One of the advantages of using a hosted solution such as Salesforce.com is that your vendor manages many of the update/backup/keep secure items that you’d have to manage if your software were installed on your computer or server.

Salesforce has a solid track record with all of those things and have a lot of redundancy -after all -their business model depends on you having access to your data!

At the same time - they’ve made it easy for you to get a backup of your data -and you should - that data most likely drives your important work, and having an additional layer of backup makes sense.

Some quick notes, though, about what you actually get (and what you don’t):

• You can request your data weekly in a CSV (comma separated value) file - but it isn’t incremental. That is, the data you get today is a full snapshot of your data. And if you get another snapshot next week - it’s also the whole enchilada - everything from last week, PLUS the changes. So you can’t “easily restore” just a few contact records without some hard work.
• Your vendor may not be able to easily integrate an older CSV file with your live data. If you remember your initial data migration process - this would be similar.
• Your vendor MAY be able to integrate a subset of data more easily.

Here’s how to request a backup:

1. Click on Setup | Administration Setup | Data Management | Data Export
2. Select the “Include attachments” check box (if desired).
3. Select any data that you would like to include by checking the box next to the name of the object. Selecting the “Include all data” box will include data from all tables.
4. Click the “Data Export” button

A confirmation email will be sent when the export has completed, with a link to the export files. Thanks to Chris Atwood at Salesforce for the how to steps!

When to Request a Backup:

• Just before you make a substantial change to your data!
• Weekly or monthly, depending on your internal IT practices
• Just before you ask a vendor to make modifications or updates to your Salesforce instance.

Salesforce is so reliable and available, it is easy to forget to back up your data locally. Lately, I’ve was reminded that it is a good idea to back up your Salesforce data from time to time. Salesforce allows administrators to download a complete export up to once a week.

It isn’t that you have to fear for the Salesforce database crashing or being lost. I recommend downloading for a couple reasons:

• It could help if you ever accidentally make unintended changes to data and want to return to an earlier state.
• It could also be helpful in the event that Salesforce or your internet access ever goes “down” at a critical time – you’d have a way to access your data offline.

To download the backup, go to Setup (Administration) | Data Management | Data Export. Click the button – a while later you’ll get an email with a link to download your data file. Save it somewhere safe.

Alternatively, if you use Demand Tools, you can back up to a file as often as you like. I use this to create a copy of the database in a Microsoft Access file.

In a previous post, I talked about a few ways that I customize web-to-lead forms. One key change I make is to ensure that certain fields get filled in for every web lead. In a Salesforce page layout, you can require fields, but web-to-lead doesn’t allow you to do this - any web-to-lead form submission will create a lead, even if critical fields such as last name or email are left blank.

Most of our clients want to make sure their leads fill in a minimum amount of information, such as name and email. Moreover, you can catch spam by requiring sensible entries - since spammers don’t always fill in the fields.

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Some time ago, I had a client who needed an easy way for inexperienced users to filter a report, on a regular basis, based on several different criteria.  In Salesforce, anyone can filter a report like this, but it takes a couple dozen clicks and a bunch of typing.  I wrote a simple s-control that allowed users to filter the report in a really simple interface.

When the user selects values and then clicks Search, the Javascript code builds a long URL that tells Salesforce to open the report and apply all the selected filters - something like this:

https://na3.salesforce.com/00O50000001QCuS?pc2=00N50000001JsTx&pn2=eq&
pv2=American%20Sign%20Language&pc4=00N50000001JsUX&pn4=in&pv4=Immunizations&
pc5=00N50000001JvOE&pn5=in&pv5=North%20End& pc6=00N50000001JvNO&pn6=eq&pv6=1

I showed my s-control to Drew Piston at a Salesforce event last year, and it turns out he was hoping to do something similar for his group at the Bay Area Chapter of Red Cross.  This week, he posted a Jing screencast that shows his version of the s-control in action.

Thanks Drew! 

While reading Steve Anderson’s blog (http://gokubi.com), I was inspired to put up one of our screencasts. 

Anand was nice enough to put together a great screencast about creating a basic Apex trigger. This dives into some code but isn’t too technical that the average Salesforce admin can’t understand it. Take a look!

http://www.screencast.com/t/KZyKK0NXrXR

Yesterday, Mozilla - the creators of the Firefox browser - released a  "Firefox lite" application called Prism, built specifically to run web applications. And it so rocks!!! Its fast, its browser compatible and it has some nice desktop integration features. I know that folks have been waiting for the Winter 08 release for sf.com to be compatible with the Windows version of Safari to increase speed and performance.  Wait no longer…this is a great alternative (although I still want to see how sf.com performs in Safari once its compatible).

A great way to automatically log into your sf.com instance is to add your username and password to the URL (which can be done with the bookmarks of your browser of choice as well): 

https://www.salesforce.com/login.jsppw=PASSWORD&un=NAME@domain.org

After saving your Prism app, it automatically creates a icon on your desktop, start menu and/or quick launch bar.  While its possible to create icons on your desktop to open web apps with any browser this just makes it all that much easier and user friendly. 

I’d imagine using Prism will help with much greater adoptability for the web app-phobic users we all know and love so well.  Let me know what you think.

UPDATE:  Steve Andersen found a pretty significant problem with Prism…those darn hovers don’t work properly. Then again, I should have noted this was not a full release…its still in "labs."

UPDATE 2: With Winter 08, Safari is the way to go. Still too many bugs in Prism.

My apologies for the spotty posting and test posts. Beth’s linking brought more subscribers than I anticipated during this soft launch.  I’ve been back from San Francisco almost a week now, but I feel like I’m just surfacing.  I was hoping to do a more formal launch of this blog at the conference - and post much more during the conference than I did - but I was having some technical difficulties with Wordpress…so there you have it.

A few DF roundups:

• Steve Andersen captures the week well in his wrap-up post
• Jenny Council did a great report out of the post-npsf summit meeting
• Everyone is looking for CRM consultants in the sector
• I posted a few of my take-aways

I plan on doing a broader announcement sometime soon. If you are reading this via RSS, please spread the word (and contact me if you are interested in blogging here about salesforce).