MK Partners News

MK Partners is proud to announce that we have a new Contact Us page on our website. Our former Contact Us page was a web-to-lead form that submitted new leads directly into our salesforce org. It was very good at what it did, but we really needed a more powerful page.

Our new Contact Us page is powered by force.com Sites and it does much more than just enter leads into salesforce. The new page dynamically changes the questions on the screen based on why you are contacting us. If you’re contacting us for product support it you have to fill out questions related to the issue. If you’re contacting us for sales you have to fill out questions related to your project. But wait, there’s more, not only do the questions on the screen change, but the resulting record in salesforce changes too. Support inquiries turn into cases and sales inquiries turn into leads!

We fell this upgrade is is long overdue for us, not only because we are such proponents of using force.com Sites but also because it improves our efficiency and helps us respond faster to support requests.

If you’re interested in having MK Partners create a custom force.com Sites powered page for your website, fill out our Contact Us form at http://www.mkpartners.com/contact

In the last week both Google and Salesforce.com have made announcements that they will stop supporting IE 6.0 later this year. While the two companies have close ties, this doesn’t appear to be an attack on Microsoft but rather just a push to take advantage of the latest (and future) web technologies which IE 6.0 doesn’t support.

Even though the announcement states that the change will not occur until the end of 2010, some users on IE 6.0 have already reported minor issues since the Spring ’10 release. Our guess is that these issues will be fixed with a maintenance release over the next few weeks, something that is common after a major salesforce.com release.

Over the next year, prior to the official desupport of IE 6.0, Salesforce.com will be releasing some pilot enhancements which require an explicit opt-in. This may explain why the new look and feel demonstrated at Dreamforce is not generally available yet. Salesforce.com has stated that it will be made available after all servers have been upgraded to the Spring release, scheduled to occur this weekend.

What browser do you use? Let us know in the comments.

MK Partners is extremely please that Invisible Children, one of our clients, was recently voted to the top of the Chase Community Giving List. As the winner of the contest. Invisible Children will receive 1 Million dollars from Chase to further their mission.

We worked very closely with Invisible Children last year to implement salesforce.com to manage their inventory and touring educational groups. Their implementation has been extremely effective and was even featured at Dreamforce ’09.

You can learn more about Invisible Children and they great work they do at their website www.invisiblechildren.com.

MK Partners is extremely please that the executive director of one of our clients recently won an Ashoka Fellowship. The lucky winner is Chris Balme of Spark. Spark is the only youth empowerment program in the country that addresses the dropout crisis by re-engaging at-risk students through hands-on, individualized apprenticeships.

We worked very closely with Chris last year to fully power and integrate their website’s online giving portal with salesforce.com. The portal has been a huge success and was even adopted by one of Spark’s sister organizations.

You can learn more about Spark and they great work they do at their website sparkprogram.org.

Way to go Chris!

If you visit salesforce.com/events you may be disappointed by the lack of events going on in North America right now. It’s not even a search option! Fortunately, salesforce.com/community has its own events page which does have a list of web-based events that do occur during North American business hours. One of which is coming up next week and sounds perfect for beginner to intermediate admins struggling with data issues. The webinar is being given by two salesforce.com employees and doesn’t mention any partners, so it should be a little less biased than a Dreamforce session.

For more details visit salesforce.com/community and click on the events link in the sidebar

Salesforce.com is holding a webinar titled “Beyond virtualization: revolutionizing application design” on January 28, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. PT. David Claiborne and Peter Coffee will be speaking. Details below.

For all its benefits, virtualization doesn’t move beyond the boundaries of traditional IT data “silos.” But forward-looking CIOs and developers are going much further, by building new highly-connected systems in the cloud.
Learn about the application design revolution that’s unleashing tremendous business value—join us for this next Cloud Computing Uncovered Webinar, and discover:

• Virtualization’s current state of play on desktops and in data centers
• Why multi-tenancy gives you more security, reliability, and elasticity
• Collaborative power tools for individuals and enterprises, from Google Docs to Salesforce-to-Salesforce

And don’t miss Peter Coffee’s monthly mythbuster: “Is virtualization the key to the cloud?” Discover the advantages of making your next IT initiative truly new vs. merely more efficient.
Register now

The Los Angeles salesforce.com user group will be meeting on January 20, 2010 in Santa Monica. Mark Whiteside of AppExtremes will demonstrate their Conga Merge product. There will also be a demo of the salesforce chatter and Twitter/Facebook integrations.

January 20th Wednesday
3:45pm-5:45pm
(an earlier start time per members request)
Daily Grill
2501 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica 310.309.2170
*Validated parking underground

More details here.

Salesforce.com is hosting a webinar on January 14, 2010 10:00 a.m. PST titled “Can one app change the world?”. It’s a showcase of a customer named “Renewable Choice Energy” and how they use Force.com. Here’s the official description and registration link:

How can you make a difference with cloud computing?
Listen in as Renewable Choice Energy explains how they built an app on Force.com that measures the carbon impact their employees have on the planet.
Join Tom, Blakely, and Sarah to learn:
What features were used to create this app
How to track your company’s carbon footprint
Where to find more planet-friendly apps
What else is possible with Force.com
Make an impact on your world. Learn how to create powerful apps on the Force.com platform.

Register today

Salesforce.com is hosting two webinars to present the new features in the Spring ’10 release. The webinars take place on January 19 at 10:00 a.m. PST and 8:30 p.m. PST. It looks like the webinar will be two hours long and broken up into two parts.

Part 1 : Custom Cloud – Learn how many new Force.com features, including Multilevel Master-Detail Relationships and Rich Text Areas, can help you build richer applications, faster (1st hour).

Part 2 : Sales & Service Cloud – Discover how new features in Salesforce CRM, including Salesforce Automation, Salesforce Knowledge and Salesforce Answers, can help transform the way you interact with customers and partners (2nd hour

You can register at www.developerforce.com

Salesforce.com has announced the following new webinar in their Admin to Hero series:

Can one app change the world?
January 14, 2010 10:00 a.m. PST

How can you make a difference with cloud computing?
Listen in as Renewable Choice Energy explains how they built an app on Force.com that measures the carbon impact their employees have on the planet.
Join Tom, Blakely, and Sarah to learn:

• What features were used to create this app
• How to track your company’s carbon footprint
• Where to find more planet-friendly apps
• What else is possible with Force.com

Make an impact on your world. Learn how to create powerful apps on the Force.com platform.

Register Here