Upgrade vs Rebuild, Interest vs Responsibility

Apparently blog writing software worldwide has been knocked out by Google’s recent turning off of an old authentication method. If, like me, you use Blogger, the good news is Microsoft and Google are coming up with a joint solution to the problem. If that is not good enough, you can create a WordPress blog site and import all of your blogs. I will give them a week or two before making the jump.

This week’s blog is inspired by a piece of work we just completed and the follow-on work which may result from it.

The Proof of Concept

Within their industry, the client checks the compliance of service providers through regular visits and tracks what measures need to be applied to meet the legal standards required. In some ways they are similar to restaurant health inspectors. They were managing this process through Microsoft CRM v3 (yes, this was before it was called Dynamics CRM). Understanding it was time to move on, they wanted to do a trial upgrade to see what could be preserved and plan out the actual upgrade.

Microsoft CRM v3 was the second version of CRM after v1.0/1.2 (there was no version 2). This was the early days of CRM and introduced the Marketing and Service modules of the product. It also introduced the extension tables for the entities, allowing many more custom fields than was possible in v1 and allowed for the creation of custom entities.

Despite making the product ‘practical’ and propelling it past Sage ACT! which had, in my opinion, been Microsoft CRM v1’s closest competitor, it still had significant shortcomings. The predecessor of plugins, “callouts”, had significant limitations, as did the API, so it was no surprise that the client had been very creative in their customisations of the solution.

It was common for consultants to embrace ‘unsupported customizations’ in v3 because of the limitations. Unsupported customizations are changes made to Dynamics CRM which Microsoft do not support i.e. they cannot guarantee they will survive updates and Microsoft reserves the right not to support a system where they have been employed.

In this specific case, the client had added stored procedures to the SQL Database (a CRM no-no), and renamed CRM tables and replaced them with SQL views (a really big no-no). They had avoided the use of callouts and done practically everything with JavaScript, web pages, and windows services.

To upgrade to Dynamics CRM 2015, it is necessary to take the system through every version. So the upgrade went from Microsoft CRM v3 –> Dynamics CRM v4 –> Dynamics CRM v2011 –> Dynamics CRM v2013 –> Dynamics CRM v2015. Practically every part of the CRM architecture was revised and tweaked over these versions. For example, between v3 and v4, Dynamics CRM went from a pure on-premise solution to a deployment-independent solution i.e. CRM Online and, more recently, the product went from only supporting Internet Explorer for its web client to supporting all major browsers.

Not surprisingly, very little of the customizations survived the process, with most having to be removed just so the upgrade worked at all. Our own l33t CRM developer, Colin Slack, brought one of the major pieces of customizations all the way through so the client could see how the product looked in Dynamics CRM 2015.

The client was happy with what they saw and we set about putting a proposal together for the actual upgrade.

Three Options

It became clear there were three options available to us to get a working Dynamics CRM 2015 system:

• Upgrade Lite: Literally get the current system and make it work in Dynamics CRM 2015
• Upgrade “Proper”: Upgrade the code where needed but, with the significant advances in the configuration capabilities of Dynamics CRM, where possible replace what was JavaScript in CRM v3 with configuration in CRM 2015
• Rebuild: Start with a fresh implementation of Dynamics CRM 2015 and determine what the business needs (as opposed to what was possible with CRM v3) and configure/customize as required

Costing the options it also became clear that the effort to rebuild was significantly less than the upgrade options and much less risky in terms of nasty surprises in the many years of code applied to the old system. It also allowed a more robust design. For example, JavaScript, the tool of choice in the existing design, relies on the user opening a form to trigger the code. This means the JavaScript will not fire on the import of records, if a web form is used, or if mobility options are used. While not part of the business processes today, it is inevitable that this will become a problem some time in the future.

The problem was the client was fixed on their path. All along they had assumed that the way to go was to upgrade and for us to convince them of a different approach was difficult. To complicate matters, the decision makers were reluctant to get the business involved in the intensive workshops necessary to understand the business processes for the rebuild but largely unnecessary for the most expensive Upgrade Lite option.

This discussion is still not resolved and it may be the business prefers to go for the more expensive option to avoid disruption to ‘business-as-usual’, discounting the ‘best practice’ option. Ultimately it is their business and they must choose the best path for them.

Conclusions

The reason I wrote this was to highlight that while upgrading is normally the obvious choice, it does not always mean it is the best choice and, under certain circumstances, rebuilding the system can make sense.

In this case, the most cost-effective, risk-averse option was rebuilding but, with the consultant having incomplete information, this did not mean it is the best option for the business. While, as consultant, we may get frustrated with clients who pay us money to hear our advice and then not heed it, it is ultimately the business executives’ responsibility if the business succeeds or fails, not ours, and we must respect that.

Salesforce: Frictional Forces and Equilibrium

Microsoft Live Writer has finally given up the ghost and will no longer link to  Blogger so I am having to use Google's online writing tools until I find another option. All suggestions welcome.

Salesforce has done it. The elusive goal of making a profit. Will Marc return to GAAP reporting? Is this a one-off like that tax write-off from a few years ago? Is this the start of a golden era for Salesforce? The numbers will reveal all.

Salesforce Quarterly Results

The numbers are from Salesforce’s Financials page. These are the numbers reported to the Securities Exchange Commission and are the GAAP numbers, not the non-GAAP numbers we hear in the press releases.

	2015 Q1	2015 Q2	2015 Q3	2015 Q4	2016 Q1
Revenue	1,226,772	1,318,551	1,383,655	1,444,608	1,511,167
Subscription Revenue	1,147,306	1,232,587	1,288,513	1,345,358	1,405,287
Revenue Cost	292,305	307,831	333,211	355,923	381,802
Operating Cost	989,808	1,044,154	1,072,486	1,123,501	1,098,260
Salesforce Income	-96,911	-61,088	-38,924	-65,765	4,092
Highest Transaction		2,037,819,946	2,502,030,346	2,872,068,400	3,186,923,759
Transaction Growth QoQ			23%	15%	11%
Revenue Growth # YoY	334,139	361,457	307,621	299,366	284,395
Revenue Growth % YoY	37%	38%	29%	26%	23%
Revenue Growth % QoQ	7%	7%	5%	4%	5%
Total Cost % YoY	37%	36%	20%	18%	15%
Total Cost % QoQ	3%	5%	4%	5%	0%
Staff	14,239	15,145	15,458	16,227	16,852
Staff Growth YoY	38%	20%	21%	22%	18%
Margin	-7.90%	-4.63%	-2.81%	-4.55%	0.27%
Growth Difference	1%	2%	9%	8%	8%
Cash	827,891	774,725	846,325	908,117	941,956
Accounts Receivable	684,155	834,323	794,590	1,905,506	926,381
Cash/AR	121%	93%	107%	48%	102%
Expenses Relating to Stock Based Awards	131,092	142,411	139,460	151,802	142,560
Stock Based YoY	14%	29%	-1%	11%	9%

 

Numbers of Note

In terms of what is jumping out at me is a general slowing down in the growth of the business. Transaction growth (the growth in the number of ‘operations’ done on the Salesforce servers) has halved in six months. Revenue growth year-on-year is showing a steady decline over the five quarters above and is the lowest it has been in five years. Thankfully cost growth has also slowed down and, by comparing the revenue year-on-year to the cost year-on-year we see growth is decelerating faster, which is good for profit. Like revenue growth we are seeing a cost growth similar to that of five years ago.

Here it is in graphical form. The solid green line (Cost) is running pretty much parallel now with the solid red line (Revenue) with both declining. Cost is also as lot less volatile than the past which is also a good thing. Note that while the lines are parallel, as this is growth, revenues are still growing faster than costs which means we are on a path to profitability.

Staff growth is a similar story. A steady deceleration with growth numbers similar to those of the start of 2010.

The business growth slowing is good because the aggressive growth strategy was unsustainable and unprofitable. By putting the brakes on, especially on marketing and sales spend, Salesforce has returned to a break-even position. As mentioned, the financials are similar to those of five years ago. Five years ago Salesforce was profitable.

Unusual Entries

Back in 2013, Salesforce turned a profit because they got a $130m tax rebate. Is this the same again? The only entry which stands out is the once-off “Operating lease termination resulting from purchase of 50 Fremont” which reduced operating expenses by around $37m. As the profit made was $4m this certainly had an impact.

It will be interesting to see how the next quarter pans out

Cash and Accounts Receivable

As I predicted last time, Cash and Accounts Receivable have come back in line after the end of year spike to bring in those last-minute contracts.

Like our Revenue and Cost measures, the Cash and Accounts Receivable are starting to level out.

Earnings Call Buzzword Bingo

I was especially interested in this one because we now have a profit to brag about. At 3,500 words this was one of the shorter transcripts in recent quarters. Regardless he managed to utter the phrase “We are all about customer success” twice and his version of bragging about the profit, “Non-GAAP EPS of $0” three times. The words “profit”, “profits” and “profitability” got mentioned once each.

Not a huge amount but they are words Marc is unfamiliar with so you can forgive him for not over-working them.

Four times his used the phrase “our customer success platform” which is the new branding for the Salesforce stack; the develop platform most dreaded by developers, according to StackOverflow.

The rules for Earnings Call Buzzword Bingo are simple. We get the quarterly transcript and count up the words and phrases. Words on the list have had ten or more mentions in the past five periods with the text used being the call transcript after the introduction and up to, but not including, questions.

	2015 Q1	2015 Q2	2015 Q3	2015 Q4	2016 Q1
Number of words	2400	4,731	3,922	4,017	3,495
Customers/Customer	22	38	34	23	34
Revenue	19	27	26	25	24
Cloud	15	22	47	32	28
Platform(s)	10	13	27	18	14
Service	13	15	12	5	9
Growth	9	18	16	13	16
Marketing	5	10	8	4	8
Cash	10	11	9	10	11
Operating	11	11	8	20	11
Enterprise(s)	8	10	8	7	8
Dreamforce		11	14	2	1
Analytics			14	11	9
Software				12	4

In terms of words we have lost, unfortunately ExactTarget and Salesforce1 are no longer the golden children they once were and we lose them from the list.

No new words stood out other than ‘incredible’ (ten times), ‘world’ (17 times), and ‘success’ (12 times). These are a bit generic though so I am not adding them on.

Google Trends

Our quarterly review of Google searches for “Dynamics CRM” and “salesforce.com”.

People are still more interested in Googling about Dynamics CRM.

In terms of regional interest, nothing really has changed in terms of the countries looking at the two terms but the cities is interesting. Firstly, let us look at “salesforce.com”:

Clearly the interest is from the Americas where five of the seven cities are based. The other two are in India.

For “Dynamics CRM” we have:

I did not know where Chiyoda was and had to look it up; it is, effectively, Tokyo for the purposes of our review. Of these top seven cities precisely zero of them are in the Americas.

It is clear which is the more metropolitan of the products and which one the international community is curious about.

Insider and Institutional Sales

So how has the slowing growth affected those in the know?

	2015 Q1	2015 Q2	2015 Q3	2015 Q4	2016 Q1
Insider Sales (as a percentage of holdings)	0.50%	0.40%	4.70%	4.60%	4.50%
Institutional Sales (as a percentage of holdings)	2.71%	2.67%	3.20%	3.11%	3.04%

No clear patterns here other than a small decline in Insider and Institutional Sales over the last three quarters. Given this is the case, they do not seem overly concerned with the slowing growth. This being said no executive has made a purchase of Salesforce shares in the past six months and they are still selling an awful lot of shares.

Looking to the Future

Last quarter I predicted revenues of $1.56b and a loss of around $50m. Obviously the loss was off, although I would be closer if not for the $37m lease termination. I did ok with the revenues though being only 3-4% off.

In terms of the next quarter, I predict revenues of around $1.66b and an income around the breakeven mark i.e. $0b.

Conclusions

The frictional forces of the market are finally affecting the turbulent trajectory of Salesforce and it is slowing down. In this case, though, a slowing of growth is not all bad. The slowing has given Salesforce the opportunity to return to profitability or, at least a break-even point. Also, the slowing of the business has brought a stability to the figures.

It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a profitable Salesforce or an outlier with more losses to come.

Tools for an Awesome CRM Demo

It has been a few weeks since I wrote a blog as it has been crazy-busy but I am still here and still committed to writing my “three per month”. There should be a Salesforce announcement soon so this will be likely the next post but, for now, it is all about Dynamics CRM.

There used to be a time when, for a demo, you had to copy your 30G virtual machine, spin it up and pretty much configure and customise from scratch. Thankfully things have become a lot easier. To this end I thought I would share some of the tools I use to put together my CRM demos.

The Base Image

This first one is probably my best secret weapon. Obviously, you can sign up for a 30 day trial and get an almost instant CRM in the cloud but, if you are a Microsoft partner and have a bit of extra time, there is another option.

Microsoft Office Demos allows partners to spin up a fully featured 90-day Office 365 environment, including CRM, if you choose the first option.

Moreover, the demo environments can be set up clean or for specific verticals.

 

If you are looking to impress, these are a great way to do it. The verticals have language specific to that vertical as well as custom elements to really show Dynamics CRM in its best light. As mentioned though, they can take a few hours to set up so do not do this on the morning of the demo.

Web Portal

For simple portal setup, it does not get much easier than ADX Studio. Once you have your base CRM image in place, go to ADX Studio’s Demo site, feed it the details of your CRM environment and your login details and it does the rest. Again this can take a few hours but is well worth the wait.

As you can see, there are also verticals available here. If you are unsure, go with the “Customer Portal” as you can always add additional portals later through CRM Settings. Customer Portal gives commonly requested features such as Customer Self-Service, Knowledge Base, Ticketing, Event Management and Service Requests.

Modifying the look and feel is as simple as editing a WordPress site, if not simpler, and requires no code knowledge.

Chipping Off the Rough Edges

There are two other tools I recommend to smooth off the rough edges of your demo. The first I have used for many demos and the other comes highly recommended by the MVP community. The first is one, I have mentioned before, which is Tanguy’s xRM Toolbox. It is full of useful bits and pieces. I mainly use the icon loader and the SiteMap editor but there is loads more in there and anyone who works with CRM should have this one within reach.

The second is Scott Durow’s Ribbon Workbench. This allows you to mess with the buttons on forms and the like. As mentioned this is not a tool I have used directly but it is on my list of tools to master and, with the ability to assign Actions to buttons, I am sure it is soon to become my new best friend.

If you need to mess with the navigation of your demo at any level, these two tools get you there.

Bonus Workflow

If the demo requires sending an email, this is a trick I use to keep things flowing nicely. Generally, your demo environment will not have email set up but you want to give the illusion it does. This simple workflow changes an email from “Pending Send” to “Sent” as if it really did go out.

Conclusions

I am sure others have tools they use e.g. PowerBI, and I welcome adding these to the comments but, for me, this handful of tools allow me to put together a great demo without taking a week or two like it used to in the old days.

Passing MB5-705: Managing Microsoft Dynamics Implementations

I just passed MB5-705: Managing Microsoft Dynamics Implementations. Lots of lessons learned so I thought I would write them down while they are still fresh.

Know the Ground You Are Fighting On

Firstly, understand what is ahead of you. In this case, the exam is 90 minutes long and has 45 questions. You need to score 700 to pass which, I assume, is equivalent to a 70% pass rate but this this not completely clear on the Microsoft site. If this is right though, it means you can get up to around eight questions wrong.

In the exam, you can mark questions for review. What I tend to do is answer the questions and, if I am not sure the answer is right, mark them as for review. Then, at the end, I go over these until I get under the eight question threshold then I cross my fingers and hit the finish button.

In terms of the topics covered, the details can be found here. Here are the high-level topics (the link goes down to a summary of the areas covered under each of these headings):

• Explain projects and project management
• Define Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step
• Initiate a project and prepare for the diagnostic phase
• Deliver Decision Accelerators
• Generate a proposal and final licensing and services agreements
• Describe project management disciplines
• Use waterfall delivery
• Use agile delivery
• Manage the deployment and operations phases

In this exam, all topics are weighted equally.

Gather Intelligence From Allies

There is a blog out there which, if you heed its advice, will be really, really, useful. Kevin Crampton aka @kevtravel put out this blog post which is an excellent summary of resources and even includes his notes. The reason I only just passed the exam is because I did not give this blog the consideration it deserved. Learn from my mistake and do what Kevin tells you.

Gather Intelligence From Double Agents

Let us broach the dirty subject of ‘Brain Dumps’. It is a poorly kept secret that there are operators out there who, for a fee, will sell what they claim are ‘questions closely resembling the Microsoft exam questions’. Microsoft have made their position on brain dumps crystal clear. On their Exam Policies and FAQ page they state:

“If a candidate violates any testing rule, exam policy, or term within the exam agreement (NDA), or engages in any misconduct that diminishes the security and integrity of the Microsoft Certification Program in any way, the candidate may be permanently prohibited from taking any future Microsoft Certification exams. In addition, the candidate may be decertified from the Microsoft Certification Program, and test scores and certifications may be revoked.

Examples of such misconduct, misuse, and fraud include, but are not limited to, the following:
…
Using unauthorized material in attempting to satisfy certification requirements (this includes using "brain-dump" material and/or unauthorized publication of exam questions with or without answers)
…”

Using brain dumps is a bad idea for a number of reasons:

• Microsoft can revoke your certification and ban you if you use them (as per above)
• While I have no evidence for this, I hear that Microsoft periodically reword questions to trip up the brain dumpers
• My understanding is the answers are randomized in their order in the exam so ‘A’ will not always be the answer

While I see value in the brain dumps as a test exam to identify areas which need study, to use them is a violation so do so at your own risk.

Gather Intelligence From Previous Battles

The pre-cursor to this exam was MB5-858. This is an exam I studied for in the dark past and still had my study notes for. This was useful to refresh my memory but it is fair to say, on its own, this information was insufficient to pass the exam.

Gather Your Weaponry

Kevin provides an excellent summary of tools to use to help pass the exam. There were two key resources which proved invaluable to me. The first one was the SureStep Client (make sure it is the 2012 version). While a lot of material in the SureStep 2010 client is the same as the 2012 client, the exam tests the 2012 client so it makes sense to be up to date.

The second was the client materials for the 80450 course. This material closely follows the topics in the exam and is very useful for revision.

For both of these you will need Internet Explorer (they use the File Manager tool to down load them) and a partner account on PartnerSource.

Once More Unto the Breach

If this is an exam you are studying for, I wish you the best of luck. If you prepare and follow my advice (and Kevin’s) you should be fine. Even if you do trip up, Microsoft are offering second chance exams at the moment (well, in Australia anyway) which takes the pressure off a little.

Forrester Trajectories for Enterprise CRM: 2008-2015

Every now and again, Forrester or Gartner release a report on the comparative strengths of the market leading CRM systems. Forrester has just put out their “The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites For Large Organizations, Q1 2015”. If you Google around you will be able to obtain a free copy in exchange for giving your contact details to one of the major CRM vendors.

Forrester Trajectories

My most recent trajectory analysis was in July last year. Basically, I took the Gartner reports from 2012 to 2014 and plotted how the products moved over time. This time I have done it for the Forrester CRM Suites for Large Organization reports for 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2015.

Here is the result.

Yes, my Photoshop/GIMP skills have come a long way in six months.

The selection of products is based on those which have ended up in the leaders quadrant which are:

• Microsoft
• Oracle Siebel
• Pegasystems
• Salesforce
• SAP Cloud for Customer
• SAP CRM

SAP Cloud for Customer was not mentioned in the previous Forrester reports so it has no trajectory line. for the others, the white circle is where the product is in 2015 with the tail being its path over the previous reports.

Products Left Behind

In the previous reports, the Leaders quadrant also had:

• CDC Software (2010)
• Oracle CRM on Demand (2012)
• RightNow (2012)

CDC Pivotal (now Aptean Pivotal CRM) is considered by Forrester to be suited to the midsize market (250-999 employees) and therefore does not appear in the chart. Oracle CRM on Demand no longer appears in any list so I am not sure what has happened to it, unless it has been bundled in with Oracle Siebel. RightNow was bought by Oracle in 2011 and is now known as Oracle Service Cloud with Forrester considering it a customer service solution and not an enterprise CRM solution.

Market Presence

Of the six players in the Leaders quadrant, four have a large market presence:

• Microsoft
• Oracle Siebel
• Salesforce
• SAP CRM

These have been the four main players for quite a while now with me highlighting them in my trajectory blog in 2012.

Challengers

The challenger of great interest to me is Pegasystems. Again I mentioned it as one to watch back in 2012 and here it is. Over the seven years it has emerged from the Strong Performers and is now a Leader. I wrote in 2012 that I had never heard of Pegasystems. These days, while the product does not feature on my radar often, I personally know three people in Australia working for them.

Other Trajectories of Interest

Of the four main players, all have moved back in their strategy score, presumably a normalisation relative to the wider market. Sadly, the only one of the four that has also moved down in its offering score in Microsoft. The Forrester report evaluated Dynamics CRM 2013 so, with the improvements in CRM 2015 and the additional capabilities available through Dynamics Marketing and Social Engagement, I expect this position will improve in the next report.

Industry Consolidation

In terms of the number of players featuring in the Forrester report we have:

• 2008: 14 (6 in the Leaders quadrant)
• 2010: 18 (7 in the Leaders quadrant)
• 2012: 17 (7 in the Leaders quadrant)
• 2015: 9 (6 in the Leaders quadrant)

While the number of leading players has stayed about the same, the total number of CRM solutions in the entire space has dropped significantly by about 1/3 since 2008. I observed a similar trend back in 2011 for sales force automation products.

Conclusions

While the industry continues to consolidate, the same four players still dominate the CRM market with Microsoft losing a little ground, in terms of their offering, relative to the other players. Pegasystems continues to move from strength to strength and it will be interesting to see if they become the fifth horse in the race in the near future.

CRM: Corpse Relationship Management

A recent project highlighted some of the newer features of Dynamics CRM so I thought running through some of the key aspects of the project to show what can be done in CRM 2013/2015.

The Project

The British Research Academy Into Necrobiological Systems (BRAINS) asked me to put a CRM system together in case of a necrobiological disaster, as described in Kane and Selsis’ recent pioneering work. In short, as we explore the universe there is an ever-increasing risk of exposing ourselves to Spontaneous Necro-Animation Psychosis (SNAP). While many agree such an apocalypse is inevitable, there is no reason why we cannot maintain relations between the uninfected and the infected as seen in documentaries such as the BBC’s “In The Flesh”.

Here is the CRM system I put together for them.

Tracing Infection Lineage

Knowing the lineage of the infected will assist in a 360 degree view of the recently eaten. Who ate whom? Do they tend to kill or nibble? Do they have a preference in their cerebral comestibles?

Using the hierarchy settings, against the Contact entity in CRM, we can link Contacts to their ‘parent’ and visually display the hierarchy.

Jim Grim has been busy and obviously likes to sample his meals, more than gorge himself leading to the creation of four additional walkers.

Travelling up the hierarchy, we can also identify that all-so-important ‘patient zero’ where the outbreak began.

Collaboration (Bringing the Brains Together)

Using the often overlooked Posts, we can combine automated responses, such as from GPS tags on our upwardly mobile departed, with manual entries requesting assistance from the wider team. Jim’s speech therapy is not progressing well but the duct tape is working a treat.

Quick Create Forms

Often, when on the road, you do not have time to fill out a full CRM form. Whether you are behind the wheel or behind a makeshift barricade, getting the data into CRM as quickly and efficiently as possible is often the key to survival. The new Quick Create Forms are for quick data entry, capturing the essentials and getting to the guts of it.

Enhanced Mobility

Even when you do not have an internet connection because of a power cut or the shambling hordes breaking the transmitters, you can still enter data when on the road. The mobile client of CRM allows you to enter data, even when you are offline and will sync when a connection is re-established.

Other Features

Other new features such as roll-up and calculated fields, quick view forms and business process flows will also prove useful down the trail, and perhaps in your systems as well. Feel free to explore but, as with all adventures into new territory, it is always recommended you have a trusted guide to make sure you do not fall into any traps or find yourself in a dead end.

Have a great April Fool’s Day ;)

A Codeless Alert System For Dynamics CRM

A common requirement for JavaScript on CRM forms is to pop up a warning when a record opens. Perhaps it is an account marked as a bad credit risk in the ERP system or perhaps it is a case overdue for a response. Whatever the circumstance, we often want to inform a user of something before they start interacting with a record.

With Business Rules, we can now interrupt a user reliably without resorting to Javascript.

Setting up the Alert

First of all we need a text field to contain our alert. Initially I added this to the header of the record but found out that it is not possible (or, at least, I could not figure out how) to widen the field meaning my alert was being cut off. In the end I added a tab to the top of the form body and added the field to a section in the tab.

When blank the field is almost invisible so I clicked into it for the screenshot. I also turned off the label for the field as we do not need it.

Next, I set up a business rule to grab the user’s attention.

All the rule does is prevent the user from saving if the Alert field contains data and forces the user to clear the field first, making them acknowledge the contents.

Triggering the Alert

Now we simply set up another Business Rule, Workflow or whatever we like to populate the Alert field. When this is done, we are set. For example, let us say we want to warn the user of all Accounts beginning with A.

When the user opens up a guilty record, they are confronted with:

Until they clear the message, they will not be able to save any changes to the record.

A word of warning though, Business Rules fire in the order they are activated so if you add a rule to populate the Alert field, make sure you deactivate and reactivate the Alert Rule afterwards so it checks AFTER the field is populated and not before.

Conclusions

A simple and effective alerting system which forces the user to read the message before interacting with the record. If you need such an alert and do not want to rely on a coder to adjust it as the business alert criteria change over time, consider this option.