Salesforce Updates - Sept 10, 2010

#Dreamforce



Count Down: @RatherGeeky reminded me that there are only 83 days until Dreamforce 2010. Have you registered and booked your reservations? This will be the biggest Dreamforce yet, with more than 20,000 attendees! Register here…

Community Conference: One of the things I love most about Salesforce.com is the overwhelming strong support I get from the user community. There are thousands of active community users who are writing Salesforce blogs, creating or promoting new feature enhancements on the IdeaExchange, participating in local user groups, asking and answering questions on the Answers forum, and collaborating on the community forums. This year, at Dreamforce 2010, we’ll have a chance to all meet each other. Dreamforce 2010 will have a community meet and greet! Read more…


#Administrators

150 (or rather, 32) Steps to Salesforce Greatness: AvideonCRM published an article titled “150 Steps to Salesforce Greatness”. The article actually only lists the first 32 steps (which is fair: the consulting company needs to keep some trade secrets!). Trying to figure out where to start with your new Salesforce.com setup? Check out this article! It has some great starting tips. Read more…

Mass Emails with Salesforce.com: What is the best way to do mass emails with Salesforce.com? Check out this article by @TFrankfurt; in the article, he talks about the current limitations of mass emails through Salesforce, and shares some popular AppExchange Email solutions to help break past these barriers – very helpful blog! Read more…
 200+ Free Salesforce Apps from Force.com Labs: Force.com Labs has been crazy busy the past few months, churning out new apps on the AppExchange – all free. The best thing about these apps (aside from being free) is that they are open source. Sometimes I’ll take these apps and use them just as ideas for other apps that my org needs; sometimes the apps give me ideas for optimizing code that for other apps that already exist within our org. Either way, if you’re not familiar with these apps, you should probably spend some time to get acquainted with them. Check them out here…


#Developer


Force.com Developer Meetup in Chicago: Salesforce.com is hosting a Developer Meetup at the Summit Executive Center in Chicago, IL this Wednesday (9/15) from 6:00 PM – 9:30 PM. There are two tracks planned: Intro to Force.com Workshop and a session on developing Chatter Apps. Quinton Wall and Reid Carlberg will be guest speakers at the event. If you are local to the Chicago area, and have wanted to learn more about developing applications on the Force.com platform, this meet-up will be a great intro! Read more…

Learning How to Code: “I want to learn Apex and Visualforce and all that other stuff, but I don’t know where to begin.” Apex is a structured programming language, very similar to Java. Visualforce is a structured mark-up language, very similar to HTML. If you don’t already know the basics of these topics, jumping in to Apex / Visualforce programming can be a challenge. Google can help! Check out these tutorials on learning HTML, CSS and Javascript from Google. (Thanks, @CRMFYI for the link!) Read more…

Use Visualforce to Add Inline Google Maps to Account / Contact Page Layouts: This is an oldie, but a goodie (that I rediscovered this past weekend). @phollo wrote a blog showing how to add Inline Google Maps to your Salesforce.com page layouts. It’s a great article, complete with sample code. Read more…

Cloud Computing for Java Developers Webinar (VMforce): Jeff Douglas wrote a great review of the recent Force.com webinar, “Cloud Computing for Java Developers”. I’m really looking forward to the REST API that will be piloted in the upcoming Winter’11 release! Read more…

Adding an Anchored Logo to Your HTML Email Template

A friend and fellow Salesforce Geek wanted to know how she could insert a company logo as the header in an HTML email template, such that when the user clicked on the logo, their browser would navigate to her company's website. I tried to describe it in email, but I suspect not very well. I promised her I'd blog about it ... so here we are.

Disclaimer: As with most things in Salesforce, there are a dozen different ways to get from Point A to Point B. This is certainly not the only approach, just the first that popped into mind.

Let's do it by the numbers. First, I created a quick logo image:

Host the Logo Image

Store the logo image in a location where it can be accessed over the internet. For this exercise, I'm going to store the image on the Salesforce servers, under the Documents tab:

1.) Click the Documents Tab.

2.) Click the "Create New Folder" link (we're going to create a new folder to store email images)

3.) In the Document Folder Label field, type "_Images". Click tab and set the other fields to their defaults. Save.

NOTE: The underscore "_" character in front of the word "Images" is intentional. Folders sort in alphabetical order, and this will push your Images folder down to the bottom of the folder list. That's my personal preference, so that my Image folders don't get mixed in with my "real documents" folders.

4.) Now that you're in the "_Images" folder, click "New Document".

5.) Enter the logo name, unique name, description, and browse to the path where the image is located. Because we will be including this image on an external email template, set the "Externally Available Image" checkbox.

Creating the Email HTML Template

Now that the logo image is "hosted" in a public location, create the email HTML Template:

6.) Click Setup -> Email templates. Specify the folder (or create a new one), and click "New Template".

7.) Select the "Custom (without using Letterhead)" option. Click "Next".

8.) Set the "Available for Use" checkbox, give your new email template a name and fill in the description field.

9.) This sample HTML code starts with an anchored logo, then continues with the "form letter" that recipients can read:


<a href="http://forcemonkey.blogspot.com">
<img src="https://na3.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.ImageServer?id=01550000000Nqqc&oid=00D500000007zyA"/>
</a>
<br>
<br>
Dear {!Contact.FirstName} ,<br>
<br>
Check out our new logo! Interested in the latest tips and tricks? Click the logo in the top left corner, and it will take you to our website!<br>
<br>
Best Regards,<br>
<br>
From the Force Monkey Troop

Let's rewind a little bit, to explain the HTML code:

The anchor tag, which starts with a href="http://.../" creates a link to the target website, referenced in the href arguement. In this case, I used the URL for this blug (http://forcemonkey.blogspot.com). Substitute your own target website after the href arg.

The image that we're wrapping the anchors around is specified in the img src="https://na3.salesforce..." tag. But what is that crazy long string after the "src" arg? That's the location where the image is stored on Salesforce servers.

To get this URL information for the logo you stored, do this (assumes you're on a PC):

1.) Click on the Documents tab

2.) Select your Logo image "document"

3.) Right click on the image. Click "Properties".



Copy the "Address URL" field to your text buffer. Be sure to capture the entire field, by holding the left mouse button down as you click from the left of the "https:" and drag the cursor downward until all characters of the field are highlighted. Press CTRL-C to copy to your text buffer.

4.) Open your email HTML template and press CTRL-V to paste it in the "src" arg of the img HTML tag.

Add the remaining HTML text for your email template, as necessary. Viola!

If the steps here are still just a little confusing, let me know -- I'll post a video blog of the whole process.