Passage Technology Blog

How Clean, Real-time Data Can Open a World of New Possibilities

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Change is inevitable. Change is constant.” And in the world of data, change happens at lightning speed. To give you an idea of just how fast data changes–Salesforce® reports that every 30 minutes, 120 business addresses change, and 75 phone numbers change.

Dear PT, 

We need to better aggregate our data so various business functions can create insights. On a number of Objects, we need a way to easily rollup records scattered across numerous child, parent, and grand-parent hierarchies—for example, Accounts. However, our company has limited developer resources internally. So when we need a solution, we have to pay for outsourcing. This can be expensive, but often it is more expensive to not obtain that solution, in terms of productivity and competitiveness. Are there other options to coding?

Rhee Layshuns in Progress, PA

This issue features our Development Services and gives you the inside scoop on the latest Rollup Helper, Lookup Helper, and Milestones PM+ updates.

Dear PT, 

With Salesforce^® Contacts, you can view their Account information. But at our company, we like to classify leads as Leads, not as Contacts. But Leads don’t display Account information. How can we extend Salesforce to get this functionality?

Moe Enfo from Lead Mine, WI

July 1 Marks the 5th Annual Database Administrators Appreciation Day

Database Administrators work behind the scenes to keep their Salesforce org running smoothly. They do everything from creating reports and automating complex business processes, to training users on Salesforce – all while helping their teams stay efficient and on top of things.

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?"

Dear PT, 

The nature of our business requires completing the same projects over and over. These projects overlap similar projects, each in a different stage of the same project process. The only differences are beginning and end dates, and once in a while a special task or dependency is needed. We tend to create these project plans from scratch each time—how can we streamline our efforts?

Tim Pleats from Standard, Canada

Successful Salesforce® Optimization Starts with Discovery and Planning

The best chefs in the world know a great meal starts with mise en place. It’s a French term for having all of your ingredients prepped and your equipment at hand. The same is true when undergoing a Salesforce data migration, org migration, or app integration.

Dear PT, 

With all of the Accounts our company manages, there is usually a point of contact who is the primary go-to person for the relationship. However, sometimes we engage a different (or wrong) Contact, bypassing the key point person. This happens with both human interactions and automated solutions. It may lead to confusion, miscommunication, and missed opportunities for all involved. How can we better address these situations?

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.