Book Image

Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook

By : Paul Goodey, Paul Goodey GP
Book Image

Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook

By: Paul Goodey, Paul Goodey GP

Overview of this book

Salesforce CRM is a market-leading customer relationship management (CRM) application that is accessed over the Internet. It is a proven system which helps to manage large volumes of information across an organization and also improves communication between departments for exceptional customer service. The CRM application is available for the management of sales projections and orders, marketing plans, knowledge management, service and support, partner relationships, and data analytics. The application greatly enhances a company's sales performance, improves customer satisfaction, and provides a robust customer relationship management system for an organization. For optimum performance of the system, there are a lot of things for you as the Salesforce administrator to know and tackle, but there isn't a single book which focuses on the administrative aspect of Salesforce CRM. "Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook" enables you to instantly extend and unleash the power of Salesforce CRM. It provides clear, comprehensive instructions along with detailed screenshots and code. Whether you are looking for solutions to enhance the core features or are looking for ideas for advanced customization techniques, this book will provide you with immediate, practical, and exciting real-world recipes. This book provides practical, step-by-step instructions that cover the use of hidden features, advanced user interface techniques, solutions for process automation, and data and systems integration in detail. This book guides you through interesting topics spanning a variety of functional areas. Recipes are provided that cover data quality and automation, approval and workflow processing, solutions to increase productivity, and the integration of Salesforce CRM with external tools and applications, such as Google and Microsoft Outlook. "Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook' provides practical, step-by-step instructions to deliver enhanced functionality and extend the power of Salesforce CRM.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Adding a Send An Email button on the home page


Within the Salesforce CRM application you can natively add custom links to the home page, which can be configured to call web URLs. These URLs can be either external to Salesforce or internal, such as a link to the Salesforce CRM Training pages (covered in an earlier recipe within this chapter).

Salesforce does not, however, natively provide a way of adding custom buttons onto the home page in order to call web URLs.

Often it is preferable to provide a button to invoke certain behavior (rather than a URL link). One such example is a Send An Email button.

How to do it...

Carry out the following steps to add a Send An Email button to the home page:

  1. Navigate to the home page components setup page by going to Your Name | Setup | Customize | Home | Home Page Components.

  2. Click on New.

    Note

    The New button is found by scrolling down the page to the Custom Components section.

  3. Click on Next (on the Understanding Custom Components splash screen if shown). The Next button is found on the Understanding Custom Components splash screen (this page is only shown if the Don't show this page again checkbox has not previously been checked), as shown in the following screenshot:

    Here, we will be presented with the Step 1. New Custom Components page.

  4. Enter the name of the custom component in the Name field. Enter the text Email Button.

  5. Select the HTML Area option from the Type options list.

  6. Click on Next.

  7. Ensure that the Wide (Right) Column option is selected within the Component Position option list.

    Note

    You are unable to change this setting after the component is created.

  8. Check the Show HTML checkbox.

    Note

    The above step is important! Locate and check the Show HTML checkbox as shown in the following screenshot:

  9. Paste the following code (as shown in the following screenshot):

    <INPUT style="BACKGROUND-IMAGE: url(/img/bgButton.gif); BORDER-BOTTOM: #5c5d61 1px solid; PADDING-BOTTOM: 
    1px; BORDER-LEFT-STYLE: none; PADDING-LEFT: 3px; PADDING-RIGHT: 3px; DISPLAY: inline; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: 
    repeat-x; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana', 'Geneva', sans-serif; BACKGROUND-POSITION: left top; BORDER-TOP-STYLE: 
    none; COLOR: #ffffff; FONT-SIZE: 80%; CURSOR: pointer; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; BORDER-RIGHT: #5c5d61 1px solid; 
    PADDING-TOP: 1px" title="This will send an email" 
    onclick="javascript:window.location='/_ui/core/email/author/EmailAuthor';" name=SendAnEmail value=Send 
    type=button>
  10. Click on Save.

    Note

    We have created our Send An Email button's custom home page component but we are not finished yet. We now need to add the custom home page component to a home page layout.

  11. Navigate to the home page components setup page, by clicking the following: Your Name | Setup | Customize | Home | Home Page Layouts.

  12. Determine which home page layout to place the component on and click Edit. Here we are editing the home page layout named DE Default.

    We will be presented with the Step 1. Select the components to show page.

  13. Check the Send An Email checkbox in the Select Wide Components to Show section as shown:

  14. Click on Next.

  15. Position the Send An Email button as the top position in the Wide (Right) Column using the Arrange the component on your home page. section, as shown in the following screenshot:

  16. Click on Save.

How it works...

You can see what this looks like in the following screenshot:

When the button is clicked the task's e-mail page is displayed, as shown in the following screenshot:

There's more...

When entering HTML and JavaScript code into the HTML editor section (in Step 2 of the New Custom Component wizard) you must ensure that the code is valid.

Note

Pay particular attention to the displayed warning message:

Please ensure that the HTML code entered below is valid, well formed HTML. Poorly written HTML in this component may cause the entire Home tab to appear incorrectly

There are a maximum of 20 custom components that can be added to a home page layout.