CHRISdotTODD

Updated March 7, 2011: I discovered you can also install the same scripts into Chrome. Chrome supports user scripting without the need for Greasemonkey. I've been somewhat familiar with Greasemonkey , but I never thought I had a real need. Greasemonkey is a Firefox Add-in allows you to customize the way a web page displays or behaves with JavaScript. A common use is to add download options to YouTube videos, such as with YouTube Video Download . Today I discovered 2 scripts for Salesforce.com that make administering Salesforce.com just a little easier. The first removes the click needed to display the menu that is displayed under your name. Most commonly used when you want to go to the Setup screen. With Salesforce.com Setup and Apps Hover Links , by just hovering over your name, the menu expands. It's simple, but quite nice. The second script is quite powerful. Setup Enhancer for Salesforce will add a search box above the setup menu, making it considerably easier to find what

I just got back from Dreamforce '08, Salesforce.com's annual user and developer conference ( see Keynotes here ). I've been a Salesforce.com user and administrator for about 6 months, so this was my first Dreamforce. I came away impressed and excited about the Salesforce.com platform. Cloud computing has been a recent buzz word, and we have heard it in context of Google, Amazon, and recently from Microsoft. What I saw from Salesforce.com though was the first real example of what cloud computing can offer. First, Salesforce.com offers their CRM (customer releationship management) application, that is used and administered through a web browser. A great application, but that in itself is not much different than many other web-based applications. What makes it extend beyond the traditional web app is the ability to add additiional applications availalbe through their AppExchange . AppExchange is like the iPhone App Store, but Salesforce.com was there first. Applications found

I haven't had to use MS Access in 7 or 8 years, so recently when I had to do some simple data conversion, it took me longer than it should to figure out how to best accomplish the task. I needed to run some reports against some Salesforce.com data, and the data set was too large for the built-in report tool to handle, so I decided to import the data into Access to perform the reporting. I quickly learned that the date/time format from Salesforce.com is not in the same format as Access. The solution is actually quite easy... transform the data when you import it. I began with my Salesforce.com data in the form of a CSV file (too big for Excel). Here are the steps I used: Link to the CSV data source Create a Make Table Query against the CSV datasource, selecting all data columns -- of course you only need to select the columns that you want to import Replace every date/time field with a forumla that parses the format and writes it in the format Access will accept. Salesforce.com fo