Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins

Learn About Admin Habits

Identify the four core responsibilities that many Salesforce admins share. Learn why creating good habits helps you become a successful Salesforce admin.
  • 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

Describe why user management habits are important. Create user management habits to help you become a successful Salesforce admin. Build a calendar of your user management habits that can help you become a successful Salesforce admin.
  • 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

Delve into Data Management

Describe why data management habits are important. Create data management habits to help you become a successful Salesforce admin. Build a calendar of your data management habits that can help you become a successful Salesforce admin.
  • 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

Get the Scoop on Security

Describe why security habits are important. Create security habits to help you become a successful Salesforce admin. Build a calendar of your security habits that can help you become a successful Salesforce admin.
  • 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)
  • Resources

Get Acquainted with Actionable Analytics

Describe why analytics habits are important. Create analytics habits to help you become a successful Salesforce admin. Establish a communication plan based on actionable analytics. Build a calendar of your actionable analytics habits that can help you become a successful Salesforce admin.
  • 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