So, it happened.
Your boss came to you and said something along the lines of, “Surprise, and congratulations, dear employee – you now own our Salesforce instance.”
GULP.
You might have been a power user and that’s how you got nominated, or maybe it loosely fell into your area of responsibility. Maybe your instance is brand new, or maybe you inherited a lot of technical debt. No matter your situation, you have an actual day job and keeping up with Salesforce – let alone learning how to administer it – takes a ton of care and feeding!
A lot of organizations split their Salesforce ownership between internal, in-house daily break/fix admins who often do have another job in sales, marketing, finance, or IT with an outside consultant who provides hourly managed services hours for strategic Salesforce moves and/or takes on the larger and riskier projects.
If you’re suddenly the daily admin at your company, I’ve put together a list of resources that I have shared with many of our clients who are in the exact same hot sear. Part 1 shows where an admin typically spends time under the Setup Menu (daily); Part 2 has helpful rapid reference links to trailhead modules, guides, user groups, How-To help articles, and apps that admins frequently use. This list is a more comprehensive examination of my past post, Getting Started as a New or Accidental Salesforce Admin.
Set Up Menu: Frequently Used Items
Administration:
1. User Set Up Menu: Advanced personal settings for user
2. Users – Set up and Deactivate
3. Permission Sets – apply permissions to certain profiles or users
4. Public Groups – used for communications and segmenting access to data
5. Queues – used for case management or leads
6. Roles – used for hierarchy set up
Data:
1. Export – used to schedule exports for data back up plans
2. Duplicate Management – used to set up duplicate and matching rules
3. Mass Updates (delete, transfer)
4. State & Country Picklists
Email:
1. Email Templates
2. Compliance BCC
3. Gmail & Outlook Integration
4. Outlook Configurations
Platform Tools:
1. Apps/App Manager (tab set up and page layouts)
2. Feature Settings
3. Process Automation (workflows, process builder)
4. User Interface – Path, Rename Tabs & Labels, Themes & Branding
5. Environments – Change Sets, Email logs, scheduled/bulk jobs, system overview
6. User Engagement – In App Guidance
Settings:
1. Company information
2. Critical Updates
3. Identity – Log In History
4. Security – Health Check, Network Access, password policies, sharing settings, view setup audit trail
5. Optimizer
Object Manager: All Objects and their fields, layouts, record types, validation rules etc.
Salesforce Help Articles related to roles, sharing rules, profiles and permissions
Role Hierarchy: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_roles.htm&type=5
Permission Sets: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=perm_sets_overview.htm&type=5
Sharing Rules: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=security_about_sharing_rules.htm&type=5
Profiles: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_userprofiles.htm&type=5
Helpful Reference Links
Links to my Trailmixes on Trailhead:
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/users/natbattista78/trailmixes/beginner-admin
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/users/natbattista78/trailmixes/salesforce-overview
App Exchange Dashboards:
Adoption: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000004gHhLEAU
Chatter: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000pviyEAA
Salesforce Trailblazer Group Recommendations:
Admin Trailblazers:
https://success.salesforce.com/_ui/core/chatter/groups/GroupProfilePage?g=0F9300000001oVp
Admin Webinars:
https://success.salesforce.com/_ui/core/chatter/groups/GroupProfilePage?g=0F9300000009NGi
Process Builder Online Help Article:
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=process_overview.htm&type=5
Downloadable User Guides:
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=getstart_help.htm&type=5
Profile Comparison: https://perm-comparator.herokuapp.com/
Unofficial Salesforce Sites: https://unofficialsf.com/next-best-action-home/
API Field Names: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/salesforce-api-fieldnames/oghajcjpbolpfoikoccffglngkphjgbo
Whitelist IPs: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whitelist-all-ips-for-sal/nnlnikmkkbpgioojghgojoejgcheilic
Apps Admins Use:
http://csvlint.io/
https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000FYDyHUAX
https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000EJdlFUAT
https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000q4evEAA
Validation Rule Examples: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=fields_useful_field_validation_formulas.htm&type=5
Formula Examples: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=how_do_i.htm&type=5
Hey, let me know how I can help, or if there is a resource missing that you really could use. I’m here to help! Shoot me a message at natalie@cloudadoption.solutions and I’ll be so happy to assist.
