Requirements elicitation

This page contains the results of the requirements elicitation process.

Features

The following lists the present set of features for Thunderforce:

1. Present Salesforce.com as a Thunderbird account type
   • Account creation wizard tie-in
   • Account properties page for Salesforce.com accounts
   • Folder views for each entity type that supports email attachments
     • Entity types, whose presences can be toggled in the account properties (only those that the user has access to can be shown)
       • Accounts, Campaigns, Cases, Opportunities, Solutions, Products, Custom Objects
     • Matches emails to their entity rows automatically, prompting the user on a case-by-case basis for emails that could not be matched by using the Salesforce.com application within a window. Entity columns are eligible to be shown as columns in each entity type's folder. Important columns for each entity type are shown by default
     • A special "Add New" parent folder contains the entity types underneath it to permit unprompted adding of all email sent to the child folders as new entity rows without matching. The contents of those folders only list new entity rows added by the user in the current session
     • Special "All Email" folder view that lists all email that the user can see in Salesforce.com along with the entity type, entity name/ID, and contact/lead name/ID as columns
     • Email template folders
   • Add each Salesforce.com account as an outgoing mail server
   • For the "outgoing server" field in the account settings, permit the user to select any server, but default to Salesforce.com
2. Present Salesforce.com as a Thunderbird address book data source for each Salesforce.com account
   • Support the following objects in an account's address book as cards. By default, all are on. Only those that the user has access to will show up
     • Contacts, Leads, People (person accounts), Campaigns (not a list because that could potentially create a huge list), Users
   • Support the following objects in an account's address book as lists. These can be enabled or disabled in the configuration. By default, all are on. Only those that the user has access to will show up
     • Accounts, Cases, Opportunities, Contracts, Roles, Profiles, Solutions, Products, Custom Objects
   • Add "Salesforce.com Account:" and an account drop-down box into Thunderbird's "Address Autocompletion" preferences after "Directory Server" and enable by default. This is both for global and for the Salesforce account preferences
   • Support address autocompletion using one Salesforce.com account, though limit the query rate to once every three seconds and at least one second after the last character was typed
   • Using a Salesforce.com address book entry will automatically associate an outgoing message with the associated entity. If a contact or individual, however, the user is asked if the email should be associated with the contact/individual, their account (contact), a contract, an opportunity, a case, or some other object
3. Add Salesforce.com convenience buttons to the message composition screen
   

   Mock-up of the Compose window
4. more to be written up...

Present features:

1. Capturing incoming email from contacts and leads into Salesforce, including cases
2. Saving outgoing email to contacts and leads into Salesforce, including cases
3. Saving already-sent email into Salesforce if not already there, such as from Sent Items
4. View and edit Salesforce.com contacts and leads in the address book
5. Using email templates from Salesforce.com in new messages
6. Creating a new case from an incoming message
7. Incoming mail rules that route mail to Salesforce (needs more elaboration)
8. Ability to see email folders in Salesforce.com under a Thunderbird account (needs more elaboration)
9. Ability to send email to contact groups and dynamic queries that return contacts/leads (needs more elaboration)
10. More brainstorming needed...

Below are the features gathered from IdeaForce. These will be refined and consolidated soon..

1. Allow users to communicate via the familiar Thunderbird interface
2. Embed Salesforce right into Thunderbird (?)
3. Capture critical customer email in Salesforce with a single click in Thunderbird
4. Ensure no customer service issue falls through the cracks
5. Reduce email clutter by allowing users to log only necessary emails
6. Syncing of email in T-bird's Sent folder, but only if recipient's email address is in Salesforce's contact database.
7. Synchronization of all Sent email in Salesforce to T-bird's Sent folder (no more bcc:)
8. Must work with POP and IMAP servers
9. Syncing a subset of T-bird's address book with Salesforce (don't want all of T-bird's address book in Salesforce)
10. Upload sent / received / outgoing emails to salesforce
11. Create cases directly from TB
12. Address book syncing a bonus
13. Add emails to SFC directly from the mail app
14. Calendar sync

IdeaExchange

The original discussion exists on IdeaExchange.