30th Jun 2022 | Charity, Consultancy, GDPR, Salesforce, Web Hosting
One of the big questions for charities (and for businesses) is, WHERE IS MY DATA?
Knowing where your data is part of your compliance with the regulations.
Here is our knowledge article on where to find it!
https://cloudgenius.my.site.com/support/s/article/Where-is-my-Salesforce-instance-located
It’s like we try to make it easy!
A super-short article, but you might want to check out our knowledge base for other useful articles, too!
30th May 2022 | Consultancy, Event Bridge, Eventbrite, Extract/Transform/Load, Salesforce
A Trademark is born
Behold it’s glory!®
It feels like a win at the Oscars… but there is a lot more to the story.
The Event Bridge® logo now has the same Trademark protections as the Event Bridge® name.
It is another step on Event Bridge’s journey within the Salesforce ecosystem.
Gaining a Trademark
The Trademark process is not that difficult, but there are a lot of traps for the unwary. That is why we employed the services of Michelle Ward of Indelible IP Limited.
Michelle helped me through, strike that, did the application process. Apart from an interesting discussion about what I wanted to protect and which areas I needed protection in, Michelle did the process. Not only that, but she kept me informed throughout the process.
If you want to know what protections you gain and how to USE a trademark, you need to speak with Michelle.
How did I find the amazing Michelle? Well, through Evo Business networking.
However, in gaining this trademark I would like to thank Pauline who helped design the logo: Pauline Brown of Blueice Graphic Design
So, you can see it was a team effort.
While we have a number of customers who directly use Event Bridge, it is soon going to be listed on the Salesforce AppExchange. Just a few more weeks!
What does Eventbridge® do? Well, it effortlessly connects Eventbrite to Salesforce. You can find out more about it on its website.
25th May 2022 | Passwords, Security and Safety
Yes, this is fair and unpaid
Just so you know, our decisions are based on our experience and there was no money from relevant services or monetised links.
For a number of years we have been using a password manager called ‘LastPass’. This has been great – as it has allowed us to securely share passwords among the staff here. Even when they had a data breach, it did not affect us as we used 2 Factor Authentication and, in common with similar services, they only store encrypted data on their servers. Without the security keys we hold, the data is entirely safe. Data is only encrypted on our computers.
New Challenges
Time has moved on.
- There were a number of pain points – organisation of the passwords was increasingly difficult, as was seeing who had access to which client’s passwords.
- Just organising the credentials was difficult – resulting in duplications.
- Duplications are not too bad until you update the password and you are not sure which of the duplicates has the new password.
- Often it would not fill in the passwords onto the websites.
- very time the computer did an update the app would be missing off the web browser, etc.
So we did a review of various alternatives.
Other Pains
In our search, we were reminded of other pains.
One of the new pains is that many services require 2 factor authentication (2FA) – you know those 6 digit numbers that change every 30 seconds and we could not share those in LastPass. (It looked like it may have been possible to set up, but also looked like a real pain.) When we shared a credential in LastPass, the person logging in still had to ring up the person with the phone set up as the 2FA device.
What about if you need to share a password with someone outside your organisation for a limited time? Not formerly possible!
As you may have guessed, we finally went for 1Password. It is a bit more expensive than LastPass… but…
- 1Password allows you to store those 2FA numbers as part of the vault – so you can properly share credentials. It does this securely and almost magically.
- It allows you to securely share passwords outside your organisation, for a limited period of time.
- Import of the LastPass vault was a doddle – so all of the old passwords were brought over simply.
- It was at this point we realised how disorganised they were… secure, but disorganised. In 1Password it was so easy to re-organise them. It took minutes!
With the business package all your team mates get family vaults – so that they can store there passwords in a separate, secure vault rather than in the business account. (Actually each team member gets 5 vaults for free to share with family members. If they leave the company, they can take those vaults and start paying a subscription.)
Our passwords are secure, easily managed and all our problems are solved.
It makes logging in a pleasure! Even setting up new accounts is MUCH easier and the App seems far more robust.
Works on Windows and Macs.
So, I would recommend it. What is your experience?
Here is 1Passwords comments on how it secures passwords. Even if the company goes bust you will still be able to access your passwords!
1st Apr 2022 | Autoresponder, Charity, Consultancy, Email, Event Bridge, General Information, Salesforce, Support, Training
Finding support can be difficult… so that is why we have launched our support portal.
The idea is that people will be able to help themselves before checking in with us. For many people, this ‘instant result’ saves them a load of time.
However, there will still be many times when you do need our personal support, so, for our customers, it is possible to raise new cases.
But… won’t that mean learning ANOTHER username and password? Fortunately, that answer is ‘no’.
As long as you have your own Salesforce instance and we have you as a contact in our system then you don’t need a password at all.
(For those of our customers who do not have Salesforce, we can still set you up, but you will need a username/password.)
The portal is at support.cloud-genius.com
Here is a video on how to access the Knowledge articles:
Access Knowledge Articles
Here is one on how to log in (without a password), raise and monitor a case.
Raising Cases
This is a new venture… so while we have been having our techies check everything out… I am sure you will find some things that could be improved. I would love to hear from you!
1st Mar 2022 | Uncategorised
When you are partner for a company, you expect them to talk a lot about their product.
So, it was a bit of a shock being at the recent partner talk.
Salesforce is different.
They talk about how you can get the best talent.
They talk about how they have added Sustainability to their core values (bringing the total to 5).
But talk is fine. What are they actually doing about it?
Well, they have a developed plan.
Plan for Net Zero
They realise that ‘business as usual’ does not cut it. They are thinking about the mental health of their employees, about getting away from toxic, destructive work practices.
What do you think?
22nd Feb 2022 | Charity, Event Bridge, Salesforce
I was always told to carry people on the journey…
So we are starting a new journey with Salesforce. Over the years we have gathered a lot of useful knowledge. A lot of this is for us to use internally – within the company, but we also have a lot of information that is good for questions about Salesforce and Event Bridge.
So we now have a knowledge portal: https://cloudgeniusltd.force.com/support/s/
At the moment, it lets folk find out information. In the near future it will let people submit cases and track progress.
We are getting very excited, as it should help us to serve our customers better.
Of course, the other part of implementing this ourselves is so that we can help our customers implement it to help out their organisations.
6th Oct 2021 | Uncategorised
One of the joys of running your own business is having all the tasks that no-one else in the business can/will do. That includes networking… I am a member of the EVO network.
This morning we had a great talk from Laura B, founder of the Shortlist.
Laura is on a meteoric rise, promoting her fashions for 30-something women under 5’4″. Sustainable fashions, created and made in the UK… with a sense of humour.
Does it sound like Laura has looked at who her target audience is?
Rather than going for everyone with a pulse, Laura has found a group she has a passion for and resonates with.
Consequently, her Instagram, Facebook and everything else can be written for the specific character she has in her head. In marketing we call this an Avatar.
Problem
While Laura has petite women in their 30’s as the group she relates to, they vary quite a bit in size.
How do they get the fashion that truly fits, without getting their fashions tailored?
Solution
Laura now has bespoke advice about the sizing of each piece in her collection. This allows the shopper to know whether it will fit.
Result
The result of this simple change has been:
- Happier clients
- Fewer returns
What could you do in your business to make your clients happier?
30th Sep 2021 | Lunch and Learn, Salesforce, Training, Training Club
What on earth are they doing?
One of the scariest moments of going from being a successful ‘minion’ to a manager is that moment when you realise that you don’t know what is happening.
You can look very carefully at the folk you are managing, but you cannot watch every mouse click and keyboard tap and screen flick. You don’t want to be one of those managers who thinks that you can do everything better than your staff. A manager who micro-manages, picks up on every detail of every piece of work done by their staff.
This situation is unpleasant for the staff, unpleasant for the manager and inefficient, as every piece of work is being done twice.
Similarly, how do you know what is happening with your resources? Are your finances in a good state? Is money coming in?
For charities there are questions like… did the people who donated last year donate this year? If not, why not?
If they did give this year, did they increase their donation?
So many questions, so little time.
To manually go through every piece of data takes forever.
That is why I am running the next Salesforce Lunch and Learn. To look at reports…
In Salesforce, once you have written a report, it will keep on running with current data. So you can run it against the last 3 months of data and it will update so that no matter what data you run it on, you will get the last 3 months of data.
Within the Salesforce Non Profit Success Pack there are a number of reports that are particularly aimed at donations and comparing this year to previous year.
21st October from 12noon to 12:45 we will be looking at these reports and how you can use them.
Book Here is where you can sign up.
Use the code SALESFORCE to get your ticket for free. (This is to stop the ‘bots signing up and taking the valuable places.)
See you there.
27th Sep 2021 | Email, GDPR, General Information
It’s not going to work the same.
One of the go-to methods for contacting many clients is mass-email.
Here we use Campaign Monitor, but there are many others including the venerable MailChimp.
All of these systems allow you to track whether someone has opened their email, where they were when you opened the email and many other features. (Whether you do track these things should be reflected in your privacy policy and whether a client allows you to track these things.)
These things are all going to break with the way Apple is changing the way it connects to email services.
This is to give your clients (and you) more privacy. So, it is a good thing.
It will impact your mass emails.
Here is a great video from Campaign Monitor, detailing the changes.
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/webinars/navigating-an-evolving-privacy-environment/view/
21st Sep 2021 | Uncategorised
Sing! Sing! Sing!
Last night was the second rehearsal of my Welsh Male Voice Choir. Hurrah! It was so good to see friends back in real life and catch up.
Networking is back on the cards… and that, too is an opportunity to catch up with friends, meet new people and share.
Tonight is the inaugural meeting of the Cardiff Salesforce User Group. It is an opportunity for people administering Salesforce to meet and share good practice (and funny stories).
User Group Link
Really looking forward to it and just meeting people face-to-face.
For all the Zooms in the world, it will be nice to see people’s full length – how they stand, speak, how tall they are… instead of fake backgrounds of San Fran, a chance to go through the mists, rain, sun of a wonderful Welsh autumn. To hear the singing in the valleys.
#SalesforceUserGroup #Cardiff #SalesforceAdmins #WelshMaleVoiceChoir
By the way, if any of you know of a pianist in the Ammanford area who would like to accompany a choir… let me know 🙂 If there is one thing better than a Salesforce User Group, it is the singing of a choir 😉