Salesforce Admin Hacks
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This document provides a collection of admin hacks for Salesforce. It includes hacks for selectively auto-responding to emails, checking data loader to maintain data storage, dealing with email templates, seeing all cases submitted by a user, comparing opportunities, changing a user's email without confirmation, making formulas error-proof, sending opportunities to approval automatically, using formula fields to relate records to the user, setting passwords for users, reducing verification requests, kicking off processes after only 5 minutes, unscheduling reports, customizing hover detail views, useful extensions, finding distance between locations, and creating links to records in email templates. The hacks are intended to help admins work more efficiently in Salesforce.
Salesforce Admin Hacks
- 2. AdminHacks! By Admins. For Admins. Complied by Joshua Loomis
- 3. Table of Contents How to Selectively Auto-Respond Keep on Top of Data Storage by Check DataLoader Dealing with Email Templates See All Cases a User Has Submitted Better Method for Comparing Opportunites Change a User’s Email Address Without Waiting for a Confirmation Stop Trouble with #Error! Send an Opp into Approval Automatically The Power of Mine Set a Password for a User Tired of Verifying Over and Over Again? Kick Off Process Builder After Only Five Minutes Unscheduling Reports Customize Fields in Hover View Detail Useful Extensions for Making Admin Life Easy Automatically Find Distance Between Two Locations Email Template Link to Salesforce Record # 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 10 11 13 15 16 17 18 19 21 23
- 4. 1 How to Selectively Auto-Respond This hack for selectively auto-responding comes from Michael Rebak at TripAdvisor. Everyone knows the standard auto-response rules. Easy peasy, but what if you want to respond to something selectively based on X criteria? Write a workflow rule on email: Incoming = true Criteria = X, Y, Z Field Update: 1. Create a checkbox and have it evaluate to true when the above is met Write workflow on the (case) object: 1. When tickbox = true, send email 2. Field update to untick box Done!
- 5. 2 Keep on Top of Data Storage by Checking DataLoader This hack comes from Emily Douglas at Formstack and will help you maintain your data storage levels. If you’ve inherited an older org that is bursting at the seams when it comes to data storage, don’t forget to check DataLoader when you’re looking for records to delete! Tasks that are older than one year are archived (IsArchived = TRUE) and will not show up in any reports you run in your org. Backing these up and deleting them regularly will really help you keep your data storage limits in check.
- 6. 3 Dealing with Email Templates This hack comes from Mariam Khan and helps with email templates. When you create email templates, do no copy in the html version to the text version. If you do copy the html to text, when the template is used any changes made to the template will not be saved on the email. By leaving the text template blank, it will automatically generate when the html template is sent ensuring the most recently updated version of the email is saved.
- 7. 4 See All Cases a User Has Submitted Meighan Brodkey from 7Summits has a great hack for helping your team see all the cases a users has submitted. If you manage your internal requests with Salesforce Cases, and you have lookup field to the user object for the internal user that submitted the case, you can create a dynamic custom view for “Cases I Submitted.” Just create a boolean formula field on cases, I_Submitted__c, not on any page layouts, where the $User.Id = Case.Submitted_By__c. Then for your custom view have the filter criteria be “I_Submitted__c = True”. Now, all your users can share a single dynamic view to track the cases they submitted. Also works great when you have multiple Account Owners (An Account Executive and Account Manager), to create an Account Filed “I am CSM” where the $User.Id = Account. Customer_Success_Manager__c.
- 8. 5 Better Method for Comparing Opportunities This hack comes from Nick Lindberg at Redpath Consulting who learned of this trick via the Success Community. It will help you better filter and compare opportunities. Salesforce reporting has some great abilities. One use case is to use reports to show the opportunities over the past three years. Using the standard reporting filters, one can filter by Close Date with the date range of “Current and Previous 2 Fiscal Years”. This works great, as the report will be filtered to show any opportunity with a Close Date during one of those years. But what about if I want to compare the previous three years while only showing opportunities that would have already occurred by this date in the year? Because in the first month of the year, you wouldn’t necessarily want to list all opportunities that occurred during the entire previous two years. That’s where the “year to date” formula field below:
- 9. 6 On the Opportunities object, create a checkbox formula field and paste in the formula below. Also see note at the bottom about adjusting for different fiscal years. IF( (Today() - DATE( IF(Today() < DATE( YEAR( TODAY() ) ,07,01) , YEAR( TODAY() ) -1 , YEAR( TODAY() ) ) ,07,01 ) ) >= (CloseDate - DATE( (IF( CloseDate < DATE( YEAR( CloseDate ) ,07,01), YEAR( CloseDate ) -1, YEAR( CloseDate ) )) ,07,01 ) ) , True, False ) IMPORTANT NOTE: One thing to mention is the text 07,01 is the month and day the fiscal year begins (in this case July 1). So if your fiscal year starts in January, anytime 07,01 appears in the formula it should be replaced with 01,01. This formula adds a checkbox on opportunities. If the formula returns True, that means the opportunity occurred on a day either before or equal to today’s date in that fiscal year. So once this field is created you can easily filter for only opportunities that would have occurred by this time in the year.”
- 10. 7 Change a User’s Email Address Without Waiting for a Confirmation This hack comes from Lauren Dunne Touyet from Symantec. You’ll be able to instantly confirm new user email addresses without waiting for confirmation from the user. When you need to change the email address on a user record, an email is sent to the new email address asking the user to confirm the change. Only when the confirmation link in the email is clicked will the change be reflected in Salesforce. This happens regardless of how you update the email address. If you change the email address and tick the ‘Generate new password and notify user immediately’ checkbox (at the bottom of the edit screen) then the email address gets updated straight away. Only down side is the user gets a new password. This is handy for sandboxes.
- 11. 8 Stop Trouble with #Error! James Goerke from Vlocity Inc. is sharing his admin hack for making your formulas #Error! Proof. I recently ran into an issue where a formula was producing a #Error! result. This was actually fine because I was expecting this since part of the formula wasn’t displaying. However, I wanted to make another formula field where I would use this field as part of my criteria. When you do this, the dependent formula breaks. Here was my situation: Seats_Used__c / Total_Seats__c This formula produced a simple percentage used formula. However, without the Total_Seats__c field filled in this formula results in #Error!. Again, I was fine with that until I used it in a dependent formula. Anytime a formula with #Error! as the result is referenced in a dependent formula the result will also be #Error! for that formula.
- 12. 9 The fix is to make your formulas #Error! Proof. #Error! Proof formula: IF( Total_Seats__c <> 0, Seats_Used__c / Total_Seats__c , 0 ) This formula takes into account the source fields and selects the denominator and checks if this field is zero or not. Then we can return a result of the actual formula or zero. Either way, a result is returned and will never result in a #Error!
- 13. 10 Send an Opp into Approval Automatically Salesforce MVP, Brendan Conroy from MondayCall, is sharing his hack for using process builder to send an Opp into approval automatically. A fun hack is to use process builder to send an Opp into approval automatically. Here is the scenario, we want for our reps to submit their Opp for approval at Stage 3 before making a quote. Their manager approves it and the rep sends it to the client. The client wants an additional discount on it. One can use the process builder to have that Opp sent back into approval and update the record type to remove the create a quote template button whenever the discount changes. I elected to have reps just submit it for approval again in case they needed to change any other field data as well, but you can always have the send into an approval process upon change in there as well.
- 14. 11 The Power of Mine This hack comes from Dan Grossberg from Bluecore and is nicknamed “the power of mine. This simple hack is similar to the ‘power of one’ hack. This one I call ‘The power of mine’ where a formula field relates to a field on the user record. A good example is whether an account is in someone’s territory, but they are not the account owner. Sure, you can have accounts teams in place, or you can have 19,000 reports that filter on the territory field, set up for specific users, or you can have a formula field on the account named My Territory, whose output type is Checkbox, that has the following formula: IF ( TEXT( $User.Territory__c ) = Territory__c, TRUE, FALSE) Then, create one report where My Territory = TRUE, then any one who views the report will see their territory, account owner or not. If you have an SDR paired with an
- 15. 12 AE, as an example, and the SDR wants to see all of their AEs Opportunities, you can have a custom field on the User record where you input the AEs name, then follow the same method of adding a checkbox to the Opportunity object. If (Text $User.AE__c ) = Owner.Name , TRUE, FALSE), etc. Hope you enjoy/find value that hack!
- 16. 13 Set a Password for a User This admin hack comes from Stephen Price from Zodiac Pools Systems and will teach you how to set a user’s password. There are many times that a person will ask you for their password. Of course, there isn’t a way for a Salesforce Admin to see the current password for a User, but there is an alternative to sending them a Salesforce Password Reset Email. You can manually set a password for a User to avoid going through the end user “error” of them stating that they didn’t receive an email. To do this, open the Developer Console. in the Developer Console, click on the Debug drop down and select Open Execute Anonymous Window. Here you want to enter: System.setPassword(‘02560000001j5h1’,’Password’);
- 17. 14 And then press Execute. You want to set the User’s ID in the first part and whatever temporary password into the second part. This is a great way to get someone up and running quickly without the hassle of having people not receive a password reset email or the following issue where they don’t receive their two step verification emails.
- 18. 15 Tired of Verifying Over and Over Again? This hack comes from Janelle Gardner of SFDC Study. She has an easy way to cut down on the need to constantly verify your computer with Salesforce. Salesforce has a lot of great security measures in place and recently there had been an uptick in the number of verification codes I’ve been asked to provide. Even logging in repeatedly from the same computer results in a verification prompt multiple times. If you are tired of verifying over and over, and it fits your companies security model, it may be helpful to add your computer IP to the trusted IP address ranges for your company. Before you go hunting for you IP if you hop over to the Login History you’ll note your IP address is already listed and you can copy the value and then navigate to Network Access and quickly add a new trusted IP. Next time you go to login, no verification request needed.
- 19. 16 Kick Off Process Builder After Only Five Minutes Eric Smith from GWI has shared his admin hack for having a process happen after only five minutes. Challenge: Process Builder time lapse intervals can only be expressed as a whole number of hours or days. How can I kick off an action after only 5 minutes? Hack: Create a formula field with a time offset and base your elapsed time on the new formula field. Example: New formula field for 55 minutes ago: NOW() - 55*(1/24/60) /* fraction of a day in minutes */ Implement: In Process Builder set the elapsed time to be 1 hour after your formula field for 55 minutes ago.
- 20. 17 Unscheduling Reports From Stephen Fischer at Posigen comes this hack for unscheduling reports. Currently, a user can have Schedule Reports permission, but unless they have Modify All Data, they cannot unschedule reports. Why? Because Salesforce. To unschedule the report, set it to run daily and then set the end date of the schedule to the following day and save the schedule. You’ll receive one more report, and then it will be done.
- 21. 18 Customize Fields in Hover Detail View This admin hack comes from Sandy Simpson of SalesFix, and will explain how to customize the fields that display in the ‘hover’ detail view. You can easily customize the fields that display in a ‘hover’ detail view, visible when you mouse over a link to a related record (lookup field). For example, on an Opportunity record when you hover your mouse over the Account Name to see more information. To add or remove fields from this hover view, edit the page layout/s for that object, click on ‘Mini Page Layout’ and choose the fields you want to display.
- 22. 19 Useful Extensions for Making Admin Life Easy From Oliver Hansen at nesensa, this hack offers two useful extensions to save you time. There are many useful Google Chrome extensions and Salesforce Apps that will help you save a lot of time managing your Salesforce org and easily master less frequent Admin challenges. Here are some of my favorites: 1) Your day-to-day Admin tasks start with a Google Chrome extension: Lastpass. Lastpass will keep all those Dev, UAT & Prod environment credentials secured and handy in one place while offering automatic logins as well 2) Salesforce Security Analysis with the help of Salesforce Appexchange: CWB (Config Workbook) & Org Comparator. This is tool will extract selected metadata from your Salesforce Org into a nice excel overview for your better understanding and as a clear configuration documentation.
- 23. 20 It covers Profile details, Layout detail, Permission set, Permission set assignment, Apex detail, Approval process, Custom application and even Field-level security!
- 24. 21 Automatically Find Distance Between Two Locations This hack comes from Dustin Kost at 1st Light Energy. Basically, we reorder the Pythagorean Theorem a bit. This works because Salesforce formulas support SQRT/Square Root function and the new-ish Geolocation fields. We need either existing lat/long number fields with the source locations or a source geolocation field (these are also formula fields because we have a bunch of sales offices and warehouses) for this to work. Set it up as a formula field that returns a 2 decimal place number. The “*60” at the end converts the lat/long “ticks” to miles very roughly. I just took an average because at the equator, each tick is approx 69 miles and gradually goes to zero at the poles. We are US based, so 60 provided the least amount of error. If Salesforce supported sin/cos/tan, I could have used the Haversine Formula and got it exactly correct regardless of latitude.”
- 25. 22 (SQRT((Source_Latitude__c - IF ( ShippingLatitude0, ShippingLatitude, IF ( BillingLatitude0, BillingLatitude, 0 ) ))^2+(Source_Longitude__c - IF ( ShippingLongitude0, ShippingLongitude, IF ( BillingLongitude0, BillingLongitude, 0 ) ))^2))*60
- 26. 23 Email Template Link to Salesforce Record Here’s a second hack from Stephen Price from Zodiac Pool Systems that will show you how to create a link in an email template for a Salesforce record. This is a really simple hack. It basically allows you to create a link in an email template that may be sent out through an email alert to allow the receiving party to be able to click and go directly to the record in Salesforce. When create an email template, for example for something like Cases, you can highlight any section to create a hyperlink. In the hyperlink field, just use the !{Case.Link} as the endpoint. This works best when you select the merge field for something like Case Number. The receiving party will receive an email that shows the Case Number as a blue hyperlink that will go directly to the record in Salesforce