Salesforce set to require Multi-Factor Authentication

With Salesforce making the recent announcement that they will be requiring customers to enable multi-factor authentication (within the next calendar year), we thought it would be a good time to review what multi-factor authentication is & the key benefits of enabling it.  Before we go into the benefits – let’s review what specifically multi-factor authentication (MFA) is.  MFA is a secure authentication method that requires users to prove their identity by supplying two or more pieces of evidence (or “factors”) when they log in. One factor is something the user knows, such as their username and password. Other factors are verification methods that the user has in their possession, such as an authenticator app or security key.

The three basic elements that can be used in MFA are:

·      something the user knows, like a password or pin number;

·      something the user has, like a mobile device; and

·      something the user is, like a fingerprint, optics or voice.

The principle of MFA is that there is no perfect authentication factor. Any one factor that is implemented will have its strength and weaknesses. The concept of multi-factor authentication is that a second or third factor will compensate for the weakness of the other factor/s and vice-versa.

Let’s review some of the obvious benefits of MFA:

·      Security

o  the principle of MFA is that each factor compensates for the weakness of the other factors. For example, authentication factors about “something the user knows”, like passwords and pins, can be susceptible to brute-force (hackers forcing logins) or social engineering attacks. You can supplement it by adding an authentication factor that is not so easily guessed.

·      Compliance

o  A second benefit of multi factor authentication is being able to achieve the necessary compliance requirements specific to my organization which in turn mitigate audit findings and avoiding potential fines.

·      Simplify Login Process

o  The added security given by MFA actually allows companies to use more advanced login options like single sign-on.

Single sign-on works by validating the user through MFA during the login process. Once the user is authenticated, they are logged into their single sign-on software. From there they have access to the covered apps of the single sign-on software without the need to log in for each app separately.

·      Combat Cyber threats

o  Cyber Security has become a big concern for companies, as more of our systems become increasingly cloud-based.  The multi-factor authentication (MFA) market is expected to reach USD 12.51 Billion by 2022.  This shows that a lot of organizations think that MFA is, right now, one of the best security measures you can implement to protect your company, users, and sensitive data.

Salesforce announced the requirement in a recent message to its customers:

Looking for additional resources?  Check out these links:

· Salesforce Multi-Factor Authentication FAQ

· Introduction to Salesforce Authenticator (Video)

· Set Up Single-Sign On for Your Internal Users (Trailhead)

Considering a Salesforce Consultant? Here's some of the key benefits

Many firms who are currently using or considering purchasing Salesforce will have an internal discussion on how to manage the environment moving forward.  Do you allocate existing internal resources or hire a full-time dedicated person to manage your Salesforce instance?  Or do you potentially look to out-source this role & build a consultancy partnership with a Salesforce subject matter expert?  There are pros and cons to both, however in today’s post we want to highlight some of the major advantages that come with going the Consultancy route.  We’ve broken down the key advantages into 3 different categories: the time & speed at which you are able to design and deploy customizations, the quality of work you are deploying, and ensuring you are maximizing your return on your Salesforce investment.

Time & Speed

-Existing Commitments:  Your internal team may be more bogged down than ever with current projects, especially in 2021, as companies are hesitant to add additional headcount.  Will your firm have the bandwidth to pull team members off existing projects to dedicate their time to Salesforce?  Using a Consultant eliminates this – always solely dedicated to the Salesforce environment.

-Learning Curve – With any new product or platform, there is a learning curve – not just with using the product but with implementing and customizing it as well. Using your internal staff to implement the Salesforce platform can add multiple hours, days or even weeks and months to the project timeline. Not to mention, you’re assuming the tools and procedures they’re implementing are correct. Salesforce Consultants spend all day, every day working in the system and typically have been for years. A Consultant gives your team the ability to hit the ground running.

-Planning Time – Your team will need to take time to get organized and map out a detailed implementation plan.  That may be easy if you have a Project Management Officer (PMO) or if your team is experienced in managing CRM implementations.  If not, it will likely take them some time to ramp up and come up with an appropriate implementation plan. Experienced Salesforce consultants will have standard implementation plan blueprints they can customize to fit your unique requirements.

-Setup and Configuration Time – Your team can, and will, learn how to setup and configure Salesforce.  However, we recommend letting them learn when the stakes aren’t so high and the pressure’s not so great. Salesforce consultants have configured many organizations.  They know exactly what steps need to be done to add your custom fields, modify your user settings, and configure security settings so that each user sees just what you want them to see.  This is done at a fraction of the time.  Also, Consultants can help empower your team to eventually take over once the implementation is live.

QUALITY

-Best Practices – When leveraging an experienced Salesforce Consultant for your implementation, you are sure to get industry best practices for using, testing, and customizing the platform. These best practices are learned from years of experience, completing similar implementations and can put your company on the right path to fully optimize the system and what it has to offer. Let your Salesforce consulting team provide you with tips, tricks and nuances without your team having to learn through trial & error.

-Constant support – If you partner with the right Salesforce Consultants, they won’t just disappear after your implementation. Although future training, support and issue resolution may not be covered in your initial implementation contract, a true Salesforce Consulting partner will be there to help. In addition to providing constant support of your Salesforce system, your consultants should always be notifying you of future releases and changes to your Salesforce org so you can stay ahead of the new features.

ROI

When paying for a tool like Salesforce, your exec team is going to want to see some tangible returns on that investment.  In a yearly study by Bluewolf called The State of Salesforce 2017, 77% of people surveyed think their company could be doing more with their Salesforce investments. Don’t become one of these companies, let your Salesforce consulting team guarantee you are using the platform to its fullest potential. Salesforce self-implementations tend to focus on just getting the system up and running. The bells and whistles that Salesforce offers then become a “nice to have”, not a “need to have” and can be completely forgotten. With a Salesforce Consultant you will get both.

-User Adoption – To accurately understand whether or not your Salesforce users have been adopting the new platform, you will want to measure their usage, data quality, and business performance. Are they logging in and contributing to the system? Is the data they’re entering correct and complete? Is Salesforce being effective at improving business performance? Proper training and understanding of the Salesforce platform can lead to increased user adoption and positively affect all three metrics.  Your Consultant can help drive that adoption you seek.

As you can see, there are several benefits to using a Salesforce Consultant to maximize what Salesforce has to offer.  For a free 30 minute consultation on how our team can help deliver these benefits to your Org, contact us today!

Need to lock a records from being edited? Let’s review how it can be done

 From time to time, situations will come up where you will want to lock down records to prevent them from any future edits.  In this post we will look at some different ways to lock-down records, to prevent users from modifying.  Some examples might be a Closed-Won or Closed-Lost Opportunity record, that you want to preserve once the records life has come to an end.  Or perhaps you have a closed Case record, that you don’t want users going back and editing or deleting to preserve the data that was captured at that moment in time.  Another example might be a record that is being pulled into a separate database, and you want to ensure that data doesn’t change.  Whatever the use case is, our team can deliver those solutions.

Let’s review a few of the options available:

·      Record Types & Page Layouts

o   The most straightforward solution would be to implement a separate record type named “Locked” or “Read-Only”.  Along with that record type, you can assign a read-only page layout assigned to that record type.  Once those are in place, workflow rules can be built to change the record to the Read-Only record type, once it meets that locked criteria you set for your Org.  However, this is not an option if you are using record types for some other purpose and do not want to change it just to meet this requirement. Also, note that using this to lock records is not a fool-proof solution as users will still be able to edit the record from the list view.

·      Record Ownership changes

o   Changing the record owner is another potential solution.  Using another workflow or trigger, you can change the owner so that other users are unable to edit.  This solution will be dependent on what your Organization Wide Default settings are, which have in place sharing settings that don’t allow edits.

·      Triggers

o   Writing a trigger to lock a record is another option, however this requires custom development.  Furthermore, it will only stop an edit once a user tries to save – which may not provide the best user experience.

·      Validation Rules

o   Acts very similarly as the trigger will, by flagging the record from being edited once the system recognizes an attempt to change it.  Also like the trigger, it only stops the user when attempting to save.

·      Visualforce Pages

o   Custom Visualforce pages can be created & used to hide the Edit and Delete buttons

Like so many requirements your Org may have, Salesforce provides several different paths to achieving it.  When locking records, you’ll need to find the best solution that fits your specific Org and how you utilize it.  Most of the time you don’t want to hide records from users, but prevent an inadvertent or intentional edit – which is can certainly be achieved.

Product Spotlight: RealZips GeoData Platform

In this post, we are going to take a deeper look into the geographic data platform “RealZips”, a third-party application available for your Salesforce Organization.  For many Orgs, managing your records from a geographic perspective is a constant battle.  Trying to figure out who should own leads, accounts, and contacts – seemingly never ends.  On top of this, sales territories seem to always change as sales teams increase/decrease head count; new markets become available, etc.  This is where RealZips can provide real solutions.  The RealZips application can help solve those territory & ownership headaches once and for all.  Once the RealZips app is installed & enabled in your Org – you can immediately link your existing records to their zip codes, in which each zip has 50 geographic data points assigned to them.  CRM data is now structured by territories, counties, time zones, etc.  You can set up lead assignment in a matter of minutes & re-assigning record ownership can be accomplished in 30 minutes, rather than weeks or months! 

Lets dig into some of the key features:

·      Geographic platform

o   Plug your existing CRM data into our geographic data platform to structure and enrich customer data.

o   Thousands of hours are often lost as team members struggle with unstructured and rapidly growing CRM data. However, companies implementing RealZips can deliver marketing and sales success as their customer data becomes organized in its full geographical context.

·      Territory Management

o   Upgrade to a robust and flexible territory solution powered by zip codes.

o   Most organizations struggle with lost time, sales reps, customers, and territory management workarounds. Conversely, business utilizing RealZips can successfully manage territories by integrating CRM data, geographic layers, drive zones, and market data.

·      Lead Routing & Ownership

o   Set up lead routing and automated ownership rules for accounts, contacts, opportunities, and cases.

o   Few things will demotivate a sales team faster than uncertainties around lead and customer ownership. Companies risk losing millions of dollars unless they can prove to their sales team that ownership is sound and correctly implemented. RealZips was originally built to solve this core problem.

·      Distance Zones & Market Data

o   Create distance zones for locations. Rank geographic areas based on market data and your key metrics.

o   CRM data must be put into a context before it can be used to power your business. Distance zones around your sales reps will immediately make your CRM data actionable. Market data across geographic areas will guide every action taken by marketing and sales teams.

·      Sales & Marketing Enablement

o   Combine geographic data, market potential, and CRM data. Roll out data-driven business processes.

o   Corporations using RealZips energize their teams by saving them thousands of hours as they are now able to target geographic areas with the highest market potential. This allows for a connection with more potential customers and greater possibilities to generate more closed opportunities.

Additionally, RealZips is 100% Salesforce native tool & available for download through the Salesforce AppExchange.  It should be noted that RealZips does come at a cost, at $25 a month/per user.  However, based off the product value & customer service provided by this company – we see this as being a real value for your dollar.  RealZips also offers a 30 day trial, if your Org wants to assess the tool before committing to it long-term.

Standardize data with this State/Country Picklist feature in Salesforce

Ensuring the integrity of your data can be a never-ending battle, however there is a feature available in Salesforce that can help alleviate a small part of it.  By implementing standardized state & country picklists, you can eliminate different variations of those values & ensure the data is clean.  This can also help your reps save valuable time, by giving them the drop-down options to pick the correct values.  When these fields are left as free text – you can end up with several variations of the same value – just think of the United States for example: “US”, “U.S.A.”, “United States of America”, and so on.

State and country picklists are available in the shipping, billing, mailing, and “other” address fields in the account, campaign members, contact, contract, lead, order, person accounts, quotes, and service contracts standard objects. The picklists are also available for managing users and companies in Setup. To use the picklists, first choose the country and then choose from the options that automatically populate the state or province picklist.

You can use the state and country picklists in most places that state and country fields are available in Salesforce, including:

·      Record edit and detail pages

·      List views, reports, and dashboards

·      Filters, functions, rules, and assignments

·      State and country picklists can also be searched, and they’re supported in Translation Workbench.

State and Country Picklist Limitations

·      State and country picklists include 239 countries by default. They also include the states and provinces of the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Italy, and Mexico. State and country picklists that contain more than 1,000 states or countries can cause degraded performance.

To implement this feature, there are a few steps that you will need to take to execute this field change:

·      Configure the values you want to use

o   First you will want to configure the values you want available to your users, you can always start with the default list (as we mentioned above).  However, there may be specific countries you do business in that you want to ensure are included.

·      Scan Your Org’s data

o   Before switching from text-based state and country fields to standardized state and country picklists, scan your org to see how the change affects it. This discovery process shows you where and how state and country data appears in your org. The process also shows where this data is used in customizations, such as list views and reports.

·      Convert existing data & values

o   Next you will select specific text values and choose which standard values you want them mapped to.  For example, you can select all occurrences of “USA” and change them to “United States.”

·      Activate picklists for your Users

o   Once all previous steps are completed, you can enable state and country picklists, the picklists are immediately available to users. However, it can take some time for Salesforce to populate the ISO code fields on existing records.

There are some examples of how this feature might not be the right fit for your Org, such as:

·      It’s a time-intensive feature to convert to unless your Salesforce org is quite small.

·      It requires a lot of maintenance around any integrated systems that use that data. The more integrations you have, the more complex that maintenance becomes.

·      It doesn’t work with custom objects. If your organization relies on any custom objects for address data, state and country picklists can’t be used with them.

·      In general, the larger your organization and the larger your Salesforce org, the more intensive the process.

Salesforce Einstein Automate: Supercharge the speed of work!

Salesforce recently wrapped up their annual week-long customer event, known as Dreamforce, with several big announcements.  Amongst the news of recent major acquisitions, Salesforce announced the rollout of Einstein Automate.  Einstein Automate is a whole set of workflow solutions completely fueled by AI.  This end-to-end workflow automation solution will help empower people and businesses to be more productive.

Einstein Automate encompasses several products designed to improve workflows inside organizations. For starters, the company has created Flow Orchestrator, a tool that uses a low-code, drag and drop approach for building workflows, but it doesn’t stop there. It also relies on AI to provide help to suggest logical next steps to speed up workflow creation.

The two biggest elements of the Einstein Automate automation are Flow Orchestrator and MuleSoft Composer.

-       The new Flow Orchestrator is a low-code workflow development tool that allows users to compose workflows that automate complex, multi-user processes and approvals. Flow Orchestrator speeds up projects and processes with AI-generated next steps and recommendations that prompt users throughout processes and quickly identify bottlenecks causing delays. For example, the mortgage approval process, which is complex and requires extensive documentation and verification, can be streamlined into an automated workflow that helps process applications seamlessly and without delays.

-       The new MuleSoft Composer for Salesforce is the fastest and easiest way to connect disparate apps and data to Salesforce and develop a 360 degree view of the customer without developing any new code. Unlocking and connecting data across apps and systems is one of the biggest challenges businesses face. MuleSoft’s new The State of Business and IT Innovation report shows more than 80 percent of line of business employees want easy access to data and IT capabilities in order to be productive as digital projects increase. MuleSoft Composer for Salesforce allows administrators and other business users to move faster with a library of pre-built connectors and templates to easily automate integrations.

In addition to making these features available in Salesforce, the AppExchange will now include a section of its store solely dedicated to Einstein Automate.  Businesses can discover more than 700 automation solutions built by Salesforce and our partners on the new Einstein Automate collection page on Salesforce AppExchange, such as solutions for robotic process automation (RPA), Einstein Bots, Flow Templates, Actions and Components, MuleSoft Connectors, Process Libraries, partner solutions and more. Organizations can implement pre-built solutions to automate processes quickly, rather than build from scratch.

It is important to keep in mind that these features are expected to be released later in the year 2021, with a beta version expected mid-year.

Salesforce’s integration with Slack - taking collaboration to the next level!

 In light of the recent news put out by Salesforce, that they had reached an agreement to acquire Slack, we decided to take a deeper look into Slack’s current integration with Salesforce & some of the features around it.  The Salesforce and Slack integration will allow you to search your Salesforce instance from Slack, and share results in Slack. The integration also allows you to share messages both ways between Salesforce Chatter and your Slack channel(s).

Here are the main reasons to take advantage of this integration through the Salesforce to Slack app:

-       Keeping the entire team update to date with the latest changes

With the Slack App, your sales and service reps can receive customized notifications immediately in Slack, so they don’t have to stop what they’re doing and log in to a separate tool. Streamlined communications give your team more time in the day to focus on what matters most, the customer.

-       Access Salesforce records directly within Slack

Search and preview Salesforce records, like accounts, opportunities and cases, all without leaving Slack. If someone needs to be looped in, you can simply tag them in Slack and they’ll have all the context they need. Executives and account stakeholders can use the slash command /salesforce [account name] to pull important details from Salesforce into Slack, giving them instant visibility into key accounts—even on the go.

-       Enhance collaboration with teams from Salesforce to Slack

Team members can send their records from Salesforce directly to Slack, choosing where and with whom they want to share information. Slack conversations can also be added to Salesforce records, so important messages regarding an account or a case can be viewed in Salesforce. For example, sales reps can easily update the extended team on the status of a deal, and support agents can reach out to colleagues and subject matter experts to triage a customer issue while they’re working on a case.

There are several more advantages to setting up this integration, that we’ve left out in this post.  However, we hope the items we’ve highlighted have shown how valuable this integration can be – when bringing these two tools together!

Key reasons on why your team should be using Salesforce Chatter

In this post we will take look at some of the key features around Salesforce Chatter, and why your team should be using it as a collaborative tool within your Salesforce instance.  First, let’s identify specifically what “Chatter is”?  Chatter is an enterprise collaboration tool on the Salesforce platform, that is quite similar to Twitter or Facebook. Through Chatter, you and your sales team can interact internally and can bring others to the conversation, if necessary. You can easily follow groups, information, and people through Chatter, that too within your company’s network.

Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of using your organization:

1)    Easing the reliance on Email

Not every conversation needs the structure of an email, but requires quick simple responses – this is where Chatter comes in.  You can get quick answers to questions from people from departments other than Sales. That’s because Chatter connects you to everyone in your organization. Through Chatter, you

can also get feedback and collaborate with individuals or groups to solve problems without creating email chains.  This can also reduce email clutter!

2)    Limit the need for meetings

There is sometimes a tendency to throw a meeting on the calendar for anything and everything.  With chatter, teams can collaborate much easier & solve problems quicker – limiting the reliance on meetings. Salesforce reports that using Chatter results in 27 percent fewer meetings. In Chatter, form a group and invite everyone connected to a specific project, then use the group forum to brainstorm ideas, share files and links, post project updates, recognize performance, and more. Salesforce Chatter becomes a virtual focus group where you can easily test ideas on coworkers. It gives everyone a voice, which means everyone participates and brings ideas to the table.

3)    File Sharing

Files can easily be uploaded, shared, & downloaded through Chatter – where sometimes email will struggle.

4)    Share meaningful material

Post interesting articles, videos, websites or other content relevant to your industry to keep everyone up-to-date on news and trends that can impact their work and make a difference to your bottom line. People are always looking for content that can help them do better in their jobs, and by sharing this content on Chatter, the ensuing discussions can bring meaningful change to your organization.

5)    Chatter with Customers

Chatter External is a feature that will allow customers to participate in Chatter groups.  Although their access will be limited, it provides a direct line to servicing your customers.

6)    Privately Collaborate on sensitive projects

Using public social network tools to collaborate can leave important proprietary information out in the open. Fortunately, Chatter allows companies to collaborate privately and securely with the same ease of use and accessibility of public social networks. All collaboration takes place in Salesforce’s secure cloud, which tens of thousands of businesses already trust with highly sensitive information.

As you can see, there are several benefits to rolling Chatter out to your internal teams to boost productivity and collaboration.  One consideration to keep in mind is that you need a Salesforce license to leverage the full capabilities of Chatter.  There are however, other options such as Chatter Plus & Chatter Free licenses that can give employees access to a portion of the features.  To get a better understanding how your Org can get the most out of Chatter – contact us today!

Leverage the benefits of SMS messaging directly from Salesforce!

We currently live in a world where the mobile device is one of the most important items individuals carry with them on a daily basis. The mobile device has also become a personal hub, giving people the information and technology to carry out almost any task.  With that in mind, it would make sense that the quickest way to reach your customers would be through their mobile device.  Salesforce has recently taken its capabilities into SMS messaging, allowing you to text your customers regarding marketing material, customer support tickets, etc.  According to a Pew Research study, SMS messaging (more commonly known as texting) is easily the most frequently used feature on smartphones. To be more specific, 97% of Americans text at least once a day. In 2011, Pew reported that 31% of people prefer text messages to phone calls, and Informate reports that the average American cell user sends and receives five times as many SMS messages as telephone calls in a day.  What this means, if you have a specific message to get out – SMS messaging is likely the best way to do it.

To use SMS messaging for marketing purposes, you’ll want to leverage Salesforce’s Mobile Studio to get this done.  Through the mobile studio, we can help you build and automate personalized mobile interactions with SMS marketing, push notifications, and group messaging.  Some of the biggest benefits of SMS marketing messages are that people are more willing to trust text over other marketing channels. The overwhelming majority of text messages are legitimate, with spam messages making up less than 5% of texts received. SMS marketing statistics show that, as a result, SMS text messages have a 98% open rate. This dwarfs the open rate of even email marketing, which is one of the most effective methods available, at 22%.

Some key factors to utilizing SMS marketing:

·      Provide Value

Segment your audience, and only send the most relevant messages, so that when your clients see a text from your business coming through, they’ll be excited to open it.

Likewise, make the deals and information you provide via text messages exclusive. If your customers can get the same deals in your emails, print ads, or website, the text messages lose their appeal. Make sure that opting in is worthwhile to your customers.

·       Pay Attention to timing

Track the times that users are most active on your mobile site to find the ideal times to send out promotions and other news.

·      Track Results

Track how many opt-outs you receive from each text, then use that to determine which sorts of content generate the best response.

SMS is not only value for marketing, but can deliver a great customer service experience too.  Messaging lets your company have conversations with customers in the ways that are most convenient for your customers—on their mobile devices using messaging apps such as SMS text messaging and Facebook Messenger. Agents can respond in the Service Console, where they can access all the benefits of Digital Engagement at their fingertips.  Customers can start conversations with your company by sending texts to your designated phone number, sending Facebook Messenger messages to your Facebook page, and more. Incoming messages are displayed in the Omni-Channel utility in the Service Console, where agents can accept a message and start chatting.

Your company also can start conversations directly with customers through proactive outbound message notifications. When a customer wants to respond, their incoming responses are routed directly to the Service Console where agents can continue the conversation.

As you’ve read, there is great value in building out an SMS messaging process to reach your customers at the right time, with the right content, and on the right platform!

Tracking Historical Trends in Salesforce

Historical Trend Reporting is a niche reporting feature that allows for reporting on the standard up-to-the-minute state of the business as well as analyze day-to-day & week-to-week changes in forecasts, cases, opportunities, or values in custom objects. Historical Trend Reporting uses a special custom report type designed to focus on changes between five snapshot dates, for example, five business days or five business weeks. The changes in data can be visually represented in tables, charts and dashboards. Salesforce preserves historical data for four months i.e. three previous months and the current month.

A common use case of Historical Trend Reporting is to help monitor an organization’s sales pipeline to ensure it consists of enough activities to meet current and future sales goals. It can highlight deals whose value increased or decreased in the last three months or deals that moved into or out of a given target period.

These reports can compare historical and current values of key aspects of opportunities, such as status, amounts and dates, to see how the sales pipeline has changed over time. Historical Trend Reporting can help focus on deals over a given value. For example, if you want to only highlight deals in your pipeline that are worth more than $10,000, Historical Trend Reporting can filter out any deal worth more than $10,000 in the set timeframe.

Moreover, Historical Trend Reporting can identify deals that have been pushed out i.e. those taking more time to close than anticipated. It can also help identify shrinking deals. For example, targeting the deals in the sales pipeline that have decreased in value since yesterday. The report shows you the deals whose value was greater yesterday than today.

Some limitations/considerations for using Historical Trending are:

·       Salesforce retains data only for the last three months and the current month.

·      Each Historical Trend Report can accommodate up to 11 fields. In Opportunities reports, it includes the standard pre-selected fields which cannot be disabled.

·      Formula Fields are not supported.

·       The Summary report format is not supported.

·      The Report Wizard is not supported. Historical Trend Reports can be created only with the Report Builder.