We've seen a lot of action in the 'personalized start page' space on the consumer side, but relatively little development in business web 'start pages'. Salesforce.com has an interesting feature in its upcoming Winter '07 release that may change that. Called the Business Web Desktop, it's basically an Ajax-powered web homepage for Salesforce apps.
The applications accessible on Business Web Desktop will include: activities, opportunities, leads, campaigns, other objects (including custom objects). The idea of this "customized desktop" is to provide all the information business people need on a single screen. The user interface relies heavily on a dynamic Ajax interface. Other features include multiple panes, data refresh in each pane occurring when data changes, and dynamic lists that expand as the user mouses over them.
Because this is for enterprise, there is a certain amount of control maintained by the IT dept. Admins will configure the page layouts and mini page layouts and assign users to profiles and record types. Users can however set up their own list views.
There has been some discussion on whether this Business Web Desktop will replace the salesforce.com "home tab" in the service. That won't happen in the Winter '07 release, but possibly in future:
"In the Winter release, we will be adding the Console as a separate Tab, it will not replace the Home tab, but that has been discussed."
We've written before about 'personalized start pages' being a great option for company dashboards or even intranet homepages. So good to see this is turning into reality, care of Salesforce.com. Winter '07 is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter. Here are some initial screenshots - a bit blurry, but they are the only ones currently available...
See also: Salesforce.com previews Analytics and Dashboard Mash-Ups
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Business Web Desktop From Salesforce.com.
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I think this is a great move. Its does neet to be viewed as Web 2.0 applications, it is simply the next step in sales tooling. And it looks really good too.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | September 22, 2006 6:25 AMAlthough AJAX-based implementations of web applications
are improving, they still do not have the power or scaleability of desktop applications. AJAX allows more data to be fed in "on-demand", but the user experience and scaleability of the queries still relies on browsers, which are very constraining desktop clients. The graphical options for really understanding large sets of data
downloaded from remote data platforms like SalesForce/AppExchange is usually limited by the desktop supporting software (currently browsers and spreadsheets).
A much better overall solution is to combine the undoubted benefits of online platforms such as SalesForce/AppExchange (with or without AJAX) with the power and scaleability of 'webified' or 'hybrid' desktop data visualisation/analysis/integration applications such as Visokio Omniscope. Using the new Visokio Connector for AppExchange (in beta now), personalised views of AppExchange data sets of any size can be downloaded,
visualised, scrubbed and converted to desktop reports that work offline and emulate PowerPoint slide shows, with maps included. Try that in AJAX...
The recent 'debate' between web versus desktop software was not correctly framed...the real question is whether one should use only a combination of (Microsoft) browser and spreadsheet as desktop clients (neither of which were ever architected to be all-purpose), or use innovative, new 'hybrid' web-service aware desktop applications like Omniscope, which HAVE been architected to complement increasingly popular remote data platforms like Salesforce/AppExchange.
Posted by: Thomas Bate | September 24, 2006 2:22 PM