Appirio Connects Salesforce to Google Apps: Launching Calendar Sync, Campaign Timeline, Document Search, and CRM Dashboards

We're happy to announce four new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings that bring together Google Apps and Salesforce CRM. The four Appirio offerings enable Salesforce and Google users to easily synchronize calendars, collaborate on marketing campaigns, find and embed documents, and create and share customized CRM dashboards.

See our press release here, our blog post here, or here for a 2 minute flash demo of each product.

Organizations using Salesforce for Google Apps have access to four Appirio products that combine the customer, sales and marketing information in Salesforce with the power of Google's collaboration tools. These Appirio products are available today as a part of the Salesforce for Google Apps launch, including:

• Appirio Search for Google Docs. Traditional office documents are costly and difficult to attach, store, and manage. Using Google Docs for Salesforce is an attractive, on-demand alternative, but requires manual effort that may inhibit adoption (e.g., changing screens to find the right document and copy / paste its URL into Salesforce). Appirio Search for Google Docs is the easiest way to get started capturing the benefits of Google Docs. Search for documents as you work in Salesforce, right from a Salesforce record detail page. Just one click, and you've linked a Google Doc to that record.
  
• Appirio Calendar Sync - With Appirio Calendar Sync, it is easy to automatically keep your Salesforce Calendar in sync with your Google Calendar. You can share customer-related events across company boundaries through an easy-to-use online calendar. And it is easy to associate every event in your calendar with the right account, opportunity, lead, case or any other custom object.
• Appirio Campaign Timeline for Google Calendar - Campaign managers spend time manually importing, exporting, copying, and pasting campaign data from Salesforce. Nobody has a single calendar with an overview of the campaigns that are relevant to them. As a result, campaigns are out of sync with people's day-to-day calendars. With Appirio Campaign Timelines, campaign managers have a simple tool to manage what information from what campaign is shared with whom. They can publish campaigns to a Google Calendar, giving key people inside or outside the company an "at-a-glance" overview. As a result, it's easier to coordinate your marketing campaigns with your team's day-to-day priorities.
• Appirio CRM Dashboards - Today, "casual" Salesforce users (e.g., executives) can't see Salesforce data without going into Salesforce... they don't know what they don't know. If they do go to Salesforce, the information they see sits in isolation from non-Salesforce data. With Appirio CRM Dashboards for Google Start Page, Salesforce data can be embedded on a Google Start Page, Google Doc, or Google Site. Appirio CRM Dashboards are dynamic, allowing for in-place drilldown, customization, and links to the underlying Salesforce data. And the data can be combined with any other information available through Google, right where people start their day.

Each of these products uses Force.com and Google's open APIs to run entirely "in the cloud" without any Appirio servers. The products are available through the salesforce.com AppExchange, the Google Solutions Marketplace, and the Appirio products page.

Launching Appirio Cloud Storage

We're pleased to announce the launch of Appirio Cloud Storage. You can read the press release here, and our blog post on the implications of the product here. You can also get started by going to our product page, or our Appexchange listing to install a free trial.

This post will go into additional detail regarding the features and functionality features of the product, giving you a "behind-the-scenes" glimpse of what's behind Appirio Cloud Storage.

The value proposition of Appirio Cloud Storage is simple: we allow an organization to use salesforce.com as the central access point for all sales, marketing and support information

• Works exactly the same for the end user
• Work with files larger than the 5MB limit (up to 1GB)
• Virtually unlimited document storage at a fraction of the cost
• Easy for Admins - No administrative overhead

Appirio Cloud Storage is powered by Amazon S3-- this allows us to take advantage of the security and reliability of the same storage solution that power's Amazon's global infrastructure.

Here's how it works
Appirio Cloud Storage is designed to be easy for an admin to setup , and transparent for end-users-- they shouldn't need to know where their attachments are being stored... just that file size limitations are a thing of the past!

But here's what's going on behind the scenes:

When users add a file

• User selects one or more files to add
• Files are uploaded via a secure web service to Amazon S3
• Programmatic confirmation that the user submitting the files is who they say and the organization is licensed for the service
• File Object is created inside of salesforce.com that points to the newly created url on S3 (contains information on owner, file type, size, name and description – all searachable attributes from within salesforce)
  
  

When users retreive a file:

• A formula field creates a link that contains the file location and secure session ID
• When the user clicks on this link there is programmatic confirmation that the user requesting the files is who they say and the organization is licensed for the service
• File is downloaded and handled like any other (open in new window, save, etc.)

Welcome to the Appirio Product Blog

Welcome to Appirio's Product Blog! Appirio provides products and services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of on-demand.

Conventional wisdom holds that technology companies need to choose whether they are going to focus on products or services. We believe that this was true with on-premise software, but that the availability of web platforms makes a truly hybrid business model not only possible, but advantageous in turning innovation into customer success, and customer success into further innovation.

Appirio has over 1,500 companies using our product offerings that bring together technologies from Google, Salesforce.com, and Amazon. For example, we recently launched 5 products connecting Salesforce to Google Apps, allowing users to easily synchronize calendars and contacts, collaborate on marketing campaigns, find and embed documents, and create and share customized CRM dashboards.

We're launching this blog to keep those customers up to date on Appirio's product portfolio. You'll see us cover:

• Tips and tricks for users and admins of our products
• Status updates on bug fixes and feature enhancements
• Details of new product releases from Appirio