Displaying BinaryCanary.com Web Site Status on a Geckoboard
Our company uses Geckoboard.com to display the status of a ton of Salesforce.com related information, as well as info we pull from Trello.com, Fogbugz.com, and BinaryCanary.com.
BinaryCanary.com is a website monitoring company that allows us to monitor all our online properties, and alerts us if there are any issues. BinaryCanary.com has an API that we can query to determine the status of each of our monitors.
We wrote a small PHP script which is polled by Geckoboard.com every 3 minutes, and checks the status of all our online properties. The returns a simple XML file, which is then displayed by Geckoboard.com in a text window.
We are able to use simple HTML like <table> and <font> to make the text display green for sites that are up, and red for any sites that are down.
The widget isn’t very pretty, but it packs a ton of information into a small space, and we can easily see any sites that are red. (Sorry, I had to blank out some of the text…)
Binary Canary Widget
Here’s the PHP file we use to generate the XML for this widget.
And, the Geckoboard Widget settings are:
Geckoboard Text Widget Properties
Adding a phone number field to Salesforce.com Opportunities
We recently had an InGenius Connector Enterprise customer who wanted to have clickable phone numbers associated with each opportunity. By default, opportunities don’t have any phone number fields.
The customer’s workflow was that they wanted their workers to go through the opportunities, and call each one every few days, until the sales was closed.
The Solution:
We advised the customer to add a field to the opportunity of type “Phone.” We called this field “Account Phone.” Since this field is of type “Phone,” it will automatically be converted to a “click-to-dial” field by InGenius Connector Enterprise.
We then added a trigger to the Account that detects any changes, and then loops through all the opportunities associated with this account, and updates the “Account Phone” field in all the opportunities.
This way, the opportunities all have a clickable phone number field that stays in sync with the phone number field in the Account.
The Trigger Apex Code:
trigger UpdateOpportunityPhoneField on Account (after insert, after update) {
// Loop through all account updates in this trigger (there will generally be one)
for(Account acct: Trigger.new) {
List<Opportunity> oppList = [SELECT id, Account_Phone__c FROM Opportunity WHERE Accountid = :acct.id AND Account_Phone__c != :acct.Phone]; // Find all the opportunities for this account.
for(integer i = 0 ; i < oppList.size(); i++){
oppList[i].Account_Phone__c = acct.Phone; // Update all opportunities with the new phone number.
}
update oppList;
}
}
Things to be aware of:
- The solution uses some Apex code to accomplish its magic. You’ll need an appropriate Salesforce.com subscription to use this solution.
- The code loops through all the Opportunities each time an Account is changed. This could use up your Apex allowance.
- If the user edits the Account Phone field in the Opportunity, this is not copied back up to the Account. You could add a second trigger for this, if needed. If the user edits the Account Phone field, the changes will be wiped out the next time the Account is edited. Another alternative is to make the Account Phone field read-only in the Opportunity Layout.
InGenius Software Announces InGenius Connector Enterprise for Salesforce.com Open CTI
September 18, 2012 at Dreamforce, InGenius Software announced their new Enterprise CTI solution, InGenius Connector Enterprise for Salesforce. InGenius Connector Enterprise for Salesforce is the first click-to-dial software solution for Salesforce.com built using the new Salesforce.com Open CTI interface. With no desktop install, InGenius Connector Enterprise for Salesforce, streamlines call dialing and inbound/outbound logging activities for an entire organization. InGenius Connector Enterprise for Salesforce, will be available directly from InGenius Software at http://www.InGenius.com or by calling 613-591-9002 x3000.
InGenius Connector for Salesforce is fully integrated with Salesforce.com to enable several features including incoming call screen pop, click-to-dial, and automatic call logging all from within the Salesforce.com user interface. Additionally, InGenius Connector Enterprise provides automatic field population and configurable templates for fast, accurate logging of all calls against Salesforce.com records. Since InGenius Connector Enterprise for Salesforce utilizes the new Salesforce Open CTI, it requires no desktop install and can be used on both PC (Windows) and Mac (OS X) and accessed from any browser (Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer).
InGenius Connector for Salesforce, is installed on premises at a customer site and connects directly with the customer’s resident telephony system. InGenius Connector Enterprise interoperates directly with the telephony system and does not require any additional hardware or software products to be purchased or installed. Initially being released for Cisco’s Call Manager, InGenius Connector Enterprise for Salesforce works with several telephony platforms including Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE), Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) and Avaya.
Rich Loen, InGenius Software’s CTO says, “InGenius Connector Enterprise makes it very easy for an organization to add click-to-dial and logging functionality for all its Salesforce.com users. The server based install is very quick and eliminates the time and effort associated with visiting every desktop during deployment. This makes enterprise wide roll-out for different platforms very efficient.”
Check out the press release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/9/prweb9901527.htm
InGenius Connector for Salesforce: How to stop those annoying Internet Explorer pop-up messages
Are you getting annoying pop up messages in Internet Explorer when you use Salesforce? Does Internet Explorer ask you if you want to display mixed content every time you change the page? That’s a whole lot of extra clicking! If you would like to avoid this pop up, you can make a change in Internet Explorer’s Internet Options.
For this change, we’ll be changing the Internet Explorer security settings to Enable the display of Mixed Content on the page. You may want to check in with your network administrator before you make this change.
To edit the Internet Explorer security settings:
1) Open Internet Options in your Internet Explorer browser. You can do this from the icon in the top right (shown below).
2) Select the Security tab at the top of the window.
3) Select Internet (we’ll also have to do this for each of the four ‘zones’ displayed), click the Custom level.. button.
4) Scroll about halfway down the list until you see the Display mixed content setting.
5) Change to Enable. This should fix the problem – however, you can also continue on to edit the same settings for Local intranet, Trusted sites, and Restricted sites, if you want to really make sure it doesn’t happen anymore.
The image below will help you find the locations I mean:
(Click the image to enlarge)
InGenius Connector How-to: setup Windows telephony location and dialing rules
InGenius Connector can create and manage it’s own dialing rules, but it also relies on the Windows Telephony Location rules to tell it how to dial. You can set these rules up in “Phones and Modems” on your Windows Control Panel, or directly from a link in InGenius Connector’s configuration window.
If you do not see the checkbox beside “Use Windows Telephony Location” where the arrow points in the image above, that means you are not an administrator on your computer and this option is already automatically checked off for you. Click on the “Edit” button encircled (ensquared?) in red above.
Clicking the “Edit” button will take you to the “Phone and Modem” dialogue box on the left. If you do not see an area code and location that matches your current location, click “New” to set it up. If it’s there, or once you’ve created your location, click “Edit.” This will bring you to the window on the right of the image above. Double check your settings, and make sure that all of the right numbers are in the yellow highlighted box. For example, I have “9″s there to access a line outside of my office network. You probably also want to make sure that “Tone” dialing is selected. Finally, click the “Area Code Rules” tab at the top of this window.
Clicking on the “Area Code Rules” tab at the top the of the “Edit Location” screen on the left of the image above will let you define rules for a specific area code. For example, if you want to make sure that your local area code is always dialed, you would select/create the area code from the window on the left, and then click “Edit.” This will open the Edit Area Code Rule window on the right of the image above. Make sure these settings are to your liking, and then click “OK” on all of the windows you’ve opened.
As a final test, you can open up the InGenius Connector settings window and navigate to the “Dialing Rules – Advanced” screen, as shown above. Type in the number you want to dial in the highlighted field above, and make sure the number that appears in the “Dialed number:” box is what you want to see.
If you are located outside North America and need to use our country-specific dialing rules, this screen is also where you have the option to select different dialing rules, or to import new dialing rules.
Finally, if your dialing rules queries are still unanswered, or if you want to know even more, you can read about Advanced Dialing Rules on our Knowledge Base: http://bugs.ingenius.com/default.asp?W19. Warning: Advanced dialing rules look scary.
InGenius Connector version 3.2: New Release Announcement
I mentioned in a previous post that we’d released a new version of InGenius Connector for Salesforce on Cisco platforms. In the meantime, we’ve also released InGenius Connector for Microsoft Dyanmics CRM on Cisco platforms, and now our newest version is available across all of our phone platforms and CRMs.
Among other things, our new version of InGenius Connector includes:
- Support for Salesforce call center adapter in Firefox and Chrome
- Tons of new features in our Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration
- Support for Cisco platforms
We think you’ll love the new features. Take a look and test it out with a free trial!
Salesforce Call Center tips: Display Call Duration in Minutes
In this post we showed you how to add Call Duration to a Salesforce Activity page. Unfortunately, the only existing field available for you to add and display on your Activity page gives you call duration in seconds. That might work just fine for you and your organization, but some of our users wanted to display call duration in minutes. Here’s how to do it.
As the Salesforce Administrator, navigate to Setup-> Customize-> Activities -> Add Custom Fields.
Select New:
Select Formula for your data type and then click Next:
Enter in the name you would like to give the field (Sarah used “Call Duration(Min)” here. Then select Text and then Next:
Click Advanced Formula and then copy and paste the text below this image into the highlighted space shown below. Once you’ve pasted it, click Next:
IF((MOD(CallDurationInSeconds/60,1)*60) > 10,
TEXT(FLOOR(CallDurationInSeconds/60)) + “:0″ + TEXT(FLOOR(MOD(CallDurationInSeconds/60,1)*60) ))
Select the profiles you wish to be able to see this field. Finally, click Save.
Navigate to a task and you should now see “Call Duration (Min)” displayed on that task page. Cool!
In the image above, you can now see that we’ve got two Call Duration Fields; one displays duration in seconds (we showed you how to display in this post) and one outlined in red that displays call duration in minutes (this is the custom field we just created).
If you’d also like to see this field on your Contacts’ Activity History page, then you’ll need to customize the Contact Page Layout. Stay tuned for more!
