Uh oh. Your Salesforce administrator, the one who keeps all of the fires burning for your sales or service team, has just announced that she won the lottery/ got a new job/ is finally becoming a Solid Gold dancer (oh, that’s just me). And you have two weeks to figure out what in the world to do about it.
Where do you even start???
Here are some tips on how to cover the transitional period, in between when your admin gives their notice and you are able to screen resumes, interview credible applicants, make an offer, and wait out their notice at their current company (which, let’s face it, could be anywhere from 1-6 months, realistically).
- Have your current admin update the user owner of current configurations and permissions. This should be your first priority, as once that admin leaves and becomes inactive, business-critical workflows could be interrupted and leave a strain on your company. Salesforce has a nice checklist to follow.
- Understand and detail any projects that are mid-stream for enhancement requests, defect fixes, or integration-focused. These are the important projects that your admin is probably working on between critical daily user (reactive) requests, and should be recapped and prioritized (perhaps in a project management system like JIRA or in a Salesforce custom object).
- Define your replacement strategy for the interim. Do you have a power user on staff, or a person with an admin background in another department who can help to keep Salesforce afloat while you hire a new FTE? If not, many Salesforce consultants offer “managed services” (we call ours Admin On-Call) to help your organization bridge the gap while you find a new hire.
- Run an organizational health check. This will help you to outline and detail anything that’s been under the radar in your organization that has likely been taking back seat while your admin puts out daily fires. You can find this in the Setup menu of Salesforce.
- Above all, don’t panic…but be sure to thank your admin for all of their hard work and long days! Oftentimes, when an employee leaves, we’re so busy trying to figure out our mitigation plan that we forget to be thankful for all of the great stuff they’ve contributed to our mission.
