I found out that Erin forgot to tell me until Monday LOL)

I wasn't really even sure where to even start... the DF feed was from twitter, and I don't remember even seeing anything about that on the appexchange... but I went and looked anyway. I found some things for streaming twitter, but the CEO didn't want that, because she wanted this not to be public. So... I google searched like mad.

I finally found one thing that seemed to be similar to what I wanted. Interestingly enough, it was a "private" listing from Force.com Labs!

I have to tell you guys, this was the bomb. I edited it to get rid of the groups postings, and set it to refresh every 10 seconds.

https://sites.secure.force.com/appexchange/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000003HjzsEAC

Tracking Portal Access, and Licenses

I recently wrote about how difficult it was to track how many licenses you have left, and that I was going to be working on a way to track those.

I also have another issue, that may or may not be relevant to each of you, but is a very big deal for my company.

Our portal users are billed for access to our data base on a monthly basis, based on the specific projects to which they have access.

I added a custom object, that has a master/detail relationship with the custom object "Project", and look ups to the user, the contact and the account, as well as specific fields such as "Activation Date", "Type of Access" and so forth, so that we can see when they were given access to that project, what site from which they view it, and if they are ever deactivated for that project, we can see what date that happened as well.

Now, I never had a reason to try this before, so it was a complete surprise to me that if you put a look up to the user object on a custom object, you're not going to be able to look up to a portal user. What I mean by that, is as of right now (this is still pending confirmation via #askforce on Twitter...) it appears that the look up field automatically excludes client portal users!

So I am currently searching for a way to do this via the API, with a trigger or something. I had SUCH a great idea... which was thwarted with this little conundrum.

Such a sad thing to happen on my birthday, or well... the day before my birthday.

;-)

Randomly Changing Font Size

If you ask my users, I randomly like to change the font size on SalesForce. Just sort of as a Beta Test to mess with them.

Today we had a user who actually had their font size "set" so small that they were literally using a magnifying glass to see the text on their monitor. I don't know how long they had been doing this, but today they had finally had enough.

This sort of occurrence happens quite frequently, I can't even tell you how many cases per week I receive from people who are VERY upset with me for just randomly changing their font size. It's actually very hurtful to me that people think that I just change the font size any time I feel like it without telling them. (We have a whole release process that I designed, and implemented that includes notifications to users prior to release.)

I've been contemplating telling these users: "Yes User A, you ARE part of a Beta Test to determine how big, or small we can make the font prior to anyone complaining. In order to end the Beta Test and return to your normal size font, please hold down the "Ctrl" key on your keyboard, and roll forward (or backward) with the scroll wheel on your mouse. Thank you so much for participating, your input has been tremendously helpful in our study."

:-P

Scheduling Reports to an Individual User

Today I was trying to set a scheduled report to send to a specific user in my company.  That user has access to the report folder where this report resides. But... the user wasn't available to send a scheduled report.

Then I had a psychedelic flashback to about 2 years ago, and for just about 60 seconds, thought I was having a "deja vu" moment... 

Back then I discovered that for some reason, SFDC doesn't "see" the individual users that have access to the folder, it only sees the public groups. I personally feel this is something that needs to be adjusted, and apparently I'm not the only one, since this idea has quite a few votes.

The idea is here: vote on it! 

While we wait for them to correct this little bug, here is the work around I employ, it's a bit convoluted but it gets the job done. 

1. Create a public group consisting of the single user to which the scheduled report should be emailed.
2. Edit the report folder to allow access to that new public group (of one single user, or you can put in multiple users if needed).
3. Set the scheduled report to run and email to that new public group.

TADA! You've got a scheduled report being emailed to the single user that needs that report.

Now you just have to maintain the multitude of personal groups that are "individuals". I'm really hoping that we can rally the users to vote this idea up enough to get it into a release soon... again - The idea is here: vote on it! 

Size DOES Matter - in email recipients!

Have you ever noticed, that the number of irrelevant questions you receive in response to an email is directly proportionate to the number of people that are included on the email?

It doesn't really seem to matter if these are people with whom you correspond on a regular basis, who normally have no issues staying on "point", or if they are completely random recipients.

I spent two days composing a very important email, that needed to be reviewed by my director, and then sent to approximately twenty-four separate recipients.

This was a proposed notification process that would involve all of the people which were on the recipient list. All of those people were identified as being someone that needed to know when the development team released any changes to our SFDC production environment. I outlined what the proposal was, and added the nifty "Vote" option to the email to make things easier for everyone.(The proposal was simple... create a new distribution list comprised of all of the people on the list, and everytime we release something, we send an email to that distribution list with a notification of the change and the date/time of the scheduled implementation)

I received two completely irrelevant questions (questions about a separate issue that had nothing to do with the email to which they were responding), and a request for clarification, because the user didn't think that there was any need for that user to have to vote on any of the changes if they weren't affected by the changes.
I've received eight approvals... and the remainder of the twenty-four have not responded at all.

I asked that they vote before 5pm on Wednesday, and set a reminder on the email... I wonder what's going to happen on Wednesday at 4pm when that reminder goes off! (16 random questions?)