Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we talk to Ted Hazard, to learn more about productivity in Lightning. For February and March, we’re setting our sights on productivity with a series of topics to help you focus on being a productive Admin and how you can deliver productivity to your users.

Join us as Ted Hazard shares with us how he rolled out Lightning at his sales organization, and how that helped drive productivity for both his users and his Admin team.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ted Hazard.

An incremental Lightning rollout.

Ted did an incredible presentation at Dreamforce about how he rolled out Lightning to his org and specifically the productivity that it helped deliver to his end users. “When we moved to Lightning,” Ted says, “we wanted to be more productive and we knew that Lightning all its great features was the way to do that.”

They rolled it out to their sales team and took an approach of rapid iteration: “Our mantra was to go quickly and make small adjustments.” They deployed Lightning with permission sets in small groups of users so Ted and his team could sit down with them to get real-time feedback as they were doing their jobs. This process helped them jumpstart all of the great productivity features they ended up implementing over the course of their rollout.

Pick your champions.

“The first thing we did is started using Lightning ourselves as Administrators,” Ted says, “and the first thing we learned is that change is hard.” Even in setup, it takes an adjustment period to get used to a new UI, so it gave his team an important bit of perspective.

The next step was to identify the different roles in the sales department, and then pick out a champion for each one to sit down with and work on improvements. Working role by role helped them structure their workflow and nail the incremental adjustments they needed. Picking the champions was key, and that involved a lot of communication with management and, specifically, seeking out people who were enthusiastic about technology and what it could do for their workflow.

Ted’s easy productivity wins.

In a sales organization it’s incredibly important to be productive, so what were the biggest productivity wins that Ted saw when he rolled out Lightning? The main one that really changed things overnight was creating helpful related lists, especially of stale opportunities that could go straight to every business development rep’s workspace.

Beyond that, the kanban board list view was insanely helpful, as well as the ability Lightning has to organize information into beautiful charts: “You can look at lists and lists of information but as soon as you put it into a chart it might give you an insight you haven’t had before.” Page layouts were also a hit, with Ted and his team taking advantage of their ability to show fields on related records to cut down on clicks for their end users.

SABSA

Ted didn’t quite do a SABWA approach, it was more like SABSA: Salesforce Administration By Sitting Around. Ted’s team booked a conference room and sat down next to their champions while they did their jobs and gave them feedback. They were able to make the changes right away because other people weren’t using Lightning yet, “so we could make the changes live in production without impacting anybody.” This made it easier to tweak things and get it just right.

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Direct download: Interview__How_Ted_Hazard_Delivers_Productivity_with_Lightning.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:46pm PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to (drumroll) Mike Gerholdt! The Original ButtonClick Admin is back to talk about SABWA (Salesforce Administration By Walking Around) and the power of peer pressure.

More about this Insights session: Why SABWA helps you get into the world and make the connections you need to drive adoption.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mike Gerholdt and Gillian Bruce.

SABWha?

Mike coined the term “SABWA,” which stands for Salesforce Administration By Walking Around. When he was preparing for a Dreamforce presentation in 2012 with Jared Miller, they created a concept of making the rounds to see how your users are doing but, at the time, they didn’t quite have a catchy way to sum it all up. When they realized that since everything’s an acronym, they figured they might as well hop on the bandwagon—and SABWA was born.

For Gillian, SABWA comes up all the time when she’s talking with users about best practices. Ultimately, if you want to be an Awesome Admin, you need to really understand how your users work. This is especially key if you want to see results with adoption.

Using SABWA to drive adoption.

The idea behind SABWA is to avoid that “SNL relationship” where you’re an IT guy who shows up out of nowhere and makes everyone’s lives harder. Instead of keeping hidden behind the curtain, SABWA is about getting out there, meeting with your users, seeing how they do things, and becoming a part of their workspace.

“As an Admin, you always see the perfect scenario,” Mike says, “but then you roll it out to your users and wonder why it isn’t adopted.” What you’re not realizing is that everyone’s workspace is different, and your new workflow isn’t so effective when there’s two phones ringing at once and a bunch of cases to manage.

It’s also about establishing a personal relationship with your users. They know you’re a resource that they can engage with, rather than just a picture of someone’s head that posts something to Chatter every now and again.

Why SABWA is great for your career.

SABWA also helps you become a better business analyst, which gives you valuable experience you can use to help grow your career. “It allows you spend one minute in sales and the next minute in service,” Mike says, “and that lets you identify gaps that can help connect more of your business together.”

In-person is the best, and even though Mike is famous for intentionally leaving an empty seat in the audience so he can “pop in” and have coffee with someone to demonstrate SABWA, it’s best to set up a 15-minute session in advance so you’re not showing up at a busy time. If you’re remote, you can still take advantage of screen share and chat to get a sense of how your team goes about its business.

To strategize, it’s a good idea to sit down with the manager or stakeholder and identify who the “power users” are: the reps who handle the most cases or the employees that have been around the longest. At the same time, Mike says, “You want both ends of the spectrum,” so you also want to see if you can get some time with new people who are maybe still learning the ropes.

How SABWA creates the good kind of peer pressure.

When it comes to driving adoption, peer pressure is a powerful tool to be able to get things moving. “Besides learning about users, SABWA also builds an internal army of advocates,” Mike says, “Look for the users that are asking questions a lot to identify who is super passionate.” You can use training sessions with these users to get them excited about helping the other members of their team use new features. This creates that valuable peer pressure that helps get you over the tipping point with adoption.

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Direct download: Insight__The_Power_of_Peer_Pressure__SABWA_with_Mike_Gerholdt.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:18am PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re checking in with Vladimir Gerasimov, Senior Manager of Product Management at Salesforce, to learn more about the new time field type coming in Spring ‘18.

Join us as Vladimir Gerasimov shares how time fields can help you become an awesome Admin and even drive adoption.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Vladimir Gerasimov.

How the Time field works.

Vladimir has been working on a new feature called the time field. In Salesforce, there was a field type for date and daytime, but there wasn’t a specific field for time. It’s available in beta for Winter ‘18 in Sandbox or Developer Edition orgs, and it’s going to be in open beta in Spring ‘18.

It works kind of like a clock on the wall. So, why is this important? If you think about a hotel, guests are always checking in or out at a particular time. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in San Francisco or New York, the ‘wall clock’ time is always the same,” says Vladimir. Another example would be something like scheduling shifts. The 12-8 pm shift is going to be to start at 12 pm, even though the NYC shift starts 3 hours earlier than in California.

Other time features coming to the party.

The time field doesn’t come to the party alone. It’s also bringing some functions along with it to manipulate time value. You can calculate durations, like how many hours someone’s spent volunteering. “In Spring 18 we’re making these time formulas easier,” Vladimir said, which will let you figure out durations and convert those results to any time value you want, whether that’s minutes or milliseconds.

Also coming Spring ‘18 is making the Time field reportable, so you’ll be able to use it in dashboards and Lightning components. The beta is a little limited right now, but for Vladimir and his team that’s okay: “We think it’s more important to let people try things, and then enhance them.”

How you can try the time field for yourself.

If you want to get your hands on the time field while it’s still a pilot beta feature, you’ll want to reach out to your supports and file a case. “At some point, that case winds up on my plate as a beta nomination,” Vladimir says, so once you provide some details about how you’ll use it you can get it pretty easily. “I haven’t denied anyone yet,” Vladimir says.

For Spring ‘18, the time field is the biggest development for Vladimir and his team, but there are a couple of things coming with Einstein...

Links:

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

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Direct download: Interview__New_Time_Fields_with_Vladimir_Gerasimov_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:34pm PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Zayne Turner, Lead Developer Evangelist at Salesforce, to talk about features that can help you drive adoption at your organization.

More about this Insights session: Zayne has a lot of experience with features as a Developer Evangelist, so listen as we get into a deep discussion about how specific features can help get your team onboard.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Zayne Turner and Gillian Bruce.

Features and coffee.

“Features are like adding things to your coffee,” Zayne says. Not everyone takes their coffee the same way, and similarly, some features are going to be perfect for your team but not so perfect for the other folks down the hall. “People need things there for them to help them use the tool.”

“Executive buy-in is how you make a rollout sustainable,” Zayne says, and features can really make that persuasive case you need to make. For executive level, you want to find a to help them quickly and easily connect with what’s happening throughout the organization (dashboards are great for that).

Driving adoption comes down to relevance.

For Zayne, “relevance is the key” to get people to see the value and make a move to Lightning. Visualizing data is a quick way to get there, whether it’s a dashboard with key data points or report charts on record pages so your team can see what’s going on at a glance. The best part is that you don’t have to build a whole dashboard because you can just use the utility bar to put that anywhere on the app.

Ultimately, the key to adoption is to find ways to remove friction from the Salesforce experience and create a natural, seamless experience. “Make context wrap around your users: wherever they are in Salesforce they can get at what they need, and what they need isn’t hard to find.”

Diving into the Utility Bar.

Zayne has taught at a zillion Lightning Now tours, so she’s something of an expert in the utility bar. Gillian is a fan of Chatter, and specifically the “Chatter Brag.” Another smooth move is to make a custom logo for a utility bar component to add a little more flavor to your app.

“The little touches that make it seem more personalized are great, but you also want to make sure you’re not overloading the utility bar either.” Instead, think about why your users would want to do a particular thing and go from there.

You want to make sure that you’re putting components in a useful place for how they’re going to be used. If it’s something that people are always doing throughout their day, you’re going to want to set it as a global action. Quick actions, on the other hand, “are a really great secret place for executive buys.” You can “action all the things” to hack productivity for your team.

Other Lightning features that can hack adoption.

In Lightning, any app can be a console app, which means you don’t have to have a zillion browser tabs open. The thing to realize is that “console is a navigation style and an increase in efficiency” because it gives you a lot of great options for getting info fast.

It was a “hallelujah moment” when Zayne saw that dynamic pages were coming in the Winter release. They let you get things out of the way when your users don’t need to see them or put stuff right in front of their face when they do need that information.

Favorites are also a fantastic way to help your users get where they want to go more quickly. “As someone who prides themselves on their Salesforce navigation skills, I was stubborn about using favorites for a while,” Zayne says. But when they were getting ready for the Dreamforce Developer Keynote she needed to do the same thing over and over, and when she finally favorited a couple of list views, it completely changed her view.

Trailhead:

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

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Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: Insights__Top_Features_That_Drive_Adoption_with_Zayne_Turner.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:39am PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking with James Goerke, Manager of Global Support at Velocity and Dreamforce 2017 speaker. We discuss adoption and how he got his boss to use Lightning.

Join us as James Goerke shares the strategies and tactics he used to kickstart a Lightning rollout in his organization.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with James Goerke.

Making a case for Lightning.

James’ company doesn’t have a Salesforce Admin as a defined role, which is common for a lot of businesses. He had a lot of experience with Salesforce, however, and so he was asked to jump in and do that job. When he got started, he quickly observed, “Our customers are moving to Lightning, so our business should be on the forefront of that, too.”

Regarding actually getting the rollout to happen, “It was easy to convince my boss from an emotional level,” James says, but the challenge was to show the value. Lightning dashboards are beautiful and appealing, but they’re ultimately like giving someone a dozen roses: “They look great, and they get you in the door, but you have to do really well afterward, too.”

The three steps to adoption.

In James’ adoption talk at Dreamforce, he went through three phases of getting management to buy in: define it, show it, and use it. So you start by defining what you can do with Lightning. James looked at what tasks his team performed over and over again every day and figured out that he could cut down a 2-minute activity to a 1-minute one. When you start talking about a multi-person team each performing that same task several times per day, that 50% reduction can really add up.

For showing it, it’s about taking advantage of all the dashboards that Lightning makes possible, and also maybe taking LeeAnne’s advice and putting together some demos. Finally, you need to use it: create a trusted group of users and get their feedback. At the end of the day, “even when a new process didn’t save me any time, it’s still easier,” and as James says, “and reducing frustration is a good thing no matter what.”

Rollouts as a player/coach.

James works remotely, and most of his team is remote too. He is very familiar with what they do on a day-to-day basis because he does a lot of the same things himself: “I’m in sort of a player/coach role.” It made it a lot easier to know the ins and outs of his teams’ processes because he defined them himself. With a bigger team, his advice is to do the research necessary to know exactly what your users are doing day-in and day-out, and why they do it the way that they do.

“One of my biggest challenges as a support manager is to balance my team,” James says, he needs to know how many cases are active and which agents are dealing with them. With Lightning, he has a dashboard component that he can quickly refresh to make a quick assessment of the work distribution in his team and assign tasks accordingly. Before, that process involved multiple tabs and a lot of waiting for refreshes, so Lightning has really saved him a significant amount of time.

Links:

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: Interview__How_James_Goerke_Moved_to_Lightning.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:48am PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Principal Admin Evangelist LeeAnne Rimel to find out how you can build demos to help drive adoption at your organization.

More about this Insights session: Join us as we look at how demos can drive adoption with Admin Evangelists Rimel & Gillian Bruce....

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel and Gillian Bruce.

Why Demos Are the Best Way to Drive Adoption

LeeAnne is the demo master on the Admin Evangelist team— she builds an app for everything. Demos make things a lot more tangible for your team, and as LeeAnne says, “The big reason that I build demos is that it’s a great way for people to understand it.”

The reason to go with a demo over an informational email or even a webinar is that it’s tangible, and you’ll come across things you didn’t expect. “If we’re explaining something verbally or putting it on a slide, we’re picking and choosing what features and areas we’re highlighting, but we can’t always anticipate what our end users need to see,” LeeAnne says. There might be something that’s not crucial to our demo, but a user will see it and have a question. “It’s a great way to help your audience think bigger and think about how they can apply it to what they’re doing.”

Demo Advice From the Demo Master

Other members of the Admin Evangelist team will vouch for the fact that what makes LeeAnne an amazing demo builder is that she’s able to focus on the story. It’s not just about what the demo is, but what the context is and how the audience will see it. For LeeAnne, the key is to start with “thoughtful discovery.”

“There’s a formula for creating a demo: business needs + feature + how will this delivery impact,” LeeAnne says. As an example, she points out that if you’re buying a car and the salesperson doesn’t ask you anything about what you need, they’ll spend a bunch of time showing you features that you don’t care about. So, “thoughtful discovery” would be making sure you take the time to talk to your team: what are the tools they’re using today? What are the friction points they encounter?

Once you understand your team’s needs, you can show them the features that they care about and use a demo to illustrate how those features drive impact.  If you can build your demo around the pain points and how a feature can help, they’ll see for themselves how it will make their day easier, which makes adoption much more manageable.

Demos All the Way Down

LeeAnne is so good at building demos that she’s actually made demos about building demos. To get ready for one of these demos, she has to do the opposite of what she’d usually do for a good demo: make her desktop really messy and leave a bunch of tabs open.

If you have a screen or video recording tool like Camtasia, it’s a great idea to make a quick screencast so your team can come back to it later. That way, you cut down on the number of times you have to run the demo. Speaking of recordings, there’s a 30-minute webinar that goes through all of the steps LeeAnne does before she runs a demo, “a pre-flight checklist if you will.”

Links:

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: Insight__Demos_for_Adoption_with_LeeAnne_Rimel.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:47pm PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking with Laura Maker, Director at Cloud for Good and Dreamforce 2017 speaker, to talk about adoption.

Join us as Laura Maker shares the communication tactics she uses to help her rollouts and implementations be successful.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Laura Maker.

Have a plan for Adoption.

For Laura, “The most important piece of advice I have is to have a plan.” Make a timeline, make sure everyone knows that schedule, and revisit it frequently. It’s easy to lose momentum once you get caught up in the details, so anything you can do to get everyone marching forward is valuable.

As others have said, adoption starts with leadership. “Your leader needs to make sure that they’re the first in line to set the example,” Laura says, which means making sure that they’re the ones who are making a move to Chatter. Even at Salesforce we sometimes struggle with getting everyone on Chatter, so keep your communications centralized, and you’ll have a strong start. In her organization, they have a Chatter group that exclusively functions as a changelog, which makes it easy for people to stay informed and asked questions.

Training is key.

Again and again, our conversation with Laura kept coming back around to the importance of training. For rollouts in general, it’s important to invest the time with your employees, so they know exactly where to go to get their daily work done and where to go for help. This is also important for something as simple as Chatter adoption. “Remind folks of what the assets are on the platform,” Laura says, and they’ll be more likely to take advantage of the new bells and whistles.

Not everyone learns the same way, so as you roll out more changes you’ll want to give people a variety of ways to take in the information. The first go-to is Chatter, but Laura will still send an email to catch late adopters. As you hit the 6-month slump, optional training sessions can give people a chance to refresh their memory.

The importance of communication.

The other key thing about adoption that we’ve heard from D’An, Marc, and now Laura, is the importance of communication. It’s a little harder if you can’t get everyone on Chatter, but it’s important to make sure that you’re always giving everyone a chance to speak. Invite people to give their feedback, and make sure that you respond to it in tangible ways.

During the show, we also got to hear where Laura falls on the great emoji debate: “Written language is so different than spoken communication and sometimes it’s so difficult to communicate tone through text.” That’s another vote in the pro column.

Links:

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: Interview__Using_Chatter_to_Drive_Adoption_with_Laura_Maker.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:07pm PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re kicking off the second component of our new format with our very first Insights episode. The idea behind Insights is to get a chance to sit down with the Admin Evangelist Team and take the time to have an in-depth discussion about a particular topic. This week, we’re talking about adoption.

More about this Insights session: Join us as we dig deep into adoption with Admin Evangelists Marc Baizman & Gillian Bruce....

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marc Baizman and Gillian Bruce.

Motivating Your Team to Adopt

Marc comes from a nonprofit background where, as he puts it, “there are wonderful, lovely people but technology is often not at the top of the list.” Because of that, the key is to find a way to get people to see the value in whatever you’re throwing at them. You want to show them that “they can get value quickly with a minimum of effort and fuss.” You need to think about how each person you’re talking to will see the value, and act accordingly.

The Admin Evangelist Team works in a custom Salesforce instance to track engineering and sprints. Recently, however, Gillian has found herself on the other side of adoption within this process. As she puts it, “I’m struggling to find my way to use it correctly.” Seeing the Dashboards her teammate, LeeAnne has built however, has motivated her to get more comfortable.

Sharing Dashboards

“When you see it all on a Dashboard, it becomes not a competition but a motivation,” Gillian says, “you want to see your name.” There’s even a Dashboard on the AppExchange for Lightning Adoption so that you can create a Wall of Fame and a Wall of Shame. However, Marc cautions: “Be careful when you share that stuff publicly because it depends on the behavior that you want to incentivize.”

Dashboards in Lightning are sexy, and not just because they look nice. You can have more than three columns, make specific components bigger to highlight them, and there are more component options than in Classic.

Dashboard Pro Tips

One of the biggest tips from Marc is that you can create one report to feed multiple dashboard components. It’s an easy way to group the same set of data several different ways to get the most out of your components. Dashboard filters are also a great way to give everyone on your team a shortcut to be able to look at the info they need. Look forward to the the improvements coming to the Lightning Report Builder (Beta) in the Spring ‘18 release.

Links:

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: Insight__Dashboards_for_Adoption_with_Marc_Baizman.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:54am PST

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re starting off our new format with an Interview episode with D’An Ervin, Senior Salesforce Admin at Seven Results and Dreamforce 2017 speaker, to talk about adoption.

Join us as D’An Ervin shares her experience as a solo Admin rolling out features to a global team and why it all starts with understanding things from your users’ perspective.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with D’An Ervin.

Why adoption is a trust exercise.

D’An has spoken quite a bit about adoption at recent Dreamforce events. For her, “It’s a trust exercise: several people depend on you in order to their job,” and because of that, “being consistent really does facilitate that trust.”

How do you build that trust? For D’An it’s about setting clear expectations. Tell them exactly what’s going to happen, and then make sure that you follow through on what you say. This process doesn’t just happen once at the beginning of a rollout but is instead a continual process as you add new things and train your team. As you might imagine, this means that one of the most important elements of any rollout is good communication.

Keeping communications organized.

In a rollout, it can be a real challenge simply making sure that everyone is on Chatter. D’An likes to set up communication guidelines at the beginning of the process. This helps to give people the lay of the land so they know exactly where to go for what, whether that’s to communicate key details or find important information. As D’An puts it, “It’s just like when we moved from phone calls to email or text.

The important thing is to get all of your information centralized. “As a solo Admin,” D’An says, “if you’re getting hit from different points of contact it’s really hard to prioritize when you’re taking care of so many other tasks.” You need to know where to start working through things each day, and your team needs to know where to go to get your attention.

An accidental adoption strategist.

Just like the accidental Admins we talk to every week on the show, D’An calls herself an accidental adoption strategist. “It came from me being a user first and understanding the pain points I was having when a new process was put in place,” she says. “Change is difficult for everyone, and when you don’t feel supported, it’s really hard to move forward with that change and adapt to it.”

After D’An’s first rollout, she realized the biggest thing she needed to improve was how she collected feedback. In her Dreamforce talk, she focused on structured feedback, specifically. Beyond that, it’s a good idea to make a focus group and try out your rollout before you push it to everyone.

Links:

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Love our podcasts?

Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!

Direct download: Interview__DAn_Ervin_on_Driving_Adoption_as_a_Solo_Admin.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:29pm PST

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