Salesforce Optimised Their Optimizer Tool!

Staying on top of your Salesforce implementation and having a tidy environment which follows all Salesforce best practice has always been a struggle. What if there was one tool which you could run and all of this bad practice comes to light? Well, there is, and now it’s even simpler to use. Introducing the new Salesforce Optimizer component. If you read my ‘10 Mistakes I Made As An Admin’ post, number 2 on the list was keeping a clean environment where I spoke about the Salesforce Optimizer and how much fun you could have trawling through an 80 page document trying to figure out where you should focus your efforts. Now, Salesforce must have heard our cries and have transformed this into a super simple lightning component which you can run directly within your Salesforce environment, giving you a full breakdown or your orgs metadata and easily actionable items. So lets break it down.

Whilst the Optimizer has been transformed into a lightning component, there is some points which you cannot get by running it through the component which you do get by running the report (Yes you can still get the 80 page document if you wish). Here is what you get in the report over the component:

• Case Feed

• Duplicate Management

• Inactive Chatter Users

• Incomplete Chatter Profiles

• Keyboard Shortcuts

• Lightning Service Console

• Macros

• Omni-Channel

• Path

• Related Lists on Page Layouts (Salesforce Classic only)

If you wish to view the full list of what you can and can’t get on each then you can view it here. Unless you’re looking specifically for any of the above, then it would be more worthwhile to run it through the new component (nothing stops you running both). There are also some other considerations which you should take into account here.

Running the Salesforce Optimizer tool allows you to view a whole host of things and works by collecting all the ‘metadata’ of your Salesforce environment. If you need to see a list of all your inactive users alongside when they last logged in, this tool has it. If you need to see if you’re close to any of your limits file/data, this tool has it. Not only does it display all of this information it also guides you upon best practice and how to resolve it. By running this you can proactively prevent any issues occurring in your Salesforce environment instead of being reactive and only finding out once it actually happens There is a saying ‘prevention is better than cure’. If you can run this and stop something happening, why wait!

This all sounds amazing, but how do you actually run this in Salesforce? Let me show you.

Login to your chosen environment and go to the setup menu > search for ‘Optimizer’ (Sorry UK readers)

Then we need to allow access for our user so that we can run the component. Select ‘Allow Access’ button on the right and then tick the consent box.

Once you hit ‘Save and Close’ you can then open the component by clicking the ‘Open Optimizer’ button.

Then finally, ‘Run Optimizer’ via any of the two buttons.

Now, it’s a waiting game. Depending on the size of your environment and how much metadata there is to analyse it could take up to 24 hours. In my Trailhead environment it only took a couple of minutes.

You can navigate away and continue with whatever you were doing whilst you wait, then come back and refresh the page, once it is complete you’ll be presented with a new list view like this

As you can see we now have a full breakdown of things which require our attention, what the feature is and how long the estimated effort is to resolve it. This is a welcome addition over the report, and should assist users being able to target what they need to much faster. Once you click into any of the features you’re given a further breakdown like so

Now we have everything we need so that we can action this.

• Results - Indicates the priority and the impact which it has on your environment.

  • Immediate Action Required - High priority should be looked at straight away

  • Action Required - Between High/Medium, should be looked at when possible

  • Review Required - Medium, not urgent but does need to be looked at

  • No Action Required - Low, nothing required from you at this moment

• Data List - Has the metadata which is being referred to, including useful information to help you make a decision what to do next. Click through to see each individual record.

• Recommendation - Holds the effort and the recommendation of what you should do next. This is great because people often don’t know what the Salesforce recommended approach is.

• Help - Displays relevant Trailhead/Documentation if you need further explanations or how to’s

• View in Setup - Takes you directly to where this can be actioned within the setup menu

You’re able to use the list view on the left hand side to work your way down the list without having to navigate away and you can also sort results by clicking on ‘Status’ for example as I have to have the most ‘urgent’ items at top.

In my opinion this new layout is a great addition. With a single click of a button I can get the state of my environment with minimal effort, where this task once took a huge amount of time. It also encourages admins to follow best practice and will ultimately benefit your users and your organisation.

Salesforce is moving in the right direction and I feel tools like this which will benefit and make lives easier for newer and more experienced Salesforce users will be a lot more prominent with the amount of growth we’re seeing.If you haven’t done so yet, run this component and also run the report, you might be surprised with what comes up that you didn’t even know about.

If you enjoyed this, please check out some of my other posts here or videos here. Thank you for reading.