Okay, I just can’t resist sharing this ad!
Category Archives: Uncategorized
-
Van Gogh meets AirBNB
Okay, I promise I’ll try not to spam these Cannes Lions winners too much (check out their website to see everything), but I really can not not share this submission. It’s a great way to leverate trends in modern life to promote art and to reach those people who are not naturally born art-lovers.
-
Sea Hero Quest: leveraging technology to the fullest
Perfect evening: cat on my lap, glass of dessert wine in my hand and Cannes Lions winners on my laptop. This particular winner is one that deserves being shared. It’s a great combination of marketing, technology innovation and ‘making an impact that matters’.
-
Approval processes in Salesforce: combining parallel and serial, and more
Sometimes it takes practice to discover if something works. When it comes to Salesforce Approval Process functionality, that’s certainly the case. Though there is quite some documentation on the out of the box features, there are currently several impossibilities that are worth mentioning and not very well documented.
- In the out-of-the-box solution you can use both serial approving (through various steps, which are executed in a certain order) and parallel approving (through naming several approvers in 1 step). It’s also possible to combine this, to an extent. You can have multiple steps and in each step you could name different approvers. However, if you want to determine approvers dynamically through a field on the User object (e.g. manager) and you have multiple approvers in the previous step, in the next step Salesforce won’t automatically generate multiple approvers. Instead, the latter approver’s manager will be used. Example:
- User A has Manager X and User B has Manager Y;
- In step 1 you say both User A and User B have to approve the record in order for it to move forward;
- In step 2 you say automatic routing should be applied, picking the option “Automatically assign using the user field selected earlier.”. In this scenario you might expect that since in step 1 you had two approvers, in step 2 both their managers will have to approve the record. However, this is not the case. Only the manager of the latter of the approving users will have to approve. So, if User B approves first and user A approvers later, in step 2 only Manager X will have to approve (naturally, it User A will approve before User B, this will result in Manager Y having to approve step 2).
- Out of the box possibilities for escalation are VERY limited (… non-existing, really; if you need this as well, upvote it here: https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000l9l4AAA). You could combine reporting with delegated approvers, but this won’t automate much. You could use workflow rules in order to send reminder e-mails some time after the step is started, but unfortunately these do not take into account business hours (this idea is currently under review: https://success.salesforce.com/ideaview?id=08730000000Bpq3AAC).
- Users are allowed to reassign their approval to someone else. This can not be disabled or limited. The community request for a feature to restrict this feature is found here: https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000kuV3AAI.
- In the out-of-the-box solution you can use both serial approving (through various steps, which are executed in a certain order) and parallel approving (through naming several approvers in 1 step). It’s also possible to combine this, to an extent. You can have multiple steps and in each step you could name different approvers. However, if you want to determine approvers dynamically through a field on the User object (e.g. manager) and you have multiple approvers in the previous step, in the next step Salesforce won’t automatically generate multiple approvers. Instead, the latter approver’s manager will be used. Example:
-
Luxury problems: stolen wallet
Monday last week, my wallet was stolen. Almost all my cards were in it, plus some cash. Surprisingly, the things I miss most are least usable for the thief… Here’s my top 7 from most missed till “meh, not such an issue”:
- My wallet. Yes, I know it’s over five years old. It’s just an old, denim wallet. And I miss it! For over a week, I have been looking for a similar wallet, or a different one that would equally suit my needs and my tastes. So far – no luck. Dear wallet, you’ve probably been thrown into a trash bin. Know that you are missed.
- My garbage disposal card. Yes, where I live, we have a card for that. Yes, this also means I wasn’t able to throw away my trash until it was replaced. And it’s 0ver 20 degrees here. Celsius.
- My museum card. I highly doubt the thief will use it (yes, I’m prejudiced like that), but it’ll cost me 60€ to replace it.
- My travel card, my gas card and my drivers’ license. The only reason I managed to get to work was because my personal travel card was in a bag pocket, so that the two cards wouldn’t cancel each other out on check-in. I would say over two hours of one-way commuting is enough pain in the ass without this…
- All the other cards, including both of my bank cards, my credit card, several shopping cards, my health insurance card.
- My earplugs. They are great for concerts.
- A sweet card from my mum.
- The actual cash inside my wallet that the thief needed.
Must have messed up my karma big time over the last couple of months..
-
Just a few thoughts on the internet
Once in a while I log in my LiveJournal account and check out my feed. Every single time, I discover brilliant posts, written by inspiring people. In the Russian blogosphere, there is a lot that I haven’t been able to find in the Dutch or even international-English-speaking blogospheres. For me, it’s a certain combination of non-commercialism paired with actual depth of thought and quality, which to me is quite rare. In this respect, I’m really, really blessed with my Russian heritage. Many people in Russia are either not well versed in or not comfortable with English and so their creations remain hidden for a large part of the world.
Which, of course, only leaves me guessing how much of the world I’m missing, by confining myself to the limited amount of languages I know.
Which, in turn, leaves me very greatful for that very thing. How are we to choose in this overwhelming ocean of information? -
Dutch Marketeer of 2016: Chief Chocolate Officer Beltman
When I was a kid, I firmly associated chocolate with Willie Wonka. Later, when I became a teenager, I started associating it with mood swings. And in my early 20’s I would link chocolate to slavery. Luckily, in the past couple of years I discovered Tony’s Chocolonely, delicious and fair chocolate, making chocolate ‘good’ again. The best part – for me – is that there are quite a few flavors that are vegan. Vegan and delicious! So yep, it’s a brand I particularly like. Their plans to make a Chocolate Experience, actually bringing to life all those fantasies people had about Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, sure help! Creating a brand like that, that is both fair and trendy at the same time – impressive! That’s why I’m not surprised to learn that our own Dutch Willie Wonka, Henk Jan Beltman, won the Dutch Marketeer of the year award, provings (as if we needed any proof) that marketing and ethics are not mutually exclusive. Congratulations, mr. Beltman!