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.

People Import 5 Stages

The videos for the five stages of People Import have been uploaded to the Salesforce User Guide site and are also available in the screen cast side bar of this blog. I have detailed a brief description of these five steps below:

1. Mapping - Select the source file & map the fields (or column names) in the file (ex. spreadsheet) to salesforce fields.

• If the field names match exactly use can use the "automap" button to automatically mach the fields.
• You can also manually drag and drop the names to map the fields
• In this stage you can also choose from field options to update the Insert, Do not update, Update, or Update only if blank for each individual mapping

Helpful Tips

• Be sure to include all required fields on import which would include Last name and Company. For prospective students without a company affiliation use the "last name, first name" in lieu of this value
• Be sure to include the recordtype id to ensure newly created records are affiliated with the appropriately

2. Comparison - Compare the records in the source file against all salesforce records (default) or choice to select a subset of records for comparison.

Helpful Tips

• It is highly suggested you match the incoming records to those of the desired record type
• Matching against a subset of records within the system will not only expedite the elapsed time but can also enhance matching precision

3. Matching - The most involved stage of all five stages where you can create various matching steps to compare source records to those in salesforce in order to avoid importing duplicate records You can match almost any field that you imported in stage 1 of the import process such as matching the first name, last name, email, phone, or address in the source file to those in salesforce (certain fields such as long text areas can't be used in this stage)

• This stage also allows you to adjust the match type settings from "exact" match type to "cleaned account name" or select additional options to loosen matching capabilities with use of "fuzzy" or "alpha clean". For a complete list of match types click here
• You can create multiple matching steps to increase the probability of locating a potential duplicate with Salesforce.
• You can assign the leads matched with each step to a pre-existing salesforce campaign or create a new task for the matching group.
• The "Final Matching conditions" step is where you specify conditions for records in the source file that did not match any of the matching steps. You can choose to import these records as "new leads", "New Contacts" or "Do Nothing"

4. Global Campaigns & Tasks - This step is optional but provides the ability to assign records not matched in Step 3 to a campaign or create a new task for these records.

5. Results & Processing - This stage is where People Import checks for dupes and matched records are retrieved. You can also review, verify, and ultimately commit & update the matched records while importing new leads that were not matched (if specified in "Final Matching Steps" of Stage 3)

People Import

This week we will be taking a more detailed look at the People Import tool (available on app exchange). As previously mentioned this is a stand alone app that can be downloaded and installed from the appexchange or CRM Fusion site. I have already uploaded a detailed presentation on the Salesforce User Guide site which provides information on each step of the import/update process. I will also be adding videos detailing the process within the next few days.

Do you have a list of prospective students you wish to import into salesforce but are considered there may be pre-existing salesforce records already in the system ? Are you looking to match an external spreadsheet of leads or contacts to those in salesforce to prevent duplication? Do you not have a unique field in order to exactly match the records in the external source to those records in salesforce? Are you looking for a way to match records using methods other than an exact math perhaps you are looking to match values that contain typos or varying punctuation. If so, People Import may be a valuable tool in acheiving these goals.

People Import is a great way to import new leads or contacts from an external data source into salesforce. The import process also provides the ability to match records that may already exist within Salesforce to ensure only new leads are imported (avoiding duplicate leads) and update the fields of your choosing for those records that match the system. For example, you can easily take a spreadsheet of new admits to your program and update their data in salesforce accordingly as well as add any students that may not already exist within the system. The People Import wizards provides 5 easy steps to achieve such a task.

Of course the most seamless way to integrate data from external data sources would be using the Salesforce Web API (Applicaton Programming Interface). This enables the data source to communicate directly with Salesforce to create, retrieve, update or delete records, such as accounts, leads, and custom objects.

* Please note when logging into People Import for the first time you will need to use a security token to login successfully. I have created a video on resetting and using your security token for the Oulook plugin fund on the Salesforce User Guide site.

Week 7 & 8 CRM Fusion (Introduction)

So I finally feel like this week we are able to delve a bit deeper taking a look at the toolset provided by CRM Fusion available on the Appexchange. One of the added benefits to utilizing cloud computing technology is the ability to easily install new "apps" to enhance your current use of the platform. The next few weeks we will examine both People Import as well as CRM Demand Tools for enhancing data management (both available on the app exchange). Typically these apps require fee based memberships (avg cost $5,000), however non-profits organizations (which includes Higher Education) receive these tools at NO COST :)

Below is a brief description as to the capabilities of these valuable tools.

People Import

• PeopleImport is a Windows based app that is designed to allow the end user to develop customized import scenarios.
  
• These scenarios include customized passes to ensure duplicates are not created, but rather that existing Leads, Accounts or Contacts are updated
• The People Import app walks you through 5 stages (some stages contain several steps) to map a spreadsheet of prospective or current students to a record that already exists within salesforce or create a new record.

DemandTools

• Provides a suite of 4 modules to enhance data management of all salesforce objects
• Maintenance - Contains a number of very useful advanced tools to import, update, and maintain your data
• Zipfix - ZipFix can suggest and correct the two digit state name and the spelling of the city name associated with that zip code.
  
• MassChange - The MassChange module is the easiest way to mass manipulate data in salesforce.com because no import or export of data is required.
• MassChangeBatch - The MassChangeBatch feature extends MasChange capabilities allowing you to create rules and develop schedule routines to execute in mass
• Other tools within this group include MassEffect, MassImpact, and MassBackup.
• Cleansing - Provides single & multi table dedup tools as well as mass lead convert features
  
• Verification - Verifies address against USPS address
  
• Discovery - Compares data in external data sources outside of salesforce and returns matching records (no data modified)

**Both People Import & CRM DemandTools are stand alone windows applications so users can feel free to download the app without the need to request integration to the live CRM environment.

Although salesforce does offer some standard data management tools within the platform to import, update, and manage your data, I found CRM Fusion Tools offer much more flexibility.

I have posted a more detailed introduction to People Import & CRM Demand Tools in a PowerPoint presentations located on the salesforce user guide site. Over the next few weeks I intend to add detailed presentation on both tools including a step by step features guide. In addition I will be recording short videos to demo some of the above.