by Mike Walsh | Dec 30, 2016 | Salesforce Tips
It’s that time again. The year is almost at its end, and that means it’s time to share with you our annual countdown. In previous years, we’ve shared our favorites and the posts with the most hits, but this year, we wanted to share the posts you really focused on. This year’s top 10 is a list of the posts our readers have spent the most time reading and re-reading. If you’ve not seen them yet, pull up a comfy chair and pour over them. And if you have, I hope you’ll share with us how you’ve used these tips in 2016!
- JavaScript makes multi-select picklists work with dynamic Salesforce Reports
If you couldn’t tell, we use Dynamic Reports for a lot at CloudMyBiz, but we have run into some issues in the past when dealing with multi-select picklists. This trick helped us amp up the value of those reports.
- The long and short of Joined Reports in Salesforce
Joined Reports are an incredible tool in Salesforce, and one that many Salesforce customers overlook. This is an overview we prepared on how to leverage those Reports for your business.
- Choosing the right phone integration for Salesforce
This is an old favorite of ours. More and more of our clients are choosing a CTI (computer telephony integration) every day, and the document on this post has helped many of them choose the right tool for their team based on features and budget.
- Celebrating 100 posts: The Dreamforce Experience
I went to Dreamforce for my first time last year, and one of the next posts was our 100th Tip of the Week. In this post, I shared my experiences at Dreamforce. If you’ve never gone and are considering going in the next year, I strongly recommend reading over this post!
- Barcodes in Salesforce are that bleeping simple
Every time I pull up our numbers for the blog, this post makes the top 10. There are so many reasons you may consider implementing barcodes for your org, and this tip gives you a simple solution to get up and running today.
- Put your trust in Salesforce with the new Trust site
The new Trust site is up and running, and looking better than ever! If you’ve not seen it yet, I recommend checking out this post and heading over to trust.salesforce.com.
- Never lose a thing with Tags in Salesforce
This one surprised me – I never expected this post to make any of our top 10 lists! If organization is a struggle for you, I recommend checking out this post, as well as the newer feature, Topics!
- Track target vs. actual with a simple Report in Salesforce
If you had to choose a theme for our Top 10, it would be Reporting – hands down. And this cool trick helps you create a simple, powerful Target vs. Actual Report in your Salesforce org.
- LiveMessage connects Salesforce, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and more
This year has been all about acquisitions for Salesforce, and this was one of the more exciting ones on the list. Check out this new feature that brings SMS messaging and more to Salesforce!
- Plan your move to Salesforce Lightning
Lightning has been all the rave in the Salesforce world, and this tip, the post with the longest read time, can help you decide when your org will be ready to make the Lightning transition. Check it out!
Thank you for reading our blog, and we look forward to sharing a whole bunch more exciting tips in 2017. Happy New Years!
-Jared and the Salesforce Guys
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Dec 31, 2015 | Salesforce Tips
2016 is almost upon us, and with it comes resolutions galore. This is the time of the year when we all look back upon the people we have been and the people we’d like to be. In the past, I’ve closed out the year with a retrospective of top tips, but this year, I’d like to look forward. This year, resolve to get the most out of your Salesforce investment with these 10 brand new quick tips you can start implementing right away.
10. Read the release notes for the latest Salesforce release.
Knowing the newest features will help you identify the best ways to leverage new tools to improve your org. If you’re intimidated by the full notes, check out the video synopsis that accompanies each release. There’s no excuse to pass over this quick and easy 5 – 10-minute video!
9. YouTube is your friend.
You and your team can learn so much from YouTube videos provided by Salesforce, implementation partners, and regular users and admins in the field. I strongly recommend you subscribe to Salesforce’s channel and any others you find with great stuff!
8. Create a Salesforce training plan for your team.
With tools like Trailhead, you don’t have to work very hard to put together a comprehensive training plan. And if you offer incentives to your team for completing training (gift cards, extra vacation, maybe a drawing for a new iPad), you’re sure to see results!
7. Identify your power users.
Who in your office has been there forever? Who knows all of the inner workings of their job? Who does your team go to when they have a question? Once you know who they are, make sure they’re power users in Salesforce as well. They can take the burden off of IT, executives, and your implementation partner by answering day-to-day questions, training new members, and maybe even helping their team build valuable new Reports.
6. Don’t underestimate standard Salesforce functionality.
You’d be surprised how much Salesforce can do out of the box with minimal implementation efforts. From assignment rules to email-to-case to duplicate management and beyond, there’s so much you don’t have to build from scratch and can implement with a few quick clicks, not code. If you know what Salesforce can do, you’ll really maximize your ROI, save loads in development efforts, and may even make major strides overnight!
5. Follow Salesforce experts on social media.
I’ve told you about #askforce a number of times, and it is still one of my favorite resources. But if you really want to get the most out of the Salesforce community, follow the content creators, the developers, the experts who are answering questions and helping users like you. You never know the gems you’ll find in their feeds!
4. Attend a Salesforce Meetup or User Group.
There are countless Salesforce meetups and user groups all over the country targeted at admins, users, nonprofits, developers, consultants, and everyone else you could possibly imagine. Check out Meetup.com for events in your area and pop out to one of these awesome parties. You’ll learn tips and tricks, have the opportunity to get hands-on experience, hear what the leaders in your industry are doing to leverage their Salesforce platform, and meet some incredible people who will become your best resources…and friends! And if you’re in LA and see a guy knitting in one of the events, he’s probably me. Come say hi!
3. Get to know the AppExchange.
Every week, we bring you a new, exciting, interesting, or powerful tool from the AppExchange, but we’ll never cover all of the 1000’s of apps. If you’re having trouble doing something in your system, or maybe just have a new idea to make things flow more smoothly, head over there and try a couple searches. You might just find the next big thing.
2. Build something new for your team.
It doesn’t have to be big or flashy. It doesn’t have to be complicated. But implementing a new feature can generate excitement, bolster your training efforts, and quickly balloon your user adoption goals. If you need some good examples of features you could implement, here’s a couple quick projects you can do yourself.
1. Find an in-house Salesforce administrator.
Hire one, train one, it doesn’t matter. When you have a workflow that needs updating, a picklist value that needs adding, a user that needs creating, you need immediate results. And no matter how good your implementation partner is, they’ll never beat the speed of walking over to someone’s desk, telling them what you need, and seeing results materialize before your eyes. And when the next big project comes along, your administrator can play a crucial role in helping translate your business requirements into Salesforce needs and solutions to ensure your vision is maintained and you get the results you’re hoping for.
-Jared and the Salesforce Guys
Cover image by Joelle Diane
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Nov 25, 2015 | Salesforce Tips
Salesforce is an incredible tool out of the box. Take a peek around a new Salesforce org and you’ll see Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, Cases. Maps display natively to give you a visual of where your customers are located. Reports and Dashboards let you organize and visualize your data. With a little configuration, you can have Email-to-Case and Web-to-Lead up and running in no time, create automatic assignment rules, and spin up some powerful workflow automations which will save you seconds and hours every day.
But the real power of Salesforce lives in the AppExchange. Thousands of apps come prepackaged with tools ready to help your team drive success. With Salesforce, the sky’s the limit, and by leveraging prebuilt tools from the AppExchange, you can go from the 0 to 10,000 feet in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the cost it would take if you built everything yourself. These are some of the apps we’re most thankful for (presented in no particular order), as they allow our customers to grow and scale at record speed.
5. Conga Composer
Conga Composer was our App of the Year back in 2013. Conga lets you automatically generate a wide range of documents straight from Salesforce. Contracts, work orders, invoices, even spreadsheets and presentations can be created with the click of a button, automatically on a scheduled basis, or based on an update to a record in Salesforce. And with a little creativity, you can even have Conga choose the right template based on the scenario – different contracts for different States, different data based on the type of customer, the possibilities are endless!
4. DocuSign
If you send contracts or other documents requiring signatures to your clients, you should really check out DocuSign. DocuSign lets you easily merge, send, and get electronic signatures back on all of your documents, and can help accelerate your sales cycle. Because electronic signatures are so convenient, you’ll get more signed contracts, and you’ll get them faster. And if that wasn’t enough, DocuSign works hand-in-hand with Conga, making even complex, variable contracts a breeze to prep, send, and get back signed.
3. InsideSales
Call centers, sales teams, customer support offices, you spend your life on the phone. Having the ability to quickly click a link and make a call to a client is huge. Letting the system dial your call list so that you can stay on the phone and get things done is incredible. And having a call routed directly to the right sales or support rep, the customer’s record popping up on the screen as they answer the call? That’s a game changer. InsideSales is one of the most powerful CTI tools on the market! And if it’s not quite the right fit, check out this handy guide to help you choose the right CTI provider!
2. GridBuddy
Making the move from Excel to Salesforce means getting an insanely more powerful system that can grow and scale with you. It also means moving away from a very comfortable and intuitive user interface to something that requires some more clicks to get all the information you’re looking for. GridBuddy is the tool that brings the simplicity of Excel to the power of Salesforce by giving you customizable, simple grids of your Salesforce data. If you’re new to the idea of CRMs, you’re going to want to check it out!
1. Cirrus Insight
Google Apps has become one of the most widely utilized email hosts on the market, and loads of businesses live in Gmail all day. If your team uses Gmail and Salesforce, you’ll want to check out Cirrus Insight. It’s one of the best Salesforce-to-email connectors on the market!
Bonus: XIRR Calculator
If you’re a lender or broker, all of the above apps are perfect for you. They’ll help you streamline your processes and get more deals closed in less time. But we created this little gem with you in mind. This app is designed to streamline calculating XIRR on a deal. Just enter the funding and repayment amounts, terms, fees, and commissions, click calculate, and you have your answer. Easy.
-Jared and the Salesforce Guys
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Sep 18, 2015 | Blog, Salesforce Tips, Tips and Tricks
Image by Joelle Diane
It’s hard to believe, but this week is our 99th Tip of the Week. Almost two years have gone by since we first shared with you some of our favorite Salesforce workarounds, and since then, we’ve worked hard to bring you a new tip, trick, hack, or solution for common Salesforce challenges every week. I’m writing this post from my first Dreamforce experience, and next week’s 100th will (probably) be focused on what I’ve learned, but for now I bring you my personal favorite top 10 tips from the last 98.
10. Barcodes in Salesforce are that bleeping simple
I have run into a couple situations where I needed barcodes in Salesforce, and happened on this solution. It’s so quick and easy to implement that it will always make my top 10.
9. Maps in Salesforce will be a game changer Spring ’15
And they have been! This feature generated a lot of excitement, and over the last several months, it has been thoroughly loved by everyone I know in the Salesforce world!
8. A quick life hack to enhance your Salesforce experience
This tip was completely out of left field, but for those of you with big, tall pages and documents to read, it can be a real life-changer. Think desktop meets iPad (without the iPad Pro investment).
7. The dos and don’ts of Salesforce Chatter
I wasn’t expecting how popular this tip was going to be when I wrote it, but it made its rounds in a big way. I hadn’t realized how many people were looking for a primer on what to do with Chatter.
6. Calculate business days between two dates in Salesforce
This simple solution can be a real help to businesses for whom business day response time is crucial – which accounts for a large number of businesses. I love these simple copy/paste solutions.
5. A whole new world in Salesforce with one simple Visualforce page
Speaking of copy/paste solutions, this one can bring some amazing features to your org with very little effort. I’ve received a number of phone calls from other Salesforce partners wanting to implement it.
4. Ready, set, integrate with Salesforce to Salesforce
People don’t realize how easy it is to integrate two Salesforce orgs together with Salesforce-to-Salesforce, but it can completely reinvent how two teams work together.
3. Choosing the right phone integration for Salesforce
This post is a go-to for me when people ask me about CTI adapters. There are so many options on the market, and this can really help you choose the right solution for your team.
2. It’s easy to create dynamic Reports in Salesforce
This tip took a lot of effort to write, but it serves as a primer for my team whenever they need to learn how to build dynamic Reports. The step-by-step instructions break it down so that anyone can do it!
1. Hack Away at work with URL hacking in Salesforce
This is one of our most revisited posts, and I’ve heard from developers in and out of my office that they come back to this time and again every time they are trying to prepare custom URL hacks. If you’re looking for simple instructions, I walk you through it and make it as easy as I can.
Keep an eye out for many more tips and tricks over the next two years and beyond! I look forward to celebrating our 100th post next week, and sharing with you our 200th and more! Thanks for reading.
-Jared and the Salesforce Guys
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Sep 18, 2015 | Blog, Salesforce-Apps-AppExchange
Image by Joelle Diane
If you’ve read our Tip of the Week already, you know that this is our 99th post, and we’re looking back over the posts that came before. The last 98 apps have been a collection of old favorites and new gems, apps from the AppExchange, apps for Chrome, iPhones and Androids, apps to help you do your job better, faster, more efficiently. This week’s tip highlights my personal favorites, and in this post, I’ll be sharing yours. Below are the top 10 most visited Apps of the Week. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you check them out!
10. Rollup to success with Rollup Helper in Salesforce
Use Rollup Helper to create data roll-ups that will provide insights you could never have before. With Rollup Helper, you can turn your data into information even for your most complex rollup scenarios. All data stays safe and secure in your org.
Note: This app is really helpful when you’re trying to roll up data from related objects which are not Master-Detail.
9. Clicks not code to schedule Apex jobs in Salesforce with JobBook
JobBook provides a single interface from which you can manage your scheduled Apex jobs in Salesforce.com. Using JobBook you can easily schedule, modify and view scheduled Apex jobs from a single interface. JobBook allows you to schedule Apex jobs, then activate and deactivate Apex jobs with a single click.
8. Calculate rate of return in Salesforce with the XIRR Calculator
If you’re a lender or broker, you know how hard it can be to find your return on investment. That’s why we created the XIRR Calculator. Enter the funding and repayment amounts, terms, fees, and commissions, click calculate, and you have your answer. Easy.
7. Shortcut Ninja saves you time with keyboard shortcuts in Salesforce
Shortcut Ninja adds keyboard hotkeys to the sidebar to increase productivity by boosting the speed of navigating through your apps. Toggle features such as Chatter on and off, or quickly create new tasks and events.
6. Measure engagement with Salesforce Chatter Usage Dashboards
The Chatter Adoption Dashboard includes 20 dashboard components and reports for a broad view into your org’s usage of Chatter. Extend it with your own new reports by using the 7 included Chatter custom report types!
5. Salesforce1, a game changer!
For the first time, Salesforce is releasing two mobile apps that enable administrators to manage their own instance from anywhere. These apps will provide real-time updates and allow admins to remotely reset user passwords if needed. It will also manage who has access to the Salesforce CRM and can review the maintenance and upgrade schedules at any time.
Note: Even though Salesforce1 has been out for a while, it is still a game-changer. The user interface has been so impactful for Salesforce customers that it has served as the basis for the new Lightning Experience!
4. Get hundreds of images for Salesforce with the Graphics Pack
‘Graphics Pack’ contains hundreds of images / icons that can be used in salesforce applications for tabs, image formulas, and Visualforce pages.
3. Account Dashboards give a 360 degree view of Accounts in Salesforce
This free app adds dashboards to your Account record pages. See year over year sales, identify buying trends, and get visibility in to what products customers have bought in the past, to quickly and visually identify areas for growth in key accounts.
2. Automate your process with Action Plans in Salesforce
Action Plans encapsulates best practices into reusable task templates. An Action Plan can be created for an Account, Opportunity, Contact, Lead, Campaign, Case or Contract. Template tasks can be pre-assigned to a specific individual, assigned to the running user or assigned to a running user.
1. Trello-ify Salesforce with the Opportunity Planning Wall
Got lost in you sales pipeline? Do you need a more visual and interactive tool for sales planning? The Opportunity Planning Wall displays sales opportunities as cards on a virtual wall and lets you filter, group & modify on one simple screen. It’s free.
Note: This feature will now be natively available in the Salesforce Lightning Experience.
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
