How I Use Jing, Clarify & Skitch to Train Salesforce Users on the Fly

"I'm trying to customize a report but my filters aren't working".... "I'm searching for an account but I'm not seeing anything in the results and it should be there".... "I don't see my opportunities."

In my role as a Salesforce Admin, I regularly receive emailed questions like this - not so complicated that scheduling a screen-sharing session is necessary, but not simple enough to warrant a "send me a link to the page you're on and I'll fix it" response. Often, it's a case of someone needing a little extra training.

Note: I've talked about this topic before (see this post: "How I Changed My Attitude Toward Internal Tech Support"), but I've updated my methods in the last few years.

I prefer to not just call someone up on the phone and tell them what to do. Why? Because...

1. What happens when the person I'm helping forgets about our conversation and stumbles across the same issue? 
2. Schedule and time zone differences tend to yield a thread of 'what time works for you?' emails that drive me nuts.
3. When the question comes up again with another person, it's great to have a resource that I can share quickly. I'm saving my future self some time.
4. Phone calls are disruptive. I'd rather they review my response at the best time for them.
5. Showing is always better than telling.

To help me use these opportunities to teach people individually, I use these three tools:

Links: Clarify (from ScreenSteps) | Skitch (from Evernote) | Jing (from TechSmith)

To determine which tool to use, I consider how I can answer their question best.

• Will a single marked-up image do the trick? Use Skitch.
• Would I type a numbered list of instructions in an email in response? And would pictures be helpful? Use Clarify.
• Can I explain this best by walking them through the steps personally? Use Jing.

How I Use Skitch

I prepare my screen so I'm viewing what I want to capture, then use the keyboard shortcut for a crosshair snapshot (meaning I 'draw' around the area I want to capture).

I use arrows, boxes or text to annotate the image as necessary, drawing attention to a button they should click on or a field that they need to populate.

Note: Jing can also be used for individual screen captures, but I prefer Skitch because I can drag and drop the images directly into Gmail.

How I Use Clarify

When someone asks me a question that will involve a step-by-step answer, I love to use Clarify. It's a quick and easy way to create one-of tutorials that combine written instructions with annotated images that show them exactly what to do.

I typically share my tutorials via a link, but there's also an option to export as a PDF or to Evernote.

How I Use Jing

Jing is easily accessed from my menu bar. I choose the area that I want to record and click to start the video recording.

Most of the time, I record audio so I can explain what I'm doing. But on occasion I leave the audio muted if no other instructions are necessary aside from a quick demo.

I keep my explanations brief - usually right around a minute. Then, with a click, I can upload the video, then the link is automatically copied and I can paste it in an emailed response.

The Result

Recording a short video, preparing a step-by-step tutorial or capturing my screen may take a smidge more mental energy, but it doesn't take much longer than composing some instructions in an email. The results have been well worth the effort.

I received this response today after I sent a coworker a video about how to customize an existing report.

Click here to see another example of the response I've gotten to this method.

Does your job involve providing tech support or training for coworkers? If so, what tools have you found successful? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

Salesforce Admin Journal: Guide & Gather Feedback Using a Google Form Before Deploying Changes

Hello fellow Salesforce admins!

In this post, I'm going to share a challenge I faced as an admin and the solution I came up with.

Imagine that you've made some changes to your Salesforce org that you'd like users to test - a new visualforce page with a few new fields, for example. You want to easily gather their feedback but the idea of assembling everyone's responses via a bunch of separate email conversations makes you antsy. Plus, you'd like a way to guide them through the testing step by step. 

You want to make it as simple as possible for them to share their comments... because you know that will encourage your testers to actually provide feedback... which will improve the quality of your changes when you roll them out to your entire org.

Now that you've got a good idea of the challenge, here's my solution: Google Forms. 

I created a form that outlined the process for testing and provided a text area for comments at each step. 

It looked similar to this (but with quite a few more screen captures and long text fields):

Now, after my group of testers are done, I can easily review all their feedback in a Google Spreadsheet.

If you'd like to make a copy of this sample Google Form to customize for your feedback-gathering needs, click below:

Note: Clicking on this button will run a custom Google Script that will copy the file to your Google Drive. You'll have to give it permission to run first.

PS - I followed these instructions from the answer from Arun Nagarajan to create the Google Script that allows you to copy the Google Form to your own Drive. Handy dandy!

PPS - I wrote this post on my own without prompting or compensation from any of the software companies involved.

Salesforce Admin Journal: Creating Groups based on Criteria with Workbench

I have so many posts in draft that I just haven't gotten around to finishing. So, instead of waiting and stressing and feeling ridiculous about it, here's something short that I stumbled upon today.

Scenario:

I wanted to create several public groups based on some criteria (in my case, I was using email domain). I discovered that was pretty much impossible in Setup. I was only seeing an option for creating a group and then adding users manually or by role/profile.

Solution:

1. I created my groups in Setup. I don't think you can create a group without a single member, so I added someone I knew would be included anyway based on my criteria.
2. I exported a query of all my active users as a csv (I used LexiLoader but Workbench would work great too).
   
   Select Id, LastName, FirstName, Email FROM User WHERE IsActive = True 
   
3. I opened my csv in Excel and sorted it by the field I wanted to use to segment my groups and added a column for Group ID.
4. I copied the id from the url for each newly created group.
5. I pasted the group id into my sorted csv for each user as I wanted to segment them in my groups.
   
   
   
   
6. I did a 'save as' on my csv.
7. I used workbench to upload the file in the GroupMembers object.

Ta da! Done! Perfect!

This process was much easier for me than trying to manually add the users to these new groups.

I haven't used Workbench that much in the past but I'm realizing that it is pretty stinkin' handy. I've been a bit frustrated with LexiLoader lately (which is the Mac version of DataLoader) and I often miss the Excel Connector (which is only for Windows OS) but even that had its flaws. 

And that's all for today... until I finish those almost done blog posts that are glaring at me.