In his more lucid days, John Dovorak made what I believe to be one of the best statements about people who use Macs. He said, “There are two types of people using Macs. Those who don’t know any better, and those who know more than the rest of us.� I’d like to believe that I’m among the later.
I switched to Mac around the time when Apple released OS X. Its Unix core and incredible Aqua interface drew me in. These, joined with the sleekness of the Powerbook and then the awe factor of my Cinema Display, made me a Mac zealot. I’ll also admit to being drawn in by the “Think Different� campaign. Who wouldn’t want to be likened to John Lennon, Mohamed Ali, Gandhi and Einstein?
As for switching, it was pretty painless. Windows has more apps, but when you take out what you don’t use, and what flat out doesn’t work, what are you left with? Since I’m the CEO of USWeb, obviously I needed to use Office, but I actually find Entourage to be even better than Outlook, except for the fact that it doesn’t support Outlook plug ins.
And this brings me to my problem. We recently started using Salesforce.com at USWeb. So far, I am happy with it. It’s a bit overly complicated, but it does streamline things a bit. If you have implemented this into your business, then you already know that the biggest challenge is user adoption. I’ve had to be a complete hard ass about this with our people, and it looks like that still isn’t enough. Salesfocrce.com allows you to sync up with a simple Outlook plug in, making the application a seamless part of the process. Unless you are on a Mac. Salesforce.com doesn’t support Mac very well, and it doesn’t look like this is going to change. Since I am slowly converting my employees to the Cult of Mac, and since it is my company, eventually USWeb will be entirely on Macs. And this might just be where Salesforce.com will lose me as a customer, particularly when we see what 37Signals produces as a CRM solution. Until then, I need to set an example in adaptation of Salesforce.com, which means I need that plug in.
I have been inspired by the work that came out of the contest for porting XP to Macintels, so I figured I’d try it myself. I will start the prize at $500 for the person who delivers the Salesforce.com plug in for Entourage. It has to be something that runs smoothly, doesn’t require me to run XP in the background, and does not require an unusual amount of work to install.
If there are any other like-minded people out there, feel free to email me ([email protected]) and we can up the prize money together.
How about a mail plugin to?
This is a HUGE issue for a mixed-environment company. Salesforce is taking over. I’d be willing to put in $500 for a plug-in.
Ed,
I was wondering what you’ve heard in terms of this plugin. We recently switched to Salesforce and I’ve been a bit disappointed about the lack of Entourage plugin.
Please what ever you’ve been able to find,
Jon
Ever have any luck with this idea?
It’s not an Enoutage plugin, but there is a way to do one-way sync of salesforce.com events and tasks to your Mac. Spanning Salesforce for iCal lets you subscribe to this info using Apple iCal. more info is at
http://www.spanningpartners.com/2006/07/use_ical_to_vie.html
I’m not sure, but you might be able to use Enroutage sync services to connect iCal to Enoutage and have your salesforce.com calendar data show up that way. I’m downloading the Office test drive now to see if that indeed works.
We would love to implement salesforce.com in my office, but with so many macs we can’t. $500 for a plugin seems a cheap price to pay. I’m in too
Put me down for an Entourage plug-in for Salesforce. Maybe we’ll bend our minds to this one a bit.
If anyone comes up with a way to sync entourage to salesforce I will pay for it. Within reason of course. It drives me nots right now.
Robert
Hello All,
I had the same challenge as above. I found this and am now able to upload emails from Entourage directly into SF.com
https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a0330000002f9rTAAQ
what about a contact sync with salesforce for entourage as well. Account Creation needs to also occur.
There’s another email logging system that works a treat with any client. We’ve been using it recently – its called ’email automation’ and its make by a company called iHance.
https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?NavCode__c=&id=a0330000003eIy1AAE
You have to set up a simple email forward rule and you’re away.
I’d kill for a simple – ‘post this contact to salesforce’ but in entourage though…
T
Please vote for this idea on Salesforce.com’s IdeaExchange if you haven’t already.
Here’s a link to the idea:
http://ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/23766/Integration_with_Entourage_for_Apple_Mac_OS_X
$500 for a prize? That will pay for two double cheese burgers and a large soda. Cheap skate.
Riva delivers server-side synchronization between Salesforce and Microsoft Exchange. Provided you have Entourage (or Mac Mail, iCal, Address Book) connected to an Exchange account (hosted or on-premise are fine), then Riva will work for you.
More information: http://www.rivacrmintegration.com/sync-crm-entour… (Entourage support) http://www.rivacrmintegration.com/sync-crm-mac/ (Mac Mail support) http://www.rivacrmintegration.com/sync-crm-ipad/ (iPad support) http://www.rivacrmintegration.com/sync-crm-iphone… (iPhone support) http://sites.force.com/appexchange/listingDetail?… (AppExchange listing)