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

5 Quick Tips to Help you be a Sponge

By "Sponge", I mean "Someone who absorbs everything they hear and learns it".  

I spent all day yesterday doing training for a client.  It got me thinking when I attend training, there is usually an investment made for me to be able to attend it and I want to learn and remember everything I possibly can to get my/my employer's money out of it.  I'm not in high school anymore and my habits of learning have changed, so I thought I'd share a few of my tips for maximizing retention.

1)  Cell Phone Off.  This should be a no brainer.  Classroom time is sacrosanct and should not be interrupted by anything.

2)  Sit in front.  Sitting close to the presenter means that I can hear everything AND my "better be polite and pay attention" behavior is reinforced.

3)  Take notes.  Preferably written ones.  A laptop brings too many distractions to a training class.  Old school is good school.

4)  Ask questions often.  Don't get left in the dust, ask questions every time you don't understand.  OR, if you feel ahead of the game, ask questions about more complex scenarios.  Keep your head in the game and engage with the classroom conversation.

5)  Within 24 hours, practice!  There is a reinforcement window, that if you reinforce the training within 24 hours, retention is dramatically increased.  This means, after the class is over, you're not done.  Recharge your batteries, go back to your room, and spend an hour reviewing what you learned that day.  I have 3 ways of doing this:

• Read/re-write my notes.  I read my notes, and often transcribe them into a Google Document.  Transcription helps me sort out what's good and what's not and re-process everything I wrote down.
• USE the application.  If it's an application based training, I try to access the application and review exercises from the day on my own.  Getting stuck sometimes is the best way to know what questions to ask.
• Google it.  I like to know what other people are doing/saying about what I was trained on.  Sometimes alternative sources give great insight and reinforcement to what I learned.

Whatever you are able to do, do it.  It'll double or triple your ability to remember what you learned.

Conclusion

I know some of these are basic and very "classic", but learning how to learn and applying good habits during training will help you, your employer, and your career long term.

Do you have any training retention tips?  Please comment below to share them!

Thanks,

Garry

Salesforce Cross Queries = Awesome

Today I was working with a Salesforce customer on the Nonprofit Starter Pack and a formerly impossible requirement came up.  It went like this:

Show me every household that has one member that has their constituency equal to "Parent" (For reference, the constituency field was a custom field on the Contact object)

Back in the "Olden Days", being, the days before Cross Queries were available to us, that would have have been quite difficult.  With the advent of Salesforce Analytics Edition however, that is now done quite simply.

Step 1 - pick a report type

In this case, I picked simply "Households" since I just wanted a household driven mail list.

Step 2 - Define criteria.

Here's the magic.  First, add a cross query.  Choose "Households With Household Members"

Next, add a filter, and choose "Constituency Equals Parent".

The logic for this is fairly basic, I want only households with Contacts in them and out of those Contacts, I only want ones that are parents.  These requirements could be changed to anything though.  Another example "Only show households that have kids with blue eyes".  It could be anything based on a contact field now.

Step 3 - Run the report and enjoy the results of your hard labor.

The resultset from the report now shows household data, and only households that have contacts who are parents in them.  It's a great way to report on a higher level object, and filter out lower level data that should not be included in your final result set.

Your executive director will probably give you a ticker tape parade, and hopefully even the rest of the day off.

Rock on.  -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 Little Twitter Snobbery, or Common Sense?

I say this all the time, but I love Twitter.  It's still my favorite social network.  To me, it has a very high signal to noise ratio, is FAST, and fun.  It allows me to link and include content with ease, and is available at my desk or from my mobile devices with ease.  I can sculpt the contents of my feed, and also create lists on certain subjects.  I can watch a Tweetdeck screen and monitor a dozen feeds at the same time and conversate like no one's business.  I love it.

I Tweeted a few weeks ago and mentioned some words to avoid at all costs in your Twitter bio.  I feel like most people want to be taken seriously in Twitter, but then write their bio in such a way that it screams "Amateur", "Marketer/Spammer", or "Trying too hard".  Sure, we all want to be clever in 160 characters to describe ourselves.  But I must admit, the following words generally turn me off and don't motivate me to click the follow button:

• Guru

  

• Ninja
• Rockstar
• Jedi
• Expert
• Wizard
• Master
• Sensei
• Social Media Anything

It's tough to describe yourself in 160 characters, but here are a few things that I've found I like to see in profiles: 

• Something unique.  One of my favorite Twitterites (aka @kikilitalien) has "I drink red wine and eat red meat" in her profile.  That's genius.  Original, funny, and assertive all wrapped up into one sentance.
• Be true to yourself.  You're most likely not a sensei, unless you teach martial arts.  What do you REALLY do?  Describe that.  Are you a carpenter?  Say you're a carpenter, not a "Wood Wizard" or a "Jointery Jedi"
• Give up some professional and some personal.  I follow interesting pros, and I follow interesting peeps.  I love to see a mix of that in a profile so I get a picture of the person behind the profile.
• Pictures help.  If I see an egg or o_O as your image, it screams "Noob!!!".  I doubt that feed will be full of interesting things for me.  Sure, it has potential, but unless you start engaging with me I probably won't follow back until I get an understanding of the flavor of your feed.

If you're not on Twitter, you're probably saying "What???".  All I can say is "What are you waiting for, get on it!".  It's a treasure trove of information and relationships waiting to be formed.  Go to Twitter and set up an account now!

And a note to all of my followers - Thanks so much for finding my feed interesting enough to follow.  Please hit me up and let's chat.

What do you think?  Do you have a few profile turn ons or turn offs?  Leave a comment and let me know what other bad buzzwords you've seen, or other genius profile additions.  

Until next time - Garry.  I mean - @DarthGarry