SOQL Query Tool

One of our founders, Glenn Weinstein, authored a fantastic utility a few years back that allows for any admin to run and test SOQL queries from within their Salesforce org... right from a custom tab! We recently converted the SOQL Query tool to Visualforce and thought we'd share it with the community. It's on the Force.com code share and is available to everyone.

We added some new features, including desc and select *

We have a toolbox of useful utilities we use to quickly show value and get a jump on projects. The SOQL Query Tool has been on of the key ones the past few years. We're looking forward to your feedback.

If you want to download a read-only version from your SVN client, you can run the following command:
svn checkout http://soql-query-tool.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ soql-query-tool-read-only

Google Voice and Appirio Personal Sync

Kyle Roche
All of us were pretty excited last week when Google announced Google Voice, the upgrade path to current GrandCentral subscribers. Like everyone else, I logged into my GrandCentral inbox and performed the required upgrade. It was pretty straight forward... nothing really to do at all.

After the upgrade, the first thing I noticed was that Google Voice is not connected to Google Apps. Not that big of a deal... works the same as Blogger and Google Reader for now. I'm sure these are on the path for integration soon enough... However, one of the drawbacks is that I now have to maintain two contact lists. (Still, if you were using GrandCentral, this shouldn't be a complaint... there wasn't even an import utility with GrandCentral! But, for those who still complain seeEverything's amazing, nobody's happy) Anyway, let's get back to importing contacts. We all, obviously, leverage the Appirio cloud connector products to manage data between our Salesforce org and our Google Apps implementation, but since Google Voice isn't connected to Google Apps we needed a new approach. I went with the simplest solution I could find... use Appirio's Personal Sync. The standard edition is free and allows you to enjoy basic calendar and contact sync between Salesforce and your personal Google account (where Voice currently resides). There's nothing to install. You simply login and enter your credentials.

After you login, and enter your credentials, you can see the management console explaining the synchronization schedule and some other details. You can sync to a few accounts, if needed.

Here's the end result... over 4000 contacts synchronized from my Salesforce.com Contacts. I don't sync the full list to my Google Apps account, but for dialing Contacts and Accounts from Google Voice, it makes sense to have the full list available. Have fun!