5 Salesforce Apps and Add-ons that will make your life as an admin EASIER!

There’s always those moments working with Salesforce where you think ‘my life would be SO much easier if it didn’t work the way it did!’.. and trust me, if you’re just starting to work with Salesforce and haven’t had one of these yet, they will come, but you’ll learn to laugh at them later down the line. In this post i’m going to share 5 of my favourite apps and add-ons which made my life as an admin much easier.

In my previous post 10 easy mistakes I made a Salesforce admin, number one on the list was logging into the incorrect environment. If you’re a Salesforce admin it’s likely you have a manageable amount of logins (or not), but it’s still easy to get mixed up and keep track of all your passwords/usernames. This is why number 1 on this list is a password manager. I mentioned a few which you can use, but personally I use ORGanizer (ORGaniser for us English folk) which is a Google chrome extension. They all follow the same principal, but it comes down to whatever works best for you. Once you add this extension to chrome you have a single place to manage all of your environments, right there within your browser.

Once you have installed the add-on into chrome via the link it will be visible in the top right hand corner of your browser. Clicking on the small ‘i’ icon will present you with the panel in which you can manage all of your logins and settings like so:

From within this you’re able to start adding and managing your logins. As you can see I have grouped my logins into two groups ‘Clients’ and ‘Personal’. This grouping is entirely down to you, and you have the option to create new groups upon entering a new login. Once you’ve added your login via the ‘New’ button and categorised it, you have a host of functions available on the left which are:

• Favourite Login (star icon) - Sort your favourite most frequent logins from the rest

• Open in new tab (green file icon) - Opens a new tab and logs you into your environment on your chosen page

• Open developer console (white console icon) - Opens directly the developer console for your chosen environment

• Open in new window (orange file icon) - Opens a new window and logs you into your chosen page

• Open in incognito - Opens an incognito browser window and logs you into your chosen page

• Copy login URL (blue file icon) - Copies the full login URL which you can paste wherever you please

• Copy password and token on clipboard (key icon) - Copies both your password and token so it can be pasted accordingly

• Choose landing page - During the login setup you can choose which landing page you want. Useful if you’re spending most of your time in the setup menu!

So, as you can see, already some useful time saving functionality which you would not of had previously. ORGanizer is also available on the AppExchange, so if you want to check it out you can also do so here. Another great feature with ORGanizer is API name replace. This feature replace your field labels with their API name making it much easier to identify your fields. Simply use the tab in the bottom left once you’re logged in then select ‘Replace API Names’. As you can see, there’s a whole host of other goodies there also.

Number 2 on the list, one which has saved me many times and will also save you needing code is Declarative Lookup Rollup Summaries. Rollup fields are extremely useful and powerful fields which allow you to do a whole host of functions between two objects (SUM/MIN/MAX/COUNT) BUT you have to have a master-detail relationship between the two. Great? But most objects you often require rollups on do not have a master-detail relationship but instead a simple lookup. Now, unless you’re a wizard with flow builder or you can write apex (most admins greatest fears) you’re stuck at a dead end.

Declarative Lookup Rollup Summaries (the name could be less of a mouthful I know) in this case solves all your rollup worries. Firstly, choose either the production or sandbox link and install the package. Then once it’s installed you can begin creating your rollups instantly. There is a great wiki page explaining the steps here.

Here I have created a rollup field on the Account object to count the number of child Cases in the status of ‘New’. You can of course tailor this to your own requirements.

Then once you hit ‘Save’ you can then use the ‘Manage Child Trigger’ button to generate the required code for your rollup.

Once you hit ‘Deploy’ you’ll then be able to go back into your rollup and mark it as ‘Active’. See? easy right?. This tools is totally free and community managed so it’s continually being updated which is also a great feature.

I get it, assigning and removing permission sets to multiple users is a pain and tiresome. The Permissioner allows you to do this effortlessly through a much better UI over the standard Salesforce one. Once you’ve created your permission sets, you can go into The Permissioner object and mass assign or revoke access through a custom UI

As you can see from the screenshot, you simply search which permission set you want to assign in this case, then search for your users (you can search specific users or just hit ‘search’ and they will all appear as long as they have the same license type as the permission set you’ve selected) then use the ‘Assign’ button to mass assign. This process is also the same for revoke.

This app becomes extremely useful when you’re dealing with a larger amount of permission sets, or you have a larger amount of users. It’s very easy to use, and has some great reviews on the AppExchange. Give it a try, you can always uninstall everything on this list if you feel it isn’t for you.

The Salesforce Inspector. Sorry another Google Chrome plugin (if you didn’t tell it’s my favourite browser and these plugins are why). This plugin is GREAT for both admins and consultants, giving you access to a whole host of data at the click of a button. The inspector panel sits within Salesforce and can be accessed via the button on the right hand side like below:

You then have access to some great options:

• Show all data - Gives you a complete list of all the data relevant to the record you’re viewing, including fields which are not visible on the screen and record type

• Data Export - Run a quick data export and then export to CSV

• Data Import - Import data.. would probably recommend other dataloaders but still useful

• Org Limits - Get a full breakdown of your org limits and your percentage of use in relation to those limits

• Download Metadata - Export all of your orgs metadata - you can choose which you want/don’t want to export

• Explore API - Allows you to make API calls - less useful for admins more for devs

• Setup Home - Takes you directly to the setup page of your org

The ones I have highlighted you will most likely find useful, although all of the features listed are great to have and much more easily accessible rather than the standard UI. An essential if you’re a chrome user.

Last up on our list is Field Trip. Another one of my mistakes within my previous post was not keeping a tidy environment. It’s very easy to create fields, forget about them and they just sit there, rotting away not being used. Unused fields are an admins worst nightmare, ruining page layouts, skewing reports and much more. This app allows you to get real-time feedback on your fields for any object, allowing you to make that decision of removing it without the worry that it is being used by your users.

Once you’ve installed the app, you can get to it by going to the ‘Field Trip object and creating a new record. You choose which object and filter for it to run on and then runs a batch process in order to generate the outcome record. Once it’s completed you’ll be presented with something like this:

I ran this on my personal org so this is not real data, but by going to the ‘Related’ tab you can see each of your fields, how many records it’s populated on and a % scoring. With this data you can then more accurately determine whether your fields are being used or not and can subsequently be removed. A tool I definitely recommend if you’re in that cleanup process! and your users will thank you for de-cluttering their pages.

So there we have it. 5 Add-ons and Apps which will make your life as a Salesforce admin/consultant much EASIER. There are loads of great tools out there, and new ones are being developed continuously. Here on the AppExchange is a great place to stay up to date and see how other people like you have rated these apps, and you can give them a try yourself.

We had an amazing response to our previous post and i’d love to hear your feedback. You can use the social share buttons below to share this post with anyone you think it could benefit and don’t forget to tag us @forcewithluke1 (twitter) @forcewithluke (all other socials) if you do. You can also ‘Subscribe’ below if you don’t want to miss out on any new content from us. Thanks for reading.