Salesforce Connections 2025 is quickly approaching, and Perficient is excited to be part of it.  On June 11–12, we’re heading to McCormick Place in Chicago and joining virtually on Salesforce+ to connect with marketers, commerce leaders, and innovators shaping the future with AI. 

Here’s what you need to know before the event: 

When and Where: 

• Dates: June 11–12, 2025 

• Location: McCormick Place, Chicago 

• Online Access: Available via Salesforce+ 

Why It Matters:
Connections is where the future of marketing takes shape. This year, the focus is on agentic marketing, using AI agents to free marketers for more creativity, strategy, and impact. It’s about working smarter and delivering more personalized customer experiences at scale. 

What You Can Expect: 

• 270+ sessions on agentic strategies, AI innovation, and customer experience 

• Hands-on demos with Agentforce, Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and more 

• Expert insights into blending marketing, sales, and service into connected experiences 

• New ideas to tackle real-world challenges and drive meaningful growth 

Join Us at Our Happy Hour:
We’re kicking off Connections with a private Happy Hour at Fatpour Tap Works – McCormick on Tuesday, June 10. Join us for curated drinks, small bites, and real conversations, steps away from McCormick Place. Space is limited, so register now! 

Stay Tuned for More:
We’re also hosting an exclusive, invite-only dinner during Connections for deeper conversations about the future of marketing and AI. Keep an eye out for more details soon, you won’t want to miss it. 

Why We’re Going:
Salesforce Connections is the perfect place to exchange ideas, showcase new capabilities, and strengthen the partnerships that drive success. We’re ready to explore what’s next, and we look forward to connecting with clients, partners, and peers who are focused on moving business forward. 

Explore Your Salesforce Health with PrecisionIQ
Our new PrecisionIQ assessment is available now to help you evaluate your organization’s marketing maturity and AI readiness. It’s a quick, insightful way to benchmark where you are and identify where to go next. Contact us to learn more.  

If you’ll be at Connections — in Chicago or online — let’s connect. See you there. 

At Perficient, we encourage you to be your true self. We’re in the business of creating genuine connections that truly matter, with experiences that count for both colleagues and clients, and being your true self is a first step to establishing these relationships. Colleague Chris Kulish, a Salesforce Technical Architect, acknowledges and appreciates the opportunity he’s given to make these authentic connections.

We want to tell the stories of the people who make Perficient what it is today. Below, Chris offers some insight into his true self and interests outside of work, but also elaborates on his role and how he’s able to create these relationships through analysis, understanding, collaboration, and driving results.

Describe your job. How do you make a difference for our clients?
As a technical architect with the Salesforce BU, I spend my days understanding our client’s business and technical challenges, and then collaborate with them on how they can leverage Salesforce to best conquer them. Not only is the role client facing, but it also involves working with the technical team during implementation to overcome challenges and solve problems unique to the Salesforce platform.

Do you have a favorite movie or TV series?

When it comes to movies, books, comics, TV, or games, I enjoy exploring the “Star Wars” universe and being entertained by the stories in it. While I’m a Rebel at heart, I always thought the Empire had the cooler looking ships and vehicles. The lumbering AT-ATs, behemoth Star Destroyers, and stealthy TIE Interceptors are some of my favorites. Boba Fett and the rest of the bounty hunters were some of my favorite characters. Again, Boba Fett looked the coolest of them all, and his reputation and air of mystery just made him cooler. “The Mandalorian” is some of the best Star Wars storytelling ever made.

What are some activities you enjoy doing in your free time?
I enjoy playing video games with my boys and having a movie or board game night with the whole family. When I’m not doing that, I like to play tabletop games and paint the miniature game pieces. Specifically, I play a “Star Wars”-themed game called Legion which puts one player’s army against another player’s army. I’m also slowly learning to timber frame with the hopes of building a cabin at our lake in the future.

What is some career advice that has helped you? 

The four things I’ve learned throughout my career are:

1) Never stop learning
2) Do great work
3) Work with great people
4) Work with great leaders

Work is more fun when it’s with great people, and great leaders recognize and reward great work. Continuing to learn allows you to do your best work.

What do you hope to accomplish in your work at Perficient?
I hope to have a positive impact on my team members and clients. I hope that long after the dust settles on our projects, they can look back at the time we spent together and know I gave my best, appreciated the effort, and enjoyed their time working with me.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT

It’s no secret our success is because of our people. No matter the technology or time zone, our colleagues are committed to delivering innovative, end-to-end digital solutions for the world’s biggest brands, and we bring a collaborative spirit to every interaction. We’re always seeking the best and brightest to work with us. Join our team and experience a culture that challenges, champions, and celebrates our people.

Visit our Careers page to see career opportunities and more!

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Join Perficient and other Trailblazers for three days of learning from those who are driving innovation in digital marketing, commerce, and service across all industries. Make sure to check out the session highlighting the Perficient-built customer community and speak to the designer who built it (and completed it in record time).

You’ve heard how popular the OpenTable community is… Now find out how it was built!

Salesforce Community Cloud: Put Your Customer in the Driver’s Seat

Salesforce Connections in Chicago
Thursday, June 14, 2018
11:15 AM – 11:45 AM
McCormick Place, Breakout Room W179B

Bookmark this Session

BONUS! The lead designer on this communities project, David Wickland, will on on-site to answer any of your questions. Don’t miss out getting to speak to the mastermind behind these wildly popular communities. Sign up details below.

The world’s leading companies empower customers, partners, and employees to get answers, explore data, and take action on their own terms. Join us to hear how Trailblazers build smart, beautiful, and connected digital experiences with world’s #1 CRM. Learn how to innovate the customer experience with Lightning + built-in processes and deploy faster with Lightning Bolt Solutions for Industries. Get an inside look at the latest features, and see why the world’s leading brands connect with over 200 million customers, partners and employees with Community Cloud.

Salesforce & OpenTable Speakers

• Andrew Barash, Manager, Software Development, OpenTable
• Joe Morse, Master Solution Engineer – Community Cloud, Salesforce
• Vivian Su, Product Marketing Manager, Salesforce
• Judy Tang, Salesforce Sr. Product Manager, OpenTable

You Should Attend This Session if You Work In…

Roles: Marketing, Service & Support, Customer Service/Experience
Products: Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, Lightning Platform
Industries: Financial Services, Manufacturing, Retail
Themes: Emerging Trends, AI & Personalization, Customer Self Service

Learn more about Salesforce Connections and register here

We will see you in Chicago at Connections 2018!

The year is winding down and we want to look back at the year that was, from advancements in cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) to the increased awareness around artificial intelligence. The following are the top 10 blogs our writers penned in the past year. Check them out:

#1 – Think Pink: The Future of IBM Connections
By Glenn Kline | February 22, 2017

#2 – Perficient Wins Beacon Award for IBM Solutions
By Stephanie Banks | February 15, 2017

#3 – Getting Started with IBM Content Navigator Plugin Development
By Eric Walk | March 22, 2017

#4 – An IBM DB2 Architecture Using AWS
By Chuck Misuraca | May 15, 2017

#5 – IBM Releases WebSphere Portal Version 9
By Glenn Kline | January 11, 2017

#6 – How to Access Google Analytics API from IBM Integration Bus
By Shuvamoy Saha | June 18, 2017

#7 – An IBM WebSphere Application Server Architecture Using AWS
By Chuck Misuraca | April 18, 2017

#8 – IBM MQ and IIB HA Architecture Using AWS
By Chuck Misuraca | April 20, 2017

#9 – Integrate Google Analytics to IBM Integration Bus
By Sivaraman Baskar | January 2, 2017

#10 – Installing IBM BPM v8.5.7 Standard on Ubuntu 14.04 (VirtualBox)
By Dean Taylor | February 14, 2017

Join us again in 2018 for more groundbreaking blogs around trending technology solutions. Let us know what you would like to see more of in the comments below.

IBM Connect 2017 provided insights into the future of IBM Connections known as Connections Pink.  Jason Roy Gary, Director of Engineering and Distinguished Engineer and Baan Slavens, Senior Offering Manager provided insights as to what is to come in the future.

The upcoming version of Connection will be a complete rewrite and not using any existing code.  Pink is about the journey and not the destination.  The premise how it is going to be done, not what is going to be done.

Key Messaging

• There are no closed code repositories – Any IBMer can pull down code and edit it
• Customers can join sprint reviews
• Pink will still embrace things from the past – capabilities will not be sunset
• There will be a single code base that will not have versions, CRs, fixpacks etc.
• Pink allows your data to stay where you want it – e.g. profiles could stay on premise but wikis could be in the cloud
• Fault tolerance will be built into the platform, e.g. automatically restart services it recognizes are down
• Pink is cognitive – it will be everywhere
• It will be API driven – APIs will be available for everything, no feature will be available without an API

Connections 6 – The beginnings of Pink

To move to Pink, you must first be on Connections 6.  There are some great innovations in 6.

• Orient Me – redesigned home page – Implemented completely Agile and customers participated in sprint reviews
  • Important people and communities always in view
  • Prioritized updates based on your behavior and interactions
  • Updates grouped by person, community or content
  • Notification center is pervasive
  • Modern focused activity stream
• Modern Communities
  • Provide community owners more design options
  • Owners can copy existing layouts to use as a template for new ones
• On-boarding Experience
  • Drive adoption by welcoming new users
  • New users are guided through steps to capture relevant info
  • Users can select people and communities to follow through recommendations
  • Guided tours to quickly start with files and community apps
• Before you can take advantage of Pink, you must upgrade to Connections 6

Technology Behind Pink

Pink will be developed with entirely open source tools and technologies

• Modern CI-CD framework
• StrongLoop / IBM API Connect (node.js/express)
• SWIFT / Go
• React.js
• MongoDB
• Redis
• Ngnx
• Docker
• No WebSphere, Java, Rational etc.  All components are open source

Three Things to Remember About Pink

• How – “We are not going to build software for our customers and partners, we are going to build software with them.”
• Omnipresent – “You choose your deployment model and where your data goes.  You can integrate in, and out, with other systems.”
• Disruption – “Now is the time to change everything, integrate with today and define tomorrow.”

And one last message, Pink is a journey, not a destination.

The webinar combines one of my favorite speakers, Luis Benitze, with a topic that has been core to me for some years now: business collaboration and specifically IBM Connections. Luis is teaming up with Badgeville, a business partner focused on gamification and driving additional user engagement.

IBM has been focused how work is changing and how it can change further. This infographic comes from the research done by outside, independent thought leaders. This IBM site is where IBM is driving the discussion with the #NewWaytoWork hashtag. There are a variety of assets from ebooks to the ever present blogs and I encourage you to spend some time on the site. Based on the research, there are compelling reasons with a strong ROI to changing employee’s behavior. 

My experience is that gamification requires thoughtful planning . One needs to ensure that the desired behavior that is being supported by the challenges and goals in the gamification product. I’ve seen some cases where the activities promoted superficial use vs. changing how colleagues interact. From my perspective, utilizing Organizational Change Management (OCM) practitioners in with both deploying a social tool and gamification is a natural combinations. I have unfortunately seen social deployments that focused on training users on how to use the platform, treating it as another IT project. I believe that the why of social is more important than the how and OCM can ensure that the reason for change is clearly communicated.

Here is the registration link to tomorrow’ webinar with Luis and Badgeville. Whether you are an IBM customer or not, I am sure there will be great information on how to engage employees and drive additional value for your company.

IBM Connect 2016 kicked off today (February 1st) with a two-part opening general session. The second part focused on new product capabilities, demos and product direction.

The first demo was IBM Verse, mobility and Connections as an integrated and seamless experience. The interface has been streamlined to include some great productivity capabilities.  Some of the items demonstrated are.

• Sort emails by Connections communities
• Integrated activity streams in a dashboard view
• Analytics driven content
• Simplified sharing tools which integrate security
• Single source of truth for documents (Emails in a thread all point to the same document, not multiple versions emailed around)
• Box integration (image attachments)
• Watson integration into email (Scan an email prior to sending to look for negativity)
• Calendar inbox capabilities

The next part demonstration was around mobility including the the Mobile Action Center. This was a single app that brings together Connections and Verse.

• Personal assistant that automatically prioritizes email and makes it actionable, e.g., it scans an email text and looks for actionable text such as “send me the file” and provides recommended actions.
• Meeting initiations.
• “Long press” on devices to open multiple options, e.g. share with box, Connections, etc.
• Quick reply to automatically send messages much like texting.

The demo was pretty interesting overall, particularly how analytics are used to help predict and streamline work functions and activities. If you are a Connections / Verse customer or prospect, these new capabilities are certainly worth looking at.

Living in Chicago means that winter isn’t a surprise; it may come later than expected (this year) or arrive with such fury that it shuts down the city (many years) but it arrives. Although it hasn’t been as consistent as winter, preparing for IBM Connect is something that has been occurring for several decades and has similar rhythm to winter.

I am currently working on my presentation for the upcoming IBM Connect conference. Connect, or Connected or Lotusphere as you may know it, returns to Orlando this January albeit to a new location, the Hilton Orlando. I have the privilege again this year to be speaking, which I am excited about. One of the things that I appreciate about my role at Perficient is that I get to work with clients developing the solution. This allows me to share both my experiences as well as experiences from the architect, developers and designers who work at Perficient.

This year I am presenting “SI-1433 : Great Technology isn’t enough, – a proven approach to a successful social adoption”. The goal is to impart some of our experiences in helping customers deploy Social and Digital Experience solutions. I hope attendees will take away ideas and an approach that will improve their deployments.

For some reason IBM thinks I am an early riser, often giving me a morning speaker slot. This year it is Wednesday February 3rd, 8:00 AM-9:00 AM in Florida 1.

As in past years Perficient is exhibiting and bringing a top notch group of employees well Versed in Digital Experience, Social, Portals and Content Management. I look forward to seeing our existing customers and meeting new people. Apologies for the pun.

More information and registration here and I look forward to see both you and the sun, soon.

As a follow up to my recent post about Connections 5.5, I thought this report was a good companion piece, Forrester IBM Connections Total Economic Impact (TEI).

One of the challenges our customers often face for internal projects is justification. A new e-commerce site can be measured and the ROI driven by hard dollar results. Similarly a Partner portal can be tied to specific top line goals. From internal systems, it becomes more difficult. Partially it is because internal metrics often don’t exist or aren’t as granular as external.

I worked with a client recently on an intranet initiative which encountered these challenges. The organization had determined a need to replace two intranet platforms and we were conducting a roadmap and visual design engagement. During one of the phase-gates the steering committee requested success criteria as part of a phased funding approval. The challenges wasn’t identifying the criteria, but rather criteria which a) had a useful baseline and b) a mechanism for updating on a frequency less than a year. The client had the flexibility and processes in place to allow for this new requirement but for others, it would have been a significant challenge.

While an intranet and Social Business tools are different, although there can be significant overlap, they can be challenged by the same measurement gap. If your company is considering initiatives in these areas, think about your employee surveys can be extended to create a baseline for these future initiatives.

The report steps through the methodology used to calculate the economic impact, focusing on the benefits of the following:
• Increase in end user productivity
• Reduction in turnover
• Reduction in IT operating costs

The mix of hard and soft savings is a good approach and the focus on reducing turnover applies to all customers. I will quibble with the report in that the calculations are based on composite of the interviewed companies. The composite is that of a large enterprise (35,000). I realize that IBM and its peer group are in the business of selling enterprise software but sometimes customers read reports such as these and decide Connections isn’t for them. Our experience is that Connections can be a good fit at mid-sized organizations and isn’t only for the large enterprise.

I recommend that you read the report and decide if your company could also benefit from Connections.

You may have missed the release of Connections 5.5 earlier this month. This week seems like a good time to contemplate projects that you will tackle in 2016. Connections 5.5 was released on December 18th and IBM did a nice job with two webinars, both available on demand, that cover both IBM Docs 2.0 as well as Connections 5.5. The links are below and the first is an overview of what is new in the release. The second is an open Q&A with the product managers.

The number of new features are too numerous to list but here are some that I found most compelling.

• Further ability to customize communities, something that is very appealing
• Built for purpose communities included with the product
• Discoverable private communities, which are optional and are not visible to members external to your organization
• The ability to reorganize communities and sub-communities
• Rich Content application which allows you to embed content from the web
• Attachments are now searchable, can be 2 GB
• Nested folders in personal and community files
• Round-trip editing, including from the Connections Editor Mobile

Upgrade options remain the same from previous versions, i.e. side by side, although why anyone would want to try an in-place upgrade baffles me. An upgrade path is available from 4.5 and 5.0 to 5.5. As always, consult the documentation for specific releases and fixes required before planning your upgrade. There are no additional server or JVM requirements in 5.5.

What’s Coming in the Next Major Release of IBM Connections & IBM Docs (On-Premises)

Ask the IBM Connections Product Managers – while there was some overlap with the first webinar, there many good specific questions. If you are currently running Connections, this is a must. If you use IBM Forms Experience Builder (FEB), there are a number of items that you will want to listen to the webinar, including that Community surveys must use FEB 8.5.1, regardless of what you are licensed for or have deployed. If you are running FEB 8.6, look at using the rich content application to surface inside of Connections.

Connections 5.5 reviewer guide

If you are running Connections or are looking at Enterprise Social tools, release 5.5 deserves to be on your list for 2016. If you are entitled to Connections Files and Profiles due to licensing other products, such as IBM WebSphere Portal, Connections 5.5 with nested folders for attachments is certainly worth a strong look. As always, if you have questions, contact your Perficient representative and we are glad to assist.

Today through Friday, I have the opportunity to attend the IBM Leadership Alliance in Boston. The Leadership Alliance will be focused on Mobile, Social, Analytics, Content and Forms as well as Cloud. I am excited to see what IBM is going with products such as Verse, Connections, WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Content Manager and Forms Experience Builder.

Although the event is under non-disclosure agreement, I hope to be able to share overall impressions and tone. Having attended a number of these events over the years, I find it a great opportunity to see where IBM’s Enterprise Social products are going and be able to provide some input and feedback. Additionally it is great to be able to meet up with fellow IBM Champions, IBM Business Partners as well as enterprise customers who attend.

Several months ago I wrote here that IBM and Box had partnered and what it could mean for customers. At almost every customer I visit, the discussion turns to cloud file sharing, even if it wasn’t on the agenda. At one hospital chain earlier in the year, the team was presenting our recommendations, and the topic came up. The Chief Medical Officer turned to the CIO and said, “I meant to tell you before this meeting, but we’ve started using this technology with our medical partner X.”

As the discussion moved from our recommendations to cloud file sharing, it came out that the uses did not involved patient information or care, rather the focus was sharing best practices. That being said, the risk of PHI (Protected Health Information) or a violation of HIPPA was clear.

That is why I am encouraged that the agenda at BoxWorks 2015, which is September 28th-30th in San Francisco, include a number around compliance, regulations (EU and US), governance, security, with a focus on healthcare, as well as integrating Box into enterprise architecture.  Although IBM is not the only partner at the conference, their session did get my interest.

Come to this session to get an update on the strategic partnership announced by IBM and Box to maximize business value from your content. Product leaders from IBM and Box will discuss integrations with our Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions for content capture, workflow, analytics, and management, as well as migration, governance, and protection. In a live demonstration, IBM will showcase new support for Box built into IBM StoredIQ, showing how you can easily assess and organize business content in legacy sources such as file shares and move it to Box, dramatically simplifying both consolidation and migration of content.

This session is focused on ECM although the partnership includes Social Collaboration with IBM Connections and Verse, Cloud development with Box APIs in IBM BlueMix,  Mobile with IBM MobileFirst for iOS as well as IBM Watson Content Analytics to touch on the highlights.

I am very interested to hear the Boxworld announcements and how the partnership is progressing and I think this is an exciting relationship.