Leveraging different tools to increase efficiency in their day-to-day is something that Salesforce professionals are well accustomed to – be it Salesforce features, managed packages, third-party tools or, of course, browser extensions. Every option, each in its own way, can ultimately help them save time while delivering top-notch Salesforce implementations. What if one of these tools could actually support your entire team?
In this post, we’ll dive into how various roles across the Salesforce ecosystem can leverage Inspector Reloaded to boost their productivity.
What Is Salesforce Inspector Reloaded?
Often referred to as “the Swiss army knife” of the Salesforce extensions realm, Inspector Reloaded is an open-source project driven and maintained by Thomas Prouvot and constantly enhanced with the help and support of the community. As a browser extension, it aims to facilitate most, if not all, tasks that Salesforce professionals execute in their roles day in and day out without them having to leave the browser setting.
Available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, Inspector Reloaded is based on the OG Salesforce Inspector created by Søren Krabbe. While it does maintain all features from the initial extension, it has been significantly transformed over the past couple years with new functionality and settings, which make working in Salesforce a breeze!
The extension is presented as a side panel, which can be opened either by clicking on the small arrow or by using keyboard shortcuts. The arrow doesn’t interfere with anything else happening on your screen, as its position can easily be customized to appear wherever it works best for you, be it vertically or horizontally.
One Extension for Your Entire Team
If you haven’t embarked on your Inspector Reloaded journey yet, there’s no time like the present! Let’s take a closer look at how this extension can help, and some of the features you can easily get started with in your role.
Salesforce Admins
When discussing productivity while working in Salesforce, it’s inevitable for Salesforce Administrators to be at the top of the list, as they are juggling configuration, security, automations, and daily user requests. In the past, Salesforce Inspector, now Inspector Reloaded, put the admin role in the spotlight with an incredible amount of features and functionalities to transform the way they complete incoming requests.
A couple of releases ago, Inspector Reloaded cemented the way efficient field creation is done. With a user-friendly way to not only create one or multiple fields, but also determine the name format, add help text and descriptions, as well as permissions – having to create fields does not have to be such a tedious task! On top of this, the page will have a background for production instances and developer editions, and you will always know if permissions are missing, thanks to the message at the top.
Speaking of permissions and user management in general, Inspector Reloaded has you covered in this regard as well. It is just as easy to search users, assign permission sets or permission set groups, and even log in as them to troubleshoot. Bonus: you can even choose to log in in an incognito window, so that anything you’re currently working on is not disrupted in the slightest!
Just as easily as you can search for particular users, there are many more items you can search through and take action on in the dedicated tabs: the Objects tab allows you to search for any object by its name and even the 3-digit prefix, while the Shortcuts tab can be customized to surface anything you need on top of the out-of-the-box Flows, Setup pages, or Permission Sets to name a few. The Org tab, on the other hand, can rapidly provide you with the Org Id in case you need it for support cases, but also when exactly the next release will happen for the org you’re currently on.
While there are many other ways to use Inspector, a brand new addition worth mentioning for admins (or anyone else on the team who is looking forward to cleaning up Salesforce or reusing fields) is the Smart Usage Analysis option. Found as a new column within the ‘Show All Data’ page accessible for individual objects (not records), the possibility to calculate the field usage with a single click will be a weight lifted from the admin’s shoulders, especially when embarking on a cleanup initiative or overall org optimization projects.
The output represents the total number of records that have a value in the field divided by the total record count, which can also be downloaded in CSV format to further manipulate and analyze in Excel or BI Tools, for example. The usage can be calculated for either individual fields or for all of them by clicking on the button in the column’s header.
Salesforce Business Analysts
One of the key roles in a Salesforce team is, without a doubt, the Business Analyst – from asking stakeholders the ‘hard’ questions which contribute to a more robust and complete implementation, to documenting requirements and processes – the more time they can save in the long run, the better.
Creating Salesforce diagrams is no easy feat, and especially when it comes to the more technical ones, having the right information can significantly facilitate the developer’s job when translating them into Apex classes or Lightning Components. Similarly, including the exact names of components in the written documentation is bound to make the team’s life easier for future enhancements or related changes.
Using field labels may be deceiving at times; although not ideal, it does happen that the label and API Name don’t coincide. BAs should have quick access to these details – and Inspector Reloaded makes sure of it with the ‘View/Hide Field API names’ button. Be it in a production org, sandbox, or scratch org for that matter, any fields exposed on the page layout or record page will have their API name exposed.
Another responsibility that usually falls within a BA’s remit is preparing and coordinating UAT sign-off with one or more stakeholders. This ultimately translates into the BA having to switch between production and at least one sandbox depending on the context; hence, the Inspector Reloaded Options page and the ability to assign custom favicons can make the experience that much smoother.
Even more so, the BA could easily enable the testers to make use of these features as well, thus ensuring that sandboxes will become easy to tell apart, while the production org will have a custom message to draw attention at a glance.
Salesforce Data Stewards
Data quality in Salesforce is more important now than ever. While ensuring data integrity may fall within the admin’s attributions only, if the team has dedicated Data Stewards as well, then Inspector Reloaded will surely become their preferred way of quickly checking records and exporting or importing data within any environment.
Starting with the Data Export page, which can be accessed via a button on the pop-up, you can perform even the most complex queries in no time – from leveraging the query templates, the field suggestions based on the Object you selected, or even Agentforce to translate natural language into an SOQL statement, there’s something available for every level of experience.
Once the query is executed, the results section not only allows you to copy data in multiple formats, but also download it as a spreadsheet. Additionally, you can opt to delete all of the records that were returned, if needed. However, remember to use this option with utmost caution.
As of recently, the query editor received an upgrade in the form of multi-tab support, allowing you to work on multiple different queries on different objects at the same time, without losing progress on any of them. Additionally, all of them are captured in the query history and can be saved as well. Each tab will be automatically named based on the Object in the query.
The data import page works closely with the data export one above, in the sense that Inspector Reloaded recognizes the Object tag obtained from the data export page or added in the file. If looking to manipulate data, you don’t need to choose the object manually anymore. When it comes to data imports, Inspector Reloaded has perhaps the quickest and most user-friendly option, as it doesn’t involve uploading a file – you can simply paste the columns from the clipboard, ensure the mapping is correct, and import.
Additionally, you no longer have to choose the format the data is input, since the extension now recognizes it automatically, regardless of whether the columns originated from an .xlsx or .csv file.
Salesforce Developers
Although it may come as a surprise, Inspector Reloaded is as much of a developer tool as it is an admin one. While Salesforce developers are primarily masters of Apex, they have to be aware of other items going on within the org that may impact their implementation — including troubleshooting, performance, and Salesforce-specific considerations, alongside all the other moving pieces.
Inspector Reloaded makes it easy to access existing Apex Classes directly from the Shortcuts tab, which is a significant step up in terms of speed when compared to either searching setup or opening the Developer Console. If you’re not looking forward to making changes, in which case VSCode or CodeBuilder would be better alternatives, simply checking an Apex Class can be a matter of seconds.
On top of searching for items in your org, what about accessing Salesforce documentation? Within the same Shortcuts tab, you can search and find documentation for any class within the Apex reference guide, saving you the need to open a new tab and Google it. Even more so, under the Objects tab, documentation is also linked for standard objects in order to review considerations at lightning speed.
Whether you’re an expert or not familiar with common API patterns just yet, Inspector Reloaded’s REST Explorer can be your sidekick when performing API requests, all from the comfort of your own Salesforce org and without having to deal with the authentication aspect while testing or looking forward to optimizing your request.
Through the extension, you can interact with Salesforce’s REST API and all available endpoints in no time and enjoy the available templates to get started, thanks to the autocompletion. The templates, where warranted, include both the URL and an example URL body in JSON format, helping you reconstruct the URL as well as the request body for your own use case. Note that request bodies are automatically formatted.
All standard HTTP methods are supported, namely GET, PUT, PATCH, POST, and DELETE, so that you can easily replicate any of the operations you need. As soon as the request is sent, a JSON or XML response can be auto-detected and formatted, but you’ll also be able to see the response time, status code, and any error that was returned. On the same page, you can review your history as well as save any of the requests for later use.
As the need to troubleshoot different automations or Lightning components may arise at times, Inspector Reloaded is also equipped with the option to enable debug logs or debug mode with a single click after finding the desired user.
By default, the extension will enable the “SFDC_DevConsole” debug level for 15 minutes; however, this can be changed within the Options page if you’d like to select another level or modify the duration. When it comes to debug mode specifically, keep in mind that Salesforce will be slower for the respective user, and this should be enabled only for users actively debugging JavaScript.
Additionally, another handy button can be found under the Org tab, which allows you to delete all Apex logs whenever you need or when the limit is reached.
Salesforce Architects
When multiple systems come into play as part of a Salesforce implementation, Architects often opt for the scalable event-driven approach as part of their solution to support 3rd-party integrations or even complex processes on the Salesforce Platform.
Within Inspector Reloaded, the Event Monitor allows you to streamline testing and overall working with Standard or Custom Platform Events, Change Events, and Custom Channels. The page can be accessed either from the standalone button found on the pop-up or after searching for a custom Platform Event within the Objects tab, making monitoring a breeze. This way, you can ensure that events are triggered as expected and that the payload is exactly what it is supposed to be.
By subscribing to any of the options, you can receive real-time updates or replay past events without additional tools – the CometD library is used to stream events directly to your browser. On top of this, from the same page, you can review the Platform Events limits, filter the result, and copy it for later use if need be.
Speaking of limits, they should always be considered when solutionizing a business requirement on the Salesforce Platform. Another button available on the Inspector Reloaded pop-up is Org Limits, which offers you a view of the org’s feature and API usage so that you can properly monitor consumption at a glance.
The dashboard-like page can be refreshed as many times as needed and sorted either alphabetically or based on consumption, ensuring that you find exactly what you need even without exporting the details.
Salesforce DevOps Teams
Retrieving metadata from Salesforce orgs can be done in various ways and with multiple tools as part of the DevOps process, but one thing all options have in common is using the Salesforce Metadata API to retrieve the details. While CI/CD and automations would ideally be in place, instances where you manually need to retrieve and review packages might still occur.
The Download Metadata page within Inspector Reloaded has seen a significant upgrade recently, with a new array of possibilities being added to create a free and user-friendly way for everyone to quickly retrieve or upload metadata into Salesforce. Not only can you retrieve and download metadata that you select from the list, but you can also retrieve components from an already existing deployment request, based on the deployRequestId. This option comes in handy when, for example, an error occurs on a deployment you did not trigger but need to troubleshoot further.
Uploading metadata on this page also translates into starting a Salesforce deployment, and that’s where the Deployment Settings come into play. Prior to deploying the package, you can choose the settings as well as the Test Level where warranted.
As soon as the deployment is started, regardless of what tool has been used to do it, you can continue using the Inspector Reloaded pop-up and more specifically the Shortcuts tab, to smoothly navigate to the Deployment Status page and keep an eye on the deployment in real time, as well as the queue, if any.
Final Thoughts
With many more features for you to explore and more to come in the future, Inspector Reloaded certainly seems like one of those tools you didn’t know how much you needed until you started using it. Created and actively maintained by and for the community, this browser extension is not only worth looking into, but it also has the potential to become any Salesforce professional’s go-to for anything: from data imports and exports to documentation, troubleshooting, integration monitoring, and more.
Are you already using Inspector Reloaded? Let us know about your experience in the comments section below!
