Salesforce.com API timeouts

Last Updated on Thursday, 31 May 2007 01:20 Written by Steve Thursday, 31 May 2007 01:20

About a month ago I started to get time out errors when I was using Eclipse to sync my S-Controls and when logging in to the Data Loader.

Increasing the timeout period does the trick, but I wonder why the timeouts have started happening more. I can’t help but think it’s tied to Apex going pre-release. Could be they’re being more sophisticated in how they’re prioritizing API traffic, favoring existing sessions over new ones.

Whatever the case may be, I recommend increasing your timeouts in Eclipse so you don’t get these annoying messages.

Thank you to our Awesome Donors

Last Updated on Thursday, 31 May 2007 07:32 Written by Steve Thursday, 31 May 2007 07:32

I’d like to thank all the folks that support ONE/Northwest in our use of CRM.

First and foremost, thanks to the Salesforce.com Foundation for donating Enterprise Edition so that we can use it to manage our fund raising, as well as our consulting work. Use of Salesforce.com has transformed the way we think about constituents, and we’ve created a much richer picture of our interactions than I think we ever thought possible.

And thanks to the Foundation for donating Salesforce.com to all the nonprofits we work with. I’ve worked with about 15 nonprofits in the last two years, and they are all using Salesforce.com actively in support of a better environment. It’s been fun to watch what folks do with such a powerful and accessible system! Thanks Steve, Meghan, Tucker, Chris, Brian, and Mike!

I’d like to thank the great folks at CRMFusion for graciously donating DemandTools and PeopleImport. I recommend to every group I work with that they use DemandTools. It’s really a fabulous tool for data cleanliness, but oh so much more as well. Thanks Glenn and Mark!

Also a thank you to Clicktools, who make their seriously powerful survey tool available to ONE/Northwest. I’ve already did a little movie about how we’re using it in our consulting practice, and I can’t wait to find a customer use case where we can implement it. Thanks Andrew!

We’re using What Counts as the email marketing system integrated with Salesforce.com. What Counts offers their service to our nonprofit customers at a discount, and they throw in the Salesforce.com integration as well. It’s been working really well, and greatly simplifies the data picture for the six groups currently using the integration. Thanks to David, Odysseus, Wilson, and all the folks at What Counts!

Conga is a new tool we just started using. Conga makes their mail merge tool available to nonprofits at a discounted rate, and we’re working on our first implementation. Thanks Mark for the discount!

And thanks to the donors who have given to support ONE/Northwest in our CRM work. Here’s a recent donation that came in to our Support Us page:

OneNW is a great organization and I have supported it in years past. I have been receiving great support from Steve Andersen who provides a wonderful community service through his ability and willingness to help people with their nonprofit technology work.

If you’d like to support our work helping environmental groups use CRM to save the world, and help make my blogging about it possible, please consider making a donation to ONE/Northwest. We love the work and love talking about it. Help us keep it up!

Coghead to make Salesforce.com Integration Easy

Last Updated on Wednesday, 30 May 2007 10:12 Written by Steve Wednesday, 30 May 2007 10:12

Or at least possible:

Integration: Integration to other applications is a key design point in Coghead and one that takes several forms. One capability that will be surfacing soon is what we call “Linked Applications”. A “Linked Application” is basically a facade on an external application service (e.g. a Salesforce.com application or on an on-premise application with exposed interfaces). Linked applications look very similar to the native applications built in Coghead – they show up on the list of applications, their actions can be invoked inside of other action definitions, forms can be used to view/add/modify data, etc. Other Coghead applications in the same account, then, are able to invoke the external APIs of the remote service associated with the Linked Application using standard Coghead application building blocks. For example, someone could build an “Issue tracking application” in Coghead that automatically attaches a Note to a Lead record in a remote Salesforce.com account whenever certain conditions are met. Linked Applications should surface as a ‘beta feature’* in early July.

I’m very excited to see what they come up with. Coghead looks really cool, but I haven’t carved out time to run it through it’s paces. If they release a way to build web apps that front end Salesforce.com, I’ll definitely make the time to check it out!