Passage Technology Blog

The double-edged sword of Salesforce is that you have the capability to customize it, but it can be difficult to achieve the vision you want depending on the experience of your current development team, or the technical debt residing in your org(s). Custom development projects are vital for enhancing efficiency and productivity within your organization. Don't overlook the significance of these projects, as they require a substantial investment of both time and money to do things the right way. Like most things in life, the best way to ensure success is to have the right foundations. Before hitting "start" on your next project, make sure you have all of these items in place.

When there are almost 3,000 consulting partners for Salesforce on the AppExchange, it might seem like it's harder to narrow down which one is right for you than snagging front row tickets to the Eras Tour. Not to worry! Here is a list of questions and qualifications to find a consultant that matches your project needs best. With these tips, you'll be placed at the front of the pre-sale line. (If you're looking for information about Salesforce implementations rather than custom development, check out this blog instead.) 

What do you want to be when you grow up? It's not often you hear kids answering, "A Salesforce Admin." Like many career paths, some people stumble upon the option of becoming a Salesforce admin later in their career. Some are drawn to the admin role after learning to use the CRM for a role in sales, marketing, or support. 

No matter the reason, one thing is certain: A Salesforce admin position is attractive. It's a job that can be done remotely, there are companies of all sizes and industries to work for, and as of January 2023 the average salary for a Salesforce Admin was over $79,000 USD.

However, the Salesforce ecosystem is so large it can be daunting to get your feet wet, let alone dive right in. That's why we put together this list of resources to get started — from training to landing a job.

Rollups are often necessary to get data on Objects or to build reports, but there are several limitations.

One of the biggest obstacles is that standard rollups can only be used between Objects with a Master-Detail relationship. This results in Admins turning to other tools to create rollups when they are between Objects with a Lookup relationship, or even when they need to create hierarchy rollups within the same Object. Users can be tempted to create these rollups with Flow, but as we describe further, there are limitations in Flow. Our AppExchange app, Rollup Helper, offers significant advantages over Flow as it is a tool purposely built to create and manage all your rollup needs.

One of the most useful and popular features of Salesforce® is a rollup summary field. They’re great for moving information from one object to another. This might make you wonder, "What does Rollup Helper do differently?"

What is technical debt?

The easiest explanation is that hardware, software, or technical processes you implement now may not work in the future. This can manifest in many ways. When you're under pressure to put something together quickly, this can result in bugs that will take a lot of time to fix (possibly more time than doing it correctly the first time). Technical debt can also manifest when you move information over from a legacy system, or it can be something that needs to be fixed with better documentation to help user adoption or ensure people use the tools correctly.

Problem solving is a skill needed for all job fields and levels. In your own life, you may have individuals you go to for advice often because they're a better problem solver than others, but what makes a good problem solver?

Why time tracking is Useful

Before, workers would clock in and out with physical time sheets to prove they had come in to work that day, and for how many hours. There are now digital versions of time cards, which is great for a more remote workforce, but it doesn't show how that time was spent. 

Lead scoring is used in most B2B companies. It would be tough to follow up with every "lead" that came through, so sales must prioritize their time in order to maintain focus and efficiency. The implementation of a lead scoring solution can range from tiers, star system, percentage likelihood to close, or simply "hot" vs "cold" indicators. Lead scoring also doesn't have to happen on just leads; you can prioritize customers, opportunities, contacts, or activities/tasks that you have already planned for following up on your sales prospects. 

But is lead scoring really effective? It can certainly help to direct sales to know who to follow up with (and who marketing needs to nurture more) when done correctly, but there can be issues with the way the scoring is built that causes inaccurate scores. Here are some of the most common problems.

It's human to avoid big changes, especially when it comes to adjustments that affect our work. So it's not surprising that while Salesforce introduced the Lightning UI in 2014, not every organization has adopted it yet. Some wanted to wait until the bugs worked out and more functionality was added. Others put it off, knowing it'd be a lot of work to support. However, that won't be an option forever.