Work Smarter, Not Harder: Rebooting the Salesforce Admin Role

Published in

AppExchange and the Salesforce Ecosystem

5 min readNov 25, 2020

(This is Part 2 of a multi-part series by Passage Technology: Reinventing Your Business, Reimagining Your Salesforce — see Part 1. In other entries for this series, we’ll be going in-depth on topics such as how Salesforce Admins can employ new approaches and empower their business partners. In addition, how businesses can streamline operations and objectively evolve strategic decision-making, ensuring group buy-in and productive innovation. And finally how to execute efficient project planning in the Salesforce environment, to be agile while achieving your goals for reinvention.)

For much of the working world, the global pandemic has changed the ways businesses and people interact and operate — in some ways permanently. The pace of change has been dramatically quick. Innovate, adapt, and survive are the buzzwords used to describe how to respond to the pandemic.

Still, the business cycle has always rewarded those who embrace change. And for Salesforce Admins and Developers, in many ways, the New Normal is not all that different from the old one - it’s just been put on steroids. There’s more to do because their company’s employees and partners have new sets of needs as they deal with the changes the New Normal has imposed on them.

But Admins and Developers of Salesforce customers have always been solving unique problems, learning new skill sets, and employing tools that are constantly changing. Let’s take a closer look at how Admins and Developers can streamline operations to work smarter, not harder.

The Constant Churn: Writing, Deploying, and Maintaining Code

One area to focus on is reducing the need for custom Apex code. An Admin’s internal business customers need data translated into valuable information. This means time and energy are expended developing insights and creating reports that drive the business forward.

This is an opportunity to reimagine the use of Salesforce. By using clicks instead of code to deploy data rollups and lookups, Salesforce Admins and Developers can alleviate the constant churn caused by customization. Streamlining configurations may reveal opportunities for serving internal customers - reinventing the business and working smarter, not harder.

Connect the Dots: Rolling Up Child-Parent Data

Many businesses need to aggregate data from child records on a parent record to, for example, see the sum or average of closed Won Opportunities on a Custom Object, such as Industry. Or to choose the first or last child record, and then display a key piece of text, such as the first Campaign that triggered a response at an Account.

With a free app like Rollup Helper, available on the AppExchange, all data types can be rolled up using either a Master-Detail or Lookup relationship through an easy-to-use interface. Filters can be quickly created with Rollup Helper’s filter builder that includes canned date filters. In just a few seconds, the rollup can be used in a list view, report/dashboard, page layout, validation rule or other process/workflow. Cross-object references and any type of formula field can be used in either the filter part of the rollup or as the source of the rollup.

A number of enterprises have reinvented their businesses using Rollup Helper. For example, FineMark Bank needed a broader view of their client detail in one simple step. AskNicely, a customer experience platform provider, needed a tool that would give them more options, real-time data, simplify their multiple reports, and quickly provide actionable data for their executive team during a crisis like the pandemic.

Maintain and Automate: Looking Up Child-Parent Relationships

Salesforce lookup fields are used to relate different records to each other. They’re great for showing relevant data all in the same place. And as a company’s database grows, so does its need for linking the data via lookups. This means customization and Apex code are often required from Admins and Developers.

A free app like Lookup Helper, which you can find on the AppExchange, is designed specifically to enhance standard lookup functionality, leveraging the standard Salesforce related lists and lookup hover-over capabilities. It populates fields using predefined or user-designed settings so it doesn’t have to be manually set every time.

Admin Helpers, Better Together: Rollups and Lookups

When Admins and Developers employ the right solutions for Salesforce data optimization, their work gets easier to manage, their internal customers become more productive, and their companies reinvent themselves - becoming more nimble and able to navigate change.

Rollup Helper and Lookup Helper are often used in tandem to achieve results. Some examples:

Roll up organization-wide metrics — Create a single object with a single record for the organization. Then, set up lookups to link each source record to it, producing a global SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, MIN, COUNT across all records tied to that organization-wide record.
Categorize/group records (e.g. opportunities) into regions — Provide regional VP/senior leadership instant visibility to regional rollups/forecasts. Also view available personnel in a geographical area. Just roll up the chosen source field into each region to get started.
Group records into time period buckets — Easily build dashboards or rollups by time period — it’s like having a report or dashboard follow Salesforce users around, relevant to the record being viewed. This feature becomes a kind of mini-analytics cloud.
Re-align territory and other geographic reporting by moving accounts, contacts, and opportunities under a zip code, district, or other location — For example, display the count of accounts, contacts, or the sum of total closed won sales amount for each segment to track forecasts/potentials and actuals/history in those segments.
Reduce or eliminate maintenance — Lookup Helper maintains and keeps your relationships up to date, so you’ll never have records related to incorrect parents, and your users can work efficiently.

Conclusion

Leveraging the innovative solutions found on the AppExchange can allow Salesforce Admins and Developers to streamline productivity, and begin to work smarter, not harder.

These videos on Monthly or YOY Reporting and Sales Rep Reporting can help you further your understanding of how using Rollup Helper and Lookup Helper together can help.

To learn more about Passage Technology’s apps and services Contact Us, or visit the Rollup Helper and Lookup Helper overview pages. You can also find the apps on the AppExchange.