If there’s a way to do things faster with the same efficiency and accuracy, who wouldn’t grab it? With the rich feature set and multiple functions of Salesforce, surely it can be overwhelming to use for admins and developers.
But working on Salesforce shouldn’t be frustrating. The software was made to help and not to complicate things to begin with.
Here are some helpful Salesforce tips and hacks you should know as an admin to help you complete your tasks in the cloud-based platform in a lesser effort and amount of time.
What you'll find in this article
1. Set up email alerts
You should configure your Salesforce to send you an alert or notification through email. In the Admin widget where you have access to all the object-specific admin pages, you can setup email alerts for specific activities done by your users such as object creation and field changes.
2. Speed up scheduled tasks
Scheduled tasks don’t start on its own even if you’ve configured the settings. You have to schedule it to run the scheduled task. It sounds confusing, but that’s how it is with Salesforce. However, you can work your way around that.
You can go to a custom object with ownership fields. Go to the bottom of the page to see the settings you can tweak to attach a batch job to it and attach your schedule job to the object.
3. Salesforce search in Chrome
Doing your searches inside your web browser will save you a lot of time and effort. You don’t have to switch tabs anymore.
To do this, you can right click in the Salesforce search bar, choose “Save as Search Engine,” and don’t forget to set the keyword to SF.
Going back to Chrome, type the word SF then space then your search keywords. This will show all the Salesforce results inside the web browser.
4. Merge multiple accounts
Before inserting the code below, make sure that you’ve found the accounts you want to merge. Now, scroll to the end of above Merge Accounts URL: https://ap2.salesforce.com/merge/accmergewizard.jsp
Also, make sure that you append the following:
parameter –
goNext=+Next+
Account Record ID’s (All the Account Record ID’s that you want to Merge) –
&cid=001200000080865
&cid=001200000080866
&cid=001200000080867
&cid=001200000080868
After having the final URL, paste it into your search bar and enter. This will show up the criteria (choose one) and click the “Press Merge” button.
5. Using Chrome extensions to save time
In general, Chrome extensions make everyone’s life much better. There is a bunch of different Chrome extensions you can use for Salesforce namely the Salesforce.com ID Clipper, Salesforce.com Quick Login As, Salesforce Sandbox Favicon Extension, Salesforce.com Enhanced Formula Editor, and Force.com Utility Belt.
6. Welcome email workflow
This hack sends a welcome email to every user that signs up in Salesforce. The email contains information about the basics and how-to-get-started manual of Salesforce.
Set up a workflow that pushes out the templated email when creating, organizing, and fixing the user record.
7. Mass email activity ghostbusting
To track the activity of mass emails properly, you should add a description to it. Naturally, the system stores this description so might as well use this function to help you differentiate one mass email from another.
8. Check duplicates in standards objects
Going over all your records to make sure that there are no two same entries literally takes up most of your time.
Here’s step by step process from Forcetalks to do it automatically in a matter of seconds:
- Go to Account Fields.
- Create a Text type field (with Unique checked) and don’t display it on the Page Layout.
- Create a Workflow rule that does Field update on this new Text field from the Account Name.
Now that you know the various Salesforce hacks that will make your lives easier, faster, and better, you can be a Salesforce-certified administrator. Take our Salesforce administrator training to grasp the functions of the software fully. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at [email protected].
