Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Ian Gotts, founder and CEO of Elements.cloud, to find out more about GDPR and processes for large organizations. 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 Ian Gotts explains how GDPR affects you whether you’re in the EU or not, why you should view it as an opportunity and not a hassle,

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

The basics of GDPR

Ian is the CEO of Elements.cloud, an ISV running on AWS but tightly integrated with Salesforce. He joins us on the podcast to talk about General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a European data privacy standard. “Our data is now spread over the world in multiple systems,” Ian says, so it’s time to update our privacy laws.

The regulations are due on May 25, 2018, and the fines are up to €20,000 or 4% of global revenue, whichever is higher, so it’s probably something to stay on top of. “There are about 100 clauses and I think I’ve read all of them, which makes me not all that fun at parties,” Ian says (Gillian disagrees). “The principle is privacy by design,” Ian says, “you need to build privacy at the center of the way you manage your customers’ data.”

In the US, data privacy tends to be opt-out, as in companies will use your customer data unless you opt out. GDPR flips that on its head— customers have to explicitly give permission for companies to use their data. The thing is, even though it’s a European standard it applies to any companies that are holding European data, whether you’re in eCommerce, software, higher ed, or travel hospitality.

Think about the benefits, not the fines

With regulations, Ian advocates a different perspective: “Think about benefits, not fines.” 4% of revenues is a big enough number to get your CEO’s attention, “and that can start to drive some of those projects that we want to get driven.” The other thing is that, while it’s a European standard, Ian thinks it’s likely to be the global norm in the next five years. “Getting a jump on this drives up our reputation with our customers, and the act of getting rid of that data which you shouldn’t have means you’re clearing out your databases of dead email addresses, so you can build a proper engagement with those customers,” Ian says.

The bottom line is that finding a way to comply actually pushes you to improve as a company. As Ian says, “Those people who do compliance well actually get a better-run business.” It’s about coordinating your marketing, sales, and customer service departments, and GDPR is just a catalyst.

The three jobs an Admin needs to do to comply with GDPR

“There are about 13 clauses in GDPR where there are specific things you have to go and do,” Ian says. For example, if there’s a subject matter access request you have 30 days to be able to tell a customer everywhere you hold their data. For a data breach, you have 72 hours to report it. “There are things you’ve got to better, there are new processes you need to put in place,” Ian says, “but there are a whole bunch of other processes you’ve already got that you need to improve on.”

For Salesforce Admins, there are basically three jobs. One, you need to start thinking about how Salesforce gets used inside your organization. How does the lead to opportunity process work? What about the sales support process? At what points are you going to need to ask for consent?

Secondly, you need to build a data inventory. “This is the scary one,” Ian says, “because you’ve got to go and identify every field in your company where you hold customer data.” Finally, make sure that you’re leveraging those fines to make sure that you can make some serious changes to your Org. The important thing is that this is a long-term change, “GDPR isn’t just for the 25th of May, it’s ongoing,” Ian says, “so you’ve got to find some techniques for how you’re going to manage those customer data fields when people start to add new fields or new objects.”

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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.

Direct download: Interview__Ian_Gotts_Explains_what_GDPR_Means_for_Admins.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:18am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Kevin Poorman, a Salesforce Developer Evangelist, to find out how Admins and Devs can work together more productively to build great apps.

More about this Insights session: tips for Admins working with Devs, why every conversation needs to be centered on the users first, how to decide between declarative and programmatic solution, and tips for when you first start with a Developer.

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

A Developer and Admin collaboration for life

Kevin is a particularly great guest to talk to about working with Salesforce Admins because his wife, Stephanie, is one. “The two of us work together in a nonprofit org called Pets for Patriots,” Kevin says, which helps veterans and current military personnel adopt companion pets from shelters. There’s a lot that comes up when you’re helping a nonprofit, “Everything from year-end reporting to custom processes and Apex work that has to be done, so my wife and I live out this Admin and Developer relationship pretty much every day. We do everything but manage our household in Salesforce.”

When Kevin thinks about how he and Stephanie work together, the key thing is that “we have to keep our users first and foremost in our mind.” Despite their many diverse talents, not every Pets for Patriots employee is particularly tech savvy, “so keeping things simple has got to be at the center of what we’re doing.” Whenever they run into a problem, Kevin says, “we have to not only come up with a solution that works but a solution that works for our users.”

Deciding between code and declarative solutions

One of the keys to working together as an Admin and Dev pair is to solution things together. For Kevin, it starts with a simple question: “Is there a clean declarative way of solving this problem?” It can be a hard question to answer because there are lots of things you can do in a declarative way that aren’t necessarily simple or easy to maintain.

Maintenance is super important because you’re not always going to be around forever. While you don’t need to know code in order to manage declarative solutions, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy to maintain. A classic example would be choosing between process builder, workflow rules, or a trigger. “That question can almost always be solved with process builder,” Kevin says, “but sometimes writing it as a trigger is beneficial.” If you’ve inherited an org with existing triggers, for example, it makes sense to put all of the logic in a trigger, but other times you’ll want to handle it in a process.

When you’re thinking about flows versus verses Visualforce or Lightning components for something like a wizard, the decision between who should build something come to the forefront. Kevin’s wife will want to solve it with a flow, but Kevin will be thinking about using Visualforce or Lightning Components. “To be honest with you, I don’t always know why because flow is often the cleaner way of doing it,” Kevin says, “I think it’s just my ingrained developer-ness.”

The amazing power of Lightning Out

Gillian put a question to Kevin that should be on the front of every Admin’s mind when working with Devs, “What is a Lightning Component that isn’t built yet but should be a standard component?” Kevin slightly twists the question to focus on Lightning Out, which he’d want to use to build a Gmail plugin that brought bits and pieces of Lightning and Records into Gmail.

Imagine a side panel where, when you open an email from someone @company.com, and it shows the company.com account and their contact on the sidebar through Lightning and you had a component there that would let you update or edit the account record from there. “Lightning Out is my favorite under-utilized portion of Lightning,” Kevin says, “it gives you the ability to load Lightning components and apps external to Salesforce.” You can do things like put a lead component on your website that will go straight into the org, instead of web-to-lead.

A tip for starting with a new Dev

For Admins that are just beginning to cultivate their relationship with their developer, Kevin has a big tip: ask to do code reviews with them. “As you’re starting to with a developer, ask if you can do code reviews of the code that they’re writing so you have an understanding or how it’s happening and how it works,” he says. That lets you start a conversation about solutioning, and really have that back and forth about which things you should do declaratively and which should be solved with code.

Trailhead

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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.

 

Direct download: Insight__How_Admins___Devs_Produce_Awesome_Apps_Together.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:10am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Joe Ryan, VP of Product Management at Salesforce to talk about the new customizations coming in the Spring ‘18 Release. 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 Joe Ryan tells us about My Lightning’s amazing customization features, personalized navigation, and what’s coming next.

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

Branding your org with My Lightning.

Joe and his team might already be your favorites because they’re responsible for, well, the favorites features. Coming in Spring ‘18, they’re rolling out My Lightning, the custom theming and branding feature. As Joe puts it, “We talk to a lot of customers and everybody loves the new UI, but people are saying, ‘Right now it looks like Salesforce, but could it look like our brand?’” A big part of delivering productivity is actually getting users to use the tools you make, so My Lighting’s ability to brand your org drives productivity by creating a sense of ownership over the workspace.

One of the best parts of My Lightning is how easy it is to use: you set colors, upload some fun images, and just like that you can roll out a custom theme to your whole org. “I guarantee I’m not a designer, by any means, and it was so easy to use,” Gillian says. Joe says that that was a major goal for the team: “If you can come up with a couple colors and a couple images, we can do the rest for you.”

Get excited for Personalize My Nav.

“From the minute we had Lightning on for all of our employees at Salesforce I got a love letter, at least one post on Chatter a day, asking why we hadn’t yet built a Customize My Tabs feature.” It’s been a long time coming, but Personalize My Nav is coming in Spring ‘18.

Personalize My Nav is all about customizing your navigation to boost your productivity. “You can actually put granular items like a dashboard, your favorite list view, or a record as tabs,” Joe says. They started their work on this feature by asking people how they start their day and overwhelming they heard that people work down lists.

Moving the feature from Classic to Lightning, they needed to strike a balance between what features Admins control and where end-user personalizations come in. In Lightning, Joe and his team thought, “Let’s help Admins out by keeping all of their app items in the app, but let end users reorder them and put whatever they want first.”

Get ready for app theming.

Next up coming down the pipeline is app theming, so if you have a different app for sales or service you can make it look totally distinct. “We’ve also been hearing from people about console personalization, and we’re working towards bringing that to you as well,” Joe says.

“One thing to know,” Joe says, “is that app customization is only going to work for Lightning apps, so if you have classic apps in your org now is the time to upgrade.” It’s also a good opportunity to do some cleanup, so if you have a bunch of tabs you should think about pulling some of those out to leave space for end users.

Trailhead:

  • Spring ‘18 Release (coming soon)

Social:

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.

Direct download: Interview__New_Spring__18_Customizations_with_Joe_Ryan.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:11pm PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got the one and only Mike Gerholdt, back again to look at best practices around what it takes to help you as an Admin be productive.

More about this Insights session: how you can be more productive as an Admin by sharing your successes, prioritizing user requests, and new tools in the app that can help you understand how your processes are running.

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

Share your successes.

“The first thing about being productive in your role is letting people know that you’re doing things,” Mike says. When he was first getting started, Mike had a manager point out to him that, “I don’t know what you do every day.” The truth is that managers are a little in the dark about what you’re working on, so Mike would post in Chatter each week the number of requests, changes, or improvements that he’d done in Salesforce.

With all the things that an Admin has to do, how do you make time to not just do your job but also talk about doing your job? For Mike, it’s about blocking the time out on your calendar: “If you don’t block the time and you don’t make the time then it’s really easy to just not do it and let someone else prioritize your calendar.”

Is it nice to have or need to have?

For prioritizing user requests, Mike’s simple advice is to “look at your user requests and understand how much you can accomplish.” You’ll get simple requests like password resets, and complicated things like creating a contract management application, so you can use that to help figure out how you can prioritize them. The other thing you can do is go back to your users and ask, “When do you need this by (and ‘now’ isn’t an answer)?” If you understand why a user needs something, you can figure out how urgent it is to address.

The second thing to help you figure what to get done first is to tie it to your actual business goals. The question Mike always asks is, “Is it nice to have or is it need to have?” When you ask about a timeline, your users should be able to tell you that business goal and why it’s important. There’s a difference between charting data differently versus reporting on new metrics that impact critical decision making. That’s why as an Admin, understanding how the business works and how technology fits in with the business goals is key.

Build a system to track requests.

“Email is not the way you request features in Salesforce,” Mike says, “if that’s how you’re getting requests, we need to sit down and create a system because it’s death by a thousand paper cuts.” Take advantage of Service Cloud and make a record type for internal cases so you can manage those and know you’ve got reportability for them. If you’re comfortable building an app, you can mirror a ticket management system

“You have to give users a funnel for them to push ideas and requests to you to relieve pressure,” Mike says, and this helps with adoption “because if they don’t feel there’s a way to communicate with you then pressure builds up and they’re more reluctant to use the app.” If they have a way to get in touch it makes them feel like they can make a difference, and it helps you be productive by being able to report on what you’re doing with ticket statistics. “I have yet to see how you can run a report on emails,” Mike says.

Even more reasons to switch to Lightning.

“We have a lot of really cool built-in apps that show you how much your team is using,” Mike says, “if you’re burning a lot of calories building record types and fields that aren’t get populated, you need to have a conversation about why they aren’t getting used.” Productivity isn’t just about Admins— the goal is to make the business more productive as well.

Tools like Lightning Optimizer to see how your org is running, and dashboard packs you can get on the app exchange to track adoption are incredibly useful and can make you more effective. If you’re still hovering between Classic and Lightning, these key features should make you want to make the switch. Your job is to “tell the executive what the dashboard isn’t saying.”

Trailhead

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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.

Direct download: Insight__Best_Practices_for_Being_a_Productive_Admin.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:22am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Alex Edelstein, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce, to find out about the features his automation team is delivering for Spring 18. 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 Alex Edelstein tells us about the incredible new flow and automation features coming in Spring 18, including components for flow screens and more.

 

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

The year of flow.

Alex and his team work on some amazing automation products like Process Builder. There’s a lot coming with the Spring ‘18 release, as Alex says, “I think 2018 is going to be one of the most momentous years for flow.”

 

Lightning Flow is a combination of process automation and workflow, and soon it’ll be connected with Lightning Components, opening up a whole new world of possibilities. It’s now possible to take components and put them in your flow screens, so you can use things like the Date Time Picker and other visual components and optimize them for flow.

 

How components and flow got together.

“We have a lot of flow users in our community who have been asking for more from our screen designer,” Alex says. People wanted to be able to do things like dynamic questions, or plugin tables or other graphical elements. Until now, their solution was to build a custom flow version, “but one of the big promises and potentials of the whole Lightning Component concept is that it makes it really easy for one person to write something as a component and then a lot of people to use it without having to write any code.”

 

Once Alex and his team took a closer look, they saw a bunch of ways to improve flow screens in a way that didn’t require the Admin building the flow to need to know any code themselves. From there, “we realized we needed to get on the Lightning Component train” and incorporate that into what they were doing.

 

Other new features for flows.

There’s a lot more of cools things coming to flow beyond components. “We’ve added a number of new ways to control flows,” Alex says, you can put a pause button so the user can resume the flow at a later date, or even use a handoff to let someone else complete the flow.

 

There are also new ways to deploy flows, you can basically hook up a quick action to a flow and insert flow buttons into all of your pages. “Any specific flow that you’ve found works for your organization you can put right where it’s most convenient to use it,” Alex says. “We think that flow is the hidden jewel of Salesforce,” because “it’s essentially an application creation environment, it’s a way you can build applications without writing any code that go far beyond what you’ve been able to do before.”

 

Even more amazing flow superpowers coming soon.

Finally, there’s a new kind of flow action called local flow actions, “they’re sort of cousins to the flow screen components.” They both use and take advantage of the power of Lightning Components, but what flow action does is turns a Lightning Component into a standalone flow element that you can drag from your palette into a flow. What this does is enable someone to write a custom flow action for their org based on components, without code.

 

Another thing that flow actions opens up is direct data queries. “It’s a unique new ability that we give the flow to make a database query directly to on-premise data or private cloud data,” Alex says. Traditionally, accessing that enterprise data involved Salesforce going through an opening in your external firewall, which created a lot of security headaches. Instead, you can connect directly to something like an Oracle database and put that data right into your flow. As Alex puts it, “we’re all about integration without having to write code.”

Trailhead:

Social:

  • Alex: @alexed1
  • Gillian: @gilliankbruce
  • Salesforce Admins: @salesforceadmns

 

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.

Direct download: Interview__Alex_Edelstein_Shares_New_Automation_Features_in_Spring_18.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:30am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Admin Evangelist Marc Baizman to explore productivity, not just as it relates to Salesforce Admins but how you can get more done in general.

More about this Insights session: we look at how you can do more by doing less, the power of strategically saying no, and another fancy new acronym, SABELWSE.

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

Make a copy of yourself.

For Marc, LeeAnne Rimel is the perfect example of someone who does more by doing less. “She’s an obsessive documenter,” so if she does something she knows she’s going to have to do more than once or show someone else how to do, she has the resources to make that easy. As Marc says, “this means that you are no longer the bottleneck because you’re sharing information rather than hoarding it.”

With resources like screen sharing and easy video casting, there’s a bunch of different ways that you can get information out there. That way people can access everything they need to get work done without waiting on you for help. Last year, LeeAnne’s mantra was to “photocopy herself.”

When to strategically say “no.”

Being productive isn’t just about being able to get more done. Actually, you want to consider the flipside of strategically staying no to things. “You can’t do everything,” Marc says, “so make sure the things you’re working on are in fact the most important things.” A good way to do this without literally saying “no” all the time is to be transparent get your manager involved in that decision: “This request came in and I can work on this, or I can prioritize this other thing that might be more important.”

For Gillian, “every time you’re making a change or doing something new you need to think about the value of it and where it fits in with your overall goals.” It’s also about making sure that your work hours don’t gradually creep towards dominating your life. Humans need time to recharge, to be with their families, go to the gym, and get some sleep.

How to look for inefficient processes.

Building in systems and processes “One of my first jobs was looking at a production line,” Marc says, “and a lot of optimizing processes was just eliminating steps for people, or simply moving things closer to them so they could be faster and more efficient.” When you’re going through your workday, always be looking for those ways to optimize the process. Marc is always asking himself, “How can we redesign this?”

When you’re looking for inefficient processes, “put yourself in the shoes of your user to find the number of clicks that they need to enter or look at information is really minimized,” Marc says, “just put in those dashboard filters, it makes things so much easier.” It’s important to realize that really simple changes can completely transform people’s experiences, and console apps and dynamic pages are huge for that.

SABELWSE

We also talked about presence, the idea that you need to be engaged with the thing that you’re doing as you’re doing it. There’s nothing wrong with taking some time to watch a TV show or play a video game if you get value out of it and it brings you enjoyment. The problem is when you’re checked out of that activity, too.

“One thing that I’ve been doing is try not eat lunch at my desk, I try to move to a different location, eat with other humans, talk to them, and get to know them,” Marc says, “it’s Salesforce Administration By Eating Lunch With Somebody Else.” If you get out into the world and meet other people, you never know what new ideas and projects might come up.

Resources

Twitter

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__Be_More_Productive_by_Doing_Less.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:30pm PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Michael Gonzalez, Director Product Management at Salesforce, to find out what’s coming in Spring ‘18 that can help Admins be more productive. 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 Michael Gonzalez tells us about the new features that will help us be more productive as Admins delivering more functionality to our end users.

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

The amazing new changes to App Builder.

Spring ‘18 is chock full of amazing stuff, for Michael and the App Builder team, “it’s a mega release, I think we’ve got more features than we’ve had in any of the prior ones.” One the biggest things that you can do is open up and edit an app right in App Builder, you have everything in one place. As Michael put it, “Our little App Builder has grown up from a simple page editor to a full-grown app builder experience.”

Michael spent a lot of time on the road at Lightning Now tours getting feedback. One of the big things that he heard about App Builder was, “Hey, this is nice, but can we bring things together and remove the number of steps I need take in order to manage these things?” Consolidation was a big goal for this release, and his team has done a lot to make everything about building an app better and more streamlined.

Lightning gets even more… dynamic.

Another cool thing coming Spring ‘18 is building on the dynamic pages idea and giving more flexibility and control. It lets you change up what your user sees on the page based on what’s happened. Before Winter ‘18, anything like that had to be done in custom code with the help of a developer, but Michael and his team made it doable with zero code required.

Dynamic pages were showcased at Dreamforce this year, which gave Michael and his team the opportunity to collect a lot of great feedback to make this feature even better. For Spring, you can create a dynamic homepage experience based on what user is viewing the page, or make dynamic app pages across mobile and desktop. “We’ve added new page types that you can view dynamically,” Michael says.

Optimize your life (and your app).

Another thing that might fly under the radar is Optimizer for Lightning Apps, which can help you make your app work better. A big piece of feedback Michael and his team got was, “The App Builder is great, but we want to make sure that we’re designing our pages for the best experience for the end users.” That’s what lead them to further develop Optimizer. This feature is pilot for now, but you can reach out to your account team to get it enabled.

Optimizer for Lightning Apps lets you run a report that analyzes your custom record pages. It looks at the components that are laid out on the page make some suggestions to increase performance and effectiveness. If you have a bunch of components on a page, it might recommend that you put some of them behind a tab. As Michael says, “A hidden trick about the tabs component is that only the active tab loads the component, so it makes your page experience load a little bit faster.”

Resources

Social

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__Spring_18_Admin_Features_with_Michael_Gonzalez.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:18pm PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to LeeAnne Rimel to get into the nitty-gritty of what makes a productive app.

More about this Insights session: we talk about how to think about productivity when you’re building an app, how to find new ways to reduce clicks, and taking full advantage of console.

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

Productivity by osmosis.

LeeAnne is a believer in what she calls “Productivity by Osmosis.” By that she means that she tries not only to be personally productive, but to also help everyone around her be more efficient and effective. When LeeAnne’s building an app, the number one question she asks herself is, “Is this something that more than one person is going to need to do more than one time?” If the answer is yes, then it’s time to get started.

Great candidates for an app include metrics that your team will need to revisit again and again (or that different people need to look at in different ways), or maybe a process that you’ll return to throughout the year. Anything that is repeatable or scalable. However, it’s important to realize that it’s not enough to just make something: “You can build apps all day,” LeeAnne says, “but training your users on how to use these features is the thing that will help them be most productive.”

Finding data flexibility.

“We can’t always anticipate how people need to work with our business processes,” LeeAnne says. If you’re building an app there’s some things that you’ll need to work out like data schema, but the main thing to realize is that building it into the platform gives you much more flexibility going forward.

Whenever LeeAnne gets sent a spreadsheet, she sends back a picture of a Salesforce Lightning dashboard. It’s a joke with an important point. For her, it’s important that the data is in a format that can be worked with and manipulated easily. “We don’t know the way we want to look at and work with information, so if we have a lot of options in front of us it can help us be more productive.” It doesn’t just help us do what we knew we needed to better, but also helps us find new ways to boost our productivity.

How to find and reduce friction.

According to LeeAnne, “What’s always front-of-mind for me is reducing clicks through building the app,” because at the end of the day it’s those “click calories” that determine how time-consuming a process is. If there’s information that your users need to access frequently, or report metrics for a certain account, you can put it into a dashboard component on the record page to make their life easier.

What’s key here is that you need to lean on Mike’s concept of SABWA. In LeeAnne’s experience, “they may not self-report all of those clicks,” but if you watch them and observe how they do what they do you can identify more places to save time. They might not even be aware of all of the friction in their processes, so smoothing things out can be a huge win.

The magic of macros.

If you haven’t gotten into macros, there’s a whole world of productivity that you’re missing out on. Macros can help automate a series of tasks that have to do repeatedly throughout the day, like log that you spoke to a customer, change the status on a case, and send an email confirmation. It’s an automated process within the app to help your users get things done quicker.

If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a Trailhead about them you should check out. It’s for classic, but the concept is still the same. There’s a bunch of ways that Lightning is changing the way that users interact with macros, including keyboard shortcuts, quick text, and more. As LeeAnne says, “it’s a great time to spend some time with macros.”

Resources:

Twitter:

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__Build_Productivity_into_Your_Apps.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm PDT

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