Dealing with Multiple Address Blocks on Lead Conversion

I've had a few clients that needed the ability to track multiple address blocks on the lead and have them convert into the two account address blocks.  It seems like a fairly common requirement and Salesforce is a bit limited here.  It's easy to map and convert custom field to custom field but there is no facility to map into the Account address fields.

The first time this happend, I asked Tom to write a trigger to facilitiate this.  It worked perfect.  The second time though, I wanted to try and push the envelope and here's what I came up with.  As a refresher, this article describes how standard fields are mapped during lead conversion.  (Basically the one Address block on Lead maps to the Billing Address on Account and the Mailing Address on Contact)

Disclaimer - this fix requires Enterprise edition since it utilizes workflow.  (Sorry my PE,GE friends...)

My requirement was that I needed both address blocks on the lead to map into the Account address blocks.  So here's the workaround:

1. Create another set of address fields on the Lead object.  I created Street, City, State, Zip to keep things simple.
2. Create another set of address fields on the Account object.  I called these "Temp Street, Temp City, Temp State, Temp Zip", since they are a holding location only.
3. Map the 2nd Lead Address Block to the Shipping Account Address block.
4. Create a workflow rule that runs upon create.  Create 4 field actions in the workflow rule to populate the Shipping Street, Shipping City, Shipping State, Shipping Zip block.

And that's it!  When the Lead is created, two address blocks are filled out.  The custom 2nd address maps to a secret 3rd address block on Account, and then a workflow rule moves things back to the standard address block on the Account.

What do you think?  Do you have any other snazzy tricks using the great features of the Salesforce platform?  Post a comment here!

-Garry

Follow me on Twitter here:  http://twitter.com/DarthGarry

So You Wanna be a Salesforce Admin...

I often get asked by people in the community... "I want to become a Salesforce Power User" or "I want to become an Admin" or "I want to learn more about Salesforce".  I feel like I often write the same email over and over with suggestions for resources to check out (and there are many, many of them).

The purpose of this blog is to do nothing other than share my favorite resources for Salesforce information and offer a few options to aid your path to Salesforce stardom.  As I talked about in this post, being helpful to your admin, or desiring to become an admin can greatly enhance your usefulness with your employer and open up doors for future career growth.  Instead of just being nice and helpful, what about being an integral part of the Administration team?  Well, here's some suggestions of things to read, watch, learn, and master.

Baseline

I often refer to Salesforce.com as "Access on Steroids, in the Cloud" to help communicate some of the underlying data structure abilities and technology.  I know that's not exactly fair, but to set some context, if you are not familiar with what a relational database is or how it works, check out these links:

• Intro to Relational Database Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-bvjtYgRVU
• Relational Databases on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database
• An introduction to cloud computing video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_DKNwK_ms
• Cloud Computing on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing 

Getting up to Speed:

• Force.com Fundamentals -  This self paced course/exercise guide will cover many important concepts for every Salesforce.com implementation.  Data modeling, setting up objects, fields, security, workflow, reports and dashboards.  Take your time and follow these exercises.  It'll fuel your thirst for knowledge! -   http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Force_Platform_Fundamentals
• Introduction Training Videos - This free series of training videos covers many of the basics of Salesforce.com Sales Cloud and general best practice (including Chatter and Reporting) - http://www.salesforce.com/services-training/training_certification/online/
• ADM-201 - Administration Essentials - This class builds upon basic platform knowledge to teach how to be a Salesforce Administrator (and covers much of the test content if you want to become certified).  Worth it to try to get on your learning plan -  http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/datasheets/DS_ADM201.pdf
• Dreamforce - Are you able to go to Dreamforce?  A 4-5 day immersion in Salesforce will definitely leave you primed up with hands on training and networking with your peers.  This year it is September 18-21.   http://www.dreamforce.com
• Premiere Support Onboarding - If your company purchased Premiere Support, you are entitled to use the onboarding video library resources.  Talk to your admin or Salesforce Account Executive about using these resources. 

Test Resources:

Here are some resources to help get you thorough that first milestone Salesforce exam - ADM-201 to gain your certified administrator credential.

• Admin 201 Certification Quiz - http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=salesforce-administration-test-adm201
• ForceCertified.com - Additional links and resources to help pass the next test - http://www.forcecertified.com
• ADM 201 Flashcards - http://www.flashcardmachine.com/adm-201-testquestions.html
• Another Pretty Comprehensive Site - to help pass the test - http://www.adm201.info/

Community Resources:

Leveraging the Salesforce Community will greatly accelerate your ability to learn and solve problems.  Having connections outside of your company will help you be exposed to a greater number of solutions and Salesforce environments.  Getting to know the community is a huge step in improving your mastry of Salesforce.

• All the Salesforce MVP's on Twitter - You should go here and follow everyone on this list to get great exposure in your Twitter feed to everything Salesforce. If you're not using Twitter yet, give it a try.  Have a question, tweet it out with #Askforce as a hashtag and people will help you.   - https://twitter.com/#!/salesforce/community-mvps/members
• Answers Board - Ask your questions here and get free answers by experts - http://success.salesforce.com/answers
• Local Users Groups - Most cities have a Salesforce users group to bring people together to share knowlege and discuss innovative solutions or industry news. http://success.salesforce.com/ideaHome?c=09a30000000D9xyAAC
• Monday AM Admin Blog - Lots of great articles here on how to be a great Salesforce administrator - http://buttonclickadmin.com/ 

Good References:

• Salesforce Data Model - http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/Content/data_model.htm
• All the Dreamforce Videos from Dreamforce 2011 - http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF11/schedule/sessions/#showdesc=true&sort=a_z&tracks=All&products=All&themes=All&levels=All&cursor=0- 
• All the rest of the Salesforce videos in the world - http://www.salesforcechannel.com/
• A search engine for everything Salesforce - http://www.findsf.info/

And there you have it...

These are my favorite resources to recommend to people who are up-and-coming on the platform. Please use these as you will to improve your knowledge of Salesforce and connections to the community.  Please bookmark this page and share it with your friends, I will try to keep it updated as I am made aware of improved resources.

Also, if you have any that you'd like to add, please, please, please comment!

Thanks!  - Garry

Salesforce Security - Two Simple Questions to Set Direction

I've been there dozens of times.  Customers asking me about Salesforce security.  They say "I just don't understand those roles and profiles and groups.  What do I need to do to use Salesforce?"

I've finally been able to distill the issue down to two simple questions.  If you can answer these questions, then you have just determined the direction you need to go with Salesforce security.  

Question #1 - Do I want every user in my company to be a Salesforce.com administrator?

If you answered "No", then you just stated that you need to implement profile level security.  Profiles define a user's experience.  Particularly, they enable an administrator to restrict users from accessing different parts of the system.  You can restrict object access, field access, administrative and user level permissions.  For you Windows NT guys, remember the Group Policy Editor?  It's the Salesforce equivalent.

There are many facets to profile level security.  I generally find it is easiest to identify the users that will be using Salesforce first, and then back into the specifications for each type of user.  Typical profiles include "System Administrators, Power Users, Standard Users".  Once profiles are identified, I review the needs of each group such as:

• Login restrictions on time and place
• Application and Tab accessibility
• Object and field accessibility
• User level abilities (run reports, export data, send emails)
• Administrator level abilities (manage reports, modify other user profiles, import data)

Question Number 2:  "For a particular object, should all users be able to see and modify all of the records?"

If you answered "No" to this question, you indicate that you need to implement Role based security.  Role based security can also be thought of as "Row Based" security.  If you imagine a data table, roles allow you to restrict the roles of the table the user has access to.  A row could be a particular customer account they should not be able to see.

Implementing role based security is often more mystical than profiles as there are may layers that impact a users visibility to a record.  These layers include the "Organizational Wide Default" on the object, their position in the role heirarchy, Sharing Rules, and Manual Sharing.  The short version of how to understand role based security needs is the following: 

• Determine which objects need to have data restricted and enable organizational wide default restrictions (i.e. should all Accounts be public read/write, or Private to their owners)
• Determine the heirarchy of users that should automatically share data.  (i.e. should a sales manager see data of their subordinates?  If so you need to define a role heirarchy)
• What are the exceptions to the role heirarchy?  Determine exceptions and craft sharing rules to open things up.
• Train staff on manual sharing usage so they can share records that fall outside the sharing rules if needed.

I hope this short, 2 cent tour of Salesforce security shines some light on the complexity.  To recap, remember there are two separate security models in the application.  Profiles determine a user's experience in Salesforce.  What applications, objects, and fields can they see.  Roles determine what records a user has access to (Their own records, their team's records, or all records).

Do you have any other critical questions you think all administrators should ask?  Post a comment!  Thanks for reading - Garry

A Neat Little Trick

Sometimes I go into a Salesforce org and things are configured in such a way that they work but are much more complex than they need to be.  Here is one example.  It is a workflow criteria, that the former admin did not know some of Salesforce's shortcuts.  The old version looked like this:

The fixed version looks like this:

One simple change, greatly reduces the complexity of the workflow rule.  No need to manage 40 lines of criteria and OR operators.  Each comma in one criteria line is an implied "or", saving a lot of time when setting up one critiera with several possible true values.

Hope you can put this in your toolbelt for future use!

Garry