The phrase “The Internet of Things” has gotten a lot of attention lately. But until now, it’s probably not one you’d associate with big tanks of liquid.

You’ve probably noticed one of these tanks dotting the landscape of your city and thought to yourself, “I wonder what’s in there?” or “Who refills these and how do they know when it’s time?” The process used to involve field technicians driving around and manually checking them. Now, though, some of the tanks are getting a modern makeover thanks to the Internet of Things: they’re connected to the cloud, which makes managing water, oil, fuel, and even alcoholic beverage levels easier than ever. The Salesforce1 Mobile Application and Salesforce Platform make fluid service management more cost- and time-efficient and provide valuable insight into consumption patterns.

In the video below, John Brunswick demonstrates how it works.

Connecting Fluid Tanks to the Cloud: How It Works

John demonstrates how a series of fluid tank assets, represented in Salesforce as objects, can share a visualization of their real-time status within a map running in Salesforce1 based on a user’s geolocation.

A Heroku application enables real-time communication between the tanks and Salesforce. As the fluids are depleted below a certain level, a support case is automatically opened, requesting a refill.

The tanks are socially enabled. Through Chatter, they communicate with field technicians by mentioning them when service is needed. A quick routing view of the tank requiring service provides the field technician an at-a-glance view of what service is needed.

Upon refill, the devices communicate back to Salesforce, letting us know to automatically close the open case and notify the technician that service has been completed.

For more information on how connecting the physical and digital worlds benefits customers, employees, and everything else, subscribe to John’s YouTube channel or follow him on Twitter @JohnBrunswick.

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