CRM On Demand Learning Blog

A big thanks to Charles McGuinness, who initially sent out this information!

How easy is it to add a Twitter feed to CRM On Demand? Try these steps and then you tell us! Our example lets you track the "tweets" of your CRM On Demand contacts.

Step 1: Create a Twitter ID field on the contact record
First, you need to create a custom field to hold the Twitter user ID, which is used to retrieve the correct RSS feed from Twitter.

1. In CRM On Demand, go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Field Setup.
2. Click New Field.
3. On the Contact Field Edit page, enter Twitter ID for Display Name, and select Text (Short) for Field Type.
4. Click Save.

Step 2: Add the field to the contact page
Next, you need to add the new field to the page layout so that CRM On Demand users can see it on their layout:

1. Go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Page Layout.


2. Click the Edit link for Administrator (or whichever layout you wish to use).


3. Click Step 3 Field Layout.


4. Move Twitter ID from Available Fields to some place on the page layout, such as the second Key Contact Information box.



5. Click Finish.

Step 3: Create the Twitter Web applet
With the Twitter ID field on the layout, you can now build an RSS Web applet for it:

1. Go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Web Applet.


2. Click the New button.


3. On the Contact Web Applet page, set up these values:


• Name: Contact Twitter Feed


• Location: Detail page


• Type: Feed


• URL: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.rss?id=%%%stTwitter_ID%%%&count=10


• Let users override URL: No


• Open Records in: Current Window


• Description: Twitter Feed for Contact


• Height: 200

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4. Click Save.

Step 4: Add Web applet to page layout
Next, you need to add the newly created Web applet to the Contact page.

1. Go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Page Layout.


2. Click the Edit link for Administrator (or whichever layout you wish to use).


3. Click Step 4 Related Information.


4. Move Contact Twitter Feed to Displayed Information.



5. Click Finish.

Step 5: Set up Contact / Layout
All the administration work is finished. The last step is to enter a Twitter ID into a contact record and make sure the user's personal layout includes the Twitter applet.

1. Sign out and then back in to CRM On Demand.


2. Open a contact record, enter a Twitter ID into the field, and save the record. You can use "oraclecrm," if you have nothing else.

NOTE: If you cannot see the Contact Twitter Feed related information section, click the Edit Layout link, and make sure that you have the Contact Twitter Feed in the Displayed Related Information column.

View image

3. Click Save.

And you're done!
One caveat -- if you don't have a Twitter ID for a contact, Twitter returns an error for the RSS feed, which is shown in CRM On Demand.

Have fun!

You can now view your company's maintenance schedule at any time from within CRM On Demand.

On your home page, scroll to the very bottom.

Click Service Information.

The new Service Information screen lets you see the following:

• Your upcoming scheduled maintenance dates for the year, for both your production and staging environments


• Any maintenance you had recently


• Details about these maintenance sessions


• Your production environment's availability


• Your application version

For customers on multi-tenant pods, your regular maintenance windows are now monthly.

For single-tenant subscribers, your regular maintenance windows are still required, but they are established jointly with your administrator.

On rare occasions, an unplanned outage may occur; this information will be made available on the home page of the Training and Support Center, in the System Notifications section.