| Primary Contact | Katie McFadden |
| Submitted | November 30, 2016 |
| Status | Submitted |
| Short Description | App Consumer Reports will allow community members to document 3rd party app in a side-by-side comparisons. This format will help create clarity around app differences and gotchas. |
| Why? | Nonprofits supplement their Salesforce instances with dozens of different 3rd party apps. It’s often hard to know how apps compare and which ones are best for a given set of requirements. Many organizations and consulting partners research these apps throughout the year, but their hard work is siloed in their own documents. The goal of the consumer reports project is to capture the community’s research in a central space for all to contribute and share. If we can publicly display and maintain this information, we all benefit from each other’s experience and knowledge. We also have a better chance of keeping the content up to date and objective. |
| How? | We considered many different platforms to build this public repository of app comparisons. We ultimately decided that google sheets is a familiar tool for our community members and it also keeps maintenance overhead low. Its relatively easy for viewers to apply their own filters to the spreadsheet and we can give selective access to community members who are qualified to update the content. Since the spreadsheets are contained under a single consumer reports gmail account, we can easily pass responsibility to new community members through the gmail account. We will also create a Consumer Reports group in the HUB where we can solicit reviewers for new consumer reports. |
| Mission Alignment | This aligns with our mission of finding and filling gaps in the nonprofit ecosystem because it helps illustrate where the gaps are among 3rd party app vendors and where community members can fill those gaps. |
| About Submitter(s) | My name is Katie McFadden and I’m a non-profit Salesforce consultant. I’ve configured many 3rd party apps over the years and have discovered how complex and subtle their differences are. I feel confident that I can work with some community members to create a structure to house this content and rally people to help populate the comparisons. |
| Next Steps | The next step is to create the consumer reports and get volunteers to populate the criteria for each app review. |
App Consumer Reports
Reward: 20 🐐
Fee: 2 🐐