Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins

Learn About Admin Habits

• Salesforce Admins solve business problems by customizing the Salesforce Platform
  • They build, configure, and automate technology solutions to deliver business value
• Your Core Responsibilities as an Admin
  1. User Management
  2. Data Management
  3. Security
  4. Actionable Analytics
• Form Good Habits
  • Habits are different from Tips & Tricks
    • Habits are repeatable, automatic reactions to specific situations
    • Tips & Tricks are something that someone figured out as a quicker/faster way of doing something
  • Units that follow are intended to equip admins with actionable habits you can adopt weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually
    • Learning the habits helps admins to structure their weeks effectively
      
      
• 3 parts to a weekly cycle:
  1. Part 1 (Mon/Tues): Discovery: Soliciting feedback and observing users
  2. Part 2 (Wed/Thurs): Design & Configuration: Designing and configuring solutions
  3. Part 3: (Thurs/Fri): Deployment & Communication: Communicating and deploying changes

Understand User Management

• Learn User Management Habits
  • Introduction to User Managment
    • Three core components to user management habits
      1. Configuring Access and Visibility
      2. Measuring Adoption
      3. User Observation and Communication
  • Habit: Observe Your Users (schedule 30 minutes/week)
    • Identify and observe users from each functional group of users on the platform
    • Make sure to include both individual contributors as well as managers and business leaders
      • Good prompting questions:
        • “Can you show me your typical tasks in Salesforce?”
        • “Why do you follow these specific steps?”
        • “Why do you export these reports to Excel?”
        • “Is anything missing from this workflow?”
        • “Do you collaborate with other departments using this data?”
        • “What are your top Salesforce pain points?”
      • Avoid using Salesforce terminology - use the language of business process and business value
  • Habit: Review and Report on Adoption (schedule 60 minutes/week)
    • Adoption is a way of measuring whether platform features are fully utilized
      • Platform features include standard features like Sales Cloud, custom objects, custom fields, and automations
      • To measure adoption, need to list all these features, and determine a method to report on each of them
      • Example reports:
        • Data created in last 7 days
        • User logins by profile & region
        • Opportunity updates by owner
    • User Audits: make sure users who no longer need access are deactivated
      • Removed unused profiles and permission sets or permission set groups based on Optimizer results
      • Align Salesforce access levels and job functions
  • Habit: Communicate with Stakeholders (schedule 60 minute monthly stakeholder meeting)
    • Meet monthly with department leaders, and send a recap afterward
      • Sample agenda for meeting:
        • Upcoming business changes that could affect Salesforce
        • New Salesforce release updates
        • Internal release updates, including new features and configuration
        • Share a recent win
        • Change requests and backlog prioritization across the business functions
        • Stakeholders by process
          • Ex: Opportunities -> Sales, Marketing, Finance
        • Review Action Items
    • Communicate updates consistently
  • Habit: Create and Maintain a User Guide (schedule 1 hour/week for maintaining the guide)
    • A User Guide contains information on how to use Salesforce in support of a business process
    • Admins create and maintain user guides:
      • Include a guide for each unique type of Salesforce user in your organization
      • User guides can be written using the tools already available in your org
      • User guides should be updated if configuration changes
      • Descriptions, help text, and In-App Guidance can support your user guides
    • An Admin Guide can also be very helpful
• Resources
  • User Management Administration
  • User Management Best Practices Guide

Delve into Data Management

• Learn Data Management Habits
  • Introduction to Data Management
    • Important because “Garbage In, Garbage Out”
  • Habit: Review and Maintain Backup (review backup solution for 30 mins once per month)
    • Create and Maintain a Backup Solution
      • Configure a weekly export with all data
        • Consider also including images, documents, and attachments
        • Include Salesforce files and CRM content
        • Schedule to export to run over the weekend and avoid peak hours
      • Download the ZIP file within 48 hours
      • Explore AppExchange apps for additional options
    • During monthly review, keep in mind any changes to objects/fields, as well as any compliance requirements
  • Habit: Cleanse Data (few hours per week, Mondays)
    • Duplicates
      • Create and modify matching rules and duplicate rules
      • Activate duplicate rules using matching rules
      • Review duplicate record sets with custom reports
      • Explore AppExchange Apps for additional options
    • Consider creating List Views with missing data in key fields (ex: contacts w/o phone number)
    • Create a Custom Duplicates Report
      • Custom Report Type: Object + Duplicate Items
      • Add any important fields as well as “Created By” and “Created Date” for auditing
      • Subscribe to weekly report
    • Don’t forget to cleanse (Meta)data as well
      • List views, fields, objects
      • Reports and Dashboards
      • Workflow Rules, Process Builders, Flows
      • Roles, Profiles, Permissions, Permission Sets
      • Email Templates
  • Habit: Review and Refresh Sandboxes (review 30 for mins, once per week)
    • Steps:
      • Create or refresh your sandbox so metadata is synced
      • Maintain a refresh schedule
      • Be aware of refresh intervals
    • Best practice: every sandbox should have one owner
      • This person should be contacted before refreshing the sandbox so that no work-in-progress is deleted
  • Habit: Maintain and Improve Your Org (schedule a few hours per week, middle of the week)
    • Steps:
      • Focus on the most important areas for your business
      • Run Optimizer for an overview of where to begin
      • Run Lightning Page Optimization for specific performance recommendations
    • Best Practice: Do not build in production - use change sets
  • Habit: Maintain and Improve Your Data Dictionary (schedule 1 hour per week)
    • A data dictionary can help improve collaboration with IT, developers, and consultants
    • Should include the following, for each field:
      • Data type & attributes (length)
      • API name
      • Sample results
      • Business process
      • Integrations or Dependencies
• Resources
  • Exporting Data
    • Export Backup Data from Salesforce
  • Managing Duplicate Data
    • Customize Duplicate Management
    • Build Powerful Reports with Custom Report Types
  • Data Optimization
    • Lightning Page Performance
    • AppExchange: Admin Tools

Get the Scoop on Security

• Learn Security Habits
  • Introduction to Security
    • Protecting Data is a Partnership
      • Salesforce’s Responsibility:
        1. Provide solutions that enable the customer to keep their data secure
        2. Educate customers on the need for security and how to enable it
      • Admin:
        1. Adopt evolving security controls and features
        2. Continually monitor user behaviors and event logs
        3. Protect sensitive data in alignment with compliance standards
    • Best practice: Users should have the minimum level of access to the system and data that is necessary to perform their job function
  • Habit: Communicate Regularly with IT (schedule 1 hour per week at the end of the week for IT communication)
    • Compliance policies
    • User onboarding and off-boarding procedures
    • Updates to data structures for integrations
    • Sandbox provisioning
    • Automated scripts
  • Habit: Review Access and Visibility (schedule 1 hour per week in the middle of the week)
    • Four distinct levels of access and visibility into the org:
      1. Organization: Single Sign-On, Multi-Factor Authentication, Password Policies, Certificate and Key Management
      2. Persona: Profile, Permission Sets, Permission Set Groups, IP Restrictions & Login Hours
      3. Record: Org-Wide Defaults, Sharing Rules, Sharing Sets, & Sharing Groups, Role Hierarchy, Manual & Programmatic Sharing, Teams, Territories
      4. Field: Field Level Security
    • Security Health Check is available in Setup:
      • Measure your Org’s security against Salesforce’s standard baseline
      • Easily identify at-risk security settings
      • Fix with one click for immediate results
      • Customize based on your company’s compliance needs
  • Habit: Learn Continuously (deepen your knowledge of security for an hour at the beginning of each week)
    • Visit Salesforce security websites:
      • trust.salesforce.com/en/security
      • admin.salesforce.com/security
• Resources
  • Security Resources
  • Use Health Check to Scan Security Configurations
  • Choose the Right Salesforce Security Settings
  • Salesforce Security

Get Acquainted with Actionable Analytics

• Learn Actionable Analytics Habits
  • Introduction to Actionable Analytics
    • Actionable Analytics are important because they allow your company to drive business decisions by using your Salesforce data
      • Many products can be used to consume analytics:
        • Built-in Reports and Dashboards
        • Tableau / Tablea CRM
        • Dataroma
        • Third-party Integrated Analytics Solutions
  • Habit: Conduct Quarterly Business Review (Several hours, once per quarter)
    • Tasks:
      • Check in with stakeholders and users
        • Salesforce Admin may join the QBR, but does not organize it
      • Focus on leaders
      • Review upcoming business inititatives and objectives
    • Sample Meeting Items:
      • Are there upcoming business changes that could affect Salesforce?
      • Are stakeholders able to measure progress?
      • What reports and dashboards are most trusted?
      • Do you hear any complaints?
      • Record detailed questions for follow up with business leaders
  • Habit: Confirm and Update KPIs (several hours, once per month)
    • Steps/Process:
      • Measure transparently to increase business alignment
      • Reference information gathered from QBR
      • Compare existing KPIs, reports, and dashboards
      • Complete these steps with a partner from the business, never alone
    • Example Reports:
      • User: Sales Rep: My leads that need follow up this week
      • User: Service Rep: My cases open over 7 days
      • Stakeholder: Sales VP: Total business closed this month by rep
      • Stakeholder: Service VP: Case open time by support rep
      • Admin: Data created in the last week by Sales users, Reports and Dashboards run int he last week
  • Habit: Review and Update Key Reports and Dashboards (several hours, once per month)
    • Build trust with a single source of truth
      • Remove redundant and obsolete analytics
      • Update relevant analytics with any new or updated KPIs
      • Remove duplicate and unused reports
      • Review report of reports for additional upkeep
    • Increase alignment with business objectives:
      • Document reporting changes and related business initiatives
      • Explain changes to how KPIs are measured
      • Share pain points that have been removed
      • Communicate across multiple messaging channels
      • Include a method to capture feedback & questions
• Resources
  • Analytics Resources
  • Create Your Own Habits Kit