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sapo No Documentation in Free Apps
I understand that the free Appex stuff is sort of "what you see is what you get" but I'm still a little surprised at the lack of documentation. We have been working to implement the Professional Services Automation module and there is literally nothing to read for it. I would expect that the strategy for Appex is to raise sf.com user base, this effort is seriously hampered when the released apps have no content that is documented.
Just wondering - what kind of info would be most useful? Best practices? Or just understanding how the app basics are supposed to work?
Having a flowchart of the expected workflow would be good. The components are there, but we're not sure what assumptions were made.
-What is the target audience (body shop, or solution provider)?
-What would be the series of events between start and end of a project?
-How do we handle employees vs subcontractors?
There are some of our basic questions. They are high level, and I'm sure once we got an answer we would come back with some more questions.
Resources
Resource profiles help understand whose on the bench by tracking skills, experience and the consulting resume.
Resources can be both internal as well as external resources. Therefore, they can be tied to user records or contact records, depending on whether they are employees or subcontractors.
With internal resources, the user object is tied to the web-based and MS Outlook calendars so it is suggested to add a primarily role and location field to the user record for better sorting of resource calendars.
Projects
A project is some type of work that needs to be fulfilled. By centralizing information you have the ability to manage all project information in a single place.
Projects are related to accounts and, optionally, to an opportunity. This relationship provides insight into the hand off between sales and services.
Within a project you may track qualitative information such as stage and percent complete.
Using the enterprise edition work flow feature, standard tasks can be created based on the project stage. This helps deliver projects in a consistent manner. These tasks can be synched bi-directionally with MS Outlook & Lotus Notes.
Another example of our platform available in any edition, is our standard custom formula fields feature. For example, you can use the project checklist to determine % complete.
There are many other pieces included with projects, such as emails, documents, issues, progress reports, time and expenses can also be tracked to projects.
Project Issues
Project issues happen. Centralizing issue tracking is a great start to standardizing and improving on project delivery.
Basic issue tacking includes the issue age, status, who is responsible for reporting the issue, who is responsible to resolving the issue, the description of the issue and its' corresponding resolution strategy helps formalize the process in a simple, straight forward manner.
Using the issue report, it is very easy to download issues to excel for meetings. Mass updating issues via the excel connector is also a great time saver. See www.crmsuccess for more details on the excel connector.
Project Progress Reports
Progress reports provide value not just by allowing the ability to track qualitative information post engagement, but also provide context for project managers and project accountants in making sure that the project is successful.
Many organizations consider their consultants their best sales people and so it is essential to provide the ability to identify cross-sell/up-sell opportunities in a simple manner.
Project Milestones
Milestones further define project deliverables and help mark the progress of a project through your standard phases or gates.
In some use cases with fixed fee engagements, milestones can initiate the billing process.
Expense Reporting
Employee Travel Expenses are the #1 controllable expense in an organization.
Expense reports can be entered and tracked back to the project for reporting purposes. If you need to implement expense approval processes, our enterprise edition workflow approval functions can be implemented in order to track that process. In addition, you could add field history tracking to understand who has modified the record and when the change was saved.
For more information on expense reports: http://www.irs.gov/irb/2003-44_IRB/ar07.html
Time Reporting
Time can be tracked and associated to projects.
For some customers and users, they will modify the timecard object to include cases (optional), opportunities, or accounts. In enterprise edition, you can use record types to delineate the project vs. case or account timecards.
Dashboards and Reporting
There are approximately two dozen report templates that come with the Professional Services Automation 1.0 application. In addition, there are three corresponding dashboard templates.
Services Organization Overview – the intent of this dashboard is to have a single view of people, project, time and costing metrics.
Project Dashboards – this dashboard is geared toward the project manager and their projects that they are managing.
Team Lead/Resource Manager Dashboard – for team leads and resource managers, insight into skills, demand, etc often go untracked. These dashboards help provide the facts based on activity generated based on your team’s work
Hello everybody, I am working on getting some better documentation out there on the app. If you would like to offer suggestions/templates to get me going in the right direction/most helpful for you all, please email me at tlucas@salesforce.com
Thanks,
Tim
Hello,
I installed"Professional Services Automation" in our enterprise, sandbox environment - and cannot find any pre-defined workflow rules. If they exist, where are they located?
We need a workflow rule/trigger that creates a project from an opportunity (closed won), and a workflow rule that creates an event that gets added to a shared calendar.
Please help,
Thankyou.