Winter 19' Highlights Summary

Salesforce have released an array of new features for Winter 19’!

Our Technical Director, Steve Rose, has summarised them below for easy reference.

1. Change Your View with Display Density Settings

You now have more control over how you want to view your data without changing the layout! Select one of these two new Lightning Experience display density settings as the default and let your users choose their own display density at any time from under the profile menu.

2. Check a Field’s References Before You Edit It

Now you can see the references to a custom field, such as in a report or formula, with the click of a button. You can also communicate changes to others who use the field in a formula or other context.

3. Collaborate with Ease with List View Sharing

Have a list view with an amazing set of filters that you’d love to share with your team? Or maybe you have a list view that you only want a select few to access. Take collaboration to the next level by sharing your list views with user groups in your org.

4. Use Background Utility Items to Add Functionality to a Lightning App

Add functionality to your Lightning apps without cluttering the user experience! Background utility items run without a visible entry in the utility bar.

Here are a couple things you can do with background utility items:

    Add custom shortcuts

    Listen for events, like chat notifications, and notify the user

    Capture data on how your service agents or sales reps spend their time interacting with customers

    Enforce console tab limits

5. Edit Joined Reports with Lightning Report Builder

Work with joined reports in Lightning Experience’s modern interface and take advantage of Lightning Experience’s productivity-improving features like report run page filtering. Edit joined filters, groups (including cross-block groups), and columns with the Lightning report builder.

6. Find the Data You Need in a Jiffy with List View Search

Use the new search bar to search the field data in your list views and find the records you need in record time

Click here for the full video series of the Winter 19’ Highlights from Salesforce

ShoNet Work Experience and Training Programme

In association with The Amos Bursary

In June we welcomed Nathan Essel, who worked with ShoNet as part of his invaluable support programme with The Amos Bursary. Students accepted for the bursary are guided through their Sixth form and University education and are mentored to develop their social and commercial skills through opportunities and life changing experiences.

Nathan worked on various projects and his knowledge of IT software and programming were very helpful in assisting with creating an app for the client.

 ‘’During my 4-day work experience at Shonet, I learnt how businesses work with IT in a commercial setting. This was a very new experience to me as I am interested in computer science and programming, but I had never thought about the implementation of technology.’’

‘’I learned about a cloud service tool called Salesforce, which is an application that manages how users interact with a database. As part of my training to use this service, I was taken to meetings to discuss whether clients could use it to manage their data. One of the meetings I attended surprised me a lot as there was a great lack of communication, such as how they saved their files etc.’’

‘’Overall, I enjoyed working at ShoNet and helping to create Salesforce applications. My colleagues were very kind and helpful, which resulted in me being introduced to Salesforce and widening my future paths.’’

Nathan was trained using Trailhead, which he can continue to further study and increase his Salesforce skills, which are recognised globally.

ShoNet are proud to support the bright young talent of the next generation and wish Nathan every success in his future endeavours. A special thanks to our Technology Director Steve Rose for his support with our training programme and his continuous work with the Amos Bursary.

We are also pleased to welcome our new interns, Ikehi Omezie and Sena Basoah, who have joined the ShoNet team for the summer.

Nonprofit Digital Marketing

Salesforce.org have launched a campaign called The Nonprofit Digital Marketer  - it is a new subscription series that offers practical advice and insights on how nonprofits can raise more awareness for their cause – all direct to their inbox!

Sign up today to improve your digital marketing presence in 2018.

Already subscribed? Please take a short survey about your experience

CRM Database and Accounting Platform Integration

Having worked with a number of not for profit organisations who have struggled to streamline their data processing and input, who often have to perform duplicated manual processing tasks in order to maintain the CRM and accounting systems, we have looked to provide a solution which seamlessly integrated the two systems.

This duplication can often include having to agree a large volume of donations received between the bank accounts within the accounting platform and the pledges recorded in the CRM.

In developing this integration, we anticipate that a number of data entry tasks will now become either redundant or much more efficient, creating more time for fundraising activity.

ShoNet have worked in partnership with Kreston Reeves, an accounting and financial services firm based in London, Sussex and Kent, and Astrea IT in order to develop the integration which effortlessly synchronises donations, contacts, invoices and products between Salesforce and Xero meaning information can be automatically available across the two platforms.

If you would like any further detail in relation to the above or would like a discussion around how this solution might benefit you, please call 0208 017 1688 or email info@shonet.co.uk

Monitoring & Evaluation for Charities: How to measure what matters

'Value for Money', Return on Investment', 'Social Value', 'Impact Measurement'.  We are surrounded by buzz words and new fads for proving that what we do really is for the social good and really can make a measurable difference.  Understanding how to measure impact and then putting in place a cost effective system to do this can seem daunting.  There is a useful saying to keep in mind though that provides a great starting point, "What gets measured, matters.  So make sure you measure what matters."

Many charities and civil society organisations baulk at having to make more funds available to measure and prove what they already know: that they are making a difference.  Yet, measuring impact is a valuable source of management information.  Done well, monitoring and evaluation can provide a rich source of beneficiary feedback and programme performance that can also be used to improve your interventions and projects, making them more relevant and likely to deliver lasting change.  Building a monitoring and evaluation system is not necessarily a complicated or expensive process, but navigating the various tools and processes sometimes does need a little help. 

A good place to start is your current management information system.  You already know about the benefits of Salesforce for running your organisation efficiently and collecting fundraising and general management information that helps you to keep an eye on the bottom line.  Salesforce can however be more than that.  It can help you to make sense of monitoring data, so that you can keep track of the different projects you're running: how many people are being reached, what they think of the projects that they participate in, which projects are on track, which need further attention. 

Of course to make this happen for you, two things will need to be in place: an overall monitoring and evaluation plan, including a policy approach to monitoring and evaluation that your organisation is signed up to, secondly a set of relevant data collection tools that capture project performance in both a qualitative and quantitative manner, and which can be linked to Salesforce. 

It is important to understand exactly what you want to measure, why you want to measure it and who will use the data in order to design an effective system for data collection and analysis.  Understanding this 'what', 'why' and 'who' will start you on the road to effective and efficient monitoring and evaluation, which will make a valuable difference to your organisation.

Developing systems and processes that make charities more effective is a driving focus for us at Shonet and we know that developing and improving your management information systems to include meaningful monitoring and evaluation data, will making proving impact easier and lead to better interventions that can deliver lasting change.

Do you want to improve the data that you are collecting and using?  Contact us for a free consultation to find out how we can help you to develop your monitoring and evaluation plan and tools.

This article was written in partnership with Robin Brady