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Building A Better Einstein (Robot)

One of the coolest projects we’ve had the opportunity to work on this year was without a doubt the Einstein Voice robot that we built in partnership with our friends at Salesforce. If you attended or followed along with Dreamforce this year you know that Einstein Voice was a very big part of the show for Salesforce and in the lead up to the event, they knew that they needed something special to really highlight what could be done with Einstein Voice and that’s how the project began. How could everyone get wowed at Dreamforce? Our team at Oktana took up to the challenge of making that happen in collaboration with Salesforce.

Einstein and Einstein Together At Last

Salesforce had already played around with the idea of taking a toy Einstein and turning it into a robot but found it to be too difficult to repurpose an already built toy into something that fit their needs. Luckily, our project leads had actually been involved in puppeteering as a hobby and had a hunch that a puppet would be the perfect fit for a project like this. It could be custom made and be designed with movement in mind. After deciding to use a puppet it was time to find someone to build it and that’s when we found FurriFingers from the UK who were able to build Einstein and install the motors he needed for his eyebrows, mustache, and neck to come to life. The team at FurriFingers built the Einstein puppet in the UK and then he was flown to Uruguay to meet our team

Einstein is Starting to Come Together!

Once puppet Einstein was all put together it was finally time to bring him to life! First, we needed to find a way to control the motors which drive the different expressions Einstein can make and for that we opted to use an Arduino. Next, we needed to find something that would both control Einstein’s movement, sending commands to the Arduino, but also listen to voice commands and respond to them as a smart speaker does. For that, the decision was made to use a Raspberry Pi. The pairing of an Arduino and Raspberry Pi allowed us to do everything that was needed while also keeping things small enough to fit inside puppet Einstein. At this point, we paired the tools that our partners at Salesforce had developed for Einstein Voice with new tools built specifically for this project to allow puppet Einstein to understand your requests and get that data for you from your Salesforce instance while looking like he’s thinking and speaking to you.

Finally, Einstein was alive and ready to take the stage! But the long road from the UK to Uruguay and finally to Dreamforce wasn’t over yet because before heading to San Francisco he had a little layover in Hawaii. While there he got to show off his talents in front of a group at a smaller VP level Salesforce conference as a prelude to his bigger performance. Thankfully, everyone liked him so much that they offered him his own stage at Dreamforce! Now he had the chance to strut his stuff every 15 minutes in the Einstein park. Additionally, at Dreamforce, our project lead did a full presentation on this project so if you want to hear even more about how we brought Einstein to life be sure to check that out here.

You might be wondering, what’s Einstein up to now? Right now he’s living with the Einstein Voice team at Salesforce in San Francisco but that doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of him. So, be on the lookout because he just might show up at the next Salesforce conference you attend.

See You Soon!

Interested in reading more success projects? We highly recommend visit our portfolio, monthly we share some of our best success customer stories.

Paraguay Joins The Fold

You may have seen hints on our social channels lately but now we’re finally ready to give you a closer look at the plans for our new office and why we’re excited to be adding another country into our fold.

As you may know, we have three offices at the moment in New York, San Francisco, and Montevideo, but everyone here at Oktana is very excited about the opening of our new office in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. If you didn’t know, Paraguay is one of only two landlocked countries in South America. It shares borders with Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia. Paraguay is a growing market for software development, and we’re excited to join in on the ground floor.

Asunción, Paraguay

Currently, our office in Montevideo acts as our primary location for all delivery related functions. As we’ve grown we’ve come to recognize that there is an opportunity for us to take our experiences in building the team in Uruguay and apply them elsewhere.

One of the things we’re most proud of as a company is how we hire and help train our new and upcoming talent. Our belief is that when we bring people in and teach them how to work within the Salesforce platform from the beginning they are able to truly master it without getting stuck on preconceived notions of how things should be working. This is a core tenant of our company culture and it’s something we will be continuing to do as our new team in Paraguay joins us.

Our New Team Members!

We’re currently in the process of moving into our new offices and hiring people but 9 people have already started working. Our Paraguay team is currently sharing a co-working space in Asunción and plan to inaugurate the new offices before the end of the year. We’re thrilled to bring this new country on board and are even more excited to continue growing the team. Right now we’re looking for Web Developers and Quality Assurance specialists to join us so if you happen to be in Asunción and are interested in joining our team, check our open position.

The New Office

At Oktana we value our people and our culture as a company above everything. We’ll be working hard to carry our culture over to the new office and the new team. We strive to make all of our offices to feel like they’re part of one big community.

The team in Uruguay drinks their Mate hot, in Paraguay, they drink it cold, and in New York, they might not even know what Mate is but that’s ok because even with some differences we’re still all part of one team working together. Even if we’re not all in one office or even one country, or even drinking the same tea at different temperatures, we still feel connected.

Connecting Salesforce IoT

Salesforce is very excited and passionate about the potential that IoT connectivity could have for both Salesforce users and their clients/customers.

During one of the keynote speeches, we learned about how the data collected through the use of internet-connected devices can be paired with Salesforce data to create a powerful tool for customer interaction that is not only reactive to customer needs but also pro-active based on the data that is being sent to Salesforce constantly from IoT devices and the use of Salesforce IoT orchestrations.

Now you might be wondering what it actually takes to get your data from your IoT device management platform and into Salesforce and that’s a fair question. As you may know, most IoT devices currently on the market aren’t capable of connecting to Salesforce out of the box. That’s why we at Oktana partnered with Salesforce to develop the Salesforce IoT Connector app. With the Salesforce IoT Connector app, we can establish a link between your IoT device management platform, including AWS and GCP, and your Salesforce dashboard to bring in all your IoT data and use it to make smart decisions for your business, your clients, and your customers.

We recognized that to help accelerate IoT adoption within Salesforce, admins need to be able to connect all the devices they already have out in the field.

We’ve built an application that makes linking your management service to Salesforce simple and intuitive. The app acts as a data replicator that connects to your management platform, collects the data that has been gathered, and then sends it to Salesforce for you to use within your Salesforce IoT orchestrations.

As a Salesforce Administrator, you’re probably concerned with how we handle the data that comes into Salesforce from your IoT management service. The IoT Connector gives you all the power you need to easily manage what data is coming in and where it goes once it gets there. First, you will provide an example of the data that is coming from your management service in JSON format. Then, you can map all the data to the Salesforce event fields of your choosing.

Salesforce’s goal with Salesforce IoT is to help empower every business in that space to be able to harness the data from their network-connected products and use it to reimagine the ways they do everything. With the Salesforce IoT Connector, we have further lowered the barrier of entry for Salesforce customers to truly take advantage of all the data being collected by their connected devices. We’re always imagining new ways to use IoT technology to change customer experiences truly and we believe this tool is one of the essential first steps on that road.

Read more about Oktana services and request a quote.

Looking back at Dreamforce 2018

With Dreamforce 2018 in the books, we wanted to pause and take a look back at everything we did at the show. From hosting sessions to manning our own booth and getting to see a pretty cool concert, it was a great show for everyone at Oktana.

The expo hall at Dreamforce was full of energy and I know our team was thrilled to be there. We loved seeing what everyone in the Salesforce community has been working on. Speaking of the expo hall, we had our own booth and meeting space. It was great to meet and talk to so many people over the course of the conference.

Developers from Oktana hosted three sessions this year at Dreamforce and they’re all archived and ready for you to watch online.

First, developer Carlos walked attendees through his experiences in developing front-end apps for Salesforce using Angular, React, or Vue. Carlos offered a number of live demos of his work as he demonstrated his expertise and approach to front-end app development.

Next, three of our developers Lorenzo, Carlos, and Gonzalo presented a session on how to use Salesforce DX to easily adopt Continuous Integration into your projects. Our team not only discussed the advantages that Continuous Integration offers to developers but also shared some of their own success stories which helped illuminate and better highlight those advantages.

And finally, project lead Antony brought us something special as he walked everyone through his team’s project of bringing a robotic Einstein to life through the power of Einstein.ai and Einstein Bots. With the emphasis on Einstein at Dreamforce this year we were thrilled to see Antony sharing this project with the world. It’s definitely one of our favorite projects in from recent memory but it’s also a great visual representation of just what makes Einstein.ai special. We’ll be going into more detail on this project on our blog soon so stay tuned.

Overall, Dreamforce 2018 was a great experience and we look forward to seeing everyone there again next year!

Interested in working on Salesforce projects? We are now hiring! Check out our open positions.

Tok is Rising on the Chatter Horizon

Enterprise collaboration is one of the major catalysts in building a successful workplace environment, one where employees are engaged, where they’re meeting KPIs, and where they’re achieving consistent success towards their business goals. Constant connectivity enables team members to break down the barriers between departments and locations so they can seamlessly collaborate on projects. As in most industries, Salesforce decided to jump on board with their very own instant messaging product, Chatter

Salesforce Chatter is an enterprise collaboration platform which is used as a company intranet or employee directory. It became a popular option for Salesforce users because it is heavily integrated with all of Salesforce’s clouds, objects, and features. Using Chatter, employees can tag, follow and share cases, opportunities, leads and much more to constantly keep updated on their tasks in real time.

What if we told you there was a way to make Chatter even more functional than ever? Well, we’ve got just the thing to enhance your experience; our product, Tok!

Tok Interface

Tok completely elevates Chatter to the next level by enabling users to maximize Chatter capabilities with an easy-to-use messenger application that includes interfaces for desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. What’s even more awesome about Tok is that users don’t even need to log into their Org to communicate with their colleagues.

“Finally, someone is making Chatter do what it always should’ve done!!! From the first day, I started using salesforce over 6 years ago I always felt that Chatter could and should be so much more. Everyone I know has to find another company-wide instant messaging platform because Chatter is so inept as a real-time communication platform. “ – Michael Irving, Business Development Specialist, InTech Together, Inc.

What else? Team members can send cool and customized messages by adding attachments or files like images, GIFs, videos, etc. Tok is also super intuitive where users can drag and drop items from their desktop directly into the platform for simple sharing amongst colleagues.

We certainly can’t forget about Tok’s coolest features: the TokBot! The TokBot automates commands on Tok as well as on the Salesforce platform. You can create polls and surveys in Tok and share them in Groups on the Tok interface. Also from within Tok, you can list views, create new contacts, leads, opportunities and much more. Since Tok is fully integrated with Salesforce, all of this info will automatically be stored in your Salesforce Org.

TokBot

Enterprise collaboration is a tool that will never go unnoticed because of the impact it has on team member engagement, and that’s why Chatter has stood the test of time on the Salesforce platform. But if you want to extend your Chatter capabilities seriously and on a killer UI, Tok is the solution!

TrailheaDX or Dreamforce: Which is better for Developers?

As a platform development services company, we value hard work, dedication, passion and really honing in on the complexities of building out these environments. This means that our developers are thoroughly examining the structure of these platforms from a very granular level and building a foundation that will thoroughly support the development process. Oktana’s talented team of developers and designers truly embody these core qualities, however, we know that collaboration and eagerness to share and learn are what also makes us grow as a company.

TrailheaDX vs. Dreamforce

This starts with attending conferences and events that serve as a sounding board for like-minded technology professionals to bounce ideas around and come up with innovative and tech-forward strategies for development services. One such event is TrailheadDX; a Salesforce conference that welcomes tech companies from all over the world to attend and share best practices for the tech industry, especially with regard to the Salesforce platform.

We recently had the pleasure of attending this year’s TrailheaDX conference in San Francisco for the first time ever! We were pleasantly surprised by the conference, specifically with how much it focuses more on platform development, which is what we here at Oktana marvel in. On a much smaller scale than Dreamforce, TrailheaDX allows companies like ours to really shine and network with individuals who share these similar interests.

TrailheaDX provides a more intimate approach to presenting subject matter panels for topics like automation processes, cloud environment optimization, omnichannel customer environments and panels for just overall improving platform efficiency. Furthermore, since its a smaller venue there’s more face time with product managers, engineering team leads and industry professionals to really share and discuss industry trends. This is also a big plus because you have direct access to decision makers which can expedite future partnerships.

With keynote speeches from Salesforce Chairman & CEO, Marc Benioff, to Star Wars actor, Mark Hamill, we found that TrailheaDX still carried the same weight and star power as Dreamforce, but it caters more to developers which was especially exciting for Oktana. We think it’s tailored specifically for developers and that if you’re a high-level developer you’ll definitely benefit from attending the conference, so we encourage those who specialize in platform development to attend TrailheaDX as well as Dreamforce!

Join us at TrailheaDX!

Calling out all tech enthusiasts and professionals! We are excited to announce that Oktana will be at the 2018 TrailheaDX conference, meeting and engaging with industry professionals to explore new trends on the Salesforce platform. We here at Oktana are always looking for opportunities to improve our craft, expand our presence with our partners and customers, learn more about technology trends and ultimately to collaborate with the best and the brightest in our industry. TrailheaDX is the perfect outlet for us to network, share and receive best practices and just overall have a good time in the process.

Salesforce’s TrailheaDX encourages companies of all sizes and tech-minded individuals to “blaze their trail” to learn, connect, have fun and give back. It’s a 2-day conference where companies can get everything they need to build and develop customer applications that people can really engage with. Salesforce product experts share the best tips and strategies for developers such as clicks, programming languages and coding, hosting services, certifications, and much more! The conference also encourages attendees to share stories amongst other developers, admins, and companies from all over the globe. TrailheaDX wants those who attend to embark on a quest to win prizes and help celebrate the Ohana with an enormous party! TDX will be hosting 150+ technical sessions, trails for both developers and admins, and the opportunity to get hands-on with the latest Salesforce product updates.

We couldn’t be more ecstatic to attend TrailheaDX this year to showcase all of the amazing things we’ve accomplished in 2017 and all of the innovative projects we’re working on in 2018! We’re blazing a trail full of amazing projects and can’t wait to present some of them this year. We’re super stoked to attend this year and see what all of the amazing Salesforce partners have been up to, hope to see you there!

5 Reasons Why We Think You Should Join Us At Dreamforce 2017

Salesforce’s annual conference, Dreamforce, takes off in San Francisco and it gets bigger and better every year. We’re extremely excited to announce that Oktana will be attending this coming November again for the four-day event and we can’t wait to share what we’ve been up to!

While we’re super stoked and eager to plan our Dreamforce 2017 adventure, many of you are probably asking: “What’s in it for me?”

Dreamforce conference

Do you ask what exactly is all of the big hype around Dreamforce? It’s just a tech conference, so why is it important for people outside of the tech industry?

1. Well, to start off, Dreamforce isn’t just any kind of annual tech conference. Sure, it’s in San Francisco (aka the hub for any kind of high-tech event or news), but over every other tech event, Dreamforce is the largest software conference in the world. This means that there are more people and more opportunities related to software and innovation here than at any other conference in the world. That, itself, speaks volumes.

2. In today’s world, almost everything is run by technology. Additionally, the pace of technological revolution is at its record high, and sometimes, it can be difficult to keep up with. This conference is here exactly to help bridge that gap. There are over 2000 learning sessions and learning programs at Dreamforce for everyone that teach attendees the latest Salesforce products and how to utilize them to the furthest potential. This is great for those with no tech background because, at the end of the day, we all want our businesses to be successful and absorbing all of this knowledge is the best way to make that happen.

3. With it being the biggest software conference in the world, people from all over the globe are attracted to this event. All types of executives and creatives come to see what’s offered, making Dreamforce the perfect opportunity to network. People aren’t just here to learn about Salesforce and its products, people also come to meet more folks! The number of doors that Dreamforce can open for a person is countless.

4. With so much intelligence packed into a four-day Salesforce conference, there will be so many ideas sparking from every corner! Whether it’s a new app possibility or a solution to a consistent issue, Dreamforce attendees can discuss these thoughts with industry leaders already present at the conference to make these ideas a reality.

5. Technology has constantly been changing the way we live on a global level. In the hospital, the classroom, or even the laboratory, the creation of innovation has helped humanity reach levels of success like no other. Salesforce supports this ideology and continues to make Dreamforce an event of giving back. There are plenty of ways to contribute to the community since the conference partners with many organizations such as (RED), Girls Who Code, and Vetforce. Dreamforce wants to help society and give to those that need it, and by attending, it’s giving that much more support to an initiative to improve our world.

Bottom line: Dreamforce is THE event to go to for the year; no matter what, there’s always something to be taken away from it. Oktana is honored to be part of this event, and we look forward to hopefully seeing you there!

Read more about Oktana services and solutions.

How Our New App, Tok, Can Improve Business Communication

If you work in a large organization or collaborate with multiple teams within your department, then you know how important it is to make sure everyone is on the same page with communication. Not just dialogue, but all methods of effective and most importantly, efficient communication.

As technology has become increasingly innovative, we’re always finding better ways to manage the mutual response. Phone calls can get annoying, it’s hard sometimes to track down the person you want to speak to in person, emails take too much time with finding the person’s email and then adding a title and then writing your message….and then, you have chat.

Chat is the best way to send a quick message and it’s not time-consuming nor complicated. There are tons of chat apps you can use, but our chat app, Tok, is probably one of the best, and currently, it’s the only instant messaging client that runs on Salesforce for free!

Oktana’s Tok team created an app that we began using at our company a few months ago.

Not only has the app improved internal communication for us, but it has created a work environment where we’re able to have more time on building quality work, rather than letting miscommunication take over our day.

From our experience of creating it and now using it, here are a few ways Tok can also help your business communication:

Group Messaging Features

With general chat applications such as iMessage, Skype, Facebook Messenger, etc., you can send messages to people quickly. The issue with this is there are too many mediums of chatting and sometimes, it can get difficult backtracking and remembering which method you used to reach colleagues. With Tok, your entire organization is in one place and if you need to reach out to more than one person, you can quickly set up a group message. No more searching for a colleague’s email or Facebook name!

Tok’s Built-In TokBot

To make things more efficient for you, our team has built a new TokBot within the app itself. Just send a message to TokBot and he’ll grab stored messages that you’re looking for, help you make a group chat quickly, and even set up a poll for others to vote on such as where to eat for lunch for the day! When it’s crunch time, TokBot can ease some of the stress and he’s always there to help you 24/7.

Mobile/Desktop/Browser Interface

Picture yourself during your lunch hour eating a salad at the nearby cafe. You have your phone on you just in case your boss calls, but the reality is he decides to message you on your chat app, instead. Unfortunately, you won’t see this message on your until you return from your lunch, and who knows, at that point, he may not even need you anymore. With Tok, we’ve set up a desktop version, a mobile version, and a browser interface! It’s all about keeping you connected, no matter where you are and with so many different ways you can access Tok, you’ll never miss an important deadline or reminder.

Salesforce Shield Protection

Another concern that came up when using the app was privacy and security for messages. There may be times when you have to give confidential info to a supervisor or a colleague and by texting them the info or sending it through Gchat, the risk of that information getting hacked is SUPER HIGH. With Tok’s browser interface, the app is set up inside Salesforce, so there’s an extra layer of security with Salesforce Shield.

To bring it all together, the value that Tok can bring to your workplace would maximize your time with work and get business taken care of. Time is of the essence so if there’s an option out there that can give you some more of your time back, why not take advantage??

Install Tok from the AppExchange and also check out the Tok page at this site!

See how your company’s communication gets better! Let us know of any thoughts or ways the app helped you, and if you have any suggestions, we’re open to ideas since we’re constantly updating Tok with cooler features!

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