Hacks, habits and helpful hints the admins guide to steering a successful salesforce ship

HABITS, HACKS,
AND HELPFUL HINTS
The admin’s guide to steering a
successful Salesforce ship


Salesforce can be the backbone to your
organization and its infrastructure, but like any
great ship, it needs an experienced captain.
This means you, mighty Salesforce Admin, have
more potential impact than ever. You not only
steer this massive ship, but you keep it afloat,
take it to new places, and bring your organization
and its employees along for the journey.
Yes, perils abound: Adoption woes. The sea of
budget blues. A mountain of information to
absorb. Pirate attacks. Have no fear, we’re here to
help you overcome these issues so you can stake
your claim as office captain.
Steer your Salesforce ship toward CRM Adoption
Island, the Education Passage, and the Big
Mountain of Company Growth.

The admin’s guide to steering a successful Salesforce ship

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This guide is organized for our fearless captains.
Captain’s Daily Habits
Captain’s Weekly Habits

Captain’s Monthly Habits
Captain’s Quarterly Habits
Captain’s Yearly Habits

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CAPTAIN’S DAILY HABITS

Talk to your shipmates
Write these tips down in your captain’s journal and use
them every single day. They’re all about engaging and
interacting with your users, to help them improve their
day-to-day Salesforce adventures.

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DAILY HABITS

Watch, learn, teach
The best way to learn how Salesforce is being used in your
office is pretty straightforward: Lean in and say, “Ahoy
Matey!” Ask them how it’s going. Give them tips. See if
they have questions for you. Oftentimes, your users have
questions; however, they don’t take time to ask. Take your

expertise to them.

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DAILY HABITS

Be a social leader
Someone needs to be at the Salesforce helm,
so you won’t always be able to walk the deck.
Instead, set up a Chatter group for Salesforce
users, and make yourself a virtual resource.
But you’re not the only resource: Every user in
your office has Salesforce knowledge and tips
to share. If you get your users in the habit
of using Chatter as a socially-driven resource,
they’ll start helping each other. It’s like creating
a bunch of little captains to help solve
problems, which will give you more time
to focus on your Salesforce vessel.

The admin’s guide to steering a successful Salesforce ship

Hack
Use Quick Actions to
allow users to submit
feedback and log cases.

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CAPTAIN’S WEEKLY HABITS

There’s a lot to be
learned, so explore!
Focus on upping your own Salesforce
knowledge on a weekly basis (which
spreads to your users). There’s much
to learn out in these wide open waters,
so grab that spyglass telescope and be
a knowledge seeker.

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WEEKLY HABITS

Land ho!

The AppExchange is adding apps every single day for every
industry and department, all built to address common
challenges and opportunities. Visit the AppExchange regularly

Get inspired by

to learn and get better at your job. When you study solutions,

embarking on

you start to develop an eye for spotting issues in your own org.

the AppExchange

It’s inspiring! Next thing you know, you’ll start recognizing areas
where your Salesforce ship’s prow and port can improve.

Hack
Download the
AppExchange
Dashboard pack.

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WEEKLY HABITS

Belay there!
Explore the Salesforce Community
The social-savvy crew of Salesforce experts and evangelists have created a wealth of resources
that you absolutely cannot lose at sea. You owe it to yourself and your users to keep these tools
on board.
Here are some ways to stay up-to-the-minute on all the latest apps and AppExchange news:

The admin’s guide to steering a successful Salesforce ship

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Hot Product Tip
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adoption with Apttus X-Author for Excel

“Once we saw what

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secure interface for Salesforce. Even better, it’s easy to install. No extra clouds,

of, we knew it was a

third-party software, or local logic needed.

perfect fit for us, and
now we use Excel as
a calculation engine

With X-Author for Excel, you can:

for Salesforce.”

Boost productivity 10x – 100x and delight Salesforce users by
enabling them to safely work using Excel while in Salesforce.

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Deliver all of the Excel capabilities that users want while maintaining
Salesforce data, permissions, reporting, routing, and controls.

The admin’s guide to steering a successful Salesforce ship

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CAPTAIN’S MONTHLY HABITS

Communicate big ideas with those around you
All of your new daily and weekly habits come into play in a big way on a monthly basis.
Without all the knowledge gained day-to-day from brain exercises, you might as well call
yourself a landlubber.

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MONTHLY HABITS

Connect with your mates
About once a month, it’s time for a gut check with
your mates, or internal stakeholders. In other words,
talk to the team managers using Salesforce. Take time
to sit down and ask how it’s going in their department.
Come prepared with ideas on how to improve their
processes. (If you’ve been visiting the AppExchange
and other resources, you should have plenty.)

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MONTHLY HABITS

All hands hoay!

“All hands hoay” means making time for all of your stakeholders to come
together once a month for governance. This is when you all set the forward path,
as a Salesforce ship crew. One of the beauties of Salesforce is how well it
works across departments, so it makes sense that stakeholders and leadership
have the opportunity to discuss Salesforce-related initiatives together.

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MONTHLY HABITS

Me hearties!
Share with the Salesforce
Admin Community

RELATED TIP:

Don’t be afraid of uncharted waters
To get even more involved and learn new things,
travel to a Salesforce Admin group at least three

From stories of new apps to stories

or four times a year, and present something to the

of life at sea, the information in the

group. Public speaking is nerve-racking for a lot

Salesforce Admin community is there

of us, but it’s a great skill for your arsenal. User group

to share the latest app tales. Give the

meetings let you compare your org’s progress to

world your tips and tricks in an admin

other orgs, so you can see how it stacks up.

group. Does one of your users make
you say “Yo ho ho!” as a result of your
help? Share the success story not only
in your internal Chatter group, but
with other admins out there.

The admin’s guide to steering a successful Salesforce ship

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CAPTAIN’S QUARTERLY HABITS

Focus your efforts
Our quarterly habits are all about running a tight
ship. We get it. It’s really easy to get caught up
in the day-to-day, but it’s incredibly important
to block off some time to tidy up and do some
prepping for the future.

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QUARTERLY HABITS

PLAN FOR

New releases
New releases — whether seasonal updates from Salesforce or an
app implementation from you — can be ugly as a scallywag if you’re
not prepared. It can require a lot of reading, but you need to study
those Salesforce release notes and communicate the most relevant
changes to the users who are depending on you. That goes for your
internal changes as well. Always test internal changes in your
sandbox and then demo them to your users. You can do demos
live or via a video posted in your Chatter user group.

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Hot product tip
Tame Your Release Notes

Eat and Delete

1. Print out new Salesforce
release notes.

Schedule time to meet with groups

of your users, give them lunch, and
go through report folders to see
what is and isn’t being used. If it’s
not being used, throw it overboard
(a.k.a. archive it).

2. Mark new features that are
automatically turned ON, so you
know you need to take action.
3. Mark stuff that can be turned
ON in another color. Evaluate with
stakeholders and your team if you
think it will support your users.

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QUARTERLY HABITS

MEET WITH

Shipowners
Beyond your crew, mates, and stakeholders, go up the
ladder and meet with your company’s high-level decision
makers, such as C-level executives. Get key insights on the
company’s overall direction, such as planned increases in
headcount, changes in product offerings, or new pirate hats.
Also ask if there’s anything you can do to help or share your

Salesforce-related, big-picture ideas.

The admin’s guide to steering a successful Salesforce ship

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CAPTAIN’S YEARLY HABITS

Run Salesforce refresher
training for crewmembers
Despite doing your best to keep users up to speed, some things can slip
through the cracks. Interestingly enough, one of the things that slip is
knowledge of the basics. It may have been several years since some users
were trained on how to use Salesforce. We all forget stuff, so retrain them.
You’ll be surprised how many “Aye!” and “Arr!” and “Oh wow! I didn’t
know I could do that!” moments they’ll have.
The admin’s guide to steering a successful Salesforce ship

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YEARLY HABITS

Review and update your Salesforce Help Text.
The Hover and Discover feature can be really helpful to
users, so you should make sure what they’re discovering
is current and relevant.

Create an app to track how long each user has been trained. If you’re a new

admin, it’s a great way to get you into building your own apps.

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YEARLY HABITS

Head to Dreamforce
Dreamforce offers amazing experiences, and the return on investment
has been proven time and time again. Make it a goal to present
at Dreamforce. Every presenter was once a young lad (or lass).

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Get certified!
Salesforce certifications aren’t just about showing what you know or going for
a raise. It’s also about how your users, stakeholders, managers, and other crew
members feel about you. And it’s about how YOU feel about you. It instills
confidence in your ability to get the job done. Certifications say that you’re
passionate about your job, you’ve got what it takes, and that there is smooth
sailing ahead.

Bottom line: certifications are undisputed proof that you rock, and give

you the right to dress like a pirate to work. Visit appexchange.com to
stay up-to-date on all of the latest apps.

VISIT US

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