So you’re a Salesforce user. Do you actually enjoy using it for your day to day tasks? Does it make you more productive? I’m sure that if we took a survey of users right now, we would see a huge disparity in our answers.
Your company has invested in Salesforce to help you perform your job more efficiently, and allow you to focus on the most important tasks. But sometimes, without proper training and user adoption, users don’t actually see this benefit. Salesforce has so many out-of-the-box features that you can start using right now to continuously enhance your experience – here are my top Salesforce tips…
1. Manage Field Permissions
Although a fairly new option admins can make use of, there is no denying that this is one of the most time-saving updates Salesforce has shipped in recent releases. With the imminent need to migrate to a model where Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups define access, while the Profile is nothing more than the baseline, Field Level Security applying just for Profiles was in dire need of an update – which luckily happened.
This setting has to be turned on in User Management Settings. If you’re including the permission sets in your source control mechanism and you’re deploying them, make sure to have this setting enabled in the sandboxes even if you may not enable it in production.
Available both during field creation and Field Level Security, you will now be able to include the field permissions directly within Permission Sets, without having to individually navigate to each one in Setup.
On top of this, as of Winter ‘24, the select all (or unselect all) option became available while defining field access in a Permission Set. Not only did it become much easier to add field permissions for individual fields in multiple Permission Sets, but it is also possible to add or remove multiple field permissions at once from one Permission Set.
2. Salesforce Object Views
List Views are Salesforce’s way of managing different sets of data within Objects. If “Recently Viewed,” “My Open Leads,” or “My Cases” mean anything to you, you’ll know that these are out-of-the-box list views.
But did you know you can create your own list views? You can slice and dice your data whichever way you like to best manage your records (and your day). For example, you could create your very own Lead list view and filter based on the Lead Source.
You can pick and choose the columns displayed in the list view, as long as they have been added to the page layout by an admin.
By default, Salesforce provides you with the “Recently Viewed” list view when you click on an object. If this view provides you with little value, then you can easily switch over the default list view by clicking on the little pin icon next to the current list view you have selected.
This is an effective way to save a few clicks and make your work life more productive.
When compared to Classic, list views have much greater functionality in Lightning with the likes of pinning, resizing columns, and more. But one of the greatest list features is the ability to view records at different stages grouped together in a fresh-looking Kanban view. Check out this guide on how to get going with the Kanban view.
Along with the Winter ‘24 release came the next step for Leads and Contacts List Views, respectively Intelligence Views. Both of these can be enabled via Setup with just a couple clicks. Activities are front and center on these pages, as the goal is to easily keep track of engaged or even idle Leads or Contacts.
3. Inline Editing
Now available for both list views and reports, inline editing is a functionality you’ll be wondering why you hadn’t heard about until now.
Inline editing allows you to quickly update fields across one or multiple records. While inline editing for Salesforce reports is a relatively new functionality, the list view alternative has been around for a long time. Both of these can be enabled by a Salesforce Admin.
The concept is the same for both ways of inline editing – from either a list view or report, you can double click and edit the fields (the little pen icon next to them).
Depending on where your users would like to make use of in-line editing, this is now an option within the Salesforce Chrome Extension Workspace Tab. Following significant updates, the new Sales Cloud Everywhere experience allows users to either make use of the out of the box Lead, Account, Opportunity or Contact lists or create their own.
4. Customize My Pages
Something as simple as the amount of information from the object page can improve the overall experience, as well as the performance.
This small setting is not something that’s commonly known, but it’s important to note that you can make personal preferences such as which related lists appear when looking at an object record page. Beyond this, you can order the related lists to your liking without affecting your colleagues.
Additionally, you can let users know that they can also choose the way the Activities are displayed, either as a Related List or Activity Timeline.
Both of these pages can be found by navigating your user settings, under the Display & Layout category.
5. Pipeline Inspection
One other relatively new Salesforce out-of-the-box feature is Pipeline Inspection. This can become a sales manager’s best friend as it provides key information pertaining to an individual rep’s or team’s forecast for a given time period.
You can also make use of extra information for reporting such as the Push Count field. This represents the number of times the Opportunity’s Close Date was delayed by one calendar month. You can also explore the Chart Tab within Pipeline Inspection to easily filter on the individual forecast data you need with just a few clicks.
This feature is free with certain Salesforce editions. Feel free to share this guide with your Salesforce Admin as they will need to enable this functionality and assign the proper permissions.
6. Einstein Search
Next up is Einstein Search, which Salesforce guarantees will help you “work faster and smarter” – and it lives up to the expectation. Like many others, this feature should be enabled by your Salesforce Administrator and it is available for most Salesforce editions within the Lightning Experience.
As a user, the biggest advantages for you are definitely easy access to related records (and record specific actions), as well as the return of a custom filtered list based on natural language search with phrases such as “My Accounts” or “Opportunities Created Last Month”.
For example, you can easily create a Case related to an Account (without even opening the Account) with immediate access to all other related lists.
7. Salesforce Navigation Your Way
Firstly, let’s start with Salesforce. Do you see the pencil icon on the far right of your navigation bar? Click on it to reorder items and rename any custom list views or records you have added to the navigation bar as long as your Salesforce Admin has allowed this option for the Lightning App you’re in.
In the top, right-hand corner menu you can control your display density with two options: Comfy and Compact. These will change the amount of information shown on the screen – fantastic if you want to squeeze in as much as possible!
For users who are splitting their time between the CRM and other web pages, such as Company Websites or LinkedIn for example, the Salesforce Chrome Extensions recently got a significant makeover.
The functionality can be accessed from a side panel either by clicking on the Salesforce cloud logo in the extensions list, or by using commands (⌘ + E on MacBook / Alt + E on PC). Users can directly search Salesforce records, log activities, create or update Accounts or Opportunities for example, and even in-line edit multiple records through the use of the Workspaces tab.
8. Use Reports and Dashboards to Analyze Metrics
Next up on the list of Salesforce tips: reports and dashboards. I’m sure that any Salesforce user reading this has seen a report or two in their life. But have you created one? Reports aren’t just for admins to generate, they are simple to create and extremely insightful.
Your manager or admin will have probably set up some reports and dashboards for you that show key KPIs and statistics – if not, then ask them to! But for any insights you want to gain from your own records, just create a report.
- Where do my biggest deals come from? (Lead Source)
- How long does it take me to close a deal?
- What industry are most of my accounts in?
- What’s the resolution for most of my cases?
All the above questions (and more!) can easily be answered by creating a report or a Salesforce dashboard if information from multiple reports is required.
On top of that, if you are an Admin of an Unlimited or Unlimited+ Salesforce Instance, you can also make use of the possibility of embedding text or even images within your Dashboards, as a way to offer further instructions or just make the experience more user friendly.
9. Favorites and Global Actions
Found at the top right corner of Salesforce lightning pages, the star icon representing Favorites is exactly what you need to quickly save quite a few clicks! This feature works just like the browser bookmarks, and not only can you mark as favorites Reports or Dashboards, but individual records and list views are supported too.
You can re-order or remove items from the list at any time using the little arrow next to the star and the edit option and search through the list since at this time one might have as much as 200 favorites.
Sitting alongside your favorites icon is another handy symbol that can help you create records fast – the plus sign gives you access to Global Actions.
These can be accessed from any Salesforce page, and while out-of-the-box actions are available, your Salesforce Admin can also add custom ones in there at any time.
10. Utility Bar
The Utility Bar can be enabled by your admin for a new or existing Lightning App – it’s a bar at the bottom of the screen and has clickable items that open in a smaller panel for easier access.
History, notes, and even list views are available to be added out of the box, but custom items can be created by your Salesforce team and added to the utility bar.
11. Tasks, Activities & Emails
If by any chance you’re not already utilizing any of these, you are missing out on some of the core functionality of this powerful CRM system.
The three elements mentioned above do require you to insert a little bit of extra data into Salesforce, which some might say fall into the admin category. But trust me, as a sales user myself, I can tell you it’s worth it.
- Activities let you log interactions that have happened with your customer, record important meeting notes, or brief comments about why you interacted with that client.
- Tasks allow you to create an action for yourself to follow up. You can set a date, a reminder, and a brief description. Bonus – you can even set tasks for others!
- Emails allow you to send emails out to clients directly from Salesforce. You can do this within Salesforce, taking advantage of time-saving features like email templates. The email will also automatically save to Salesforce so you don’t need to log that activity! Learn how to create email templates here.
Once you and your team have started using Activities in Salesforce, the obvious next step you will probably look into is finding ways to automate the sync between the calendar and/or email. This is where Einstein Activity Capture comes into play.
In reality, users might forget to send all emails from Salesforce for example, and even if they are using the Outlook or Gmail add-in, it’s still a manual step. From the get go, Activity Capture allows you to choose what to sync, and in addition to the actual Activities, you can even sync Contacts or benefit from standard or custom Insights. Wouldn’t your Sales Managers like to immediately see if pricing was ever discussed in an email at a glance?
12. Screen Flows
Finally, the last of my top Salesforce tips which is powered by a core functionality but does require you to actually define and build the processes, Salesforce Flows – more specifically in this example, Screen Flows.
Tailoring the experience in Salesforce is a tale as old as time, as different companies do have different processes and styles of working. Up until Screen Flows were launched, the ability to create a multi-step multi-screen wizard-like experience was something a Developer would have had to support. Not only is this no longer the case today, but you can actually build and maintain complex experiences faster, for both internal and external use – these can be embedded into Actions, Record Pages or why not, the Homepage.
Additionally, you can also make use of the newer enhancement which allows for reactive screen components, hence removing the need for more clicks between pages.
Summary
As with any tool in the tech stack, learning to optimize Salesforce for your day-to-day tasks takes time. These Salesforce tips are here to help you speed up this process with amazing out-of-the-box functionalities.
If you are a user or an admin, leveraging the functionalities above will ensure an increase in productivity with a low level of setup effort.