Zenkraft Blog

If you have been keeping up with our updates recently you will probably already know that we are excited to be sponsors of Dreamforce 2017. We have some great new features to show you inside our apps. Lightning Support is a feature many of our customers are talking about and of course we will be on hand to show you exactly what our apps can do and how they can benefit your business.

We are also extremely excited that Amy Young from Delta Dental of New Jersey will be giving a talk about how they connected to UPS, inventory systems, and printing facilities, to fully automate their marketing event management lifecycle and how our Apps helped them along the way. Make sure you don’t miss it by adding it to your Agenda Builder here.

Our Tips for Surviving Dreamforce 2017

Dreamforce is a huge event, offering hundreds of sessions, opportunities and potential new solutions. With that in mind, we have compiled a quick list of what we believe are the most important tips based on our previous experiences that will help you to make the most of your time at Dreamforce.

• Connect socially: take advantage of social media by utilising hashtags such as #df17. Not only will this enable you to connect with the right people but it is a great way to get the latest updates on after-parties and other events taking place after the day’s proceedings have come to a close. We will also be Tweeting using the hashtag #df17 as well so you can keep up to date with what we are doing throughout the event.

• There’s no need to bring a laptop: you’ll be walking around all day so it’s best to carry as little as possible, such as a tablet to take notes, which brings us onto our next point…

• Plan ahead: Moving from one session to another can take up to 15 minutes depending on the location and it’s a good idea to try to arrive early as there are often queues if you haven’t pre-registered. Don’t worry if you happen to miss an event, many of them are available to view on YouTube afterwards. Remember you can also use the Agenda Builder to plan your time at Dreamforce.

• Network network network: you will be at an event with thousands of other Salesforce Enthusiasts, this is a great opportunity to meet people you have been chatting with on Twitter or LinkedIn.

• Dress comfortably: business-casual but most importantly comfortable trainers for all of the walking. October is a warmer month in San Francisco but the weather can be unpredictable so pack layers.

We will be there for the whole of dreamforce at booth 1941 and it would be great to see you there. To book a 1-to-1 meeting at salesforce, you can click the button below.

We are pleased to announce the partnership between ourselves and Purolator, one of Canada’s largest shipping companies.

By partnering with Purolator Zenkraft users now have access to more than 875 shipping locations across Canada. Purolator is one of Canada’s leading, package and logistics solutions provider and in conjunction with Zenkraft are able to make shipping quicker easier and cheaper for thousands of users and brands.

“This work with Zenkraft is part of Purolator’s ongoing commitment to support our customers’ need to seamlessly integrate our shipping solutions into technology solutions to help grow their businesses,” said Ramsey Mansour, Vice President of Corporate Strategy Marketing for Purolator. “We are helping businesses accelerate their e-commerce strategies by providing more options and greater flexibility for the management of purchasing, order fulfilment, shipping and returns online.”

Being Salesforce Native as with all of our integrations meaning that users have the same familiar platform to enable shipping and updating of tracking information in real time; saving both time and money with their deliveries when using Purolator as their preferred shipping partner.

We are excited to be able to bring both Domestic and International shipping options to Zenkraft users meaning more businesses can ship to more customers in more locations with their renowned service levels and reliability

If you are not yet a Zenkraft customer but use Purolator as your preferred shipping partner, please contact us to find out how we can make your shipping easier, quicker and cheaper by integrating our system with your Salesforce CRM.

If you haven’t already, read the press release here

London, Oct. 23, 2017 – Zenkraft and Purolator are pleased to announce the launch of Zenkraft’s new online shipping application that integrates Purolator’s Canadian shipping services with Salesforce® customer relationship management (CRM) software and cloud computing.

In recent years, as more companies have adopted Salesforce CRM, the demand for online shipping apps on the Salesforce AppExchange have increased. Salesforce customers can now access Purolator’s shipping services without ever leaving their CRM application. Zenkraft’s new shipping app for Purolator is 100 per cent Salesforce native and integrates directly with the Salesforce Chatter tool to enable shipping and updating of tracking information in real time. App users are able to access accurate shipping estimates, generate international shipping forms, create shipping and return labels, schedule pickups and track deliveries in real time.

“We are delighted about the launch of our Purolator application, enabling businesses of all sizes to have a more efficient and streamlined shipping process from beginning to end. As organizations are building more of their business applications on Salesforce, they are searching for solutions like ours that are robust, secure and can be implemented and rolled out in hours, not days,” explains James Lumb, CEO of Zenkraft.

With more than 875 shipping locations across Canada, Purolator is one of Canada’s leading freight, package and logistics solutions provider. In 2016 Purolator generated a revenue of $1.53 billion and achieved earnings before tax of $67 million.

“This work with Zenkraft is part of Purolator’s ongoing commitment to support our customers’ need to seamlessly integrate our shipping solutions into technology solutions to help grow their businesses,” said Ramsey Mansour, Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Marketing for Purolator. “We are helping businesses accelerate their e-commerce strategies by providing more options and greater flexibility for the management of purchasing, order fulfilment, shipping and returns online.”

About Zenkraft

Zenkraft is an award-winning software company which primarily focuses on building shipping applications for Salesforce. Zenkraft’s solutions enable Salesforce users to process shipments, generate labels, and track packages natively on the CRM platform.

About Purolator

Purolator Inc. is a leading integrated freight, package and logistics solutions provider in Canada. Celebrating over 50 years of delivering its customers’ promises, Purolator continues to expand its reach and renowned service levels and reliability to more people, more businesses and more places across the country and around the world. Purolator is proud of its Canadian heritage and is focused on sustainably positioning itself for future growth and success. Purolator is also committed to contributing to the well-being of the communities it serves and where more than 10,000 of its employees live, work and play. For more information, visit purolator.com.

Matouk & Co. Inc.,is a world renowned textile manufacturer, producing high-end bed and bath linens. Their headquarters, located in Fall River, Massachusetts, is a world-class facility featuring a solar energy system, advanced production technologies, and an environment committed to promoting the health and well being of their employees. At Matouk old world techniques live hand-in-hand with state of the art tools and production philosophies.

When Matouk was transitioning to Salesforce.com they realized that, like many companies, they had a unique opportunity to take advantage of the Salesforce ecosystem to build a true best of breed solution. Through their evaluation process they chose Rootstock Software as their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Prior to Salesforce, they were using legacy desktop software for their Pick and Pack stations. While this could generate their FedEx labels it couldn’t connect to Rootstock. Matouk fulfils 5,000 orders a month via FedEx alone, so a high level of automation was important.

Zenkraft was identified as the leading Force.com shipping service provider. It was recommended that Matouk utilize the Bulk Automation App and FedEx app. This would enable Matouk to:

• Recreate and enhance the UI of the legacy Pick and Pack station software inside Salesforce.
• Connect to existing hardware devices including printers, scanners and scales.

In additional to shipping labels, the Zenkraft solution was able to generate custom documentation including:

• Content packing slips printed using thermal printers.
• A PDF Packing Slip for each package.
• A PDF Master Packing document after a shipping session was completed.
• Custom FedEx shipping labels to include Sales Order Number and Total Weight in the DocTab.

Zenkraft’s Automation App enabled browser-to-peripheral connectivity so that barcode scans could be recognized and auto-packed. This workflow obtained the product weight for the containers from the scales without extra user interaction. Utilising the Rootstock API to update the status of the order and the order items at various stages of the Pick and Pack and Ship process. This included the ability to create full and partial shipments.

As a result of the implementation, Matouk fully transitioned to Salesforce, with full visibility of their inventory, order data and their FedEx packages.

In the future, Matouk plans to integrate with Zenkraft’s UPS app and other niche carriers that are used for occasional shipping.

Todays blog post will show you the code needed to set up a scheduled job that will remove all FedEx checkpoint objects for shipments that have been delivered more than 2 weeks ago.

This is useful if you are coming up against salesforce storage limits and need to clear out some space.

We will need to create two classes and then their respective test classes.

RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsBatch

This class creates the list of all the checkpoints that need to be deleted.

Line 7 creates the SELECT query, and Line 15-16 is where the DELETE statement is executed.

RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsScheduler

This class is needed to execute the RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsBatch above, and will be the class that we use the Schedule Apex on your production instance, once these classes have been deployed.

RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsBatchTest

The test class for RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsBatch

RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsSchedulerTest

The test class for RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsScheduler

Next you need to create the changeset and deploy these classes into your production environment.

Once in your production environment you need to go to Setup > Develop > Apex Classes and click on the schedule Apex button:

Fill in the details and remember to input RemoveDeliveredCheckpointsScheduler into the Apex class field.

If you want the job to run everyday at 5am then set up the page like so:

Click Save, and you’re finished.

Please let us know if you have any questions and we will be happy to help.