Chatter Reviews

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How is customer service and technical support?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

What was our ROI?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

What other advice do I have?

Most people instantly see the benefits here are three reasons executives have given me for not using Chatter. And here’s what I said in response. The three reasons are:

1. People will post inappropriate content.


2. I’m swamped with email now I’ll be swamped with Chatter posts.


3. It only works if everyone uses it; and everyone won’t use it.

It depends what you mean by inappropriate. Employees are no more likely to create a Chatter post telling other people what they did on Saturday night than they are to send out a company-wide email with the same content. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but I’ve never heard of it.


That doesn’t mean to say you shouldn’t have rules on what is acceptable on Chatter. In my own business we use Chatter extensively for business purposes. However several of our employees have recently had babies and they’ve posted a picture of the baby on Chatter. Other people have commented on how cute they look.

In our organisation that’s an acceptable use of Chatter. It’s part of the fabric that binds us together as a company. If the pictures hadn’t been posted on Chatter they’d have been circulated out by email. In some of our clients the policy on Chatter is to keep it strictly to business issues. That’s also fine. Just let people know where they stand in terms of how Chatter should be used.

My own experience and that of our clients is that internal email significantly reduces when organisations start to use Chatter. Communication that would have taken place by email now takes place by Chatter.

However because Chatter is a much more collaborative mechanism than email there’s an improvement in the quality of communication. People tend to be more concise. Comments are less political. And you avoid the mess that results when some people ‘Reply All’ and others just ‘Reply’.

However it’s also a question of filtering. You follow the people, records, groups and files that matter to you. If other people want to bring you into the conversation they can @ you. So rather than being swamped, I’ve found that executives in organisations that make good use of Chatter have more time to focus on their important priorities.

Its true that to get the best from Chatter everyone needs to be committed to using it. And to achieve that there are a number of steps that you can take to get everyone on board. We described these more fully in a separate blog post (see “10 tips for successful Chatter adoption”) but essentially they include:

• Get Executives and managers involved from the start.


• Persuade users to add a picture to their profile.


• Plant some seeds by pre-populating with Chatter posts.


• Get Executives to ask questions about deals using Chatter – on the relevant record in salesforce, and


• Set up feed tracking to receive automated posts when deals or customer service case change status.

Of course not everyone in your organisation is necessarily a full salesforce.com user. However salesforce provide free Chatter-only licenses for existing customers. It’s a powerful way of bringing everyone into the conversation.



Disclosure: The company I work for is a Salesforce.com implementation partner https://www.garysmithpartnership.com

We’re big users of Chatter at The Gary Smith Partnership and now we take it for granted as a way of working. But a customer asked me this week, “Why should we use it? What are the benefits?” Here’s what I said.

1. It's by far a more collaborative way of working
Like many organisations, if someone was trying to solve a problem or get feedback on a presentation they’d send out a global email. Some people would reply to everyone, some would just reply to the sender, the email thread gets jumbled...…it quickly becomes a mess.

Now we use Chatter. The problem solving process becomes a conversation rather than a series of disjointed emails. People can interact and spark new ideas. There’s no ambiguity over which is the current version of the document. Other employees can be brought into the conversation using the @ function.

The whole process is just a much smarter way of working.

2. You'll get input from unexpected quarters
A prospect I was working with recently asked me how they could support a fairly complex business requirement using salesforce. I wasn’t sure so I asked the organisation for help.

Previously I’d have sent me email to the top 3 or 4 consultants and technical guys in the team. But this time I posted it on Chatter. And yes, the experienced guys all replied. But one of our graduate trainees also chipped in with some ideas. It wasn’t the final solution but it then sparked some further Chatter discussion that led to the question being answered successfully.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen a significant contribution on Chatter that simply wouldn’t have happened in the old way of working.

3. You'll find out things you wouldn't otherwise have known
At GSP we use Chatter to keep each other up to date on clients we’re visiting, prospects we’re talking to and projects we’re working on.

I was on a train recently and posted on Chatter to say I was on route to visit a particular prospect. It turns out one of our team used to work for their biggest competitor. He saw my post and was able to give me industry insight that I simply didn’t have - and which I wouldn’t have received if I hadn’t made that Chatter post. We got the deal.

I’ve found out about configuration tips and tricks I didn’t know about, opportunities I wasn’t aware of, ideas that wouldn’t otherwise have surfaced.

4. It's a great way to keep up to date on deals and projects
We make good use of the reports and dashboards in Salesforce.com to track our projects and deals we’re working on. But I also want the important insights and updates to be pushed to me in real time. That’s exactly what Chatter does.

I use Chatter to follow the projects and opportunities that are most important to me. When a key field on one of these records is updated I get an automated Chatter post to let me know. It means I save a huge amount of time asking about the status of things – I don’t need to ask because Chatter has told me. Which also means I don’t go around constantly interrupting other people!

5. And you'll get a lot less email!
Who doesn’t want less email? I’m not someone that’s ever counted the number of emails I get a day – or how few I receive now – but one thing’s for sure, there’s a lot less internal emails flying around! The dialogue and communication hasn’t reduced, its now being handled a lot more effectively on Chatter.

And because Chatter responses often have a wide audience and typed into a box rather than an open email, they tend to me more considered – and shorter! And that means a more efficient and more productive way of working.

www.garysmithpartnership.com/

We’ve been asked a number of times, what exactly is Chatter? Isn’t it ‘The Twitter of Salesforce?’ or ‘Just a bit like Facebook’? It’s true Chatter does incorporate functions from Facebook and Twitter, but is so much more than that.

Salesforce have taken all the great functions from social media and incorporated them into Chatter to make Salesforce an even more powerful CRM. Chatter brings you a new level of collaboration within your salesforce environment and your users will have no problem adapting to Chatter if they know how to use any of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Skype, YouTube, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Forums...

"I Like Salesforce"
Chatter is perfect for collaboration and like Facebook you're able to like, comment and share posts. Chatter also gives you the ability to create Polls - a great way for a busy team to vote with just a simple click! And best of all - no social media advertising!

“Hi @SolXConsulting I’m using #salesforce”
Just like Twitter when you use Chatter you can instantly connect to what's most important to you, by following colleagues, Opportunities, Campaigns, Leads, Accounts, Cases and Dashboards - in fact anything that’s important to you. @mention your colleague into your conversation or use hashtags to generate popular topics and reply to posts.

“I can connect and follow my Colleagues”
With your Chatter profile you can manage your professional identity just like you would on Linkedin. Add your own image, update your contact details and follow colleagues and customers to build a Chatter network. Join Groups with customers and colleagues. Private messaging is also available, much the same as you would with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

“Here’s my presentation about Salesforce Products”
Slideshare.com is a great social media platform for sharing slides and presentations. Chatter offers salesforce users the ability to upload and share the same content publicly or privately within a Group. Add PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios directly onto your Chatter Feed or by @mentioning a colleague.

“Here’s a video of me using Salesforce”
On Chatter you can Share videos with colleagues, groups or customer groups. You can like, comment and share the link, follow the video or even bookmark it for future reference.

“Here's a Photo of me using Salesforce”
Just like Flickr, Chatter is a great place to upload photos. Share your images with your Chatter network or Customer groups. Upload important images relating to your business or share your photo’s from events or customer sites.

“Let’s live chat about Salesforce”
Chatter provides you the ability to have an instant chat with your colleagues, it’s perfect for those times you don’t want to post a public message or you wish to collaborate instantly with colleagues anywhere in the world.

“Can you help me with my Salesforce query?”
Chatter Much the same as Quora.com, we’ve found Chatter is the perfect place to go when you need to ask a question that requires an expert answer. Get real-time help from your colleagues. Or get them to collaborate on resolving business or technical issues.

“Salesforce Recommends these Records and People to follow”
Chatter has incorporated features from Stumbleupon like Recommendations. Its the easiest way to find new Customers, Documents, Groups, videos, photos and images from across Salesforce. Chatter automatically makes recommendations just for you based on your existing connections and Chatter posts.

“This is what I’m reading, and also what I like to follow”
Just like Wattpad.com, Chatter allows you to follow documents, presentations, images or Files that are stored in your Salesforce Library. You can share with your colleagues and see who else is following your favorite files.

“I’m bookmarking this post about Salesforce”
Like Delicous.com, Chatter provides Bookmarking. It’s an easy way to save, organize and remember the posts you find interesting. They are easy to remove and make life simple when referring back to a conversation.

“I’m going to search salesforce”
Like Google, salesforce provides a powerful search function that means users can find the information they’re looking for whether it’s directly in a record or stored in a Chatter Feed. Searching for items in a specific group is helpful when you want to confirm or check if something was once discussed in the Group.

“Let’s have a discussion about Salesforce”
Chatter Customer Groups are similar to Forums or Social Media Groups that you’d find on Linkedin or Facebook. As the Group Manager, you’ll be able to manage the profile, add a logo, updated the group members settings and invite guest members from outside the organisation.

Disclosure: The company I work for is a Salesforce.com implementation partner - www.garysmithpartnership.com/

Chatter is a great tool, and if you use Salesforce, you should be using it, and using it every day – many times a day. Chatter is great for “working out loud” and keeping others in your team up to date with what you are doing.

There is a lot of help out there about how to use chatter, including the Chatter Best Practices page on the Salesforce website and this excellent series of 9 chatter training videos created by Engineers Australia for their Chatter implementation. They may be a bit specific to just engineers and just the stand-alone chatter app, but they are very well done.

One thing I could not find enough information on is Notifications, so here is my explanation of notifications. (Well, it started out as being only about notifications, but it may now include a bit more information also).

Chatter, like most social networks, can be Push or Pull - eg you can “pull” the information towards you by going to look at your chatter feeds, or have chatter “push” the information out to you, via notifications.

There are different forms of push notifications.

1. Email – set all the emails you want to receive in Chatter Email Settings in your Setup Menu in Salesforce. 


2. The Chatter desktop app – download it onto your PC or mac. Go to settings to set notifications to Pop up, show focus on the app. On a mac you can have the app bounce in the dock or come to the front. You can’t have sound for chatter feed notifications, only chat notifications – confusing, isn’t it.


3. The Chatter iOS app or Android app. Set the app to provide sound or visual notifications. in Android you can have a sound, vibration and LED flash notification. In iOS you can have sound, badge, banner and alerts – via the notifications centre.

Push Notifications

You will receive push notifications for:

• A post to a public group that you follow:
  
  
  
  • Email: if you have turned on immediate notifications for that group (as opposed to a daily or weekly digest).  
  
  
  • Desktop:
  
  
  • Mobile: No push notification, but it will be in your feed next time you refresh it.
  
  
  
  


• A post on your “wall” – someone has gone to your profile, and made a post there.
  
  
  
  • Email: if they have Posts on my profile email notification turned on.
  
  
  • Desktop: No sound, no bounce, no visual notification until I went to the mentions, which refreshed the app – something is not right here.
  
  
  • Android: Sound, vibration, and notification in the notification tray, if they have been set up.
  
  
  • iOS: Notification in the notification centre, and badge, and sound (unless you are on DND). If you are in the app, it is just a circle on the @ symbol.
  
  
  
  


• Mentions you in an @ reply (this should be the same as posts on your wall).
  
  
  
  • Yep, the same, However, I did get the bounce, the popup notification on the desktop app. This is weird. It should behave the same as writing on your wall. But it is good, that you can have your notifications appear so forcefully.
  
  
  
  

Push notifications do take a few minutes to pop up on your destktop app. I tend to get emails immediately, desktop notifications a few minutes later, then android notifications a few minutes after that. Desktop is a bit all over the place.

Pull – Feeds

Feeds are seen by “pulling” the information to you. There are a few types of feeds – Choose which feed you want to look at to see how much or how little you want:

• What I follow – people and records you follow.


• To Me – posts to me. (if I comment on a post that I made, that post will appear in here – a bit weird).


• Bookmarked – posts I have bookmarked – useful as a todo list.


• All company – all posts by all chatter users in the company, even if you don’t follow them. Including posts on records – this can become very busy. The All Company feed is not on iOS, or Desktop but is available on Android – this is weird.

Note, no posts in the feed will display automatically. You have to either:

• Refresh the page in the desktop app.


• Focus to the desktop app (it appears automatically then).


• Pull down on the feed in the iOS app to refresh.


• Click the refresh icon in the Anroid app.

You will see posts in the All Company feed if they are:

• Added to public groups that you don’t follow.


• Added to the general feed by people you don’t follow – You can also see these by looking at their profile. This is exactly the same as not following someone on twitter, but you can still see their posts on their twitter profile.

Hidden Posts

You won’t ever see posts that are:

• Added to records that you can’t see.


• Added to private groups that you are not a member of.

See a basic overview of chatter post security, and a quite in-depth look at chatter security, especially for groups.

Searches and Topics

Searches and topics (aka hashtags) are extremely powerful. Search for a topic, save it as a favourite, then you can return to them at any time. Favourites are not available in iOS or Android or on the desktop app.

You need to go to favourites to see posts that contain a search term or topic that is saved as a favourite, or just click on a topic hyperlink to search for all posts with that topic, or search for a word, phrase or topic in the search bar (and choose to search in the feed).

Chat

Chat is part of chatter but is different than chatter – chat is your regular one to one instant messaging kind of chat.  To initiate a chat with someone, go to their chatter profile, if they are logged in at the moment, their chat icon will have a small green circle (presence indicator). Click on start chat, then type what you want.

• They will get a notification in the bottom right hand side of their salesforce window, showing a red chat bubble. 


• If they have turned on sound and / or pop to the front in the desktop app, they will be notified there. A completely new window will open containing the chat.


• In Firefox, the browser tab will flash and the word *NEW* will appear in the browser title. I have seen this happen on Chrome, but I could not get it to work just now.


• You don’t get the chat feature in the iOS or Android chatter apps, but you can use Chat in the desktop app.

So basically, chats can be bloody annoying, just as they are in any other app.

Messages

The last feature of Chatter is private messages – just like DM’s on twitter. They are one on one, like chat, but asynchronous, so the person can just get back to you when they can – so therefore they are not as annoying as chat messages.

To send a message, go to the chatter profile as the person and click Send a Message. Type the subject and the message and click Send. (or from your chatter page, click Messages, click New Message, type their name in the To box, type the message, click Send).

• They will get an email notification (if they have email notifications for messages turned on).


• If they click on their chatter page they will see a number in a blue square next to the messages. Note, however, that they will not see this until AFTER they have refreshed the page. The notification won’t go away until you go into the message and click on it – so that is one positive.


• Messages appear in the Desktop app but there is only a small green circle over the message icon, and they don’t appear until you do something in the app. And one message did not show up at all, even until I went into the message itself. Very dangerous.


• Messages don’t appear in iOS or Android at all.

So, not sure if there is any advantage in sending messages over sending emails. Actually I think it is quite dangerous, as you can’t be guaranteed they will see it if they have message notifications turned off.

Have I missed anything? I’m sure I have. I probably have not focused on records enough, and I have not covered chatter external users. Add a note to the comments  if you see any more weird behaviour with Chatter notifications, or want to add anything to this post.

Originally posted on my blog here