I was pretty happy to see Salesforce Chatter Desktop since its evolution. It gave me an handy way to stay updated about chatter updates, just like various twitter clients like Seesmic, Tweetdeck. We all loved Chatter Desktop, but it has some issues like
Managing multiple Salesforce accounts is not easy or intuitive. How to do is explained in this blog post
You can’t work and see updates from multiple Salesforce accounts together, chatter desktop works with one Salesforce account at a time. We can argue, if this is really a requirement ? I would say “YES”, I know a few consultants(including me) who are on Chatter for their own and different companies and want all the updates together.
Luckily, I get rid of both the above issues using “Seesmic” desktop client, using its Chatter plugin.
What is Seesmic ?
For those who don’t know what is Seesmic ? Its basically an application that aggregates news streams from various channels like twitter, facebook, linkedin, foursquare, buzz etc. One can additional channels like Google Reader, Chatter etc, using plugins available at “Seesmic Marketplace”
Seesmic is available in various forms like web, desktop & mobile.
Why I’m loving Seesmic Desktop for Chatter ?
I am a guy who spends a decent time in Twitterverse, love to read/post twitter updates. Its important for me to have multiple columns of information across various twitter accounts/channels/lists, like mentions, home, Salesforce lists, android lists etc.
Pretty same is story for me with Chatter, I need to connect to various salesforce accounts, always need to view whats going on in chatter groups/feeds of my interest. How nice would be if I can get something similar with chatter, something like following image.
Please notice that in above image I am logged in via 2 Salesforce accounts i.e. one client SFDC Org & other from my employer “Simplion Technologies”, plus 1 Twitter account. Best part about using Seesmic with Chatter is ability to add various other news feeds like saved searches, Opportunities, Leads and other sobjects as independent columns, as shown below :
Want to get started with Chatter – the “Seesmic” Way ?
No more words, here are the direct steps to quickly let you experience chatter in Seesmic.
Install Seesmic Desktop via http://seesmic.com/products/desktop ! Good news, its friend of both PC & Mac.
Post installation, Goto : http://marketplace.seesmic.com/plugins/salesforce-chatter and hit “install” button to add “Salesforce Chatter” plugin to Seesmic.
That’s it, you are done start adding your twitter and salesforce accounts.
Important Note: Surprisingly, You can’t directly add more than Salesforce Production Accounts directly to Seesmic. I was able to add two production accounts via this hack.
On the Seesmic Account setup Screen, after selecting “Salesforce Chatter”
Add one production account normally via the standard oauth flow Seesmic does.
For second production account, select “Other” from Salesforce account type and specify field values as shown in image below.
I will confirm this from Seesmic team, why did they blocked from adding many Salesforce accounts. But still with these many features we are good to go.
Improvement suggestions for Seesmic Team
I don’t know if this chatter plugin is open source, but if you make it, wonderful salesforce community can take it to next level. Some updates to this can be support for
Like button
New Chatter lists coming in Summer’11
Updates to plugin as per new releases.
Add ability to support more than one production/sandox or other account altogther. As of now I can just have upto maximum 2 accounts of any type in system.
Your Views !!
What do you feel about this post and Seesmic, looking forward for your comments on the same.
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Comments (4)
Anonymoussays:
May 25, 2011 at 9:38 amAbhinav, appreciate the post and value the feedback here. We actually are working on some of the fixes and improvements. You should be able to add multiple accounts and there's a bug where you need to close the app and open it, but we'll have a new version out soon with more improvements to come soon after. Feel free to email me yama [at] seesmic [dot] com – Thanks!
Anonymoussays:
May 25, 2011 at 10:20 amThanks @jyamasaki, First of all, I really liked this Chatter plugin & Seesmic of course, its helping me a lot with Chatter in the typical Seesmic style with Twitter.Please let me know once the new version of this plugin is out, I will shoot a new post to share the update and will cover any new features released. My email is abhinav@tgerm.com.I have added you in my contacts.
Anonymoussays:
June 7, 2011 at 5:52 pmI was not able to add the second SFDC Account. I get a message that says account already added. It never prompts me for the ID/Password for the new ORG. Also this does not help you out when you want to post to one org and have it cascaded to all the other orgs.
Anonymoussays:
June 8, 2011 at 3:50 amHey Mike,Their is a trivial bug in Seesmic Desktop, as mentioned in Jyamaski's comment above. Though you can add another account using the trick mentioned in the blog post, please check this image for hints : http://content.screencast.com/users/AbhinavGuptas/folders/Jing/media/b2dbb5f8-6866-4e4f-b638-04e0f0d93588/2011-05-25_1348.png