Wed, 31 October 2018
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re switching it up and focusing on productivity. We pull together some of our best interviews of 2018 to bring you the best tips we’ve heard focused around productivity. We talk to Carlos Umana, Principle Business System Analyst at BMC Software, Matt Vickery, Salesforce Administrator at the Washington State Housing and Finance Commission, and Anusha Surepeddi, Product Manager for Analytics at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about how Carlos, Matt, and Anusha each approach productivity and the tools that you can use for your own org. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Carlos Umana, Matt Vickery, and Anusha Surepeddi. How Carlos simplifies complex lead processes. Carlos Umana came to the admin role from more of a development background. He focuses on productivity at a big organization, particularly in the area of lead processes. He does a lot of customizations, both in declarative and in code, to help make their complex marketing and sales teams work more smoothly. “We have a unique process around leads,” Carlos says, “so we had to devise a way to ensure, based on extremely specific criteria and logic, that leads would open for our reps.” He first tried to solve it with code but ended up realizing that using Workflows was a more efficient way to make that happen. As far as favorite apps that help Carlos get more done, he’s a big fan of SalesEdge by Savo, which renders content in your opportunity based on the stage that you’re in. LeadData lead-to-account matching has also been really helpful for leveraging account information on the lead. Finally, Andy and the Cloud’s Declarative Rollup Summaries tool, which improves customization and gives the reps the information they need. Productivity for social good. Matt Vickery is an admin in the public sector, so his interview is an interesting window into how those orgs are able to accomplish complex tasks for a good cause. The Washington State Housing and Finance Commission runs a tax credit program focused on building housing for low-income families, the elderly, farm workers, and other targeted populations. Another program helps first-time home buyers with down payment assistance and first mortgage programs to give them more favorable lending terms, which helps families get into their first home. What this translates to is a lot of things to track in their org. “One of our biggest challenges is that we have a lot of different divisions with a lot of different, overlapping needs,” Matt says. “We needed a database that allowed us to silo some information off, as well as have some integrations and overlap.” Process Builder plays a key role in facilitating and automating the flow of records throughout the organization. Matt was also able to identify redundant data entry and build processes and flows that populate key information wherever it needs to be. The magic of structure. Finally, we go back to a conversation we had earlier this year with Anusha Surepeddi, whose team delivered the top three IdeaExchange idea of all time: subfolders for reports and dashboards, which came out with the Summer ‘18 Release. Anusha had a lot of great things to say about dashboards and report last run date, which can help drive productivity throughout your org. “You have to evaluate your folder structures,” Anusha says, “do you want to organize by role? By region? You can do both, but keep it clean. Each folder structure should have a meaning.” Another big thing is to not be afraid to delete legacy data. Sort by report last run date and go crazy. With dashboards, you can use dashboard linking to drill through your dashboards and paint a picture with them without making them too cluttered. “If you’re in a meeting, it’s a nice way to tell a story with how these two things connect,” Anusha says. Resources
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Wed, 24 October 2018
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got Rikke Hovgaard, Solution Architect at Salesforce, to talk Einstein analytics. We go into how to use these tools in your daily life as an admin and to help your organization. Join us as we talk about what Einstein analytics can do, how Rikke got where she is today, and how analytics can allow you to tell complex stories with your data and get stronger insights. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rikke Hovgaard. The winding path to Salesforce. Gillian first got to know Rikke when she was preparing for a presentation about Einstein analytics on the Admin Theater Stage at Dreamforce. The presentation was so good she ended up getting hired to help people with Einstein full time. Like many, her path to the platform was a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work. “I ended up in a job interview and the guy that was interviewing me started talking about Salesforce, and I started panicking because I didn’t know what it was,” she says, so she thought she didn’t get the job. She got called in for a second interview and decided to bone up, which landed her in a job implementing Salesforce for customers. “Back then we didn’t have the wonderful tool of Trailhead so I couldn’t learn myself,” but Rikke’s colleagues had her back. Through little tasks and helpful pointers she was able to work her way up to building demos, and within a month and a half, she had her admin certification. From reports specialist to Einstein analytics expert. Rikke got involved in Einstein because she was in charge of report training for customers during Salesforce implementation. When Einstein was introduced, Rikke’s manager immediately put her into a four-day training in Paris (not as romantic as it sounds) so she could leverage her knowledge of reports. From there, she kept up to date by doing different use cases and actively teaching herself. Why should you think about using it at your organization? “Every single record we create makes more and more data,” Rikke says, “and we want to know how much more we have to do to get the job done.” There are limitations on reporting and sometimes you need more flexibility. Rikke’s presentation is about taking the standard Salesforce reporting that we know and love and then looking at what Einstein analytics brings to the table. There’s a bunch of features you can use, but Rikke really gets into when and where they can be deployed. She also gets into Einstein discovery, which is bringing even more to the table. Making Einstein work for you. “I like to call standard reporting operational— we want to have a list, we want to have that quick, instant look,” Rikke says, “but Einstein analytics is more for a strategic purpose.” It gives you the ability to get an overview but also drill down into your data and make a data story. “The way that Einstein analytics works is when you’re on your dashboard you can click on any of the widgets and everything starts reacting to it,” Rikke says, “and once you’ve found your data, you can take actions on it.” If it would be useful to notify the account manager that they need to take action on an opportunity, you can use global actions to empower that at scale with Einstein Analytics. Other tools like custom maps and compare tables give you the ability to create something useful from your data, immediately. We can create complex formulas right in the UI with no code, like to calculate “what is the percentage change in my opportunities from month to month.” Attend a Global Gathering near you! The Trailblazer Community is #LivingtheDream and bringing the best of Dreamforce to you! Join a Global Gathering near you to connect, learn, have fun and give back with Trailblazers like you. Register for a Dreamforce Global Gathering at dreamforce.com/globalgatherings. Resources
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Direct download: Einstein_Analytics_for_Admins_with_Rikke_Hovgaard.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:00pm PDT |
Wed, 17 October 2018
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re live from the Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group to hear a special panel of nonprofit admins put together by Laura Derby. If you’re in the nonprofit spaces or thinking about getting involved, tune in for some great insights from Laura Derby, Salesforce Admin at the Nature Conservancy and co-leader of the Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group; Shay Davis, Salesforce Admin at the Assistance League; and Heather Hart, who has a new role as VP of Information Technology at the Huntington since this podcast was recorded. Join us as we talk about how to fit everything into your budget, translate language like sales and leads to the nonprofit space, and how data modeling can work for these orgs. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Laura Derby, Shay Davis, and Heather Hart. Getting comfortable at Dreamforce. This week on the pod, we’re lucky to attend an Ask the Expert Admin panel with three experts in the field. Laura Derby is the Salesforce Admin at the Nature Conservancy and co-leader of the Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group. She’s relatively new to the position, “but we primarily use the opportunities and contracts object to track land.” The Nature Conservancy will do things like pay farmers to intentionally flood their fields in order to protect a key bird habitat, and Salesforce helps them keep track of what they’re doing. At the time of this recording, Heather Hart was the Director of IT and Salesforce Admin at the Broad Museum, a contemporary art museum in LA. “Our mission is to make contemporary art accessible to the broadest popular public, and we use Salesforce in a lot of ways to achieve that mission,” Heather says. Salesforce is their central database for collecting information about the general public, whether that’s ticket reservations, shopping in their store, or subscribing to their email newsletter. “Reporting is really important to us, and we want to know exactly how many people are coming and encourage them to come back.” Like so many people on this podcast, Heather is an accidental admin. When she started she was the 7th employee and the museum was still under construction. “There was no infrastructure at all— we had a flash-based website,” Heather says, “it was a really great opportunity to build a really solid, integrated solution from scratch.” Because they decided that they needed to manage their data more effectively from the outset Salesforce was the obvious solution, so Heather went to an admin training and hasn’t looked back. The museum attracts 150,000 people a year with only 40 full-time staff members, and Salesforce is a big part of that. Shay is also an accidental admin, getting her start in the world of education as an administrator at Pepperdine. From there, she worked for a for-profit test prep and admissions consulting company. “We had a Salesforce admin but he was also our developer and our Director of College Prep,” she says, “our instance needed some TLC so I took it upon myself to go through Trailhead and get certified, which brought me to my new role at a nonprofit.” “I had familiarity with Salesforce but not as an admin,” Laura says, but she didn’t get a chance to dive into it until she became a temp at a grassroots environmental nonprofit. She happened to work for Paige Von Riper (who now works for Salesforce), “and they used Salesforce for everything.” They had a customized implementation that taught her a lot and helped her understand how powerful the platform truly was. “The number one challenge with nonprofits is budget,” Laura says, and figuring out how to deliver those things to end users at minimal cost. “What’s so great about the Nonprofit Success Pack is it’s free. And you might want to have someone help you get started with it, but it’s great that you can continue using it and there’s all these great features, just like with regular Salesforce, that get updated three times a year.” “Coming from for-profit,” Shay says, “the first week of looking at NPSP for the first time, I was a little taken aback because it looks so different.” You need to really understand what you’re looking at to know what type of data you need to get out of the system. “For us, what we’re doing is so different,” Heather says, “we seem to attract people who think that we’re very unique and special, and our needs are somehow not at all related to the needs of all the other thousands of organizations who use Salesforce.” The challenge, then, is taking the language that nonprofits use and translating it to the language that Salesforce development uses. Even if a museum isn’t trying to “sell” things in quite the same way, there are tools out there that could be useful to them. Attend a Global Gathering near you! The Trailblazer Community is #LivingtheDream and bringing the best of Dreamforce to you! Join a Global Gathering near you to connect, learn, have fun and give back with Trailblazers like you. Register for a Dreamforce Global Gathering at dreamforce.com/globalgatherings Resources Social
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Direct download: LIVE_from_Los_Angeles_Nonprofit_Community_Group.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:37pm PDT |
Thu, 11 October 2018
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we have the second half of our live taping from Dreamforce. We have Aaron McGriff, Salesforce Business Systems Analyst at Masco Cabinetry in Detroit, and we’re joined by the original Button Click Admin himself, Mike Gerholdt. Join us as we talk about the differences in their experiences as someone who’s just learned Salesforce and someone who’s been with the platform for over a decade, and stick around for a special community Lightning Round. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Aaron McGriff and Mike Gerholdt. Getting comfortable at Dreamforce. For Mike, it’s his tenth Dreamforce. He’s evenly split them with five as a Salesforce customer and five as an employee. At the same time, we also have Aaron on the stage at his very first Dreamforce, so there’s a big contrast in experience represented on this episode. “I’m comfortable at Dreamforce this year,” Mike says, “it doesn’t feel as crazy and hectic and you’re just able to let it soak in. When I was in Aaron’s mode I remember getting back and thinking that I wished I spent more time in the hallway just talking to people.” Mike started using Salesforce in 2006, while Aaron has only been on the platform for a year. With the contrast in experience on the stage, we wanted to hear what the hardest thing was for Mike about learning to be an admin. “The biggest thing I struggled with was understanding how data relates to other data,” Mike says, “understanding how objects relate to other objects and how they link together just never made sense.” One day, he took a class with Salesforce instructor Wendy Braid that clarified everything. She drew a diagram on the whiteboard visually relating records and identifiers, and suddenly it all made sense. Learning and sharing Salesforce. “A lot of my friends are finding out that I’m a Salesforce admin now,” Aaron says, “and I didn’t realize how many of them use Salesforce for their jobs.” Even though he’s relatively new to the platform, he’s been able to use his knowledge to teach others. One of his friends needed to create a bunch of reports but she had no idea how to do it, so she came over and he was able to show her the ropes. For Mike, one of the first things he got taught was how to use roll-up summary fields to count items below items and sum them up higher. “It’s so much easier now to do stuff in Salesforce. I rebuilt an org the day before they rolled out a WYSIWYG editor,” Mike says, and with all the new tools the difference between when he started using the platform and where it is now is stark— “it’s the difference between digging a pool with a spoon and digging a pool with a shovel.” How to jump in with the community. “Volunteering is one of the best ways to get experience, and there’s tons of nonprofits everywhere, so find your local nonprofit user group and see what you can do for other people,” Aaron says. For Mike, “what’s interesting is that getting involved with the community constantly changes. You have to look at where you are in the world and also in your career.” If you live in Montana there’s probably not a user group within 60 miles of you, so it might be worth it to invest some time in social. “Treat Twitter like you’re going to a party,” Mike says. You don’t go around to everyone announcing that you’re there— you spend time listening. The same goes for if you are in a position to go to a live event. Spend time listening and focus on having quality conversations, and it’ll snowball from there. “Find one person, either online or at a community group,” Mike says, and focus on building that relationship. Attend a Global Gathering near you! The Trailblazer Community is #LivingtheDream and bringing the best of Dreamforce to you! Join a Global Gathering near you to connect, learn, have fun and give back with Trailblazers like you. Register for a Dreamforce Global Gathering at dreamforce.com/globalgatherings Resources
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Direct download: LIVE_from_Dreamforce_with_Mike_Gerholdt__Aaron_McGriff.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:16am PDT |
Wed, 3 October 2018
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re joined by Aaron McGriff, Salesforce Business Systems Analyst at Masco Cabinetry in Detroit. We’ll learn about how Salesforce and Trailhead helped him go from unemployed to recording live on the Dreamforce stage. Join us as we talk about why sharing his experiences changed his Salesforce learning journey, the incredible power of the Salesforce Ohana, and how to battle imposter syndrome. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Aaron McGriff. From unemployed to Salesforce Admin. This episode of the pod comes to you live from the Dreamforce stage. It’s Aaron’s first Dreamforce, and how he got here is pretty amazing. “Two years ago I was unemployed and had no idea what direction I was going to go in,” he says. A family friend turned him onto Salesforce at first and so he started on Trailhead, but it wasn’t until he got on Twitter and started tweeting his experience. “That’s when everything really blew up,” he says, “the encouragement, the support I was getting was something I never felt before in my life.” Originally, Aaron had heard about Salesforce but didn’t really pursue it. It sort of went in one ear and out the other because he figured it would take too long to go from first learning the platform to actually getting a job. A few months into working a new job Aaron asked himself a tough question, “Am I really living the lift that I want to live? Am I living my life on my own terms or just going with the flow? And as I’m sitting there I notice that the company I work for had a link for Salesforce on their landing page.” Battling imposter syndrome with the power of the Salesforce Ohana. “Whenever I do something right I giggle to myself,” Aaron says, “and every time I got a new badge in Trailhead I was just laughing to myself because I was actually getting it and doing stuff right.” The connections he had made on Twitter motivated him to come to community events, and he found himself at Midwest Dreaming. From there, he ended up in his new job at Masco Cabinetry. “Two weeks into my new position I had 16 projects assigned to me,” Aaron says, and he’s working on everything from implementing live chat for customer service and building surveys for their design team. “Imposter syndrome hits you pretty quickly once you get into a new role,” he says, “but what you have to do is take a step back and say, ‘OK, I’m in this position for a reason, I got this job for a reason, I know what I’m doing and if I don’t I know I have a million people standing with me that can help me get through it.’” The first of many. For advice, Aaron says you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for what you need. “The Salesforce community is the best resource you can have,” he says, “someone will always be there to help you.” Beyond that, “you never know what you can truly do, what you can truly accomplish until you get up and actually do it.” “Seeing just how big Dreamforce is, it’s just kind of awe-inspiring that I’m actually here,” Aaron says. The Salesforce Ohana (and a lot of hard worked) helped him get there, and hopefully many more to come. Attend a Global Gathering near you! The Trailblazer Community is #LivingtheDream and bringing the best of Dreamforce to you! Join a Global Gathering near you to connect, learn, have fun and give back with Trailblazers like you. Register for a Dreamforce Global Gathering at dreamforce.com/globalgatherings Resources
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Direct download: LIVE_from_Dreamforce_with_Aaron_McGriff.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:43am PDT |
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