Working on the Salesforce platform can, depending on the task at hand, entail having multiple open tabs, switching between orgs, and troubleshooting data or metadata. It can also involve maintaining a well-defined security model with the help of out-of-the-box functionality such as Permission Sets and Org-Wide Defaults. With so many possibilities and a variety of tasks, optimizing your way of working is key to making the most out of your day.
In this post, we’ll delve into SF Explorer, a browser extension and standalone web application that can help you, as Admins and Developers, increase your efficiency while interacting with key aspects of your Salesforce implementation.
What Is SF Explorer?
This productivity tool was created by Nicolas Després. It’s come to life following different questions and business requirements that have come his way while working with Salesforce customers on enhancing their CRM processes/automations and having to know the ins and outs of their orgs.
“I usually work in design authorities, so I need to quickly understand what’s going on in multiple sandboxes. I’m the first user and if it helps me, it may help others, so I decided to package it,” says Nicolas.
Overall, SF Explorer covers all aspects of a Salesforce implementation that you may need to engage with in your day-to-day – from the ability to visualize and deep dive into your data model and records to browsing code or implementing best practices. This tool has the potential to boost your productivity and optimize your entire team’s ways of working.
You can access SF Explorer either by installing the Chrome extension or Microsoft Edge add-on, or directly by navigating to the web application. Under the hood, the tool leverages multiple technologies which, when brought together, offer a comprehensive and easy-to-use experience packaged with functionality. If you’d like to learn more about what’s going on behind the scenes, you can watch Nicolas explaining the architecture here.
What’s in It for You?
While it may sound too good to be true at first, let’s deep dive into the top features of SF Explorer and you can decide which of them (if any at all) are what will help you out with your next Salesforce-related task.
Record Details and Multi-Org Support
Working within multiple Salesforce orgs at the same time is bound to happen, for example, when having to troubleshoot similar records, or when testing new functionality. SF Explorer natively supports being simultaneously connected to multiple Salesforce orgs, making it easy to explore and compare records between all of them on the same screen.
With a right click, the SF Explorer side panel can be opened and you can explore individual records or perform queries all while having the Salesforce page opened. At first, you’ll have the details about the record you’re on when you bring up the side panel, but you can navigate away from it to open any of the other tabs.
For example, you could easily query an Account record you also have opened, and the query results will contain data from all connected orgs for you to further deep dive into. Selecting the ones you’d like to explore further and clicking the compare button will surface a side-by-side comparison, where you can filter, group, and quickly analyze any differences.
2. Easy-to-Use Query Builder
As you might have noticed above already, SF Explorer includes a query editor, which not only supports SOQL but also SOSL and even GraphQL. Additionally, it’s much more than just a query editor as you can also execute Anonymous Apex if needed, as well as REST API. Once the results are displayed, you can search, filter, or display them in a pivot table without having to export them to Excel. You can also view the record in Salesforce or review it directly in SF Explorer and come back to your query history at a later time.
Right under SOQL, there’s the SOQL Analysis option, which calls the new Query Performance Feedback (beta) Salesforce exposed to help you review the performance of a query without executing it.
On top of the above (which is a lot of functionality already!), what enhances this way of querying Salesforce even further is the option to chain queries. The autocomplete makes it even easier, so no matter whether you’ve just started with SOQL or are already a pro, having this option to reference the results of a previous query at hand can get you the data you need in no time.
3. Profile Cleaner and Permissions Explorer
Since Salesforce announced the permissions moving away from Profiles into Permission set, Salesforce professionals have been motivated to prepare for this change. One daunting and time-consuming task is having to manually remove permissions from the Profiles which will remain just a baseline access.
One of many security and permissions-related functionality within SF Explorer is the option to blank out Profiles with just one click. Depending on the number of permissions within the profile, it may take up to a few minutes, but removing Field Level Security, Object Permissions, and even System permissions and Apex classes will be done automatically for the selected Profile once you’ve properly analyzed it.
Once you’ve installed the extension or opened the web application, make sure to take a look over the additional features under the security tab – you’re in for a treat!
4. The Enhanced Object Manager You Were Hoping For?
The main feature SF Explorer offers is a different Object Manager to help you obtain a high-level overview but also allow you to explore any Objects or fields you need. As you’ll notice on most pages within the application, you can either export the data, filter, or sort it. You can also present it as a pivot table (and more!). You can do this with information about multiple objects simultaneously on the main pain without having to click through each of them unless you’d like to dive deeper.
Clicking or opening any of the Objects will result in another screen with tabs available for various types of components, ranging from Fields and Layouts to Flows, Triggers, and even List View. On this page, you can quickly identify all the custom fields from an Object and review their approximate usage as well as the total number of Permission Sets and Profiles they’re on. And yes, hovering over the number will also give you the exact names. Of course, you can visualize this analysis in a pivot table as well, or why not add a bar chart if warranted?
5. Supercharged Schema Builder
A new addition to the Object Manager is the possibility to access a Schema Builder, and similar to the out-of-the-box Salesforce one, visualize multiple objects alongside their fields and how they’re related to each other. Once you choose at least one Object in the Object Manager, then the Schema Builder button will become visible.
The SF Explorer ‘on steroids’ Schema Builders combine the entity relationship functionality you’re already familiar with, with other features to give you a bird’s eye view across any Objects you’ve chosen: fields are highlighted with colored bubbles representing each connected org.
You can easily add more objects by searching for them, bringing up example records, and even analyzing user access in the contexts of the objects you selected. How this works is that you enter the names of individual users, the Object Permissions will appear towards the top of each card, and hovering over each field will tell you not only the type of access but also where it’s coming from.
6. Mass Delete Old Flow Versions
The out-of-the-box, admin-friendly, way of deleting inactive Flow versions as you probably know is clicking delete on each version – this is time that could be better spent elsewhere. When visualizing your Salesforce Flows within SF Explorer, you can sort and filter by any attribute you need, but this view also includes the option to quickly delete one or multiple obsolete versions at the same time without having to navigate between the different Flows on separate pages.
After ensuring that you selected all the rows you need, a simple click of the bin above the table will delete them from the connected org. How simple is that?
7. Define Your Own Rules
The SF Explorer DevOps tab nests a feature that allows you to check your metadata against predefined rules and analyze how the development team adheres to certain rules and conventions. The Best Practices section comes equipped with an array of readily available rules that you can execute against your org – these range from checking if Field Level Security was added on Profiles (very handy if you’ve just cleaned them up), to making sure that an Omniscript has less than 100 elements.
Once the rules are run, the outcomes will appear towards the top of the page. Additionally, you might have noticed in the screenshots above an Errors column – this is how items not adhering to your rules will be flagged contextually on the page you’re on within SF Explorer.
You can edit the existing rules, add new ones, or remove some altogether by clicking the Edit button on this Best Practices page. Additionally, SF Explorer has a ‘companion’ Chrome Extension, especially built around this best practice rules concept, allowing you to display custom messages within some Salesforce Setup page. Make sure to check out Salesforce Explorer – Enhanced Setup (source).
Keep in mind that this section of SF Explorer is open source, so you can run the rules in your pipeline if you’d like.
8. Quickly Generate a Data Dictionary
How many times did you have to make a list of field details by object to document their use and details? If you’ve been in the ecosystem for a while already, probably at least a few times. Within SF Explorer, you can leverage the list within Object Manager to select your objects, and then simply generate a Data Dictionary with the click of a button.
The output will be an Excel file which will be downloaded to your machine to further review and complete any missing details before storing or sharing it. Alongside the API Name and Label of the field, additional information such as the type, any values, and even an estimated completion rate (based on a sample of 200 records) will be automatically included. Additionally, this can be a great starting point for determining the data sensitivity of any of your fields.
9. Flexipage Comparison
In the era of Dynamic Forms, filtering capabilities on Record Pages, and Dynamic Actions, there shouldn’t be too many situations in which you need multiple Record Pages unless they are, of course, fundamentally different. Chances are that there are instances in your org today where you could combine two or more Record Pages into one, considering the newer capabilities, such as the ability to filter individual Tabs added in Summer ’24 or the option to add a Dynamic Highlights Panel coming soon in Winter ‘25.
The built-in comparison tool SF Explorer is equipped with enables you to see at a glance the differences between multiple flexipages, which can help you quickly spot if additional changes could optimize the experience. For example, if the only difference between two Record Pages is a Report Chart, why not look into filtering it if warranted? With more enhancements coming to the platform, it would be a good idea to look into these sooner rather than later.
10. OpenAI Integration
Using AI to increase productivity and complete tasks more efficiently is becoming the norm, so it should come as no surprise that SF Explorer considers this need. You can use an OpenAI API Key or Einstein Generative AI (beta) to get contextualized help right within the side panel or web application through Explorer GPT. This will allow you to either provide a prompt for information to be retrieved from the org you’re connected to or quickly have it explain what a certain Apex class does, and why not ask it to generate a SOQL query for you?
What’s Coming Next?
With change being the only constant nowadays, the tools we use have to keep getting better as well. SF Explorer is no exception, with the help of Florian Lebrun, Nicolas prepared an exciting roadmap with new innovative items to become available soon, such as the ability to generate Salesforce Flow documentation as a Mermaid diagram or introducing a Jupyter Notebook equivalent right within the extension.
Feel free to either comment on these roadmap items or add your own suggestion to further enhance SF Explorer directly on GitHub.
Summary
SF Explorer could easily become a trusted partner while having to discover the intricacies of a new Salesforce org, or further enhancing and optimizing one which you are already familiar with. With the ability to compare data or metadata, deep dive into all layers of your Salesforce security model, and even browse multiple org data as you please, this extension is bound to save significant time across your entire team.
Nicolas is always open to feedback and suggestions, so if you have an idea to share, don’t forget to submit it as a feature issue here!