As a Salesforce user at your company, you were (hopefully) trained on how to do your daily tasks in Salesforce. However, even with good training, some things can easily be missed. In particular, those “unspoken rules” or skills that aren’t so easy to document or create a training guide for.
In this post, I’m going to be covering some of those things that your Salesforce Admin wants you to know but may have not covered in your training. These are things that may not be a task that you need to do, but rather important things that you should know about using Salesforce at your company.
1. The Salesforce Admin’s Job
The job of “Salesforce Admin” has a huge breadth of responsibilities – every org is unique, and the job is never the same from company to company. Some admins strictly deal with system configuration. Some admins wear multiple hats and also do things like Sales or Marketing Operations.
Some admins live under the IT department, while others could be in Sales, Marketing, Support, or Finance. Knowing what your Admin is responsible for will help you both save time and find the right resolution to your request. If you’re not sure, just ask!
2. How to Get Help
Salesforce Admins generally love their jobs and enjoy helping or teaching other people. But we can’t help anyone when we don’t know what the exact problem is. If you’re going to request help from an Admin, we need a LOT of detail. You may even think they need an extensive level of detail. Rather than just sending an email that says, “My Leads were deleted” we’ll need you to be very specific.
What were you looking at in Salesforce (include a link!) – what were you expecting to see compared to what you are actually seeing? When did you first notice the issue? Has this happened before? Do other people on your team have the same problem? Did you get an error message, and if yes, what was it (word for word)? Include a screenshot of the entire page.
3. How to Reset Your Password
On behalf of all Salesforce Admins, everywhere, I ask of you this: don’t be that person! Avoid your Admin on Slack and ask them to reset your password. Just go to the login screen and click “Forgot Your Password?.” If you don’t believe this is a problem, watch this video (start at 2:50).
4. Communication is Key!
You don’t need to suffer! If you’re having a problem, tell us. Don’t just complain to your manager or your teammates that “Salesforce doesn’t work.” Or, if you think something could work better, be more organized, just ask.
Remember, we don’t know that you’re having problems if you don’t let us know! I’ve met countless users that just lived with a problem for years simply because they assumed they were stuck with it, and didn’t know they could ask for changes.
5. We Have a Boss, Too
Remember that we answer to someone too. We can’t implement whatever you want just because you requested it. Changes need to be reviewed to make sure they align with the overall system and goals, and you might have to wait for the implementation if it’s approved. We also have to prioritize multiple requests from multiple teams, of varying complexity. We may or may not have additional support to help us do this work.
Please be patient and understand that, though we might be good at juggling, we can’t do everything for everyone all at once, and some things may not get approved.
6. Multiple Teams Use Salesforce
Your team is probably not the only team using Salesforce. You might be requesting a change for your team, but may not be aware of how that change may impact other teams who are also using Salesforce. The role of the Admin is to ensure that changes for one team don’t negatively impact another team or other users.
This happens all the time on the Account object in Salesforce – one team will request to remove something they think is not used, only to later find out that another team relies heavily on that feature. If your request is denied, this is one of the likely reasons.
7. Salesforce Was Different at My Last Company
We already know this, because Salesforce is different at every company. Salesforce was different at our last company, too. At your last company, you may have had an admin group with a larger team, or with an Admin with a different experience level. You may have been at a much larger or smaller company, with a totally different budget for implementation and tools.
But we probably can’t rebuild what you had at your last company based on a brief user description. Try to explain what you need in this Salesforce Org, with this data set, and your Admin will be happy to help identify a workable solution.
8. Pay Attention to Publishing Dates
Salesforce changes frequently, at least three times a year, and has been around for 20+ years. If you’ve taken the initiative to Google how to do something before asking your admin, that’s great! But keep an eye on published dates on articles or videos.
A lot of core functionality has remained steady over the years, however, if you find directions that you can’t follow or seem confusing, they’re probably just out of date (or your org is set up differently).
9. We Don’t Own Salesforce
It’s software, we didn’t invent it, and we can’t control any outages. The best we can do is look at status.salesforce.com which anyone can look at to see if there’s an outage. If there is an actual outage, and you are locked out, we are locked out too.
10. Don’t Panic
We can’t “un-do” everything in Salesforce, but we can un-do a lot. For example, things that have been deleted can be retrieved within 14 days. If you have history tracking enabled, we can probably see what a field value was before you changed it. If you notice you’ve made a mistake, reach out to your Admin right away. The sooner we know, the sooner we can help to resolve the issue.
Summary
Remember, your Salesforce Admin is a person trying to do their job, just like you, and working within the same company structure and requirements. It’s a role that often has many “hats” and poses a huge variation of responsibilities from company to company.
Hopefully, knowing these things will help you as the user get what you need and be able to work more effectively with your Salesforce Admin.
