Category: Salesforce Blog

Salesforce has been helping sales reps of all sorts of companies for more than twenty years now. Over time, it has successfully occupied the position of one of the most reliable and efficient CRM platforms in the world.

 

Salesforce is a pretty vast platform with several components. On getting Salesforce implemented, you will be provided with an array of different tools, platforms, add-ons, and applications. Each of these components has a specific function to perform and the users should be well aware of the same.

 

This vast and multi-layered nature of Salesforce may result in queries, confusion, and a variety of other issues faced by the customers. Salesforce users may require reliable support from the experts at different stages of implementation, which is provided by the Salesforce Customer Portal.

 

What Is Salesforce Customer Portal?

Salesforce Customer Portal is the platform where Salesforce customers/clients can share the issues faced by them and get the same resolved effectively. Here, they can submit their respective inquiries and get their cases resolved in an efficient and satisfactory manner. Salesforce Customer Portal extends the personalized nature of Salesforce services. Through this platform, every customer can obtain personalized solutions that are unique to their business and serve their unique requirements.

 

Customer Portal is one of three major Salesforce portals designed for the Salesforce community – Self-service Portal, Partner Portal, and Customer Portal. Self-service Portal, as the name suggests, is an interactive platform where different Salesforce customers can get together, share their queries, and get their issues resolved by themselves.

 

The Self-service Portal is suitable for solving nominal issues for which the customers are not willing to wait for a long time to get their cases considered and resolved by the experts. Salesforce Partner Portal is a platform designed for Salesforce Partners to have a common meeting ground and interact with each other regarding matters common to each other.

 

Out of all these Salesforce portals, the Customer Portal involves Salesforce support helping the customers solve their specific issues by providing them with an ideal interface with functionality that is similar to that of salesforce.com.

 

Features Of Salesforce Customer Portal

Salesforce Customer Portal comes with a variety of features that help the clients obtain quality assistance from the professionals.

 

Self-Service Functionality

The Customer Portal comes with a self-service functionality that readily integrates with your existing website or back-end system. The portal also allows you to integrate with Salesforce Service Cloud for the best management of customer cases.

 

With seamless case management and a provision for Salesforce Knowledge, Solutions, and Answers, Salesforce Customer Portal allows you to route your customer cases to the right agents and get them solves faster.

 

Running Customisable Reports

The portal allows Salesforce users to run extensive customized reports. This helps the users to keep a track of their activities, know the nature of their issues, and check the effectiveness of the solutions provided.

 

Access To CRM Content

As mentioned earlier, Salesforce Customer Portal helps you in providing personalized solutions to the issues faced by your customer. This is done by giving you access to the CRM content of the concerned customer.

 

These details help in getting a 360-degree view of a customer and a better understanding of their needs, preferences, and their engagement with the organization. This information further improves the quality of Salesforce support provided.

 

Salesforce Ideas

As the name suggests, Salesforce Ideas is an interactive platform where Salesforce users and clients can share creative ideas pertaining to any aspect revolving around Salesforce.

 

Customer Portal allows the customers to participate in this community for sharing innovative ideas that improve the functionality of the platform and the manner in which customer cases are handled. It is very likely that an idea provided by a customer for resolving a specific issue would help other users and clients in handling their own cases better.

 

Creating Customer Profiles

Salesforce Customer Portal allows you to create profiles having customizable layouts, list views, and reliable field-level security. Moreover, it provides access to custom Salesforce objects for displaying and collecting relevant information for custom applications.

 

Effective User Management

The portal facilitates automated and efficient user management with profiles, roles, and sharing rules. It also facilitates a more efficient login through a single sign-on feature.

 

Salesforce Customer Portal vs Salesforce Partner Portal

It is important to understand the difference between the Customer Portal and Partner Portal in Salesforce. While Salesforce Customer Portal is dedicated to resolving customer problems by the experts, Partner Portal is a platform developed for Salesforce partners to interact with each other.

 

Here is how Salesforce Customer Portal is different from the Partner Portal:

 

Key Purpose

The primary purpose of the Salesforce Partner Portal is to show leads, opportunities, cases, and other relevant details to the Salesforce partners. On the other hand, the primary purpose of the Customer Portal is to provide personalized solutions to the problems faced by the clients.

 

Users

As the name suggests, the Partner Portal is designed for different Salesforce partners (consultants, investors, and other third parties) to use and be a part of. On the other hand, Salesforce Customer Portal is designed for the end customers and clients availing of Salesforce services.

 

Pricing

The Partner Portal is more expensive than the Customer Portal. This is primarily because the Partner Portal provides more CRM access to the users as compared to Salesforce Customer Portal.

 

Role-Based Access

The Partner Portal allows you to provide specific role-based access to other partners on the portal. On the other hand, no such access can be provided to other customers on the customer portal.

 

How To Enable Customer Portal In Salesforce?

If you are willing to offer personalized and wholesome customer support to the clients you cater to, you can enable Salesforce Customer Portal by following these simple steps:

 

Step 1

Firstly, go to Setup and look for Customer Portal Settings in the Quick Find Box.

 

Step 2

Once the Customer Portal Settings are displayed, click on the option of “Edit”, followed by clicking on “Enable Customer Portal”.

 

Step 3

Now, click on “Save” and continue setting up your portal according to your specific requirements.

 

Step 4

View the Customer Portal you set up in the previous step and confirm the changes you made. You have now enabled your Customer Portal.

 

How To Enable Customer Portal For Contacts

Follow these simple steps of you want to enable Salesforce Customer Portal for your contacts:

 

Step 1

Firstly, ensure that an account owner is associated with a role for enabling Customer Portal or transferring portal users to the contacts of their account. Also, make sure that the Site.com Publisher user field is enabled on the User Details page.

 

Step 2

Once you have met all the prerequisites, go to the Contact Details page and click on the option of “Manage External User”. Now, click on “Enable Customer User.”

 

Step 3

After clicking on “Enable Customer User”, you will be required to verify the general information and locale settings. If there is any missing information, enter the same. Remember that the username of the concerned customer will be the same as their email address by default.

 

Step 4

Now, you need to select a portal user license. It is important to choose a suitable license as it affects the user profile, permission sets, and the role hierarchy options you can select for the concerned customer.

 

Step 5

Once you have chosen the portal user license, save your action. The concerned user will immediately receive an email on their registered id with their Customer Portal username and password.

 

Step 6

Now, go back to the Contact Details page and click on “Manage External User.” Now, select the option of “Log in to Portal as a User.”

 

Step 7

Your Salesforce Customer Portal is now enabled for the concerned contact. You can view the portal and confirm your setup.

 

Limits Of Salesforce Customer Portal

There are specific limitations pertaining to the Salesforce Customer Portal that are important for a Salesforce user to understand. These limits are mainly concerned with custom objects, portal roles, and Salesforce person accounts.

 

Here are some of the key limits to the Customer Portal, which are essentially the number of Customer Portal and user licenses that can be activated within salesforce.com:

 

1. Depending on the Salesforce edition you have subscribed to, you can include the maximum number of custom objects in your Customer Portal allowed in the said edition.

2. You cannot add more than 1,000 person account portal users to your Salesforce Customer Portal.

3. You cannot add more than 5,000 portal roles to your Customer Portal.

 

Salesforce Customer Portal is an essential platform for providing a meeting ground to different customers, share their problems, receive solutions, and provide innovative ideas on an interactive forum.

 

It extends the automated functionality of the CRM platform and provides personalized solutions to specific issues faced by the clients. With the help of the Customer Portal, your customer executives can streamline their services, leveraging the overall performance of the platform.

 

Salesforce is definitely the need of the hour. It fulfills the need for automation and personalization to save the operational time and effort of sales reps, customize the services provided to your customers, and keep a track of all the activities performed by your team.

 

However, Salesforce needs an organized approach to handle a variety of business processes through the platform. Every feature and tool needs to be handled effectively by the Salesforce users in a sustained and systematic manner to ensure the smooth functionality of Salesforce.

A major way of handling Salesforce operations effectively is by assigning profiles in Salesforce. Salesforce profiles help the users in performing and not performing specific sets of activities using the platform of Salesforce.  So, what is a profile in Salesforce?

 

What Is A Profile In Salesforce?

Simply put, a Salesforce profile is a set of settings and permissions provided to specific Salesforce users that define the extent of their actions on the platform. A profile in Salesforce determines the way in which users can access objects and data to perform specific business processes.

 

A Salesforce profile is assigned to every user whenever a user is created to define the extent of their activities on Salesforce. A Salesforce profile controls the following key aspects pertaining to Salesforce:

 

1. Field Level Security – Here, the users are restricted to create, read, edit, and delete fields according to specific requirements.

2. Page Layouts – This restricts the page layouts a Salesforce user is permitted to see.

3. Custom Apps – This restricts all the custom and standard apps that can be viewed and accessed by a Salesforce user.

4. Record Types – This restricts the record types available to specific Salesforce users.

5. Login – This restricts the login hours of Salesforce users onto the platform based on specific requirements.

6. Tabs – This restricts the tabs that can be accessed and viewed by the Salesforce users.

 

There are two major types of user profiles in Salesforce – standard profiles and custom profiles. While a standard profile is a profile already provided by Salesforce, a custom profile can be created by the users based on their specific requirements. Let us look into standard Salesforce profiles in Salesforce.

 

What Is A Standard Profile In Salesforce?

A standard profile is a profile that is provided to the users by Salesforce by default. Users cannot delete these profiles and need to adhere to the default Salesforce permission sets assigned to them. Here are some of the major standard profiles in Salesforce that are assigned to the users with specific sets of permissions and settings:

 

System Administrator

This is the standard Salesforce profile that has the maximum permissions and access to the platform. A system administrator can configure and customize the Salesforce application according to specific needs and preferences. This profile gives you access to all Salesforce functionality except the ones that require an additional license.

 

Standard Platform One App User

When a user is assigned with this profile in Salesforce, they have permission to use one custom application installed from Salesforce AppExchange or developed in their org. Such a custom app is limited to five tabs.

 

Moreover, this profile offers the user with permission to use core CRM functionality like contacts, reports, accounts, dashboards, and custom tabs.

 

Standard Platform User

This profile is similar to the Standard Platform One App User, but it gives you permission to use more than one custom application installed from Salesforce AppExchange or developed in your org.

Here as well, users have access to core CRM functionality like contacts, reports, dashboards, accounts, and custom tabs.

 

Standard User

A Standard User profile allows you to create and edit most of the key records, run Salesforce reports, and view the setup of your Salesforce org. Although this profile allows you to view campaigns, it does not allow you to manage them. Also, it allows you to create solutions, but not view them.

 

Customer Community User
This profile in Salesforce allows a user to log in through a Salesforce community. Here, specific community settings and sharing models determine the access of a user to tabs, Salesforce objects, and a variety of other features.

 

Salesforce Partner User

If this profile is assigned to a user, they can log into the org through a partner portal or a Salesforce community.

 

Solution Manager

This profile gives you permission to review and publish specific solutions. The functionality of this profile is similar to that of a Standard User.

 

Marketing User

This Salesforce profile allows you to create and manage marketing campaigns, create HTML email templates, create letterheads, manage public documents, add campaign members, and update the statuses of the same using the Data Import Wizard.

 

Contract Manager

The profile of a Contract Manager allows a user to create, edit, activate, and approve contracts on the platform. The users with this profile can also delete contracts, provided they are not yet activated.

 

Read Only

As the name suggests, this profile in Salesforce allows a user to view the Salesforce org setup, run Salesforce reports, expert them, and view other records without being able to edit them.

 

Chatter Moderator User

This profile allows a user to perform the following activities:

 

1. Log into the platform of Chatter

2. Access all standard Chatter people, profiles, groups, and files

3. Grant and cancel privileges given to moderators

4. Edit the posts and comments made by themselves

5. Activate and deactivate Chatter free users and moderators

6. Delete the posts and comments visible to them

 

Site.com Only User

As the name suggests, this profile is assigned to the users who can only log into the Site.com application. Every user with this profile in Salesforce would require a Site.com Publisher feature license for creating and publishing sites. Also, they would require a Site.com Contributor feature license to edit the content of the site.

 

Some of the other permissions provided by the profile include:

 

1. Creating unlimited custom tabs

2. Using one custom application with not more than 20 custom objects

3. Accessing the Content app without having an access to the objects of Accounts and Contacts

 

Difference Between A Role And Profile In Salesforce

When it comes to defining the tasks and limits of Salesforce users, three major groups of settings are taken into consideration – roles, profiles, and permission sets.

 

It is very common to get confused between Salesforce roles and profiles. Although both these settings provide specific permissions and restrict specific actions of the users, there are subtle differences between the two.

 

Salesforce profiles determine the specific record privileges assigned to Salesforce users. They are concerned with the permissions provided and access granted to the users for performing specific actions on the CRM platform.

 

On the other hand, roles determine the different ways in which a user can control their access to the records. Roles are often defined in the form of hierarchies where the user occupying higher roles can control the access of those occupying the roles below them in the hierarchy.

How To Create A Profile In Salesforce?

 

Creating profiles in Salesforce is a simple process with no complications. Here are the steps you can follow to create a profile in Salesforce Lightning:

 

1. Log into your Salesforce Lightning account and go to “Setup”.

2. Click on the option of “Setup Home” and search for profiles in the Quick Find Box.

3. Once you have opened the Profiles window, click on the option of “New Profile.”

4. You will now see a drop-down menu of a list of different profiles. Choose an existing profile from the list.

5. Enter the name of the concerned profile in the space provided.

6. Once you are done, click on “Save” and your Salesforce profile is successfully created.

 

How To Edit A Profile In Salesforce?

If you are willing to make changes in a Salesforce profile after creating it, you can edit it by following a simple procedure. Here are the steps you need to follow for editing a profile in Salesforce Lightning:

 

1. Log into your Salesforce Lightning account and go to Setup.

2. Click on the option of “Setup Home” and look for profiles in the Quick Find Box.

3. Select the option of “Profiles” from the menu and click on “Edit” near all profiles dropdown menu.

4. Now, enter the new view name and other relevant details regarding the chosen profile in the space provided.

5. Finally, click on “Save” and you have successfully edited a Salesforce profile.

 

How To Assign Profile To Users In Salesforce?

You can assign Salesforce profiles to specific users on the platform to define their permissions, restrictions, and specific activities they are allowed to perform on the platform.

Follow these simple steps to assign profiles to users in Salesforce Lightning Platform:

 

1. Log into your account, go to setup, click on “Setup Home”, and select Users by looking for them in the Quick Find Box.

2. Click on “New User”.

3. You can simply select the required profile from a dropdown menu in the window of the concerned user.

4. Click on “Save” to complete the process.

 

 

Salesforce has been helping business enterprises in managing their customer database for more than the last twenty years. It has successfully acquired its niche in the market as a trusted CRM platform for the utmost automation and efficiency.

 

Salesforce can be used for recording, storing, assessing, and analyzing complicated data within your system. It allows you to keep a track of the details of your customers and the activities performed by your sales reps on a centralized platform.

 

Everything in Salesforce revolves around data. The platform helps you manage your valuable data for gaining valuable insights and providing personalized services to your customer.

 

Salesforce stored all your data in different tablets of information called Salesforce objects. These objects help you store and track the necessary data for performing a variety of business processes. These Salesforce objects include accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, leads, and many more.

 

Contacts are frequently used data sets for obtaining information about specific individuals. While accounts contain the names of companies you interact with, contacts are the individuals belonging to various companies you interact with.

 

The contacts stored within your database comprise of every individual your business caters to, which makes it essential to manage them right. It is always advisable to be precise and careful while handling the contacts in your database.

 

One of the most common issues faced by Salesforce users is that of duplication of contacts. If there are two or more duplicate contacts in your system, it is likely to affect the accuracy of your analytics and the business processes carried out by your sales reps.

 

The solution to this problem is to merge contacts in Salesforce. Merging your Salesforce contacts helps you clean your database and increases the accuracy of your activities. So, how to merge contacts in Salesforce? Based on the version of Salesforce you are using, there are different procedures for merging contacts in Salesforce Classic and Salesforce Lightning Experience.

 

However, before getting into the steps you should follow to merge duplicate contacts in Salesforce, have a look at things you should consider before going ahead with the same.

 

Things To Consider Before Merging Salesforce Contacts

Before you merge your contacts in Salesforce (Classic or Lightning), consider these aspects and keep them in mind:

 

Primary Account

A primary account is an account a specific contact belongs to. It appears in the Account Name field in the concerned contact’s record. If you merge Salesforce contacts in Salesforce Classic, you can only merge contacts having the same primary account.

 

However, you can merge contacts having different primary accounts in Salesforce Lightning, provided the concerned contact is not associated with a portal user.

 

Data Privacy Preferences

When you merge Salesforce contacts having the same primary account, you associate the data privacy record with the contact acting as the master record.

 

Redundant Relationships

If you are willing to merge contacts that are indirectly related to the same account, Salesforce will notify you about the same and ask you to remove the redundant relationship between the contact and the account.

 

Contact Roles

On merging two or more contacts, the contact roles on the non-master contacts lose the status of being a primary contact.

 

Portal Users

When you merge Salesforce contacts associated with portal users on Salesforce Classic, you can choose the portal status that you want to retain in your merged record.

 

In the case of Salesforce Lightning Experience, you will not be shown the portal user status while merging contacts. The merged record would retain the portal user status of the master record.

 

Campaigns

When you merge Salesforce contacts that are associated with different campaigns, Salesforce would retain the “Member Status Updated” date for every campaign that the merged contact is associated with.

 

Related Items, Chatter Feeds, and Attachments

When records of duplicate contacts to be merged are related to items like campaigns and activities, the items will be related to the merged records, with some specific exceptions.

 

While the Chatter feeds are retained only from the master record, Salesforce Files linked in the Chatter feed or Files related list would be retained in the merged records.

 

Hidden and Read-only Files

When you merge duplicate contacts in Salesforce, all data in the hidden and read-only fields are retained from your master record. Salesforce does not show you hidden files while you are merging contacts.

Irrespective of which contact is acting as the master record, a merged record will retain the “Created By” user and “Created Date” from the oldest merged record.

 

Non-master Contacts

Eventually, all the non-master contacts are moved to the recycle bin, out of your active database.

 

Merging Duplicate Contacts In Salesforce Classic

If you are willing to merge your contacts using Salesforce Classic, all you need to do is follow these simple steps:

 

Step 1

First of all, you will be required to go to the Contacts-related list of the Account whose contacts you are willing to merge. Now, click on the option of “Merge Contacts”.

 

Step 2

Now, you will be asked to choose not more than three contacts that you wish to merge. You can refine your list of contacts by using the search box or selecting the “All Contacts” option to have a look at all the contacts stored in your database.

Once you are done selecting the contacts, click on “Next” to proceed.

 

Step 3

You will now be required to pick one contact as your Master Record.

In case you are using a partner or a customer portal, you will have the option of choosing which contact you want to retain as the portal user. If you do not want the portal user to be included in your merged contact, select the option of “Not a Portal User”.

 

Step 4

Once you have selected your Master Record, you will need to select the field values that you want to retain from each of the records. You will find fields having conflicting values highlighted.

 

Step 5

Finally, click on “Merge” and you have successfully merged duplicate contacts on your Salesforce Classic version.

 

Merging Contacts Using Salesforce Lightning Experience

If you are willing to merge Salesforce contacts using the Lightning Experience version, go through the following simple steps:

 

Step 1

In the case of Salesforce Lightning Enterprise, you will need to choose a contact record that you are willing to merge. On choosing the record, you will be shown a message telling you whether a duplicate of the chosen record exists in your database.

You can click on the option of “View Duplicates” for getting the full list of duplicate contact records.

 

Step 2

Once you are provided with the duplicate records, the process is similar to the one involved in merging contacts in Salesforce Classic. You will be asked to choose not more than three contact records that you are willing to merge.

Click on “Next” when you are done selecting the contacts.

 

Step 3

Now, you will be required to choose one of the selected contact records as the Master Records. Also, you will need to choose the requisite field values that you want to retain in your master record. Click on “Next” to continue.

Please note that if you want to merge Salesforce contacts using Lightning Enterprise, you will not be shown the portal user status.

 

Step 4

Finally, you will be asked to confirm the changes you made and click on “Merge Contacts” to complete the process. You have now merged duplicate contacts on your Salesforce Lightning Experience successfully.

 

Aspects To Consider While Merging Contacts Associated With Portal Users

If you are willing to merge contacts in Salesforce that are associated with portal users, always consider these aspects before going ahead with the same:

 

It is possible to merge a portal contact with another portal contact on Salesforce.

 

It is important to choose the type of portal user you are willing to retain before you go ahead with merging Salesforce contacts that include partner and customer users. Once you are done with merging the said contacts, you can choose to enable the contact for access to the portal you removed it from during the process of merging the contacts.

 

If you are willing to merge Salesforce contacts that belong to different accounts, you will have to transfer the contacts you want to merge to a common account followed by merging the contacts of the said account. You cannot directly merge two or more Salesforce contacts belonging to different accounts.

 

The process of merging Salesforce contacts is simple but should be undertaken very carefully. The contacts stored within your database are the essence of your business and all your marketing and sales activities depend on how well you manage them.

 

It is advisable to be very careful while emerging contacts, always making sure that you do not lose any important data. Every action you take, including the master record you choose and the requisite field values you retain, should be calculated and reasonable. In case there is an issue at any step involved in merging Salesforce contacts, get the help of your Salesforce Admin.

 

Salesforce is all about automation and making the lives of users easier. Right from recording information into the database to analyzing it and using the same to provide personalized client services, the CRM platform has helped thousands of sales reps in saving their time and efforts.

 

Salesforce Google Chrome extension is one of the many ways in which Salesforce has made it easy and flexible for the users to operate on the platform and carry out specific processes with the utmost ease.

 

There are several Salesforce-Google Chrome extensions that can be added to your screens for making the platform more productive and your work more efficient.

 

Here are some of the most beneficial and widely used Salesforce add-ons and extensions with their creators that would make your Salesforce and Google Chrome experience better:

 

1. Salesforce.com Quick Login As (Kyle Peterson)

This is an ideal Salesforce Chrome extension for Admins and Developers. As the name suggests, it allows you to log into Salesforce as any specific user with ease.

 

All you need to do is click on the extension and it would give you a pop-up list of all users on the listing page. You can select the user you want to log in as into the system. Once you log out, you will be redirected to the page you were browsing on Chrome before clicking on the Salesforce extension.

 

Since 2019, Salesforce.com Quick Login As has been included as a Salesforce Lightning Chrome extension for all the Lightning Experience users.

 

Also, Read: How To Create A Free Salesforce Developer Account?

 

2. Salesforce Logins (Synebo)

This is also an extension for quick and easy login into your Salesforce account. It facilitates one-click login, where you are saved from going through the verification codes and get a direct entry into your Salesforce account.

 

This Salesforce Chrome extension syncs all of your stored data with your Chrome browser, ensuring complete security of the data by saving passwords or tokens by encryption. Such security makes it possible for you to manage multiple Salesforce accounts using a single extension.

 

3. Salesforce ORGanizer (Enrico)

This is yet another Salesforce Chrome extension for easier and faster login. Along with helping you log into your account without entering your username and password every time, it saves your security token so that you do are not faced by verification codes.

 

If you tend to work on different Salesforce orgs simultaneously, the extension allows you to assign a distinct color to every org, which will be displayed on your browser tab. Also, it comes with a “Login as a Function” feature that allows you to shift between multiple user accounts.

 

4. Whatfix on Salesforce (Whatfix.com)

This extension is for the individuals who want to get trained in Salesforce and want to hone their skills in the same. It consists of interactive walkthrough sessions at a click of a button, guiding you through specific areas of the CRM platform.

 

It comes with a widget named “self-help” which displays all the Salesforce walkthroughs created on the Whatfix Community that you can be a part of. These walkthroughs help you get familiar with the tools and features new to you and train yourself in using the same.

 

5. Salesforce Navigator (Daniel Nakov)

As the name suggests, this is a Salesforce plugin for Chrome that helps you navigate through the platform of Salesforce. Salesforce is a pretty vast platform and it might get complicated to navigate through it for performing specific activities.

 

Through this Salesforce extension, all you need to do is type in what you need to do and it will show you how to navigate the platform to get it done.

 

6. Boostr For Salesforce (matt simons)

Staying true to its name, Boostr for Salesforce helps Admins and Developers to boost their processes by providing them with advanced, automated, and efficient tools.

 

The Salesforce Chrome extension comes with a variety of features that allow you to perform several activities, including:

 

1. Adding items to the changesets

2. Checking or unchecking items in a column

3. Displaying the API name with the field names while editing a fieldset

 

7. Salesforce Advanced Search (Yasir Arafat)

This Salesforce Chrome extension makes your search quick and efficient. It allows you to search for all relevant keywords, text, or field APIs within your system with a few clicks pertaining to the following components:

 

1. Visalforce components

2. Apex classes

3. Apex triggers

4. Visualforce pages

5. Email templates

 

Moreover, the extension allows you to show or hide API names as per your requirement, making your searches faster and more efficient.

 

8. Salesforce Hotkeys (Beta) (Prafulla Patil)

This Salesforce extension makes use of keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) in helping you navigate the CRM platform. It allows you to view specific menus on your Salesforce account at once using keyboard shortcuts.

 

9. Record And Metadata Comparator For Salesforce (Rajiv Bhatt)

This extension helps you search your metadata without monitoring the data on your Salesforce UI. It is an ideal tool for Salesforce Developers who frequently need to search for field requirements, API names, field types, and other relevant data.

 

Additionally, the extension helps you compare any two Salesforce objects or their records, highlighting differences between the two. Salesforce Developers can make use of this tool for identifying a change in formula, miss fields, value mismatch, data type, and other relevant values.

 

10. SOQL Extractor And Analyzer For Salesforce (Rajiv Bhatt)

SOQL Extractor and Analyzer helps you in extracting the SOQL queries along with their execution counts from your Salesforce debug logs with a click of a button.

 

With this extension, you can analyze the error of “Too Many SOQLs” with ease and efficiency. Apart from providing you with the information pertaining to the objects on which the said queries are executed, the count, and statistics, this Salesforce extension helps you optimize the performance of the application to obtain improved results.

 

11. Log Machine (Gourav Bhardwaj)

This Salesforce Chrome extension is designed to help you analyze your Salesforce debug log with the utmost ease. As it conducts the analysis, the extension also highlights critical sections and provides you with tips that keep you from committing errors.

 

The latest update on Log Machine has made the Code Unit and Method Entry or Exit clickable. This would allow you to go directly to the required component by making a single click.

 

Moreover, the Color Index in this extension comes with a checkbox that you can use for filtering the log for seeing specific content (such as errors or user debug) only.

 

12. Grey Tab (Chris Peterson)

This extension is open source and allows the user to view the data of a specific field on the “currently viewed” record. Its functionality is similar to a lookup tool that provides you with the required details of a specific field within your system.

 

Apart from viewing fields and records, you can use Grey Tab for getting information about a Salesforce session from your web browser cookies.

 

13. Salesforce Admin Check All (Dan Pazehoski)

Salesforce Admin Check All is an extension designed to help you save a good amount of time and effort spent on setup pages. Instead of having to click on every checkbox on the setup pages individually, the Salesforce extension allows you to check all the checkboxes at once.

 

Although it is a fairly simple and straightforward extension, it does help you in getting your work done faster when there is already a lot on your plate.

 

14. Enhance Salesforce Dashboard (Satrang Technologies)

The name of this Salesforce Chrome extension is pretty self-explanatory. It is designed to simply help users in refreshing their dashboards on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

 

The tools have a pretty simple but important role to play in managing and updating your Salesforce dashboards on a real-time basis. Moreover, the extension allows you to set the desired duration for auto-refresh or the frequency of the same.

 

Using this rather simple tool, you can increase your dashboard columns from the default 3 columns to 7 columns to suit your specific requirements.

 

15. Salesforce Id Paster (cleandata4good)

This Salesforce extension is suitable especially for developers, helping them in faster, easier, and more efficient development and deployment, especially in the field of data entry.

 

By clicking on the extension, it will immediately redirect you from the Salesforce page you are on to the page whose SFID is present in your clipboard with the help of a quick keyboard shortcut. The default keystroke for the same is Ctrl+Shift+Y.

 

This extension is ideal for the users who frequently import and export data in and out of their Salesforce database. Also, Salesforce Id Paster has now become a Salesforce Lightning Chrome extension for the Lightning Experience users.

 

16. Salesforce.com Sandbox Favicon Extension (Joe Ferraro)

This extension is designed for developers who use work with the Production and Sandbox environment using the same web browser. When you use this tool, it would put an “S” to the standard Salesforce.com cloud favicon for all your Sandbox tabs open in your browser window.

 

This small change will make it easier for you to keep a track of the environment you are working on in your Chrome browser.

 

17. Salesforce Colored Favicons (Steve Babula)

This Salesforce plugin for Chrome is pretty similar to the one discussed above as it allows you to keep a track of the environment you are working on. On using this extension, it would override the standard Salesforce favicon with a distinct color on the basis of the concerned org.

 

It would automatically update the icon for Salesforce on the basis of the instance being used. Moreover, it includes a separate icon having an “S” for Sandbox instances.

 

If you tend to work on more than two Salesforce orgs and Sandboxes, this Salesforce extension is ideal for working in an organized and efficient manner.

 

18. Salesforce Advanced Code Searcher (sameernmiraj)

This extension facilitates a quick and efficient search for Salesforce components within your system. It allows you to find and jump to components like Apex classes, Apex triggers, Visualforce pages, etc. to get the required code with a few simple clicks. Adding to these features, the extension also provides you with autocomplete suggestions that help you in finding specific codes that you are looking for.

 

19. Cirrus Insight (CirrusInsight.com)

This is one of the most useful Salesforce Chrome extensions that help you manage your contacts and facilitate efficient communication. It helps you make the most of your email marketing processes by facilitating an automatic transfer of data from your Salesforce org onto Gmail. It essentially helps you sync your Salesforce account with your Gmail account easily, allowing you to record and update leads, contacts, opportunities, cases, and other relevant data.

 

With this Salesforce extension, you can keep a track of the customer details stored within your database and manage the opportunities tapped by your sales reps.

 

20. Clearbit For Salesforce – Lite (Clearbit)

The creator of this Salesforce Chrome extension claims that helps the users save up to two hours of traditional and manual data entry and research on a daily basis.

 

Clearbit extends the automation provided by Salesforce and helps the users convert an email address or a domain name into a prospect/lead or a company profile within the Salesforce database. This is an otherwise complicated and time-consuming process of assessing emails and adding the names of the contacts into suitable Salesforce objects on the basis of the mail.

 

This Salesforce extension makes all these activities less complicated, helping you add data to existing contacts, segment your leads, and researching new prospects and opportunities by your sales reps.

 

21. Whatslly (Overstack)

This extension is designed to help you improve your customer communication by linking your WhatsApp to your Salesforce account. It scans the conversations you have on the desktop application of WhatsApp and adds relevant data onto your Salesforce database on a real-time basis.

 

There are several other Salesforce Chrome extensions that can be added to your browser for making an array of activities simpler and faster. These extensions not only give you the speed you require but also increase the efficiency of your work.

 

Salesforce is known to be a highly customizable platform and has carried out multiple integrations in the past with a variety of third-party applications.

 

The latest partnership Salesforce entered into was that with Snowflake – a cloud-based data management and warehousing platform.

 

Here is everything that you need to know about the new Salesforce partner and the relationship between the two platforms.

 

What Is Snowflake?

Snowflake is a SaaS cloud-based platform that helps business organizations in managing their database and using the same for carrying out an array of business processes. Snowflake provides users with immediate access to the Data Cloud for sharing live data with their customers, employees, or business partners. This also helps the users to connect with external data platforms. The primary aim of Snowflake is to facilitate ease of data management.

 

It provides users with a centralized platform where everyone can access and work on the data without facing the risk of data silos and increasing flexibility at work. Snowflake also ensures the utmost security of the data stored and managed on the platform, managing user permission and access to the database effectively.

 

Partnership With Salesforce

As Snowflake raised $479 million in Series G round of funding, Salesforce acted as a major investor, joining the Dragoneer Investment Group for the funding initiative. This has established a new phase of partnership between Salesforce and Snowflake.

 

This $479 million investment has resulted in Snowflake having a value of $12.4 billion, making it a major player in Silicon Valley.

 

According to Frank Slootman, the CEO of Snowflake, Salesforce will help the data management and analytics platform in leveraging its content strategy. Salesforce will club the customer database of its various clients stored with the data contained within Snowflake for improved business processes.

 

This integration will allow Snowflake users to make use of platforms owned by Salesforce such as Tableau for obtaining key business insights and visualizations based on their data.

 

Additionally, Slootman said that the integration would be so seamless that their data will readily show up on the integrated platform. They wouldn’t even have to make a single click!

 

Just like several other Salesforce integrations, the partnership with Snowflake aims at improving user experiences and helping the clients to manage their valuable database in a more automated, flexible, organized, and secure manner.

 

The automated CRM features of Salesforce in association with the advanced data management features of Snowflake would provide the users with the best of both worlds, where they can undertake their business processes with increased ease and reduced efforts.

 

On the partnership with Salesforce, Snowflake has said that they are willing to make it easier for the Salesforce users to integrate their data with Snowflake and use the same in making key business decisions.

Also,Read: How To Integrate Salesforce And SharePoint Online Through File Connect

 

Snowflake Data Cloud And Salesforce

Data Cloud is an ecosystem recently launched by Snowflake for improved and centralized data management. It allows the users to integrate data silos, keep a track of changes, analyze the data stored within the platform, and perform other important functions like expanding valuable data sets.

 

On the occasion of partnership with Salesforce, a lot of Data Cloud features can be used in sync with Salesforce for better user experience. Salesforce users can now integrate their data sets with Snowflake’s Data Cloud and make use of the integrated platform for obtaining better insights and analytics.

 

The Salesforce and Data Cloud integration would provide users with advanced and flexible data search and analytical features that can be used across different cloud-based platforms.

 

This platform can be used for carrying out personalized activities like running data queries and creating highly customizable reports and dashboards using the data stored on the platform.

 

Moreover, this integration helps the users make use of advanced AI features in scanning the database and making important predictions, including sales forecasts, gauging customer behavior, and other automated processes.

 

New Analytics Tools

The partnership between Salesforce and Snowflake has resulted in the rise of new and advanced analytical tools that can be used for better data management and business analytics.

 

Einstein Analytics Direct Data

If you are a user of Einstein Analytics, an AI platform of Salesforce, you now have an access to the feature of Einstein Analytics Direct Data for Snowflake. This feature makes data integration simpler by allowing the users to query Snowflake directly for obtaining key insights from live data. Snowflake users no longer need to copy their data from Snowflake to Einstein Analytics as the Salesforce integration makes it easier for them.

 

For Einstein Analytics users, Einstein Analytics Direct Data for Snowflake allows them to query their Salesforce data within Snowflake. They can bring in data sets from various sources like web, apps, mobile, IoT devices, or other relevant data sources onto the platform for carrying out analytical processes.  This new analytics platform is currently open in beta and can be accessed by all Einstein Analytics users.

 

Einstein Analytics Output Connector

Another key analytics tool coming out of the Salesforce Snowflake partnership is Einstein Analytics Output Connector for Snowflake. As the name suggests, this tool helps Salesforce users to move their data to Snowflake with the utmost ease.

 

Along with connecting the Salesforce data with Snowflake, this tool helps users to query their data with Einstein Analytics and Salesforce Tableau. Several tools and technologies are currently being used by users that help them in migrating their data and moving the same to Snowflake. With this tool, the transfer becomes quicker, easier, and more secure.

 

All you need to do is follow simple configuration steps and move the required data sets from Salesforce onto Snowflake and leverage Einstein data sets and Salesforce objects according to specific requirements.

 

What Is In Store For The Users?

Salesforce users are well aware of the various integrations made by the CRM platform with a variety of third-party applications. The partnership with Snowflake will also provide them with a unified platform for managing their data an analyzing the same in the best way possible.

 

The users of both platforms will be able to transfer their data sets across platforms and access them in a flexible manner. Also, it facilitates the use of business intelligence and artificial intelligence like Tableau and Einstein for improved user experience.

 

The integration allows the users to aggregate their data on a centralized platform and get valuable insights pertaining to the same with the help of advanced analytics tools. These tools help them make sense of the seemingly complicated customer database and make important business decisions.

 

The aim of this integration is to provide a more data-driven experience to the users of both Snowflake and Salesforce users. Over time, data has definitely assumed top priority in conducting almost all business processes and this partnership stressed on effective data management.

 

With this productive partnership, Snowflake has not only increased its valuation but has also emerged as a prominent competitor of platforms like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS.

 

On finding an investor and a partner in one of the most trusted business CRM platforms for more than two decades, Snowflake has upped their game and entered the league of the Silicon Valley elites.

 

Salesforce has successfully acquired a niche status in the market as a prime business CRM platform. For more than two decades, Salesforce has been helping businesses in handling their valuable database in an automated and organized manner.

 

Recently, Salesforce made an announcement it is aiming to generate 12,000 jobs in the next year. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce made an official statement saying that the company is looking forward to generating 4,000 jobs in the coming 4 months and 12,000 jobs in the upcoming year.

 

Benioff took to Twitter in stating, “Join our 54K employee strong Ohana defining the future of software.” Saying that Salesforce is the thing of the future, he added that individuals willing to obtain Salesforce jobs should start sending their resumes soon!

 

The position of Salesforce in the stock market has been soaring despite a global pandemic with the shares already experiencing a surge of 49% year-to-date. Further, the company is looking at a potential 9% rise in the stock value in the days to come.

 

Salesforce And The COVID Situation

As the world is struck by a global pandemic, there is a dearth of jobs in several industries. Consumers have stopped spending money, which has resulted in suppliers backing off and manufacturing companies facing a steep decline in production.

 

A variety of small, medium and large enterprises have suffered serious setbacks and have resorted to laying off their employees. Corporations have no choice but to let people go to meet their expenses and survive as the world struggles with Covid-19.

 

However, this is not the case with Salesforce. Although Salesforce had earlier declared that they are looking into cutting close to 1,000 jobs across the globe, the recent announcement has provided Salesforce employees with a sigh of relief.

 

When the company announced letting go of 1,000 employees, they asked them to find a new designation for their companies. With the latest announcements, it seems like all is well with Salesforce and these employees may not have to leave their jobs as Salesforce professionals.

 

Why Are Salesforce Jobs Unaffected By COVID?

While most companies are giving pay-cuts and letting their valuable employees go, Salesforce is looking forward to providing thousands of new jobs. How exactly is this possible?

 

One of the primary reasons behind Salesforce jobs not being affected by the COVID situation is the degree of flexibility and automation provided by the platform.

 

In the majority of business enterprises, employees are required to work fixed hours of the day with a physical presence required at some point in time. Although certain employees may be working from home, there are some specific business processes that require physical presence and interaction.

 

On the other hand, Salesforce jobs can be performed from any part of the world at any time, as far as the targets are achieved and the work is done. Being a completely cloud-based platform, Salesforce provides a high degree of flexibility to all its employees, where no physical contact is necessary.

 

This ensures that the utmost social distancing is maintained while performing Salesforce jobs.

Moreover, Salesforce jobs involve managing customer database for an organization for providing personalized services to the customers. No matter how worse the pandemic situation gets, a business will never stop generating leads and servicing them to tap sales opportunities.

 

In fact, these are the times when a lot of businesses can approach a bunch of prospects with promotional messages and persuade them to purchase their products/services.

 

It is very unlikely for a company to stop managing their customer database and carrying out business analytics. As long as businesses continue serving their existing customers and acquiring new prospects, there will always be a demand for Salesforce professionals to help them carry out specific marketing and sales processes.

 

Why Are Salesforce Jobs Important In 2020?

Salesforce has close to 54,000 employees working across the world. Today, we live in an age where Salesforce jobs have almost become a necessity for businesses belonging to all scales of operation.

 

Need For Automation

As businesses are diversifying and the number of customers handled by them keeps increasing, it becomes difficult for the sales representatives to handle the customer database using traditional techniques.

 

We live in an age where automation has seeped into every major business process carried out by an enterprise. Salesforce employees save the time and effort of your sales reps in providing them with a platform that does the labor for them.

 

Whether it is keeping a track of sales activities, managing the sales pipeline, managing leads or communicating with the customers, Salesforce professionals ensure that work is done faster and in a more efficient manner.

 

Staying Updated

It is essential for a business to stay in sync with the technological advancements and market trends to sustain in the market.

 

Salesforce helps businesses in making use of the latest technology and in getting used to the latest trends in the market. A good Salesforce professional will always be updated about technological advancements and would keep the CRM platform upgraded to make use of the latest tools, platforms, and applications.

 

Need For Personalization

Over time, the demands of customers have gone through a paradigm shift. Customers today ask for a high degree of personalization in all the services offered to them.

 

Salesforce professionals help users in approaching every customer as if they are the only ones catered by the company. They help them tailor their services and communication according to the specific needs and preferences of the prospects/customers.

 

Aid To The Economy

We are living in difficult times. Almost every sector of every industry has been gravely affected by the pandemic and businesses have taken a big hit. This has had an adverse impact on the global economy.

 

As mentioned earlier, the impact of COVID on Salesforce jobs is not as severe as the other industries. Now that Salesforce is offering more jobs in the coming year, securing a Salesforce job will not only help you meet your expenses but also make you contribute to the economy.

 

Salesforce is a vast platform with a variety of features and tools. If you aspire to become a Salesforce expert, it is advisable to obtain professional training by the best Salesforce training resource and start your Salesforce journey today!

 

Data has always been the utmost important aspect of handling CRM activities in a business organization. Depending on its scale of operations, an active business house deals with hundreds and thousands of customers on a day-to-day basis. This implies that the employees have to process huge volumes of data on a daily basis.

 

Salesforce has been highly effective in lifting this load off the shoulders of several enterprises. It allows automated and efficient handling of the complicated customer database, allowing the sales representatives to make the most of the business data and provide personalized services to the clients/customers.

 

With highly customizable offerings such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud, and many more, the CRM platform ensures that your valuable data is processed in the best way possible. However, it is extremely important for this data to be represented in a way that it is easily understandable by the users. Through efficient data modeling, Salesforce helps you store information in distinct Salesforce objects.

 

What Is A Salesforce Object?

A Salesforce object is essentially a database table that stores all relevant information and business data Salesforce helps you deal with. These tables are dedicated to specific information pertaining to the organisation, especially regarding the customers catered by the firm. While a Salesforce object is a table, its columns are referred to as fields and rows are referred to as records.

 

There are two types of Salesforce objects – Standard Objects and Custom Objects. Standard Objects are the objects created by Salesforce that are already present within the platform when it is implemented. Leads, Opportunities, Cases, Accounts and Contacts are examples of Standard Objects. One the other hand, Custom Objects are the objects that are created by the users if the Standard Objects do not meet the specific business requirements.

 

Relationships Between Salesforce Objects

An object relationship in Salesforce is a relationship between two Salesforce objects. When you link an object with another, you can view the related data present in the records pertaining to the connected objects. Salesforce relationships are established to allow users to perform specific actions on the CRM platforms.

 

Depending on your requirement, you can define different Salesforce relationships by creating custom relationship fields on a Salesforce object. Users often establish object relationships to display relevant data about relating Salesforce objects and their records on the detail page of a specific record. Generally, these relationships are created to ascertain specific values and avoid the repetition of data within the system.

 

There are four major types of object relationships in Salesforce – Lookup Relationship, Hierarchical Relationship, Master-detail Relationship, and Many-to-many Relationship.

 

Lookup Relationship

This object relationship in Salesforce allows users to link two Salesforce objects together in a way that one object can access the fields of the other. Here, the objects are connected without having an effect on their security and deletion properties.

 

Such a relationship is often added to standard, custom, and external Salesforce objects to create intermediary relations between them. Lookup relationships can be of two major types – one-to-one or one-to-many. Here, the objects may or may not be related to each other.

 

This relationship can be created by connecting a child object to a parent object. While it can be added to the standard, custom, and external objects to act as child records, only standard and custom objects can serve as parent records. Every child record in such a relationship bears a lookup icon that displays the parent record when clicked and vice versa.

 

As opposed to other relationships, Lookup relationships are not required automatically. Users have a choice to access the linked objects on an individual or joint basis. This implies that if one object gets deleted, the other one would remain intact within the system.

 

Here are the major steps involves in creating an external Lookup relationship:

 

1. Start by navigating to the Setup.

2. Select the option of “Develop”, followed by “External Objects”.

3. Click on an object to want to connect, for instance “OrderDetails”.

4. Now, locate the field of the second object, for instance, “OrderID”. Click on the “Edit” button and choose “Change Field Type”.

5. Select the option of “External Lookup Relationship” as the data type.

6. After clicking on “Next”, select “Orders” under the option of Related to value.

7. Type the required number, say 18, under the option of field length. Keep the other options intact according to their default values.

8. Click on “Next”. If you want the field to be visible to all the profiles, click on the checkbox beside “Visible”.

9. Click on “Next”. Make sure you do not edit the checkboxes that will now appear. Let them retain their default values.

10. Click on “Save” to complete the processes.

 

Hierarchical Relationship

This is one of the relationships in Salesforce that allows you to use a lookup field for associating one User with another that does not refer to itself. It is a special type of Lookup relationship that is available only for the User object.

 

An instance in which such a relationship can be established is creating a custom hierarchical field for storing the direct manager for every user within your organization. The hierarchical relationship is essentially a one-to-one relationship. This implies that it can only be established with one user object in the approval process.

 

Master-detail Relationship

This is the object relationship in Salesforce similar to the Lookup relationship, the only difference being the fact that the parent and child records are always strongly connected to each other. The parent object is called “master” while the child object is called “detail”.

 

In such a relationship, the child’s record will get deleted if its parent record is deleted. The child record cannot exist independently and is always associated with its parent record. Moreover, only custom objects and not standard objects can be used as child objects.

 

Here are the major steps involved in creating a Master-detail relationship between the objects of Candidates (master) and Jobs Applied (detail):

 

Go to Setup, followed by clicking on “Objects” in the Create option of App Setup.

Select the option of “Jobs Applied”.

Go to “Custom Fields and Relationships.

Select “New” followed by “Master-detail Relationship.”

Now, relate the object to the Candidates object.

Add the field label and field name.

You will obtain the child’s relationship name.

Click on “Save” to complete the processes.

 

After creating this relationship, you can also create a roll-up summary for any field pertaining to the master object controls​.

 

Many-to-many Relationship

This is the relationship that cannot be directly created but comes into being when two master objects have a common child object. This common child object is called a Function object and the relationship between the master objects is called a Many-to-many relationship.

 

A major contributor to creating such a relationship is the Junction object. Salesforce Junction object is a custom object having two Master-detail relationships to two distinct record types. Junction objects are used to represent Many-to-many relationships as multiple Junction objects tend to connect one record instance to several children records, with each child record being equally linked.

 

Every Many-to-many relationship in Salesforce starts with the creation of a Junction object.

 

The entire infrastructure of Salesforce CRM revolves around storing, processing, and analyzing your valuable business data. Once you subscribe to an ideal license with respect to Salesforce pricing and feed data within the system, you can automate several processes to help your team member perform CRM activities and cater to your customers in a personalized and efficient manner.

 

However, none of these processes would be possible to undertake if the user is not able to organize and view business data in an understandable manner. This makes data modeling in Salesforce critically important for every user. It is also a fundamental aspect to learn for professionals wanting to obtain a Salesforce certification.

What Is Data Modelling In Salesforce?

Salesforce Data Model is essentially the manner in which tables of data are represented within your Salesforce database to make them understandable to anyone who views them.

 

Data modeling helps you make sense of the data residing within your system. It helps you establish specific relationships between Salesforce objects and fields, necessary to perform distinct CRM activities. SFDC data model is an aggregation of Salesforce objects and fields, which makes it important for Salesforce users to be well-versed with these terms to have a better understanding of data modeling.

 

 

What Are Salesforce Objects?

Salesforce objects are nothing but the tables of data within your system. Through the various columns (fields) and rows (records) present in these tables, they help users in storing and processing business data in an organized manner. There are three major types of objects involved in the Salesforce object model – Standard Objects, Custom Objects, and External Objects.

 

Standard Objects

Standard Salesforce Objects are the objects that are created by Salesforce and come pre-built when you implement the CRM platform. These objects are crucial to the core functionality of Salesforce and all such objects necessary to perform basic CRM activities are already present in the application. Lead, Contact, Account, and Opportunity are some common examples of Standard Objects.

 

Custom Objects

Custom Salesforce Objects are the objects created by users after implementing Salesforce if the pre-existing Standard Objects are not enough to comply with specific business requirements. These objects are unique to an organization and are created to serve their specific needs. The record data present in these objects is used for creating reports and dashboards.

 

External Objects

External Salesforce Objects are the objects that help users in mapping the data stored outside the platform of Salesforce. They are similar to custom objects in functionality. Each of your external objects would connect with the data stored in an external platform with the help of external data source definitions such as Salesforce Connect or OData. Every field on an external Salesforce object maps to a table column on the concerned external platform.

 

Object Relationships In Salesforce

Salesforce allows users to establish specific relationships between two or more of its objects to undertake specific processes. To understand the Salesforce data structure, it is mandatory to be thorough with the two major object relationships supported by Salesforce – Lookup Relationship and Master-Detail Relationship

 

Lookup Relationship

If two of your Salesforce objects are connected through a Lookup relationship, the fields of one Salesforce object can be accessed by the other object. There are two major ways of establishing a Lookup relationship – one-to-one and one-to-many. The Salesforce objects connected through such a relationship might or might not be connected to each other.

 

Master-Detail Relationship

This is the object relationship wherein one of the connected Salesforce objects is the master (or parent) object and the other one is the detail (child) object. In such a relationship, the behavior of the child object is always monitored by its parent object. The user is required to mention the parent object before storing its child object within the database. As opposed to the Lookup relationship, the objects in a Master-Detail relationship are always strongly connected. Moreover, when you delete a parent object, its child object also needs to be deleted along with it.

 

Designing Your Salesforce Data Model

Once you are thorough with the concepts of Salesforce objects (and their relationships), fields, and records, you can design your data model effectively. While designing the Salesforce model, it is advisable to reduce the use of Custom Objects and employ more Standard Objects to use. However, this does not stand true for storing integrated business data. It is also important for a user to know how the data is used in Standard Objects while loading external data into the same.

 

Managing Your Data In Salesforce

As mentioned earlier, the entire functionality of Salesforce revolves around your business data. All your business processes, no matter how complicated or detailed, boil down to the basic activity of data import and data export.

 

Importing Data Into Your System

Getting valuable data from the external platform onto Salesforce CRM is a critical activity that should be monitored closely. It is important to ensure that the data entering your system is relevant and not duplicated. There are two major ways in which you can import data into your system:

 

1. Data Loader – This is essentially a client application that can be used for importing data in bulk. It allows you to import a maximum of five million records at once belonging to any data type, whether you want to import data from files or from a database connection. Salesforce Data Loader can be operated either through the user interface or command line.

 

2. Data Import Wizard – This is a Salesforce tool that can be accessed through the Setup menu, letting users import data from common Standard Objects and the data stored in Custom Objects. This tool facilitates an import of up to 50,000 records at a time.

 

Here are the major steps involve in importing data into Salesforce CRM:

 

1. Start by creating an export file using your existing software.

2. Now, search for any duplicate records within the system and delete such records.

3. Once you are certain that the data is not duplicated, match the fields in the concerned file with Salesforce.

4. Once you are done with fine-tuning of data mapping, make any configuration settings necessary for the import.

 

Exporting Data from your System

You can export necessary sets of data from Salesforce manually or through an automatic schedule. Your data is always exported in a set of specific comma-separated values (CSV) files. The data export tools of Salesforce provide users with a copy of your data which can be used either for backup purposes or importing the same into another system.

 

There are two major methods of exporting your data from Salesforce:

 

1. Data Loader – Just like importing data, the Salesforce Data loader can be used for exporting your data, which is to be installed separately. This client application can be operated via the user interface or the command line.

 

2. Data Export Wizard – This is an in-browser wizard that can be accessed from the Setup wizard. With the help of this tool, you can export your data either once every seven days for a weekly report or once every twenty-nine days for a monthly report. Salesforce Data Export Wizard also allows users to export necessary sets of data automatically on a weekly or monthly basis.

 

If you ever wanted to do business, what do you think is the essential thing you should work on? Yes, monetary assets are crucial. However, business isn’t just about selling products or services. Having a good relationship with your clients is essential. Marketing is all about CRM. CRM is the core principle on which all businesses are based upon. CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship Management.’  Now, if you want the best CRM for your business, you’ll need the best tools for that too. That’s where the salesforce marketing cloud comes into play, it boosts your business via specially designed tools.

 

These tools are technologically advanced and assist you in having a better understanding of your customers, which, in return, boosts your profits. So, let’s discuss in detail about salesforce marketing cloud and salesforce marketing cloud benefits.

 

Also, Read: Salesforce customer 360: Overview and Features

 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Features

To summarize what salesforce does, it can be said that it brings companies and their customers together. Salesforce has one integrated platform which helps you in managing marketing, sales, commerce, and services at one single time. ‘Salesforce Customer 360 Platform’ is something you can rely on. It delivers a personalized experience to your customers by which they attract other customers too. When you use Sales Cloud to manage sales activities and customer contacts, you’ll see an increment in  :

 

1. Win rates by 43%

2. Improvise rep productivity by 44%

3. 37% in revenue

 

That’s not all you can also:

 

1. Deliver exciting shopping experience to your customers

2. Respond quicker to customer support issues

3. Automate time-consuming tasks by using customized apps and so much more.

 

Why Choose Salesforce?

Before telling you the reason behind choosing salesforce and salesforce marketing cloud benefits. Firstly, it is necessary to introduce their values. Values inculcated in their platform and colleagues are the unique thing that separates them from other companies in digital marketing solutions.

 

Salesforce built a culture of trust in which they motivate each other and the industry through their values and principles. Salesforce believes in transparency and total integrity. They believe that profits can increase through honesty too.  When using Salesforce there are innumerable benefits that users have. It all depends on the user how they use the platform to optimize and improve their business and CRM. Here are some Salesforce Marketing Cloud help.

 

Some of them can be listed as follows:

It increases your power to grow more business across different markets by helping you connect to the bigger market. For example, you have integrated apps with AppExchange, which makes you connect to the world’s largest marketplace.

 

Salesforce also has a lighting platform. As the name suggests, it helps you in growing your sales by connecting directly to each customer. The employees working in your company in sales can easily access this platform to understand the needs of your customers better.

 

7 Benefits of Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud

There are numerous salesforce marketing cloud benefits. However, seven salesforce marketing cloud benefits are mentioned below.

 

1. Customization

Salesforce offers the power to customize online marketing tools according to your market base. By using customization tools, you can make a personal touch to each customer without any hassle.

 

You can also use integrated apps to know the various needs of your customers. The power to customize the platform for better understanding, helps you touch the different points of your customer and thus utilizing it for management and better functionality of your motives to increase the profits.

 

2. Understanding

One of the significant essential points why some businesses are more reliable than others is that they have a better understanding of the psychology of their customers. To grow your business, you must be adaptable to different changes that occur in the market. That’s where Salesforce comes into play.

 

It helps you make friends with change when it comes to the variability of your customers. It also helps you to understand the underlying shift in the pattern of customers. By using this platform, you can be invincible by making proper decisions at the right moment. This is one of the biggest Salesforce marketing cloud benefits.

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3. Security

Salesforce platform provides trust and protection against the misuse of data. By analyzing the data, you can protect your business from any harm being done by your business rivals. It also helps in the encryption of data between your company and the customer.

 

Moreover, Salesforce is all about having a secure platform via which you can use and protect your customers from any unfair loots. Also, the better your security will provide them, they’ll become accustomed to your business and thus will stick with you for the long term. Therefore, security is the most crucial role in customer and company management, and you can get it at its best only on Salesforce.

 

4. Sales

Without a doubt, when you have all of the salesforce marketing cloud features as mentioned above, the sales will increase too. The increase in sales varies directly proportionally to the understanding and security you provide to your customer.

 

Also, it has specially designed platforms and apps, too, which help you to connect to your customers through one touch. With this ease, sales are an easier task than ever. Moreover, by using data analytics that salesforce provides at such an affordable price, it’s easier to focus on big data to increment your sales by a significant percentage.

 

5. Innovation

When you’re not worried about sales and have plenty of time to engage with your customers, only then you can have innovation. That’s why Salesforce is the best-recommended source. By using this platform, you can have innovative ideas and implement them straight away to understand the optimal returns of ideas.

 

It is said that innovation can be born at any place in the hierarchy. By keeping that in mind, this platform gives opportunities at different levels to all the users. So that they can have innovation for the benefits of the overall community and business.

 

6. Decision Making

When all of the pre-steps are taken for any motive, the most crucial step takes place i.e., decision making. Now decision-making can be flawless only when you have curated information presented professionally.

 

Therefore, Salesforce helps you in better decision-making tools. This platform helps you by offering all the information gathered graphically. Also, it helps you in visualizing the future trends, thus making your choices more accurate.

 

Engagement Making and Customer Satisfaction

With all these features and your efforts and hard work, it’s guaranteed the happiness of your customer. Without any doubt, if your customer is satisfied and happy, you will be satisfied too.

 

So that’s what salesforce do: It prospers and makes others thrive also. This is the ultimate goal and benefit we want to reach through sharing our platform and connecting it to businesses across different parts of the world.

 

Final Words:

To conclude, we can say Salesforce isn’t just about buying or selling. It’s more about spreading happiness through connectivity and power to spread joy among everyone. Salesforce tools aren’t only materialistic assets, but they are just like angels spreading contentment and grace in different means while working hard behind the scenes.

 

As we have entered into the new decade with 2021, every business organization belonging to every sector of the industry is looking forward to tapping new opportunities and reach new heights.

 

Over time, businesses have become more diversified and have increased the level of customization in their services. This is because the demands of customers are increasing steadily and becoming more specific in the services they want to avail of.  Also, the number of customers catered by an average organization is increasing over time. Owing to such situations, enterprises are finding themselves in a fix to carry on with business processes using traditional methodology.

 

One of the most important activities performed by an organization is that of handling customer relationship management (CRM). An average business house may need to look after hundreds or thousands of customers on a daily basis. This, coupled with the fact that customers need personalized services makes it nearly impossible for the team to work using traditional and manual methodologies.

 

As a solution to this problem, more and more businesses are switching to advanced and automated CRM software platforms, the most prominent of the lot being Salesforce. Since it was introduced more than twenty years ago, Salesforce has helped an array of businesses in handling their CRM activities.

 

However, before getting into the details of the CRM platform and understanding its relevance in 2021, it is important to answer the fundamental question, “What is Salesforce CRM?”

 

What is Salesforce CRM?

Salesforce is a fully cloud-based Service-as-a-Software (SaaS) that helps organizations in handling their CRM activities. It allows the users to record, store, track, and process the seemingly complicated customer database of a business organization.

 

Salesforce software uses its cloud technology to connect with its customers and partners for carrying out various business processes. The CRM platform ensures that the users are able to provide personalized services to their current and potential information by letting them process data pertaining to every single customer on an individual basis.

 

With the help of Salesforce CRM, users can avail of a high degree of automation and efficiency. This relieves the marketing and sales team of an organization of the burden of carrying out their respective business process in a traditional manner. It also helps users save time and increase the overall productivity of the organization through its computerized accuracy.

 

What Does Salesforce Do?

Now that we have a clearer idea of what Salesforce CRM is, let us answer the question, “What does Salesforce do?” to understand its functionality.

 

Salesforce helps you at all stages of your sales cycle, right from acquiring a lead to communicating with the customer for after-sale services. The Salesforce technology helps you in recording all necessary details about your current, past, or potential customers and storing them within your system in an organized manner.

 

Salesforce stores specific details about your customers in information tablets called Salesforce objects, such as Leads, Accounts, Cases, opportunities, contacts, etc. These objects can be utilized for obtaining customer information whenever needed and for tracking the activities of specific customers/Accounts. By establishing suitable relationships between two or more Salesforce objects, users can undertake sales processes or obtain necessary reports. This is how Salesforce works in helping you customize your services based on the customers you cater to.

 

What Is The Need For Salesforce In 2021?

The need for a platform like Salesforce is only going to increase with time. In 2021, the need for personalization and advanced technology is at its peak. Businesses need to treat every customer as if they are the only ones catered by them. Also, after witnessing a global pandemic and realizing how fickle physical activities can get, there is also a need for high flexibility in every sector of the industry.

 

Salesforce helps you in tackling the majority of the challenges 2021 has thrown or is likely to throw at business organizations. It provides an optimum level of business and process automation, helping users to provide personalized services according to specific customer requirements. Beings cloud-based platform, it also provides substantial flexibility in operation as your team members can use the platform at any time from any location.

 

This flexibility is also increased by its seamless mobile customization. Moreover, every tool, platform, and application pertaining to Salesforce keeps updating according to the latest technological advancements. This makes is certain that Salesforce is here to stay and will help businesses sail into the new decade successfully.

 

Now that we have understood the core functionality and relevance of the platform, let us understand the different Salesforce Clouds while answering the question, “What is Salesforce used for?”

 

What Is Salesforce Used For?

Salesforce CRM is used to perform an array of specific functions that are dedicated to streamlining the marketing and sales services of an organization. The CRM platform is essentially developed to provide ease of operation to the users while making sense of the complicated customer database. It also allows them to create extensive reports to help the management take key business decisions.

 

The services provided by Salesforce software are divided into multiple offerings that can by different organizations (or the same company) for different purposes. These offerings are called Salesforce Clouds, each of which is comprised of a unique set of processes.

 

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Sales Cloud is probably the most beneficial and sought after the offering of Salesforce CRM. As the name suggests, it helps businesses in driving their sales and generating revenue for the organization. Right from finding the right leads and qualifying them to facilitate purchases and closing sales deals, Salesforce Sales Cloud guides your sales team every step of the way.

 

One of the most advanced and currently relevant features of the platform is Einstein AI. Incorporated into Salesforce Lightning, the latest version of Salesforce CRM, Einstein is an artificial intelligence component that scans all your CRM data and helps you make a predictive analysis.

 

It also helps you prioritize the sales leads to nurture and predict the behavior of your customers based on their current and previous interactions.

 

Salesforce Service Cloud

This is the platform designed to handle CRM activities of a business functioning in the service sector. If you are into a business that partly or wholly provides services to the clients/customers, Service Cloud provides you with services such as efficient call centers, knowledgebase, provision for live customer interactions, product assistance, etc.

 

The primary motive of this platform is to ensure that the customers are happy and satisfied with the business. One of the primary features of Salesforce Service Cloud is its ability to route the right customer cases to the right agents. This makes the process of problem-solving faster and more organized.

 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

This is the module that is dedicated to navigating the complete journey of your customers on a platform. The primary motive of the Marketing Cloud is to provide marketing channels that facilitate personalized communication to the customers. With the help of this platform, markets can send the right message at the right time to the right person and through the right channel.

 

One of the most relevant features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud in recent times is marketing automation. Owing to increased competition and the need for personalization in the market, marketing automation helps you ascertain useful customer information and formulate the right messages to communicate with them.

 

Also, the platform allows you to draft efficient and result-oriented marketing campaigns for greater user engagement.

 

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

This is arguably the most relevant platform for marketing in recent times. Salesforce Commerce Cloud is essentially designed to help businesses set up and/or manage their e-commerce ventures. Right from designing the website (storefront) and getting the products listed to receiving payments and managing checkout processes, it is the best assistance you can receive to market your products online.

 

Based on your business model, you can avail of two major variants of the Commerce Cloud. If you deal with other businesses and follow the B2B module, you can opt for Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud. On the other hand, you can choose Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud if you tend to the ultimate customers.

 

Salesforce Community Cloud

A Salesforce Community is essentially a virtual group comprised of individuals having a common interest. Salesforce Community Cloud allows you to build such communities to facilitate quick and efficient communication with your customers, Salesforce Partners, employees, or any other entity having a vested interest in your organization.

 

Community Cloud can be referred to as a social platform where individuals can meet, interact, and share constructive ideas that would affect a particular project or an ongoing campaign. The platform can also be used to improve personalized customer interaction and receive their feedback.

 

Key Features and Benefits of Salesforce

Now that we have answered the fundamental questions of “What is Salesforce?” and “What does Salesforce do?” it is important to understand some of the major features and advantages of the platform that would help you in handling your CRM in 2021.

 

Lead Management

One of the most prominent services provided by Salesforce is that of efficient lead management. With the help of Salesforce tools and platforms, you can identify prospects, generate leads, and add them to your sales pipeline. Once leads are added to the pipeline, the platform helps you in scoring them based on their responses, allowing you to cater to the more responsive ones first.

 

This way, Salesforce technology provides the right amount of automation and effectiveness in handling your sales leads, reducing the time and efforts put in by your sales representatives.

 

Increased Personalisation

As mentioned earlier, the need for personalized services is steadily increasing over time. Customers want to be treated specially and want their specific needs to be taken care of. Salesforce helps you solve this purpose by organizing your customer details on an individual basis.

 

As opposed to the marketing team manually going through the data of every single customer, Salesforce automates the process of scanning customer database and tending to each customer based on their specific requirements.

 

It also helps you track the actions of your customers with your business to ascertain their likes and preferences. For instance, if a customer visits the page selling t-shirts on your online store frequently and is a frequent buyer of t-shirts, you can personalize the page to show them new stocks of t-shirts and/or t-shirt ads on their browser. This way, you can cater to the specific needs of your customers and build a loyal base.

 

Third-Party Integrations

Salesforce is a highly customizable platform. Its functionality can be tailored according to the specific requirements of the concerned user. This has facilitated an array of third-party integrations with external platforms and applications.

 

Salesforce allows independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop robust applications on using the Salesforce environment. These applications provide users with an ideal mix of services provided by two software entities. Apart from providing a centralized platform to the users, such integrations also increase the overall functionality and consistency of Salesforce.

 

In the majority of these third-party integrations, the integrated platform allows users to utilize their CRM data to avail services provided by the integrated application. For instance, if Salesforce integrates with an accounting platform, you can perform accounting activities using your CRM contacts on the concerned application. Similarly, if Salesforce integrates with a chat room, you can provide online/live chat facilities availed from the concerned application to your CRM contacts

 

Advanced Reports

It is important to keep a record of all the activities performed by your team to monitor its progress over a period of time. Salesforce CRM comes with a feature that allows you to create extensive and automated reports for specific activities performed by your team members.

 

Salesforce helps you track all your business processes and formulate highly informative and customizable reports for specific projects. These reports display extensive information about the progress your team made over a specified period of time. Ultimately, they help the management to take key decisions to improve the functionality of their organization.