The launch of Salesforce Communities™ marked a shift in the way organizations interact with their customer and partner bases. Moving away from the Salesforce Portal™ framework, these new communities utilize a more collaborative and social model—providing a necessary tool for any customer-obsessed organization. We recently hosted a webcast on Salesforce Communities that included a great round of questions from the participants. Below are the consolidated answers to seven of the broadest questions. 

1. What sort of skill sets do I need to launch Salesforce Communities?
   
   An administrator can take Communities live, but to fully take advantage of what is actually a platform, not just a product, you will need a multidisciplinary group. You’ll need specialized roles for those who run will the community and measure its effectiveness, and those who can enhance and optimize the user experience. 
2. We have a Salesforce Portal. Will the Salesforce Summer Release ‘13 negatively impact us? Should we stop customizing our Portal and focus on Communities?
   
   There are a few changes to Portals in Summer ‘13 that you should review in the release notes (pg. 29). Otherwise, there is no end-of-life date for current Portal products and you should only switch to Communities when the business need and benefit exists. 
3. Is Communities just private chatter groups that are published to customers?
   
   Chatter is a key feature of Communities, but not the only one. Standard setup allows you to expose community members to cases, solutions, knowledge, and much more. Certain parts of the community could be made public, while others are password-protected. You could even expose another application through Canvas or build Visualforce pages to meet your needs.
4. Do customers need a Salesforce license to access a community I have created? 
   
   Customers need an “external customer license” to participate in a customer community. Salesforce Communities is priced in pre-defined blocks (general size) of either number users or logins per unique community. 
5. Can I have Communities with access to only certain customers?
   
   Yes, access is controlled through user roles. Not only can you determine which customers have access, but also who in your company can participate in each community.
6. Can you have a single login that allows you access to different communities?
   
   A single Salesforce org can have multiple communities, which can all be accessed from a single Salesforce login. Save your external community members from having to create a unique ID by enabling social sign on.
7. Are reports and dashboards sharable in Communities?
   
   Only Partner Community licenses have access to dashboards and reports. Launching a customer community? Consider displaying a business intelligence (BI) solution like Birst on a Visualforce page inside the community. BI applications can be found in the Salesforce AppExchange.

Have a question about Salesforce Communities? Post it to the comments below. To learn what Salesforce Communities can do for your company, contact Bluewolf. 

For more information on Salesforce Communities resource, check out these resources:

• The End of Portals: The Dawn of Salesforce Communities