August 2017

Spotlight is on... One Question...   How does this certification help you in the projects you’re working on? This certification helps me to be confident about the work I am doing, and now I can myself develop a new project from scratch with minimum help from others. The current project I am working is almost at the end phase now. I have perfect knowledge about all limitations in Salesforce from a developer’s perspective, as I can maintain the project well and all the tasks which are backlogged in phase I are to be done in this release II. Now I have much knowledge so at the spot itse...

As you learn about and use Salesforce, you may hear the term “Salesforce Org” and hear questions about how many we use. An Org (Organization) is simply the system where you log in to perform your work. Universities and businesses can decide to use just one Org or they can use multiple orgs. The Salesforce architecture is designed for this flexibility so that each university can implement Salesforce in the way that best supports their business. Each solution comes with advantages and disadvantages, and developing an Org strategy is a key decision when implementing Salesforce. It is the foundati...

The 2017 TargetX Summit took place June 25th – 27th in Chicago, IL. The conference offered three days of educational content from CRM users from a variety of institutions, TargetX staff, and industry thought leaders. Attending the Summit was a great opportunity to help further develop technical skills, generate new ideas for how we can better use TargetX solutions, and expand our knowledge of adoption techniques and best practices. The Summit offered comprehensive educational sessions, optional training sessions led by TargetX staff, and opportunities to network with peers who face similar cha...

Do you like personalized, real-time help online when you have a question instead of lengthy wait times on the phone or standing in line? If so, then you’ll love Live Agent. Live Agent is a chat tool within the Service Cloud that allows customers to communicate with an institution via the web from anywhere on any device. With the latest Summer ’17 release by Salesforce, even more exciting features are being rolled out, including: Developers have the ability to embed Live Agent chat functionality in an app or Salesforce Community Chat visitors can upload files at the request of an agent ...

Every year thousands of incoming students attend orientation at their designated campus. Each campus hosts its own specialized program, but one thing they all have in common is a need for a system that allows them to register, communicate, and track orientation attendance. Enter the CRM. Salesforce and TargetX offer functionality that we will be able to utilize to effectively invite the appropriate attendees, communicate with those constituents, allow appointment changes, and track event attendance. And because the events module is part of the CRM, we will have additional information on the...

The Division of Institutional Advancement (IA) has found a way to connect a new divisional priority to its Salesforce CRM implementation through the addition of the Classy platform. As the division expands its fundraising opportunities, crowdfunding has become a priority to implement for the University. After much research, the team was able to select a platform that is also Salesforce compatible. Classy, which is currently touted as the best online and mobile fundraising platform, allows IA to offer crowdfunding and peer-to-peer fundraising in a way that reaches new donors and additional n...

The Process Evaluation and Improvement (PE&I) department includes a team of Business Systems Analysts in Information Services that specialize in LEAN facilitation. This team works with departments to help them better understand and document current processes, identify areas of improvement and areas of waste, help document future state, evaluate effort and impact, and create action plans. Their work spans from doing hour long exercises reviewing current processes to five-day Kaizen engagements. This work is not limited to CRM projects, but they are playing an important role in getting some ...

Recruiting Update PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS Completed mappings and QA testing for the Banner Application data load Completed build-out, tested, and deployed to production the user permission sets to be applied to the recruiting user profile Loaded recruitment data into production environment and de-duplicated records Conducted end user training and updated documentation as needed Added users to production (post training) and applied appropriate permission sets Finalized page layouts, event and inquiry forms, event and email configurations Identified inquiry data requirements for ...

Data is the foundation of any system, and as we progressed in the implementation of the CRM projects, it was important to get the data right! The Data Management team began with a thorough understanding of the Banner demographic, student, and academic data. Learning the Salesforce CRM data structures and the TargetX data model was the first hurdle, with several options available for data storage and display. For example, data could be formatted consistently for display (i.e. phone number), or could be mapped to a code to ensure consistent values (i.e. country of residence). Once an understa...