114

salesforce admin
BEST PRACTICES
for salesforce admins. by salesforce admins.

#sfadmintips
 “
To get the most out of Salesforce,
you first need to UNDERSTAND
YOUR SALES PROCESS inside and
out, REFINE IT, and then develop
Salesforce to DRIVE IT.
-nick, u.k.
“
 “
Use Salesforce Get reports right for your organisation. It will
encourage users to use the system if they get
for as much data something useful out.
-John, U.K.

management Develop a process, document it, and

as you can. follow it. Every month iterate what you’re doing
and why...then adapt.
-shawn, u.s. -Lauren, U.S.
“ Garbage in, garbage out. Clean data rules all.
-Nam, U.S.

Humans make things messy...don’t ever

expect a well-formulated process and flow to
function a particular way as a result.
-Nicole, U.S.

Visualize everything.
Pencil to paper before
configuring!
-suresh, u.s.

#sfadmintips
 “
ARCHITECTURE FIRST.
The design needs to be
right from the start.
-andrew, u.s.
 Don’t let the villagers
run the village. Gather
feedback, determine validity
of requests, and be the
admin/developer.
-leanne, u.k.

Your company needs at least one admin to

do Salesforce stuff 50-70% of the time.
There is so much to learn and offer, and you need
time for that.
-karey, u.s.

Work on ways to engage your organisation. When

they see what Salesforce can do, they’ll be very excited.
-Mike, U.k.

If it can be automated, it should be automated.

-jon, u.s.

Do as much with configuration as you can. Avoid

customization as much as possible!
-Nicole, U.s.

#sfadmintips
Make sure your users really
understand the terms and
language of Salesforce.
Otherwise, you’re going to
have problems.
-julia, U.S.
 Make the most of the Sandboxes available to
“
develop a well structured Development, QA, and If you’re struggling with
UAT process.
-Mark, U.K. Salesforce, 80% of the
Use the forum! Great place to go for tips and time the problem is not
advice. Ask questions on the forum. Quick and
great responses.
the system; it’s the lack
-Jennifer, u.s. of internal processes.
Sit down with your business units and go through -Elena, Canada
their processes. Automate as much as you
can for them using workflows, etc.
“
-denise, u.s.

Don’t set up your own Salesforce database; let a

Salesforce pro handle it. Pay the extra money.
Do whatever it takes to not set it up yourself.
-kim, U.S.

Workflow rules
saved my life.
-jackie, u.s.

#sfadmintips
 “
Take the time to LEARN THE INS AND OUTS
of Salesforce, and show your users so that
they see it as a VALUE, not a BURDEN.
-sarah, u.s.
“
 Standardize, standardize,
standardize!
-sue, u.s.

Only let users have access to the features they

need to use. Giving users access to features they
don’t need introduces unnecessary questions
and opportunity for user errors.
-Angie, u.s.

Use custom buttons to pre-populate data from

Master record into Child record.
-Crystal, u.s.

Get away from the traditional use of Email and

Tasks and embrace using Salesforce.
-Thomas, U.s.

Use descriptions when creating fields.

-rick, U.s.

Work at it a little
every day.
-Lonnie, u.s.
#sfadmintips
 Try to automate and
enforce whatever you can.
Trusting humans to follow
processes is risky and may
be error prone.
-Yair, Israel
 “ Make training fun and interactive. Host
periodic open discussion groups for people to
ask How-To questions.
Learn (mine data), -rebecca, U.S.

grow (report trends), train Go to Dreamforce!

-jennifer, u.s.
(improve), repeat.
If you don’t have it already, add a custom link
-david, U.S.
to your Account page using http://www.google.
“ com/search?q={!Account_Name} to allow users
to Google that customer/prospect in one click.
-Richard, u.s.

Incomplete info and missing details will render

reports useless.
-Andrew, saudi arabia

If it’s not in Salesforce,

it doesn’t exist.
-jason, u.s.

#sfadmintips
 “
You must be PASSIONATE
and a “LITTLE BIT CRAZY” to
follow your own ideas and
do things differently.
-amit, austria
 Use Chatter Topics.
They make life much easier.
-jeff, u.s.

Create naming and data entry conventions.

-Maura, U.s.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions to

Salesforce support, the community or
colleagues, even if you are the Salesforce
Admin. Everyone is willing and interested
in helping so that Salesforce can work
better for everyone.
-Emily, u.s.

Never use multi-select picklists.

-Dale, U.S.

#sfadmintips
 “
Constant training and devoting
resources to learning
ARE CRITICAL TO THE SUCCESS
of a Salesforce instance.
-brian, u.s.
“
 A CRM is only as good as
what you put into it.
-Robin, u.s.

Define your business needs very completely, and

“
then you will know what questions to ask.
Whatever it is, there’s a good chance someone
has developed an app or add-in for it.
-andrea, u.s.
Don’t over think things.
Always use a sandbox prior to any integration.
Use configuration, not
-raman, u.s. code whenever possible.
Continually train your users by sending
If you have to code
monthly or quarterly tips and best practices. They something, you’re probably
will never remember half of what they learned in
training their first week with the company.
over complicating it.
-soon, U.S. -Frank, u.s.
“

#sfadmintips
 Give it a go.
You can’t break the system
by trying new ways to
manipulate and report data.
-robyn, australia
 Document everything. Your replacement
needs to know.
-mary, U.s.

Do your best to understand

standard functionality instead
of customizing it. Always deploy the
simplest version possible first, and make
incremental improvements based on feedback
and usability testing. Save yourself immense
technical debt and future frustrations.
-shayne, u.s.

Permission sets are everything. One little misuse

can cost a week of fixing.
-Revital, Israel

Get your users’ input before integrating new things.

They may not even want it!
-bailey, u.s.

Become certified!
-Melanie, u.s.

#sfadmintips
 “
Reporting is only as good as
the data it is reporting on, so
PUT IN GOOD DATA.
-richard, u.s.
 Learn how to use report features, like running
reports for contacts with no email, or some other
vital feature to continue to make your database
“
more viable.
-clark, u.s.
Make Salesforce
mandatory for
Don’t give everyone admin permissions.
-steve, u.s. better user adaptation.
Define your business needs very completely, and
-olga, netherlands
then you will know what questions to ask.
Whatever it is, there’s a good chance someone
“
has developed an app or add-in for it.
-andrea, u.s.

Do one thing at a time.

-enrique, u.s.

Quality in = Quality out

-diane, u.s.

#sfadmintips
 “
Pay attention to new
features delivered each
release. There’s some
GOOD STUFF IN THERE!
-josh, u.s.
“
If you expect sales people to
use Salesforce, then you need to
understand the sales cycle.
-keri, U.S.

Make sure your initial setup is done with

competent people who understand where
you want to be with the instance in a few
years time, otherwise you will spend a lot of
time fixing broken processes as you
scale.
-john, U.S.

Salesforce is a great tool, but to optimize it you must

have a well tuned admin with time to spare.
-Colleen, u.s.

Spend the time to ensure fields and formulas are

accurate.
-Bill, U.S.

Always use a test

environment and test, test,
test customisations.
-gemma, u.k.

#sfadmintips
 Go to user group
meetings, get to know
people, use #askforce
on Twitter, and join the
success community.
-SHannon, u.s.
 Simplify. Clean records
make for easier sales.
-kevin, u.s.

Avoid multi select pick lists. They are very

difficult to report on.
-Jo-ann, canada

Only go custom when necessary.

-matt, canada

Keep your page layouts clean. Continuously

remove fields or merge fields that don’t get used.
-Mark, U.S.
“
When receiving user
When building Salesforce, one must
understand accounts and contacts
requests, take a step
structure before anything else. I wish we did a back and analyse
better job internally.
-scott, U.S. what they really mean.
-jennifer, u.k.
“
#sfadmintips
 “
Keep your data
CLEAN AND HEALTHY.
-alan, u.s.
“
 Clean and de-dupe your data
monthly. If not, you’re creating
a monster headache
as you build out your database.
-carl, u.s.

Do all the help and training you can do to stay

current on changes.
-wendy, u.s.

Have patience with your users.

-leah, Israel

Organize your tabs left to right as the relationship

flows. It helps people keep it straight.
-geof, U.S.

Marketing automation is a must!

-carol, canada

Clean data rules my world!

-christine, u.s.

#sfadmintips
 “
Be careful what data is
IMPORTED, and make sure
to have DATA CLEANSING
VALIDATION RULES.
-mary, u.s.
 Ask your co-workers what works for

“ them. They’ve probably stumbled on a feature

that makes the office workflow even better.
-shelly, u.s.

Develop a routine schedule Find a good cleansing app for duplicates.

for data cleansing.
-Yolanda, U.S.

-nathan, U.S. Standardize an import spreadsheet that

“ matches the fields in Salesforce.
-kelly, U.S.

Join your local users group!

-mike, U.S.

Email to Salesforce is a great feature that lets you

save important emails on a contact record.
-Anna, U.s.

If you don’t know the

implications, don’t change
the data.
-max, u.s.

#sfadmintips
Invest in processes and
products to help keep
your data clean. It is
worth the time.
-jaffe, u.s.
 Come up with a
standardized training
module for new users.
-brian, u.s.

Standardize and train your users. Start with

clean data before the mess consumes you.
-Sarah, U.S.

Sharing settings should be properly

considered when creating users and
assigning profiles. Be clean
-rob, Australia
and accurate.
Make sure you know what you want to do -renee, u.s.
with Salesforce before building your
database so you don’t have to reverse
engineer later.
-emily, u.s.

Use standard objects.

-naveen, u.s.

#sfadmintips
 “
MAKE SALESFORCE WORK
FOR YOU... not the other
way around.
-bridget, u.s.
 “ Embrace flows and
process builder. I’ve
Listen to your users. fallen in love. :)
-kim, U.S. -Bryan, u.s.
“ When scrolling down a long report, click on
the little drop down arrow in the middle of
the screen to freeze the headings. Makes
reading a report much easier!
-Annakie, South Africa

Before launching Salesforce, be forward

thinking about what info you want to have
in each record, and gather it before uploading.
-C.J., U.S.

Run the bounced emails report and send

it to your team to help clean your database.
-Susie, u.s.

Clean your data before importing it

into Salesforce.
-Krisztina, Germany

#sfadmintips
 “
BE PATIENT and don’t
force solutions.
-mitch, u.s.
“
 Get training and learn how
to train.
-nate, u.s.

Standardize your data entry for ease of sorting

and report-building.
-elissa, U.S.

Add validation rules to help get good data

into Salesforce from the beginning.
-john, u.s.

There are lots of apps in the AppExchange

which make life easier.
-sanjeev, india

Communication and engagement of the

users are key to increase user adoption.
-glenda, australia

#sfadmintips
Enter as much data
as you can.
Data is power.
-josh, u.s.
 Data is vital.
Keep it clean.
-Kapil, germany

The SFDC community is vibrant. Always

check there first when you have a question.
-stephanie, u.s.

Data integrity is key.

-andrew, u.s.

Always search the database for existing

records prior to data entry! Utilize the wildcard

“
search in case it is spelled differently.
-nick, u.s.

Keep it simple.
Keep it people-centered. -yael, israel

-angela, U.S.
“
#sfadmintips
 “
Just enjoy using Salesforce
and all the cloud
productiveness goodness
that it offers.
-JENNY, U.K.
 Make your Salesforce instance the best
it can be with clean, reliable data.
ü Find duplicate records in your existing database and easily
dedupe from a simple dashboard

ü Auto-merge, mass merge, or manually merge duplicates without

data loss

ü Choose from prebuilt filters or create your own

ü Cleanse import files before the data reaches Salesforce
ü Maintain data with features such as mass update, mass delete,
geocoding, address validation and standardization

How many dupes are

lurking in your data? .com
Find out with a free 10-day trial!
makers of
 SHARE THIS
Help us make the Salesforce world a
better, more productive place.

Produced and copyrighted by Symphonic Source Inc., makers of DupeCatcher, Cloudingo, and Cloudingo Studio
Copyright & Permissions

You are welcome to print a copy of this document for your personal use. Other than that, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as
permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the author. Requests to the author and publisher for permission should be addressed to the following email: contact@symphonicsource.com.

Limitation of liability/disclaimer of warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this guide and workbook, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this document and
specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, promoters, or written sales materials.

The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited
to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Graphics designed by Freepik.com.

Salesforce® is a registered trademark of salesforce.com and is not affiliated with Symphonic Source Inc.