Sharing Between Accounts Within the Same Salesforce Org

If you’re familiar with the way VerticalResponse for AppExchange accounts work, then you  know that each user in your Org with access to VerticalResponse is using their own individual account.  This means that lists, emails and data that live in one user’s account will not show up in an account belonging to another user.

There are various reasons why our accounts work this way - due to the way things are setup both within VerticalResponse and Salesforce - but ultimately this arrangement works well for some customers and causes at least occasional frustration for others.  No matter which of these two camps you’re in, you may be happy to know there are easy workarounds that allow some sharing between different users.

What can be shared?

Credits

Paying for email within VerticalResponse is based on a credit system in which one credit is equal to one recipient of a message.  These credits can be purchased in bulk and used over time as they do not expire for a year.  And if you do buy in bulk, the more you buy, the cheaper your cost per credit becomes.

By default every account has its own pool of credits.  Which means if there are multiple users in your org sending out email, that each of their accounts require separate purchases.  Considering credits get cheaper when you buy more of them, this could lead to some VR for AppExchange customers missing out on a lower rate for their purchases. 

The good news is that the credit pools for individual accounts can be linked together to share a single group of credits.  Then whenever a connected account makes a purchase, all the credits from that purchase become part of the larger, connected credit pool.  So if you have multiple users in your VR org, you could designate one account as the credit purchasing account (to ensure the highest discount on credits) - all accounts would have immediate access to purchased credits.

To setup credit sharing within your own Org, contact support@verticalresponse.com and let them know the usernames for the accounts you’d like to connect together.  Note that each account’s VerticalResponse user name can be found by going to VR Email > Account Information > Log In Information > Email Address.

Templates

Though the emails created within an individual account cannot be directly shared, you can work around this by using Salesforce’s own Template tool.  This tool can be found under Setup > Personal Setup > Email > My Templates.  Templates saved here are usually used with Salesforce’s own email tools, but you can also access them from within VerticalResponse to use in our system.  So this is a great way to share emails and templates with other people in your Org. 

We wrote a great article showing how you can put the Salesforce template tool to use in May of last year.  Check it out!

Reporting

Salesforce provides some great reporting features, and we’ve connected our own reporting to these features so you can take full advantage of the data we provide using the Salesforce tools you’re already using outside of VerticalResponse.  As has been mentioned in this blog a few times in the past, VerticalResponse pushes data from your sent emails to custom Email History Lead & Contact folders within the Reports tab, to Email History Objects on individual Lead & Contact records, to Dashboards, and to the Campaign Member Analysis Report.

I reference this here because anyone in your Org who has the appropriate permissions within Salesforce can access all this data.  So even though they can’t see the reporting directly within another user’s VerticalResponse account, they can view the results through the various avenues directly available in Salesforce.

The important thing to note here, though, is that this reporting data needs to be manually “pushed” to Salesforce through the use of the Update Statistics button found under VR Email and VR Statistics tabs.  You must select the email (or emails) whose stats you’d like to update and then click the button.  So it’s important to get in the habit of doing this on a regular basis if other people in your Org need access to the reporting data.

If you want to learn more about VerticalResponse's reporting features, visit our How To Do Everything - Statistics site.

Is there anything else within VerticalResponse you’d like to be able to share throughout your Salesforce Org?  Let us know in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Comments

[James Wiley]

Marc,

Like your organization, we too find the current functionality frustrating. We have also found that manual "pushing" of data to Salesforce contacts only works sometimes; despite updating statistics, some users find that the contacts used in campaigns have no indication in Salesforce that they have even been sent emails, much less have opened or clicked them. This, of course, makes it impossible to run an accurate Email History Lead & Contact report and the like.

Thanks,

James

[Marc Baizman]

Richard,

Thanks for this post. This continues to be our main frustration with the product. Although the Salesforce integration and the reporting capabilities are top-notch, the "sick with the flu" scenario that Steve describes is all too common in real life.

The desired functionality is User A and User B have different Salesforce logins, but shared VR lists, emails, stats, etc.

I understand that architecture changes to VR are required to make this happen, and as an IT Director, am sympathetic to the effort required to make that change. However, it's something that our organization needs *yesterday*, and I suspect many others would find extremely useful too.

[Richard Huffaker]

Mike and Anne,

It was, up until very recently, quite easy to convert a standard VerticalResponse account to a Salesforce version. However, we changed the way lists are managed in the standard version of our account and have not yet made the same change in the Salesforce version. Once we do make that list management change within VR for Salesforce, it will be possible to easily convert accounts again. I don't have a time frame for this, though.

[Richard Huffaker]

Hi Steve,

You make some excellent points! With the standard version of our product you can create any old username you want and then everyone can share that account.

This leads to the question: why doesn't our Salesforce integration work this way?

The main reason is the way Salesforce handles log-ins for our application. They automatically take the personal email address from your profile and use that as your VerticalResponse username. Since our system (currently) only allows one username per account, this makes it impossible to associate a single VerticalResponse account with multiple Salesforce users - unless those multiple users change their personal email address to all match the single VerticalResponse username.

This is a limitation we hope to see addressed in the future. Sorry to be so vague with "the future" I just want to make sure you know this is very much on our radar.

[Anne Siri]

I have the exact same problem as Mike describes - I'm taking over the responsibility for our company's newsletter to clients and partners in my region, however I cannot see the info, lists and stats regarding the newsletters the guy who used to be responsible for this has sent. Any workarounds on this?

[Stefan]

I would like to be able view all users mailings in VR response.

Would like statistics to be pushed automatically but if that was not possible. Would like one user to be able to push back all users statistics.

[Mike]

Unfortunately no way to link an existing vertical response account to salesforce.com (at least your support told me that). Would be great if you could provide a way to covert a regular account into SF-enabled account.

[gokubi]

I love the Vertical Response product for Salesforce. I also love that Vertical Response has reduced rates for nonprofits. We recommend VR for most of the Salesforce-using nonprofits we work with.

But the biggest drawback is that Salesforce Users can't see the lists and sends of other Salesforce Users.

Here's a scenario:

* Barb is in charge of sending the monthly e-newsletter.
* She runs the report and adds the people to a Campaign in Salesforce.
* She creates the list in Vertical Response and tweaks the Salesforce email template.
* Then she goes home sick for a week with the flu.

The enewsletter is supposed to go out the next day, but it has to be started from scratch because no one can see the work she's done.

Salesforce doesn't work this way--we can use sharing rules and profiles to make data and process available to groups.

Does Vertical Response without Salesforce work this way? I suspect that in your full product team members can see each other's work. It's what people expect from business-focused systems.

It would be fabulous if you rearchitected your integration so that Users in the same Salesforce organization could share lists and sends.

Thanks!
Steve