Have you ever heard the expression “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” (BTW – who has a “breadbox” these days?). Or perhaps “animal, vegetable or mineral?” If not, you might be too young to be familiar with a game called “20 Questions.” I touched briefly on this topic when interviewed on the Button Click Admin…
When I was interviewed a few weeks back for the Button Click Admin Podcast, hosts Mike Gerholdt and Jared Miller asked what was harder to learn – Salesforce or consulting? I answered that I thought Salesforce was easier to learn than consulting, and that might surprise a few of you. I think it even surprised…
Visual Workflow (Flow Designer) has been a curious feature of Salesforce that I’ve never had a good opportunity to dive into. I’ve created hundreds of Workflows, Validation Rules and probably over a thousand reports in the last 10 years, but until last weekend I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually…
In this second installment of our two-part series on Campaigns, Shell tackles the subject of Campaign Members – the method in which we tie Campaigns to people (Leads and Contacts) in Salesforce. He walks through how to setup Member Status to track response rates and then highlights the multiple methods you can use to associate…
In this first installment of our two-part segment on Campaigns, Shell provides examples of marketing initiatives that could be represented as Campaign records in Salesforce. He explains how Campaigns are like any other tab or standard object (in that you can have custom fields, multiple page layouts, record types, validation rules, and workflow), but they…
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell introduces the topic of Workflow Actions. In this second installment of our two-part segment on Workflow, Shell explains the four different actions that can result when a Workflow rule fires. You can: Update a field Send an email Assign a task to a Salesforce User Send an…
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell introduces the topic of Workflow Rules. In this first installment of a two-part segment, Shell explains how Workflow can help accelerate your business processes by automating activities like creating tasks, sending emails and updating a record. He also covers what Workflow cannot do – trigger off information…
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell looks at the options available to send mass email to your Leads and Contacts. First he covers what you can do natively (for free) using the mass email wizard in Salesforce – the volumes limitations, reporting available, and how to handle opt outs to be CAN SPAM compliant….
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell walks you through how Validation Rules in Salesforce can help you enforce data quality to ensure users cannot enter conflicting information, save a record that is missing key fields, or enter data that is not in a standardized format (to help downstream with reporting). Shell takes you through…
When I was first exposed to Salesforce back in 2005, it blew my mind. At that time I had been working for large companies that were stuck between the extremes of very rigid ERPs like SAP (that almost never got updated due to the expense and time involved), and “lowest common denominator” tools like Excel….