Example using XML, JSON, Form Encoded

Every kind of item can be created, updated or destroyed with three supported Content-Type formats: XML, JSON and Form-Encoded.  The following example of creating web site activity for a contact demonstrates each format.

XML

JSON:

Form-encoded (provided by html form):

Example of Batch Processing Activities

This example demonstrates filtering Project Blogs by category tags then adding six new Section activities for each one if they don’t already exist.  Most of the example code is for handling communication with the server; the actual API logic is at the end and is fairly small.

Preamble

The Solve360 External API is implemented over HTTP and is RESTful.  Every item has its own URI and is manipulated in isolation.

You will normally send your Request data in XML format, but we understand JSON and form encoded data just as well.  If you want to use a non-XML request format simply set the HTTP Content-type header to either application/json or application/x-www-form-urlencoded. conversely, we will normally send response data in XML form unless you set the HTTP Accepts header to application/json.

Remember, access to features and data is limited to the actual user account being used to access the API.

Reference

The API methods and parameters are the same for Project Blogs as they are for Contacts.  While this API documentation is in a preliminary state please refer to the Contacts page and simply replace the segment name /contacts/... with /projectblogs/...

Preamble

The Solve360 External API is implemented over HTTP and is RESTful.  Every item has its own URI and is manipulated in isolation.

You will normally send your Request data in XML format, but we understand JSON and form encoded data just as well.  If you want to use a non-XML request format simply set the HTTP Content-type header to either application/json or application/x-www-form-urlencoded. conversely, we will normally send response data in XML form unless you set the HTTP Accepts header to application/json.

Remember, access to features and data is limited to the actual user account being used to access the API.

Reference

The API methods and parameters are the same for Companies as they are for Contacts.  While this API documentation is in a preliminary state please refer to the Contacts page and simply replace the segment name /contacts/... with /companies/...

Methods

The Solve360 External Application Programming Interface or “API” provides clients who have access to some basic programming experience the ability to add, edit, delete and report on data in their Solve360 accounts without having to go through the Solve360 web interface. With the API, you can integrate Solve360 with your web site and other applications you use and create some pretty spiffy custom reports. This level of customization is provided so you can meet your team’s specific needs and automate as much of your work flow as possible. The API is probably easier to use and way cooler than you might originally think. It's also quite powerful; you’ll be working with some of the same tools that we use here everyday. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

Authentication

Your code will authenticate to the API as a real Solve360 user account and will have access to everything that particular account has. However, instead of logging in using the user's password your code will use the user's “API Token”. The API Token is enabled on the Workspace, My Account, API Token page and is different for each user account.

Often when authenticating using HTTP Basic Authentication (the method we use) you will be prompted for a username and password. In these cases you would enter the user account’s email address as the username and the API Token as the password.

Just like your user account's password your API Token provides unlimited access to your account so be very diligent in keeping it secret and remember that the API Token can be removed or value reset at any time from the same page you first activated it.

Giving it a Spin

Creating a new contact in Solve360 directly from your website’s “Contact Us” form

Lets start by setting up the script that will receive the completed form from the website visitor and update Solve360. The good news is we've already done the hard work for you. You only need to edit two lines with your own account information and save the file on your server. Everything else stays the same. This file contain your API Token so it needs to be secure i.e. not readable by visitors. Note to the inclined: We've chosen the to use only native PHP functions for this example so clients don't need to worry about installing special libraries on their server. You may prefer to use CURL and send data in XML format.

http://yourServer/contactSave.php

Next, lets create a simple web form to capture the data from the website visitor. The only change here is to set the form action="contactSave.php" attribute to the URI where you saved the file in the previous step.

http://yourServer/contactForm.html

Now lets test it out, open the form created in you created in the previous step in your web browser, fill in the values and click Save. If the test worked as expected you will see a response page which would be look like:

If the response was "success" you just created a contact so login to Solve360 and enjoy the result of your work. If there were any errors with the transaction, for example posting nonexistent fields to the system, you would receive information about them between tags in the response.

What's next? Try expanding on this example by adding additional fields to your form and enabling the category tags option in the ContactSave.php script above. To help you get get going quickly lists of all Field Names, Category Tag IDs and Ownership IDs specific to your organization are provided within your account under: Workspace, My Account, API Reference.

Conventions used in the External API Documentation

Content that has been elided for brevity: ...

Any text that should be replaced by your own data: {text}

Reading Data Using the API

The API has two types of actions for reading data: List and Show. List returns a collection (e.g. a list of contacts) and Show returns a single record (e.g. all information related to a specific contact). These actions are done through the GET verb, which also means that they're easily explorable through a browser. We recommend using Firefox for this as it's renders the XML response in easy-to-read format. The response to a successful read is "HTTP/1.1 200 OK".

Writing Data Using the API

Creating, updating, and deleting items through the API is almost as simple as reading, but you can't explore it easily through the browser. We recommend using CURL to evaluate the methods first. It's a very easy way to explore the API and it's perfect for scripts too.

When you're creating and updating items, you'll be sending XML into the API and including the XML content in the body of your request. If you prefer to send regular form-encoded data just let the system know that by adding the header "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded".

The response to a succesful creation is status code "HTTP/1.1 201 Created". You can read the URI of the new resource in the Location header which is handy if you need to refer to your newly created item. Since you can create a new item with less than all its regular attributes the API also returns the complete XML for the newly created item in the response e.g. new Id and created date.

Updating an item is done through the PUT verb and against the URI of the resource you want to update. The response to a successful update is "HTTP/1.1 200 OK".

Finally, you can delete items using the DELETE verb. Here you don't need to pass the content-type header because you're not sending any data. The response to a successful delete is "HTTP/1.1 200 OK".

Dealing With Errors

If a request fails, the error information is returned with the HTTP status code:

• 400 Bad Request: The request was invalid. An accompanying error message will explain why. This is the status code will be returned during rate limiting.
• 401 Not Authorized: Authentication credentials were missing or incorrect.
• 403 Forbidden: The request is understood, but it has been refused. An accompanying error message will explain why.
• 404 Not Found: The URI requested is invalid or the resource requested, such as a contact, does not exists.
• 406 Not Acceptable: Returned by the Search API when an invalid format is specified in the request.
• 500 Internal Server Error: Something is broken on our end. Please contact our support team to investigate.

API Limit

Clients may request up to 12,000 API calls every 24 hours. Requests for more than the limit will result in a reply with a error status code of 400 and an empty result in the format requested.

Pursue every potential sales opportunity

• Maintain daily call lists for your Sales Reps and follow their progress
• Send email newsletters or direct mail to customers and prospects and improve targeting of marketing campaign activities by pre-qualifying prospects
• Improve cross-selling and up-selling
• Share detailed client history between employees and departments
• Differentiate and stay close to your high-value customers

Improve and measure staff performance across the company

• Keep track of all communications between your business and customers, be aware of every targeted marketing activity, question, complaint, and the complete sales history before picking up the phone
• Anticipate customer needs based on previous experiences
• Improve customer service responsiveness when handling customer questions or concerns
• Reduce the cost of handling customer orders
• Access client contact information and history on mobile devices
• Have a secure system in place for “all corporate memory” in case of loss or theft

So what’s it going to take to make CRM work? We were taught in kindergarten that sharing is good and the same principle applies in business, at least when it comes to managing customers. Share information between staff and departments so your team can provide feedback to each other and respond to your customers in a consistent and efficient way – your customers will notice. Have reasonable expectations – not everyone is going to use the system in exactly the same way or to its maximum potential. That’s still okay. In hindsight you'll notice you are much better off with it than without it.

Getting Started with Solve360's CRM Features

Setup user accounts for all team members that need access. If you need to, separate your contact database between groups of users and setup work groups.

1. Import contacts from your existing systems. Our team is standing by if you need help with this. When you import, you are given the option for the contacts to be shared by default (recommended) or private.
   
   
2. Quickly take care of any customization you need in the system, including:
   
   
   • Add tags to describe your contacts as you work with them so contacts can be grouped into lists. For example you could use categories such as: Lead, High Value, Qualified Prospect, Customer, Vendor, Contractor, Conference Attendee, etc.
   • Add new fields to the forms to track unique information
   • Remove standard fields from the forms that you don’t need
     
     Don’t worry you can come back and tweak this at any time!

Plan the Day-to-day CRM Routine

Although Solve360 allows you to work the way you see best by not imposing its own predefined processes, quite often sales revolve around the following tasks:

• Entering and qualifying new leads
• Making new calls and scheduling follow-up calls
• Creating and following-up on sales opportunities
• Delivering on promises (tasks to be completed)

Essentially the entire day-to-day process revolves around two simple concepts:

1. Create contact records for all new leads then call on the prospect to gather information and qualify them. For each lead select the tags that describe the status of the prospect e.g. Qualified, Hot, etc. Record what has happened in the contact’s activity section by adding a call log, documenting requirements in notes, attaching files, adding tasks to complete, scheduling follow-up calls and attaching all email correspondence to the page for future reference.
   
   
2. Each day open the Activity Dashboard and review what tasks needs to be completed, meetings you need to attend and opportunities that should be followed-up on or updated. Then return to the Contacts window, filter your active prospects by their tags and work through your list again. Review prior conversations, call on prospects, send them helpful information and continue to qualify them. Remember it takes on average twelve interactions with a client to make a sale so establish a simple system to ensure the work gets done and get busy.

Responding to Prospects

When the phone rings anyone can quickly and simply open the caller’s contact page and BAM!, there they have a complete 360-degree view of the caller in front of them with the detail about all prior discussions. They instantly continue the process with the prospect exactly where it was left off. Just outline what needs to be done next and record the outcome of the call. That’s personal and attentive service!

Tell Your Team How They Should Be Using the System to Support Your CRM Routine

• Explain the tags/categories you are using and why
• Outline your lead qualification process e.g. the sequence of “helpful information” you have to send your prospects
• Describe what should be documented (call logs, notes, tasks, future events/meetings, email correspondence, etc.

Permanent link to this page http://is.gd/pfEr

Activate Your Calendar Feed The first step is to create your own private web address to your Solve360 calendar that the other program will use to load the items from.

Mac OS X iCal

Google Calendar

Microsoft Outlook 2007

iPhone and iPod Touch

1. Email your calendar feed address to your iPhone / iPod Touch
2. Open the email message on the device and double-tap on the address and choose Copy (that sure is easier than typing it in!)
3. Open the Settings Application, click Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Add Account…, Other, Add Subscribed Calendar, double-tap in the Server field and Paste in the feed address, tap Next
4. Double-tap in the Description field, choose Select All, Cut, enter “Solve360”, scroll down to the Use SSL option and choose On.
5. Open the calendar application and on the Calendars page, in the section called Subscribed, you will see your Solve360 Calendar

Permanent link to this page http://is.gd/rOoO

Good up-front planning is essential to running a successful project, but let's be real, just because you want it to happen “this way” isn’t going to make it so. Requirements change, issues pop-up and people respond in unexpected ways. The secret to a successful project is managing the daily project activities. This is where most traditional tools like Microsoft Project let you down and where Solve360 becomes essential. Projects don’t fail all of a sudden; they succeed or fail one day at a time and hinge on your team’s ability to continually synchronize information, communicate and manage changes like a smooth running machine.

Projects that require new designs or outcomes often follow a general overarching plan but approach the actual work in small phases or “sprints”. The details of the next phase are uncertain until the current one is finished and outcome reviewed by the client. This gives the team the flexibility to respond to what was learned and refine the approach for the next phase. The benefit of this type of agile approach is that it ensures the final result will meet the client’s real needs; not just what was anticipated when the project was first contemplated.

As a determined organizer lets say your project manager has mapped out every detail from start to finish and has a complex system fully configured the way they want. They’ve started to rally the troops around their plan but the team is feeling a bit overwhelmed and confused. A intricately detailed software system or project plan might look impressive, but it’s unlikely to help your team keep their promises with clients or reach their potential. Multi-tasking, multi-tracks and matrices are just going to confuse people and waste time. Project Managers may need to map things out like that for their own purposes they shouldn't overwhelm and confuse the team with too many details at once. All team and client facing activity is more effective if presented in a simple, flat, sequential list with the prior phases removed, current phase detailed and future phases generalized.

Enter Solve360

Although Solve360 allows you to work the way you see best by not imposing its own predefined processes, we’d like to share a typical example of how the system is used to organize a project.

Start by creating a new “Project Blog” for each client project then link the page back to the Contact or Company page using the Related-to field. Use tags to group project blogs for future reference in ways that make sense to your business e.g. Active, Manufacture, Maintenance, Sponsored, Design, etc.

Outline the story

In the activities area of the project blog create a task-list for each phase of the project. A task-list will represent a deliverable or “outcome” the team and client can identify with and rally around; a convenient break point to re-evaluate and refine future phases and tasks. A date can be enabled on the task-list which sets a milestone date for phase completion. The milestone date should be seen as a road-sign and not necessarily something each person manages to. Team members should be primarily focused on their individually assigned task’s due date.

Break each phase down to manageable tasks

Break down each phase of the project into manageable tasks within its corresponding task-list. For the current phase assign each task to a person and set a due date only if it is required i.e. don’t add noise unless it provides value. Tasks for future phases are not normally assigned until you’re about to start that phase. This keeps the next actions list uncluttered and presents achievable goals. It also keeps team members focused and motivated on the work in hand and defers decisions to a time when you have more information in-hand.

From the top, then move to the next

Drag-and-drop tasks to order them in a logical way within each task-list; most often by priority or sequence of dependency. Add hints to the task title to queue or coordinate the relationship between tasks. Complex tasks can have multiple parts or steps by adding points in the task detail (a great way to compress multiple highly related tasks to simplify the overall plan). Color labels can be added to individual tasks to imply different tracks, themes or priorities.

Supporting notes, files etc are added below each task-list to provide detailed specifications in context with the work to be completed.

Essentially you are writing a story on the project blog that communicates and coordinates the sequence of the project and the related resources needed to complete the work. Making the story clear, interesting and achievable will translate into getting more work done with less meetings, less phone calls and fewer email messages. Less overhead lets more work get done. Reorder items; add notes and section breaks to organize everything on the page in a logical way that makes sense to your team.

Everyone gets their own slice

Team members manage their work queues primarily from the Activity Dashboard window’s Next Actions screen. From here everything that is required of them across all projects is listed. To improve coordination of tasks, team member can create an RSS feed for each project and subscribe to it with a desktop RSS reader so changes are pushed to them as they happen instead of needing to check the individual project blog pages for updates.

Enable the “Hide from Publish and RSS views” option for any activities that are for your team’s eyes only then publish the project blog page to your client so they can follow the process, co-work with you providing comments, filling in gaps, completing their own tasks, and generally see for themselves that you have a solid ongoing process to manage their business. Simple and continuous progress updates are a great way to keep your clients happy.

Keep it moving

It's important for the Project Manager to track the transition from phase to phase, keeping everybody’s queue full. As the team progresses through their tasks, older information will become less important and new information and tasks will take focus. Keep moving items around the page to maintain a simple view about what is currently expected and planned. For example, after a phase is complete, delete the task-list or move it to the bottom of the page. What has happened is not nearly as important as to what needs to happen next. Reduce the prior clutter and noise; keep timely information front-of-mind.

Keep the team focused on the current phase of achievable tasks and avoid overwhelming them with 100 different tasks at once (some which may end up changing anyway!).

Solve360 prevents low-value micromanaging by allowing team members to mark updates of their part of the project work in a shared collaborative environment. This gives the Project Manager an up-to-date picture of where the team and the project stand. The top-down value comes in when the Project Manager aligns and guides those activities from phase-to-phase. Solve360 lets you gain harmony between top-down and bottom-up management styles by replacing communication with coordination.

Permanent link to this page http://is.gd/pfEV

March 11, 2009 It's safe to say that my business starts and ends in Solve360. From the moment in the morning I check my daily activity list to the last review before I call it a day, Solve is where I go to make sure I'm on track.

And basically, once I know what I've got lined up for the day, my world revolves around the contextual search bar, or as I like to call it, The Money Bar. It has proven to be one of the most important parts of my workflow in Solve. And though I've long since lost my ability to read human syntax on computer systems, the layout is a simple, efficient solution that any tech novice will understand.

Under contacts, you can of course search by tags, or filter by stars etc. but the ability to look at “having open tasks due in the next 7 days”, “ having open overdue tasks” and “having open unassigned tasks” is quite possibly the most brilliant set of filters ever. I don't want to flip through calendars, todo lists, and projects because I've already done that - I've set everything up already. Isn't that the point of CRMs and PMs: that I don't have to keep rifling through information to get stuff done? I just want to see what I need to deal with now. In Solve, you can use the “show next actions assigned to” filter in Activities to get similar results, but sometimes it's best to start with a contact oriented task list.

This sort of filter is crucial for an expanding small business. The last thing a manager (or owner) wants to confront is the overstuffed inbox, or even worse, the 5,000 contacts that can't be prioritized correctly (I'm looking at you Outlook 2007). Solve's result box gives you the list of contacts that match your criteria, as well when they were last updated, their job title and who they work for. Using a filter like "having open tasks due today" is going to show your only these contacts. Seems obvious - but the perk here is that you now have overview at who you're going to be dealing with today.

The quick view in the results bar is like a mental prep. You can adjust your day accordingly, knowing that the meeting with Gary is going to spill over, and that you absolutely need to get the proposal to Robert by the end of the day. We all know there isn't enough time in the day to do everything but you can prioritize and do what needs to be done. If you business is client and contact focused, this type of contact to-do list helps you keep your relations with people strong. So maybe today Gary's meeting gets bumped back, and you devote more time to deliver for Robert. Solve's search filter and result bar are going to get you thinking about these things right away.

Additional filter results like “untouched in the last 30 days” or “not viewed in the last 30 days” are valuable ways to remind yourself of cold leads, low priority projects, or even important things that have slipped through the cracks. The contextual search bar can quickly give you a comprehensive look at your data and where you are at with each project and contact. Using "untouched in the last 30 days," you can easily review what projects and contacts need to be re-prioritized, and which ones can be put on hold, shelved or deleted (hopefully this will become dquo;archived”).

This is important because no contact or project is ever truly a lost cause. Maybe they don't need your service, or maybe the project won't pan out for you - but here you'll have an archive of why, or possibly a foundation to create a new project with those clients, or use the old project for new clients.

As your database grows, so too does the complexity of digging through it. Solve's contextual search bar allows you to have the types of tools you need, be it shovel, jackhammer or pick axe to get you what you need.