I’ve been playing with VOIP products a lot recently.  For instance, I learned you can make VOIP calls through Gizmo5 [registration currently closed] using your Google Voice number.  That’s pretty handy when you’re in another country – so long as you’ve got wifi, you’ve got a US phone number.  For free.  Since Google purchased Gizmo5, I expect we’ll see some interesting offerings when the product is re-launched.

But I digress.  As great as the above combo is, I still often connect with others using Skype.  This lead me to start collecting their IDs on the contact record.  From there it is pretty simple to create a URL to dial them through Skype directly.

Skype ID is a text field.  Skype URL is a formula field using the following:

IF( LEN(Skype_ID__c) > 0, HYPERLINK("skype:" & Skype_ID__c & "?call", "Skype " & Skype_ID__c ), "No Skype ID")

This can also be implemented as a button using this code:

skype:{!Contact.Skype_ID__c}?call

Happy dialing.  Cheers,

John

I am typically not doing a ton of programming, but when I do I like to use meaningful (long) variable names, and frequently mistype them.  Woe was me, until…

I type: pb# and the code is translated automatically.

The configuration is really simple:

So far I have used this mostly for shortening email addresses, company names, and URLs.  But when I fired up a DE tonight for some light code testing it hit me that this could be a huge time/pain saver for you heavy coders out there.

PhraseExpress is Windows only (Mac users can try TextExpander), free for non-commercial use, $49.95 otherwise. 

Note: PhraseExpress v7 was recently released, includes Windows 7 support and new features.

Check out the developerforce wiki for some great cheat sheets.  I can see how these would be an absolute lifesaver, especially during the initial learning process.

[edit: updated URL]

http://developer.force.com/cheatsheets

[edit: Direct to PDF shortcuts removed by request]

How can you translate text from a related list into a field on your master object?

Magic.  Pure and simple.  That, and formulas.  Lots of formulas.  We’ll call it Formula Magic.

This works by assigning each entry within the picklist to a range of digits, using a roll-up summary formula to compile the totals, and then using remainder calculations to determine type.

Here’s how to set it up:

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The ‘update’ function within the data loader does not allow you to specify an external ID.  Well, as it turns out I needed to do just that.

The simple work-around is to simply not include a required field and then perform an upsert.

In my example, I was updating accounts via the external ID “OWNER ID”.  By leaving out the “Name” field (required to create a new account record), I will get an error message instead of creating new accounts:

You could set a different field to required (checkbox on the field itself, not the page layout) in order to get the same functionality with the name field included.  As always- if you are playing with data in a production org, test with a small batch before you load up the big guns!