I sometimes wonder if we've forgotten the original purpose for CAPTCHA images, which is to prevent the repeated, automated submission of web forms by non-humans.

This CAPTCHA engine (original here) has apparently become a little lazy. It simply displays the challenge code un-obfuscated and calls the end user a "twit". Wussup with that?!

Wow... what a busy week. 3 new i-Dialogue portals went live this week and 2 more are on the way next week. The i-Dialogue implementation team is really doing a fantastic job bringing these resources online.

The latest additions to the i-Dialogue family of web sites/portals integrated with Salesforce.com CRM include:

http://www.GeoFunders.org : Nonprofit out of Washington DC dedicated to helping other nonprofits advance the effectiveness of their grantmaking.

http://portal.PlanarDigitalSignage.com : Partner portal with self-service access channel tools for Planar's digital signage partners.

http://portal.WhatWorks.org : Interactive tools that help nonprofits aligning their operational metrics with organization goals.

All 3 of these implementations are very interactive and portray the organization in a new light with their customers and partners. We're really looking forward to helping these organization evolve the value they're providing their constituents online.

I've been under NDA for several weeks beta testing this product and am happy to see Google Presentations finally released.

The quick definition: "Web-Based PowerPoint"

Does it work? Absolutely.

Is it as good as PowerPoint? Set your expectations accordingly. If you need to assemble a deck of slides with bullets and have your presentations available wherever you go using only a web browser, then you'll be happy.

But if you expect to do fancy animations, access a vast library of images, or integrate with other Office apps, then you're setting your expectations too high.

Is it better than PowerPoint? For design work, no. But for collaboration, yes. This is where Google Presentations really shines. You can easily collaborate with others on a single slideshow and even chat with slideshow viewers during presentations.

The problem: On-demand CRM tools streamline the sales process, but in the end it's still common to print, sign, and fax actual agreements using non-web technologies. How do you extend the online dialogue to include contract signing?

It would be ideal to click on a Salesforce Contract custom link that alerts the customer to "click here to agree", but that's not always possible. Contract law says that both parties must have a copy of an agreement to be enforceable.

If I click "I Agree" on a web page and the legal agreement terms change later, can the original agreement be enforced? There's been some recent legal precedence that says altering online contracts may make them unenforceable.

I've run into this scenario recently in a variety of industries: Purchase and Sale agreements, Patient Intake Forms, and Mortgage Loans. All managed in Salesforce up to the point of contract signing, which then switches to paper and/or fax.

The solution: There are several contract management solutions on the AppExchange, but I'm not aware of how many actually interact with the end customer via the web and support online digital signing (maybe one of these partners can correct me if I'm wrong).

We recently acquired a clever 3rd party tool that allows us to take screenshots of portal pages and export them to PDF. An evolution of this approach stores one copy of the PDF as a Contract attachment in Salesforce and emails a copy to the customer.

This fulfills the 2 copies of same contract requirement.

This video was playing on a loop at the Dreamforce expo within view of our booth. I only caught occasional glimpses during the show, but truly worth watching end-to-end.

Yes, it's marketing... but it's also a fine piece of digital art created by Bruce Campbell (Chief Creative Officer at Salesforce).

The Salesforce Foundation hosted an event on Tuesday evening in Tiburon California, which is just a short ferry boat ride away from San Francisco.

It was a fantastic opportunity to touch base with Salesforce employees, partners, and customers all at once. I learned about organizations such as Rainforest 2 Reef while standing in line for Fajitas and hung out with our friends at Exponent Partners (who by the way, implemented the Family Service Agency of San Francisco solution, which was awarded Best Non-Profit Deployment Award).

The Marga-greet-as (#2 on Steve Anderson's highlight list) were a pleasant surprise (at least from what I remember ).

Visual Force was probably the biggest announcement at this years Salesforce user conference (aka Dreamforce).

To understand the benefits of VisualForce, it helps to first understand the limitations in Salesforce today. All users see the same screen, headers, sidebars, and navigation elements in Salesforce today. Data customizations occur within the boundaries of these UI constraints.

VisualForce does for web-based enterprise software what Power Builder and Visual Basic did for traditional client-server programming. It allows developers to borrow from a library of pre-built components, incorporate them into the layout of a page, and bind the user interface to back-end data methods and models (called Apex Controllers in this context).

In short, this is basically RAD (Rapid Application Development) for the web. VisualForce is currently an XHTML template language, but I suspect it won't be long before a true WYSIWYG drag-and-drop development environment is available that removes UI developers from the XML syntax altogether.

As a Salesforce Developer, we (3 of us from i-Dialogue attended) were just drooling at the opportunity to start using Visual Force, but as a Salesforce Partner, we're being forced to walk a fine line between partner and customer loyalty.

Apex, and presumably VisualForce, will only be available to Salesforce Unlimited edition customers. Our loyalty to Salesforce and this new development paradigm dictates that we should proceed forward, developing our content management solutions using Visual Force, and convince customers of the obvious value and benefits of this approach.

But loyalty to our customers dictate that we must also continue to be backwards compatible with both Pro and Enterprise Editions and enable rich customer experiences and online interactions using the features that are available to the lowest common denominator today.

My understanding is that VisualForce and Apex controllers will be available to all editions for an additional $25 per user/per month. I'm anxious to learn more about this.

I have a new goal... to start listening to John Chambers more often. And if possible, start communicating like John Chambers.

I knew the CEO of Cisco would be speaking at Dreamforce, but I didn't expect much more than "Yes... we're a Salesforce customer and here's why you should be too". But there was none of that.

Within a couple minutes, he walked down off the stage and "stood amongst the people" so to speak. He walks with his left arm behind his body and accentuates his words using his right hand, often high in the air, as if demonstrating that the concepts he is communicating are within grasp.

He uses several very slick, animated PowerPoint slides in the background, but he was not dependent upon them. The timing of his message was in perfect sync with the visualizations, which were only there to serve his point.

He is unafraid to communicate extremely abstract and complicated concepts to an audience of 7,000+. At one point, he was displaying a multi-dimensional chess set, like something out of Star Trek, and using that as the metaphor for intricate market evolution and growth strategies.

John is a highly visual person and I assume comes from the same school as Edward Tufte on information density. I felt like an eager MBA student, voraciously taking mental notes in hopes of doing some follow-up homework later to completely digest his vision.

Why would a CEO give away their playbook and strategy to the world? Because having access to Cisco's playbook is of no benefit if you can't execute in response to the plays. The combination of product innovation, execution, distribution, efficiency, and quickly adopting to change resonates in John's message.

And finally, John understands the power of demos. "I know from experience that 6 months from now you might remember 1 or 2 things I've said, but it is the product demo that you'll truly remember." said John as he introduced his Chief Demonstration Officer (CDO) who commenced to "wow" the audience with a 5-10 minute real-world telephony demo that incorporated presence, VOIP, and video-conferencing to help close a fictional sales call.

"What" John spoke about was enlightening, but "How" he spoke was really something worth noting.

I really enjoyed the Dreamforce 07 session on Advanced Segmentation and Reporting. Salesforce shared how they internally customize Salesforce to track email preferences and subscriptions for their Leads and Contacts using a custom object name "EmailPreferences".

I liked the simplicity of this approach so much that I'm resolute on adding this as an i-Dialogue feature in the next release to replace our newsletter subscription engine.

The Problem: Duplicate leads and contacts from multiple campaigns result in contact fatigue. Leads may want to subscribe to one newsletter but not others. Allowing leads to change their global "Email Out Out" setting prevents future contact on other campaigns.

The Solution:
1) Create an Email Preferences custom object for storing a unique email address and multipicklist of subscriptions.
2) Modify Lead and Contact with lookup reference to an EmailPreference object.
3) Create some Apex code that looks for existing Email Preferences on Lead/Contact create events.
4) Create an Email Preferences landing page. Update email template footers with link to preferences page (passing in user id or email address)

Step 3 is only available for unlimited edition, so we'll likely implement this step via the API to ensure backwards compatibility with our Pro and Enterprise Edition customers.

The Results: CAN-SPAM compliant. Customers can opt-out of individual newsletters managed in Salesforce. Ability to create target email lists by subscription type. Ensure only 1 unique email address per person (if duplicates exist, ensures only 1 email sent).

Quick note to follow-up to my recent nonprofit related blog post... the Salesforce implementations for all our recent nonprofit web sites have been delivered by Exponent Partners (ExP), a Salesforce consulting partner committed to growing the capacity of Nonprofit organizations via effective use of technology (and pretty much spending 90%+ of their time on Salesforce like us).

Rem Hoffmann of ExP will be at Dreamforce in the Nonprofit pavilion. We're only about 20 yards away. Come talk to either one of us about implementing Salesforce in conjunction with a web content management system or portal. After jointly working together on a few projects, I think we have several great lessons learned about how to efficiently integrate the web with Salesforce.

"Hey Mike, will you be blogging at Dreamforce like last year?"

"Uhh... hmmmm... well... I think so."

Sorry to sound so non-committal, but I've pretty much filled up my calendar with meeting clients (both current and potential), other Salesforce partners, hosting at our booth on the Expo floor, and attending sessions. Finding time to share my experiences online would be GREAT, so I'll make some effort to broadcast over the following channels when I can:

Blog RSS Feed: http://www.i-dialogue.com/blogs/main/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss

Twitter: http://twitter.com/dlog

Definitely expect a Dreamforce wrap-up after the conference. It looks like some of the big bang announcements are already getting out. My gears are already starting to spin on how the new Salesforce features will have an impact on Customer Experience Management.

My biggest wish is for Salesforce to enable Apex on Pro and Enterprise Editions (not just Unlimited Edition as it is now). That would be big news worthy of committing to Salesforce as a Platform for many years to come IMO.

My second biggest wish would be for tighter integration with Google Premier Apps (email/calendaring/document productivity tools).

We don't have any free iPods to give away, but we are giving away 1 full year of i-Dialogue portal hosting (Portal Edition - $6,000 value).

Visit us in booth #731 at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce user conference and enter to win.

CRM Chump has a great post on An Introduction to Customer Experience Management (See related blog post on Does CEM replace CRM?).

When you describe CEM as a customer-centric approach that focuses on the needs of the customer rather than the company, it's very easy to get onto the topic of Marketing in general. Is CEM really new, or is it what marketers have been doing along?

It's not enough for a marketing agency to broadcast one-way, outbound messages anymore. The Internet allows for much greater interaction than traditional TV, print, or radio and marketing agencies must think in terms of long running, interactive, online dialogues to generate leads, cultivate, and acquire customers.

Some other questions that arise when on the topic of CEM: Is i-Dialogue a software company? An interactive marketing agency? Our core competency is certainly in technology, hosting, and on-demand content management tools. We do get very involved with our clients business goals, marketing message, and help them evolve their web site beyond simple, static web pages. But ultimately marketing functions like graphic design and copy writing fall into the hands of our partners and other agencies.

To emphasize this synergy between CEM and marketing, we are busy developing an i-Dialogue Agency Edition that allows marketing agencies to outsource the marketing automation tools, CRM, and hosting infrastructure and focus on what they do best... branding and product/service marketing. This effort requires marketing agencies to persuade their clients to use Salesforce.com CRM to monitor and report on marketing campaigns. My experience is that even one SFDC enterprise seat bundled with i-Dialogue returns extraordinary value relative to existing marketing automation platforms.