Enhanced, Customizable Validation Rules Help Admins Boost Salesforce Data Quality

Improving the quality of the data contained in the Salesforce platform is an ongoing challenge for every business. It requires a systematic approach.

• Different and numerous Salesforce users are adding new records affecting data quality everyday and may not be doing it uniformly 
• Because change is so rapid, existing data ages quickly and may become invalid or fragmented by incompleteness or duplicity—existing data also requires a plan for maintenance
• The amount and lifecycle of data need to be managed with policies and tools for data storage and deletion

Former American Express executive, Ash Gupta, summarizes the correct approach for addressing the situation:

“The first change we had to make was just to make our data of higher quality. We have a lot of data, and sometimes we just weren’t using that data, and we weren’t paying as much attention to its quality as we now need to… The second area is working with our people and making certain that we are centralizing some aspects of our business. We are centralizing our capabilities, and we are democratizing its use.”

Salesforce Admins are charged with managing the Salesforce platform, and ensuring data quality is an important Admin responsibility. But this can’t be done by Admins alone. The Salesforce users who generate and use the data must be enlisted in the effort to improve data quality and empowered to take the necessary actions. It’s a team effort, and a business’s investment and ROI for using Salesforce depends on it.

How Admins Can Lead Users to Achieve Better Data Quality

Salesforce default validation rules are sometimes useful in centralizing how users input data for better quality. But these “hard” rules can be inflexible and are not customizable by Admins for unique business needs. Often users can’t save new or updated records unless they meet the rules exactly. Plus, standard salesforce validation rules don't provide much context in the warning messages for users (because they don't allow merge fields to be displayed).

“Prevent save” can be a viable option, but sometimes save exceptions are also needed so users can proceed. The users creating the data are the closest to it, so they should be allowed to review the warning message and decide if the data they input is correct. If the data is correct, they should be allowed to make the decision to ignore the warning and go through with the save of the record. Inflexibly preventing the save of valid data is never a good idea.

By using the Salesforce-native app, Data Quality Helper from Passage Technology, Admins can get the flexibility and customization they need to reach the business’s data quality goals. Enhanced data validation rules allow Admins to adjust triggering criteria or create multiple sets of rules with differing criteria. These rules can run before or after a save, or prevent or allow a save—whatever the Admin prefers.

The customized validations empower users with options when creating or updating data, or reviewing existing data—democratizing use of the centralized rules. The warnings and reminders that users see can be customized by Admins for content, style and presentation. Also, a Lightning Web Component can be set up to provide an org-wide view of all identified data problems.

These validation rules can apply to numerous data situations for incomplete or invalid records, such as:

• External (customer) records used for business decision making/strategy and relationship management to generate revenue
• Internal (business) data used for high performing operational functions

Enhanced Data Validation Rules Have Numerous Use Cases

The notifications generated by these enhanced validation rules can serve a wide range of purposes. They can serve as reminders or positive reinforcements. They also can serve as warnings to help prevent negative situations and consequences. Whatever the business needs, the Admin can easily configure a data quality solution. Here are just three examples:

• If a contact is created without a phone number or email address, the warning could say: “When saving a contact, please enter a phone number or email address that may be used when attempting to reach them.” “If you were unable to collect contact information, you may continue with the save.”
• If an Opportunity is set to Closed Won and a certain Line Item was not added, the warning could say: “Before an Opportunity’s stage is set to closed won, it is recommended that at least one Line Item is added to the Opportunity.” “If this Opportunity does not require a Line Item, you can continue with the save.”
• If an employee’s time-off request exceeds the remaining allotted time, a reminder could say: “The number of hours on this time-off request exceeds your remaining available PTO hours for the year. If you continue to save this time-off request, you will have to take unpaid time off.” “Click the save button again to create the time-off request with unpaid time off.”

Of course Admins can choose to prevent any of these saves, if that is the desired outcome. In addition, another Admin option would be to have unresolved notifications for rules continue to be attached to the affected records after a save, allowing data cleanup at a future time (see below).

Data Quality Helper App Also Helps Resolve Duplicate Data Situations

That’s right. As seen in the image above, besides the enhanced validation rules functionality, Data Quality Helper also has a customizable duplicate record identification and correction function. The notification says: “Potential duplicates exist for this Opportunity.” “View Duplicates”

Data quality can be improved by eliminating and/or merging duplicate records. Admins custom-set the sensitivity matching and triggering criteria. Users are notified and empowered to choose and merge the correct data from any of the duplicate records into one cleaner, updated record. It’s that easy.

Better data quality is within reach. With clicks not code, the app delivers greater Admin power and flexibility than many other solutions or Salesforce’s default features. The free app can be downloaded at the Salesforce AppExchange.

Admins would rather be working on more important strategic initiatives, not fixing data they didn’t create. Meanwhile, the data users, who need it and know it best, become more productive because of these rules. Higher quality data can be the ticket to transforming and growing the business.

But none of that will happen unless you act quickly to improve quality data. How much longer can you afford to ignore poor data quality? More and more damage is done, and opportunities lost, with each passing day.

Learn more about Data Quality Helper or schedule a demo/consult today.

Data Quality Helper Premium features

Upgrade to Data Quality Helper Premium Edition for unlimited enhanced data validation rules, unlimited duplicate resolution rules, and priority support, plus all of the features in the Free Edition.