what not to do as a salesforce administrator

How Not to Be a Bad Admin

Brad Gross – Information Logistics

Jared Miller – Configero

Jeff Grosse – Appirio

How to be a Bad Admin

• Actually – stories and good ideas to improve are the purpose

of the session

• Learn from these mistakes

• We will talk about a few of them but…

• All ideas are here:

• https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1JZDUll7JbOOxFZyDWs

ISv3VP4TAnZA99q5oQ2oGFSpc

Your Hosts

Jeff Grosse – Appirio - @CRMFYI

Jared Miller – Configero - @JaredMiller

Brad Gross – Information Logistics - @imperialstout

Jared Miller

Senior Project Manager, Configero

@jaredemiller


• Jared Miller

• Configero

• Co-Leader of the Tampa User Group

• Admin for a Professional Edition org for 3 years

• Working with Salesforce for over 6 years

How NOT to be a Bad Admin

• Creating date specific fields

• Customizing the “other” page layouts

• Point and Click doesn’t mean work only in Production

Creating Date Specific Fields • Story

• Sales reps are required to conduct a quarterly business

review with their customers

• 10 Fields were created to capture relevant data from

these meetings

• What happened next…

• First time, the users overwrote the data – No history

• Second time the admin created 40 fields to cover the

next year

Creating Date Specific Fields

• Business requirement

• A date specific field can be used for many different

purposes

• September 2012 Revenue

• 2012 Yearly Review Notes

• Next Steps for 2013

Creating Date Specific Fields

• What are the downfalls?

• No historical data tracking

• Maybe there was an issue from Q1 that has now

been overwritten

• Field Limits

• 40 fields a year to capture the data

• Think of your page layout

• Think of your field limits

What Should We Do?

• The need to create specific date fields for a specific

purpose should prompt you to dig into the requirements to

determine if you need a Custom Object.

• Ask questions

• How many fields are needed?

• Is historical data important?

• Will the users/management/admin need to report on

the data?

What Should We Do?

• Solution

• Don’t be scared of a custom object!

• Create a custom object named – Quarterly Review

• Add the needed fields to this object, not the Account

• Why this worked

• Users clicked on “New Quarterly Review” button

• Historical data is kept

• Your page layout thanks you!

Customizing the “Other” Page Layouts

• Story

• Users need to find the information they need quickly,

with few clicks on the records and using searches

• Create formula fields to pull information from a related

object


• Page layout was too long

• Users weren’t finding the information quick enough


• What are the “other” page layouts?

• Mini-Page Layouts

• Controlled at the page layout level

• This is how you customize the hover box

Customizing the Mini Page Layout

We already know the

account name! Information I can do

something with (and

no clicks)!


• What are the “other” page layouts?

• Search Layouts

• Controlled at the object level

• You can add up to 10 fields

• You can’t add long text fields

• Formula fields are not available

Customizing the Search Layouts

• Setup>Customize>Object>Search Layouts>

All about

ButtonClick Admin a Salesforce blog that is all about solving

problems with Clicks and Not Code. New posts are published every

Monday morning at 10 AM CST.

We love Salesforce.com because of its usabilitiy

We solve problems with clicks, not code.

We work hard everyday to ‘make Salesforce go’ for our company.

We refuse to say NO when asked “Can Salesforce do that?”

We are dedicated to being successful!

Mike Gerholdt, Blogger-in-Chief

It's more than a blog,

it's a community.

ButtonClickAdmin is more than just

my voice, there are dozens of guest

posts written by Salesforce

Administrators just like you. Many of

these Guest Posts are written by

Salesforce MVPs and are some of the

most popular posts.

Point and Click doesn’t mean work in Production

• Story

• New ideas are always coming to us

• Salesforce is releasing new functionality that may solve

a business need


• New workflow rules, validation rules, custom objects,

custom fields are added into production…

Use your sandbox!

• Just because we point and click doesn’t mean we aren’t

“developers”

• Your sandbox is a place to

• Learn new functionality

• Test your ideas

• Login As

• Not disturb users in production

Jeff Grosse

Consultant

@CRMFYI

Appirio Helps Enterprises Power Their Business with Public Cloud Solutions

22

Technology-enabled professional services, supported by 500 cloud experts and

a 50,000+ cloud developer community

Helping Enterprises Become:

Efficient Effective

5 years, 300 enterprises, 1.5M users moved to the cloud

Social Mobile

Agile


• Jeff Grosse

• Appirio

• Founder of the Twin Cities User Group

• Admin for two Enterprise Edition orgs totaling 6 years

• Working with Salesforce for over 7 years

How NOT to be a bad admin

• Sections

• Available for a reason

• Logical collection

• Don’t always need labels

Sections

• Spaces

• Watch for dead space

• Be aware of Field Level Security

How NOT to to be a bad admin

• Page Layouts

• What justifies new layouts?

• Functional views of core data

• Design it for them

• How they look at data

• How they gather data

Two Records – Two Layouts

Customer Layout

Partner Layout

How NOT to be a bad admin

• Data gathering – A story

• Customer wanted 32 points of data gathered over the

course of years, available easily on an Account

• Option 1

• 64 fields of data added to the page layout

• Option 2

• One new custom object and a related list that builds

How NOT to to be a bad admin

• Reporting and Dashboards

• The role of Field Level Security in usability

• Limits the ability to report on data

• Helps users find fields they’d actually use

• The role of Folder Security in usability

• Don’t show them what’s irrelevant to them

Brad Gross

Information Logistics

How to Not be a Bad Admin

• Plan Not React

• Everyone Needs to Nod Yes

• Get an Amen From the Congregation

• Data Entry May Not be Their Job

Stay “PEGD” on Good Salesforce Admin’ing

P - Plan Not React

• Salesforce is almost too

easy to create

• Plan and think in

advance of doing

• Does that belong there?

• What should happen

next when Y occurs?

• Think about:

• Objects

• Fields

• Workflow

• Views

• Reports

• Dashboards

• Validation Rules

E - Everyone Needs to Nod Yes

• Executive buy-in is crucial to salesforce.com success

• Tie their wallets (or bonuses) to the solution

• Have executives announce big news

• Its not YOUR system its EVERYONE’s system

G - Get an Amen From the Congregation

• Have regular team meetings

• Make the team aware of situations and successes

• Discuss and agree

• Let everyone march out and talk with all users

• Don’t be a lone gunman

D - Data Entry May Not be Their Job

• User’s job may be worth more then all the data

• Pick your battles wisely on new fields

• Use scheduled reports/dashboards

• The 2-minute task

Jeff Grosse

@CRMFYI

Jared Miller

@jaredmiller

Brad Gross

@imperialstout