Introducing All About...Salesforce
Welcome to a new email series from Fíonta called All About…Salesforce. I’ll be sharing resources, tools, and tips about Nonprofit Cloud and the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), as well as other Clouds in the Salesforce ecosystem like Community Cloud and Service Cloud. This monthly email will go out the third week of each month. I want to be an active part of your capacity building – if there’s something you want to learn more about, send me an email!
– Jordan Berger, Senior Salesforce Consultant
BLOG: Break Up Your Record Details with Dynamic Forms
For those who haven’t been made aware of this feature, this is a huge win for nonprofits and associations using Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). Salesforce has introduced “Dynamic Forms” which allows you to replace the standard record detail component with a selection of fields from the layout. You can recreate the detail page component, but this allows you to dynamically display fields based on record attributes such as certain field values being selected. It also provides you with the ability to display or hide fields on the layout based upon the permissions of the user visiting the page. It is currently only supported on Custom Objects but given that NPSP extends Salesforce with a range of Custom Objects, we can take advantage of this feature before it is rolled out for standard Objects (No information on when standard objects will be supported has been released by Salesforce at this time).
CHROME EXTENSIONS: Major Time Savers
Salesforce Inspector is my go-to Salesforce related Chrome Extension. With the click of a button I am able to view all the data on a Salesforce record as well as search for custom fields that may not be on the layout. This is especially useful when looking to identify if fields are being populated by automation or via the API but are not on the record’s layout. No more navigating to the Page Layout to toss fields onto a layout for confirmation. Trust me, this is a must-have!
I’m also a big fan of the Colored Favicons Chrome extension. If you are responsible for multiple environments as an administrator, it can be hard to quickly parse which is which amongst your Chrome tabs. With this extension enabled, each Salesforce cloud logo has a different color which can be specified based on the instance. This is great for working when working in multiple sandboxes and/or production.
If you find yourself working in Production (live environment) and sandbox(es), Production Org Warning extension is a very helpful reminder that you are inside of a Production org and to be aware that customizations could have serious, real-time effects.
BLOG: Integrating Salesforce with a Learning Management System (LMS)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our association clients have had to pivot and deliver all of their trainings or certification courses online as in-person gatherings came to an abrupt end back in March. There are some serious advantages to online learning, both for attendees and associations and, by integrating Salesforce with an LMS, you can use member data to improve learning experiences, measure engagement, and make future decisions supported by member data.
LIBRARY: Resource Library with Salesforce Extensions
Unofficial Salesforce is my favorite Salesforce related resource. There are many Lightning page components and flow actions that I use on a daily basis. It’s a community project and new elements are added pretty regularly. I highly recommend paging through it next time you’re looking for creative ways to solve a Salesforce requirement. Or reach out to Fíonta ;).
UPCOMING RELEASE: Winter ’21
The Winter ‘21 Release is bringing a ton of new enhancement to the Lightning Flow Builder. This article by Jen Lee breaks it down for us. I am particularly excited for the ability to configure record triggered flows based upon specified criteria. This should remove the need to launch flows from process builders, reducing the number of places admins need to go to in order to make changes or troubleshoot issues. We will also now be able to find out where in a flow an error occurred. This will help admins pinpoint where an exception was thrown directly from the error email and will be especially useful in complex flows with lots of elements.