Gmail integration coming to Salesforce?
My intrepid co-worker Matthew noticed this standard button on the Activity Related list. The button doesn’t show on the UI when checked, but appears to indicate a way to compose a Gmail to the Contact in question. Nice.
Update: Google Contacts API was launched yesterday. It would allow Salesforce to google sync for Contacts. Google also released a Google Calendar to Outlook sync product. Openness is a virtue–the best CRM and the best online productivity suite are lined up for a deep integration. Can’t wait to see what gets built!
March 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Good find!
It will be interesting to see if this is “Integration” or just a link to launch a new email in gMail. If Salesforce is listening to this comment thread, please make sure that it works with Google Apps for your Domain and not just regular gMail.
When I think of “Integration”, I imagine something on the gMail side that allows for saving of emails into Salesforce. Although, now that gMail supports IMAP, you can just do that via Outlook.
March 6th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
[...] March 6th @ 4:53 pm by Darren Wow, what a great find from gokubi! This is like finding a spy shot of a new BMW in the wild! Apparently there’s an option to [...]
March 6th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
This is really interesting!
Good eyes!
March 7th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Hi Steve,
In which Salesforce Edition and Page Layout did you find it on?
March 7th, 2008 at 6:47 am
I’d love a gMail connector, just like the Outlook connector. Lots of my clients use macs, and my latest client is on google apps. They would love thier google apps groupware to be deeply integrated with Salesforce, as would I!
March 7th, 2008 at 6:50 am
It was in Enterprise on the Contact page layout. Scott Hemmeter at arrowpoint found another clue when he noticed that the Appexchage packaging interface asked him if he wanted to require Google Docs be present.
http://sfdc.arrowpointe.com/2008/03/06/google-docs-integration-coming-to-salesforce/
March 10th, 2008 at 11:30 am
[...] people found references to Google products in Salesforce’s applications: a button to compose a message in Gmail and a button for Google Docs, so the integration is probably in the final stages. “Openness [...]
March 10th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
[...] others have discovered buttons in Salesforce four using Google Docs and composing emails with Gmail. Last June, the two companies signed a deal to include Google [...]
March 13th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
[...] perhaps this is sf.com’s answer. Steve noticed a couple weeks ago some interesting new things popping up in sf.com that suggested [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 5:22 am
[...] people found references to Google products in Salesforce’s applications: a button to compose a message in Gmail and a button for Google Docs, so the integration is probably in the final stages. “Openness [...]
March 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Alot of this is over my head, I must confess, as I am an accidental techie surfing around for info. on Salesforce…..so perhaps my questions are overly simple, but this thread makes me wonder, if I plan to
use sales force on a laptop out of the office do i want to link up with either Outlook or google apps but not both? I’m thinking my “at work” email might need a supplemental gmail account so I can use web-based email from anywhere…..
April 8th, 2008 at 1:53 am
[...] I should speak for myself) have been anticipating for sometime. There have been rumors and teasers for couple months now, but nothing substantive from either company. While this isn’t an [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
>Update: Google Contacts API was launched yesterday.
I also have a client on Google Apps that wants to use it with Salesforce.com. The Gmail integration works great, although as Scott points out in this post, we need the ability to record an activity on the “what” records in addition to the “who” records.
http://snipurl.com/2c48n
Contacts seems to be the weak point for Google Apps in terms of syncing . . . not just with Salesforce.com but in general.
- Gmail can be synced via IMAP with any desktop client (e.g., Apple Mail, Outlook) and mobile device (e.g., Blackberry, iPhone)
- Google Calendar has direct two-way sync with Outlook and mobile devices - http://snipurl.com/2c4ab - as you point out, and one can also use iCal (and even go two way with that using Spanning Sync, etc)
But, what about those contacts?
Now, that the Google Contacts API is available (http://snipurl.com/2c4bx) what do you think the chance is that Salesforce.com is going to sync contacts - high? I’d like to think so.
I tried Appirio’s solution to it (http://snipurl.com/2c4ch) and wasn’t impressed . . .