A little patch no one is talking about...

Last night a slick little patch was released. In it, one new fix (of many) will be particularly interesting for those of you who are frustrated with how you report on cases and solutions. You can now report on cases and solutions as one combined attribute.

Previously, before this patch, there was no reporting ability to combine Case attributes with Solution attributes. So you could never do a "Cases with Solutions" report reporting and segmenting on custom field on both cases and solutions together.

This patch lets you do all sorts of cool crazy stuff.... well, "cool and crazy" assuming you use cases and solutions.

Why we don't make more noise about these usability fixes when they come out, I'll never know. There should be a changelog available to all customers. It'd be in the help. Any user could see all enhancements and changes that impact the end user experience in any way. Each patch would be dated. This seems like such an obvious thing to do, it drives me nuts. I assume usability fixes don't happen until major releases... That means that I might miss this usability fix unless I happen to try and do something I wasn't able to do 2 days ago. But if I saw that in a changelog, I'd know about it. Wouldn't that be cool? I think so.

Salesforce.com prevents Microsoft from growing... News at 11.

Alright, in not quite the way we were all expecting... but Microsoft is closing up shop and moving out.

"While the company is looking at all its options, including growing at One Market, it may be forced to leave because of space limitations there. Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) has been aggressively gobbling up all the space available in the building and would like to expand even more."

Click to read.

I'll admit, I'm going to miss seeing someone hit "2" in the elevator then saying things like "Did you hear what that prospect said about how unusable Microsoft CRM 3.0 reporting is? They said they had to use Excel!" followed by obnoxious uncontrollable laughter until they get off on the Microsoft floor. And, on a side note, it's one damn floor up from the lobby - can't they just take the stairs?

Blog Wars

I woke up this morning and found Mark over at Salesforcewatch.com having a little fun at trying to figure out who I was.

It definitely made me laugh and I like the creativity - especially using an AppExchange tool to do it. It'll be pretty interesting to see the results.

But then, of course, I started wondering about what happens if it clearly points to my actual identity.

I've addressed the anonymity question in response to a few comments from Saul and others. Some have decided to swear off my site all together due to the fact I wish to remain anonymous - and I'm OK with that. But I haven't written in my blog as a post why I'm anonymous, and what happens when I'm no longer anonymous.

First, why I'm anonymous. In an ideal world, I'd be completely free to talk about whatever I want to talk about. Clearly, this is not an ideal world. I can't talk about things that aren't public knowledge for instance - especially because we're a public company. If I came out with all the news and gossip I hear on a day to day basis, I'd be fired. Period. Then the SEC puts me in jail. And rightly so - my obligation as an employee of salesforce.com is to not cross that line. It's simply proof that we're not free to talk about everything - even though that's almost certainly the most interesting stuff.

Removing the confidential information from the conversation, all we're left with are ideas, opinions, and speculation. I'd like the freedom to disagree with everyone - all the way up to Marc. If I thought buying Sendia was a moronic move (I don't), I'd want to feel free to say that. If I think we're messing up, I'd like to feel free to publicly shout that out. If I think execs should be replaced, I want to feel free to express that. Saul and Kingsley say that they feel free to write whatever they want. I do not.

Let's say that I thought Marc should step down as head chef. Let be me clear, I think that's a horrible idea, Marc is a great leader and the right guy for the job. But let's say I did think that... and I was so passionate about it that I wrote about it in my blog. If it turned out my true identity was one of Marc's subordinates and he knew it - I'd be fired... or at least be sporting a very big black eye. So my choices would be, either not say anything because my identity was public, or take the black eye...

Now I'm a passionate person, but my financial advisor would probably recommend against risking my career by getting on my soap box with a name tag on. And this not only goes for posts I've already made - but also posts that I haven't made yet. It's the future posts that I'm most concerned about.

That's the main reason I stay anonymous. I'm not doing it to be mysterious - I'm doing it so I can truly speak my mind as freely as I legally can. Is who I am a mystery that can be solved? Probably. Do I wish people would try? No. Are people going to try anyway? Yes.

So what happens if and when my identity is revealed? If I'm the one revealing, nothing - it'll be my choice. If I'm outed, I'll probably just delete the blog and maybe later start a new one that's just not anonymous but filtered... though I admit the appeal of that is zero for me. Does that make me chicken? No. I made the choice to be anonymous when I started this blog, and I'm going to stick to it. If this blog is no longer anonymous, it no longer serves its purpose to me.

If I can't write an unfiltered blog, this blog won't be interesting for me or, I'd suspect, the majority of my readers - because then this truly would be yet another salesforce.com employee blog.

Why hasn't anyone...

If I was a crafty shoot from the hip consultant who was looking to raise awareness of my own little personal consulting company here's what I'd do...

I'd go register the domain name crmuptime.com or something equally witty and creative.

I'd buy one user license (or find a free license if they offer one that is on their "production" server) of every on demand vendor out there. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Oracle, RightNow, Salesnet, Entellium, SugarCRM, and any other CRM vendor who has an on demand offering.

Then you get/write some simple software that just goes checks uptime, response time, etc basically doing everything I suggested trust.salesforce.com should do in a previous post. I'd then post all of those stats in a snazzy grid on the home page of the website I just created.

So it'll be like trust.salesforce.com, but this time you're doing it for every vendor, essentially forcing them to reveal how good/bad they really are.

I'd personally love that. Let's get some third party evaluation going on. It's such an itsy tiny investment and you could instantly be one of the most popular CRM review websites out there. Hell, maybe even a online news magazine or something could do this...

I'm not saying salesforce.com would necessarily come out on top (but my brainwashing compels me to think we will)... but I'd bet just about everyone who cares about CRM would visit the website on a regular basis.

Of course, ideally there would be some sort of auditing of the data because you know the worst vendor would say "oh, they're skewing the data to make their preferred CRM vendor look better" etc etc....

Once I've got that built I'd then do my own personal reviews of each of the vendors. Have forums where people can gab about their experiences and stories as to why they switched from one vendor to another.

It could be a pretty darn popular site...

Anyway, that's my thought for today.