Chapter 6
IN THIS CHAPTER
Configuring Chatter
Finding Chatter
Updating your profile
Keeping your status up to date
Following people and relevant objects
Joining groups
Every one of us has been the new guy or gal at a company at some point in our lives. Even if you received a formal orientation and a review of the organizational chart (a luxury that you shouldn’t take for granted), do you remember still having to meander around, finding that person who has the answers? Or maybe you’re an old-timer who is extremely busy but always willing to answer a newcomer’s questions because you remember how overwhelming it was when you first started.
Organizations have huge amounts of varying types of knowledge: formal and informal, documented and verbal, current and outdated. Very rarely is knowledge shared in one centralized location. Even when a company is pretty diligent about communicating, the sheer volume of information and the speed at which current information gets outdated can be overwhelming. Chatter bridges the gap between sharing useful information and information overload by allowing you to communicate quickly with colleagues, as well as keep track of progress and updates on topics as they happen.
In this chapter, we discuss how Chatter, when used correctly, works to eliminate all that information chaos by providing a central place where Salesforce users can update statuses, post and respond to questions, and see recent activity on records to easily collaborate in a private and secure environment. We walk you through setting up your profile, updating your status, and using groups and feeds so that your sales, marketing, and customer service organizations can work together even more effectively.
When you get a new car, it’s tempting to just drive away as soon as you’re handed the keys, but taking a few minutes to read the owner’s manual may serve you better. The same holds true for Salesforce Chatter. By spending a little extra time preparing, you can ensure a successful implementation of this powerful feature and ensure your standing as a Salesforce hero in your company.
Provide training sessions and FAQs. Education is the key to success for any Salesforce implementation. Training and documentation not only improve adoption but also ensure that users make fewer mistakes. The same holds true for implementing Chatter. It might seem easy to “just turn it on,” but if people aren’t all on the same page on when and how to use the tool, information that’s posted won’t be helpful, which will affect adoption rates.
An FAQ list is a basic question-and-answer document that your users can reference. In addition to the previous guidelines, you can include sample status updates (good and bad ones) and instructions on common tasks. See Chapter 8 to find out how you can create a reusable email template that includes your FAQs and guidelines.
Here are some Chatter-related terms to familiarize yourself with:
Chatter is automatically enabled for all new customers. However, if you subscribed a long time ago or turned it off, then before your company can begin using Chatter, your system administrator has to make some minor changes to your Salesforce configuration.
The first step in using Chatter is activating it in Salesforce Setup. Follow these steps:
Choose Setup ⇒ Customize ⇒ Chatter ⇒ Chatter Settings.
The Chatter Settings page appears.
Select the Enable check box.
Several more sections appear.
After your administrator turns on Chatter, you’ll notice it at the top of your home page when you log in to Salesforce.
As shown in Figure 6-1, after you set up your profile, Chatter shows a photo of you, today’s date, and a feed of status updates from yourself and others whom you’re following. All this occurs in the middle section of your home page.
The rest of your home page is still there. Your tasks, dashboard, and calendar have just moved down the screen. You can always click the Hide Feed link right below your top photo to, well, hide the Chatter feed.
The first thing you should do when starting Chatter is to update your profile. When you click your name anywhere in the Chatter feed or click My Profile below your name in the upper-right menu area, you’re taken to your My Profile page. Your profile page is your work profile, displaying your profile picture, more information about yourself (your background, contact information, past roles, hobbies, and so on), a history of your status updates, the co-workers who follow you, and the co-workers and Salesforce records that you follow.
To update your My Profile page, refer to Chapter 4.
Part of what makes Chatter work is letting your co-workers — even maybe your boss — know what you’re up to. In return, you can find out what they’re doing. In this section, we show you how to post as well as how to comment on others’ posts.
Posts are what your followers see. You can update posts to let others know what you’re working on, to ask questions, or to share files or website links. The inspiration comes from status updates on websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, that play an increasing role in people’s personal lives. If you have a Facebook or Twitter account, you’ll pick up Chatter in no time.
To make a post, follow these steps:
Click the Chatter tab or the Home tab.
Either option takes you to a page with a Chatter feed in it.
If you’re at the home page, your Chatter feed must be showing. If it’s not, click the Show Feed link below your photo at the top of the page.
(Optional) Attach a file or a website link, or append a poll to your update by clicking the File, Link, or Poll icon, respectively, directly above the Status box. These may appear under the More drop-down list on the right.
You may want to link to an interesting article that you read online or upload a file with a presentation you’re working on.
Click the Share button to publish your update.
Your post is published.
(Optional) From the small drop-down list to the right of your post, select the Delete option to remove it.
If you ever make a typo or post something embarrassing, you can always delete that entry and make it disappear from the feed.
When you’re following people, you start seeing their posts in your Chatter feed on the home page. Chatter allows you to add comments to posts, thus creating and managing multiple conversations in an organized fashion.
To add a comment to someone’s post, follow these steps:
Click the Comment button when you’re done writing.
Your comment appears indented below the original update, as shown in Figure 6-2.
Before you can follow anything, your administrator needs to enable Chatter on certain objects. Objects are types of records. They’re the words (for example, Accounts) that appear at the top of your Salesforce page; you can click these words, and then they look like highlighted tabs. (For a review of how to navigate the default objects in Salesforce, turn to Chapter 3.)
Your administrator and executive stakeholders should decide which objects to first turn on for following: typically, the one or two objects that your Salesforce users collaborate on the most, such as Opportunities.
After you determine which objects need to be followed, you can enable Chatter for those objects:
Choose Setup ⇒ Customize ⇒ Chatter ⇒ Feed Tracking.
The Feed Tracking page appears, as shown in Figure 6-3.
Click the name of an object in the Object list on the left side.
The Fields In page for that object appears.
Select each check box for the fields that you want to track with Chatter.
Select fields that others will want to be notified about when a change occurs to that field, for example, Areas of Interest, Next Step, Status, or Stage.
You get a maximum of 20 fields on any given object that you can track with Chatter. You may be able to expand this number for an additional cost.
When you first start Chatter, the feed will be empty because you’re not following anyone. In this section, we show you how to follow people in your organization.
To follow people, follow these steps:
Click the Chatter tab from the home page.
The Main Chatter feed appears.
From the left sidebar, click the People heading.
The People heading expands to show the All People subsection.
Click the All People subheading.
The All People list appears.
Find people to follow using one of these methods:
Be picky about whom you follow first so that you don’t get overwhelmed with all the updates you’ll be getting in your feed.
Figure 6-4 shows a list of people and whether you’re following them.
When you click a person’s name, you go to his or her Profile page.
After you locate someone you want to follow, click the Follow link that appears in his row.
You’re now following that person, and the link toggles to Unfollow in case you want to unfollow him in the future. By default, the followed person receives an email notifying him that you’re following him so that he can likewise choose to follow you back — or not. His posts now show up in your Chatter feed as long as you have your feed unhidden.
Only internal users of your company’s Salesforce instance can see your Chatter posts and comments, depending on where you enter that update. (Read through the earlier section for more information on how to update your status.)
As far as having outsiders or Google see your updates, you’re safe because Chatter uses the built-in privacy and security functionality of Salesforce. Internal users can see whatever you post, if they have access to the record you’re posting on or about. So if you post from your home page that you’re looking for a notary, everyone can see that (what’s the point if they can’t?). But if you’re on the Opportunity record for “Big Secret Government Deal” and make a post there asking about a notary, only people who can see that opportunity will be able to see your post.
One of the key differentiators of Chatter, as compared with other social networking sites — or other services that attempt to bring social networking into the workplace — is that you can also follow nonhuman things in your Salesforce database. Sounds crazy, right? This feature means that you can follow specific opportunities, accounts, contacts, leads, price lists, cases, and any changes that are made to those records. You can even create or follow groups, focused on a single competitor, region, or vertical. Being able to choose what things you want to stay in the loop about makes Chatter highly relevant to what you need to be successful at work.
To follow a record feed, click the Follow link under the record’s name on the record’s detail page. Below that link you’ll see who else is following that record.
Whenever someone changes a tracked field in an opportunity, for example, you know about it. If you’re a sales manager, you can choose to follow a strategic opportunity that one of your reps has been toiling over. The moment she updates that Opportunity Stage field to a Closed-Win, it appears in your feed. If you have key executives following that opportunity, too, they can provide comments that amount to a virtual high-five for all to see.
When you follow a specific record (see Figure 6-5), your profile photo appears as a follower of this object on the record’s page so that others will know you’re interested in this record.
You can also add comments to specific records, just as you can with people you follow (see the earlier section, “Commenting on posts”). They appear in your feed on your home page and on the feed on the record’s page.
Similar to finding people to follow, you search for groups to join. By following a group’s feed, you can collaborate with a specific subset of people within your company on a regular basis.
Chatter groups in Salesforce are subsets of people who collaborate on a project, event, or idea. You can create a Chatter group for all sorts of different projects. For example, that company retreat may warrant a Chatter group to broadcast updates and answer questions. A specific branch or office could have its own Chatter group. Similarly, you can create Chatter groups for a wide variety of use cases — product lines, organization-wide competitions, and so on. Just make sure that these groups are kept professional and don’t become a channel to talk about personal lives or your weekend plans.
To find a group to join, follow these steps:
Click the Chatter tab.
The Chatter feed appears.
Click the Groups heading in the left sidebar.
The Groups heading expands to show several subsections.
Select the Active Groups subheading.
A list of active groups appears. You can see which groups you’re a member of by looking at the Membership column to the right of the group’s name.
Use the search bar to look for specific group names.
While you type, the list automatically changes to show the results of your search.
If you don’t find a group that you want to join, create a new one yourself. See the next section, “Creating a new group,” on how to create a group from scratch.
Click a group’s name to view the Group detail page.
This provides more details about the group.
Communication is key when working in teams. With groups, you can set up private feeds where team members can discuss their work outside their normal feed. This feature is extremely useful for sensitive projects to ensure that online conversations remain secure. You can set up public groups as well for less-confidential discussion.
To set up a new group, follow these steps:
Click the Groups heading on the left sidebar of the Chatter tab.
The heading expands. The Recently Viewed Groups home page appears, listing existing groups.
Click the New Group button.
The New Group page appears.
Click Save.
Your new group’s page appears. You can add members by clicking the Add/Remove link on the right side.
If Chatter Emails was enabled by your system administrator when Salesforce Chatter was activated, you have the option to be notified via email whenever someone (or something) you’re following has made a post.
You can set your preferences as follows:
Here are a few ideas on how your company can benefit from Chatter if some people are reluctant to get onboard: