The Beginning
Cirrus Insight is a CRM Application developed by Ryan Huff and Brandon Bruce in California in 2011. It was ranked as the No.1 app for five months in the year 2012. This app was started as a basic plugin and now it has become a full-fledged platform. Most of the work can be done in this plugin which will be reflected in Salesforce database.
What is the Old-School Way of Doing Things?
- When the user logs into Salesforce, he needs to go to the respective objects and update the records and other related data. Let us say, if we want to create a new contact. We need to go to the ‘Contacts’ tab, click on create ‘New’ button and then enter the information.
- Later we need to click ‘Save’ and the record is reflected in Salesforce.
The same procedure is being followed to create a task or an account etc. Now, this is easy. But imagine if, you could do this in one tab alone without flipping pages. This is when Cirrus Insight comes into picture.
How does the Appy Ninja Help?
Cirrus Insight is like having Salesforce right in our inbox. This is a critical tool for optimizing Salesforce. Instead of separating you from your daily tasks, you can bring all your aspects into your inbox and easily use data into Salesforce from your Gmail or Outlook without flipping your tabs for copying and pasting. It provides the users with plenty of features which are listed below:
- First, you can sync all your data into your email.
- Users can create new records for all standard and custom objects.
- Track your emails.
- View customer’s information from Salesforce.
- Create your own Salesforce templates or merge the available ones.
- Follow up reminders with required time slot.
- Create and assign tasks.
- Syncs all the data available from your Org.
How does it Work and the Real Life Scenario
Cirrus Insight supports Gmail, Outlook, Apple products and Android phones. The snapshots of the features of the platform are given below.
Setup:
The basic layout of your Cirrus Insight clubbed with Gmail looks like this.
First and foremost thing is to go to “Settings” and enable email tracking and real time email notifications. Contacts, tasks, calendar and email can be synced. Reminders can be enabled for tasks in case you want to be notified again regarding the task. The menu for “Settings” is as shown below.
Most of the work is done on the right-side panel of the screen. There are 3 tabs in this panel: Salesforce, a drop down to select object and a “plus” sign. From the drop-down option, there is a list to select the objects from. (The plug in that we are testing is a trial plugin. Hence, only limited objects are present, in my case. The objects present are Accounts, Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Tasks and Cases.) In the “Salesforce” tab, a particular record can be searched in an object. If a record should be created quickly, there is a “plus” sign. If the plus sign is clicked, a list of objects can be found. The object can be selected and a record can be created quickly. Below is a screenshot of the right side of the panel.
On the left side of the panel, an “Inbox” tab is present, which is like Gmail and “Tracking” tab, where the number of emails sent and received can be seen. The best part of this is that a user can also see if the person at the other end has actually opened the mail, checked if the person has gone through the mail by clicking the link provided in the mail and see if the person has replied to the mail. A notification will be received for that as well. The “Tracking” tab contains a graph of all the information regarding the same. Here’s a snapshot below. Filters are present to view the graph accordingly.
Even in the right-side panel, you can search for a contact.
Creating and Editing Records:
Any number of records can be created from any object on the right side of the panel by clicking on “New Account”. “Plus” sign can also be used for this job. If record types are present on your object, that too will be displayed. Now, if a particular record type is chosen, the list of fields will be same just like the fields that exist in the Salesforce Org. After saving the contact, it will be reflected in Salesforce. Below screenshots represent the same.
Tasks, Email and Attachments:
Tasks, email and attachments, Log Calls and Calendar Events can be synced with Salesforce. For example, I have assigned a task to the user “Subhashini” and I have attached the respective screenshots.
And this is reflected in Salesforce Org.
Calendar:
Even Calendars can be synced to the Salesforce Org. It has the option to specify the work hours and even the location. The below screenshot is provided for the same.
If a meeting is scheduled, there is an option to invite people by specifying their email ID, location, description (optional).
Here, I have specified the timings from 5 to 5:30 PM and when I clicked “Insert Times into Email”, I was brought to the respective email field, where the description of the template is specified. The following screenshots provide the same.
Now, once the mail has been sent, if the end user clicks on the mail, a notification is sent to the sender of the mail. Even this Email sync shows up in the Salesforce Org. The following two screenshots describe the same.
NOTIFICATION
A task reminder can be set for yourself when the meeting time approaches. Notifications will be received as shown below.
There is an option to schedule to send an email at a specified time later.
The other options include creating an Email Template on your own and following up of the task. Even these will be synced in Salesforce. Hence you can do a complete tracking of all Emails and Tasks.
The Conclusion
From the features mentioned above, it can be seen that this is a handy tool that helps users to do productive work in less time. Although there are not many objects present at our disposal, it is a best buy for being even more productive at the workplace.
