Thursday, August 13, 2015

Simple TextExpander Snippet to Search Salesforce with a Copied Keyword

Here's a simple text expansion idea that popped into my head today and will save me clicks/time on a daily basis!

I often receive emails asking about a record in Salesforce by a keyword, such as Opportunity Name, without a link to the record.

My previous workflow involved:
  1. Highlighting the Opportunity Name in the email
  2. Using CTRL + C  to copy what I've highlighted
  3. Navigating to Salesforce
  4. Putting my cursor in the search box
  5. Using CTRL + V to paste what I copied
  6. Using the ENTER key to execute the search
  7. View the search results to find what I'm looking for
I realized today that it would be a lot easier to automate steps 3-6 using TextExpander. So, I created a new snippet comprised of the url of the page after I do a search in Salesforce.

My new process is: 
  1. Highlighting the Opportunity Name in the email
  2. Using CTRL + C  to copy what I've highlighted
  3. Opening a new tab in my browser (CTRL + T)
  4. Typing the snippet abbreviation, in my case: s.sr
  5. Viewing the search results to find what I'm looking for
The snippet is made up of three parts: 1) the Salesforce search url, 2) the value I've copied to my clipboard, and 3) the [ENTER] keystroke


Creating this simple snippet shaves a few clicks whenever I need to perform a search based on keywords I've received in an email. It might not seem like a big deal, but every click or keyboard stroke counts in my book!