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.

Simple Method for Processing Digital Media Using Pocket, Feedly and Evernote

Processing the flood of available digital media can be overwhelming.

Blogs, bookmarks, pins, articles, quotes, emails. Random inspiration and useful information is scattered all over the web.

Here's my method for keeping things organized:

Evernote... allows you to organize information (bookmarks, clips of web articles, audio snippets, images, handwritten notes, etc) in digital notebooks.

Find out how to get started with Evernote here.

I use the desktop version primarily and pay for the premium subscription - totally worth it!

I'll outline my favorite tips and tricks for using Evernote productively in a future post.

• Get the Evernote Web Clipper for Chrome here.

Pocket... is a useful resource for saving web content for future reading. Whether I'm using my desktop computer or my smart phone, it's easy to send a link to Pocket to come back to.

I'm currently using the free version.

• Get the Save to Pocket extension for Chrome here.

Feedly... is the software I chose to review blog posts after the demise of Google Reader. I've found that I actually peruse posts with Feedly a lot more often than I ever did with Reader thanks to a layout that allows for super speedy scrolling.

Feedly Pro allows you to save posts directly to Evernote, but right now I'm using the free version and saving to Pocket instead.

PS - I haven't been compensated by any of these software companies. I just happen to love these tools!

Logos found here: Evernote, Pocket, Feedly.

Tip: How to Fire an Updated Trigger on Existing Salesforce Records

Hey Salesforce Admins,

Here's a tip to help you if you've got a recently updated or newly created trigger (or workflow rule) that you want to fire on existing records.

Create a custom 'Admin Filter' text field on the object that you are running the trigger on. You don't need to add it to any page layouts or make it visible to users. (I chose this method because I didn't want to update any existing fields that are already in use in order to force the trigger to fire.)

Then, use the Data Loader (or Mass Update Anything) to update that field on all of your records.

Ta-da! The update will fire the trigger on all records that match whatever criteria you've specified.

Now, I'm off to do this in my own org.

Salesforce Admin Journal: Teaching a Man to Fish.... or at Least to Create a Report

I regularly receive requests from users to create a specific report. Often these are reports that no one else needs access to.

We are trying to cut down on the number of reports in the 'Unfiled Public Reports' folder. So, I'm encouraging users to save reports that they may need in the future to their 'My Personal Reports' folder.

I'm also working on teaching them how to create reports on their own. As I mentioned in this post from last year, I think it's important to educate people whenever possible rather than just doing something for them automatically because 'it will take me less time.'

This method doesn't just benefit me by reducing the number of request I will receive in the future. It also helps my users become more self sufficient and capable.

Today, a user chatted me a report request. In response, I recorded a one minute long tutorial that will help him learn the basic skills needed to prepare the report himself.

Here's the response I received:

That was totally worth the few extra minutes it took me to record the tutorial using Jing.