Tag: Salesforce Page 7 of 24

Vladimir Gubanovich is the Head of Product at The Welkin Suite and Head of Salesforce Development Department at Polytech Software. He’s been working with the Salesforce platform and The Welkin Suite for many years already and knows their strengths and bottlenecks first hand.

Nowadays, Salesforce is probably the most sought-after platform providing CRM service. The products it offers help companies make their performance more productive, increasing customer satisfaction and bringing value to their business. Salesforce allows customizing the already existing applications according to user needs and this is a big plus. But on the other hand, customizing can take a lot of effort, not to mention time. What is more, it can cause mix-ups if you have to create dozens of validation rules, for example.

These inconveniences are possible to avoid using Welkin’s Customizable Path as it provides the user with out-of-the-box features standard Salesforce Path doesn’t have.

To make more developers or Salesforce users aware of this I have decided to share this information with you.

Real-life case study

Not long ago, we were contacted by a customer who was using the Salesforce platform for their sales processes. These processes involved six different teams that changed each other’s status from time to time, although they were not supposed to. This made it necessary to restrict each transition to certain profiles and/or roles. Unfortunately, Salesforce doesn’t provide a built-in feature that can limit access to status changes. After fruitless attempts to enforce the limitations with numerous validation rules, the customer gave up and asked us for help.

To solve this problem, we offered him to try Welkin’s Customizable Path that has this feature out of the box. The only thing he should have done was to open Path configuration, switch to the Transitions tab, and click on the “Configuration” for transition permissions. It took him significantly less time and effort to fully configure Welkin’s Customizable Path and grant proper permissions than to customize everything from scratch.

As you can see no coding skills are needed. Everything can be done in a well-understandable standard Salesforce UI.

Some more advantages of using Welkin’s Customizable Path

Creating conditionally required fields without any validation rules

Status change restriction isn’t the only feature of Welkin’s Customizable Path that can make your life much easier. Another area where Welkin IDE can be pretty useful is conditionally required fields. In Salesforce, you can’t create conditionally required fields without writing validation rules. There is no need to mention all the inconveniences connected with that.

Welkin’s Customizable Path solves this problem simply and easily. With its help, you can configure transition screens with as many relevant fields as you need. Besides, Welkin’s Customizable Path also provides a simple way to create screens for each transition, including lists of optional and mandatory fields to be filled; guidance; building a 2-step status change with the 2nd screen that has fields that are shown or hidden depending on the values in the fields from the 1st screen.

Creating an unlimited number of fields

Salesforce Path provides only 5 key fields. It may seem not enough for users, no matter how hard they try to focus on the truly key fields.

In Welkin’s Customizable Path you can create as many fields as you need. This feature is available out of the box.

Building stage transition diagram

To be as productive as possible, businesses split their processes into stages. To make them clear, they use stage transition diagrams that can be quite complicated and hard to remember. Welkin’s Customizable Path facilitates this process significantly. Users should locate their “source” status in the first column and click on the “Add Transition” button nearby, adding all allowed transitions between statuses one by one. No other tool is needed for that. After transitions are configured, the allowed transitions will become highlighted and clickable, while transitions that are not available will be disabled. As a result, users will know in advance what they’re supposed to do next.

Improving Salesforce Approvals

Salesforce Approvals is a great tool that can be used, for example, to approve or reject financial requests as well as to forward them to the appropriate manager within a company. There is only one drawback: users have to check by themselves if a record is locked as a part of an Approval process.

In Welkin’s Customizable Path, the Path component automatically detects if a record is locked and places it in the most important part of a record page – in the Path. It allows users to notice it at once.

So what is Welkin’s Customizable Path? It’s a powerful tool that can be used instead of standard Salesforce Path, providing the user with out-of-the-box features standard Salesforce Path doesn’t have.

The 5 listed above solutions are just a few of the many Welkin’s Customizable Path can offer his customers. To find out more click https://insights.welkinsuite.com/customizable-path-for-salesforce.

Integrating Salesforce and Accounting Software

By Enrico Murru

On October 18, 2021

In Post

This guest post is powered by Breadwinner Integrations, Inc. the leading integration software between Salesforce and accounting systems, including NetSuite, QuickBooks, andXero, as well as major payment processors such as Stripe, Braintree, and Square.

Users of Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) software who are looking to integrate that program with accounting software, like NetSuite, have several options in the marketplace. Some are dedicated integration software for this purpose, while others are cloud computing or automation platforms.

Integration platforms

Boomi – Operates in integration platforms as a service (iPaaS) format, and also offers data management and preparation services. Boomi has solutions geared to specific applications of NetSuite and Salesforce.
Celigo – Operates in iPaaS format. Connects finance applications with enterprise resource planning to lower operating costs and reduce outstanding sales receipts.
DBSync – Integrates QuickBooks with sales and accounting departments. Connects with CRM systems and databases to load and extract data for integration with accounting.

Automation and cloud platforms

FinancialForce – Offers a cloud accounting solution native to Salesforce. Can cash process, manage revenue, and produce real-time financial analysis and audit trails.
Workato – Focuses on integrating Salesforce products with several other applications, including NetSuite, Workday, ServiceNow, and SAP.

Aside from the platforms mentioned above, Breadwinner, an integration software provider, offers a solution for linking the NetSuite corporate inventory, financials, and enterprise planning software suite with Salesforce.

Breadwinner also has other integrations to connect Salesforce with accounting programs such as QuickBooks and payment processors such as Stripe, Square, and Braintree.

How does Breadwinner integrate software?

Breadwinner’s solutions focus on integrating Salesforce with finance software and are experts in this field. Breadwinner for NetSuite has a guided invoice creation feature that can generate a NetSuite invoice out of an opportunity with just a few clicks. This is emblematic of its simplicity.

Other hallmarks of Breadwinner’s ease of use are:

Configuration wizard – Displays of NetSuite objects and Salesforce fields are intuitively mapped, making Breadwinner easy to navigate for its users.
Rapid installation – Breadwinner is built on the Salesforce platform, so a user can see NetSuite records in Salesforce within an hour of installation.
Two-way data transfer – Breadwinner can transfer enriched data from Salesforce into NetSuite for processing, then back into Salesforce immediately.

Breadwinner is efficient and fast at aligning internal teams. It syncs with Salesforce on a per-subsidiary basis when a company has multiple subsidiaries. It also works great with existing integration (iPaaS) tools in Read-Only or Read-Write modes, putting enriched data next to data and systems already in place.

Record Creation Wizard

Integrating Salesforce with your finance software using Breadwinner allows users to quickly generate records such as invoices, estimates, and sales orders from within Salesforce, speeding up payment operations. Breadwinner has a Record Creation Wizard to guide users through this. The new NetSuite records the solution creates are immediately integrated into Salesforce. Your company’s sales and support teams can track NetSuite invoices in Salesforce, including overdue status, to collect payments faster.

Data Accessibility

Breadwinner aligns corporate teams so that they may all access the same common records, including sales and finance data. It does this regardless of the location of the data or the device being used to access that data. This prevents organizational silos and makes live, accurate data available to the right users.

Global API

No matter who creates new NetSuite customer records in Salesforce, these are instantly updated in both systems. Breadwinner’s Global API makes creating and editing NetSuite records easy and with flexibility. It allows users to create and update NetSuite customers and records, such as estimates and sales orders, from within Salesforce, saving staff time and increasing data accuracy.

Compare and contrast

Knowing how Breadwinner works and performs its integration functions for NetSuite and Salesforce lets you see the solution in the context of what is available in the marketplace.

As discussed, there are many benefits of integrating Salesforce with accounting software, particularly NetSuite. Choosing one that is seamless and user-friendly will undoubtedly making your company’s financial operations much easier.

📢 #ORGanizer for #Salesforce announcement 👂

By Enrico Murru

On October 8, 2021

In Post

Few days ago ORGanizer for Salesforce turned 5. 🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂

It’s been an amazing journey through the Salesforce Ohana, inspiring both professionaly and personally 💙🌈

In these 5 years I was the “one man company” behind ORGanizer, doing design, development, support, marketing, sales, PR… 🤯🤯🤯

This is not my primary job, it wass meant to be my hobby occupation, so you can understand that it’s become really stressfull to keep the pace 😓

The time has come to move on a brand new project and contribute on the Salesforce Ohana in a brand-new way. 🎁

Recently I published a new adv. on the ORGanizer that states:

📣📣 ORGanizer for Salesforce is looking for a new Trailblazer home 🏡💙

Yes guys, I’m looking for a virtuous #trailblazer company that wants to take ORGanizer by hand and make it do the next step with a more structured vision and business power! 💪💪💪

With tears in my eyes, I believe that my little child needs to spread its wings and fly away 🦅

In the past 5 years I reached many goals that I thought unreachable:

48000 weekly users 👨‍👩‍👨‍👨‍ (and new thousands counting month after month)
200+ downloads a day 💻 (and counting day after day)
Published in 3 stores (Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons and Microsoft Edge Add-ons) 🏪🏪🏪
Published on the #AppExchange with 50+ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews
200+ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews on the Chrome Web Store
100+ releases 🚛
8M+ logins executed in the last 12 months 🛩
1.2M+ query executed in the last 12 months 🔭
12M+ popup openings 📃
Tens of spontaneous online reviews 🤙

👉 Contact me if you re interested in the acquisition: https://organizer.solutions/newowner.html or simply help me spread the word! 🌍🤗

⚠ No scam companies please (and I assure you I’m being contacted by several of them…)

The big burnout – How COVID-19 is accelerating the Salesforce skills gap

By Nabila Salem

On September 15, 2021

In Post

Nabila Salem is on the Board of Tenth Revolution Group, and as President of Revolent Group is responsible for leading on the creation of talent, specialising in Salesforce and AWS. With over 15 years of experience in professional services, tech recruitment and marketing in the UK and USA, Nabila was the first and youngest female to be appointed to VP at the FTSE 250 company she used to work for. She is passionate about creating talent and plays an active role in encouraging, supporting and promoting diversity in the workplace. Nabila was recognised in Management Today’s 35 Women Under 35 List 2019, and most recently in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in UK Tech.

Recent research from the 2021 Mason Frank Salesforce Salary Survey shows that the acceleration of digital transformation triggered by COVID-19 is putting increased pressure on workers, creating the perfect conditions for employee burnout and mass exodus from the workforce. So what should organisations be doing to address this alarming trend, head on?

The data shows that, prior to the pandemic, only 27% of professionals regularly worked outside of their contracted hours. Post-pandemic, this number has rapidly grown to 42%.

It also shows how the number of employees who had never worked outside of their contracted hours is shrinking quickly, going from 10.5% prior to the pandemic, to just 7.28% post-pandemic.

The boom in demand for tech has seen many companies prosper (41% of companies were hiring new IT staff during the pandemic, with a further 62% planning to add more before 2022). But, without intervention, the added pressure on existing employees may result in increased burnout and growing attrition rates.

Why the Salesforce skills gap matters

These new statistics should be of great concern for our sector, particularly for Salesforce stakeholders. As far back as 2018 tech already had the highest turnover rates of any industry, at a staggering 13.2%, so anything that looks to grow that number is a real problem.

As the tech skills gap grows, and experienced but overworked employees leave the sector, the war for talent will get much worse. Businesses of all sizes, not just the small ones, will struggle to afford the people they need to help them thrive.

Of course, the consequences of the skills gap going unfilled are already well documented. The Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute’s Skills Gap Study cautioned of economic output losses in the US of up to $454 billion by 2028 if the skills gap is not closed. And, according to Airswift, the US talent crunch is currently at a 10 year high, which could cost up to $162 billion if unresolved.

How to close the Salesforce skills gap

As a talent creation organization that specializes in creating net new Salesforce and AWS talent, we believe there are measures that can be taken to help prevent the impact of the growing skills gap, and even start to close it.

The first thing you have to realize is no one company or organization can do this alone. It will take a concerted effort from individual organizations, software providers such Salesforce, and talent creation companies such as ourselves.

To do this, you have to work the problem from both ends. First and foremost, we need to shrink our attrition rates as a sector, which means reducing things like employee dissatisfaction, burnout, and start placing a high value on employee wellbeing.

At the same time, organizations need to rely less on traditional hiring methods and accept more candidates from non-traditional career paths. Not every employee needs to be an Ivy League grad!

Finally, we need to improve diversity within our sector, and allow more people from different backgrounds to enter, progress, and stay within tech, if we have any hope of bringing in new talent at the scale we need to solve the skills gap.

Closing the skills gap with strategic diversity initiatives

Historically as a sector, we have employed a very narrow approach to our hiring. We’ve over-relied on traditional hiring positives like grades expected or universities attended. And it shows – our sector has the worst diversity stats of almost any industry.

Not every Salesforce candidate has to be a STEM graduate and, if we only look for these people, we’ll never close the gap. People who have self-taught, upskilled, or gained experience but not qualifications are just as valuable, professionally speaking, as the ‘more traditional’ applicant.

Especially when you consider how Salesforce in particular is highly accessible through non-traditional pathways (with Trailhead, anyone can learn Salesforce), only taking on STEM grads seems unnecessarily reductive.

Beyond this, we also need to look at our processes for acquisition. In particular, we need to examine the things that stop us bringing on a more diverse range of candidates. To do this, businesses need to rethink their workforce planning strategies. While traditional recruitment channels are great for some hires, they should not be relied on exclusively. Instead, look to work with suppliers who have a focus on diversity and inclusion and broaden the range of places you source talent from, be it returners programmes, apprenticeships, or talent creation companies like Revolent.

Ultimately, we cannot let burnout deplete our sector of the valuable employees that we already have. As a collective, we need to support our existing talent and focus on closing the skills gap, in order to relieve pressure and guarantee a healthy, future-proofed pipeline of skilled workers.

ABOUT REVOLENT GROUP

Revolent Group, a division of Tenth Revolution Group, specializes in creating talent that can thrive within niche technology markets, including Salesforce and AWS. We recruit, cross-train, place and develop talent for those ecosystems, fuelling the market with the next generation of certified professionals in cloud technology. With hubs in Australia, the US, UK, and Canada, Revolent offers a truly global solution to the lack of talent in the industry.

For more information, visit: www.revolentgroup.com

Forceea 2021 User Meeting (it’s free!)

By Enrico Murru

On June 9, 2021

In Post

Forceea (https://github.com/Forceea/Forceea-data-factory) is the most powerful and sophisticated native data factory for Salesforce, and it’s open-source!

What

📣 This is the 1st Forceea User Meeting (free online event).

When

🕓 Saturday, July 10, 4 PM (UTC).

Agenda

▶️ Meet other Forceea users.

▶️ See new features of the next release (v2.5).

▶️ Learn advanced techniques.

▶️ Showcase your own code.

Data Integration between two Salesforce Orgs using Talend

By Akashdeep Arora

On March 12, 2021

In Post

This post has been baked by Akashdeep Arora, founder of Founder of #BeASalesforceChamp and #MakingChampion, 8X Salesforce Certified, #LightningChampion, 6X Trailhead Ranger, 5X Trailhead Academy Certified, #SalesforcePartyAnimal #SalesforceTravellerGeek

Greetings Trailblazers! Many developers asked this question: how to integrate two Salesforce orgs without any custom code.

Here is the quick way you can use Talend Open Studio for Data Integration which will just use drag and drop functionality to transfer your records from one Salesforce org to another.

Talend is an open source data integration platform where you can integrate between different platforms and it offers 800+ connectors and components to perform several options.

Let’s just walk you through quickly to make you familiar to it.

Steps for Talend Integration

Launch Talend Studio.
Select the Create a new project option and enter a project name in the field.

Click finish to create the project and open it in the Studio.

Create a job

In the Repository tree view of the Integration perspective, right-click the Job Designs node and select Create job from the contextual menu.

An empty design workspace opens up showing the name of the Job as a tab label.

The Job you created is now listed under the Job Designs node in the Repository tree view. You can open one or more of the created Jobs by simply double-clicking the Job label in the Repository tree view.

Centralizing Salesforce metadata

The Salesforce metadata wizard provided by Talend Studio to set up quickly a connection to a Salesforce system so that you can reuse Salesforce metadata across Jobs.

In the Repository tree view, expand the Metadata node, right-click the Salesforce tree node, and select Create Salesforce from the contextual menu to open the Salesforce wizard.

Enter a name for your connection in the Name field, select Basic or OAuth from the Connection type list, and provide the connection details according to the connection type you selected.

With the Basic option selected, you need to specify the following details:

User Id: the ID of the user in Salesforce.

Password: the password associated with the user ID.

Security Key: the security token.

The newly created Salesforce connection is displayed under the Salesforce node in the Repository tree view, along with the schemas of the selected modules.

You can now drag and drop the Salesforce connection or any schema of it from the Repository onto the design workspace, and from the dialog box that opens choose a Salesforce component to use in Job.

Mapping data flows

Mapping components are advanced components which require a more detailed explanation than other Talend Open Studio Components. The Map Editor is an “all-in-one” tool allowing you to define all parameters needed to map, transform and route data flows via a convenient graphical interface.

You can minimize and restore the Map Editor and all tables in the Map Editor using the window icons.

tMap operation

All these operations of transformation and/or routing are carried out by tMap, this component cannot be a start or end component in the Job design.

tMap uses incoming connections to pre-fill input schemas with data in the Map Editor. Therefore, you cannot create new input schemas directly in the Map Editor. Instead, you need to implement as many Row connections incoming to tMap component as required, in order to create as many input schemas as needed. The same way, create as many output row connections as required. However, you can fill in the output with content directly in the Map Editor through a convenient graphical editor.

The Map Editor requires the connections to be implemented in Job in order to be able to define the input and output flows in the Map Editor. You also need to create the actual mapping in Job in order to display the Map Editor in the Preview area of the Basic settings view of the tMap component.

How to run a Job in normal mode

Click the Run view to access it.

Click the Basic Run tab to access the normal execution mode.

In the Context area to the right of the view, select in the list the proper context for the Job to be executed in. You can also check the variable values.

If for any reason, you want to stop the Job in progress, simply click the Kill button. You will need to click the Run button again, to start again the Job.

Step to Schedule Job

Open up Talend Open Studio.

Select the job you wish to automatically run based on a schedule.

Right-click its name in the Repository tab.

Select Build Job option.

In the pop-up window select where you would like to save the archive.

Select the version of the job, if you have multiple versions.

Make sure that the build type is set to Standalone Job.

Tick Extract the zip file (You will need to extract the archive anyway).

Click Finish.

Once this job is extracted, you can schedule it to run on the server in order to automate the job on timely manner.

You can play around with different operations like tMap or tlogRow or tSendEmail as per your need.

To just summarize in a quick way, you just need tInput, tMap and tOutput. Just play around on these operations with insert, update or upsert and your data would be transferred from one org to another in just a game of minutes.

If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!
#BeASalesforceChamp

Automatic export tool for Salesforce Data Export backups

By Enrico Murru

On January 19, 2021

In Post

TL;DR
Jump to GitHub for the complete repository: https://github.com/enreeco/sf-automatic-data-export-script/

Have you ever had a close relation with the Salesforce Data Export feature?

It’s a way to periodically export all Salesforce data set in zipped CSV files, including files and attachments.

You can do a one-shot export or schedule it on monthly (available on Developer Edition orgs) or weekly (available on Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions only).

The one-shot and periodic export configuration is straightforward:

Select the file encoding
Select which data you want to export (including files and content can increase export size)
Select a schedule (for monthyl or weekly export schedule only)
Select all or a subset of the available Salesforce objects

Monthly Data Export configuration schedule

What’s the outcome?

You’ll come up with a set of zipped files with a size up to 512 MB, containing Salesforce extracted files (if checked in configuration) or CSVs grouped by Salesforce objects, as shown below:

The struggle of downloading

What if you have plenty of files and want to automatically download them one-shot without having to click link by link?

Unfortunately there are no Salesforce standard APIs that you can use to automate the export and the only way was to go by script by getting all download links and triggering each download on a local folder (or remote storage if you are brave enough).

I thought there was already a solution out there but as far as I know there wasn’t anything.

The script

I decided to implement a script in NodeJS that:

logs in to Salesforce with a full powered user
opens the Data Export page
looks for the download links (if any)
triggers downloads one by one, putting them on a local folder

This way you can continue doing other tasks while the scripts runs.

DISCLAIMER: the script has been written in a quick & dirty style, so please don’t tell me it’s ugly, it gets you to the point!

Download it from GitHub: https://github.com/enreeco/sf-automatic-data-export-script

These are the simple steps:

Install NodeJS and NPM if haven’t already (you just have do donwload the installers, follow this guide but you’ll find tons online)
Open a console and install Foreman with:
npm install -g foreman
An alternative is to use the Heroku command line with:
npm install -g heroku
Install all required packages with command line npm install
Rename the .env-local into .env and replace the environmental variables with a local path (where the files will be stored), the login URL, your username and the password+token
Run your script with alternatively:
nf start
or
heroku local

You’ll see the script running and the files magically will drop on the selected folder:

Have a nice Salesforce day!

Key Findings from the Mason Frank’s Salesforce Salary Survey 2020/21

By Enrico Murru

On December 28, 2020

In Post

2020 has been a year of change. The pandemic has had a devastating effect on many, and its side-effects have re-shaped the way we live, communicate, learn and ultimately, the way we work. The Salesforce ecosystem hasn’t been an exception. It’s hard to imagine what the future will look like, but it’s worth having a look at the trends that have shaped the Salesforce universe during these past months if we want to be as prepared as possible. This is why it’s a good time to have a look at Mason Frank’s Salary Survey – the largest independent Salesforce market report worldwide. Mason Frank International is a global leader in Salesforce Recruitment, and their yearly study gives us independent insights into the latest market trends and salaries across the ecosystem. The report delves into topics such as how professionals feel about their jobs and employers, work perks, certifications and diversity, and also looks at salaries in different roles globally. Here are some key findings from the report.

Experience vs education

Let’s start off with something of an eternal dilemma – when it comes to employability, which is more valuable, experience or education? If you’re looking to increase your earning potential as a Salesforce professional, experience seems to be deemed essential, with 90% of survey respondents naming it as the most important factor. That, together with exposure to large projects and Salesforce certifications, seem to be the top-ranked aspects that increase your earning potential.

In contrast, having a university degree is considered important by just half of the survey’s participants. Formal education can lay the groundwork for a range of skills—communication and problem-solving just to name a couple—but with Salesforce being such a broad, evolving industry, experience and product knowledge seem to be better indicators of whether or not a candidate is suited to a particular post.

Which Salesforce certifications will increase your pay?

We’ve mentioned certifications being an important factor for career progression, but the real question is: which certifications are most likely to help with development and earning potential? The Technical Architect certification tops the Mason Frank Salary Survey list, with Salesforce professionals considering it to be the certification most likely to boost your pay for the second year in a row.

This qualification is still very much a rare one within the ecosystem, making it highly sought-after by employers across the globe. This certification shows the depth and breadth of a candidate’s Salesforce knowledge and demonstrates the ability to deliver optimized solutions across the entire platform. The qualification is intense, and requires some serious commitment and investment, but as with any challenge, it’ll yield rewards if you put the work in.

Let’s talk perks

We usually think of salary as one of the most significant factors affecting a candidate’s decision at that all-important offer stage. However, employers and job seekers alike should not underestimate the value of employee benefits.

Many of the benefits enjoyed by Salesforce professionals, according to Mason Frank, are either the ones supporting employees outside of the workplace, such as health and medical insurance, and retirement savings plans, or perks aimed at improving that coveted work-life balance, such as homeworking or flexible working. Other perks topping the lists are training and development opportunities, and naturally, bonuses. The value associated to each of these perks depends on many factors—but making sure your employer offers a robust benefits package as well as competitive salary will truly pay off.

Working from home

What was previously considered a more of a perk has become more or less the default following the coronavirus pandemic. Pre-pandemic, 21% of permanent professionals who took part in the Mason Frank Salary Survey worked from home on a full-time basis, while 62% worked from home at least once a week. These both increased during the pandemic, with 84% working remotely full-time, and 97% working from home at least one day a week.

Remote working definitely comes with its own set of pros and cons, and anyone currently experiencing it may have their own thoughts and concerns. However, what the remote working boom has surely done is open up roles to new, more diverse hiring pools, which is good news for anyone looking for a job and great news for employers looking to hire Salesforce talent in such a competitive market.

Salesforce Salaries

We’ve spoken about how to maximize your earning potential, but how much are Salesforce professionals actually earning? Compensation benchmarking is beneficial to job seekers as it helps them gauge whether or not their salary is on par with their qualifications, skills, and experience, allowing them to make an informed decision when looking for fresh opportunities.

It’s also interesting to look at salary benchmarking when considering re-location. Evaluating job proposals abroad can be quite tricky when you’re not sure if the salary on offer matches up to the standard of living, or whether it really is competitive in that country. For instance, a junior functional permanent consultant’s salary starts at an average of €23,000 in Italy, while that same role starts off at €48,000 in Germany, €35,000 in France and €47,000 in Ireland. It’s also worth looking at salary benchmarking if you feel like you haven’t seen a salary increase over some years, or if you’re not sure that increase matches up with your years of experience, qualifications, and ultimately, the current standard of living. For instance, the same junior functional permanent consultant salary started at €20,000 last year – an increase of €3,000 in the Italian market over just one year.

The Mason Frank Salary Survey 2020/21 is an excellent resource to learn all about the salary and benefits Salesforce professionals expect and receive today. It’s also packed with useful tips on how to maximize your earning potential as a Trailblazer, bringing you that one step closer to your dream job. Download the full report and get the most current snapshot of the Salesforce Ecosystem.

What writing a (Salesforce) tech book means: my experience

By Enrico Murru

On November 3, 2020

In Post

Almost exactly 1 and a half year ago I’ve been contacted by Alok Dhuri from Packt Publishing asking me if I was interested in writing a Salesforce guide.

At that time I still was a Salesforce MVP and, on my career’s checklist, I missed the authoring experience.

Since I was a child, writing a real book has been one of dreams: the only problem is that I’ve never been an artist, so writing a novel have never been an option (although I really REALLY want it was).

It’s at the age of 27, after my MsC degree, I tried to write a PHP related book for newbies: as a self-taught programming learner (I took an Electronic Engineering MsC but I learned programming all by myself), I really love to help others to achieve knowledge with less effort.

That book never saw the light, although I still have the draft on my archives (I lost the digital copy but still have a printed copy).

In 2009 I joined WebResults as a junior Salesforce developer and in 2013 I started Nerd @ Work blog with a cool technical post about a Salesforce workaround that had, and still have, much appreciation on the community.

That was the time I understood that I had enough knowledge to share to the world: it was an important step in my career, because I finally understood that, although I’ve always been a humble guy, I could give and help people just by telling them what my experience taught me. Post by post, challenge by challenge, Nerd @ Work became a known blog among the Salesforce Ohana community.

Busy on my daily work, side projects, ORGanizer for Salesforce and, recently, on authoring 2 books, I started getting help from the Ohana with awesome guest blog posts, but I try to write as much as I can.

The first book: let’s start with advanced stuff first

Although I really wanted to write something for newbies, the guys from Packt Pub. suggested me to write a guide about Salesforce Advanced Administrator certification, which I took as an amazing opportunity…after all I haven’t ever written a book, challenge accepted!

After almost 6 months, the book was out on the book shops and I had an amazing blast when I saw it on the Dreamforce 2019 book shop (picture below).

Salesforce Advanced Administrator Certification Guide by Packt Pub. at Dreamforce 2019

Next book please!

Writing Salesforce Advanced Administrator Certification Guide was a blast, but it was an advanced book and I knew it couldn’t become a best seller.

Unfortunately few months after the publication, on March 2020 I lost my Salesforce MVP status, which honestly made me feel down regarding my Salesforce Ohana involvement: I didn’t understand why, even after publishing a book, hosting my blog, running a well known browser extension used my thousands people, the status was not renewed but, after the first days of sadness, I thought that it was just a new challenge for me.

Fortunately, on the same March 2020, Alok came back with the title I was looking for: Hands-On Low-Code Application Development with Salesforce.

Finally a book for newbies, where I can try to introduce people to our beloved technology, speeding up their involvement with Salesforce, trying to help companies with an heavy shortage of Salesforce professionals.

The pandemic was striking across the world and a psychologically heavy lock-down hit Italy between March and middle May 2020. we lost a dear friend, Steven, that’s why I decided to dedicate this new book to him and all other Codiv19 victims.

I didn’t have much free time as I though home working could bring, so keeping in time with chapter schedule has been hard during the past months: a mean of 2-3 chapters per month, should have brought the book to life in November 2020 and, luckily, we managed to end at the beginning of October, anticipating by one month…not bad!

Hands-On Low-Code Application Development with Salesforce by Packt Pub.

But how does writing a technical book work?

The schedule

The first step needed when writing a book is the Table of Contents (TOC) creation: what we’ll be talking about?

I usually use a personal knowledge tool (such as Atlassian Confluence) to host these files, so I can quickly update them by accessing them whenever I need from any device.

The TOC is not definitive and it is possible to change chapter order or even chapter descriptions; indeed this is the final approved TOC:

A Brief Introduction to Salesforce
Building the Data Model
Mastering Formulas
Cleaning Data with Validation Rules
Handling Dynamic Configuration
Security First – The “Who Sees What” Paradigm
Be a Workflow Champion
Setting Up Approval Processes
Process Builder – Workflow Evolution
Designing Lightning Flows
Interacting with Actions
All about Layouts
The Lightning App Builder
Leveraging Customers and Partners Power with Communities
Importing and Exporting Data Declaratively
Learning about Data Reporting
The Sandbox Model
Deploying Your Solution
Salesforce Ohana – The Most Amazing Community around

For each chapter you need to provide:

expected page count
chapter extract
learning objectives

To keep up with the schedule I literally printed out a calendar for the next months so I always had the whole schedule on sight range, as shown below.

Each chapter has a first draft release date when the guys at Packt Pub. reviewed all the content in terms of English grammar, chapter structure and all not technical stuff: I REALLY want to thank Prajakta Naik and Tiksha Abhimanyu Lad for surviving my awful English writing!

After one or two review iterations, each book is then evaluated by a technical reviewer: I’ve been supported the whole time by my Ohana friend Fabrice Cathala, who happily joined the team and helped me in tweaking and increasing coherence in the narration on the chapters content with his vast Salesforce knowledge as a prominent Salesforce technical architect and evangelist.

If you plan to write a book, be aware that you may find yourself stuck with a new draft to write, an editor review to check and a tech review to finalise: and this is not your only job!

Time management is essential, you made a commitment and, if you are like me, you REALLY want to keep your word and finish what you started!

Pay attention to…

Check your page count: I have a tendency to write too much
Balance content depth versus page count: depending on the audience you are talking to, try not to write too much and simplify the explanation
Follow a coherent narrative style: it is your book, choose your style and don’t be afraid to adopt an informal writing…I love to put some humour (even if a tech book is not the perfect place to tell a joke!)
Use external references: there’s a plenty of stuff on the net, avoid copy&paste of tables or lists, simply add a reference / highlight box with a link to the external resource where the reader can read further details
Take good screenshots: save with good resolution and avoid typos (I’m known for writing tons of typos…). I suggest to save pictures on a dedicated folder (one per chapter) so, if you ever need to make some modifications, you have the original version
Take a note of each step in your examples: if your book has examples, take notes of any configuration/customisation, you may need to execute the same steps again in the future if you need (for example) to take another screenshot and, believe me, after few months from that writing you may forget what you were doing
Not forget the final goal: during the writing you may find weeks where you believe you want to give up, you may be stressed, but remember that this is pretty normal, it is the so called writer’s block, and if you are not an experienced author, well…soon or later you’ll fill this awful feeling

Finally the publication

But at the end of your journey finally the book gets published: this is an amazing feeling and now you have to wait patiently to see reviews coming from all around the world, hoping that the efforts you did to write those hundreds pages have been worth a bit at least, and maybe helped someone in achieving some knowledge.

I really love the feeling of taking a copy of my own book, turn the pages, and randomly read an sentence and check if I’ve been clear enough.

My free copies of the book, a cool gift from the publisher

Writing a book is an interesting and formative journey, if you believe you have something to tell the world, start a new authoring project, think of a cool title, plan your content and start writing: believe me if I tell you this is not a waste of time!

If you want to start a Salesforce career give my book a try and let me know if you enjoyed it!

Comparison between Salesforce Omni-Channel and Round Robin Distributor for Salesforce

By Nandini Gupta

On October 26, 2020

In Post

Nandini is currently working with Mirketa as a Product Manager aiming to provide strategic and innovative solutions. She specializes at salesforce sales cloud & admin providing support in product marketing, client interface and aspects of project management. Alongside, enjoys writing blogs on Salesforce Sales Management, and shares her experience in product management on Medium. Connect with her on LinkedIn for related conversation and insights!

Omni-Channel is a declarative tool that routes work based on queues to help assign work items to available agents in real-time. The assignment uses routing models based on the most available and qualified support agents and sales reps in your Salesforce console.

Why Salesforce Introduced Omni-Channel?

Omni Channel routing helps business admins push workload (work items in Salesforce) to the agents in real time thus optimizing service response time.
With a high ticket (support request) volume incoming, the agents need to prioritize what is of high priority to business, and Omni-Channel solution allows Admins and Supervisors to set routing priorities to work items via Secondary Routing enablement.
Shorten the average resolution time for online customers through Live Chat by listing it as a priority to prevent delay in responses to live customers on your website.
Track ticket volume and reason of ticket declines by setting up Omni-Channel Supervisor in your Salesforce org and watch handle times tick by the second, and average wait times change as agents accept and close their work.
Weighted allocation and capacity management by assigning higher load to more experienced and lesser to the new joinees to avoid the burnout it could cause queuing up everything to the very best agents only.
Skill based routing to the agents based on the attribute associated with the work item on a real-time basis.

How can you set up Omni-Channel for your Salesforce org?

If you are just starting to set-up omnichannel experience, here is the list of tasks you would be required to perform:

Step 1: Type in Omni in the Quick Find box of the Setup Menu. In the options, click Omni-Channel Setting and check ‘Enable Omni-Channel’ and Save

Step 2: Click on Service Channels under Omni-Channel Setup, and click on New

In here, Salesforce Admins can define the Salesforce Object they want to associate the routing with as well as secondary routing configuration priority

Step 3: Create Presence Configurations and set Presence Statuses

Set up Presence Statuses which is easy to use and understandable by support agents

In this step, the Admin can define the intake capacity for an agent, setting up statuses as the agent declines or agent’s presence status on time out. User can define the users and profiles

Step 4: Specify the manner and order in which Salesforce will automate the routing of records for your business. The model determines which agent will be selected from the list for routing.

Step 5: Create Queue and Define Configuration with Omni-Channel

Step 6: For the final step, add Omni-Channel to the Utility bar of the lightning app

Go to Setup and type in App and select App Manager. Choose the app in which you would want to enable Omni-Channel and click on Edit on the drop-down towards the right.

In the general settings, I will select Service Console as I set it up for my Customer Support Team and then as the new window opens. From there, select Utility Items from the vertical navigation pane and add Omni-Channel from the items.

Since, now you are all set to get started, as a Manager, you ready to connect the right information to the right people at the right time too.

When to not use Salesforce Omni-Channel?

This salesforce out-of-the-box functionality does come up with some limitations which makes it complex to use with other integrations and organizations looking to use advanced routing solutions for their teams

In a help article by Salesforce, it is mentioned that when Omni-Channel agents are online and see an error “LIMIT_EXCEEDED, limit exceeded”, it is possible that the queue has hit the maximum limit of 200000 records. New work items will not be added to the queue or routed to agents, until the volume has lowered.
According to this Salesforce Article, If a work item requires certain skills, but no agents have those skills, then the work item isn’t routed.
Omni-Channel is not capable of assigning records to the specific agent or rep based on past relationships with the clients based on the attribute of Salesforce incoming leads, cases, accounts, opportunity and any custom SFDC object
A record cannot be re-assigned to another queue if the case has not been owned within the specific wait time
If the capacity of volume assigned to an agent is exhausted, high priority cases or hot leads couldn’t be assigned to the best available rep which impacts the business throughput

Recommended Salesforce App- Round Robin Distributor for Salesforce

Round Robin Distributor (RRD) app overcomes the limitations of Salesforce Omni-Channel and optimizes and simplifies complex routing logics for your Sales & Service Teams

RRD tool is a robust, highly customizable, and open-platform solution for your distribution automation solutions and integrates with your marketing and sales automation apps like Marketo, Hubspot and even with existing Salesforce Lead Assignment rules and Salesforce Case Assignment rules.

Round Robin Distributor addresses the following concerns for you:

Role based Assignment- Assign lead to multiple people working at various positions automatically by defining rules for distribution. For Instance, in Education Industry, you might want to assign Program Managers, Financial Advisor, Academic Advisor along with a Case Owner/ Contact Owner on a student which can be round robin’ed with Round Robin Distributor by simply defining the criteria for allocation.
Re-assign Cases to another Queue- If everyone in the selected Queue has either declined the case, capacity is exhausted or unavailability of agents, then the cases are routed to the queue with the second highest priority matching the rules logic defined
Priority based handling of users and queues – Through Round Robin Distributors, Administrators can define priority to case teams, users and even queues based on which the inbound record can be routed to the best available agent
Distribution of leads and cases to the queue- Leads & Cases can be round robin’ed between multiple queues based on the defined attribute for the incoming leads and cases through any integration or manual upload of inbound data.
Criteria based routing to queues – Complex AND & OR logic can be used between various attributes and corresponding values can be defined in RRD Teams for efficient allocation for organizations with complex team structures.
Ability to handle High-priority cases even if the Capacity is exhausted – For organizations, customer experience is of high value and to cater to high value cases, the agents should be able to respond them on priority even if the limit has been exhausted.
Round Robin routing method
Eliminates the issue with Triggers and Workflow rules not working on updating by Omni-Channel
Handling relationship-based assignments- Useful for routing leads and cases as you want to assign them to the same person working with another case/lead from the same client.

To know more about the benefits of the app and designing of architecture of distribution logic functions and intuitive real-time routing, do visit our page at https://www.roundrobindistributor.com/

Introducing an exclusive referral program this fall, for fellow partner firms and solution architects. Distributing a small token of appreciation for every successful referral. To know more mail us at [email protected]