CRM Demand Tools - Mass Convert

Are you looking to convert a group of prospective students (leads) to student accounts within salesforce? Do you wish to avoid having to search & locate each student then manually click the "convert" button for each individual? Would you rather convert a group of lead records by using specific criteria? If so, the Mass Convert is the tool for you.

Mass Convert allows you to:

• Enter criteria in order to identify only those leads you wish to convert. For example, I use this tool to identify all leads affiliated with the "Off Campus - Student Lead" record type with a lead status value of "Applicant".
• Create an opportunity upon conversion (however currently Rutgers is not utilizing the "opportunities" object)
• Specify account ownership as well as create notifications for these individuals. This is a great way to notify a co-worker of a newly admitted student and provides options to assign a follow-up task for staff member
• Provides a final confirmation dialog box indicating the number of errors, converted leads, and location of the log file
  

CRM Demand Tools - Mass Change & Mass Impact

Both Mass Change & Mass Impact are great tools for maintaining data integrity and routine data cleansing. The MassChange tool allows you to specify a condition to find matching objects of most salesforce.com tables and set values for those tables to specific values that you choose. It is designed to allow you to quickly change hundreds of records that require a common value in minutes.

With the off campus data, there is a critical field "location of interest" that delineates student data for each off campus site. I have decided not to make this field required for various reasons but it is important that the field is populated. I have created a video demo showing how to update this field using Mass Change. Since the staff at each site is unique, I use Mass Change to update the location of interest field based on the owner of the lead. You can also schedule this update to automate the process using Mass Impact. Both Mass Change & Mass Impact are great tools to assist with managing your data from a global perspective.

However, Mass Impact is more a powerful feature as it provides the use of advanced operators as well as the ability to run scheduled scenarios, completely automating the process. For information regarding the creation of a scheduled task please click here.

CRM Demand Tools - Mass Effect

Are you looking to update a group of records within salesforce but want to avoid having to manually search, locate the record, and make your desired change? Would you rather export a group of records to Excel make the changes within the spreadsheet and simply upload the changes? Mass Effect provides you the ability to do just that and much much more.

Recommendations for using MassEffect

• If you are looking to update leads/contacts that you are unsure exist within salesforce and do not have a unique identifier to identify potential matches, please utilize the "People Import" tool as it provides varying matching levels other than exact such as fuzzy, alphaclean etc
• If you have just completed and import using "People Import" and wish to manipulate the data in a spreadsheet, please save the report located on the final step which includes the id field for both matched records as well as newly imported records.
• If you are looking to update group of any records you know exists within salesforce, using MassEffect create a report to export the fields you wish to update and be sure to include the id field.
• If the updates you perform in MassEffect are routinely completed with identical mapping and update options, simply save the scenario to avoid having to identify the mapping and update options with each process.
• If the group of records you are looking to update is a routine task schedule the salesforce report to run automatically. This report can then automatically be emailed to your user group including the id, so they can simply copy and paste the data to a spreadsheet, make the desired changes, and process the updates using MassEffect.
  
• If you are using Excel 2007 please be sure to save the file under the previous version as xlsx is not an acceptable file type.
• Be sure your report does no contain duplicate id's as it will produce errors on the final stage of Mass Effect for those duplicate records and will not complete the desired update.

I have created three videos (available on the Salesforce User Guide site as well as in the Screencast video side bar of this blog) demonstrating some uses of mass effect such as:

• Updating an Accounts "Program" field
• Updating the "Status" field of a lead from "New" to "Contacted"
• Updating a group of tasks from "Not Staretd" to "Completed"

Demand Tools

People Import allows you to compare an external source, such as an excel spreadsheet, to pre-existing leads and contacts within salesforce based on the matching criteria you set. CRM Demand Tools offers several modules (as described in a previous blog post) assisting in maintaining & cleansing salesforce data. The maintenance module allows you to update leads and contacts as well as all other salesforce objects like accounts (with various update methods), task & activities, even custom objects, extending the functionality. As opposed to People Import, CRM Demand Tools is a much more robust app providing tools not available in People Import.

Over the next few weeks I plan on uploading both PowerPoint slides as well as step by step videos on the following CRM tools:

Maintenance Module

• Mass Effect - DemandTools MassEffect module is the ultimate data loader for salesforce.com. Used to insert, update, delete or export information to and from almost any salesforce.com table or field. MassEffect has a large advantage over other data loaders due to its support for advanced file types such as Microsoft Access, Excel, CSV and UDL files to add support for SQL Server, Oracle and other databases
• Mass Impact - The newest module that allows users to mass manipulate data across tables without importing or exporting of data. The entire process of searching and changing data between tables, all takes place directly on the salesforce.com servers.
• MassChange - The MassChange module is the easiest way to mass manipulate data in salesforce.com because no import or export of data is required. The entire process of searching and changing data all takes place directly on the salesforce.com servers. Essentially MassChange allows the user to find all objects that meet a custom criteria and then effect changes on a field level to all the matching objects.
  

Cleansing Module

• MassLeadConvert - MassLead convert allows the DemandTools customer to develop a custom criteria of Leads to look for and then have them automatically sent through the Lead conversion process. During processing ownerships, Lead source and Campaign data can be tweaked and even emails sent out to notify the new owners of the created Account and Contacts.
  

Demand Tools offers many more helpful tools such as de-duplication features but I will be unable to demo all of these options as I would like to conlcude with a section on marketing and web to lead forms.