When I started my Salesforce Journey I progressed from a Certified Administrator to App Builder and then passed the Salesforce Advanced Administrator certification. On reflection, I believe becoming an Advanced Administrator has really set me up to progress further in my career at a quicker pace, as I now have some of what I consider Advanced Admin superpowers!
In this article, I’ll dive into some of these hidden Advanced Administrator superpowers and how they can empower you on your Salesforce journey.
Debug Logs
When it comes to troubleshooting within Salesforce, sometimes an error message isn’t enough to tell you what’s wrong.
They give you a glimpse into what is wrong but don’t give a full picture of what led to the error. For example, did an Automation trigger another that tried to input invalid information on a record?
With Debug logs you get line-by-line insights into what happened, in what order, and you get important extra detail that the error message snapshot might not have given you. If you are an Admin, Consultant, or Developer you are sure to need these at some point in your Salesforce career.
Custom Report Types
Every Salesforce Administrator would be lost without the ability to report on the data held in your CRM.
What if you need to report on Accounts with Assets and Asset Feed (Chatter posts on the Asset object)?
Step in Custom Report Types that allow you to report on up to four directly related objects within the same reports with all the fields in the same place.
Custom Report Types have multiple advantages that you are sure to need at some point:
- Multiple Objects: add up to 4 layers of objects as long as they have a parent-child relationship,
- Fields via Lookup: you can add fields into the report from any related object,
- Create, remove, rename & reorder sections and fields,
- Default Columns: you can control which columns already display on the report when you create a new one.
Reporting Snapshots
Something that you are unlikely to come across unless you’ve had an explicit need for it, is Reporting Snapshots.
These create a snapshot of records at a specific time that you can use for comparison purposes. For example, you could monitor the number of open Cases on the 1st of each month to spot trends and patterns.
A Reporting Snapshot is created by running a Salesforce Report on a particular schedule (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) and then copying that information into a Custom Object that you create.
There are limitations to what fields can be mapped and the process runs as the Reporting Running User you specify, so if setting this up for the first time, be sure to refer to Salesforce Help.
Delegated Administration
Within Salesforce, another largely unknown feature is something called Delegated Administration. Delegated Administration enables you to assign limited admin duties to some of your users, letting you focus on other tasks.
Delegated Administrators can:
- Customize specific custom objects (eg. Create new fields or amend the page layout.)
- Perform user management tasks for users in specified roles and all subordinate roles such as create, unlock and assign certain Profiles and Permission Sets (eg. If you have a Community Manager that should only be able to set up Community Users or if you have a Service Desk Team that should only set up Users that are not System Administrators.)
- Create and manage specific Public Groups
There is also the option for users within a Delegated Group to be able to log in as other users without needing to be a System Administrator, for example, to troubleshoot user issues.
Summary
I personally believe that the abilities of an Advanced Administrator are too often overlooked and hopefully if you are a Consultant, Administrator, Developer, or Architect, you’ll now consider learning what it takes to become an Advanced Administrator!
As you can see, this is just my top pick of what an Advanced Administrator can do, so there are lots more goodies and treasures hidden in the references linked below.
References
- Prepare for Your Salesforce Advanced Administrator Credential
- Salesforce Advanced Administrator Certification Guide & Tips
- How I Solved This: Dive Deep Into the Debug Log
- The Ultimate Guide to Report Types
- Report on Historical Data with Reporting Snapshots
- Delegate Administrative Duties