Yes and no!

Here’s the deal: Salesforce does a lot of things really well. And while we’ve had terrific luck customizing and extending and so on - there are a few areas where we think that other tools are better. For instance - creating a financial accounting system in Salesforce, or a robust word processing tool would be duplicative. Those tools exist already, have decent price points, features and more.

We feel the same way about auctions. But you SHOULD invest in some integration - and here’s how:

Use Salesforce to INVITE people to your auction. You can create a campaign (or a series of them), you can segment that list, you can send email, or Vertical Response mail or snail mail. Salesforce (especially with Vertical Response) is a great way to evangelize your event and keep track of who has said that they will attend. Or give. Or volunteer.

Export that attendee list to your auction software. (I know - this might be easier said than done!). And then use your auction software to it’s full extent: Create seating charts, provide bid numbers, keep track of the difference between a paid ticket to the event, a fair market value purchase, and a donation, and check your guests out and process their payments. ALL of those activities (and more) are what auction tools can do (or should do!) well!

Import your results into Salesforce. Again - this may be easier said than done. Importing into Salesforce is pretty easy. But you might want something a tad more automated. For instance, you might want to import the total amount of giving, break it down by type (dinner, fair market value purchase, outright gift, other) and you might want Salesforce to de-duplicate on the way in. And if you have a lot of data - you might want to have Salesforce automatically create those giving opportunities, provide them with an appropriate status (closed - send thank you!) and so on.

You can see why we like this model: You use Salesforce to do what it is good at, and ditto for your auction tools. Someone might create an extensive widget for managing an auction directly in Salesforce someday. And if they do - you can be sure I’ll tell you about it. In the meantime - a simple (or, if your needs are more complex) integration ought to suit.

So this week the folks over at GraphicMac had 2 posts of interest around Adobe Photoshop. The 1st one is practical. It’s a nice “how to” article on how to whiten areas in Photoshop. Specifically teeth & eyes. A nice approach which is different than what most users might step through, ie. the brush tool. This technique gives you more control and a more realistic look.

The 2nd one is about Photoshop CS4, or specifically what is gone in CS4. Turns out Adobe has removed some features. Some of the features, or lack there of, may impact you. Contact sheets, Web Photo Gallery, and Picture Package are a few that have gone away.

Now NPower won’t have CS4 until next year but I can’t wait to try out the new features!

It’s no surprise to anyone reading this here that NPower Seattle is a big fan of Plone, the open source content management system that helps us deliver huge features to our customers without building from scratch. As a matter of fact, I attended the World Wide Plone Conference a couple of years ago, have been on the circuit with Idealware talking about Plone (and other CMS tools) and recently send one of my senior web developers to the World Wide Plone Conference in DC.

Well - now some of that magic is going to be happening right here locally. Our friends and colleagues at ONE/NW are hosting the World Plone Day, and you should attend!

Here’s what you need to know about the event and how to sign up:

AGENDA

Speakers

• Jon Stahl, Plone Foundation Board President
• Sam Knox, ONE/Northwest Support Manager

Talks

Plone: How it helps you build great websites

A brief overview of what Plone is all about — led by Jon Stahl, Plone Foundation Board President

Plone for Content Editors: Learning and Teaching the Essentials

Plone is often touted as a great CMS for non-technical users because it is easy and attractive for content managers to add, update, and maintain content. While this is largely true, there are a number of essential skills that one must learn in order to become comfortable with all aspects of posting and editing content in Plone. Added to that, there are a number of ‘best practices’ to learn about writing for the web and using the Plone interface that can substantially increase the chances of a satisfactory experience with Plone. Sam Knox, Support Manager for the non-profit consulting organization ONE/Northwest, will present an end-user focused training with ideas and advice for both end-users and the consultants who work with them. If you are new to Plone, or are often engaged with those who are, this session is for you.

So that we have enough food & beverage, free swag from Google, and can tailor the talks appropriately, please RSVP.

LOGISTICS

World Plone Day
Friday, November 7th, 5:00 P.M. to 7:00ish P.M.
ONE/Northwest
1402 Third Ave, Suite 1000
Seattle WA
Directions at:
http://onenw.org/about/contact-us

RSVP at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ndrYO87_2fwkvwtUq6z1BH_2fg_3d_3d

Microsoft released a critical security alert today. Please read and distribute to the team responsible for managing your server environment.

There is an update available, and Microsoft recommends applying that update immediately.

Here’s a bit more about the alert:

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Server service. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected system received a specially crafted RPC request. On Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability without authentication to run arbitrary code. It is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect network resources from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter.

This security update is rated Critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and rated Important for all supported editions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

NPower Seattle is going to host the very first Nonprofit Salesforce Users Group on November 19th at 8:00 AM!

We have a nice conference room, I’ll pick up some coffee and some snacks to get us started, and we can work together to get our local group up and running!

I want to be clear that we’re NOT starting the group to drum up business! Our mission is to help nonprofits use technology more effectively - and the popularity and power of Salesforce.com is doing that in our community already. So - we want to convene, provide space, provide some leadership to grow our group - but we’ll be depending on you to help set the agenda. We hope to talk about:

• report from DreamForce!
• tips and tricks
• best practices
• problem solving
• demonstrations and show and tell

And much more.

Please join us  on  November 19th, at 8:00 AM here at NPower Seattle. Street parking is generally available, and we’re well served by  public transportation, too.  We’ll start and finish in 60 minutes, although I’ll hold the room until 9:30 in case folks want to stick around and talk more.

Yes it can - but that DOES mean that you’ll either get a little less, or will have to provide additional "sweat equity" on your own!

We’ve configured a basic donor management system that has all of the terrific things you’d expect from a CRM - great contact management, great activity tracking, great reminders. And we’ve modified or added in ways to manage households, to manage a giving pipeline (donation, major gift, grant, in kind gift) and have configured some reports, too - such as the ever popular "Last Year but not This Year" report.

So - if you’re starting fresh - you can have our template quickly and affordably - think a base install fee (depends on your budget size) and a few hours of training, coaching and documentation -and you’re off and running.

However - if you need us to:

• Migrate existing data - then your costs go up.
• Ditto for if we need to customize things - such as fields for income levels, or for items unique to your program.
• And if you need web forms for your website, help with using and configuring Vertical Response - those all take time and money, too. And most likely - will require some pre-planning.

So - you CAN have Salesforce for less -but only if a basic package meets your needs. You might be surprised to find that it DOES -and you might also be surprised to find that relentless attention to your core donor tracking needs will probably return the highest results!

MacWorld.com is just making my week. Today they posted another great article on ‘Brushing Up Your Creative Suite Skills’.

A nice listing of tutorials, tips and news resources around the Creative Suite applications. Some I’ve offered in the past, some are new to mee too! I highly recommend you check it out. You can find the article at http://www.macworld.com/article/136161/2008/10/creativesuitetips.html

I recently bought one of those Flip video cameras. You know, the ones that have a little flip out USB connection that you can plug right into your computer and download the video you’ve recorded. I’m planning on playing with it over the next week or so for the nonprofit I’m on the board of here in Seattle.

So what does this have to do with training & using software? Well you never know when your nonprofit might use video to:

• enhance you message
• inform your community
• market your services
• tell your story

Just today NTEN had a post, with example, of how a NTEN member nonprofit used video to make a change in the world. It’s pretty cool and has lots of links to helpful resources, guides & tips to get started with video.

If you’re interested check it out at http://nten.org/blog/2008/10/15/more-help-getting-started-with-video

Christopher Breen over at MacWorld.com had an interesting post today on email etiquette and using the BCC field. Well his post was actually a follow-up on another post he had earlier where he got lots of comments.

Today’s post is great because it explains where to find the BCC field in different email programs. While the previous post had lots of really good reasons why you should use the BCC field. I agree whole heartedly!

But the one thing missing, in both the posts & the comments that followed (or at least I didn’t see it mentioned); is when NOT to use it. Mainly when you have a lot of addresses you want to send to. General rule, and this isn’t hard & fast, is no more than 20 addresses in the TO, CC, or BCC fields. Why? Many ISP’s check incoming emails, looking to see how many addresses are in these fields. If they are over a threshold, they’re flagged as spam. Because Spammers will send out spam that way.

If your email is flagged as spam, then not only does that person not receive that email; no one who uses that ISP will get email from anyone at your nonprofit.

If you’re sending out email to more than 20ish (including distribution groups from Outlook), use an email service like Vertical Response instead. Want to find out more? Come to NPower’s eNewsletters for Nonprofits training or ask for a copy of the training workbook.

I don’t know about you but I’m placing Word documents into InDesign all the time. Most of the time it’s stuff that other people have created. And if you’ve ever been in any of NPower’s InDesign classes, taught by me of course, you know I’m a big believer in getting other people to write it for me.

Well the down side of Word is that most people that use it have been taught to hit that Enter key anytime they want some space between their paragraphs. Which also leads to them getting blank pages at the end of their Word document when they print it. Those ‘invisible’ returns count to the program.

Now InDesign, and Word too, has a much better way of controlling the space between your paragraphs. You use the Space Before Paragraph and Space After Paragraph options. This lets to specify exactly how much space you want before and/or after your paragraph.

So what’s my point? I know I cover this in the InDesign training.

Here it is, What do you do if someone else created the document and put in a bunch of extra returns? How do you get rid of them?

Well today I came across a way to use Find & Replace (under the Edit menu) to do exactly that. Delete unwanted paragraph returns. Introduced with InDesignCS3 is something called GREP. When you open the Find/Replace dialog the 2nd tab in the dialog is GREP. Now this feature is new to me and I wasn’t entirely sure how to use it. But a little searching around the internet and a helpful post on InDesign Secrets led me in the right direction.

Here’s what I did. In the Find field I put in ^\r

• ^ stands for at the beginning of a paragraph
• \r stand for a paragraph return

So I told InDesign to look at the beginning of a paragraph for a return - meaning they is no text in front of it- and remove it.

Worked like a charm!