Generally speaking, documentation and geolocation are seemingly disparate data points. How often are we concerned with where a document comes from or where it is being sent? But there are benefits to knowing this information. Additionally, location data is key when it comes to audience targeting, locating opportunities, and better understanding your business’ demographics. In today’s digital world this type of data collectively can help shape and inform decisions that affect your business’ future.
Here at FirmWorks, our focus is to develop products to simplify, organize, and optimize your working world. The use cases of our products run the gamut so we are sharing some of the unique solutioning opportunities that we have encountered. In this post, we’re taking a look at a couple of instances where two of our products, FirmWorks Files and Geo, are used together to simplify, organize, and optimize business processes.
What’s the Scenario?
Geotagging is not a new concept. But, what if we were able to tag a document on upload with the location of that user to easily ascertain if it was fraudulent? What about if there was an automated internal process that could flag a document for review, because its origin didn’t match the record?
Let’s look at it from the other end of the process. What if you needed an internal document to be distributed to a particular geographic region? For instance, say you’re part of a marketing team that distributes a monthly newsletter to customers with region-specific information and you wanted to only select individuals within that geographic area thereby resulting in a more accurate grouping?
Not As Simple As It Sounds
If you are intrigued by the premise, that’s great! But there aren’t many ways to combine geocoding and document management in Salesforce. True story! Not only does it require a way to obtain geocoded information, but it also requires you to manage a cache of documents. Not necessarily an easy task, but one where Salesforce excels.
Salesforce has the tools that allow you to obtain the contextual geocoded information for standard Salesforce Objects while also maintaining a repository of your documents. But just because they CAN provide those two pieces does NOT mean you can make them to work together. That part requires a little help beyond standard Salesforce.
FirmWorks has two products that work together in this manner and can help your Salesforce shine— FirmWorks Files and FirmWorks Geo.
The FirmWorks Solution
FirmWorks Files is a package that allows you to regain comprehensive control of your Salesforce files. Have you ever wondered where a file went days, weeks, maybe months after loading it? What about making sure you have all the files you need for an upcoming presentation or audit? Those are just a couple of scenarios FirmWorks Files can help your company with. If you want to learn more about FirmWorks Files’ potential read THIS.
With respect to the topic at hand, FirmWorks Files can facilitate storing geocode information on files themselves to support the use cases we described above. The second piece needed to make this work, and the other half of this dynamic duo, is FirmWorks Geo.
FirmWorks Geo is a free app that allows you to easily geolocate information. In basic terms, FirmWorks Geo leverages out-of-the-box Salesforce data validation in combination with US census data and browser location to help you make the best choices when it comes to your Salesforce data. What are the 10 closest local accounts to the one I am visiting next week? Which accounts are in this region and should receive this newsletter?
Starting to see the through way? Good! Now let’s look at two really interesting ways we can enable geocoding documents and resolve these scenarios.
Files + Geo = Success
Option #1:
First, find a group of contacts based on their location to distribute a file or series of files to. Using FirmWorks Geo, FirmWorks Files and Salesforce Flow, a user can run a process that will allow them to obtain a list of contacts, which could initially be filtered by Record-based information, such as Title Buying Power and/or Previous Engagements.
Then, using FirmWorks Geo, that search can be further pared down using Geocoded information to achieve a highly specific geo-targeted list of contacts. The next step in the flow would be selecting the files you want to distribute to that list of contacts. Using FirmWorks Files’ flow components you can view the documents and filter them to a specific set or select a specific document you want to send.
Then, via custom Actions, a basic email can be created with generated public links of those documents for distribution.
Option #2:
Alternatively, you could automate the association of specific documents to a group based on their location. This method uses the same three pieces (FWF, FEW, and SF Flows), but with a slightly different approach.
In this instance, the starting point is the FirmWorks Files FileViewer component, which allows you to organize, search, and tag documents on page layout or in a flow. Using this, you can tag specific documents you want to send to a particular group of clients.
Then as you move through the flow there will be a geo component to use geolocation targeting to help select a group of clients in a particular area to distribute those documents to.
Lastly, using a FirmWorks Files’ custom action, a public link can be generated and sent to the aforementioned client audience via email. This ensures that there are no blockages for the client-side email due to file type or size restrictions or any potential access related issues.
Conclusion
As I mentioned, files and geolocation aren’t often a consideration, but when put in context the two can provide a powerful and effective solution. Now you can see the potential for a marketing team’s email campaigns, region-specific reminders and follow-ups, and countless other scenarios. If you want to a deeper dive into how FirmWorks Files and FirmWorks Geo can help your org grow, request a demo and let us show you how these products can help your use case.
