If Mismanaged, Salesforce Can Feel Spooky

For businesses big and small, Salesforce is an amazing CRM–but everything’s got a dark side if all features aren’t being used to optimize your workflow! If you don’t know how to manage your instance, even though it’s an amazing tool, there are things about Salesforce that can go bump in the night for some users and admins. No matter how Salesforce-savvy you are, if you don’t know what pitfalls to avoid, even you might fall victim to the jump scare of an imperfect Salesforce instance. We’re here to help you find some ways to brush up on your monster-hunting (er, Salesforce administrator) skills to make sure that no matter the issue, you’re not caught all alone after the lights go out. These pitfalls and solutions will make your problems look silly, and have them saying “I could have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those pesky tips on the Bitwise Industries Tech Services Blog!”

The Case of the Missing List View

There are few things more powerful than a solid Salesforce list view–an admin-perfected list view gives you access to all of the information you need at a moment’s glance. List views are versatile, and great tools for tracking registrations, clients, or anything else your organization might need. However, with great list view skills comes great responsibility. Things can get pretty nightmarish if a list view is being utilized by multiple users and is deleted or modified–what was once helpful to several Salesforce users has now been altered and may cause gaps within the workflow of the organization. How do you avoid a scenario in which the call is coming from within the instance? The solution is easier than you might think: asking an admin to create a copy of a list view customized to a new set of specifications achieves a streamlined workflow that’s more accessible to all users, and no information gets compromised in the process!

The Night of the Living Dataload

Picture this: you’re home alone, it’s a dark and stormy night. Your parents left pizza money on the counter for you, and right as you’re reaching into your popcorn bowl, you’re shocked by the chilling breath of a creature hovering above you. It’s the dataload you did three days ago, and though you thought it went perfectly, several things went awry, and it’s returned to haunt you. Whilst data loads can be an extremely efficient move, moving large amounts of new data into a Salesforce instance can cause data to be lost or changed. To make things even spookier, data loads can even fire multiple emails without the user knowing. There are permanent settings that can’t be undone once uploaded, like Person Accounts or multi-currency, and jumping into an org that’s got 40,000 poorly maintained reports is altogether cursed. To avoid this particular pitfall, check for emails that are triggered off of record changes before data downloads. And as always is the sage advice of the most experienced Salesforce admins: always, always, always test your work in a sandbox and not production.

The Call is Coming from Within the House

Salesforce is a powerful tool because of its ability to store tons of important data, down to the names and addresses of the customers or employees your organization serves. Because of this, access is extremely important, but only for those that need it–you never know who may be lurking in the shadows with access to data they do not need to see. Sometimes, when creating a new user profile, an admin can clone the “Standard Profile” to make adjustments, not realizing the extra access levels granted to the end user. They can see all internal user data such as emails, address, phone numbers, and more. Even scarier, they might have access to enable things that cannot be disabled once it’s on, and quite possibly the scariest possibility: someone changing organization workflows, processes, or flows that keep the instance working properly. So how does the admin skirt this and ensure the villain isn’t someone they’d been trusting the entire time? Cloning an existing custom profile used in the org and adjusting the permissions ensures that your new users get all the access they need, without the risk of too much access.

Invasion of the Object-Snatchers

When creating object relationships in Salesforce, it’s important to maintain clarity and organization, so things don’t get sticky and the objects become interrelated in a less-than-productive way. If several objects all have lookup fields to one another without a real sense of consistency, or no validation or checking to make sure everything is lined up in terms of object relationships, it could create reporting that is jumbled and inaccurate. Because of this, the connections on specific records all overlap in one way or another, creating an information gap. When there’s an axe murderer in your house and it’s the climax of a horror movie, you want to make sure you know exactly who to call, and that the information on your Salesforce reports is as clear and consistent as possible. A solution for this? An automation that would simplify the population of these relationships, and ensuring no bad data crossover would happen by accident. When this happens, reports and dashboards make a lot more sense and fewer objects can be consolidated in the process.

The Prepared Protagonist Always Survives

So what do we do to make sure we survive all of the Salesforce jump scares and booby traps? What gets us to the end of the movie, where things are on fire, but the culprit for mischief caught and peace brought back to the org once again? As always, creating a clear and concise plan with the stakeholder and defining a clear roadmap for a project ensures you always end up at the right place. Clear organization documentation, communication, and focused org management all help keep Salesforce instances happy and healthy, with no conflicting data or compromised reports–the number one tip our very own Bitwise admins have given is that few things go wrong with communication and documentation of the client’s needs are the first priority.

We Will Be the Passing Car to Save You

Bitwise Industries specializes in custom software development, Salesforce implementation and administration, and Contact Center-as-a-Service support. Our technology professionals have deep experience applying cutting-edge technology solutions to help entities of all sizes navigate the technology landscape to find solutions to optimize their operations.

This post was written by Amber Carpenter, Jr. Copywriter at Bitwise Industries. She recently discovered her Muppet astrological alignments, and of course, identifies as a Miss Piggy sun, Kermit moon, and Fozzy Bear rising.

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