Execute better using Salesforce.com, Basecamp, and Quickbooks

CloudCamp LA – 2009

jcline — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:13:32 +0000

Live blogging of CloudCamp LA 2009

The Organizers

5:15pm – About 10 people so far…

5:30pm – The amazing Persian food arrives thanks to CKK. The lamb is amazing – and the hummus!

6:30pm – Thanks to our sponsors: RIGHT SCALE, Microsoft Azure, alestic, Cisco, Axis Technical Group, & 3 tera. They funded the food, the beer, the venue, and facilitate our gathering to connect, learn, and move cloud computing forward.

6:45pm – Lightning Talk 1: David w/ Microsoft Azure Cloud

This is a cross between Google App engine & Amazon EC2. Nov 17 is go live date.

Cloud models have implications:

Private – you own it but must manage it. (own the car)
Infrastructure – (rent the car)
Private – (public transportation)

100 Globally distributed data centers. Moving the data closer to the customer.

SQLAzure seeks to be relational DB in the cloud. Microsoft is looking to do a hybrid model

7:00pm – Lightning Talk 2: Uri w/ RIGHT SCALE

What are customers doing with the Cloud?

A single admin managing 100 to 1000 servers.
Auto scaling of instances based on load.
Animoto started with 40 servers and move to 4700 in 3 days. Signing up 25,000 people per day.

[Shows many charts showing amazing load variance, ability to peak to extremely high points]

7:15pm – UnPanel (all those who claimed to be “experts” in Cloud Computing)

7 Questions get answered

Q: 20 servers paid for + 2 good employees + no power problems. why should I use the cloud?
A: The hype always precedes the deep usefulness and need of a product. If it doesn’t make sense now, don’t use it. Just evaluate some of the solutions before you invest in your next 10 servers.
Q: Ho do I move my ASP.net app to the cloud?
Q: When should I stop using Amazon SimpleDB?
Q: Large infrastructure, consistent utilization, why should I use the cloud?
Q: How do I avoid lock-in?
A: Carlos: Use systems that have lots of users and developers, use systems that use standards that are interoperable and portable.
Q: How do I keep my data secure?
A: We can’t because someone else owns the disks and could steal them. Although homomorphic encoding is providing some hope of interacting with data without having it leave its encrypted form.
Q: How can I put client server apps in the cloud?
A: Look at each app and analyze it individually. Web apps move the easiest.
Q: What is the operational definition of a cloud computing service?
A: It’s what you use a computer for but with a metered pay schedule that’s scalable, and delivered over the Internet
Q: What is one positive nontechnical motivation for the cloud?
A: Cost reduction, eliminating the complexity of IT, dynamic scalability with no punishment for scaling down, lower risk with little long term consequences
Q: How do you build a CAP app? (Consistency, Availabily, Partitioning)
A: Very carefully as certain architectures do not support it.

7:45pm – Breakout Session Proposals (15+ proposed)

Make It More Readable: Enforce Case w/ Simple Workflow Rules

jcline — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:52:30 +0000

Sometimes the flexibility of Salesforce.com can be intimidating. Whether potential buyers, admins, or users, wrapping your head around all the various tools available to you and imagining how you might used them can be challenging. Sometimes it is the most simple example that starts the wheels turning and leads to a real use case in your business.

I hope this is one of those simple examples. Please let me know otherwise below.

Workflow is a feature of the Enterprise Edition of Salesforce.com that provides a lot of that powerful but daunting flexibility.

I am going to focus on a simple but valuable way to use Workflow to make your data more consistent and readable. I will then show a few screen shots as examples of the setup process and then offer a few additional ways this could help you.

You and I have a different way of taking notes. You probably write very well. Me, not so much. I use pictures (thanks Tony Buzan!) and you use abbreviations. I oscillate between ALL CAPS and Camel Case (also called Title Caps) and you write in all lowercase.

So, let’s say we are both working together on a deal in Salesforce.com and logging calls, tasks, updating Opportunity and Account information, etc. Our style of writing will start making the information look strange. Certainly my doodles would be absent but my ALL CAPS, Title Caps, and your lowercase notes would certainly stand out.

Many companies require all written forms to be filled out in ALL CAPS due to the variance in how people write letters like o, i, l, and others. It is probably a good idea to set the same rules for information that is typed in since all are used to looking at capitalized letters.

Workflow can do this automatically so no matter who enters valuable information, it will be placed in the right case when it is saved. All we have to do is setup a simple rule with some actions and it will all happen automatically from there.

Inside the Salesforce.com Setup area (click the “Setup” link at the top, just right of center), we will navigate to Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | Workflow Rules. Click New Rule and select what object it relates to. In my case, I want Account fields to be saved in ALL CAPS.

After clicking next, choose the criteria of your rule. This is just Salesforce.com asking, “when should I do these actions?” I chose every time the account is saved and when Account Name not equal to null so it will run every time it is saved, whether a new or existing account.

By clicking Edit on this screen, you can add/modify the actions you want to execute when the rule gets invoked.

In this case, we just want to take some existing text, such as “Hello world!” and make it “HELLO WORLD!” before saving it. We do this through a Field Update as we are updating the text that exists within a field.

Here is the simple formula that transforms text into ALL CAPS. You can use this exact syntax for each field as long as you just change the part that is inside the parenthesis to be the specific field you want to change. Use the Insert Field button to pick one and it will insert it into your formula for you.

Once you have done this, simple go back to an existing Account record, edit a field and save it. If done right, all the text fields you assigned actions to will automatically turn to ALL CAPS. The page will be SCREAMING SUCCESS TO YOU!

I’m not angry, I’m excited. Really.

To your success.

Is Your Profitability Flexible? Here’s a Possible Solution

jcline — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:50:18 +0000

When it comes to business, using flexible tools in the wrong place can make your profitability flexible too. Every business does it for at least a short time but the successful will proactively innovate to avoid the high cost it brings with growth. Here’s a short test to see where you are on the scale.

The Test

Do you have at least 2 versions of the same form and have difficulty getting your team to use the right one?
Do you let your sales reps come up with their own method to manage leads?
Do you only hear of a deal once it’s been signed?
Does your staff complain of too much “admin” or “overhead” time?
Do you have an employee that manages docs and spreadsheets regularly?
Do clients complain that their expressed needs were not met or items were forgotten?
When a sales rep departs, is their little hope of finding, not to mention working his in progress deals?
Does your sales manager have little visibility into your sales pipeline (i.e. accounts, deal size, win rate, discounting)
Is there little historical data available without significant manual labor?
Do you often have to search through numerous docs and emails for account related info?

Each ‘yes’ answer on this list is shaving hundreds of dollars from your profitability for each employee!

The flexibility of these tools is very helpful at times, especially when doing one-off tasks or exploring a process. However, when you are looking to grow and add on additional resources as needed, this flexibility puts too much creativity into the hands of each person and leads to an organization headache with lots of confusion. Especially if the situation isn’t changed before the next growth spurt.

The worst time to change is when potential customers are knocking down your doors.

The Solution

Most businesses make the decision to move away from this flexibility toward a manageable system when they are small and want to grow. Profitable growth is very challenging in general and without a simple, consistent system to manage the increase of very important information, it can be stunted.

My recommendation to any business that answered ‘yes’ to at least one question above is to consider starting with Salesforce.com Group Edition. With a free 7 day trial and just $8 or so per user per month for up to five users, you can see quickly the benefits of having a common system for all your team.

Salesforce.com Data Cleansing on a Shoestring Budget

jcline — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:48:25 +0000

One of the biggest challenges with any database, especially when they are easy to use for your whole team, is keeping the data accurate. The most common problem is duplicate data due to the variance in spellings, abbreviations, and other ways that information can be stored with a slight variance in syntax or specifically how it is written.

Salesforce.com definitely falls into the category of an easy to use database and the great potential of getting your entire team directly involved with the data can quickly change your data from a couple varieties of lettuce, each in their own bag to a large tossed salad with few or no ways to discern duplicates, the data of record for conflicts, or organize and separate the lettuce out again.

There are great solutions like RingLead that can proactively check for duplicates when entered and even help you sort them out quickly once saved. However, pricing is based on which features you use and the total number of records. I checked pricing on just the de-duping feature called Declone Data Cleansing for less than 3000 existing Accounts and Contacts and the price came back in excess of $1000 annually. (Their free trial enabled me to test their system on de-duping my Contacts with names ending in A – C which was a nice way to get a few records done.)

Due to the relational nature of Salesforce.com, various records like Tasks, Cases, Campaigns, and other information may be connected to a Contact or Account so keeping the Master Record, the one that is most accurate, and deleting the rest is not the best solution as any connected data either gets deleted or becomes orphaned.

The solution is Merging and Salesforce.com includes very simple wizards for merging up to three Contacts and Accounts at a time. Merge Contacts by clicking “Merge Contacts” button above the Contacts related list when viewing an Account. Merge Accounts by clicking the Accounts tab and then clicking the “Merge Accounts” link at the bottom under “Tools.”

The above method can be time consuming and is not in context to where you might see the problem. If you were to determine if you had duplicates, you would use Views or Reports. What I did was simply enable a custom link from separate Contact and Account Reports so that when I saw a duplicate, I could click the link and it would take me directly to the Merge Wizard for the set of Contacts or Accounts that I wanted to merge.

Here are some points to help you do the same.

Create a new Custom Formula Field in both the Contact and Account objects
Setup | Customize | Contacts or Accounts | Fields | Custom Fields & Relationships > New
Name is what you like such as “Merge URL” and select Formula Field. Click Next.
Select Return Type of Text. Click Next.
Click the Advanced Formula tab and enter the corresponding Formula below:
Account (i.e. /merge/accmergewizard.jsp?srch=Joe’s Crab Shack):
HYPERLINK('/merge/accmergewizard.jsp?srch=' & Name, 'Merge Accounts', '_blank')Contact (i.e. /merge/conmergewizard.jsp?id=0018000000RrGuG):
HYPERLINK('/merge/conmergewizard.jsp?id=' & AccountId, 'Merge Contacts', '_blank')
Click Next.
Make them visible to Profiles and add them to Page Layouts as you need.
Customize the Contact and/or Account Report you would like to add the field to.
Select “Choose Columns” in the top right pull down menu and check the box next to the Merge URL field from #2.
Select “Order Columns” in the top right pull down menu and move the Merge URL columns to the top of the list or where you desire.
Click “Run Report” and see how it looks. You should see your Merge URL formula fields within the Report and can click one for a test. If you are using grouping, your Account field may be next to the Account name and the Contact field may be down near the Contact
If you like it, click Save and you have a quick way to Merge Contacts and Accounts with just a few clicks.

Formula field in Report with hyperlink to Merge Contacts

For more detail, I provide Digital Coaching, Training, and Implementation services for Salesforce.com and Basecamp.

Glad to help.

How To Make Tables Easier To Create & Use in Basecamp

jcline — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:51:03 +0000

As a Digital Coach, I leverage Basecamp in my business and coach others to do so as well. It helps managers better manage and everyone executes better because they know what is expected by when in a simple, easy to understand fashion.

One of the underused elements of Basecamp is it’s ability to render tables for columnar data. I used this when detailing out field, page layout, and formula changes prior to implementing them in Salesforce so they can all be seen at a glance and updated in a Writeboard before ever hitting the Salesforce.com admin portal.

Basecamp renders visual tables very well with the help of Textile.

However, there are many other reasons tables are generally useful. One example is sorting by a specific column. You cannot do this in Basecamp but you can in OpenOffice Calc or Excel. However, if it was easy to go back and forth between them then using the best of each when needed would be feasible. This is what I will be illustrating.

I prefer the former so this tip will be using OpenOffice.

I want to create a table in Basecamp but rather than create it as text and insert the pipe (”|”) symbols, etc. as I go, I start with a new Calc doc and drop in my column headings and fill in the rows.

OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet

When I am ready, I simply copy the text I have entered into the spreadsheet and paste it into JEdit, a free java based text editor. The great part about JEdit is you can create custom Macros that do common manipulations to text. In this case, I am replacing the tabs automatically created from my copy/paste operation with pipes (”|”) and new lines with pipe and new line combinations. Here is the macro so you can quickly create your own. My Mac stores them in /Users/joncline/.jedit/macros/, your computer may have a different location.

textArea.goToPrevLine(false); SearchAndReplace.setSearchString("\\t"); SearchAndReplace.setReplaceString(" | "); SearchAndReplace.setBeanShellReplace(false); SearchAndReplace.setIgnoreCase(true); SearchAndReplace.setRegexp(true); SearchAndReplace.setSearchFileSet(new CurrentBufferSet()); SearchAndReplace.replaceAll(view); SearchAndReplace.setSearchString("\\n"); SearchAndReplace.setReplaceString(" |\\n| "); SearchAndReplace.setBeanShellReplace(false); SearchAndReplace.setIgnoreCase(true); SearchAndReplace.setRegexp(true); SearchAndReplace.setSearchFileSet(new CurrentBufferSet()); SearchAndReplace.replaceAll(view);

So, I paste this now tab separated value (TSV) text block into Jedit:

Field Type Values (CSV) Note Landing MonthlyUnits number(8) - What is their average monthly unit volume per month? Account MonthlyUnitSales number(8) - What is their average monthly sales? Account SeasonalBusiness boolean yes, no From Lead Questionnaire Form Account

Run the macro on it to turn it into this:
(you may have to add the leading or trailing pipe symbol depending whether you had line breaks before or after your tab)

I can now paste this code directly into any Basecamp Message, Writeboard, ToDo/Milestone Chat, etc. to get a table.

BONUS: What if I want to edit my Basecamp table again or add more fields? Must I do it in basecamp now?

This is a great question and since Basecamp is collaborative, I would expect this. The method is actually quite simple if you are using a Writeboard, which you should be since you are collaborating on the source data, not just commenting on it (read: Message). Instead of opening the spreadsheet and typing in your columns and rows, you simply go to your Writeboard, click the Export button at the top and view the HTML version.

Now, simply copy the columns and rows you want from the HTML file and paste them into your spreadsheet. You may get a confirmation menu to confirm the columns and rows were selected accurately but you quickly are back into the powerful spreadsheet interface for sorting, additional columns, reordering, etc.

Once finished, simply follow the directions above and move the data back into Basecamp from TSV text again.

Keep working together, and that doesn’t mean using “Track Changes” in your favorite Office app!

Your Digital Coach,

P.S.
If you don’t want to do any of this and your data is not confidential, you might consider just embedding a public Google Spreadsheet into your Message, Writeboard, etc. and you can just modify it as needed.

Organize Your Growing Set of Browser Tabs

jcline — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:59:38 +0000

During both of my last two online coaching sessions, my client has asked me about the way I have setup my own web browser, Firefox.

Specifically, they wanted to know how I could have over 20 open Tabs at once and still remain sane. The ability to have multiple pages in your browser be seen as Tabs instead of unique windows has been in Firefox for a few years and came to Internet Explorer and Safari more recently. Each Tab indicates a unique web page and with all of the various on-demand apps, sites, and pages I make use of, having 20 open pages seems to be the rule nowadays, not the exception.

Tree Style Tab Add-On for Firefox

I am one of those people who “get’s nervous” — my words — when I have many things open and cannot easily discern or navigate them. This is why I moved to the Mac and this is why prior to this Add-On I would only have as many Tabs as I could horizontally stack and still read, usually about 4-7, depending on page titles.

So, try this in your Firefox and let me know how it helps you.

Tree Style Tab Add-On for Firefox.

Additionally, here are a few additional tips for Firefox:

By default, the Tab bar will be organized horizontally at the top like Firefox does without it. Change it to organize them vertically to get the productivity gain.
When you have multiple tabs open, the first 10 are attached to keyboard shortcuts CTRL/+0 through CTRL/+9 so you can move between the tabs quickly.
When you want to navigate Tabs in context rather than by number, you can use CTRL-TAB and CTRL-SHIFT-TAB for next Tab and previous Tab respectively.
Now that you can handle many pages as Tabs at a glance, you might consider bookmarking an entire set of pages as Tabs such as “Shopping” instead of just Amazon.com or WhatSheBuys.com.

Your Inbox = Re: Re: Fwd: Re: New Website Project – Huh?

jcline — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:48:27 +0000

We’ve all seen our email inbox explode as a project starts out and all the team gets going. Your inbox starts to look something like this soon after the project begins:

Re: New Website Project
Re: Fwd: New Website Project
Re: New Website Project
Re: Re: Fwd: New Website Project
Re: Call Your Mother
Re: New Website Project
Re: Re: Fwd: Re: New Website Project
Re: Fwd: Re: New Website Project
Offer: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

And this is just the first 30 minutes! In my experience, using email for this sort of communication is the norm. All the information and data related to the project is sent via email:

Questions related to the project
Updates on the status of the project
Attached documents related to the project
Deadlines for the project
Reference materials for the project

This ultimately leads to your email inbox turning into a repository of information related to many different projects of which this is just one. This brings many challenges including:

Email was designed for notification so searching it is generally frustrating
Email often not backed up to prevent data loss
Email databases struggle to handle the increase in size this task requires resulting in technical difficulties
Email subject lines are often vague and out of sync with the actual message contents
Purging old information after a project is complete is very time consuming
Accidental deletion, spamboxes, and mailbox quotas cause a myriad of resends and repetitive work

Do I need to go on?

We have all experienced this but find ourselves drafting the accouncement email with all the milestones, some of the tasks, and adding our team to the CC: field again and again.

Imagine never having to ask “Can you resend me that file again? I think I deleted it” again. Imagine being able to see status automatically based on what has actually happened, not what someone says has or will happen.

The answer is Basecamp. I hesitate to call it project management as it might scare you off with nightmares of MS Project and Gantt Charts. It is the most accessible and simple way I have found to manage lots of tasks, people, deadlines, and copy.

For example, let’s say you want to find the web design 2 revisions ago that was emailed to you and your team. You deleted it as it has a 50MB attachment and you knew someone else was worrying about it. Now you need it so:

Send an email to your 3 other team members and ask them if they have the web design file from an email 2 revisions ago.
Your team members each spend their time searching their inboxes to find the 200 emails with “New Website Project” in the subject with an attachment and then find the one with a Photoshop file from 2 revisions ago.
Each team member that finds something sends you an email with a 50MB attachment and asks “Is this it?”
You then receive the emails, open up each of the files and try and compare which one is the right one.

Total time for 4 people involved: 2.5 hours

Let’s imagine you were using Basecamp to manage your project and you need to find the web design 2 revisions ago. You would need to:

Log into Basecamp
Navigate to the project called “New Website Project”
Click the Files tab
Click the Web Design file and download the one from 2 revisions ago.

Total time for 1 person involved: 10 minutes

This is just one example, my next posts will talk about the specific features Basecamp offers and how to benefit from them by using them strategically.

– jc

Understanding Business Accounts and Person Accounts – Part 2

jcline — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:07:33 +0000

In Part 1 of this series, we reviewed the difference between a [Business] Account and a Person Account.

Moving from a Business Account to a Person Account is very common and the converse can be as well so how do we make this easy to do?

Let’s review the requirements to create a Person Account from a Contact.

Salesforce states the only path to change a Contact into a Person Account has these requirements:

You must use the Application Programming Interface (API) to do it.
You cannot make any other updates or changes to the record at the same time.
You must create an Account/Contact pair. That’s one Account with one Contact. The new Person Account will take the Account name.
The Account must have a blank Parent Account value.
The Contact must have a blank Reports To value.
All data in any shared fields (i.e. phone, etc.) between the Account/Contact need to match.*

* I have found that converting a Contact with a mailing address and an Account with no address still works with the address being added to the new Person Account.

As I was looking to solve a different problem today, I came across a solution that made this process simple. Instead of using the heavy apps mentioned in my previous post, this one involves adding a simple Custom Link on qualified Business Account Page Layouts that will convert the Account/Contact into a Person Account.

To get this done, follow or print this page for your Salesforce Admin:

While logged into http://www.salesforce.com, click the Setup link at the top of the page, just right of center.
Navigate to Apps Setup > Customize > Accounts > Buttons and Links.
Navigate to Account Buttons and Links
Near the bottom of the page, click the New button to the right of the header Custom Buttons and Links.
Use example image below to match your settings exactly.
Create the Custom Link using Javascript
Paste all of the Javascript code below into the code area and save. Preferably the second one for added safety.
Get the SalesforceID of the Person Account Record Type you would like to convert to.
1. Navigate to Apps Setup > Customize > Accounts > Person Accounts > Record Types
2. Copy the value after the “id=” in the URL either by clicking the Record Type name or copying the URL to your clipboard. It usually starts with “012″.
3. The value I used out of my url is bolded here:
  https://na2.salesforce.com/setup/ui/recordtypefields.jsp?id=0124000000011NS&type=01I400000005qaX&setupid=PersonAccountRecords
Navigate to Apps Setup > Customize > Accounts > Page Layouts
Click the Page Layout you would like to add this Custom Link to. Security note: If you add this to a widely visible Page Layout, you may find that people will convert B2B records because they can. Sigh.
Click Custom Links on the left of the Layout Editor Top Bar.
Drag your Custom Link onto your Page Layout
Drag the Custom Link you created onto the Page Layout and save.
Custom Link is in the Custom Links section in the Page Layout Editor

Here is the code courtesy of David Schach of X2OD.com:

{!REQUIRESCRIPT("/soap/ajax/13.0/connection.js")} var AccountObj = new sforce.SObject("Account"); AccountObj.Id = '{!Account.Id}'; AccountObj.RecordTypeId = '0120000000000000'; // Change by pasting new RecordTypeID sforce.connection.update([AccountObj]); location.reload(true);

Changing the red/bold RecordTypeID will change the behavior from a Business Account => Person Account to a Person Account => Business Account. I suppose you could also use this same method to switch Accounts to other Record Types withing B2B and B2C such as a Vendor to a Partner Account, etc.

I like a little confirmation and feedback just to make sure I don’t accidently do this and cause trouble for me (or my client!) so I added a confirm() and alert():

// convert TO a Person Account
{!REQUIRESCRIPT(”/soap/ajax/13.0/connection.js”)}
if(confirm(’Are you sure you want to convert this Account and Contact to a single Person Account (B2C)? This is NOT reversable.’))
{
var AccountObj = new sforce.SObject(”Account”);
AccountObj.Id = ‘{!Account.Id}’;
AccountObj.RecordTypeId = ‘0120000000000000‘; // Paste B2C RecordTypeID
msg = sforce.connection.update([AccountObj]);
alert(msg);
location.reload(true);
}

Custom Link is now visible on specific Page Layout

This will show a little popup confirming what you are doing and that it is not reversable. It is reversable with a little work but I would like others to realize that they should only do this if they know what they are doing. This avoids the accidental curiosity clicks. This also saves the response from Salesforce for a simple alert to confirm all was successful or the error if received. The original behavior just reloads the page with no messaging.

Person Account Created. Success!

Thanks again David and I hope this helps many the way it has helped me.

– Jon

Avoiding Number Formatting Problems in Salesforce.com Fields

jcline — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:51:19 +0000

An issue came up with a client recently that will help other Salesforce.com users I’m sure. The issue relates to the increasing use of unique and long numbers in business. From account numbers, merchant numbers, to Tax ID numbers, we have lots of numbers to keep tabs on.

Salesforce.com is a great place to keep these numbers. However, if you create a custom field and store them as numbers you will find your formatting probably will not be allowed or preserved.

A couple examples:

US Tax ID numbers are in the form of: 88-8888888. This number contains a dash after the first 2 digits. Social Security Numbers have the same problem with two dashes: 888-88-8888. Not allowed as a number with the dashes so you are forced to enter in the numbers by themselves, removing the intended formatting and giving you a new format: 888,888,888.
An account number with a vendor is 8847506644758 and can be saved as long as it is 18 or less digits before the decimal. However, when you view it, it shows 8,847,506,644,758 which is a little distracting to the eyes and confuses the fact that this number is an account number, not a numeric total of something else.

The solution in both of these cases is to only store numeric data that will be related to calculations in formulas, reports, etc. There will never be an example of subtracting two SSNs or adding merchant numbers together so storing them as numbers, even though they are, is unnecessary and cumbersome.

The rule should be:

Only store numeric data as a number when it quantifies something.
Otherwise, use text and include any spaces, dashes, or other characters that make it more easy to read and parse (i.e. 66898-9865-57377)

– Jon

Understanding Business Accounts and Person Accounts – Part 1

jcline — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:23:12 +0000

How you store your client information inside Salesforce.com makes a big difference. One area where this is very clear is Accounts and Contacts. Salesforce began as a business tool and therefore focused on business to business (B2B) relationships. Therefore, the Account object is oriented toward a business or company by default.

These relationships look like this:

ACCOUNT (i.e. Acme, Inc., www.acme.com, 1-800-ACME-INC) | | ----- CONTACT (i.e. Joe Smith, joe@acme.com, 555-555-1212) ----- CONTACT ...

This works great when there is a company such as a company client, vendor, or partner and it has employees that are related to it.

However, what happens when the client is an individual person such as someone who bought one of your e-books or a t-shirt? What happens when you are a nonprofit that relates to individual as well as institutional donors?

This is where a fairly recent addition to Salesforce, Person Accounts, comes into play.

Instead of being forced into this parent-child relationship between the Account and Contact, it combines these two objects into one Account/Contact object called a Person Account that looks like this:

PERSON ACCOUNT (i.e. Joe Smith, www.joesworld.com, joe@gmail.com, 555-555-1212)

So, let’s say you started out in Salesforce without Person Accountsenabled or you still find your team creating Accounts and Contacts for B2C individuals. What can you do besides just retyping in all the info in a new Person Account? Can you just convert it?

Well, Salesforce states the only path to change a Contact into a Person Account has these requirements:

You must use the Application Programming Interface (API) to do it.
You cannot make any other updates or changes to the record at the same time.
You must create an Account/Contact pair. That’s one Account with one Contact. The new Person Account will take the Account name.
The Account must have a blank Parent Account value.
The Contact must have a blank Reports To value.
All data in any shared fields (i.e. phone, etc.) between the Account/Contact need to match.*

* I have found that converting a Contact with a mailing address and an Account with no address still works.

Now, the most painful of these steps for a normal Salesforce user is #1. Dealing with the API is a great feature but many stellar admins and users are not familiar with these concepts and are not interested.

Previous discussions I’ve read cover the Data Loader or Excel Connector which can certainly hammer this nail like a sledgehammer but are very developer oriented and overkill for this common task. They are Windows-only apps as well.

Thankfully, there is a much easier way to get this done for Mac, PC, and Linux users on-the-go with less than 10 lines of Javascript from right within Firefox.