Category

Information Technology

salesforce

Salesforce Issues Malware Warning

By | CRM & Salesforce, Information Technology, Nonprofit Tech

Salesforce has recently announced that certain malware may be able to steal a user’s Salesforce credentials. At this time, Salesforce does not believe it is affected. However, it is always good to take preventative measures in these situations. The name of this malware is Dyre or Dyreza; this would be a program (like a virus) that runs on the user’s computer. The malware could target any site, it just so happens that Salesforce is its target. (Click here to learn more about malware) You should follow the instructions below to keep your Salesforce account and your computer safe.

  1. Find out what antivirus program is running on your computers (home, work, laptop, etc. – anywhere that you might login to Salesforce).
  2. Use the website of your antivirus program or contact your IT provider to find out if you are protected from Dyre or Dyreza.
data practices - spreadsheet

3 Principles to legitimize your Data Practices

By | CRM & Salesforce, Data Management, Information Technology, Nonprofit Management
data practices - spreadsheet

Image courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Have you ever wondered why your staff is using Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs to track data when you have a perfectly good central database for that purpose?

We see this problem over and over. If data is warehoused in disparate files, its value is seriously diminished. Plus, overall efficiency suffers whenever you actually try to use the data

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Salesforce Tech Talk: How To Convert a Contact to a Person Record

By | Information Technology

This post is for anyone already using Person Accounts.

salesforceThere are pros and cons to using Person Accounts, but because relatively few apps play nicely with them, they’re typically used by organizations that have a good reason for going the Person Account route.  So don’t think that you need to go switch today – if you don’t use them, you’re off the hook today! Jeff Douglas’s blog has a fantastic, detailed description of Person Accounts if you want to learn more about this account type.

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Scary emails from Salesforce: What action does a nonprofit need to take about whitelists?

By | CRM & Salesforce, Information Technology, Nonprofit Resources, Nonprofit Tech

If you get the emails that Salesforce sends out to systems administrators, you probably got a baffling email last week with the subject “Action Required: Whitelist All Salesforce IP Ranges to Prepare for Login Pools.”

dog-dude-wait-what
If you’re a normal person, your reaction was probably “Wait, what?”

First things first: the chances of small and mid-sized nonprofits needing to do anything about this email is very slim.  Check with whoever manages your IT and network, they’ll know what this email means and whether you should do anything.

But because the question has come up a couple of times, we figured we’d try to translate.  This isn’t really about Salesforce, but it’s a quick peek into the inner workings of the internet for the curious.

Inner workings of the Internet
Many of us don’t even bother with the address bar on our web browsers anymore – we just type in what we want and whatever search engine we use goes out and fetches it.  So these days you can type “salesforce” into the top address bar of your browser, and more or less go to the right web site.  If you’re old enough to read this blog post, you’re probably old enough to remember when you had to type in “www.salesforce.com” or “login.salesforce.com,” or type in “google.com” and go search for whatever you were looking for.  If you deal with web pages at all, you know that you have to find the URL (human readable name) of a web site in order to link to it.

Screen Shot 2013-10-29 at 8.23.11 PM

That human readable web address (URL) has some magic behind it.  When you type it into your address bar, your computer first talks to your local network, which talks out to the world, to find out how to translate “login.salesforce.com” into a unique IP address.  A unique IP address is just a string of numbers tied to a unique computer somewhere, like a telephone number is tied to only your phone.  How a request gets from your computer to a global computer to Salesforce servers, back to your computer, is pretty neat, actually, but we’ll trust you to read more on your own.

IP Address assignment in today’s day and age
In the very old days, you got one IP address per human-readable address.  Your own organization’s web site probably has only one IP address.  For massively busy and distributed (cloud) systems like Salesforce, or Google, what actually happens is that any of hundreds, or thousands, of different IP addresses can actually answer a request for “login.salesforce.com.”

Whitelisting Salesforce.com’s IP Addresses
So Salesforce is just expanding the number of computers that can answer a request for “login.salesforce.com.”   This never impacts most people.  However, if you are dealing with systems that have to be absolutely sure that “login.salesforce.com” isn’t coming from some evil hacker, you will get a list from Salesforce of what IP addresses are legit, and you’ll whitelist those IP addresses.  If you’ve done that, you need to expand your list soon.  That’s all this is about.

The Three Immutable, Immovable Laws of SalesForce: As told by a former nonprofit SalesForce Admin (1 of 3)

By | Information Technology

Law 1: Commitment

Repeat after me: IF IT’S NOT IN SALESFORCE THEN IT DOES NOT EXIST.

It’s that simple. SalesForce, especially for nonprofit organizations, can be an incredibly powerful and valuable system. This means, however, that other systems must go away, reporting systems must get consolidated, and people must have the expectation that relevant information must find its way into SalesForce.

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Summer ’13 Salesforce.com Release Notification

By | CRM & Salesforce, Information Technology, Nonprofit Tech

501Partners would like to advise its clients using the Salesforce.com platform that Salesforce will be releasing its Summer 2013 upgrade over the next couple weeks. Users of Salesforce.com do not need to do anything to manage this upgrade except to note that is is occuring. Your organization’s specific 5 minute upgrade window can be found by visiting trust.salesforce.com.

During the five minute upgrade window, clients will not be able to access their Salesforce.com. Once the upgrade is complete, your organization will be on the new release and no further action is required.

If you have specific questions regarding this upgrade, we recommend you speak with your 501Partners representative.

At salesforce.com, customer success is our top priority. We work hard to deliver optimal value in each of our releases to you and your users. The Summer ’13 release is quickly approaching and we want to ensure you have the information you need to best prepare.

Google Maps and Your Nonprofit’s Data

By | 501Partners News, CRM & Salesforce, Information Technology, Nonprofit Tech

Please join Jenn Taylor, 501Partners’ COO as she leads a hands-on discussion and training on the use of Google Maps to map your nonprofit’s data.

The event is being hosted by HandsOn Tech Boston on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM (EDT) in Cambridge, MA. To register, please click here.

For a preview of the process, you can visit page on Success Stories or directly at this link.

Salesforce.com to end Google AdWords support

By | CRM & Salesforce, Information Technology, Nonprofit Tech

501Partners would like to inform its clients on the Salesforce.com platform that technical support for integrated Google AdWords will be ending on May 1, 2013. If you are using AdWords, you will no longer have new data added to leads and opportunities nor will you be able to use the AdWords integrated application

Existing data, views, dashboards and reports will still contain previously collected data and will remain accessible to users. While 501Partners does not currently recommend a replacement solution (although we are researching the best solution for our clients), Salesforce.com is recommending the following partner solutions:

Please note that 501Partners and Salesforce.com are not affiliated with any of these third party solutions.  For more information from Salesforce.com on this topic, please click this link.

Salesforce to Update Its Login Identity Confirmation Program

By | CRM & Salesforce, Information Technology, Nonprofit Tech

On March 6, 2013, Salesforce.com began a phased rollout that changes their Identity Confirmation in an effort to increase its overall security and protection of user accounts. This change will ultimately impact all of 501Partners’ clients that are on the Salesforce.com platform. Salesforce will replace email Identity Confirmation with SMS Identity Confirmation for all verified mobile users. This update safeguards Salesforce.com customers by adding an extra layer of protection when verifying a system login from an unknown source. Once the change is activated, verified mobile users will only receive an SMS Identity Confirmation message. Users without mobile phones will still have the option to use email identity confirmation.

What do you need to do? The folks at Salesforce will automatically enable this change on the auto-activation date listed in the Critical Update Console of your account, which is found on the Setup page under the “Critical Update” section in the left-hand navigation. However, Salesforce strongly encourages you to enable this update prior to the auto-activation date by clicking the “Activate” button in the Critical Update Console of your Salesforce.

To learn more, please visit the Salesforce FAQ page on this change. If you would like 501Partners to assist you with this change please contact us at info@501Partners.com.