Protect Your Parents Online

A quick Google search of 'protect your parents online' reveals that most sites deal with protecting your kids.  There is very little out there about protecting your parents.  Maybe everyone assumes that they can take care of themselves.

Most likely, they can't, especially online.  My parents are not necessarily tech-savvy.  They grew up before the Internet, before cell phones, before computers were commonplace, before Facebook.  While they picked up basic computer usage, I doubt if they protect themselves online.

Case in point: my mother's Facebook page was hacked into.  A new profile was created, invited the same friends, and subsequently asked for money through a donation.  I wasn't copied on the message, presumably I was excluded as I had the same last name, and I would recognize that something was amiss.

She changed her password since that incident, and hopefully that will be the end of it.

So here are a few tips to protect your parents:

1. Teach them about strong passwords, about phrases and character replacements, and special characters and adding numbers and mixing case.  This may be an uphill battle.  My mother had created multiple Skype accounts because she could not remember her old password.  She doesn't do online banking, so using the same password to different sites might be okay.  Adding a few words specific to each site could be something that parents will remember.
2. When I was a kid, my father taught me not to believe everything I see on TV.  I will remind them of that lesson, but in this case, don't believe everything on the computer.  Just recently I read of an older gentleman whose computer was held 'hostage', and the screen said to pay $99 to fix it.  Luckily for that man, he had a good backup, and simply restored an old backup.  And then in the news there are older people who fall for the advanced fee scam.  My mother also taught me that the warnings on chain letters are not true.  I will remind them not to forward anything through email or re-post anything on Facebook as soon as they see one of those.
3. Teach them about privacy.  Show them how to change their Facebook privacy settings.  Tell them that the exact birth date is not always necessary, and be wary of giving the information to every site they register to.  Tell them there is such a thing as 'over-share'.  And that public posts are just that: public.

 These are just three.  They seem to be the most basic, and will reduce many of the threats our parents may face online.  I'm sure there are more, but if my mother can't remember her Skype password, I doubt she will remember more than three tips.

Is Amazon Prime Worth It?

Is Amazon Prime worth it?  Or more accurately, Is Amazon Prime worth it to me?  This is a personal question.  What I think is worth what I paid may not apply to anyone else.  And that is perfectly fine.

I signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime.  The offer sounded good enough not to pass up.  As Amazon is increasing their subscription price from 79 to 99 dollars a year, they were offering to lock in at 79 if I sign up today.  And I get 30 days to try it out before they charge me the 79 dollars.

What does one get with Amazon Prime membership?  A lot of it is highlighted on their website, and as of this writing, they are:

• Free Two Day Shipping on millions of items
• No minimum order size
• Unlimited streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows
• Read free books each month

Let's examine the first two together.  First, I will take a look at my purchases in the last two years, and then see how much I would have spent for two day shipping if I chose that option every time.

In 2012 and 2013, I had roughly 35 orders each year.  This excludes Subscribe & Save orders.  If two day shipping costs $10 on average, I would've saved $250 dollars just by subscribing to Amazon Prime.  But the flipside of that is I don't NEED two-day shipping.  I plan ahead enough to not need something I purchase from Amazon in the next two days.  I always choose Free Super Saver Shipping.  This option, of course, has a minimum order value.  It was $25 last year, and it is now $35.  Either I wait until I reach that minimum threshold or I add something I've been looking at but was not ready to buy at that time, just to increase my order value.

So, in summary, if I really cared for two-day shipping, $79 or even $99, which is their new price, is worth it.  But right now, I don't.  It's great.  But I probably won't miss it if I went back to Super Saver Shipping.

Let's then take a look at unlimited streaming.  I can only compare this to Netflix, as I have had experience with that service.  I have not tried Hulu Plus or any other similar service.  Netflix charges $7.99 for theirs.  When it was still bundled with their DVD rental, I tried it out, and what I found was that there wasn't really any show or movie I would watch from their selection.  That was three years ago.  I don't know if I would like House of Cards, or whether I would have the time to watch yet another show.

Amazon's selection is also limited.  They may say thousands, but there are very few that I would watch.  There are old movies I've seen before and like, but I don't like them enough to watch them again.

I watched Skyfall the other night.  There is The Avengers as well.  But I've seen both before and I didn't really want to watch them again.  Also as I alluded to in another post about Netflix, streaming service is at the mercy of bandwidth.  As I was watching Skyfall, there were a few times when it stopped to buffer the movie.  And I wasn't even skipping chapters.

This service alone can be priced the same as Netflix, which is $7.99 a month.  So ninety six dollars a year out of the $99 goes to this service, if we were to compare Netflix and Amazon.  But I wouldn't pay $96 to either for such limited content.

Moving on to the free books, I'd like to highlight that these are Kindle books which can only be read on a Kindle, or through their Kindle reader app on an iPad.  I have only read two books on my Kindle.  While it is very convenient, I still like the tactile feel of turning pages.  As I said, this is a personal evaluation.  Others may like the convenience over the tactile feel, in the same manner that I finally ripped all my CDs into MP3s. It's just more convenient.

I also have only briefly checked the selections available for free.  If the movie selection is any indication, I don't know if there is anything that I would necessarily read.  For me, at least, this is probably worth five dollars a month, or sixty dollars a year.  And I wouldn't pay sixty dollars a year for the current selection.  I would rather buy real books with sixty dollars, also through Amazon.

So, overall, is it worth it to me?  I don't think so.  I would rather save my $79 dollars, use Super Saver Shipping, and buy more stuff with $79.  But I can't stress this enough: this is my own analysis based on my own situation.  Anyone can put in the time, do this themselves and find it is worth it to them.

Salesforce: Another Use for ISCHANGED

In an earlier post,we used ISCHANGED to track when Next Step was changed.  This formula can be used in many situations: logging when a Lead Status was changed, when a Close Date is changed, or when a Sales Stage is changed.  The last scenario is useful if you need to show it on a page.  For reporting purposes, the standard "Age Duration" is available on standard Opportunity report types.

But what if we need to measure how long each stage is taking?  This will help the management see where the sales teams take long, and maybe provide help to move them along faster.  It can also help rationalize if the sales process is accurate.

First, the requirements: We need to log when an opportunity reaches a certain stage.  We also need to clear out any time stamps for subsequent stages (in case the Stage went backwards).  And then we need to measure the duration between stages.

In this scenario, let's assume we only have one Sales Process, that is, one set of Sales Stages.  First, let's create a time stamp field for each stage. These can be pure Date or Date/Time fields, depending on how granular you want to measure your sales cycle.  They should all be read only to all profiles, as they will only be updated via workflow email updates.

Now we need the workflow and field update.  The first time stamp is a little different than the others. We want to capture the time stamp of the first stage upon creation.   ISCHANGED isn't actually True when a record is new.  If all the workflows were just based on ISCHANGED, the time stamp of the first sales stage upon creation will not be captured.

Assuming that we allow the sales team to create opportunities above the first stage, we must create one workflow for each stage that we want to capture, that fires only when the record is created, and has a single criteria that evaluates the Sales Stage.  For example, to capture the time stamp if it was created with "Prospecting" as the stage, we will need this workflow:

 Note the Evaluation Criteria and the lone Rule Criteria.

We will need one of this for each stage in your sales process.  And this takes care of capturing the time stamp when it is created.

The field update is relatively simple.  We will use NOW() if it is a Date/Time field, or TODAY() if it is just a date, and set the Stage 1 Timestamp or Prospecting Timestamp field.

Now, to capture the same time stamp when the stage is changed,  we will use the following formula:

AND ( 
  ISCHANGED ( StageName ),
  ISPICKVAL ( StageName, 'Prospecting')
)

We will use the same field update that we used in the earlier workflow to  capture NOW() or TODAY().  And again, we will create one workflow for each stage, adjusting the value in ISPICKVAL as appropriate, and changing the Field Update.

We also need additional field updates.  Say for example, our organization uses the standard Salesforce stages, and a sales person moves his opportunity back from Id. Decision Makers to Value Proposition.  The time stamp for Id. Decision Makers is now invalid.  We will need to clear this out, and all the timestamps for the subsequent stages.  So for each of these workflows, there will be more than one field update.  One to set the time stamp of the current stage, and one or more to clear the time stamp of subsequent stages.

The above steps take care of setting the time stamp for each stage when that stage is reached, either when created new or when the opportunity stage is updated.

The next step is to create formulas to get the duration.  We need a formula field, Stage 1 Duration for example, that evaluates to a number, and the formula will be something like this:

IF ( ISPICKVAL( StageName , 'Prospecting'),
  NOW() -   Stage_1_Timestamp__c  ,
  Stage_1_Timestamp__c - Stage_2_Timestamp__c
)
    
If it is currently Prospecting (and Prospecting is the first stage), then the duration for Prospecting is the current date and time minus the time stamp when it was set to Stage 1.  If it is not, then it is the difference between Stage 1 and Stage 2.

Note that the above formula will cause issues if the opportunity jumps from Stage 1 to Stage 3.  The formula can be modified to check if Stage 2 Timestamp is not null before performing the subtraction, and making the result -1 to signify that it is unavailable.

The alternative is to modify the workflows from the previous step to set any previous stage time stamp to TODAY or NOW, the same as the current stage, effectively making the duration zero.  An administrator can discover the pros and cons of each and reach a decision on the best way forward for his own organization.

Once the workflows have been added, and the field updates are done, it is possible to populate the new fields with data from the Opportunity Field History table.  This requires some Excel work and the use of Data Loader.  Afterwards, reports can be created to show average duration of each stage.

To summarize, we have created fields, workflows, and field updates that will allow us to measure Stage Duration for each Stage and gain useful insight about the current Sales Process.

Never Hesitate to Collaborate

I play piano for a church choir that sings fairly regularly.  Last weekend, the person in charge of coordinating choir groups, musicians and schedules came to me and asked if it was all right if a bass player joined us that day.  She even said it was okay to say no.  I did not hesitate.  The answer of course is "Yes!"  I wondered to myself why that was even a question.

Many great musicians have collaborated and recorded even more spectacular sessions with other great musicians.  If nothing else, adding bass just makes for better sound.  And what is the worst that could happen? He may be off tempo or off key some of the time, but not all the time, and in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter?  All I see is a great upside to improve the music.  We weren't curing cancer or solving world hunger. We weren't recording the next great American Songbook.  Sure, in a more professional setting, you'd want some practice time together first. This isn't that.

Turns out he was great. We'd like to have him back.

For a team attempting to solve a business problem, it is almost always better to welcome a new addition who has expertise.  That fresh perspective always keeps things interesting.  The only downside I can think of is when it is late in the game and you have to train someone.  But if someone is coming in with experience, by all means, let's collaborate!  There may be a solution the existing group hasn't thought of.

In music, and in business, never pass on the chance to collaborate.