Where did that idea come from?
Facebook is an important source of information for many of us - also in the IT industry wherein multiple groups, we can reach out to job-seeker or person looking for a subcontractor. We often want to share information with people responsible for individual processes in the company, e.g. Human Resources. At its simplest case, we can send a link or screenshot – in the best case, we could send a link to the prepared record in the company’s CRM system.
“Save a post” is not enough
Copying interesting data takes little time, however, when we repeat that process often, it turns out to be time-consuming, for that it’s easy to make a mistake. What if that process would be reduced to two or three clicks using a simple extension? Therefore, we created the extension for Chrome browser that could copy the interesting data to the company's CRM system. We want to increase our productivity and quality of the data that we process every day, that’s why we got the idea to reduce function occupying several minutes to a few clicks. The extension was affectionately called “Scratch Me”. The simple extension works on the principle of adding a button to each displayed post on any selected Facebook group. After clicking the button, it gets data from post and displays a form containing: author of a post, the content, link, and date. If the data is correct, we can send it data to the CRM system.
Why the plugin?
We have already created a few plugins that help our clients improve processes in their companies. However, the main reasons were the low entry threshold, limited access to data in closed groups as well as willingness to share our knowledge outside. The process of extension divided into two stages. The first stage of "Proof of concept" is a very simple plugin, that adds a button to each post and then extracts the data and displays as JSON format. The second stage, on which we are working, will include integration into the Copper CRM System (which we use every day in our company). Before we started writing chrome extension, it necessary was to know the latest Google Chrome documentation (https://developer.chrome.com/extensions). Owing to the fact that we used publicly accessible knowledge, we decided that the extension would be available in open source code.
Based on preliminary tests and opinions, we see that the first extension version has the potential to develop. The next step will be integration with e.g. CRM SalesForce. You can follow the plugin development on GitHub and you are welcome to share your feedback.
