8 Ways An SMB Makes Most Of Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com users can get more work done away from the office with three new mobile app updates available next week: the ability to edit records, view dashboards, and take custom actions with the publisher. Users can access these new features from within the Chatter feed.

"Productivity is limited when you're away from your desk," said Michael Peachey, senior director of solutions marketing at Salesforce. "You can access email, read news and check your calendar, but can you update a sales opportunity or resolve a service case? The fourth generation of Chatter Mobile lets you do all that and more."

These three updates support the trend of consuming information in "micro-moments," the company said. Gartner research found that on average, employees are on their smartphones 19 times a day for 1.2-minute sessions.

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"Employees can consume information on these smartphones in micro-moments, but what if they could take valuable business actions and drive productivity across sales, service, marketing and more in every micro-moment?" the company said.

With the Edit Any Record feature, Salesforce users can make changes to account and sales opportunity information, customer cases, marketing campaigns or any other type of information in Salesforce from their mobile device. "Employees don't need to wait until they're back at their desks to update business information," Peachey said. "They can get work done at any moment, whether it's on the train or waiting for coffee."

The View Dashboards feature connects users to dashboards so they can prioritize tasks in real time and stay on top of information such as quota status, account activity or campaign milestones. Users also will be able to create custom actions for various business scenarios. These may include logging a support request, creating a work order, approving a candidate or creating an invoice.

"In just a couple of taps, employees will be able to advance any sales, service, marketing or custom business action on the spot, from their mobile device," the company said.

Salesforce Chatter Mobile is available now on all iOS devices and Android phones, and included with all Salesforce editions. The new dashboard viewing, record editing and custom action capabilities will be available on all iOS devices on July 29, and on all Android phones in the fourth quarter of 2013, the company said.