A number of readers asked me for more information about the Salesforce data management tool I built.
It’s basically a MS Access database with a Salesforce Dataloader integration. This means it can be used to:
Additional features:
One of my favorite Salesforce activities is cleaning up technical debt. With one of my current clients, we’ve been moving data from custom fields to standard fields and objects.
For example, the contact object had the following:
The account object had:
Today is Thanksgiving in Canada. While it’s not as huge of an event as in the US, it’s still a significant moment.
The origin of the celebration is to give thanks for a good harvest. Since most of us are not farmers anymore, we extended the moment of gratitude to include friends and family.… Read the rest
The other day, a friend told me a funny story. He was asked by a colleague to review their work before merging it into the main development sandbox.
The colleague started by explaining the purpose of the feature they designed and built.… Read the rest
If you haven’t already noticed, Salesforce is really pushing their AI advancements.
Like really pushing.
I believe they started labelling last year’s Dreamforce (their annual conference in San Francisco) as the “largest AI event in the world”. This year was no different.… Read the rest
Continuing from yesterday’s email…
Step 3 – Define the scoring values
Rather than use a typical score of 1-5 or 1-10, this is where things become interesting.
Imagine the following scoring:
Having gaps between the scores allows for more discrete responses.… Read the rest
Let’s say your client has a need, and it cannot be fulfilled by Salesforce. So you provide them with a shortlist of your preferred third-party applications. (Note: you have a shortlist, right?)
How do you help your client decide which of the apps is the best one for their needs?… Read the rest
As an independent Salesforce consultant, I need to submit my taxes to the government on a quarterly basis. This means having a platform in place to record my invoices and expenses.
Since I provide a service, I need to charge local tax on my invoices.… Read the rest
You understand that Salesforce, as great as it is, has limits. That’s why the AppExchange exists. To provide third-party organizations an opportunity to fill those gaps or improve upon core functionality.
However, as a Salesforce consultant, there’s a fine line between recommending an app and suggesting one.… Read the rest
My friend’s wife approached me earlier today to learn about Salesforce.
She is the owner of a small art consulting business, advising businesses and high net-worth individuals about which art installations to buy and why.
Last year, she purchased a Salesforce license and was now looking to implement it.… Read the rest
When you name a field, there are two definitions to consider
When you rename either of these definitions, Salesforce pops a warning message.… Read the rest
In today’s tech Tuesday article, let’s discuss field names.
I’m currently auditing a client’s data model. The team created the following roll-up fields:
A couple of issues strike me immediately:
As a Salesforce consultant, how should you spend your time when you don’t have much work to do?
This is a common question that is becoming more and more relevant as work is harder and harder to find. Whether you’re a full-time employee of a consulting agency or an independent contractor, the answer is mostly the same.… Read the rest
10k is a Salesforce agency in the US. Over the last few years, they also publish annual reports about the state of the Salesforce ecosystem.
In short, this year’s report doesn’t look great. They call it a “post-COVID hangover.”
Here are some notable takeaways:
So demand has gone down while supply increased.… Read the rest
So you’re doing the agile thing during your Salesforce project. Your two week sprints are full of user stories. Each user story is allocated points, which represents the level of development complexity and ultimately, the time to deliver the story.
The project manager (PM) usually knows how many points can be delivered in an average sprint.… Read the rest
When working in sprints, there are two common ways of demonstrating work to a client. The first is during the sprint, which eats up time for actual development.
The second is after the sprint is finished. This is an interesting choice, as your team has more time to deliver more functionality than option 1.… Read the rest
The sprint is complete and you’ve delivered several user stories and points. Yay to the team for their accomplishments. Now it’s time to show off their hard work.
As a Salesforce consultant, it may very well be your responsibility to demo this work.… Read the rest
When you’re delivering a Salesforce project, you’re probably using a form of agile methodology. It’s the popular kid these days.
Work is usually migrated from a Development (DEV) sandbox to a Quality Assurance (QA) sandbox every two weeks. Towards the end of the sprint, you’ll probably want to demonstrate to the client what was done in that sprint.… Read the rest
While at a local Salesforce user group event yesterday, a colleague spoke about how he received several new opportunities. This is obviously a good sign, as recently Salesforce opportunities are harder to come by than in the past.
The challenge he’s now facing is deciding which opportunity to choose from.… Read the rest
When you have several solutions to a Salesforce problem, how do you make a final decision? How do you recognize and fight for the best solution?
Enter a framework. A framework is a series of guidelines and considerations to help you make the right decision for a specific problem.… Read the rest
There’s a phenomenon in psychology called anchors. An anchor is usually the thing you think most often of, when presented with a stimulus.
For example, if I ask you to think of a tool, your first thought is probably of a hammer.… Read the rest
Earlier today, I helped a friend clean his storage locker. He’s been holding onto things for far too long, and needed someone to help him discard things.
Being a minimalist, I told him to throw away, recycle, or donate nearly everything.… Read the rest
Yesterday, a colleague accidentally factory reset their mobile phone. She was jet lagged and didn’t fully realize what she was doing until it was too late.
As a result, she lost hundreds of notes, contacts, pictures, and other important information. None of this data was being backed up into the cloud.… Read the rest
Whenever you create or refresh a partial copy or full sandbox, you should be aware of certain privacy settings. For example, you wouldn’t want to accidentally send an email to a contact from a sandbox.
When a sandbox is updated, the email deliverability setting is automatically set to “System email only”.… Read the rest
Whenever a sandbox is created or refreshed, there may be additional steps to perform.
This is because the information from the source environment (either Production or another sandbox) is copied to the destination environment (the new or refreshed sandbox).
Some information should remain the same in the destination as in the source.… Read the rest
Not all Salesforce projects require the same number of sandboxes. Smaller ones require fewer sandboxes and massive projects require additional ones.
Here’s a rough guideline to manage projects of various sizes. One Production is always assumed.
Small
Medium
Large
Extra Large
The takeaway
Not surprisingly, the larger the project, the more the sandboxes.… Read the rest
Before officially launching medium-to-large amounts of new functionality into Production, you’ll want to perform a checklist.
This checklist is a list of things to be completed by you and your team. It details that all the preliminary steps have already been completed, as well as preparing the use for the upcoming change.… Read the rest
The final diagram in this Salesforce diagram series is the release management diagram.
This is used when you’re using DevOps to manage and deploy changes between sandboxes and eventually to production.
It’s common to have a release branch for each major Salesforce instance.… Read the rest
Understanding the relationships between sandboxes and production systems is another key diagram for Salesforce consultants.
This helps understand which sandboxes are used for what purpose and the general flow of configuration and development.
A diagram for sandbox management needs to include
Looking beyond the borders of Salesforce, a system architecture diagram helps understand Salesforce’s place in the project.
Just like user flows, it’s always a good idea to have a current state and desired future state for system architecture. The future state might be a phased approach, with different integrations introduced in later phases.… Read the rest