On Monday, we crushed on Salesforce.com and shared how we expanded our Salesforce integration tools for membership organizations before the close of 2011.

To show Baby New Year we mean business, we released Soapbox 2.2.13 right after flipping the calendar to 2012. What does Soapbox 2.2.13 give you, you ask? Well, we'll be happy to tell you!

More flexible donation forms

With Soapbox Donations, you can accept donations seamlessly within your website without visitors ever leaving your site - and have the transaction details automatically posted to Salesforce.com. Our recent release added some additional functionality into Soapbox Donations to make it more flexible.

Custom fields

The donation form requires the donor to input their first name, last name, and email address in the Contact Information portion of the form. You can also elect to ask for a phone number and organization. Address information is captured further down the form in the payment section.

With the latest release, Soapbox Donations allows you to customize and enable up to four additional text fields in the Contact Information area whose data is also written to Salesforce.com. In the example to the right, those custom fields are for the annual budget of an organization, the number of clients it serves, the name of a primary contact and the Executive Director's name.

Displaying text in default amount options

In Soapbox Donations, you can predefine donation amounts a donor may select or choose to allow them to enter their own amount. In the example to the right, we've chosen to use Soapbox Donations as a means of collecting dues for a membership organization. For that, we've turned off the ability for a visitor to select their own payment. We wouldn't want to allow them to choose their own dues amount, after all!

For the example, we have used the new functionality in this release that allows us to include text in the predefined donation amount options. Now, we can define the membership levels as Silver, Gold, and Platinum instead of simply listing the payment amounts.

Customize form headings

In the donation form, you can now define the heading text that appears above the payment amount and payment frequency options. In the example, we've elected to display Level of Membership and Payment Frequency in these spots.

Customize payment frequency options

With Soapbox Donations, you can accept one-time or monthly recurring payments from visitors. With the latest release, you can now customize the text for these options so it is appropriate for the use of the form. In our membership example, we've chosen to add language that is more specific to the dues transaction.

Handy widgets and complex code easily added with Soapbox Shortcodes

One little bit of magic that we've added behind the scenes is something called Soapbox Shortcodes. Soapbox Shortcodes allows for WYSIWYG editor-safe code that can be easily added into an article or a module that inserts more complex javascript or HTML that has been defined for your site with a visitor views the page. This is super handy in instances where that more complex code is something that might get stripped out by the WYSIWYG editor.

The editor-safe code could look something like this...

This is my article text. It is very interesting, isn't it?

{safelittlecodesnippet}Some text that I want inserted into the fancy, complex code{/safelittlecodesnippet}

And I have yet more to add to this article...

...but translate into any number of things once Soapbox Shortcodes runs it on your site: a Facebook Like Box, a Flickr slideshow widget, or a variety of other options that require javascript or advanced HTML.

We create the complex code and add it to your sit. You click a button to insert it in an article and include any additional text it needs. Handy, ain't it!

What next?

If you'd like Soapbox Donations added to your site, let's talk! Want to learn more about Salesforce.com or how our integrations work, hit us up! Think getting us to add a specific Soapbox Shortcode to your site could make your life easier and more efficient, our door is always open!

For those keeping tabs on our updates, you know that we're quite enamored with the amazing possibilities Salesforce.com holds for nonprofit organizations. Call it a schoolgirl crush but when a hunky, world-class constituent relationship management (CRM) database floating in the cloud offers free or significantly reduced product to nonprofit organizations, we get weak in the knees. And we've been investing in a bright feature with our beau by building robust tools that integrate Salesforce.com with Non-Profit Soapbox. This is more than a casual fling for us.

We were so lovesick over the latest of these tools that the mistletoe-fueled holiday hysteria got to our heads and we didn't stop to share the details of a Soapbox update weeks ago - that, and yours truly was making sure he wasn't eaten by a lion while on vacation.

Control website login access based on Salesforce.com data

The latest round of Salesforce.com wizardry extends the power of the tools in ways that will make membership organizations a touch giddy. We've always been able to connect website logins with Contact records in Salesforce. Now you have more control over who can create those logins, choose to allow login based on membership status, and customize the user experience through the whole process. Somebody not paid up? Your website can tap them on the shoulder when they try to login and tell 'em to cough up the cash before they get access to the goods. Only want folks in your Contacts object to register. Sure thing! It all allows you to control who gets to see website content or Salesforce data - or have access to their own Contact or Organization data in your Salesforce account.

Members add photos and other images to their online profiles housed in Salesforce.com

We're also added the ability for visitors to upload images and associate those with Salesforce.com records. Think avatar for individual members or a nonprofit's logo for organizational members. It adds some sizzle and personality to membership directories, builds community, and increases identity. Interested in an example? Just ask Fozzie Bear about what a great position that is to be in.

Feeling a little smitten yourself?

Give into those butterflies! Drop us note and we'll chat about how dreamy things can be!

Due to a change in the Javascript engine in the most recent version of Firefox (9.0.1), there is currently an incompatibility with some functionality in Non-Profit Soapbox 2.

Currently, you are unable to use the Save, Apply, or Cancel buttons when editing or adding 1) Soapbox Donation forms; 2) Soapbox Events; 3) J!Salesforce Submit forms; or 4) J!Salesforce Search forms, if you are using Firefox 9.0.1.

You are still able to use the Save, Apply, or Cancel buttons when editing content, menu items, and slides for Soapbox Slideshow.

PICnet engineers are working now to resolve the issue and make the functions compatible with the latest version of Firefox. We will update this thread as more details become available.

In the meantime, we recommend using an alternate browser, such as Internet Explorer or Safari, if needing to add or edit items in Soapbox Donations, Events, or J!Salesforce.

Thank you,

The PICnet Solutions Team

You’ve got data. It’s nice data. It’s data about people and places and things. It’s members and donors and clients and locations and dues and grants and lions and tigers and bears (oh my!). And all of that lovely data is safely and securely stored in your Salesforce.com account.

But you’re a giving, sharing kind of person. You’re not a greedy and selfish and man-sized-safe-in-your-office secretive kind of person. You want to share that data. Not everything, mind you! That would be just self-absorbed foolishness. But you want to share important bits and pieces that will be valuable to your website visitors and beneficial in achieving your mission.

With our Salesforce integration tools for Non-Profit Soapbox, you can do just that - and you can display it in more ways than you can shake a stick at. And my grandmother told me that’s a lot of ways when I asked her what the heck she meant when she used that expression back when I was growing up.

Basically, you got yourself a three-step process here, ya see? Step One is decidin’ which one object in Salesforce you want to display data from. That’s plum easy. You’ve got your Contacts or your Organizations or some such custom object doohickey you or some smarty-pants Salesforce consultant built for you.

Step Two is decidin’ how you want to filter that data and if you want to give your website visitors a search form so they can filter by some of their own preferences. Just want to show all of your active members in your Organizations object? Plum easy. Want to show only your active members in your Organizations object but have a little form displayed to your website visitors so they can search by organization name? You guessed it! Plum easy.

Why plums are so much easier than other fruit is something I never asked my grandmother.

Step Three is choosing which fields in that there object you want to show on the results list and the subsequent full record view - and where exactly those fields should show up. Now, the part after the dash is where things can get a might dizzying with all the possibilities we throw at you.

You see, we like choices. Choices are good. We also like things to look pretty. Not sissified put-a-pink-dress-on-your-piano-playing-pig pretty but sensible and fashionable and well-presented pretty.

Now, when you're choosing from all of those fields in Salesforce that you want to show on your website, you can put them in different positions. A lot of different positions! Four when it comes to the initial results list view, to be exact, and a full nine when you get to the full record detail view.

"I don't have a clue what the heck you're talking about now, sonny!" you might be saying right now. Come to think of it, that's another thing my grandmother used to say, too! Well, how about a couple pictures? We'll skip the search form and jump straight to all the options you have for displaying the results list and the full record. Click the thumbnails below to see the whole shootin' match at full size for each. Feel free to take your time to digest things. I'll wait until you're ready.

Salesforce Data: View Positions for results List View and record Detail View

Ready?

What you're looking at there with all of the labels and text and images is Salesforce data pulled from a Salesforce account and displayed in any which way on a website, first for the results list view and then for the detail record view that is linked to from the results list view. That could be YOUR Salesforce data displayed on YOUR website in any which way YOU would like to display it so you can make your life easier by updating data once in Salesforce and letting your website visitors peek at what you want them to see.

Like what you see? Already using Salesforce? Wow, do we need to talk! Hit us up to learn how we can implement these tools on your site.