There has been an increase in competition in the admissions process. In an era when so many students are applying to different institutions, you need to find a way to stand out and harness your relationships with prospective students. One way to do this is to use SMS, which is popular among today's students. SMS app for higher education may help schools increase enrollment, expedite the admissions process, and enhance communication when combined with the potent features of Salesforce Education Cloud. By integrating text messaging with powerful platforms like Salesforce Education Cloud, institutions can supercharge their admissions efforts. This platform offers a seamless way to streamline communication, improve the overall student experience, and build meaningful interactions. In this blog, we’ll explore six practical tips on how to leverage text messaging with Salesforce Education Cloud to attract and engage prospective students more effectively. 1. Create a Clear Communication Plan Reaching the target audience of prospective students requires a strategic communication approach. One of the best uses of text messaging is to communicate rapidly and effectively with schools. Many students tend to use SMS simply because it is less formal and more direct than email. You can also set up automated text messaging through the Salesforce Education Cloud for regular questions, such as data about your programs, scholarship information, or even campus tour registration. This saves time for your team while you send immediate and timely responses to interested students. To keep students informed and involved, don't forget to provide reminders about deadlines, significant dates, or activities like open homes with the help of SMS app for higher education. From their first meeting, prospective students may develop strong ties using this technique. 2. Personalize Every Interaction Nowadays students want personalized communication and do not pay much attention to a generic approach. By viewing each student's profile 360 degrees, Salesforce Education Cloud allows you to personalize messages based on their specific interests and needs. Let’s suppose, a student has expressed interest in a particular program. In that case, you can send personal messages about that particular program-of-interest-for example, information on faculty or events happening soon. That way, the students feel that you are listening to their individual preferences and interests. Personalized messages show students that your institution values their unique journey, which can make a big difference when they’re deciding where to apply. 3. Use Data for Targeted Messaging Data always turns out to be a best friend in terms of reaching the right students at the right time, and Salesforce Education Cloud makes this possible. It lets one see what students have been doing and most notably, which students have not completed their application or shown interest in certain programs. Use Salesforce texting app to send timely text messages to students requiring that extra push or a reminder to complete their application. For instance, if you observe that several students started an application but haven't completed one, you can text them reminding them of the deadline and offering assistance in case they need that little bit more to push them over. By focusing on data-driven outreach, you increase the chances of turning interested prospects into applicants. 4. Promote Events and Follow Up via Text Campus tours, webinars, and virtual open houses are key touchpoints during the admissions journey. Text messaging can be a great tool to promote these events and increase participation. Send out event invitations via text, and include links for easy registration. To ensure that students don't miss the event, you may also send reminders in the days before. Thank them for coming, and provide an invitation to proceed to the next stage of the admissions process, which might be setting up an interview or submitting an application, in a follow-up text message after the event. Event-based texting is an excellent way to keep students engaged and moving forward in their decision-making process. 5. Streamline the Application Process with Updates For students, the admissions process may be nerve-racking. You may inform them at every turn along the application process by sending them text messages. You may programmatically notify students using Salesforce Education Cloud when their application has been received, is being considered, and a decision has been made. Your team will receive fewer questions as a result of keeping pupils informed. To assist students in staying on task, you may also remind them of any missing paperwork or approaching deadlines. Simplifying the application process with regular updates builds trust and reassures students that their application is being taken seriously. 6. Build Community and Foster Engagement It is not just about getting students to apply but building a community and letting them feel a part of the family. Using Salesforce Education Cloud, mark the potential students who require more peer interaction and send them text messages inviting them to connect with other students or attend social events with existing students. You can also text invite students to follow your school through social media or join the student forums. Making such connections this early makes a safer and more engage-friendly status for your school with the prospective students. This acts as an increase factor for them finally joining your school. Another way to foster a feeling of community is to encourage potential students to text existing students or graduates. Students can be inspired to apply by creating a supportive environment through the sharing of testimonials, success stories, and group chat invitations. Conclusion Integrating text messaging with Salesforce Education Cloud offers an incredible opportunity for educational institutions to enhance their admissions process. Schools can create a smooth, efficient communication strategy that reaches students where they are most active. A school can improve its admissions efforts by personalizing the student experience, leveraging data to target outreach, promoting campus events, simplifying the application process, and building a sense of community. This approach not only engages students but also streamlines administrative tasks, making the entire process more efficient. To take it a step further, consider incorporating GirikSMS into your communication strategy. GirikSMS offers powerful features that enhance your text messaging capabilities, helping you reach and engage prospective students more effectively. Whether you want to send reminders, share updates, or provide personalized support, SMS app for higher education can simplify these tasks and ensure timely communication. By using GirikSMS alongside Salesforce Education Cloud, your institution will stand out in today’s competitive educational landscape. Together, we can help you attract and connect with the next generation of students, making your admissions process not only more effective but also more personal and engaging. Get in touch with us today!

In today’s context of COVID19, institutions across the world have been compelled to rapidly adapt and innovate in order to survive. Education is going through a phase of digital transformation. Education leaders are investing in new business models and digital-first strategies to drive learner and institutional success, from anywhere. Education Cloud Education Cloud provides the digital foundation to deliver a 360-degree experience to students, faculty and staff throughout the learning lifecycle. Teams across various processes through the learning journey can use an integrated platform to drive success from prospect to alum. With Education Cloud, institutions get access to actionable insights for every student. Staff can now support students with personalized experiences and build lifelong relationships and spend less time gathering data. Additionally, with Education Cloud your institution can leverage the latest innovations across the Salesforce platform and deploy customised, scalable, purpose-built education solutions to cater to your evolving needs. Bring together recruitment & admissions teams around potential students with Education Cloud Understand and predict student needs throughout their education lifecycle. Quickly move to a digital-first strategy to accelerate transformation. Manage your data Integrate data from legacy systems and external sources into a single platform and boost the student experience. Unify experience Deliver a complete and unified student experience- from recruitment to alumni. Create an online community Respond to student needs in real-time in an agile framework with community driven architecture. Support your students Provide scalable student support with Einstein powered chatbots and recommended actions when required. Supporting the full student journey. Salesforce for Education Salesforce Education Cloud is a powerful suite of scalable, customisable solutions based on the community-driven Education Data Architecture (EDA). It has been designed with decades of experience transforming educational institutions, empowering them to quickly move to a digital-first strategy to accelerate transformation. Mulesoft and Tableau – Salesforce products that work best with the Education Industry Mulesoft allows the integration of legacy apps and data, enabling your solutions to connect on a single platform. Tableau delivers accurate, real-time visualization of student data, and Salesforce Education Cloud draws on Einstein AI to provide automated support and recommendations on next-best actions to support students. With Salesforce Education Cloud you also get access to AppExchange and online learning platform Trailhead to extend your capabilities. A look at Tableau and what you get from it. Deeper visual analytics with Tableau Tableau allows institutions to visualize their data clearly and make informed decisions to drive their business forward. Faculty and staff have access to dashboards where they can see a 360 view of their institution and detailed categorised metrics to understand the health of their day to day operations. Live institutional data is pulled from multiple sources across departments and platforms. Using auto filters, institutions can get a deeper look into their data including all the students in their pipeline from prospects to alumni. When interacting with this data institutions can see the different interests and engagements between incoming and current students. Taking a closer look into student metrics, you can view changes in engagement over time and by location. And by simply dragging and dropping the students’ assignment scores under color, institutions get deeper analytics into their performance of each program and engage with students on additional academic programs. Without any need for code, institutions can now quickly and easily get 360 degree view of the current and future needs of their organization. Gain valuable insights into data and power your institution to drive deeper conversations with your students, faculty and staff. Become a connected campus. Deliver personalized engagements, proactive advice, and connected experiences that students have come to expect — the moment they express interest in your campus. Let’s take a look at how Education Cloud empowers institutions with 360-degree views across the entire student lifecycle. Recruitment and Admissions Salesforce for Recruitment and Admissions Find and engage best-fit students, optimize processes, get insights on the enrollment funnel, and guide every student for success. Unify data, get actionable insights, and collaborate across teams with Admissions Connect, a product designed to make the entire application process smarter and provide a 360-degree view of prospective students. Image Source – salesforce.org The Student Experience Salesforce for the Student Experience Maximize student engagement, streamline services, deliver smart advisory experiences, and unlock career prospects. Promote smart engagement with Student Success Hub, a product that transforms collaboration, and enables you to understand students better, and facilitate successful outcomes for students Image Source – salesforce.org Advancement & Corporate Relations Salesforce for Advancement Foster trusted relationships with your constituents, upgrade your fundraising processes, augment personalized engagement with donors, and drive efficiency of your operations. Image Source – salesforce.org Marketing & Communications Salesforce for Marketing and Communications Unify people, processes, data, and insights that drive connected engagement at scale. Image Source – salesforce.org Faculty and Staff Experience Salesforce for Faculty and Staff Salesforce helps institutions build great employee experiences through communities and apps. Institutions can build custom marketing campaigns, manage faculty and staff wellness, facilitate volunteering, create virtual advising engagements, and engage donors with a digital experience that accelerates support across your entire campus community wherever they are. Image Source – salesforce.org Institution Operations Salesforce for Institution Operations Drive operational efficiency and streamline processes by seamlessly connecting data and legacy systems, automating workflows, personalizing engagement, monitoring and tracking success. Image Source – salesforce.org Eco System of Support Trailblazer Community Connect with a dynamic online community to get answers, share insight and expertise, and augment your skills. AppExchange Get access to salesforce vetted customizable apps to help you get the most out of your implementation and extend your Salesforce capabilities. Your institution is unique, and Education Cloud is designed to ensure that your path to success is unique too. A certified Salesforce Consulting Partner can help you achieve the goals you have set for your institution. Start on the path of Education Cloud today. Looking for Pricing? Education Cloud provides a unified platform to expand the reach and impact on your campus. Get in touch with our experts today. CONTACT US

Upgrading to a newer or latest Oracle Database release is an important aspect of database maintenance and administration. So, if you are running Oracle Release 11.2 or 12.2.0.1 , it’s time you started planning your upgrade to latest Oracle Database Release 19c. Note that Oracle Database 19c is the most current Long-Term Release and positions you for several years of stability.  With extended support for Release 11.2.0.4 and premier support for Release 12.2.0.1 coming to an end by December, 2020, all organizations using these releases should actively and immediately assess their strategy for upgrading their Oracle databases to Release 19c. It must be noted that, as per Oracle Corporation, further extended support will not be available for these releases. Therefore urgent attention to this upgrade is warranted.  Benefits Of Upgrading To Release 19c A jump from the older (11c/12c) database releases to Oracle Database 19c can provide you an opportunity to benefit from host of new features and capabilities introduced in the Oracle Database technology over the years. Your upgrade plans can also provide you an opportunity to further improve your deployment configuration and architecture such as migrating to a container model  for database consolidation introduced in Release 12c, or leveraging in-memory database features for greater performance, or even migrating some databases to Cloud if you would like, etc. Oracle Database Release 19c can help enterprises significantly improve operational efficiency for enhanced productivity, as well as reduce overall costs while improving performance.  What New Features Are Introduced In Release 19c? Oracle Database Release 19c includes numerous new features and capabilities as well as performance and availability improvements. Some of the new features such as, Automatic Indexing, Active Data Guard DML Redirection, Application Continuity for Java, Extensive support for JSON, REST enabled SQL, etc. are very significant and could potentially deliver key desired functionality for your database and applications environments. A complete list of new features is available in Oracle documentation for your review.  What Is The Need For An Expert Database Upgrade Partner? Because no two environments are usually the same and organizations typically have complex legacy configurations and integration requirements, Database upgrades can sometimes be extremely complicated, tricky and risky.  Consequently, proper planning, thoughtful selection of appropriate upgrade methodology, adequate testing, and careful analysis and final execution are some of the keys to a successful database upgrade project and ensuring business continuity. Engaging an expert, cost-effective partner organization who have extensive experience in performing database upgrades can be a crucial factor in your database upgrade project’s success and enable you to have a clear, well thought out plan of action and a seamless experience while maintaining peace of mind.  Why Should You Partner With Girikon?  Girikon is an established Oracle Gold Partner with Oracle certified expertise in the area of database upgrades. Our engineers are trained and qualified to help your organization accelerate your transition to Oracle Database Release 19c. Our global delivery model comprising a team of on-shore and off-shore Database Engineers, allows us to offer highly cost-effective services to our customers. Our upgrade execution methodologies include careful planning, preparation, and analysis taking into account your IT environment, business processes, and any other constraints and considerations. We collaborate with you and are committed to delivering your project on-time and on-budget, while providing you a clear roadmap and guidance on how to leverage innovations embedded in the new Oracle Database Release 19c. We use a secured delivery model per ISO, SOC2 & HIPAA guidelines and ensure you are satisfied with your upgrade project and have a seamless transition.

In this competitive world Attracting desired customers can be more challenging in-comparison to the actual implementation of project execution. Every organization is spending more and more money and time on campaigns. Here Google Ads is a powerful campaign tool for generating new leads and opportunities. In order to get new leads and opportunities first, we have to understand the area from where our prospects come. By connecting Google Ads to your CRM (Salesforce) you can understand which keywords and campaigns are helpful for creating new business opportunities. Steps for preparing the environment • Here we have to make some changes into our Salesforce environment and you need admin credentials for that also make sure that you have edit privileges for Organization, Lead Status, Opportunity Stage, Lead History, Lead, OpportunityFieldHistory, Opportunity fields and for creating new custom fields. • Also make sure auto-tagging is enabled in your Ads accounts. if not then Goto —> Settings–>Account Settings—>Tracking menu—>click Edit in Auto-tagging section —>Select Destination URL Auto-tagging—>click Save Changes. • In order to send lead information from your website into Salesforce lead object you should have access of salesforce’s web-to-lead feature and permission to edit your website code. Following are essentials steps for connecting Salesforce to Google Ads: Step.1 Salesforce Configuration: • We have to create a new Custom filed in Opportunity object with field name as “GCLID” (Google Click ID) also make sure that “Set History Tracking” is enabled for the “Stage” field. • Create a new filed in Lead object with same name • At the end select “Map Lead Fields,” and map the Lead.GCLID to the Opportunity.GCLID field and save this. Step.2 Salesforce Configuration: • In this step we have to use following JavaScript code in the header section of any web page that have salesforce lead forms function setCookie(name, value, days){ var date = new Date(); date.setTime(date.getTime() + (days*24*60*60*1000)); var expires = “; expires=” + date.toGMTString(); document.cookie = name + “=” + value + expires; } function getParam(p){ var match = RegExp(‘[?&]’ + p + ‘=([^&]*)’).exec(window.location.search); return match && decodeURIComponent(match[1].replace(/\+/g, ‘ ‘)); } var gclid = getParam(‘gclid’); if(gclid){ var gclsrc = getParam(‘gclsrc’); if(!gclsrc || gclsrc.indexOf(‘aw’) !== -1){ setCookie(‘gclid’, gclid, 90); } } • Login to salesforce and go to web-to-lead section and follow the process to setup form also include GCLID lead field in the form. Step 3: Configuring Your Google Ads Account • Go to—> Google Ads Account Settings—>Linked Accounts—>Go to the Salesforce section—>select View Details—>Add account—>Continue—>Enter the Salesforce account information—>Set Up Conversions. • In order to setup conversion select any boxes relating to relevant lead and opportunity that is the part of conversion. • Go to Conversion column—>chose Leads and Opportunities—>Create a Conversion—>Done • Go to —>Value,Count,Conversion Windows—>Configure this—>Create—->Pick Best Import schedule—>Save • Now your salesforce is connected to Google Ads Learn More About Salesforce Consulting Services

Today I would like to share a story with my audience. This is regarding one of challenges which once I faced in my technical career, well the hurdle was not Mount Everest peak ! but was not less than it for me. Now I explain what was the task. One of my clients wanted me to write a program where user can do drawing. It was easy using HTML5 canvas and we all knows that canvas is very common now a days but he added some more points, he wanted to register hand drawing with time and options, and then save each draw with the record (pixels) in a database table i.e. whole the process of drawing like a video of various image frames. So my breakpoints for application were: Draw image with options Record & Save it with pixels and time Replay option (single and multiple together of same options) Replay should be with same time frame as it was drawn There are a lot of tools available which provides the facility of drawing (for images, sketches etc.) but no facility to save with pixel & time (some tools may be providing now but at that time none) also most of the tools were desktop/window application. So I need to develop my own application as client need was web application but the biggest challenge was to save drawing with time and pixels i.e. if user pauses for few moments while sketching and then continue, it should be recorded in the same manner and when user replay the drawing it should play like a recorded video. For the ease of user convenience I decided to using JQuery for all client side events and AJAX to save data and replay drawing. I opted .Net as platform, C# as server language, SQL Server as Database and HTML5 for canvas. I interacted with database via .Net web Services using AJAX. And now was able to save drawing with time and options as well as replay. and the best part is that was also able to play multiple drawing of same options together. I am sure that it gave you some idea for approach if you encounter with similar problem. Use client side script to not to refresh page at every event and for awesome user experience and web services for server interaction. Cheers! Pramod In case you need Certified Salesforce Consultant for any Salesforce related work, then please feel free to reach out to sales@girikon.com

Main point: Billions of rows X millions of columns Key Features: Modeled after Google’s BigTable Uses Hadoop’s HDFS as storage Map/reduce with Hadoop Query predicate push down via server side scan and get filters Optimizations for real time queries A high performance Thrift gateway HTTP supports XML, Protobuf, and binary Jruby-based (JIRB) shell Rolling restart for configuration changes and minor upgrades Random access performance is like MySQL A cluster consists of several different types of nodes Best used: Hadoop is probably still the best way to run Map/Reduce jobs on huge datasets. Best if you use the Hadoop/HDFS stack already. Examples: Search engines. Analysing log data. Any place where scanning huge, two-dimensional join-less tables are a requirement. Regards, Alok In case you need Certified Salesforce Consultant for any Salesforce related work, then please feel free to reach out to sales@girikon.com

Ideally Big Data is term for large and huge amount of data. Now a day’s data piles are growing exponentially. This data is coming from various sources like call logs, web logs, digital transactions, social media posts, sensors data & log, pictures, videos and everything which is digital is contributing. Whereas Big Data doesn’t specifically indicates to any size or quantity, yet it is referred when we talk for data of petabytes and exabytes. Now Big Data is an evolving & popular term and in the current age main challenge with this plenty amount of data is how to manage it and how to get productive information from here. There are three prime factors of Big Data: 1. Volume : Analytics on massive amount of data 2. Velocity : Faster & robust transactions with uninterrupted availability 3. Variety : Wide variety of data from different scenarios. Where our traditional techniques are inadequate to process high volume of data , Big Data makes your business more agile, flexible and swift and to convert potential data into useful information. Dealing with larger datasets it help us to manage both structured semi-structured or un-structured data. Because traditional applications or databases takes too much time to load voluminous data and obviously costs too much, new approaches use complex algorithms for the same thing which reduces time and cost both. In such mechanism main focus is on mining for information rather than emphasizing on data schema and data quality. Following are few references of that technologies which born to handle this buzzword “Big Data”. Cassandra DB, MongoDB, HBase, ElasticSearch, Apache Cassandra etc Cheers! Pramod In case you need Certified Salesforce Consultant for any Salesforce related work, then please feel free to reach out to sales@girikon.com