MK Partners Archive for September, 2009

Recently we received the below email from the Google Apps team indicating that any Google Docs that are publicly published will now be indexed by Google’s search engine, making the data inside them visible to anyone. At first, we were very concerned about this change and the possibility of confidential data being published. However, after following the extremely easy instructions, we’re now confident that our data and the data of our clients is still as secure as ever. I am curious how much confidential data at other companies will now be searchable and how much of that data will be real vs that which people purposely publish for marketing purposes.

Here’s the email:

Hello Google Apps admin,

We wanted to let you know about some important changes around published documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

In a few weeks, documents, spreadsheets and presentations that have been explicitly published outside your organization and are linked to from a public website will be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines. There is no change for documents published inside your organization or shared privately.

If you wish to prevent users from publishing documents to the public internet, we now offer an admin control in the Google Apps Control Panel that allows users to continue to ‘share documents outside the domain’ without allowing them to publish the files to the public Internet. To change this setting, follow these steps:

- Login to your admin control panel
- Select Service Settings > Docs
- Un-check the option ‘Users can publish documents to the public internet’

If a user does not want their published Docs to be crawled, then the user must unpublish them by doing the following:

- Go to the ‘Share tab’
- For documents and spreadsheets, choose ‘Publish as web page’. For presentations choose ‘Publish/embed’
- Click on the button that says ‘Stop publishing’

For more details, please see this Help Center article: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60781

This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps Team

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We received an email from Salesforce notifying us that force.com Sites will be down during the upcoming Winter ’10 upgrade window. As you may know, MK Partners is already using Force.com sites to power a portion of its website and has plans to use it more (stay tuned next week). While our website is a valuable tool and one that we would not want to be without, we still have confidence in force.com Sites and will not change our plans due to maintenance releases like this one.

From the beginning, we have recognized that WordPress (the Content Management System that powers our website) is an amazing tool that makes it very easy to setup a professional website with a blog. Our strategy is to leverage WordPress for our home page, blog, and static content and then leverage force.com Sites for dynamic content that needs to interact with salesforce.com. So during the Winter 10′ maintenance window, visitor to our website will be able to view our homepage. blog, and other static content, but will not be able to apply for a job at MK Partners. Since the window is on a Friday night, we’re not too concerned because we encourage our employees to have an active life outside of work and hope that any potential candidates would too.

For those of you that didn’t get the email and want to read it, we’ve included it below.

You are receiving this email because we have identified you as a system administrator of Force.com Sites and wanted to make you aware of best practices as related to salesforce.com major release windows.

Salesforce.com plans three (3) major feature releases each year. During these releases, we conduct a release maintenance window. Because Force.com Sites are directly served from your company’s Salesforce organization, Force.com Sites availability is directly related to your Salesforce organization’s availability and up time. For all major releases, including the upcoming Winter’10 release, your Salesforce organization and Force.com Sites will be unavailable during your organization’s release maintenance window. During the maintenance window, your end users will see a Force.com branded maintenance page when they try to access your site via HTTP.

How am I notified of major releases?
One month prior to every major release, salesforce.com sends release communication to system administrators of every Salesforce organization to make them aware of the upcoming release maintenance window. Additionally, these dates are updated on our Trust site.

For the upcoming Winter ’10 release, please visit http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/status/#maint to understand release maintenance window for your Salesforce organization and related Force.com Sites.

Are there best practices I should follow?
Salesforce.com recommends that you inform your end users, as well as any other Salesforce stakeholders, of the release maintenance windows and related Force.com Sites unavailability.

How can I get more information?
For information on our upcoming Winter ’10 release features, visit the Salesforce Community “New Release Resources” page for information on new features, release notes, and much more. For any additional questions, please contact salesforce.com Customer Support.

Best regards,
-salesforce.com Customer Support

Just a reminder that time is running out to book hotel accommodations for the Dreamforce ’09 Global Gathering in San Francisco. Our records reflect that you have not yet booked a hotel reservation, so book now if you have not done so. Salesforce.com has worked with Dreamforce hotel partners to offer the most competitive rates and exclusive concessions for our attendees. All conference hotels offer complimentary internet access for Dreamforce attendees booked within the conference hotel block.

It’s easy to make reservations online. Just go to the Attendee Portal, log in, and book your hotel reservation.

For information on all hotels offered for Dreamforce ‘09, click here and review the hotel information, special offers and rates.

Don’t hesitate to contact the Dreamforce ‘09 hotline below if you have any questions:

U.S. and Canada: 1-866-855-3818
International: +1-650-226-0793
Fax: +1-650-226-0840
Email: registration@dreamforce2009.com

We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

Dreamforce ‘09 Global Gathering Registration Team

The following letter was sent out to salesforce.com customers last night, if you have any questions, feel free to contact MK Partners support:

At salesforce.com, trust is our top priority, and it is our goal to ensure that any changes we make have a minimal impact on your business processes. You are receiving this email because we have identified you as a system administrator of a Salesforce organization that may be affected by a change to outbound messaging permissions with the Winter ’10 release.

What is the change?
In Winter ’10, the “Disable Outbound Messages” permission will be renamed to “Send Outbound Messages” and its value has been reversed. This means that in profiles where “Disable Outbound Messages” was enabled, “Send Outbound Messages” is now disabled, and vice versa.

How will this change impact me?
There is no impact to your users. The change will automatically ensure that all users who had the previous permission enabled now have the new permission disabled.

However, there are some API changes you should be aware of that may inadvertently affect your users if you upgrade your integration code to API v17. The API versions 16 and earlier will continue to be compatible with the old profile permission (“Disable Outbound Messages”) called PermissionsDisableNotifications in the API. The API v17 and higher will now be compatible with the new permission (“Send Outbound Messages”) called PermissionsEnableNotifications in the API.

Any updates to integration code that require upgrading to API v17 and perform calls to the Profile object should be examined to ensure that the correct profile permission (PermissionsEnableNotifications) is used. If you migrate to new code, make sure that this permission is disabled if it was originally enabled and vice versa.

When is this change taking place?
This change will be made with the Winter ’10 release. Please check http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/status/#maint to understand when your instance will be upgraded.

How can I get more information?
Customer Support works in conjunction with our Technology & Products team and are all equipped to answer questions you may have.

Regards,
Salesforce.com Customer Support

MK Partners is proud to announce that it has migrated yet another area of its website to Force.com sites. As of today, individuals looking to join the MK Partners team can do so via force.mkpartners.com/careers.

The migration to force.com Sites allows MK Partners to manage all aspects of online recruiting directly from the force.com platform. “Our business is growing rapidly, we need to be able to make changes to our job position listings instantly without going through a web developer.” said CEO Matt Kaufman. Using force.com sites enables MK Partners to accept applications directly into salesforce.com with attachments, manage multiple applications from a single candidate, and report on recruiting results all from a single location.

If you are interested in leveraging force.com Sites to power your organization’s job listings, contact MK Partners today at http://www.mkpartners.com/contact

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September 24, 2009, 9:00 a.m. PDT

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According to a Wall Street Journal article published this week, Salesforce.com is continuing to grow and make a profit in this year’s tough economy. Earlier we posted an article explaining that Salesforce.com should remain a strong technology to invest in. We’re happy to see this article fortifies Salesforce.com’s position as the leader in the Software-as-a-Service provider.

Check out the news about Salesforce.com’s strong showing in the Wall Street Journal article here.