OPTIMIZING YOUR BUSINESS WITH THE MICROSOFT CLOUD

MFI - WHITEPAPER

OVERCOMING UNPRECEDENTED BUSINESS CHALLENGES WITH SALESFORCE

WHITE PAPER

CONTENTS

03 INTRODUCTION

04 MEET THE EXPERTS

08 10 TIPS TO KEEP YOUR DATA SECURE IN SALESFORCE

09 CONDUCT A SALESFORCE HEALTH CHECK

10 ENABLE TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION

11 DETERMINE A ROLE HIERARCHY

12 IMPLEMENT A VIRUS SCANNER UTILIZE SALESFORCE SHIELD

14 TURN ON CLICKJACK PROTECTION SECURE YOUR APIS

16 USE CUSTOM LOGIN FLOWS TIGHTEN UP USER ACCESS CONTROLS

18 DON’T FORGET ABOUT EXTERNAL USERS

19 USE DASHBOARDS TO VISUALIZE DATA AND PERFORMANCES

26 BEST PRACTICES FOR SALESFORCE

27 GETTING THE MOST OUT OF SALESFORCE

30 COST CUTTING

31 MANAGING REMOTE SALESFORCE TEAMS

34 HERE TO SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS

35 USEFUL LINKS

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INTRODUCTION

Mason Frank has been working with Salesforce partners and customers for over a decade now. Whilst every project comes with bumps in the road, we’ve never experienced such immediate and significant disruption to how businesses are working day-to-day.

From how staff interact and operate, to how individuals and businesses purchase products and services, it’s a huge change.

Some businesses have been well-equipped to deploy a remote workforce for some time but are struggling to handle business change. Others feel they’ve cut corners in accelerating their digitization projects to enable remote access to systems, and this is causing real headaches when it comes to accessing, harnessing, and securing this data.

We recognize that whilst no two businesses are the same, we are close enough to the pulse of the ecosystem that we operate in to acknowledge there are some shared themes that are emerging during these difficult times.

We’ve therefore reached out to some of the most popular bloggers and bastions of knowledge from the Ohana and compiled their best tips to share with you— some of them are surprisingly easy to implement!

We hope that you’ll find this resource useful. If there any further questions you’d like our experts to answer or if there is any way we can help you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch—we’re just a click away (but a phone call is always nice).

James Lloyd-Townshend

Chairman and CEO, Mason Frank International

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MEET THE EXPERTS

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BEN MCCARTHYBen McCarthy is Managing Director at Salesforce Consultancy, EMPAUA, and a prominent thought-leader in the Ohana thanks to his massively popular community blog Salesforce Ben.

SUSANNAH ST-GERMAINSusannah St-Germain is a 19x certified Colombian-American Salesforce Architect. She was one of the first graduates of the RAD Women Code program and since then, her career has skyrocketed. She has gone from being a solo admin/dev at a nonprofit to a Salesforce Architect at a Fortune 500 company. Susannah is currently a Technical Architect at Odaseva, a Salesforce Partner that provides data protection for Salesforce’s largest customers.

MATT MEYERSMatt Meyers is the Managing Partner of Adaptus, LLC, a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect and a cloud cybersecurity expert with more than 15 years’ experience in tech. Matt led on the development of a cybersecurity solution for Salesforce and co-created the industry-leading Salesforce EZProtect.

MEET THE EXPERTS

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ENRICO MURRUIn addition to being the first-ever Italian Salesforce MVP, Enrico Murru is a Technical and Solutions Architect at WebResults, creator of Salesforce popular extensions, and a blogger at Nerd @ Work. Enrico has more than a decade of experience with Salesforce, and holds 20 Salesforce certifications.

CHRIS GARDNERChris Gardner is a 24x certified Salesforce Architect and editor at the blog Salesforce Chris. He is passionate about solving problems using Salesforce, as well as developing the talent of new professionals in the Salesforce ecosystem.

MICHAEL GRANTMichael Grant is Vice President of Marketing Automation and CRM at The Marketing Department, an integrated marketing agency based in London, Ontario, Canada.

MIKE MASONAs the Vice President of Emerging Markets at FairWarning, Mike Mason is a data privacy thought leader, a sales team leader, and works closely with the Product and Implementation teams to revolutionize FairWarning’s services.

MEET THE EXPERTS

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JAINEESH DAVDA

Jaineesh Davda is Director of Infrastructure and Security at Salesforce AppExchange Partner FormAssembly, and a specialist in security monitoring and threat prevention including WAF, firewalls, SSL, and encryption technologies.

AMANDA BEARD-NEILSON

A Salesforce MVP, Amanda is a leader of the Salesforce London Admin Community Group, and a co-organizer of the London’s Calling Conference. Amanda is also a Certified Salesforce ADM-201 Administrator, and Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud Consultant, dedicated to helping businesses improve their operations using Salesforce.

IAIN CLEMENTSIain Clements is Technical Lead at Cloud Ursa and a 7x certified Salesforce professional, holding certifications including Salesforce Platform Developer, App Builder, and Service Cloud Consultant. Formerly a Technical Lead at Salesforce, Iain specializes in implementing, customizing, and training people in Salesforce.

MEET THE EXPERTS

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MARK CHRISTIE

Mark Christie is Salesforce Trainer and Adoption Consultant at Salesforce Training, which is dedicated to the education of sales teams harnessing the technology.

TIM KOROTEEV

Tim Koroteev is Director, Marketing at Inspire Planner, a powerfully simple project management app for Salesforce. Tim has almost ten years of experience in B2B SaaS products.

JOACHIM KLEIN

Joachim Klein is the President and COO of Threekit, a product visualization tool. A former VP of Product Management at Salesforce, Joachim boasts a deep understanding of the SaaS market and specializes in growing SaaS businesses. 

MEET THE EXPERTS

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MANISH THADURI

Manish Thaduri is a 6x certified Salesforce MVP and Technical Architect with over 10 years of experience in Salesforce technology. He’s also an ardent blogger at sfdcfanboy.com, where he shares tips and tricks to help Salesforce users get more out of the platform.

LUCY MAZALON

Lucy Mazalon is a Marketing Automation Consultant, as well as editor and fountain of knowledge at both Salesforce Ben and THE DRIP. With five years of Salesforce experience and six Salesforce certifications under her belt, Lucy was recently named by Salesforce as one of their 2020 Marketing Champions.

OM PRAKASH

Om Prakash is a Salesforce MVP, Salesforce Lightning Champion, and 4x Salesforce certified Professional. Om currently works as Product Head at 360 Degree Cloud, a Salesforce Silver Consulting and Crest ISV partner.

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10 TIPS TO KEEP YOUR DATA SECURE IN SALESFORCERecent events have meant remote working has become widespread a little sooner than anticipated, and CRM users all over the world are now accessing Salesforce and its data on their personal devices.

Though we’re all trying to stick as close to business-as-usual as possible, circumstances have changed dramatically. In the face of increased remote working and a growing reliance on digital systems, businesses need to step up their efforts to protect their data from both internal and external threats.

To help you safeguard your Salesforce data, we spoke to data infrastructure and security experts from across the Salesforce ecosystem to find out what users should be doing to ensure maximum data security.

NOW IS THE TIME TO SECURE YOUR CLOUD APPLICATIONS

“Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the chaos to steal data and infiltrate networks, so to prevent critical data loss, now is the time to secure your cloud applications. Enacting the right precautions now can protect your Salesforce system during this crisis and take you from reactive to proactive when it comes to data security in the future.”Mike Mason, FairWarning

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1. CONDUCT A SALESFORCE HEALTH CHECK

Need to get a detailed, fast overview of your security standing? Salesforce offers a tool called Health Check that grades your baseline security across many categories, producing a percentage score and giving recommendations to help you address weaknesses quickly.

Any vulnerabilities unearthed are split into classes - High-Risk, Medium-Risk, Low-Risk - so you can prioritize the most impactful changes.

“Run the Salesforce Security Health Check. It’ll provide you with a baseline of where you are versus best practices.” - Susannah St-Germain / Odaseva

“Salesforce provides a security check tool that everyone should run in their org. It identifies key settings and vulnerabilities in your org. Running that gives you a good checklist of items to review and fix. Salesforce is built on a robust security model, so there are numerous settings, and

added to frequently. This tool describes the setting, its potential impact, and reference material to educate you.” - Chris Gardner / Salesforce architect

The tool uses a proprietary formula to score how well your security settings size up to the Salesforce Baseline Standard.

For example, Salesforce’s Baseline Standard for maximum invalid login attempts is three. If you have a higher number set for your instance, Health Check will flag this as high-risk, give you a recommendation to mitigate the risk, and create a shortcut for you to action this change.

Other settings Health Check might flag include:• Minimum password complexity• Forced logouts on session timeouts• Forced re-logins after an administrator logs in as another user• Clickjack protection• Locking sessions to the IP address from which they originated

You can also set your own custom baseline, but bear in mind that Salesforce’s Baseline Standard is industry-leading, so be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking you know better than the pros!

“Understand that Salesforce was built with industry best practices in mind. While Salesforce is extremely flexible and customizable, care should be taken when changing core pieces of Salesforce. It’s often better to review your internal processes to see if you should update the process to match Salesforce standards, rather than overly customize Salesforce to fit your processes.” Chris Gardner / Salesforce architect

What makes the tool even more useful is that it updates its Baseline Standard all the time, adapting to new threats and changes in best practice, so be sure to run Health Checks on a regular schedule!

To get started, search for Health Check in the Quick Find box of your Setup page.

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2. ENABLE TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION

If you haven’t already turned on Two-Factor Authentication (TFA) for your org, you should flip that switch now. Requiring your users to go through a second level of authentication for every login is one of the most effective ways of protecting your Salesforce accounts.

With TFA, users download an app such as Salesforce Authenticator on their phone, or receive a text message, then relay the unique code issued by Salesforce to confirm that it is indeed them that’s trying to access the account. Passwords can be shared, lost, guessed; TFA adds an additional barrier between bad actors and your Salesforce instance.

There are two ways you can roll out TFA: • You can require users to go through TFA every time they log in• You can trigger TFA only when a user meets specific criteria, such as attempting

to review particular reports or access a connected app

To get even more out of the TFA functionality, admins can also set IP restrictions that prevent access to Salesforce from specific IP ranges, or at certain times of day, further ensuring that only authorized users can get into your instance.

“Turn on Two-Factor Authentication! It’s a built-in feature of Salesforce that is easy to enable and provides a great added level of security.” - Susannah St-Germain / Odaseva

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Your role hierarchy will likely look similar to your organization’s hierarchy, but it doesn’t have to match precisely. Even if you’re a “flat” organization or your structure is a little looser than average, Salesforce hierarchies are still super useful for security purposes because they help selectively protect sensitive data.

For example, if you have a team of five people all doing the same sales job, and you don’t want them to be able to access each other’s data, you can assign them all the same role, which hands them the same privileges and restrictions.

Those five peoples’ supervisor, however, would be assigned a different role further up the hierarchy, enabling them to see the data of all their team members. Role

hierarchies also allow you to extend field editing permissions from the record owner to their immediate supervisor, but no one else.

Setting this role-based grading means that a user can only access what’s “below” them. Their manager, on the other hand, would sit further up the branch and be able to see everything related

to their sub-branches. Someone higher up in the hierarchy, like a CEO, for example, would be able to see the whole “tree.”

Not only does setting up a strong hierarchy mean better data security, but it can also make reporting and forecasting a lot easier if all users in your org are properly aligned.

3. DETERMINE A ROLE HIERARCHY

In addition to field- and object-level security, it’s good practice to have a role hierarchy in place within your org. An often underused functionality, a well-architected role hierarchy can blanket your Salesforce instance in an extra layer of security by obfuscating data based on a user’s role.

A role hierarchy lets admins grant read and write access to data based on their position within their department or the business. Rather than dictating which fields are accessible to users, role hierarchy determines the records, reports, and dashboards that can be viewed and edited by users in a particular role.

“There are so many powerful out-of-the-box security features. Make sure that you’re using them to the best of their ability. From things as simple as profiles, permission sets, object CRED and FLS, these are powerful tools to protect your data. Need something even more secure? You can require high-assurance

security for sensitive operations.” - Susannah St-Germain / Odaseva

Think of your hierarchy like a tree, with each department, team, and so on as its own branch.

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4. IMPLEMENT A VIRUS SCANNER

There’s an argument for steering away from hosting your data in different systems, and instead integrating it with one comprehensive tool like Salesforce. But even Salesforce can need extra security, which should come in the form of a third-party virus scanner app.

LOCKDOWN YOUR ENVIRONMENTS WITH A NON-NATIVE SOLUTION“Due to the number of security vulnerabilities via unsecured devices, as well as multiple areas of entry into a Salesforce environment (think communities, sites, attachment uploads, email-

to-case), the only way to truly fend off malicious content is to connect a third-party (or non-native) virus scanner to Salesforce environments. Salesforce doesn’t include an inherent virus scanner, so it’s really important to lock down your environments with a non-native solution such as EZProtect.” Matt Meyers / Adaptus

5. UTILIZE SALESFORCE SHIELD

Salesforce Shield is a three-pronged tool, created to help admins and developers bolster business-critical apps with additional layers of security. It also allows many Salesforce security policies to be automated.

It’s admin-friendly and doesn’t require any complex setup, and is an incredibly useful tool for financial and health organizations to help protect their sensitive information.

REACT AND OPTIMIZE“Finance and healthcare industries are at major risk as these industries are highly regulated and tech modernization is often slow. I recently read a quote that stated, ‘Rapid digital transformation has been led by COVID-19 and not the CIO or

CTO.’ This means they must react and optimize their systems for the new climate.” Jaineesh Davda / FormAssembly

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PLATFORM ENCRYPTION Salesforce Shield’s encryption features are more comprehensive than you’d find in Salesforce Classic. With Shield, you can encrypt standard fields and unstructured content like files, with no limit on file size. Plus, Shield’s encryption supports platform functions like search, validation rules, and workflows, so that the encryption processes don’t interrupt these actions as Salesforce’s basic encryption does. Users maintain control over encryption keys, and you can set permissions to keep especially sensitive data from the eyes of unauthorized users.

EVENT MONITORING Another standard area of Salesforce to which Shield brings richer and more exhaustive functionality is event monitoring. Salesforce Classic comes with a change logging feature, but for larger clients or those with more complex auditing needs, Shield takes things to the next level. Shield’s event monitoring gives you a more granular overview of user behavior and app performance, showing you every interaction so you can see who is accessing what, where, and when. It generates logs within 24 hours and is accessible via APIs so that the data can be digested in the third-party data visualization tool of your choice.

FIELD AUDIT TRAILS Salesforce Shield spectacularly blows open the scope for tracking, letting you see the state and value of data going back up to a decade across custom objects, accounts, cases, contacts, leads, and opportunities. Especially useful for tightly regulated sectors with extensive audit requirements. You can also set triggers to notify you when certain data is deleted.

HERE’S HOW YOU CAN UP YOUR SECURITY LEVELS WITH SALESFORCE SHIELD.

INVEST IN CHANGE MONITORING“According to Trend Micro, misconfiguration is the biggest risk to cloud environments. As Salesforce environments are modified to minimize business disruption, it’s important to consider how these

changes are being documented and verified so as not to introduce additional risk. Invest in the proper technology that can manage and monitor all the changes being made to avoid misconfiguration as well as what data users are accessing.” - Mike Mason / FairWarning

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6. TURN ON CLICKJACK PROTECTION

As you might already know, clickjacking is a type of hack that attempts to lure a user into clicking an object such as a button or link that they believe to be safe, but that has, in reality, been programmed to perform malicious actions. With Salesforce, clickjacking can be used to access and modify instance data.

Salesforce provides customizable levels of protection against clickjacking by restricting the use of iframes on your site pages. Standard Salesforce pages are safeguarded against clickjacking by default, but it’s recommended that you roll out additional protection to customer Visualforce pages by enabling clickjack protection in your Session Settings.

7. SECURE YOUR APIS

One of the greatest things about Salesforce is that it can be easily integrated with other apps and services, allowing you to share data and bolster your functionality. But not every app you connect to Salesforce might be as safe as Salesforce itself, and can potentially create unsecured doors into your instance.

You should always look into the security model of any API you connect to Salesforce before you give it access; after all, it’s primarily your responsibility to ensure your platform is safe.

APIs can leave you vulnerable to issues like:

• DoS attacks• Code injections

• Fraudulent logins• Replay attacks

• Exposed data in URI keys• Unsecured cardholder information

Since granting access to a shady or unsecured API could lead to hacks, data breaches, and compliance issues, you must have measures in place to help you take advantage of APIs while remaining protected.

“Remember that you as a Salesforce customer are responsible for the security and integrity of your data. Backup and restore in the cloud is complex. Luckily there are many great partners in the ecosystem who can help, like my company Odaseva. I would recommend that everyone read our Salesforce backup and recovery tips.” - Susannah St-Germain / Odaseva

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HERE ARE A FEW STEPS YOU CAN TAKE RIGHT NOW:

ENABLE APP WHITELISTINGDon’t leave the power to connect apps in users’ hands. To prevent even well-meaning users from creating vulnerabilities, enable Salesforce’s App Whitelisting feature so that your admins can specify which apps can and cannot have access to your instance.

DESIGNATE AN INTEGRATION USERAn API that accesses your Salesforce instance and passes data back and forth should be treated like any other “user,” meaning you tightly control what it can and can’t do.

You can then set the user permissions to “API only,” ensuring the integration can’t access your instance in any other way and grant the appropriate permissions so that the API can’t view or modify data it shouldn’t be near.You should always abide by the principle of Least Privilege when it

comes to user permissions: each user should only be granted access to the bare minimum of data that they need to do their jobs, and APIs are no different. And never, ever give any integration System Admin access.

DOUBLE DOWN ON ACCESS CONTROLS FOR INTEGRATION USERSAs we mentioned above, you should only give an integration access to the bare minimum of data it needs to operate. But there are a few other ways you can restrict APIs access to your Salesforce instance to reduce risk. For example, we already discussed restricting logins by IP range, and you can go one better in this case and lockdown the integration user to ensure it’s accessing your instance legitimately. You can do this by restricting the API’s access so it can only log in from its own partner or vendor’s servers.User passwords in Salesforce must be at least eight characters by default. You may have already made this requirement longer (which is great best practice), but you should consider demanding even more robust passwords for integration users: at least 20 random characters, including upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special symbols is recommended.

KEEP AN EYE ON API ACCESS Taking these additional steps when it comes to API access is a good start, but actioning them doesn’t mean you can take your eye off the ball. Once again, treat your integration user like any other user, logging their behavior, and conducting regular audits to hone in on any anomalous activities.

A good way to achieve this is to create a dedicated integration user; a user account solely for that API with its own profile and permission sets.

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8. USE CUSTOM LOGIN FLOWS

Now, we’ve already talked about restricting access to Salesforce outside of specific IP addresses and set business hours—but in these unprecedented circumstances, your users may well need to access your instance from different locations and at different times than they normally would.

Custom login flows let you put additional authentication steps in place if a user’s login attempts are in some way unusual. For example, if a user tries to log in from a restricted IP or out of hours, you can set a flow to be triggered that would require the user to meet extra security requirements, like answering a secret question.

A flow could also include sending a notification to an admin so they can look into and validate

the login attempt. These flows help keep your instance safe without preventing authorized users from doing their jobs.

9. TIGHTEN UP USER ACCESS CONTROLS

There are a lot of default user access settings and requirements in Salesforce that you can, and should, tighten up to bolster your instance security, especially now that more users are working from home.

Away from the office environment, users can often forget that best practices still apply, and the security measures that had previously been drilled into them are still needed even though they’re physically isolated.

Of course, you need to tread a fine line between security and user experience; having your users reset their passwords once a week may be super secure, but it’ll also infuriate your workforce.

DON’T LET HOME WORKERS FALL THROUGH THE GAPS“We also encourage organizations to work with employees to be sure they’re updated regularly; remote employees often delay updates which allows for the slip.” - Matt Meyers / Adaptus

Luckily, Salesforce has a feature that helps safeguard against illegitimate logins, while still giving your authorized users access even under unusual conditions.

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HERE ARE A FEW WAYS YOU CAN UP YOUR DIGITAL SAFEGUARDING GAME WITHOUT IMPINGING ON USER EXPERIENCE.

PASSWORD BEST PRACTICES

Length By default, Salesforce asks for a minimum of 8 characters for passwords, but security experts now recommend at least 15 characters for extra security; the longer the password, the longer it takes to crack.

Complexity In terms of security, password length tends to be more important than complexity, but requirements like numbers and special characters are always a good bet. Salesforce offers six different levels of complexity so you can choose the best one for your org.

Expiration Salesforce’s default password expiration setting is 90 days, which is roughly the number of days it takes to crack the average password. You can opt to shorten this period; if you do, you should also turn on Salesforce’s Enforce Password History setting so your users can’t reuse the same one over and over. Salesforce will then remember (and block the use of) a user’s three previous passwords. You can amend this number if necessary.

Password hints You can also prevent users from setting their actual password as their password hint (thus revealing their password to anyone who asks to see the password hint). Salesforce does not prevent users from adding their password to their security question by default, so make sure to turn on the Cannot Contain Password setting.

Autocomplete We’ve all been saved from forgotten password nightmare by a web page’s autocomplete form, but when your Salesforce data is in the mix, you don’t want your users to have that option. Make sure you disable caching and autocomplete on your Salesforce login page.

HEAD ON OVER TO THE MANAGE PASSWORD POLICIES PAGE TO ENACT THESE CHANGES.

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Salesforce is hugely into knowledge sharing and collaboration, and its Communities tool is a big part of facilitating these things. Communities enable you to share information and connect with those outside of your Salesforce org; people like customers, partners, or non-Salesforce user employers, for example.

As useful as it can be to share your Salesforce features and data with others, though, it’s vitally important that you’re mindful of exactly what you’re sharing.

If you’re utilizing Communities, take a moment to audit your configuration and make certain that you’re using the Least Privilege approach so that both authenticated and unauthenticated Communities Users can only access what you want them to. The last thing you want is to expose customer data to external users.

“Any org that is running a community should review their external sharing and security model, including that of guest users. When you’re potentially exposing Salesforce data to external users through a community, you want to take extra care to lockdown records, objects and

permissions. It’s not uncommon to have overly permissive security and sharing here.” - Chris Gardner / Salesforce Architect

Mason Frank Salesforce blogSalesforce BenSalesforce StackExchangeOfficial Salesforce security documentation Trailblazer Community articles on securitySalesforce Developers blog posts on security

Trailhead security travilsSFDC Fanboy blogSalesforce Weekly blogAdmin Hero blogAutomation Champion blog

USEFUL DATA SECURITY RESOURCES

10. DON’T FORGET ABOUT EXTERNAL USERS

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USE DASHBOARDS TO VISUALIZE DATA AND PERFORMANCES Salesforce is incredibly comprehensive in the way it houses data and makes it available bi-directionally with other systems and reporting functions. But you really need to know how to access and visualize this data to start making use of it, and this is possible via dashboards.Whether you’re looking to learn which of your marketing assets are resulting in the greatest number of sales, which of your regions has performed best in the last quarter, or even what kind of content is resulting in the most engagements on your social media channels, dashboards are the way forward.

Dashboards are also probably the best way to communicate data to project stakeholders who don’t use the technology day-in, day-out; they offer a snapshot of all the key metrics, with insight into best and worst performers.

Remote working by definition means it's physically impossible for managers to peek over shoulders or observe their staff at work in order to deliver deskside coaching. The dashboard, therefore, has become incredibly relevant in these uncertain times due to the increased need for real-time visibility on business data and staff performances.

Fortunately, we’ve worked with Salesforce expert Michael Grant to put together this step-by-step article on creating custom Salesforce dashboards, so you can start diving deep into your data and getting more meat into your reporting.

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When you hear the word “dashboard” what do you think of?

Most will think of the instrument panel on a vehicle. The centralized hub for virtually all information about the current state of your

vehicle—speed, RPM, fuel level, mileage, length of your current trip, any warning or maintenance messages… they’re all there. It is the go-to place for information when operating your vehicle.

Note: For the purposes of this guide, I’m referring to dashboards in the Salesforce Lightning Experience. Since Classic is as good as gone, it makes little sense to focus on the Classic dashboard experience. I’m also assuming you have the necessary licensing (Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, or Developer edition) and necessary permissions to build reports and dashboards.

HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOM SALESFORCE DASHBOARD

Salesforce dashboards are just that—the go-to place for information about your organization.

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WHO NEEDS DASHBOARDS?

Virtually every role within your organization can benefit from some sort of dashboard.

SALES TEAMSFor Sales Teams, a dashboard that contains a sales rep leaderboard can act as a motivator for staff, can offer valuable recognition for team members who are leading, and also give management insights into their top performers for the cycle.

SALES EXECUTIVEFor a Sales Executive, a dashboard with five to 10 deal metrics might offer the most bang for their buck and provide valuable data quickly before stepping into, or during, a meeting.

SALES AND MARKETING TEAMS, For Sales And Marketing Teams, creating cross-functional dashboards, like the Lead Funnel Dashboard can give a quick look into how well Sales and Marketing are working together, and allow both departments to make data-driven decisions, while identifying where Sales and Marketing should best spend their time.

Maybe marketing is too loose in generating their Marketing Qualified Leads? Maybe Sales doesn’t have the right content to convert those MQLs? Dashboards like this can help better align efforts across teams and identify trends, allowing you to pivot quickly.

Awesome right? You’re raring to go and ready to put every one of your two hundred reports into a dashboard, but there are still things to consider before you begin.

WHAT IS A SALESFORCE DASHBOARD EXACTLY?

Dashboards are a highly visual, customizable, aggregate view of reports that are meaningful to a given user’s role.

Your Salesforce Org is a wealth of information that is vital to your operations. However, not all of your valuable information is valuable to all roles at all times. You’ve likely built a plethora of reports for the various types of user roles within your Org. Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Production, Service, and more all have individual reporting metrics that are of interest to their given business unit.

However, for most day-to-day operations, detailed reporting is likely overkill. Having to open up ten different reports, when all you really need is a quick summary snapshot of your data seems less than ideal. Enter the Salesforce dashboard. Dashboards bring together the results of multiple reports into a visual quick-reference hub, with a variety of highly customizable styles.

In an age where we’re bombarded with information 24/7, having quick insight into the key performance indicators for your role is critical.

Whether you’re a C-suite executive, front-line sales staff, or a marketing director, there’s a dashboard that will help you do your job and give you quick access to information that enables you to take action.

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WHERE TO BEGIN WHEN BUILDING A DASHBOARD

Knowing where to start, especially when building your first dashboard, can be a challenge. It’s helpful to have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish with your dashboard. What are your goals? What is your vision? Maybe you have a certain look in mind before you’ve even begun? Sketching your dashboard out on a piece of graph paper isn’t a bad idea and may help you get your thoughts in order.

Some key questions to answer are:

• What is the purpose of my dashboard?• What roles in the business are viewing my dashboard?• What is the reporting period I should be concerned with?• How often will this dashboard be viewed?• How much, or how little, data should I include?• What should it look like?• What types of components should I use?

Once you’ve answered those questions, you’re ready to begin.

NOTE: There are specific permissions to enable building dashboards. At a minimum, you’ll need Run Reports AND Manage Dashboards under Legacy Folder Sharing, and Run Reports AND Create and Customize Dashboards under Enhanced Folder Sharing.

HOW TO CREATE A DASHBOARD

So you have your plan, you know your audience, the data they need to see, and roughly how you want your dashboard to look. Now it’s time to put it all together!

Dashboards have three ingredients:

1. Source Reports: there are reports that feed the data into the visual components. Each component is fed by a single source report. The fields available for filtering your dashboards are the same fields available in your reports that feed those components. You create those reports in the Salesforce Report Builder.

2. Filters: allow the people using the dashboard to limit the data they want to see in the dashboard to a particular view.

3. Components: the widgets which display the data you want to see in a visual format. These components consist of Chart (Bar, Stacked Bar, Line, Donut, Funnel, Scatter), Gauge, Metric, and Table.

For the purposes of this guide, we’ll assume you already have the source reports you want to use for the dashboard. If you haven’t built a report before, check out the Salesforce Trailhead that’s discussed in Mason Frank’s blog, An introduction to Salesforce Trailhead: Admin Beginner Trail.

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Step 1: From the Dashboards tab click New Dashboard.

Step 2: You’ll be asked to give the Dashboard a name, a description, and choose the folder location where it’s saved. Give it a reasonably descriptive name, include a summary of the dashboard in the description, and place it in a folder that everyone who needs to use it has access to. By default, Salesforce will save the dashboard into your “Private Dashboards” folder.

Step 3: Now you have a blank dashboard, it’s time to add components. To add a component to the dashboard click the + Component button

a. Choose a report that will provide the source data to the component and click Select.

b. Choose the type of data display from Display As. Depending on the type of output of your source report, you’ll have different options for the component type.

c. Customize the data being displayed. What you can customize is dependent on the display type. For instance, a table component and a donut component have different customization options. You can also choose between a Light and Dark theme for the component.

d. Click Add.

e. If you want to edit your settings at any time, click the Pencil icon in the top

right of the component.

f. You can resize and reposition your components based on the default 12 column grid of the dashboard canvas. (The Spring ‘19 release saw the original 9 column grid changed to 12 by default. You can switch to 9 via the settings menu if you prefer.) Use the drag handles to resize. Click and drag the component to reposition within the grid.

g. Repeat steps 3a to 3f as needed to build in all the components you want.

Step 4: Now, you can extend the functionality of the dashboard further by adding filters that users can apply to show segmented views of the same dashboard. To add a filter, click the “+ Filter” button.

a. Select the field you want to filter on from the Field drop-down list. The drop-down list contains all of the fields that can be applied across all of the components in your dashboard. If there are equivalent fields, you can filter by hovering your mouse over the circular "i" icon to see them.

b. Enter the Display Name that will be shown above the filter drop down on your finalized Dashboard.

c. Define your filter values by clicking the Add Filter Value button, inputting your values, and clicking Apply. These values utilize the typical reporting filter operators: equals, not equal to, less than, greater than, less or equal, greater or equal, contains, does not contain, starts with, and between.

CREATING A CUSTOM SALESFORCE DASHBOARD IN 9 STEPS

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Step 6: To switch from the default 12-column grid, to the legacy 9-column grid, click the gear icon to open the Dashboard Properties menu.

a. Dashboard Grid Size – select 12 columns or 9 columns

b. Click the Save button.

Step 7: To change the theme or color palette, click the gear icon to open the Dashboard Properties menu. From here you can choose between Salesforce’s light or dark theme, and also select one of the 14 available color palettes.

a. Dashboard Theme – select between Light and Dark. This sets the theme for the entire dashboard. Pro tip: you can set the theme for individual components by editing the component itself by clicking the pencil icon.

b. Dashboard Palette – choose one of the 14 available color palettes. Pro tip: Choose the Mineral theme if you need a high-contrast accessible theme.

c. Click the Save button.

Step 8: Click the Save button in the top right.

Step 9: Click the Done button in the top right.

Step 5: To modify the advanced settings for the dashboard, click the gear icon to open the Dashboard Properties menu.

a. Update Name, Description, and Folder if you would like to make changes to what you entered during Step 2.

b. In the View Dashboard As section, you can choose who your audience can view the dashboard as (and all of the source reports). You may need to be a little bit careful here as it is possible to show more data to audience members than they would normally have access to with their account settings. Be sure you aren’t showing sensitive data to someone who shouldn’t be seeing it. Your options are:

Me – People will see the dashboard exactly as you do.Another person – People will see the dashboard as someone else you choose. Click the X icon to make a change from the default, which is you.The Dashboard Viewer – People will see the dashboard using their own credentials and will be subject to their normal access restrictions.

These kinds of dashboards are typically called dynamic dashboards and come with some specific limitations:• Up to 5 dynamic dashboards for

Enterprise Edition• Up to 10 for Unlimited and

Performance Editions• Up to 3 for Developer Edition

• Not available in other editions.• Cannot be saved in Private Folders.• Must be manually refreshed.• More limitations are listed here.

Let dashboard viewers choose whom they view the dashboard as – Let the individual (with appropriate permissions) determine who they view the dashboard as.

c. Click the Save button

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As with all things Salesforce, there are tips, tricks, and features to take it to the next level. Here’s a quick collection of some.

Change your reporting from pull to push with subscriptions.

Now that you’ve got your dashboard up and running, and you’ve saved it in a public folder, your audience can visit the dashboard at any time, and manually refresh it to see the latest results.

However, what if you could make sure that the dashboard is in your boss’s inbox every Monday morning right before their big meeting with all the top executives? Well, now you can.

1. From the Dashboard click the Subscribe

2. Select the Frequency you want the email to be sent (daily/weekly/monthly)

3. Select the individuals or groups you want to receive the email by clicking Edit Recipients.

Important Note: You will not be able to email the dashboard if you have it saved in the “Private Dashboards” folder. In addition, if any of your reports are saved in your “Private Reports” folder, anyone who is not viewing the dashboard as you will not see components that rely on your private reports for data. Always save dashboards and dashboard reports in public folders.

Making Dashboards can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s actually pretty fun to fiddle with the different types of charts and components, and change color schemes and themes. However, chances are you’re on a time crunch.Luckily for you the Salesforce AppExchange can help. There’s over 85 pre-built Dashboards and Reports available on the AppExchange, and 60 of them are completely free! They take no time to install and can fast-track you on the road to successful reporting.

SALESFORCE LABS HAS MADE FOUR VERY USEFUL DASHBOARDS AVAILABLE COMPLETELY FREE:1. Salesforce CRM Dashboards – Includes a pack of dashboards for

Executives, Reps, Sales, Support, and More.

2. Lead and Opportunity Management Dashboards – Includes a pack of dashboards for leads and for opportunities.

3. Sales Activity Dashboard – A dashboard pack for tracking sales rep activity against opportunities.

4. AppExchange Dashboard Pack for Sales, Marketing, and Service – Includes consolidated dashboards that connect sales, marketing, and service.

It’s definitely worth checking out, even if you just want to see how other dashboards are built.

DASHBOARD PRO TIPS THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT

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FINAL THOUGHT

Dashboards are incredibly flexible and powerful. They can also be incredibly time consuming and, at times, a bit difficult to understand exactly how to get the right source reports to provide the data you want to display. I recommend that you go into your dashboard projects with your eyes wide open.First, I suggest you do the completely free Salesforce Trailhead Module called Reports & Dashboards for Lightning Experience. If you haven’t already set up a Trailhead account, I strongly suggest you do.Next, it’s important that you embrace an iterative approach to building dashboards.

Be willing to accept that your audience may not appreciate your data display and stylistic choices. After all, there’s no accounting for taste. If you are prepared for change and continuous improvement, you’ll save yourself some frustration.You probably already appreciate the power of business data; that might be why you’re reading this white paper. Salesforce is the perfect platform for pulling that data together and mapping it against your sales figures. After all, that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?You need a clear view of how other areas of your business are performing and how this is impacting your bottom line, and it can be very difficult to do that without having all your data in one place. That’s why data integration is so important; it allows you to pull valuable information from multiple disparate systems into one platform, giving you a single view of the customer.

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“The most impressive thing about Salesforce is the power

to connect. I just think that the ability of the Salesforce platform for additional integrations/connections really sets it apart. Syncing data, connecting to 3rd party APIs, using other front ends, and connecting into Salesforce. So much is possible.” - Iain Clements / Cloud Ursa

Even with a platform as comprehensive and innovative as Salesforce, there’s always more you can be doing to maximize your investment. We asked our Salesforce experts and MVPs for some quick tips and actionable best practices to help you supercharge your instance (and its users) across areas like integration, cost-cutting, and managing a remote team.

BEST PRACTICES FOR SALESFORCE SALESFORCE MVPs SHARE THEIR FAVORITE TOOLSAs useful as integrations and apps are, don’t forget there are tonnes of useful tools baked right into Salesforce that can transform the way you use the platform.

“My favorite tool in Salesforce is Process Builder. It has come as a replacement for Workflows, but it does a lot more than what workflows could do and with ease. This is the most loved tool by #AwesomeAdmins. What’s more, some complex automation can be done using this point-and-click tool.”

Manish Thaduri / SFDC Fanboy

“The Salesforce tools I use most are workbench and dataloader.io. Nearly all projects invoke data migration, and these tools can really help with that.”

Iain Clements / Cloud Ursa

GETTING THE BEST OUT OF SALESFORCE

Salesforce is designed to play well with others, so adding in apps or integrating it with your other systems can open up a whole world of new possibilities and functionality.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF APPS AND INTEGRATIONS If you’re in a position where Salesforce is already up and running in your business, congratulations on harnessing the number one CRM product in the world. You might have already achieved great success on the platform, but Salesforce’s real strength lies in how it allows you to build on that success. Michael Jordan once said that talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win

championships. Technically, he was talking about basketball, but the same can be said of Salesforce. Salesforce pioneered add-ons in the SaaS market, so it’s no surprise that it boasts one of the most comprehensive app stores in the world. Through the AppExchange, users can access thousands of independent solutions designed to extend the platform’s functionality, with

specialist tools available to suit all industries and niches. Plus, since Salesforce’s acquisition of MuleSoft, SaaS integrations are set to become even easier.

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USE MULESOFT TO BETTER HARNESS YOUR DATAOne of the things that makes Salesforce so innovative is its ability to connect with legacy systems, allowing you to pull all essential data through to your CRM for a holistic, single view of your customer, all in one place.

Following Salesforce’s acquisition of integration platform MuleSoft in May 2018, it’s never been easier to integrate multiple systems with your CRM, and achieve

Salesforce’s vision of Customer 360.That’s because MuleSoft’s Anypoint platform, where developers can use readymade API templates to connect systems that are otherwise completely independent of each other.

By using MuleSoft, you could, for example, bring back-office data from systems like ERP and POS into Sales Cloud, giving you a better overview of your customer lifecycle. All you need to do to marry them together is to use one of MuleSoft’s out-of-the-box integration templates that are available for platforms like SAP, Oracle, and NetSuite.

MuleSoft is a really popular tool, so there’s probably an integration template for the system you’re looking to integrate Salesforce with already. If not, a MuleSoft expert will be able to create a custom template for you.

CONNECT WITH THE SALESFORCE COMMUNITY Perhaps as celebrated as Salesforce itself is the community that’s grown around it. The Salesforce Ohana is a famously tight-knit yet inclusive community, where knowledge sharing and peer support is not only commonplace but encouraged at every level. Within this happy tech family, there are countless resources that will help you optimize your instance

and turn your users into Salesforce superstars.

At the forefront of that community are Salesforce bloggers and influencers—people who dedicate their free time to connecting with Salesforce professionals, learning of their pain points and technical challenges, and then producing information-rich content to help them.

Salesforce’s open-education platform Trailhead, in combination with the many long-established Salesforce blogs, forums, and user groups, has helped inspire thousands of new Salesforce professionals to enter the ecosystem over the last few years.

GETTING THE BEST OUT OF SALESFORCE

If you want to get more out of your data and connect other systems in your tech stack to Salesforce, you can do that quickly and easily with MuleSoft.

Salesforce’s Trailblazer community offers a great platform for both fresh and experienced professionals to discuss their tech problems with people who can help.

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CUSTOMIZE SALESFORCE TO FIT YOUR BUSINESS As well as boasting simple point-and-click functionality for building apps and creating custom views such as dashboards for reporting, to really get the most out of Salesforce, you need to learn how to customize it.

GETTING THE BEST OUT OF SALESFORCE

STAY ON TOP OF SALESFORCE UPDATES“You need to get to the future ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive.” - Marc Benioff, Salesforce Co-founder

Salesforce’s suite of business products is constantly being enhanced and upgraded, resulting in a platform update roughly every three months. While you can be a bonafide guru in the Salesforce ecosystem, your know-how could all disappear in the space of six months if you don’t stay up to date on product updates.

Salesforce Developers and architects are always busy because virtually every element of Salesforce can be customized. This means you can build a CRM system that’s perfectly suited to your organization, with no room for wasted fields or features.

Enrico’s top tools for Salesforce developers• ORGanizer for Salesforce Chrome/Firefox extension I built it myself, but I cannot

imagine a day of Salesforce work without it• Visual Studio Code + Salesforce Extension Pack After its official release some

time ago, it’s become my development companion• Clayton An amazing, effective, and reliable tool for code analysis on the

Salesforce platform—give it a try! • Heroku Obvious? I’m a lazy developer, and whenever I can, I build scripts, web apps,

or APIs to speed up my work, and Heroku is the perfect host for all my lazy efforts

INFINITELY CUSTOMIZABLE“There isn’t one particular feature that impresses me the most about Salesforce; the thing that made me love Salesforce unconditionally is the customization power of every aspect of the platform.” - Enrico Murru / Nerd @ Work READ THROUGH RELEASE NOTES TO SPOT NEW

FEATURES “Sometimes, businesses already have access to a great solution, but don’t know about it because they’ve neglected to keep track of platform updates. Salesforce releases new

features every quarter, so to get the most out of your CRM, you need to be aware of what’s new in the technology and what Salesforce can offer your business with every release.” - Manish Thaduri / SFDC Fanboy

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TRIM THE SUBSCRIPTION FATBusinesses should audit the SaaS platforms and digital tools they’re using. It may sound so simple, but in this subscription economy we’ve begun to favor, I’m sure many businesses are being billed recurring fees for platforms that are not essential.

COST-CUTTING

“I’ve even done this exercise myself when reconciling my business bank account this month; I always thought my business was lean, but I still managed to shave off a few items!” - Lucy Mazalon / The DRIP

HOST YOUR FILES ELSEWHERESalesforce is all about having a centralized place for the data that you need to succeed. But that doesn’t mean all your data has to be stored within your Salesforce instance. Additional or supporting documents, or extra information that your users might need that’s not necessarily a core part of your Salesforce data can be linked to from within Salesforce, even if it’s not stored there.

All you need to do to give users access to external files through the Salesforce interface is enable Files Connect. Then you can link through to files from outside sources like Google Drive or SharePoint, or share them with users via feeds and the Files home page.

Storing data or documents outside of Salesforce on a cheaper cloud storage platform can save you money if you need to cut down on your bills right now.

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MANAGING REMOTE SALESFORCE TEAMS

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LOOK OUT FOR YOUR NEW REMOTE WORKERS“Perhaps the quickest win is for businesses to focus on their people. Ensure they are supported and have

contact points should they need help. Open up communications and keep them fluid. It’s important to over-communicate at this time. Have your IT support available to help with all sorts of questions. Many of the staff won’t have worked remotely before, and this will be all new to them.”Amanda Beard-Neilson / Salesforce MVP & London Admins Group Leader

OVER-COMMUNICATE WHERE NECESSARY

Things can get lost in translation when communicating digitally; when you’re physically separate and can’t catch up over a coffee as easily, communications can become overly transactional, so you need to maintain a rapport with your team to keep spirits high.

STAY IN TOUCH WITH SHORT, REGULAR VIDEO STANDUPS“Communication is crucial in the remote work environment, so it shouldn’t be overlooked. Try to over-communicate with your colleagues, since you don’t have the luxury of body language. Schedule regular short standup meetings—whenever possible, try to use video even if it’s uncomfortable for you. Share information on how employees can reach each other and their

managers directly if there is such a need.” - Tim Koroteev / Inspire Planner

CONNECT IN UNCONVENTIONAL WAYS“I’d say to over-index on communication and give people a reason to interact on subjects that are not work-related. We’ve been doing a lot internally to connect in unconventional ways: virtual lunch hours, ‘share your hidden talent’ Slack channels, and more regular all-company check-ins. These have given lots of people who don’t typically work together with

a chance to interact and connect.” - Joachim Klein / ThreeKit

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DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE VALUE OF SCHEDULED BREAKS

Just because staff may be working from home doesn’t mean they don’t need to take breaks. In fact, they may actually take fewer breaks than they would at work, as there are fewer distraction tasks and conversations between co-workers. They need time to recharge and approach work with renewed enthusiasm, so make sure your team still knows it’s okay to take five every now and then.

GIVE YOURSELF SOME SPACE“Remember that just because teams are 100% remote doesn’t mean everyone should be working at all times. Even though you don’t need that extra 10 minutes to move from conference room to conference room, leave those 10 minutes free. Don’t let scheduling etiquette fall by the

wayside.” - Susannah St-Germain / Odaseva

STICK TO A SCHEDULE“Encourage staff to take regular breaks to help keep them sane! Follow the usual office hours and avoid any overtime; it’s important people don’t stretch work into their personal lives, even if they’re at home. At the same time, they have to eliminate any distractions to ensure they’re just as

productive during work hours.” - Manish Thaduri / SFDC Fanboy

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ENCOURAGE YOUR TEAM TO LEARN NEW SKILLS

The shift to remote working has resulted in serious changes to our everyday work lives, both in the things we do and the systems we use. This has left a lot of teams suddenly needing extra skills to cope with business change. One thing you can do, particularly if some of your staff are experiencing downtime, is encourage them to upskill and work towards learning a new technology or system, or research which tools would improve business processes in the current landscape and make a case for them.

INVEST IN TRAINING“Most organizations vastly underinvest in skills training for their employees. The reasons for this are numerous, but one common explanation given is the lack (or perceived lack) of time. With the recent and sweeping changes to the way we live and conduct business, what better time than right now to provide staff with additional training resources to keep

them focused and sharp and upgrade their skills at the same time.

“This is not only a way to ensure that your teams are ready and prepared to bust out of the gate when we can all get back to the normal state of affairs, but a great way to keep morale high. People naturally want to feel productive and that they are contributing when much of their traditional ways of doing this have been stripped.” - Mark Christie / Salesforce Training

PLUG YOUR SKILLS GAPS“This is the time for bringing more innovative ideas, encouraging your team to learn new skills online. Find out the drawbacks of your business, your struggling points in the past, and have a plan to improve those.” - Om Prakash / 360 Degree Cloud

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX TO BOOST MORALE

MAKE STAYING ENGAGED A KEY BUSINESS GOAL“We’ve set up a remote working taskforce, who have been working hard to keep us engaged

with each other. They have arranged events such as after-work drinks, quizzes, exercise classes, meditation, and cooking classes! These are all being led by volunteers in the company and are a great way to stay connected with your colleagues. It’s funny how quickly you forget you are sitting in your living room when engaged in one of these activities.” - Ben McCarthy / EMPAUA

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HERE TO SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS

These are challenging times. Businesses across every industry are making tough decisions and, in many cases, completely revamping their business model, the way they work, and the core resources they use to get things done.

Across the globe, organizations are relying more heavily on digital infrastructure to keep things moving forward. Having been helping our clients digitally overhaul their businesses for ten years, we understand the metamorphic power that cloud tools can have.

We appreciate that now more than ever, in the face of unprecedented adversity, businesses of all sizes need to utilize the resources at their disposal to overcome these challenges and endure.

Cloud projects don’t just stop. Digital transformation doesn’t just stop. Migrations don’t just stop. Implementations don’t just stop.

We’re still hard at work sourcing and placing the talent our clients need to get them through this testing time, no matter what their requirements are.

The need to invest in the cloud tools and services that will make your business more agile, more efficient, and more resilient has never been more urgent.

Whether you need permanent Salesforce professionals to help you get the most out of your cloud platform, or a contract developer to facilitate new ways of doing business, we can connect you with the right candidate for the job.

Whatever you need, we're ready to support your business.

EMAILcontact@masonfrank.com

TELEPHONEUK (London) 020 7337 0875

US (New York) +1 267 463 4700

ANZ (Melbourne) +61 3 8657 4570

CONTACT US

DON'T LET YOUR PROJECTS SLIPWe've got 1,000s of trusted contract and permanent nearshore professionals, with a proven track record in remote working, available now for terms of any duration.

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