WHITE PAPER

GOOGLE AND SALESFORCE integration

WHITE PAPER

2 | Google and Salesforce Integration

INTEGRATING GOOGLE APPS AND SALESFORCEBorn in the cloud, Cloud Sherpas is a leading Cloud Services Brokerage

offering services that span the complete lifecycle - from strategy and

implementation to integration and customization - of cloud solutions from

salesforce.com, Google, ServiceNow and more. By helping organizations

adopt, manage and enhance their solutions, Cloud Sherpas becomes a

trusted partner and guide for businesses seeking to take advantage of all the

benefits cloud technology has to offer.

An integral part of any organization’s cloud strategy is integration, as the

ability to integrate multiple cloud solutions gives end users the ability to

work more efficiently and maximize the benefits of the cloud. While the

types of integrations that are most beneficial vary from one organization

to the next, some of the most common integrations for enterprises are

between their email messaging, collaboration, sales automation and

customer relationship management systems. Because these platforms

provide a standard set of APIs (Application Programing Interface), this can

reduce the complexity of the integration. This paper provides specific details

for accomplishing a wide range of integrations between Google Apps for

Business and Salesforce Sales Cloud.

If your organization operates on both Google and Salesforce, you already

understand the power of each of these cloud solutions and recognize

their ability to transform your organization. But imagine if you could

further maximize your investments by combining the power of these two

cloud solutions through an integration that allows your end users to work

seamlessly between them.

There are many ways to integrate Google and Salesforce to realize these

benefits, but here is a guide, compiled by the cloud experts, that highlights

just a few such integrations. Specifically, this paper presents three

approaches to integration - native (out of the box) integrations, third party

integrations and custom integrations - as well as when it is appropriate to

use each.

CONTENTS

2 Integrating Google Apps and Salesforce

3 Native Integration (Out of the Box

Integration)

4 Third Party Applications

5 Custom Integration

6 Maximize Your Cloud Investment With

Integrations

WHITE PAPER

3 | Google and Salesforce Integration

NATIVE INTEGRATION (OUT OF THE BOX INTEGRATION)As a first step, organizations should explore the native

features that are provided within the platforms before

looking to build or purchase additional services. Salesforce

and Google are committed to providing a great user

experience, and, often, the native features provide a

no-cost, zero-maintenance solution to accomplish your

integration needs.

Within Salesforce, there are a few out of the box

integration points that an administrator can enable for the

organization. These integrations allow customers to quickly

leverage multiple platforms to capture and maintain a

history of activity as it relates to an opportunity.

Reduce storage costs - Add Google Docs to SalesforceTypically, many organizations store contracts, documents

and attachments directly in Salesforce. While this method

does provide universal access to the information, the costs

associated with this redundant storage and the difficulty

of collaborating/updating the attachment content is

unnecessary.

By integrating Google Docs with your instance of Salesforce,

you gain quick access to the first-rate collaboration

capabilities of Google Docs as well as the ability to associate

the documents with Salesforce entries. Specifically, users

will be able to:

• Associate Google Docs with any Salesforce record from

within Salesforce

• View and edit Google Docs associated with records

from within Salesforce

• Share Google Docs with other Salesforce users on the

same instance

• Associate Google Docs with Salesforce records outside

of Salesforce with the “Add Google Doc to Salesforce”

browser button

• Link Google Docs with Salesforce to view and manage

all content from one screen

Log email activity automatically - Send Gmail to SalesforceFor better or worse, a large portion of communication

with your customers happens via email, often outside

the context of Salesforce. The “Send Gmail to Salesforce”

integration enables users to associate emails they send

from Gmail to records in Salesforce. Specifically, users

can take advantage of this functionality to log emails

as activities on lead and contact records and set this to

occur automatically. Additionally, this integration will

automatically add the sender’s “Email to Salesforce”

address to the BCC field of the email.

WHITE PAPER

4 | Google and Salesforce Integration

Work the way you like - Gmail Compose in SalesforceTo take the “Send Gmail to Salesforce” integration one step

further, you can add Gmail compose functionality directly

into Salesforce. With this integration, Gmail links are added

to Salesforce and “Compose Gmail” buttons appear in the

Activity History for leads and contacts. Clicking on these

Gmail links will direct users to their Gmail accounts and

a new email template with the “To” field pre-populated

will appear automatically. If this integration is working in

conjunction with the “Send Gmail to Salesforce” integration,

then the BCC field will also include the sender’s “Email to

Salesforce” address by default.

THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONSMany third party applications can be accessed through the

Salesforce AppExchange or the Google Apps Marketplace.

By leveraging standard APIs (Application Programing

Interface), which are available in both Google Apps

and Salesforce, third party vendors can quickly build

applications that offer more robust integration points than

they could otherwise offer.

Cloud Sherpas has been working with customers to

evaluate, select and deploy the applications that best meet

their business requirements for many years, and in this

process we have established partnerships with several

providers that we see as strategic solutions. It is important

to note that this is not a comprehensive list of third party

applications, rather it is a list of some of the applications

that we recommend to customers.

Contextual awareness in your inbox - Cirrus InsightCirrus Insight offers Google-to-Salesforce integration by

providing the following features:

• Instantly view leads, contacts, activities, cases,

opportunities and more right in Gmail.

• Log emails with a click. Easily create new leads, tasks,

events and log calls from inbox.

• Sync Salesforce contacts with Google Contacts and

Salesforce calendars with Google Calendar with only a

30-second install for Chrome or Firefox

Email Marketing AutomationMarketing automation provides powerful tools for targeting

marketing communications and lead generation. Most

marketing automation platforms work in conjunction with

Google Apps to deliver the functionality that marketing

teams need to drive business without any additional cost.

For example, the Gmail tracking app, provides the ability

to capture new leads directly in Salesforce by using a

browser extension for the Chrome browser. In addition,

marketing automation tools integrate with Google Sites by

allowing you to embed conversion forms into Google sites

to capture prospect information or customer feedback. This

information is then stored in your marketing automation

platform and can become information that is reported and

acted upon in as part of any number of existing or new

workflows.

Contracts Management - DocuSignDocuSign integrates with both Google Apps and Salesforce

to offer many benefits. For example, DocuSign integrations

allow users to take advantage of the collaborative features

of Google Docs to create and collaborate on contracts and

pre-populate fields in the document with customer data

WHITE PAPER

5 | Google and Salesforce Integration

from Salesforce. Contracts can then be sent to a customer,

signed and stored in Salesforce as part of the entry or

stored in Google Drive and associated to the Salesforce

entry.

Single Sign-On and Active Directory Co-existence Many enterprises have invested in having a single

“source of truth” when it comes to a user/employee

directory. Often, the tool of choice is ActiveDirectory, and

organizations want to continue to use this infrastructure

as the source of authentication between both Google and

Salesforce. Because both Google Apps and Salesforce

conform to industry standards for security and Single

Sign-On (SSO) technologies, many third party solutions

can integrate the platforms. Solutions such as OneLogin

and Okta utilize SAML technology to provide SSO and are

both pure, cloud-based technologies. SecureAuth also

utilizes SAML to provide SSO to Google and Salesforce while

offering an on-premise appliance that helps to integrate

back-office systems as well. Additionally, organizations are

increasingly looking to extend their applications outside the

firewall for collaboration with external communities, and

SSO is a key piece of the solution to provide this extended

access in a secure and compliant way.

CUSTOM INTEGRATIONIn situations where neither the native integrations nor

the third party applications solve the integration feature

requirements, customers can leverage Cloud Sherpas to

build custom integratable applications on either the Google

or Salesforce development platforms.

Google Maps and GeoMany Google and Salesforce customers ask for the ability

to visualize their Salesforce customer data in a Google

Map in a simple way. Some common requirements include

the abilities to place a pin on a map for the location of

a particular customer, to place multiple pins on a map

to show all customers within a certain radius of another

customer and to create a heat map of the density of

customers in particular locations. These types of maps can

be made available by adding a tab in Salesforce for the

users to visualize the data in a manner that is meaningful to

them.

Send-to-SalesforceThe custom Send-to-Salesforce capability is similar to what

is available with Cirrus Insight, but it only requires one-time

build and deployment costs, not ongoing license fees.

The Send-to-Salesforce custom-built capability enables

users to add emails in Gmail to Salesforce as Activities

related to a Case, Opportunity, Contact, Lead, Account or

one of several custom Salesforce objects. With Send-to-

Salesforce, users can not only add emails that they already

received to Salesforce, but they can also automatically

add new emails as they are sent. Additionally, users can

search various Salesforce object types and select which

one they want to associate with the particular activity.

This application also allows business’ to customize the

Gmail interface to include buttons for performing these

operations.

Calendar IntegrationThe custom calendar integration is similar to what is

available with Cirrus Insight, but again, it only requires one-

time build and deployment costs, not ongoing license fees.

Salesforce to Google

This calendar application allows users to sync all calendar

entries from their Salesforce Calendars to their Google

Calendars. This synchronization application has the ability

WHITE PAPER

6 | Google and Salesforce Integration

3525 Piedmont RoadBuilding 8, Suite 710Atlanta, GA 30305

PLATINUM

CLOUD ALLIANCEPARTNER

2011- 2012 Google Partner of the Year

FIND OUT WHAT CLOUD SHERPAS CAN DO FOR YOUOur focus is on helping organizations meet all their cloud needs, including running business applications like messaging, collaboration and CRM in the cloud, developing custom cloud solutions using platforms and infrastructure as a service and integrating existing cloud solutions with other clouds and business systems. Let us help you leverage the cloud. Contact your sales representative or visit us online at

www.cloudsherpas.com or call (888) 260-7660.

to run a manual or automatic calendar sync. When finished,

users see a secondary calendar called “From SFDC” in their

Google Calendar view. This calendar contains all Salesforce

calendar entries that were created by the user.

Google to Salesforce

This custom application has advanced synchronization

features that allow users to interact with the application to

select objects associated to calendar events in Google. This

functionality enables users to search and select Salesforce

objects associated with Google Calendar events.

Google Sites IntegrationThis solution allows you to use a standard iFrame to display

a Google Site page within a Salesforce record.

Google Drive IntegrationThis solution allows Google Drive folders and content to be

displayed and accessed from within a Salesforce record.

Chatter and Google Sites IntegrationThis solution allows you to display Chatter information

within a Google Site. For example, if you have a Google Site

related to a particular business group, such as Sales, you

can display all relevant Chatter information directly on that

team’s site.

MAXIMIZE YOUR CLOUD INVESTMENT WITH INTEGRATIONSInterested in learning more about how a Google and

Salesforce integration can maximize your cloud investment

and help your end users work more efficiently? The Cloud

Sherpas team has the expertise you need to help identify

which integration options will work best with your existing

cloud strategy and business processes.

DERIK VANVLEET, Director of Cloud StrategyDerik brings over 12 years of experience in IT Management

to Cloud Sherpas. In his current role, Derik is the technical

guide for companies considering a move from their

messaging and collaboration systems to the cloud.

Prior to joining Cloud Sherpas, Derik worked as a Senior

Solutions Engineer in the Microsoft Business Unit at Quest

Software and as Technical Account Manager on the Quest

Partner team. Early in his career, Derik was an IT and

Systems Administrator for a major bank managing the

Active Directory and Exchange migration for over 10,000

users. Derik holds a bachelor’s degree in Management

Information Systems from the University of Memphis and

an associates degree in Engineering Technology.

ALEX ROBERTS, IP ManagerAlex is an IP Manager at Cloud Sherpas, where he leads

efforts to develop high value IP assets for Cloud Sherpas’

clients. Prior to taking on this role, Alex was a Senior

Consultant at Cloud Sherpas specializing in CRM Strategy

and Implementations. During his time with Cloud Sherpas,

Alex has worked on multiple CRM Assessment projects for

investment banks and multinational insurance companies,

helping clients make key decisions for a wide variety of CRM

business cases. Prior to join Cloud Sherpas, Alex worked as

a Management Consultant for Fitzgerald Analytics, where

he worked with Fortune 1000 Financial Services and Retail

companies.