I. Introduction▲
Salesforce just announced during the Summer ‘16 release that is now possible to geolocate your customers close to you.
For example, you can geocode and know the distance between two points in the aim to see your customers which are less than 50 miles from you.
This is the perfect tool for your sales and marketing team to find prospects.
How it works? To enable this feature, you will have to use SOQL queries but all of this is a cinch with Automatic Geocodes for Address.
II. Requirements▲
To test this feature, you will need a developer environment.
If you don't have one of these yet, click on this link right now to sign up and join the adventure, it's free !
III. It is now easy to geolocate your customers close to you▲
There are two ways to use this new feature : a SOQL query or a custom field.
III-A. SOQL query▲
You can geolocate your customers thank to a SOQL query by using the method DISTANCE() and GEOLOCATION().
This is a query's example :
2.
3.
SELECT Name, shippingCity, shippingState, shippingCountry, shippingLatitude, shippingLongitude
FROM Account
WHERE DISTANCE(shippingAddress, GEOLOCATION(37.79340, -122.39420), 'mi') < 50
III-B. Custom field▲
Moreover, you can create a custom field to use it in your reports and see customers who are close to you.
The custom field has to be a formula which return an integer and looks like that :
DISTANCE(BillingAddress, GEOLOCATION($Organization.Latitude, $Organization.Longitude), 'mi')
The parameter ‘mi’ means ‘miles’ but you can use ‘km’ to calculate with kilometers.
IV. Summary▲
In this article, you have learnt how to geolocate quickly and easily your customers according two ways : a SOQL query or a custom field.
This is a great news for your sales and marketing team.
So, don’t waste your time, test it and develop an application !