Patrick Shaw’s Weblog

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.

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!

Tip of the hat to Smiley Cat for posting a great link about website statistics, search engine optimization, marketing effectivness and more.

Well worth a read!

We’ve been implementing websites for nonprofits for a long time, and we’ve been using Plone as a CMS for about three years. It’s no surprise that over that three year span - our websites are getting better and better, Plone is getting better and better - and sites cost a bit more, too. Here’s some of the why:

When we first started, there was a lot we didn’t know - so - as we learned how to implement effectively in Plone - we wrote off a lot of our initial costs to that learning curve. Some of those items were true learning - we had to acquire skills in web hosting, in writing user agreements, in understanding the open source model and more.

But some of those costs were related to implementing hard designs - and that hasn’t changed!

Here are some things that we’re doing now:

• We test to make sure that your website renders well in IE6, IE7, and in Firefox. IE7 wasn’t out when we started, and Firefox was barely on anyone’s radar. Now we have IE8 on the way, the browser by Google (called Chrome) and Firefox 3 to get ready for.
• We implement one (if not two) analytic tools to make sure that you can measure site traffic
• We add additional tools that you can use, such as Plone Form Generator -a tool that lets you create forms for visitors to fill out and send to you
• We create "quick tip" documentation sheets to go along with our overall documentation
• We’ve implemented a cache scheme that makes your site render more quickly

And there’s a lot more. On top of THAT - our customers are asking for more, too:

• Deeply tiered permission structures so that board members, volunteers, and others can view restricted content
• Connecting to Salesforce.com databases to display and get information
• Expanded typography, using Flash and other tools, so that your website isn’t "stuck" using standard website fonts only
• Custom widget building, such as for a Resource Library, highly customized Calendars, stylized blogs
• Extended tools for tracking Search Engine Optimization

And there’s more of THAT, too!

We’re still able to implement highly affordable websites, if that’s what you want and need. We’ve recently helped a pair of customers move their old website (couldn’t edit them) to Plone, keeping much of their existing design. And we’ve had a few customers pick an already designed site (so the feature set and design didn’t have any moving pieces) and re-use with their own color scheme and content.

So - there are a lot of options. After three years (and just about 50 sites) - we’re excited about the future of Plone and how nonprofits can gain access to editing and posting content with it!

I was getting ready to head out the door today for a run with my brother Frank. We’d chatted about if we needed new shoes or not, so I fired up my trusty running log, and checked a couple of things.

I started with total mileage - I wanted to see how many miles I’ve run this year compared to last year. At first glance - it looked about right - a lot more than last year. Thing is - Frank and I had also trained for a marathon, so warning bells didn’t go off in my head.

But when I checked my shoe mileage - WOW! The report said I’d almost 600 miles on my shoes, and I KNEW that wasn’t right. It didn’t take long to find the data entry that SHOULD have said 5.5 miles, but which was incorrectly entered as 555 miles!

When we help customers into a new database - we’ll set up some reports and so on. But we don’t know your data, you do. Over time, the reports we gave you to start may become less valuable for a lot of reasons:

• You have inaccurate or incomplete data
• Your needs have changed but the report hasn’t

So - you need to know before you click. You SHOULD have an expectation of what you are going to see BEFORE you press the go button - and - if you are going to make business decisions based on the data in that report - you’ll want to double check.

At NPower, we were reviewing our Salesforce setup, and noticed a couple of reports that didn’t seem right. Since I’m not deeply engaged in our fundraising - I probably wouldn’t have noticed. But our fundraising team? They spotted a pair of mis-categorizations right away - they knew that there must be data that was included in a report that didn’t belong.

It was easy to fix the report, but harder to fix the process. We’re tracking data differently than when we first began using Salesforce - and we’re due to update some of the ways we’ve configured our reports. The actual adjustments will be easy. Working out the business rules won’t be too hard - but will take some time. We’ll have to get the right people in the room, ask the right questions, think about how things are and how we want them to be, and then decide how much of our time and money to invest in making those changes.

So - a pair of important things to remember:

1. Know before you click! If you’re looking for event attendance reports - you should have a good idea of what you’ll see when you generate that report. And if you don’t - make sure that someone on your team does - or that you truth check the report carefully!
2. Plan to re-visit your processes and reports every year or two. For instance - your definition of a top donor might change over time, and you’ll want to make sure that your reports reflect those changes.