Salesforce trend data (Analytic Snapshot)

Can we have report of data trending in Salesforce? Hmmmm, Salesforce only report current data? But, is there anyway to store historical data so we can use it for reporting? Yes, if you are using Salesforce Enterprise or Unlimited edition, you can configure Analytic Snapshot to store historical data, but to note, do not expect old historical data will be available after you configured analytic snapshot. Only historical data for specific analytic snapshot will be available after be configured properly and run. User with "Manage Analytic Snapshots" permission able to create and configured analytic snapshot. Each edition have limited number...

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Salesforce list all dynamic dashboard

Dynamic dashboard is great to enable each user to see the data they only have access to or their team have access to, without the need to create separate dashboard using a fix user "viewing as". But, each organization can have up to 5 dynamic dashboards for Enterprise Edition and 10 dynamic dashboards for Unlimited Edition, additional dynamic dashboards may be available for purchase separately. So, it important for system admin to track all dashboards configured as dynamic dashboard. Many admin do not sure how to track or list down all dashboards configured as dynamic dashboard. Here we go 1. Create a custom report type...

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Salesforce sharing button

Sharing is a nice feature in Salesforce to share a record to other user, particularly when 'Organization-Wide Defaults' is set to Private or 'Public Read Only'. By clicking Sharing button, you’ll see who can see that record and why (sharing rule, group, role hierarchy, manual share etc). The Sharing button allows users to extend the sharing of a record such as a lead, opportunity, or case. However, the Sharing button only displays when appropriate. The Sharing button is available when your sharing model is either Private or Public Read Only for a type of record or related record. For example, the Sharing button may appear on an...

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Salesforce how to check schedule reports

Salesforce.com report allow users to schedule reports run and deliver to their email or a group of users. It is very simple and with just a few clicks and user can set it up. This feature only available for user with Scheduled Reports permission enable in their user profile or user with added Permission Set contain Scheduled Reports permission. But, there is maximum of reports can be scheduled for each organisation depend on their Salesforce edition use, from Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. For more information on the limitation, look here. Because of this limitation,...

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Mass add member to Chatter group

Salesforce.com give 5,000 chatter free licenses, it is good for organisation to use Chatter for collaboration as it is free. But, adding hundreds or thousands of user as member into many Chatter group is not fun, if do it manually. If you are Salesforce admin, here tip to make your life easier :) You can use Data Loader to mass add member to Chatter group. 1. Open Data Loader and select Insert 2. Select "Show all Salesforce objects" 3. Select "Chatter Group Member" 4. Map "CollaborationGroupId" to Chatter Group Id and MemberId to User Id Done, easy......

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Chatter: can user delete feed or comment?

Sometimes user need to delete feed or comment post to Chatter, but can user (read: not system administrator) to delete it? Yes, you can delete posts and comments that you and others have made in these areas: on the Chatter feed on your profile, on records you own, and on posts and comments you’ve made in other feeds. Deleted posts disappear from your feed and you can’t restore a post after you delete it. Users with the “Modify All Data” permission can delete all posts and comments. Here a quick summary: User can delete their own comment User can delete other people comment to their feed User cannot delete other people feed But, if you are group owner of a group, you can do more things within the group: User can edit group setting User can edit group information User can...

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Salesforce searchable field type

As Salesforce admin, sometimes we confuse when user come to us and ask, why my data is not searchable using Phone number or Email or a custom field with type equal to picklist . Here is guide on searchable field type in using Salesforce Global search: All custom auto-number fields and custom fields that are set as an external ID (You don't need to enter leading zeros.) All custom fields type: email and phone All custom fields type: text, text area, long text area, and rich text area If you see FORMULA field is not searchable, it make sense because formula field is not stored in database. For complete searchable fields by object, see this documentation and tips from Salesfor...

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Salesforce: Master-Detail relationship (in detail)

One of the most advantage using Master-Detail relationship compare to Lookup relationship is Roll-Up Summary. In Master-Detail relationship, we can create roll-up summary field in master record to summarize / count data from child records. Few items to notice when create roll-up summary field: Parent record is locked If you implement approval process with lock record, user will not able to create new child record if Sharing Setting in Master-Detail option is Read/Write. Solution: change the sharing setting to Read Only. Validation rule on parent record If user not able to edit parent record and you have roll-up summary...

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Salesforce Data Loader: sandbox and null values

If you are using Salesforce Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition, you can use Data Loader to import, update, delete or export data to/from any object in Salesforce.com In this blog, I'll give tips on: Login to sandbox instance By default, after Data Loader installed, it is configure to login to Production instance. You need to change in Data Loader setting to point it to sandbox instance. Goto Settings and find "Server host (clear to turn off)", type: https://test.salesforce.com Update fields to null If you update a field to null / blank, and you notice the data is stay the same (not updated to blank), you need to change in Data...

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Salesforce Opportunity Roll-Up

Roll-Up summary field is a nice feature in Salesforce to summary data from child record to parent within Master-Detail relationship object. Although, Account and Opportunity is standard Salesforce object, but we can set Roll-Up summary for many purposes. Date of last won deal We can easily know and display when closed won opportunity in Account page layout without complex triggers. Create roll-up summary field in Account with - Summarized Object = Opportunity - Field to Aggregate = Opportunity: Close Date - Filter Criteria = Won EQUALS True - Summary Type = MAX Number of Opportunities Display number of opportunities in Account page layout Create roll-up summary field in Account with - Summarized Object = Opportunity - Filter Criteria = - Summary...

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Salesforce delete record: 'Insufficient privileges' error

In some organisation, user allow to delete records, but sometimes user get error message 'Insufficient privileges' although Delete button exist. What's happening? Let us analyze: 1. User able to access the record There are few scenario: Organization-Wide Defaults sharing setting on that object is Public Read Only or Public Read/Write; or  Sharing rule added based on record owner or criteria for Public Groups or Roles; or User is the owner of the records; or User in higher role hierarchy of record owner; or User profile have "View all Data" or "Modify all Data" permission 2. User see Delete button This is happened because: Delete button is added in record page layout; and User profile have permission to delete that object 3. Error 'Insufficient privileges'  The...

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Cross-Object Workflow in Salesforce.com

With Spring '12 Release, cross-object field updates in workflow rules and approval processes now support standard objects. Both custom-to-standard and limited standard-to-standard relationships are supported. This feature only available in Enterprise and Unlimited edition. Only Master-Detail relationship support using cross-object workflow, so cross-object will not work in Lookup relationship. Here is a sample case for using Cross-Object workflow. Master object: Customer__c Child object: Order__c Company would like to know how much and when latest order for each customer, but date use to determine is payment date, not order date, and payment date will be blank when customer have not make payment. So, here we go: 1. Create a workflow in Order which will run on create and...

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Record Type in Salesforce.com

If you are using Salesforce.com with Enterprise, Unlimited and Developer edition, Record Type is a powerful feature. We can define business processes, picklist values, and page layouts to different users based on their profiles. So, even for the same object, user can have different page layout with different fields, different picklist value and etc. But, sometimes admin overkill of Record Type usage. Not all condition need to use record type, may be a custom picklist field is enough. Please note that record type is different with a normal custom field and you cannot just edit record type like normal picklist field. So, when do you need to setup record type? 1. Different Page Layout Use record type to assign different page layout based on user profile. User will see different...

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Salesforce.com Queue SOQL

Queues allow groups of users to manage a shared workload more effectively. A queue is a location where records can be routed to await processing by a group member. The records remain in the queue until a user accepts them for processing or they are transferred to another queue. You can specify the set of objects that are supported by each queue, as well as the set of users that are allowed to retrieve records from the queue. Queues available in almost all Salesforce.com edition, from: Contact Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer. Queues can be created for Leads, Cases, Knowledge article version, Service contract and custom object which not a child object in a master-detail relationship. SOQL to query all queue: Select g.Id, g.Name, g.Email...

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Custom Button to Pre-populate Field

Out-of-the-box, when we create a new record from a parent object related list, Salesforce.com provide parent name pre-populated in child object. This is efficient and save time, user do not need to look for the parent record again. This is good, but, often we needs more fields to be pre-populated to make our life easier :) We can make this happen by create new custom button whether in related list or in page layout. In this sample, we'll use Account as parent and Opportunity as child. Custom button in page layout Go to Account object in Setup menu and choose Buttons and Links. Click New button and select option as screenshot...

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Field Tracking

Out-of-the-box, Salesforce.com provide field tracking for up to 20 fields for standard and custom object. For custom object, you need to enable it by edit the object enable "Track Field History". Once enabled, you will find a button "Set History Tracking" in "Custom Fields & Relationships" related list. For standard object, it will be there by default. From "Set History Tracking" button, select fields you want to track up to 20 fields and yay... DONE!! But, for Long Text Area field, it will just show who changed the field and when, that's all, no more information about what is the prior value and new value :(...

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Master-Detail relationship

Sometimes new admin confuse what is the different between Master-Detail relationship with Lookup relationship, since both are used to link an object to another object and you can use parent-child relationships in SOQL queries. But, fundamentally it is different between Master-Detail with Lookup relationship. Few items you need to notice on Master-Detail relationship: When a record of the master object is deleted, its related detail records are also deleted. The owner field on the detail object is not available and is automatically set to the owner of its associated master record.  The detail record inherits the sharing and security settings of its master record. The master-detail relationship field is required on the page layout of the...

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Salesforce.com hidden features

Salesforce.com come with tons of features for administrator to make everything their live easy. But, do you know if there is more features which is not enable by default. You need to contact Salesforce.com support to enable it. Here are few features a consultant usually love: 1. Ability to update created date and last modify date This sound crazy? But yes, sometimes you need this when do initial data migration to Salesforce.com 2. Extended Mail Merge With Extended Mail Merge, you can easily generate mail merge Word documents 3. Person Account For some companies, not all of your customer is company, instead just linked all contacts to the same Account, you can request to enable Person Account. 4. Remove Price and Quantity fields from Opportunity Product Rather than always...

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Enable Inline Editing in Salesforce View List

Salesforce.com allow user to edit data directly in page layout when your System Administrator enable inline editing feature, except for read-only and system fields. Editable fields display a pencil icon () when you hover over the field, while non-editable fields display a lock icon (). On top of inline editing in page layout, user also can do inline editing in view list without any effort to write any code. Many system administrators may not aware of this feature and sometimes it will not work because of some conditions. Here are the items need to check for inline editing in page view: 1. Enable Inline Editing and Enhanced...

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Can we set Salesforce.com user password?

As Salesforce.com administrator we often get questions from our user, " can you check what is my password? ", hmmmm, user often think it like some legacy application, where system admin able to see or modify it as we would like. But, Salesforce.com is different, system admin not able to see or modify user password. We often offer the user to reset their password, where Salesforce.com will email that user with instruction to set new password by  their own. And it works fine. But again, some user (read: senior management) not really want to bother by checking email and so on, even this request is come from his/her secretary....

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Can we set Salesforce.com standard field to be unique?

Salesforce.com administrators and consultants often get business requirement to set standard Salesforce.com fields to be unique. In some companies, we need to make sure every mobile phone in Contacts have to be unique (if it is not blank). And as we known, until now, we are not able to set standard Salesforce.com field be unique, only custom field have this option. So, any solution? Yes, there are few ways to get this done, from a simple one until a difficult one. 1. Trigger Using trigger may be not a simple way, we need a developer who well understand Salesforce Apex Trigger. Developer need to write apex code in Developer instance or Sandbox instance, make sure the test method coverage above 75% and deploy it to production.  Developer may be like this approach,...

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Salesforce converted currency in report

In Salesforce, there is a field type "currency", as a standard field for example Amount in Opportunity, and we can create custom field with data type is currency. If you enable multi-currency in your Salesforce instance, if the currency is not in the Corporate currency, you will find the corporate currency show in parenthesis after the amount. In report, you will find (converted) field for each currency field. You can add it into report as other normal field. But, you cannot add converted field as report filter (as of now). Solution: use original currency as filter and add currency code. Example: USD 300, SGD 500, JPY 10,000 and etc....

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Salesforce: how to get Approval Process status

Out-out-the-box, Salesforce.com has Approval Process featured with lock mechanism to lock record has been submitted for Approval, so user unable to change the record. But, Salesforce.com do not provide approval history by default. So, user cannot run a report to show which records has not approved or approved or rejected. Ideally, admin should configured field update actions to update a field with current status: pending, approved, rejected or recall. I meet a situation where approval process has been setup and deployed for few months back, but later user  realize unable to run report on the approval status. How we can get the approval status for all opportunity has been submitted for approval? Is it possible, any workaround? YES, as long as you are in Enterprise Edition...

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