Kao Consulting Inc.

I follow a blog about social design called Bokardo; it discusses many observations about users and software interface. As Salesforce becomes more and more of a consumer-like business application, I find its topics increasingly relevant to Salesforce administrators.

Josh rightly asks, “if you can’t illustrate an idea visually…is it really a clear idea?”

Both large and small organizations, for-profit or non-profit, must be able to diagram out their processes in order to properly replicate them in Salesforce. If you have a hard time explaining it to someone who’s new to your business, believe me, you’re going to have difficulty building it out within the app.

Regardless of what size your organization, if you have the System Administrator role in your Salesforce org, you should always review a copy of the upcoming release notes to understand how your organization could benefit. The Winter 08 Release Notes are now available.

If you admit that you don’t have the patience to read the whole thing, at least take a look at the Summary of Winter 08 Features and Impact on Saleforce Users section near the front. It highlights which changes in the new release are things you’ll need to configure to use, and which ones will just “happen” in early November with the automatic upgrade happens. The least you can do for your users is prepare them for any default system changes that may happen. That why you all aren’t caught off guard a Monday morning.