At the end of a successful deployment or when a Salesforce org has been up and running for a while, clients often find it useful to dedicate a certain number of hours toward general or function-specific support. These support hours can be used on an “as needed” basis for questions and org enhancements. We typically see support contracts come from either post go-live support or from clients that do not have a dedicated Salesforce Administrator, but some orgs are large and also need support for individual pieces of functionality.
As we do a significant number of support contracts, we often get similar requests with organizations using Sales Cloud. Below are five simple enhancements that can have a huge impact on end users and won’t burn up your Support hours too quickly:
1.) Workflow Email Alerts
Sales managers and sales teams often ask for automated email alerts based off Opportunity record updates. Setting up workflow criteria and an email template can be an easy win that clients find extremely useful. Workflow notification requests often vary across different teams. Make sure to gather requirements from all teams interested in receiving automated updates.
Common Opportunity Workflow Requests:
- New Opportunity notifications
- Notifications based on specific Amount values
- Opportunity Stage change notifications
- Closed-Won notifications
2.) Reporting
Reporting enhancements can help users get the insight they have been looking for. I recommend setting up time with managers to create a list of desired reports. Often mangers look for similar reports with minor differences. In this case, leveraging the clone button to make minor changes ensures minimal use of support hours and increased productivity by end users. Keep in mind standard Salesforce reports. These prebuilt reports offer quick insights that managers may not know are available.
Common Reporting Needs:
- Sales team-based reports
- Reports for executive management
- Sales month over month
- Quarterly sales
3.) Dashboards
Setting up dashboards or the components within a dashboard based on reports is another enhancement that we often see. A simple set of table components can help managers and teams get a quick visual without needing to open a series of reports. Dashboards are another piece of functionality that can be streamlined by leveraging the clone button. We often get asked to create different dashboards that are very similar to existing dashboards, but with minor changes. An example would be separate dashboards for yearly and quarterly data.
Common Dashboard Requests:
- Sales team dashboard
- Executive dashboards
- Quarterly dashboard
- Yearly dashboard
4.) Validation Rules
Validation rules are a common ask to help ensure data integrity. The need for additional validation rules often arise after an initial Salesforce implementation, and once users have been working in the system for some time. Setting up some validation rules can really help to keep records consistent and accurate reporting without gaps.
Common Validation Requests:
- Closed- lost reason
- End date validations
- Required fields based on Opportunity Stage value
5.) List Views
List views in Salesforce can often get overlooked. Adding a few field columns to list views and related lists can help out end users a ton! Simply asking which fields are most important and having a discussion on whether or not they should be included in lists can help streamline the end user experience and most importantly save time.
Common List View Requirements:
- List views containing most relevant fields
- Clean-up all list views for different Objects for consistency
These features can help support some of the most fundamental enhancements for an existing Salesforce environment. While simple to configure, these features are often not used to their full capacity. Be sure to cover each of these areas when discussing a support contract with your Salesforce partner. By exploring these possible enhancements, it is common that additional work will surface based on Object findings.
