Location, location, location

I promised to write about some of my customization plans in Salesforce.com. One of them is regarding locations.

In Dexter, as you know if you use Dexter, you can pick a billing location from Contact and a jobsite or shipping location from the Sites database. There are times when that scheme doesn't work so well. If a client has several billing locations, you have to create the company several times in Contact. And then when you're making Contacts you have to decide, which Company will I put this Contact under? Sometimes you might have to decide to put the same contact under two companies. Not good!!

In Khameleon, it's set up that every company can have as many locations as needed, and they can all be under the same company. One issue in Contact, though, at least as I understand it, is that if you need to put in a different "Attn to" name, you end up having to create a new location for each "Attn to" name. Not good!!

I'm hoping to avoid those issues in Salesforce by having one Company -- in Salesforce they're called Accounts -- and a custom object called "Locations". You will be able to create as many Locations for each Account as needed, and then you will be able to choose whichever location you want in the Projects you create (another custom object I'm creating in Saleforce, more on that later). And you'll create all your Contacts under the one Account, and, again, be able to choose whichever Contact you want, wherever you want, on the Project.

In my current plan, I'm keeping the Account object (in Salesforce there are "objects" rather than forms) very simple, not even requiring an address. That way you won't have to create an Account, put all the address info in, and then have to create a Location and put that same address info in there. When you create a Contact, you'll have the option to associate him/her with Location(s) but it won't be required.

Sound good?

One concern I have, though, is whether at any point we'll wish we had the address information in the Account. What if we're looking at a report or dashboard of a bunch of Accounts and we wonder where they are? Should I require putting in the city and state at least? But what about when there are billing addresses in several cities & states? Would it be okay if you had to pick one "best" city and state for each account, probably the headquarter's? Would you resent having to put the city and state in on the Account object, and then still having to create the Location and put that same city and state in again??

Such deep, philosophical questions!

Next I'll talk about one of the biggest changes -- for some of you -- in Salesforce: Opportunities. No more 3 Month Forecast forms, only Opportunities. Change is a-comin'.