Accessing Salesforce data on the iPad

We have talked a lot recently about mobile design, mobile websites, and the surge in use of mobile devices in the enterprise. In this post we are going to look at a specific use case of the latter - Salesforce and the iPad.

Salesforce is best known for their customer relationship management (CRM) software which has found a great deal of success in the enterprise market. In recent years they have started to expand their focus towards social products, in particular Chatter, which is billed as a real-time collaboration network and has parallels with products like Yammer. Chatter is a good example of how Salesforce has reshaped itself as a dynamic innovative company, one keen to embrace new trends. These trends include ‘mobile first’, and the company has also tried to reach out and help its users as much as it can in this area.

Salesforce have their own mobile app called - Salesforce Touch for iPad. It is a well thought out affair, allowing users to:

1. Access accounts, contacts, opportunities, and tasks
2. Access Chatter feeds
3. Edit data and create new records
4. Search

The interface is nice, and it makes good use of the iPads screen real estate. The biggest drawback is the app still doesn’t provide access to all of the data available on the native Salesforce website, so it can’t be totally relied on in the field just yet. Nor does it offer anything groundbreaking in terms of dashboards or charts. It just isn’t very exciting, it doesn’t make data ‘pop’ off the screen. For that you will need something like our very own ReportPlus product.

ReportPlus is a dashboard and reporting tool that can connect to popular enterprise data sources like those provided by Salesforce. It is specially designed to provide easy access to data on iOS devices like the iPad, and takes a lot of the pain out of creating beautiful visualizations. It doesn't require programming knowledge or code of any sort, is easy to use, and the results can be very impressive. If your customers or workforce are looking for an alternative to the official Salesforce app, or you want to bring your Salesforce data to life in a whole new way, then ReportPlus might be the tool for you.

ReportPlus allows easy access to server side resources, like Salesforce, using domain credentials or username/password authentication. Then the real fun begins, as you can manipulate retrieved data sets to build rich functional, charts, trend lines, filters, and even geo-coded maps.

ReportPlus also offers the following features:

1. Create interactive dashboards - Sort, filter, and manipulate data directly in the app
2. Add logos, colors, and images - Brand your dashboards
3. Save and export dashboards in a variety of formats - Share dashboards with colleagues via email, PowerPoint or the cloud.

So next time you are looking at your Salesforce data and wishing it had a little more shine, try ReportPlus. We think you will be impressed.