Image Based Salesforce

A picture is worth 1000 words. Pictures are so easily taken with our mobile devices. Can pictures help us in Salesforce? I think the answer is yes, now and (with AI coming so fast) amazingly so in the not so far off future. But how do you put images front and center in Salesforce? Turns out it not so easy...

Read the entire blog: https://mighyforce.dreamhosters.com/2023/06/image-based-salesforce/

I embarked on an Odyssey to try to make the most out of photos in my salesforce organization recently. Here are some challenges where it seems like photos would help:

• We select clients for service deliveries from a list of several thousand. Admittedly, it’s more likely that Dave is the one who received service lately, but Dave also Drops by after a five or six year absence. Sure would be nice to have confirmation it’s the right Dave with a photo. And be able to add one easily if there isn’t.
• We have a “loyalty program” for clients who attend groups that encourage growth and healing, volunteer to help out, and learn things like soft skills that help reduce barriers to the kind of life they want to live. They always want to know what they can get for their loyalty points — and we love that!. Increasingly words are not enough since our catalog of donated items and purchased items has grown to 100 items or more. Sure would be great to have a store driven from Salesforce with photos!
• The full blog lists 3 more user stories we wanted to support

How can you store an image in Salesforce? I have spent several years (not kidding sadly) investigating the various methods and tracking several tumultuous changes in Salesforce capability. But to be honest, this solution oriented MVP hacker has never been able to find a satisfactory method no matter how hard I tried. 

• I can upload a photo as an attachment. 
• I can include it in a rich text field by copy and paste. 
• I can upload it as a file 

… but to save my life, I cannot find a comprehensive way to allow busy users to :

• Easily associate several photos with a record
• Use them reliably in a list view, 
• Use them on record pages
• Use them in emails
• Use them in public directories on Salesforce sites or Community Cloud.

Seems easy, right? If you have a free solution using standard Salesforce that meets true ease of use, I want to hear from you! 

As far as I could tell, it simply was not possible in a repeatable and reliable way… until… SharinPix. (I pay them… I don’t receive money or free use for this review. I just want people to know the benefits when the need arises) You can get part of the way easily for free. SharinPix makes a very fine application that allows you to view photos and upload them using standard Salesforce objects. The full blog discusses the limits of the free solution as well as the levels of paid product. https://mighyforce.dreamhosters.com/2023/06/image-based-salesforce/

I am using the mid-level paid license for my entire team at this point. I’m a very cautious person when it comes to agreeing to annual per-user costs, yet I think this is a good move. Let’s see why… Mind you, we’ve only licensed for a couple of months now so this much progress in that time says a lot.

Here are the benefits of the paid SharinPix app to me:

• Any record page can host an album that will be associated with that specific record. Users can upload, tag, annotate and manage photos whether they are using a desktop, iOS, or android device. 
• Behind the scenes, automation can be enabled to provide you with a simple salesforce record that is attached to the original record for each photo giving you several resolution options and all the meta-data associated with the original file. This makes reporting and internal automation with record triggered flow super easy. 
• Photo tags can be set up to identify specific pictures for special special purposes like profile pictures, directories, listings, etc. The special purpose tags will cause a particular resolution image to be generated with optional standardized cropping, a link to the photo will be filled into a URL field on your record.
• By adding a formula field that shows a small resolution version of the above maintained link for internal list views, related record lists, reports and emails..
• These photos can be private or the link can be made public. Our Community Cloud is driven by the “profile pictures” created by the special tags and they just work out of the box on a public guest Community Cloud page.
• The full blog lists six additional benefits including support of Flow.

So the user stories now work like this:

• All our loyalty program incentives have a photo album now. They have at least one directory photo. We have a list view to show us any items that don’t have a directory photo link so we can fix it right away. Clients can see these directly in a Community Cloud that is driven by a list view and the object’s fields. The image link simply works from SharinPix. When you click into it, you can see the details as well as the full photo album. Just like a regular shopping experience. Soon we will allow clients to give their phone or email and request an item for pickup. A flow will charge their account, decrement inventory, and print out the receipt for us to pick inventory and delivery! Wow! Clients love it already! 
• As part of our programming, we allow clients to get loyalty points for demonstrating or learning skills online. When we add new courses to our catalog, we include profile pictures of the course content. These appear on our Cxperience Cloud catalog for our clients to see. We can click a featured button, and they appear in our featured items list. The most frequent items can appear in the popular list. And other items can be searched for. You can click on the image and an attractive catalog listing pops-up for clients with the image, additional album images, course description, and link to take the course.
• Our inventory items now carry a directory photo which can pop up on an experience cloud site when we need more. This way in-kind donors can see what we need. We can update that photo as needed and have additional backup photos available in the directory so donors feel comfortable with substitutions and equivalents.

• When we deliver service in our programs, we see a list of the attendees and of the services provided on the record page. But now we will be able to include the small formula field that has an icon version of the profile picture of every service recipient. And we can have visual clues in the list view of services delivered to help us distinguish from different services at a glance, without needing to read the description closely.
• The full blog shows screen shots from another 7 user stories where we've put photos at the center of communication. We'll do more over time. We only do thinks that work on desktop and mobile, in flow and on all pages, in Lightning and Community Cloud.

It's not perfect. Some of the flow features aren't yet fully built out in my opinion. I'm giving them feedback to make sure declarative admins can master and build fantastic solutions.

So… we’re happy with this investment. I just wish I could get back the months and months of research it took to discover that the SharinPix solution was right there in front of me the whole time. Everything has a cost: time, quality and financial. You can prioritize one, control one, but the other remains uncontrolled. In this case, I prioritized cost, tried to control quality, but time was seriously involved. But once I chose to prioritize quality/features, I managed to control the time, and the cost is manageable. Recurring annual costs make me nervous in the nonprofit world, but I think this one is worth it!

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