A new, secure enterprise collaboration application called Salesforce Chatter was introduced today by the software-as-a-service pioneer, which expects to make it commercially available early next year.

 

The application includes profiles, feeds and groups through which individuals can become “deeply connected,” and developers can use the platform to build social enterprise applications, according to Salesforce.

 

The profiles include things like contact information, area of expertise, work history and a photo. 

With status updates, employees will be able to keep everyone informed of what they are working on. Salesforce Chatter’s feed will stream real-time status updates, not only from people, but also from content and apps. The groups feature in Salesforce Chatter will allow employees to create their own groups within Salesforce Chatter and share updates, content and more. 

Also, relevant updates from the Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Custom Cloud, like a new lead or an alert that inventory is low, will be represented on Chatter's feed. Business content, like documents, spreadsheets and presentations, also will be able to alert the entire company when any updates have been made through Salesforce Chatter's feed, just as people are alerted when new photos are posted on popular social networks. There are also a variety of other features to the application, including tie-ins to Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert).

 

Salesforce Chatter will be included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com, and a new Chatter Edition will be sold for $50 per user per month and will include Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content and Force.com.