Top 50 Salesforce CPQ Interview Questions with Answers

This tutorial will show you top 50 Salesforce CPQ interview questions with answers. You can go through the set of Salesforce CPQ interview questions most frequently asked in the interview panel.

As of 2020, business organizations are looking forward to the best Customer relationship management frameworks to reach out to potential customers for consistently driving business. Salesforce is one of the latest software platforms that is extensively combining customers and business organizations.

In this article, you can go through the set of Salesforce CPQ interview questions most frequently asked in the interview panel. And these lists will help you to crack the interview as the topmost industry experts create these

Now let's have a look into the salesforce CPQ intervieq questions based on the levels.

• Salesforce CPQ Basic Interview Questions
• Salesforce CPQ Intermediate Interview Questions
• Salesforce CPQ Advanced Interview Questions

Most Frequently Asked Salesforce CPQ Interview Questions

• What is meant by CPQ?
• Define the term search filters?
• Define the term
• Determine the different factors on which Salesforce tracks the sales details?
• Give a brief idea about QTC?
• Distinguish the difference between Trigger and Workflow?
• Give a brief idea of how CPQ helps in closing the CRM system gaps?
• Why is it required to follow Alert Rules in Salesforce CPQ?
• Define the role of a Salesforce CPQ specialist
• Define Pricing Rules in Salesforce CPQ

Salesforce CPQ Basic Interview Questions

1. What is meant by CPQ? Give a brief explanation about CPQ?

Ans: CPQ, also called CPQ Salesforce, refers to Configure Price Quote software by Salesforce. It is specifically a tool that has designed to generate quotes for the orders for the organizations quickly. This tool is an extension of a customer relationship management platform, which helps drive sales and its processes in an organized and faster manner. CPQ tool gives the view of the different aspects to consider in a project. The sales executives will be able to access the overall view and make decisions as per the business needs.

2. What do you know about Salesforce Dashboard?

Ans: Salesforce dashboard is the pictorial representation of the reports. Salesforce dashboard can add 20 reports at one time on a single panel.

3. Define the term Price List?

Ans: Price List in Salesforce is used to store the products' multiple prices based on the business flow. The organization usually analyses and sets up a price for every product. All the different prices will represent in the Price List in Salesforce.

4. Define the term search filters?

Ans: A search filter in Salesforce will help discover the results by using the field values. Search filters have used to find the products by using the options available as fields. 

5. What do you understand by permission sets in Salesforce?

Ans: A permission set refers to the set of permissions or settings set up to the users to access the records and perform the functionality without changing the profiles. The functionality of the user can be extended by using the permission set. Profile creation is a time taking process, instead, a permission set can be used.

6. What do you mean by Transfer record in profile?

Ans: The transfer record is the functionality available in the Salesforce that is used to grant the permissions to the users. If a particular user has the permission or authority to share the record, the user will have the capability to share the document in a read-only access format.

Salesforce CPQ Intermediate Interview Questions

7. Define the term Object in Salesforce? What are the different types of objects and tasks that the user can do using the objects?

Ans: Object in Salesforce refers to the tables in the database. Objects in Salesforce are correctly used to store the data of the organization. Objects in Salesforce are of two different types. They are:

• Standard Object: The standard objects include accounts, contacts, leads, cases, campaigns, products, contracts, opportunities, dashboards, etc.
• Custom Object: Custom objects are capable of storing the unique and essential information of an organization. Custom objects allow the users to perform the modifications within them. Custom objects include custom user interface tab, applying relationships to the different objects, custom fields, page layouts, etc.

8. Define the term Profile in Salesforce? Does Salesforce provide an option for two users to use the same profile? Give a brief difference between Role and Profile in Salesforce?

Ans: A profile in Salesforce refers to the set or collection of procedures and rules followed by the user. The profile allows the users to access the information or records related to the organization. Salesforce includes multiple profiles like a sales profile that would provide access to the opportunities, leads, campaigns, and contacts, etc.

Yes, Salesforce provides an option to allow two users to work or use the same profile. Any number of people can use the same profile, whether it is from one department or not.

A role is different from Profile as Role increases the user's visibility by sharing the rules or building a role hierarchy. A profile has represented at the object level.

9. Define the term

Ans: Product in Salesforce refers to the products or the services sold to the customers. Products have represented in three different kinds:

Standalone: Individual products will be sold.

Bundle: It is a combination of two or more products.

Options: Options helps in providing an additional choice to choose the products to the end-users.

A product can be created by following the below steps:

• Select Create new dropdown and navigate to the Product option. Or use a new option that is available next to the new products on the products home page.
• Add a name for the product.
• Add relevant additional information to the product by reviewing the fields of the product.
• Save the data entered. Once done, click on Save and Add price to save the product.Make sure that you enter a standard rate.

10. List out the different types of relationships available in Salesforce?

Ans: There are different types of relationships available in Salesforce which are listed below:

• Master-detail relationship: The Master-detail relationship represents the relationship between the parent and child. The master is the parent, and the detail is the child. The master object has the control of the child object because the child object will no longer exist if the master object is deleted.
• Lookup relationship: The lookup relationship has used for linking two different objects together. It can be either one to one or one to many.
• External Lookup: External Lookup is the relationship that helps in establishing the connectivity between the child object and the parent object. It helps in the identification of the correct mapping of the child object to the parent external object. The matching is done against the External Id values.

11. What do you mean by the term Trigger in Salesforce? What is a Time Trigger?

Ans: A trigger in Salesforce refers to the Apex code that is executed before or after performing the functions like insert, delete, update, etc. It provides the flexibility to achieve the custom actions before and after the record modifications in Salesforce.

A time trigger refers to the system that performs the execution of one or more tasks based on the defined set of rules and the scheduled tasks.

12. Determine the different factors on which Salesforce tracks the sales details?

Ans: There are multiple aspects that Salesforce provides information. They are:

• Generation of the sales reports on a timely basis
• Provide regularized sales numbers
• Represents the number of customers served on a daily basis.
• Provide complete reports to the sales manager.
• Provides the details of the repeated customer activities.

13. Determine how many master-detail relationships and Lookup relationship fields can create in an object?

Ans: A maximum of two master-detail relationship fields can be created in an object while a maximum of 40 master-lookup relationship fields can create. 

14. Figure out the different ways to store the various types of records in Salesforce?

Ans: There are four different ways to store the various record types like files, documents, images etc. They are listed below:

• Google drive
• Attachments
• Libraries
• Chatter files

15. What do you mean a Junction object? Give a brief idea about its usage?

Ans: A junction object is the object used for creating many-to-many relationships in Salesforce. Let us consider an example, a recruiting application. It has interlinked with many candidates, which allows the candidates to apply for multiple positions in the same way.

Salesforce CPQ Advanced Interview Questions

16. Give a brief idea about QTC?

Ans: QTC refers to Quote to Cash, a term used in the technology designed to allow automated management of the user business processes. It includes integrating the business processes on the seller side related to the product or service configuration, quote creation, pricing, invoicing, payments, etc. In simpler terms, it is the process that the organizations send the details and offers to the customers along with the pricing, generating a document called quote and involved in further completion of the payments and invoices.

17. Give a brief idea on Audit Trail and Audit fields in Salesforce?

Ans: Audit Trail is functionality in Salesforce that is used for tracking and retrieving the information about the recent changes performed by the administrator in the organization. The audit trail functionality can preserve the data upto six months. The standard fields in Salesforce are called Audit fields. The approved areas include name, owner, created by, and last modified. 

18. What are the default filters used in Salesforce? How can you get rid of them?

Ans: The default filters used in Salesforce is the "Date Filter." We can get rid of the Date Filter by selecting the option "All Time" in the range on the page.

19. Can you explain how SaaS is beneficial to Salesforce?

Ans: Saas, Software as a Service is the platform that provides subscription offers to the clients so that they can choose not to discontinue or renew at any time without any charges or penalty. Saas helps in avoiding substantial investments and startup fees.

20. Distinguish the difference between Trigger and Workflow?

Ans: The following are the differences between Trigger and Workflow represented in the tabular format.

• Workflow
• Trigger

Workflow refers to the automation process that follows some evaluation-based and rule-based criteria.

• A trigger refers to the execution of the piece of the code either before or after the record is inserted or updated.
• Accessing of Workflow is allowed across the object.
• Accessing of the trigger is permitted on the objects and their related objects as well.
• DML operations cannot perform on Workflow.
• DML operations can perform. At least 20 DML operations can perform on one trigger.
• Querying from the database is not allowed in Workflow.
• Querying is allowed in triggers. At least 20 SQL queries can be used in one trigger.

21. List out the default indexed fields in Salesforce? List out some examples of custom fields?

Ans: The following are the default indexed fields in Salesforce.

• Name
• ID
• Lookup fields
• Owner fields
• Master-detail relationship fields
• Last modified dates
• Audit dates

Some of the custom fields are listed below:

• Currency
• Date
• Text
• Picklist
• Email
• Number
• Text area
• Geolocation
• Checkbox
• Master-detail relationship
• Percent

22. Give a brief explanation of the benefits of Salesforce CPQ?

Ans: Salesforce CPQ provides its extensible support to the sales team and the organization in many ways:

• Provides the control and visibility to the sales leaders          
• Enables a way to launch new models which are flexible to the customers
• Ensuring that the organization is working in collaboration with the back and front office teams together.

23. List out the reasons that result in data loss in Salesforce?

Ans: Multiple reasons will result in data loss in Salesforce. They are:

Modifying or performing changes in the text area to email, phone, URL, or text.

• Performing changes or migrating from any other picklist to the multi-select picklist.
• Modifying the time and date.
• Migrating from other data types to percent, number, and money.
• Moving from the options that include a checkbox, multi-select picklist, auto number to the other different types.

24. Give a brief idea about the different steps involved in creating a bundle product in Salesforce?

Ans: Product creation in Salesforce is one of the primary steps to be followed for any CPQ solutions. Salesforce allows the configuration of various types of products and services. Let us learn about the steps involved in creating a bundle product.

• Navigate to the Setup option->Customize->products-> Fields-> Product Family Field-> New. Click on save by adding the Hardware as a new picklist value.
• Select the Products tab and click on New. Update all the necessary information. Make sure that the checkbox has set to True.
• Save and Add the price by selecting the Save and Add price button. Update the standard price for the product.
• After saving, the product detail page will reflect on the screen.
• Add the price for the product in Custom CPQ Price.
• Enter the list price for the CPQ price book and Save.

25. What are the six different steps to be followed to define a successful CPQ implementation in Salesforce?

Ans: It is essential to follow the guidelines for a successful implementation of CPQ in Salesforce. They are listed below:

• Establishment of the goals to attain the best driving business sales.
• Optimization and documentation of the business quote to cash process
• Prioritization of CPQ features
• Initiation of System Integration and Data updation
• Organize and change management initiatives
• Measurement and Optimization of the progress evolved.

26. Briefly explain the different ways to store the various types of reports in Salesforce?

Ans: The reports in Salesforce can be represented in various types as listed below:

• Tabular report: The tabular report is represented in the tabular format.
• Matrix report: The matrix report is represented in the form of columns and rows based on grouping.
• Summary report: The summary report provides detailed reports represented in the columns.
• Joined report: Joined reports include the combination of one or more reports in a single report.

27. Define the steps to create a master-detail relationship on the objects that are already included in the reports?

Ans: The following are the steps to create a master-detail relationship.

A lookup relationship has to be created between two objects.

Establish the connectivity between the parent and child records.

Convert the relationship from Lookup relationship to Master-detail relationship by selecting and modifying the fields.

28. Give a brief idea of how CPQ helps in closing the CRM system gaps?

Ans: Most of the CRM systems do not provide the flexibility of automating the price quote processes. The price quote process has found to be difficult in the current CRMs. This infact leading to a slow process of quote generation and prone to unidentified risks. This will ultimately lead to low revenue generation, which is a significant loss to the organization. CPQ in Salesforce helps in reducing these unwanted factors and improving business revenue.

29. When do we prefer the data loader?

Ans: We prefer data loaders in the following cases. They are:

• We prefer using a data loader when we want to export our data for backup purposes.
• In order to prevent duplicate records.
• We use a data loader to save multiple mapping files for the future use.
• In order to load an object that is supported by the web based importing, etc.

30. Explain Paas?

Ans: In Platform as a Service (PaaS), cloud services include an operating system (OS), hardware, storage and network services across the cloud, but we have to pay service providers depending on our subscription, such as rental services.

The top providers of PaaS are:AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AppScale, Appistry (Cloud), CA Technologies, and Engine Yard, etc.

31. Explain IaaS?

Ans: In the IaaS, the cloud services includes infrastructure services such as servers, hosting services and network storages, etc. The top providers of IaaS are, AWS ,AT&T,  CA Technologies, Cloudscaling,Bluelock, Eucalyptus, etc.

32. What is field level security and how can it be controlled?

Ans: Field-level security helps to monitor the usability of a user to a specific data field. Assume that when an entity allows the client access to see, modify, alter, or remove a data object specific to the user's field of work,  other data objects can be concealed from the user. In order to control the field level security, we use permissions and profiles. 

33. Explain login hours and login IP ranges in salesforce platform?

Ans: Login hours: In an enterprise, the log-in and log-out schedule is set to determine the time limit and working hours. It identifies the user who doesn't follow the plan. In order to set the login hours for a company on the Salesforce platform, go to:

Setup>>Administration>>Manage Users>>Profiles

Login IP ranges: Suppose if the user login through an unknown IP address, then the enterprise will be alerted and restrict the user in doing such actions. In order to prevent any loss, companies uses secure IP logins.For setting up the login IP ranges, please go to:

Setup>>Administration Setup>>Manage Users>>Profiles

34. Write the code to insert multiple records at a time?

Ans:

public class insert50

{

public void p1()

{

List lstExample = new List();

Example_c objTest;

objTest = new Example_c(name=’Example1’,city_c=’City1’);

lstTesting.add(objTest);

objTest = new Example_c(name=’Example2’,city_c=’City2’);

lstTesting.add(objTest);

objTest = new Example_c(name=’Example3’,city_c=’City3’);

lstTesting.add(objTest);

insert lstTesting
}
}

35. Define Salesforce Shield.

Ans: Salesforce Shield is a high-end encryption software that helps to create and secure cloud applications quickly. It helps to monitor usage, data protection, spam check and manage data records with high security. Also, it gives enhanced protection, monitors data and systems, and retains crucial data stored within Salesforce.

36. Why is it required to follow Alert Rules in Salesforce CPQ?

Ans: Once we finish product pricing, the Salesforce CPQ alert rule displays informational messages related to sales or pricing. These rules help you save your price or configuration without the need to change anything. Further, they provide multiple suggestions with optimal options.

37. Define the working strategy of Asynchronous Calculations in Salesforce CPQ.

Ans: Most of the calculations in Salesforce run in the quote line editor, which will time out after 30 seconds by default. However, enabling asynchronous computing helps prevent timeouts. The calculations that run outside the quote line editor are less prone to time out but take more time to finish.

38. Define Self-Relationship in Salesforce CPQ.

Ans: A self-relationship is similar to the lookup relationship to the same object. It is built when a CPQ expert looks after the relationship between an object-to-object. It is accessible to users through the application UI layer.

39. What is Salesforce CPQ Revenue Cloud, and how does it work?

Ans: Salesforce Revenue Cloud is a complete revenue management solution that combines the products like Salesforce CPQ, Billing, etc. It is useful to build sales reports, recurring revenue, subscriptions, payment collection process, etc. The revenue cloud platform establishes communication between an organization's sales and finance departments to discuss sales and products.

40. Explain the integration of CPQ with Salesforce.

Ans: CPQ is a sales tool provided by Salesforce to determine accurate pricing with the given product specifications. Here, we need to download the CPQ package first and install it. After completion of product installation, we can find the CPQ in the listing and configure the window as per the product and organization set-up.

41. Explain the Advanced Approvals function in Salesforce CPQ.

Ans: Salesforce CPQ allows advanced approval functions for businesses involving more approvals. This function uses approval rules to decide which approvers will get an approval request. Also, it determines the template of email users to send approval requests. If IT industries use Salesforce CPQ, they can easily automate their sales process and improve their workflow. Further, if all parameters are satisfied, they can be automatically approved. Thus, the advanced approvals package allows for automation and a customized approval process for Salesforce CPQ.

42. What will happen if we convert any record in Salesforce?

Ans: If we convert any record in Salesforce, the record's values will change automatically. For this, we need to change the complete documentation. Thus, users can hold a copy of the changed document across the same object. Further, the agreement will automatically modify the entire price quotation of a product.

43. Distinguish between Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce.

Ans: Salesforce CPQ simplifies the price quotation process and manages products. It can compare product information throughout the quote lines. But normal Salesforce checks data in sequential order. It offers an efficient CRM platform that helps sales and marketing teams in an organization to generate more leads easily.

44. Define the role of a Salesforce CPQ specialist.

Ans: A Certified Salesforce CPQ specialist is a professional with credentials to log in and modify the software per the given documentation needs for pricing and renewals. They will demonstrate the ability to change bundle configurations, design output documents and updates, and execute renewals.

45. What are the quotation templates present in Salesforce CPQ?

Ans: Quote templates are the layout of the documents sales representatives produce from a quote. These ready-made quotation templates are highly useful for designing quotation documents more effectively and efficiently. The templates include various text boxes, tables, T&Cs, etc. Also, we can easily customize the quotation document as per our need which is securely saved within CPQ.

46. Define what Co-Terminated Subscriptions are?

Ans: Co-Termination is useful to renew lines from different sales contracts with various effective end-dates in parallel. Further, the co-terminated subscription applies to all clients, which helps compute product pricing. We will be unable to use it while computing contractual pricing.

47. Explain the functioning of Twin Fields.

Ans: Salesforce CPQ designs twin fields automatically provided that both fields' data types and API names match exactly. Twin fields can be two similar objects where the first object delivers the custom variable value to another object. Here, Salesforce CPQ develops a Twin field. If we can edit these twin fields, the data will be approved using field type and API name.

48. What are the benefits of a Nested Bundle?

Ans:

• The nested bundle allows users to choose a subset from a single product. 
• Also, the nested bundle allows you to build a complex or mixed bundle.

49. What is the use of Custom Scripts in Salesforce CPQ?

Ans: Salesforce CPQ computes various quotes based on the schedules, products, and set-ups made within the quote line editor. Thus, calling a Custom Script within the Quote Calculator Plugin is the only option to alter the quote calculator's data usage. It uses this data to create the quote. Also, these scripts add additional performance to the quote line editor in Salesforce CPQ.

50. Define Pricing Rules in Salesforce CPQ.

Ans: The price rules in Salesforce CPQ automate the price calculations and update the quote line parameters. These rules protect the price actions from doing wrong computations. Further, this feature is applicable when a business entity has a product that changes in response to the existence of other products mentioned in the quote.

51. What is meant by Price Actions?

Ans: While the prerequisites of price rules are accomplished, the rule would apply its price actions to the specific target field. Price action then recovers the value from a summary constant, integer, equation, or quote line field. Further, it writes the same to the target directory/field. Further, a price rule must contain atleast a single action. You can have many actions that target the same field, or each action target a different field.

#salesforce #interviewquestions

Salesforcedx-vscode: Salesforce Extensions for VS Code

Salesforce Extensions for VS Code 

Introduction

This repository contains the source code for Salesforce Extensions for VS Code: the Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extensions for Salesforce DX.

Currently, we have the following extensions:

• salesforcedx-vscode
  A top-level extension pack that automatically installs the following extensions for you.
• salesforcedx-vscode-core
  This extension interacts with the Salesforce CLI to provide basic Salesforce DX functionality.
• salesforcedx-vscode-apex
  This extension uses the Apex Language Server to provide features such as syntax highlighting and code completion.
• salesforcedx-vscode-apex-debugger
  This extension enables VS Code to use the real-time Apex Debugger with your scratch orgs and to use ISV Customer Debugger with your subscribers’ sandbox orgs.
• salesforcedx-vscode-apex-replay-debugger
  This extension enables VS Code to replay Apex execution from Apex debug logs.
• salesforcedx-vscode-lightning
  This extension supports Aura component bundles. It uses the HTML language server from VS Code.
• salesforcedx-vscode-visualforce
  This extension supports Visualforce pages and components. It uses the HTML language server from VS Code.

Be an Efficient Salesforce Developer with VS Code

Dreamforce 2018 session on how to use Visual Studio Code and Salesforce Extensions for VS Code:

Getting Started

If you are interested in contributing, please take a look at the CONTRIBUTING guide.

If you are interested in building the extensions locally, please take a look at the publishing doc.

You can find more information about developing Salesforce Extensions for VS Code in the docs folder. If the docs don’t cover what you are looking for, please feel free to open an issue.

For information about using the extensions, consult the README.md file for each package.

Download Details:

Author: Forcedotcom
Source Code: https://github.com/forcedotcom/salesforcedx-vscode 
License: BSD-3-Clause license

#typescript #lightning #salesforce #vscode #extension 

How to Salesforce SAP integration for Your Business Transformation

In an era when connectivity is pivotal, you need more than commitment and a skilled workforce to run a successful business. Businesses must have a hold over all the key workflows and an ability to transmit information between different departments easily. It is where ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning tools like SAP and Salesforce CRM come into the picture. This blog will cover what happens when two substantial, dominating ERP and CRM tools come together. Keep reading to uncover why you need it, how to do it, benefits, and challenges in Salesforce SAP integration.

Introduction

Worldwide organizations use ERP tools to have centralized access to the data dispersed across the department. When we speak about ERP, one name that instantly comes to mind is SAP. With over 24% market share, SAP is a leader in the ERP market.

If SAP had been the ERP leader, Salesforce would dominate the CRM domain for nine years and have a 22.9% market share in 2022.

Now, consider what happens when we integrate a world-class ERP with an equally reputed CRM. Well! by bringing these two together, organizations have a chance to optimize workflow according to customers’ needs.

Integrating SAP with Salesforce is a way to scale up functionalities and enjoy improved workflow at every level. In this post, we will learn about the nitty-gritty of Salesforce SAP integration and why businesses must go for it.

Why Do Businesses Need SAP Salesforce Integration

Running a business was always challenging. Moreover, the rapidly evolving customer needs, market demands, and competition gives hard time to companies and organizations. Modern enterprises need focus, technology, and vision to keep hold of customer requirements. If they focus on customer-centric business strategies and evolve workflow accordingly, they will eventually succeed in offering a delightful customer experience. But is it possible?

One possible solution is to integrate ERP and CRM so that every workflow involved with customer data can be streamlined, synced, and utilized better. With Salesforce SAP integration, businesses can access customer data at every step and every stage of the consumer’s buying journey.

Top Five Reasons for Salesforce SAP integration

By integrating Salesforce with SAP, businesses can enhance efficiency and functionality and enjoy actionable insights. A comprehensive integration policy to unify Salesforce and SAP helps achieve remarkable coordination between departments like sales, marketing, accounting, manufacturing, distribution, inventory, and consumer support. Consequently, a business succeeds in delivering an excellent customer experience, thereby increasing brand loyalty.

To delve into detail, here are the top five reasons you need to integrate Salesforce with SAP,

Unmatched quote accuracy

With Salesforce SAP integration, organizations can easily manage customer expectations while creating quotes and can increase the acceptance chance.

For example, imagine your team is creating a quotation for an XYZ client who has already availed of your services. The CRM will have details of a past project, the total budget, the timeline proposed, and other crucial factors for closing a deal.

When ERP and CRM are integrated, the team can access past order details while creating quotations and accordingly create a more personalized, engaging, and responsive quote.

Sync accounts receivable with CRM

Having an updated and well-integrated accounting workflow is a must for any organization willing to go far and succeed. Pending invoices, negative cash flow, and poor visibility to accounts receivable are some of the concerns that organizations have to address immediately and accurately. However, the lack of accounting data across the team is a huge hindrance.

When a CRM is integrated with an ERP, it becomes easy to fix not only account receivable issues but many more similar issues. Converting such cases becomes seamless, with seamless coordination between finance and accounting departments. Besides, you can automate time-consuming and error-prone workflows and optimize and monitor the cash flow cycle with data-backed facts.

Overcome service installation and warranty issues

When SAP and Salesforce work together, it’s easy for an organization to incorporate product/service installation/warranty information into the workflow. It saves them from providing incompetent solutions to their consumers due to a lack of relevant installation/warranty information.

Your customer support team gets easy access to customer data. They can find all customer information and their association with the company in a single window. Thorough knowledge of customers results in offering excellent customer service, strengthening customer relationships, and providing factful information.

Quick promotion and discounts application

This integration allows businesses to sync discounts and promotions with the workflow and strengthen the distribution process. The team doesn’t have to make efforts to apply applicable discounts, as they are automatically applied.

The CRM and ERP work in sync to access customer information, find promotional offers, enhance customer loyalty, and build better relationships that lifetime.

Easy customer acquisition and onboarding

Customer acquisition becomes much easier with Salesforce SAP integration. It gives you access to everything needed to acquire and onboard a new customer. It offers all customer data in one place and personalizes your marketing campaigns accordingly. The CRM team can find out about past purchases and grievances. With personalized recommendations, it’s easy for businesses to lure customers.

In general, customer onboarding takes a few days, with multiple follow-ups. But, by integrating Salesforce and SAP, businesses can trim down the onboarding efforts and time as all the records are in sync and easily accessible. Records are quickly updated, and the required information is made immediately accessible.

SAP and Salesforce; together, enable businesses to improve customer service, team communication, and internal workflow with the same ease and perfection. However, these benefits are subjective and only possible when the integration between Salesforce and SAP is seamless.

Benefits of Salesforce and SAP Integration

Although integrating Salesforce with SAP is complicated, you must consider it. It offers multiple benefits to a business. Some of the most prominent and substantial benefits of SAP Salesforce integration are:

• Seamless and effective data management as data across the team and departments are easily accessible from a single interface. Teams don’t have to move back and forth to access reliable and valuable data. All the necessary data is made centrally accessible, ensuring scalability and effectiveness in achieving great business intelligence across the operations.
• Improved customer handling, as no customer solution is delivered without relevant data. As data now power mere order tracking, every piece of information, including shipping details, tracking links, and other relevant information plays a significant role in offering a powerful customer experience. It allows for streamlining the buyer journey and delights customers at every stage.
• Reduced overheads as most tasks are automated, and less workforce is needed. The team also spends less time scheduling workflow and follow-ups and can make crucial decisions immediately.
• Personalized service delivery as the team remains in touch with historical customer data and can quickly overview the customer journey as a whole. The concerned team will have required customer data during marketing and sales pinches. This way, the customer turnout is high, and customer loyalty is easy to build.

Challenges in Salesforce SAP Integration

While integrating SAP and Salesforce brings a lot to the table, the process is more challenging than it sounds. How could it be? You are trying to get two superpowers together. The integration becomes more tedious because businesses have to bring on-premise and cloud-based tools together – this is a huge struggle.

Here are some of the significant challenges you might come across while trying to integrate Salesforce with SAP,

• SAP, being an on-premise tool, has different technical specifications. On the other hand, Salesforce is a cloud technology with a completely different set of technical and technological specifications. Their stand-alone nature differences make them hard to handle.
• SAP is a back-end tool that existed way before Salesforce or cloud technology was introduced. Hence, it’s not built for the cloud by default. Even though recent versions are compatible with the cloud, it’s not a cloud tool from a fundamental aspect.
• Salesforce, on the other hand, is a front-end tool built over the cloud. These two are different tools constructed on various platforms and serve different purposes.
• Organizations seek modern Salesforce SAP integration approaches as traditional approaches need to be updated. Direct or point-to-point integration is viable in many cases. But, this approach leads to strict dependencies, resulting in a highly brittle ecosystem and complex architecture. Adding new features and capabilities in such architecture takes time and effort.
• Another very famous approach, to integrating them, is SOA stacks. This approach is significant if you want flexibility in the integration process. But the approach comes with challenges that include high overheads and extensive operations. A full SOA stack can consume a considerable chunk of your business capital and even take years to function fully.
• Both these challenges are something that you can take into account. They are notorious and can jeopardize your SAP Salesforce integration plan.
• Safe and secured data migration is another challenge businesses face during Salesforce SAP integration. The process is so daunting that organizations need help for months. They have to clean, validate, and process the data to prevent migrating unnecessary data. They have to enforce the best data safety measures and compliance standards to make every essential data available for migration.
• The ideal practice to enjoy seamless integration of these two tools is to map out the process in advance to achieve end-to-end connectivity. Cloud-based integration is less tedious and hassle-free. You need to take the help of professional Salesforce support to avoid these challenges and make the most of your Salesforce SAP integration.

Design Solution In Cloud Integration

Ideally, the cloud is the only place where Salesforce and SAP should be merged, as this environment is flexible and easy to expand. In cloud-based Salesforce and SAP integration, the process starts with Postman, which shares HTTPS requests with SAP to initiate the integration. That is the first step of integration.

In the second stage, Salesforce is set up in a way that it handles the request from the above process. The second integration stage starts with converting JSON to XML conversion, storing External ID and message, fetching account ID using Salesforce, setting body, mapping to Case subject, and sending data to Salesforce and XML to JSON converter.

Step-by-step Process For Salesforce SAP Integration

The process of integrating SAP with Salesforce needs to be simplified and involves multiple steps. However, we present you a quick overview of the steps involved so that you can have an idea of what SAP and Salesforce integration might look like:

• Start the integration process by logging into your existing Salesforce account.
• Access Setup and look for API. You can also type API in the Quick Find box if you’re not able to find the API
• You need to have a WSDL file to use the API. Hence, download it.
• Once WSDL is successfully downloaded, use it to generate SOAP projects.
• Generate WSDL/XSD. To make it happen, you must create an upset request via SOAPui. Simultaneously, it would help if you started XSD for the corresponding request. You can use external tools for this task.
• Generate the ESR object using the external definitions that you created in the above steps
• Create SOA requests to map the messages
• Set up or access an API lookup code that can access the session ID and server URL.
• You will also need an ID configuration (get it by creating 2 ICOs using the ECC and forwarding them to Salesforce.

That’s it! With these steps, one can manage to bring SAP and Salesforce together. However, we presented just a quick overview of the steps involved. These steps are a little bit elaborated in real-time. Only reliable Salesforce integration services provider knows the detailed process of Salesforce SAP integration.

Cost of Salesforce SAP Integration

Cost is a crucial factor to consider as one plan for Salesforce SAP integration. Generally, the expenses involved in the force are on the upper side as ownership, licensing, implementations, and optimization of two products are involved. There is no fixed cost to states, as multiple factors influence the final cost.

The best way to find the cost involved is to consult with an experienced Salesforce integration partner that will guide you about the cost involved.

Conclusion

Businesses must find a way to bring together viable tools and technologies, to achieve incomparable sustainability, flexibility, and productivity. SAP and Salesforce are tools that add a lot of value and worth to a business after a successful merger.

However, the job is very tough as both are based on different infrastructures and have other purposes. The ideal way to eliminate the challenges involved and enjoy the copious benefits is to hire a skilled and reputed company offering Salesforce integration services that will allow businesses to ensure Salesforce SAP integration in a fully optimized and scalable way.

Integrate your line-of-business applications today for a better tomorrow.

Original article source at: https://www.bacancytechnology.com/

#business #salesforce 

How to Solve Merge Conflicts in Salesforce

In this article, we will learn about How to Resolve Merge Conflicts in Salesforce. Every Salesforce DevOps engineer must have dreaded the infamous merge conflict. My intent with this article is to bring clarity to the merge conflict topics: why and how merge conflicts occur, and how to solve them. Understanding these lets you handle them with more confidence! 

What is a merge conflict and when does this occur in Salesforce? 

Ideally, merge conflicts happen when people make different code changes to the same line of the same file, or when one person edits a file and another person deletes the same file. As frequent as it occurs, all merge conflicts must be solved before you merge a pull request on your source code repository (Example: GitLab).

As for Salesforce, the merge conflict has been a common pain point for enterprises implementing several cloud solutions in their Salesforce Org. There is always a list of common components like triggers and classes used across projects. 

For example, assume a Sales Cloud implementation team customizing account trigger and its subsequent handler and helper classes. Within their own Development environment, the Service cloud team is concurrently working on the same set of components. In this case, there is a good probability that when the code from the Sales team is delivered to a Test or UAT environment, the changes that may have been previously deployed by the Service cloud team will be cleared out.

The most direct way to resolve the merge conflict and create a new merge commit. 

Why do Salesforce teams struggle with merge conflicts?

Salesforce developers typically collaborate on the same projects concurrently. As a Salesforce developer, you frequently have to put in a lot of work to identify potential conflicts when integrating changes made by two developers in order to avoid code overwrites.

In order to do this, the team would have to spend a lot of time manually resolving GIT conflicts, which are difficult to integrate with Salesforce. 

As the number of Salesforce developers grows, merging changes also gets more difficult, which reduces productivity. Additionally, change sets and ANT scripts do not offer a merging method, therefore developers do not receive this kind of merge conflict alert. A few more common reasons for conflict are:

Lack of DevOps tools: The DevOps team hasn't made any investments in a technology to automate or better orchestrate the git version control procedures.

Failure of branching strategies: Each branch that an engineer works on needs to have its own workspace for the code that specifies how it interacts with a common codebase.

No source of truth or the source truth being production metadata: Lack of a common process to combine data from several sources into a single repository so that developers can get insights

Inability of the existing tools to identify conflicts: If a DevOps tool has been used and the engineers are still having problems, this points to the failure of the tool to determine the conflict's underlying cause.

Three ways to avoid merge conflicts in Salesforce DevOps 

Have all the environments in sync

This is obvious, but an overlooked factor that occurs for your Salesforce environments as metadata differences between your environments begin to appear as you constantly deploy codes. When you have different environments such as Dev, QA, production, etc, you really need to make sure that they are as identical as possible. 

Implement clear branching strategies

Branching strategies aren’t alike for all teams. Define how your team will handle the delivery of each feature, or bug handling without creating complexity in the delivery pipeline and leads to faster release cycles. 

For example, consider a multi-branch approach to manage the source code. This approach consists of two main branches: master and develop. The production code is saved in the master branch of this approach, while development takes place in the later branch, where modifications are made and then merged into the master. For particular situations, support branches like feature, hotfix, and release can be built. 

The benefit? A cooperative setting without codebase duplication

Invest in DevOps tools

Implementing a DevOps tool can revolutionize the way you run Salesforce deployments. The Salesforce deployment apps have intuitive features to make deploying a breeze. A few benefits of using DevOps tools are:

• Improved deployment in terms of reliability and time.
• Effective unit testing that results in Fewer bugs/errors.
• Integrating with Git/GitHub or any other hosting provider to have full visibility on version changes.
• Take full advantage of (CI/CD) Continuous Integration and continuous Delivery processes by creating automated delivery pipelines.

How to resolve merge conflicts with Opsera’s Salesforce DevOps solution?

Opsera offers powerful strategies to build perfect CI/CD workflows to automate your Salesforce deployments, allowing you to move your Salesforce code seamlessly between organizations.

With our configurable pipelines and out-of-the-box templates, you may designate workflows to metadata, objects, or classes between Salesforce Orgs, or Git to Salesforce, and develop pipelines with custom unit testing and code coverages. 

Additionally, you may choose which objects, classes, and attributes to use as you deploy your pipelines. The opportunity to compare Salesforce orgs or Git and Salesforce org is also provided.

Here is an example of how Opsera displays a merge conflict when a task has been run.

You can create a Task (Git Merge Sync Task) to merge the components which would highlight conflicts between the source and destination, rather than overwriting files blindly. 

Start by creating a Git Merge Sync Task by selecting the Salesforce components you wish to merge and the source file that has been modified. Any differences in the existing code and the incoming new changes will be highlighted for your reference. From here, you can choose to either ignore the changes or allow these changes to be merged into the destination branch.

You can resolve conflicts by using Pull Requests from code repositories as well. Find out more about resolving disputes in GitHub, BitBucket, and GitLab.

Merge conflicts can be an intimidating experience. Yet, as technology advances, the solutions are better. Pick an approach that satisfies and suits your organizational practices. 

Check out this session “Keep Calm and Merge Conflicts” for an informative session and demo. 

For more, explore our ongoing and previous events, such as our DevOps Huddles and Webinars where our experts discuss the challenges in the industry. 

Original article sourced at: https://www.opsera.io

#salesforce 

Learn about Salesforce's backup solutions

In this article, we will learn about Salesforce backup solutions. According to the 2022 Thales Cloud Security Report, 45% of organizations surveyed have experienced a data breach involving data in the cloud. This means about 60% of organizations that use SaaS solutions do not have an adequate data backup and recovery strategy in place.

Solutions for backup and restore are essential for striking a balance between the importance of data security and flexibility and user-friendliness. Due to remote work, it is difficult for businesses to manage data that is scattered widely, so it is crucial to have a reliable data restoration solution. Additionally, companies must produce backups that can be used as restore points in particular scenarios. 

It is crucial to start using these kinds of technologies because faults, such unintentional data deletion or change, might happen at any time.

In Salesforce, for instance, users will be able to automate daily backups of both standard and custom objects and will also be able to automatically erase outdated backups during predetermined time intervals and restore backed-up data into organizations.

What kind of Salesforce data do we back up?

Having metadata backups in the DevOps cycle makes the process more reliable, as teams can easily perform rollbacks. ‍To restore Salesforce data, you must first restore the metadata. Without having a backup for metadata, only partial backup of data is possible, as the data cannot be restored to fields that do not exist. You must back up and restore your metadata as an attachment in addition to your data.

Therefore, the key is to create a regular data backup and restore strategy through automated salesforce data recovery and backup of your data and your metadata.

A few examples for backup supported in Salesforce are:

• Custom Objects Backup
•  Attachment Backup
•  Metadata Backup
•  Customization Backup
•  Force.com Apps Backup
•  Chatter Backup

Salesforce data backup strategy
 

• Your regular data backup approach must adhere to Salesforce Service Level Agreements and industry compliance as part of your overall data management and security model (SLAs).
• The data must be backed up to an additional Salesforce instance or Amazon Web Services, and it must be secured while in transit.
• You need to frequently perform automated backups of your Salesforce data.
• Create an automated data backup procedure for both data and metadata.

Best practices for backing up Salesforce data 

There are a handful of best practices when it comes to backing up Salesforce data. A key practice is to Schedule repeating backups so you can be sure you have a reliable data set to fall back on. This type of backup can be done at least once a week or even daily.

In addition to this, you can archive unused data, protect your data repositories using access control methods, and configure the retention period for your backup data based on your needs.

What is Salesforce’s backup and restore?

On July 31, 2020, Salesforce announced discontinuation of its native backup service (Data Recovery Service), and later unveiled its new Backup and Restore solution in 2021.

The main benefit is an automated backup and restore system that can plan daily backups of files, attachments, standard objects, and custom objects. Every backup of data will be encrypted both during storage and transmission.

Salesforce regularly creates backups of the data as well as the metadata. In addition, Salesforce deletes the oldest backups automatically in order to undertake a systematic purging of outdated copies. It is possible to alter the period of time after which it is erased. It is possible to run audits and discover who is responsible using this new cloud backup option.

Limitations of Salesforce backup and restore 

1. User-deleted data is retained by Salesforce for 15 days in the recycling bin. Data in the recycle bin is permanently erased after 15 days.
2. All of the CRM data may be manually or automatically exported by administrators and power users to CSV files that can be kept locally. Through tools like the Salesforce Data Loader, data from these exports can be reimported into Salesforce.
3. Data recovery from Salesforce's own backups is available as a subscription service for up to 90 days.

The need for a separate Salesforce backup tool 

Business data and workloads today reside in data centers and public clouds. Extending traditional backup solutions to the cloud, especially to multiple clouds, is complex. Leverage the flexible and scalable capabilities of the cloud to deliver powerful data protection services that are easy to use and on-demand. It reduces costs with cloud data protection, global, source deduplication, integrated cloud archiving and on-demand scaling. Deploy anywhere securely and at scale in minutes and data encryption with no additional infrastructure costs. 

How to choose a Salesforce backup tool for your organization? 

Opsera offers integrated backups into your CI/CD DevOpspipelines. 

In the event of any outage, teams can monitor and undo changes to their data and metadata and swiftly restore complex data to their orgs. You may quickly deploy backup data to testing environments using Salesforce DevOps. Additionally, you can use the deployment procedure to retrieve data and metadata.

At Opsera’s no code platform, we strive to build secure and scalable declarative CI/CD pipelines with quality and security for your DevOps teams.

For more details on the backup we offer, write to us at https://www.opsera.io/contact.

Follow Opsera at LinkedIn to know more about our Webinars and events.

Original article sourced at: https://www.opsera.io

#salesforce 

Simple Guide to Batch Apex in Salesforce

In this article we will learn the Simple Guide to Batch Apex in Salesforce. Apex is a development platform created by Salesforce that allows you to use Salesforce’s powerful functionality and build your own custom cloud-based software applications.

Salesforce allows multiple users to use their development platform simultaneously. The Apex engine enforces runtime and data limitation measures called governor limits to avoid performance issues and optimize processing. With governor limits, Salesforce guides its users to write code based on programming best practices, limits the number of operations a user can make simultaneously, etc.

The goal is to minimize situations where users take up more shared resources than necessary.

This problem often occurs for larger companies with advanced needs and is limited in the number of records they can manipulate or their operations in general.

To overcome this hurdle, Salesforce has introduced the Batch Apex feature.

In this article, you’ll understand what Batch Apex is and why it’s useful. Also, you’ll see the specific Batch Apex code syntax and some of its best practices for optimal performance.

What Is Batch Apex?

Batch Apex allows you to deal with many individual instances or records as they’re commonly known, which otherwise can surpass the typical system limitations. Batch Apex, as the name implies, processes records asynchronously in batches. As a result, they run following the platform’s limits. More specifically, Batch Apex breaks your recordset into smaller groups of records that are easier to process and manage.

Batch Apex is ideal for situations where you have a high volume of records that you need to process daily or regularly.

Batch Apex Advantages

Consider a case where you use Batch Apex and run a large number of records. At first, your records are grouped into batches of a maximum of 200 records each, which is the upper limit. Afterward, the processing of each batch, which is considered a distinct Apex transaction, is added to the Apex task queue and waits to be executed. The way Batch Apex functions offers several advantages:

• First of all, you won’t have to worry about your transactions exceeding the governor limit because it resets each time a batch is executed.
• Batch Apex will not process new batches unless the current batch is completed.
• With Batch Apex classes, you’ll be able to run tasks asynchronously and process a significant number of records frequently, according to a predefined schedule that suits you.
• Lastly, Batch Apex allows you to break down your task into smaller, much more manageable chunks.

Batch Apex Syntax

To get started with Batch Apex, you have to create and then invoke an Apex class that implements the Database.Batchable interface. This interface has three methods.

Start Method

The start method gathers the records that need to go to the execute method of the Database.Batchable interface for processing.

When a Batch Apex task begins, it automatically invokes the start method once, and there are two options it can return; either the Database.QueryLocator object or an iterable object that stores the records sent to the execute method.

In cases where a Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) query is enough to determine the object scope of the task, then you can use the QueryLocator option. You can avoid the governor limit of how many records you can retrieve from SOQL queries when using the QueryLocator object.

However, if you’re planning to perform a more sophisticated action, then the iterable is the preferable choice. You can even create your own custom iterable for your advanced needs. One thing to keep in mind is that, unlike the QueryLocator, the governor limit of how many records you can retrieve from SOQL queries remains in this case.

Execute Method

Execute is the method that will have all the logic you will perform for each batch. So if you’re updating those records or archiving them, the logic will go here. The execute method will perform every time a batch runs. If, for example, you have 10 batches, the execute method will be called 10 times, once for each batch. Batches can have up to 200 records.

The execute method has two parameters. The first is a reference to the Database.BatchableContext object and the second is a list of the records returned by the start method.

Finish Method

The third method you need to implement is the finish method. If you want to perform an action after processing all the batches, like sending a status report or email to the administrator, you need to specify it here. The finish method is executed once and only after all the batches are successful. It takes a reference to the Database.BatchableContext object as a parameter.

Below you can see some boilerplate Batch Apex code:

Batch Apex Invoking

You can invoke a Batch Apex class using the Database.executeBatch method.

In this case, the default number of records will pass to the execute method for processing, which is 200.

Another option is to limit the batch size by adding a scope parameter. This will determine precisely the number of records you need to pass to the execute method.

Batch Apex State

As mentioned above, the processing of each Apex batch is a discrete transaction. That means that every time the execute method runs, it creates a new copy of the object, and all static and instance variables initiate.

Using Database.Stateful will help you keep the same state during all transactions. Keeping the same state can be beneficial in cases where you need to calculate records. You have to use it carefully, though, as it can affect the performance of your batch; for example, it can lead to a longer batch execution time.

Batch Apex Testing

You can test Batch Apex by inserting some sample records in a test class. Then, you can invoke it and verify whether or not the records were modified as planned. Batch Apex allows you to test the execute method only once. Therefore, you need to determine how many records will pass to the execute method by using the executeBatch method and specifically the scope parameter.

Apex has two test methods, startTest and stopTest, where you’ll place your test logic and executeBatch method.

Batch Apex Best Practices

There are several best practices that you can implement to make sure that Batch Apex is performing optimally:

• Use normal Apex instead of Batch Apex when you have a small number of records that you need to run.
• Organize your SOQL queries properly to maximize the efficient processing of your batches.
• Salesforce uses queues to manage asynchronous tasks. If you pile up your queue with a significant number of requests that are waiting to run, it’s possible you’ll face delays. Reducing asynchronous requests will help you prevent slow execution times.

Final Thoughts

Salesforce’s Batch Apex is a suitable solution for organizations that have large numbers of records and are struggling with the governor limit. Whenever there’s a need to process millions of records at once, it’s the only solution developers have. It’s gaining popularity as every major project in Salesforce is currently using it.

You can learn more about Batch Apex and find code examples in Apex’s developer guide. Also, Salesforce has a free online learning platform where you can learn how to use Batch Apex in detail.

Are you using Salesforce? Testim for Salesforce is a powerful AI-powered testing tool that will help you automate and simplify your Salesforce applications testing efforts.

Original article sourced at: https://www.testim.io

#salesforce 

One Stop Solution for Customer Needs with Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud – One Stop Solution For Customer Needs

Salesforce being a CRM is used to connect people and information. In this blog, I am going to explain one of the core service – Salesforce Service Cloud and how it revolutionized customer support by making interactions easier between an organization and its customers. In my previous blog, you learned how to create a custom Salesforce Application. Moving forward, I will help you understand how Salesforce Service Cloud can add value to your business. First, I will explain the need for Salesforce Service Cloud, what it is and what all services it provides to engage your customers. In the end, I will explain one use case on how Coca-Cola  has been extremely successful in enhancing their customer’s experience using Service Cloud.

So, let’s get started with why your organization should choose Salesforce Service Cloud.

Why Salesforce Service Cloud?

If your company deeply cares about the customer service, then Salesforce Service Cloud is what you should go for. Irrespective of whether you are in B2C or B2B  domain, you will have several customers raising tickets and queries on a regular basis. These tickets will be received by your service agents. Salesforce Service Cloud helps you in tracking and solving these tickets efficiently.
This is not the only way how you can transform customer experience. Let’s dig deeper and see how Salesforce Service Cloud is creating an impression.

• Maximize Agent Productivity – Using Service Cloud, agents can work from anywhere. With the easy management options available (such as web-based application, mobile device, knowledge base) , the agent productivity is enhanced leading to reduction of overhead costs of agents. Get Salesforce CPQ certification to showcase your mastery of advanced billing processes, invoice generation, and CPQ.
   
• Transforms Customer experience – Customer relations are drastically enhanced – connecting one to one with every customer via live agents. You can increase your customer loyalty, satisfaction and customer retention, leading to repeat business from existing customers, increase in LTV (Lifetime value) of your customers, positive word of mouth for your brand.
• Security – Your data is completely safe and secure with the Service Cloud platform. It follows a multilayered approach to protect the information which is vital to your business.
• Leverage Social Media Platforms – You can also interact with your customers on social media such as Facebook or Twitter in real-time.
• Case Tracking – Tracking helps you in faster case resolution. This leads to better management of a person’s day to day activities and manual errors are drastically reduced.

To sum up, Salesforce Service Cloud definitely helps in improving your operational processes leading to better experience for your customers. Based on a study done across companies using Salesforce Service Cloud, growth in performance metric has been drastically increased. If you see the below infographic, agent productivity increased by 40%, case resolution increased by 41%, which eventually led to a 31% increase in customer retention.  

This growth illustrates why people prefer Salesforce Service Cloud and how it plays an important role in improving your customer support team.

Now let’s understand what Salesforce Service Cloud is and what services it has to offer.

What is Salesforce Service Cloud?

Salesforce offers Service Cloud as Software as a Service. Service Cloud is built on the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, giving you a 360-degree view of your customers and enabling you to deliver smarter, faster and more personalized service. 

With Salesforce Service Cloud, you can create a connected knowledge base, enable live agent chat, manage case interactions –  all at one platform. You can have personalized customer interactions or even up-sell your products/ services based on his/her past activity data.

Now, you may be wondering how to access Service Cloud. Let me walk you through the steps to access a Service Cloud Console.
Step 1: Login to login.salesforce.com
Step 2: Create a SF Console App
Step 3: Choose its display
Step 4: Customize push notifications
Step 5: Grant users Console Access – Sc User 

What services it offers?

As I had mentioned earlier, there are case tracking and knowledge base features. There are several other services that Salesforce Service Cloud offer which will enable you to provide a differentiated customer experience.  You can refer the below image to see what Salesforce Service Cloud has to offer you.

You can take your console to the next level by learning the following features in Salesforce:

Case Management – Any customer issues raised are usually captured and tracked as cases. Cases can be further classified into the following:

• Email-To-Case: Email-To-Case helps you create a case automatically when an email is sent to one of your company’s email addresses, such as support@edureka.co. These generated cases will be displayed in an ‘Emails related list’. This Emails related list includes all emails sent by your customer on a particular case, as well as the email threads. 
• Web-to-Case: Web-to-case helps you create a new case automatically in Salesforce whenever a support request comes directly from your company’s website. To enable it, you can go to Setup → Build → Self-service → Web-to-case settings.
  Check the “Enable Web-to-Case” checkbox. You can select an Auto-response template and select the default case origin as ‘Web’.
• Escalation and Auto-Response: Case escalation rules are used to reassign and optionally notify individuals when a case is not closed within a specified time period. Also, you can configure auto-response rules to respond to cases either from the web or email. 

At the core of the Service Cloud lies the ‘Case’ module. Let us understand the Case module with an example. Assume in a large organization like Coca-Cola, few of the employees’ systems get crashed, let’s call it as ‘breakdown of laptops’. Now you need to fix this as soon as possible to ensure business continuity. Service Cloud helps you track the progress and provides you with all the necessary information of every Coca-Cola agent. You can solve the problem by creating a case. You can then assign them as ‘high’ priority and also categorize the origin of this case (such as phone, email or web) and then click on ‘Save’. Refer the below screenshot to get a better understanding.

Solutions – You can categorize your solutions into query types – making your solution search easier and closing the case faster. With this, the agent does not need to create a new solution to existing queries every time. This helps in enhancing your agent productivity. Solutions do not need any additional license.

For the same Coca-Cola scenario, if you want to solve a case as an agent, then you will definitely search for a solution. Firstly, you can check whether the solution has been already present or not. If it is not present, then your admin can create a solution stating that the case has been resolved and hence can be closed. You can refer to the screenshot attached below.

As you can see in the above screenshot, I have created a solution- ‘Laptop Solution’ that displays the title, status and the details of the solution created.

Knowledge – Salesforce Knowledge is a knowledge base where users can edit, create and manage content. Knowledge articles are documents of information. Customers can go to the company’s website and search for solutions. Knowledge articles can be associated with a case before it is closed unlike solutions. Salesforce Knowledge needs a separate license to be purchased.

Communities – Communities are a way to collaborate with business partners and customers, distributors, resellers and suppliers who are not part of your organization. Typically, these are the people who are not your regular SFDC users, but you want to provide them some channel to connect with your organization and provide them access to some data as well. To learn more, get Salesforce developer certification and become certified.

In Salesforce, if you go to the ‘Call Center’ dropdown, you will find Success Community. A Salesforce user can use their user id and password to login there. This community is accessible to all the developers, functional consultants or admins. In this community, user can search anything as it has a lot of things like documentation, articles, knowledge, feed, questions and many more. For example: If you want to know about record type, then you can search here. Have a look at the screenshot attached below.

As you can see in the above search, you got a lot of customer’s problems, documentation, known issues, ideas etc. You can now start exploring them, understand the major issues faced by the customers and fix them accordingly.

Console – Agent console provides unified agent experience. It reduces response time by placing all the information together. In a console, you can find everything from customer profiles, to case histories, to dashboards – all in one place.

As I have shown you the basics of how to set up a Salesforce console in the beginning of this blog. Admin can grant Console Access to the users, Service Cloud gives you the console access where you can assign users to it. Refer the below screenshot, you can assign user profile for the console. Also, you can assign the Service Cloud user license to agents with those profiles so that they can start using your console.

Social Media – Service Cloud lets you leverage social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter to engage visitors. With Salesforce Social Studio, customer requests are escalated directly to your social service team. Social media plays an important role in bridging the gap in virtual world, engaging them in real time. 

Live Agent – Live agents deal with 1:1 customer interaction. Agents can provide answers faster with customer chat and keyboard shortcuts. They stay totally connected to the customers as their team members are alerted immediately to get the issue resolved. Also, it makes the agents smarter and more productive in the process with real-time assistance. This in turn improves customer satisfaction.  

Salesforce Service Cloud is all about providing services to your customers and building a relationship with them. You can use other features such as call center, email & chat, phone, google search, contracts and entitlements, chatter and call Scripting.

How Much Salesforce Service Cloud Cost?

Salesforce Service Cloud offers three pricing packages- Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited. You can refer to the table below and select your plan accordingly.

“Our agents love Salesforce CRM Service. They tell us how easy it is to use and how phenomenal it is when it comes to driving a better customer experience” – Charter

This is how Salesforce Service Cloud has revolutionized the way customers interact with organizations using the services over the internet. Now, let’s have a look at how Coca-Cola implemented Salesforce Service Cloud to solve its business challenges.

Salesforce Service Cloud Use Case: Coca-Cola 

Many global organizations leverage Salesforce Service Cloud for a better customer relationship management solution. Here, I will talk about how Coca-Cola Germany used Service Cloud to analyze consumer behavior and build data driven business strategies. This use case will give you an idea on how Service Cloud can be used extensively across any domain.
Salesforce Service Cloud is an integrated platform to connect employees, customers, and suppliers around the world.

Earlier, Coca-Cola was facing several issues while managing their customers. Some of them are listed below:

• The company’s in-house repair facility formerly had technicians who were tracking their jobs on paper. They took a lot of time and effort.
• Call center and repair department suffered from frequent downtime.
• Lack of speed, functionality, scalability and connectivity with a fully-mobile experience.
• Slow mobile app sync-up.
• Overall unsatisfactory user experience.

“In the past, big companies outcompeted smaller companies. But that’s history. Today, the fast companies outcompete the slow companies,” explained Ulrik Nehammer – CEO of Coca-Cola.
 

Now when they are connected to the Salesforce Service Cloud, technicians are alerted in real-time on customer issues. This helps reduce response time dramatically. Also, call center support agents receive instant access to customer history. With all of this, productivity of Coca-Cola Germany’s technical services has shot up by 30%.

A Big Fix for Coca-Cola

With the Service Cloud, they wanted to understand their customers’ need and cater to them more effectively. Here are some key points that contributed to their excellence.

• Customer satisfaction – One to one support to customers through any channels or product with services for app like video chat or agents instantly guiding them to solutions.
• Mobile App – Using app mobile support, customers can interact via live agent video chat, screen sharing and on-screen guided assistance. These services transform customer support resulting in making their customers happy.   
• Analytics – Using Salesforce Service Cloud, all information is gathered and evaluated through custom dashboard. Coca-Cola performed analysis to check the past transactions and immediately took action at the location they serve. This helped them in making better and profitable decisions in lesser time.
• Agent productivity is supercharged – With features such as email-to-case, skills-based routing, milestone tracking, Service Cloud gave their agents the tool to respond quickly and efficiently to customers on any channel. This is how Coca-Cola has enhanced the overall productivity.

“This has been a massive step forward for us,” said Andrea Malende, business process expert and mobile solutions in Coca-Cola. “I’m amazed how quick and smooth the implementation was.”

This is how Coca-Cola implemented Salesforce Service Cloud thus making their customers happy. There are several other Salesforce Service Cloud use case stories which show how various companies have benefited and grown their business.

Integrations available for Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud supports integration with various application and business system as shown in the image below:

Since everyone and everything is connected on one platform, you should definitely go for Salesforce Service Cloud. Hope you enjoyed reading my blog, you can also go through the video below for a detailed explanation and demo on Salesforce Service Cloud.

Original article source at: https://www.edureka.co/

#salesforce #service #cloud 

Learn To Create Your Own Salesforce App

Salesforce Tutorial: Learn To Create Your Own Salesforce App

In the previous blogs, you learnt what is Salesforce and different Salesforce certification. In this Salesforce tutorial blog, I will show you how to create a custom Salesforce App. I will be creating an app called StudentForce which can be used to maintain student records.

This app will contain three different objects (tables) to store data. The first object called Students Data will contain the names of students and their personal details like email id, phone number and native city. The college, students belong to, will be stored in the second object called College and the third object called Marks will contain the marks obtained by the students in various subjects.

Salesforce Tutorial

I have covered the following topics in this Salesforce tutorial blog with step-by-step instructions and screenshots:

• How to create the app environment?
• What are tabs and how to create tabs in your app?
• What are profiles and how to customize user profiles?
• How to create objects in the app?
• How to create fields in objects and define their data type?
• How to add entries (fields) into these objects?
• How to link (create a relationship between) two different objects?

Before I get started with creating an app, let me introduce you to the cloud environment where Salesforce apps are built.

Salesforce Org

The cloud computing space offered to you or your organization by Force.com is called Salesforce org. It is also called Salesforce environment. Developers can create custom Salesforce Apps, objects, workflows, data sharing rules, Visualforce pages and Apex coding on top of Salesforce Org. Get your Salesforce sales cloud certification today to become certified.

Let us now deep dive into Salesforce Apps and understand how it functions.

Salesforce Apps

The primary function of a Salesforce app is to manage customer data. Salesforce apps provide a simple UI to access customer records stored in objects (tables). Apps also help in establishing relationship between objects by linking fields.

Apps contain a set of related tabs and objects which are visible to the end user. The below screenshot shows, how the StudentForce app looks like.

The highlighted portion in the top right corner of the screenshot displays the app name: StudentForce. The text highlighted next to the profile pic is my username: Vardhan NS.

Before you create an object and enter records, you need to set up the skeleton of the app. You can follow the below instructions to set up the app.

Steps To Setup The App

1. Click on Setup button next to app name in top right corner.
2. In the bar which is on the left side, go to Build → select Create → select Apps from the drop down menu.
   
3. Click on New as shown in the below screenshot.
   
    
4. Choose Custom App.
5. Enter the App Label. StudentForce is the label of my app. Click on Next.
6. Choose a profile picture for your app. Click Next.
7. Choose the tabs you deem necessary. Click Next.
8. Select the different profiles you want the app to be assigned to. Click Save.

In steps 7 and 8, you were asked to choose the relevant tabs and profiles. Tabs and profiles are an integral part of Salesforce Apps because they help you to manage objects and records in Salesforce.

In this salesforce tutorial, I will give you a detailed explanation of Tabs, Profiles and then show you how to create objects and add records to it.

Salesforce Tabs

Tabs are used to access objects (tables) in the Salesforce App. They appear on top of the screen and are similar to a toolbar. It contains shortcut links to multiple objects. On clicking the object name in a tab, records in that object will be displayed. Tabs also contain links to external web content, custom pages and other URLs. The highlighted portion in the below screenshot is that of Salesforce tabs.

All applications will have a Home tab by default. Standard tabs can be chosen by clicking on ‘+’ in the Tab menu. Accounts, Contacts, Groups, Leads, Profile are the standard tabs offered by Salesforce. For example, Accounts tab will show you the list of accounts in the SFDC org and Contacts tab will show you the list of contacts in the SFDC org.

Steps To Add Tabs

1. Click on ‘+’ in the tab menu.
2. Click on Customize tabs, which is present on the right side.
3. Choose the tabs of your choice and click on Save.

Besides standard tabs, you can also create custom tabs. Students tab that you see in the above screenshot is a custom tab that I have created. This is a shortcut to reach the custom object: Students.

Steps To Create Custom Tabs

1. Navigate to Setup → Build → Create → Tabs.
2. Click on New.
3. Select the object name for which you are creating a tab. In my case, it is Students Data. This is a custom object which I have created (the instructions to create this object is covered later in this blog).
4. Choose a tab style of your preference and enter a description.
5. Click on Next → Save. The new Students Data tab will appear as shown below.

Salesforce Profiles

Every user who needs to access the data or SFDC org will be linked to a profile. A profile is a collection of settings and permissions which controls what a user can view, access and modify in Salesforce.

A profile controls user permissions, object permissions, field permissions, app settings, tab settings, apex class access, Visualforce page access, page layouts, record types, login hour and login IP addresses.

You can define profiles based on the background of the user. For example, different levels of access can be set for different users like system administrator, developer and sales representative.

Similar to tabs, we can use any standard profile or create a custom profile. By default, the available standard profiles are: read only, standard user, marketing user, contract manager, solution manager and system administrator. If you want to create custom profiles, you have to first clone standard profiles and then edit that profile. Do note that one profile can be assigned to many users, but one user cannot be assigned many profiles.

Steps To Create A Profile

1. Click on Setup → Administer → Manage users → Profiles
2. You can then clone any of the existing profiles by clicking on Edit.
   

Once the tabs and profiles are set up for your App, you can load data into it. The next section of this Salesforce tutorial will thus cover how data is added to objects in the form of records and fields.

Enroll in Salesforce training to fast forward your career.

Objects, Fields And Records In Salesforce

Objects, Fields and Records are the building blocks of Salesforce. So, it is important to know what they are and what role they play in building Apps.

Objects are the database tables in Salesforce where data is stored. There are two types of objects in Salesforce:

• Standard objects: The objects provided by Salesforce are called standard objects. For example, Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns, Products, Reports, Dashboard etc.
• Custom objects: The objects created by users are called custom objects.

Objects are a collection of records and records are a collection of fields.

Every row in an object consists of many fields. Thus a record in an object is a combination of related fields. Look at the below excel for illustration.

I will create an object called Students Data which will contain personal details of students.

Steps to create a custom object:

1. Navigate to Setup → Build → Create → Object
2. Click on New Custom Object.
3. Fill in the Object Name and Description. As you can see from the below image, the object name is Students Data.
4. Click on Save.

If you want to add this custom object to the tab menu, then you can follow the instructions mentioned earlier in this Salesforce tutorial blog.

After creating the object, you need to define various fields in that object. e.g. the fields in a student’s record will be student name, student phone number, student email ID, the department a student belongs to and his native city.

You can add records to objects only after defining the fields.

Steps To Add Custom Fields

1. Navigate to Setup → Build → Create → Objects
2. Select the object to which you want to add fields. In my case, it is Students Data.
3. Scroll down to Custom Fields & Relationships for that object and click on New as shown in the below screenshot.
4. You need to choose the data type of that particular field and then click Next. I have chosen text format because I will be storing letters in this field.
   The different data types of fields have been explained in detail in the next section of this blog.
5. You will then be prompted to enter the name of the field, maximum length of that field and description.
6. You can also make it an optional/ mandatory field and allow/ disallow duplicate values for different records by checking on the check boxes. See the below screenshot to get a better understanding.
7. Click on Next.
8. Select the various profiles who can edit that text field at a later point of time. Click Next.
9. Select the page layouts that should include this field.
10. Click Save.

As you can see from the below screenshot, there are two types of fields. Standard fields created for every object by default and Custom fields created by myself. The four fields which I have created for Students Data are City, Department, Email ID and Phone No. You will notice that all custom fields are suffixed with ‘__C’ which indicates that you have the power to edit and delete those fields. Whereas some standard fields can be edited, but not deleted.

You can now add student records (complete row) to your object.

Steps To Add A Record

1. Go to the object table from the tab menu. Students Data is the object to which I will add records.
2. As you can see from the below image, there are no existing records. Click on New to add new student records.
3. Add student details into different fields as shown in the below screenshot. Click on Save.
4. You can create any number of student records. I have created 4 student records as shown in the below screenshot.
5. In case you want to edit the student details, you can click on Edit as shown in the below screenshot.

Data Types Of Fields

Data type controls which type of data can be stored in a field. Fields within a record can have different data types. For example:

• If it is a phone number field, you can choose Phone.
• If it is a name or a text field, you can choose Text.
• If it is a date/ time field, you can choose Date/Time.
• By choosing Picklist as data type for a field, you can write predefined values in that field and create a drop-down.

You can choose any one of the data types for custom fields. Below is a screenshot listing the different data types.

Data types like Lookup Relationship, Master-Detail Relationship and External Lookup Relationship are used to create links/ relationships between one or more objects. Relationships between objects is the next topic of discussion in this Salesforce tutorial blog.

Object Relationship In Salesforce

As the name suggests, object relationship is used in Salesforce to create a link between two objects. The question on your mind would be, why is it needed? Let me talk about the need with an example.

In my StudentForce app, there is a Students Data object, which contains personal information of students. Details regarding student’s marks and their previous college are present in different objects. We can use relationships to link these objects using related fields. The marks of the students and colleges can be linked with the Student Name field of Student Data object.

Relationships can be defined while choosing the data type. They are always defined in the child object and are referenced to the common field in master object. Creating such links will help you to search and query data easily when the required data is present in different objects. There are three different types of relationships that can exist between objects. They are:

• Master-Detail
• Lookup
• Junction

Let us look into each of them:

Find out our Salesforce Training Course in Top Cities

Master-Detail Relationship (1:n)

Master-Detail relationship is a parent-child relationship in which the master object controls the behaviour of the dependent object. It is a 1:n relationship, in which there can be only one parent, but many children. In my example, Students Data is the master object and Marks is the child object.

Let me give you an example of a Master-Detail relationship. The Students Data object contains student records. Each record contains personal information about a student. However, the marks obtained by students are present in another record called Marks. Look at the screenshot of Marks object below.

I have created a link between these two objects by using the student’s name. Below are the points you have to keep in mind when setting up a Master-Detail relationship.

• Being the controlling object, the master field cannot be empty.
• If a record/ field in master object is deleted, the corresponding fields in the dependent object are also deleted. This is called a cascade delete.
• Dependent fields will inherit the owner, sharing and security settings from its master.

You can define master-detail relationships between two custom objects, or between a custom object and standard object as long as the standard object is the master in the relationship.

Lookup Relationship (1:n)

Lookup relationships are used when you want to create a link between two objects, but without the dependency on the parent object. You can think of this as a form of parent-child relationship where there is only one parent, but many children i.e. 1:n relationship. Below are the points you have to keep in mind when setting up a Lookup relationship.

• The lookup field on the child object is not necessarily required.
• The fields/ records in a child object cannot be deleted by deleting a record in the parent object. Thus the records in the child object will not be affected.
• The child fields will not inherit the owner, sharing and security settings of its parent.

An example of a lookup relationship in my case would be that of a College object. You can see the child object: Students Data in the below screenshot. You will notice that there is an empty College field for the first record. This indicates that the dependency is not a necessity.

Below is a screenshot of the schema diagram of both the relationships. College – Student Data forms the Lookup relationship and Student Data – Marks forms the Master-Detail relationship.

Self-Relationship

This is a form of lookup relationship where instead of two tables/ objects, the relationship is within the same table/ object. Hence the name self-relationship. Here, the lookup is referenced to the same table. This relationship is also called Hierarchical relationship.

Junction Relationship (Many-To-Many)

This kind of a relationship can exist when there is a need to create two master-detail relationships. Two master-detail relationships can be created by linking 3 custom objects. Here, two objects will be master objects and the third object will be dependent on both the objects. In simpler words, it will be a child object for both the master objects.

To give you an example of this relationship, I have created two new objects.

• A master object called Professor. It contains the list of professors.
• A child object called Courses. It contains the list of courses available.
• I will use the Students Data object as another master object.

I have created a many-to-many relationship such that every record in the Courses object must have at least one student and at least one professor. This is because every course is a combination of students and professors. In fact, a course, can have one or more number of students and professors associated with them.

The dependency on Student and Professor objects makes Courses as the child object. Student and Professor are thus the master objects. Below is a screenshot of Courses object.

You will notice that there are different combinations of professors and students for these subjects. For example, Kate is associated with two courses and has two different professors for each of those two courses. Mike is associated with only one course, but, has two different professors for that course. Both Joe and Kate are associated with the same course and same professor. In the below screenshot, you will find the schematic diagram of this relationship.

Congrats! The StudentForce App is successfully built. The two schema diagrams present above show how the different objects are linked inside my Salesforce App.

This brings us to the end of this Salesforce tutorial. I hope you understood the various concepts like apps, tabs, profiles, fields, objects and relationships which were explained in this Salesforce tutorial blog. In case you have any doubts or queries, feel free to leave them in the comment section below and I will get back to you at the earliest.

I urge you to see this Salesforce tutorial video  that explains the creation of Salesforce student app. Go ahead, enjoy the video and tell me what you think.

Salesforce Tutorial For Beginners | Learn To Create Salesforce App | Salesforce Training | Edureka

This Salesforce Tutorial video will help you learn how to create a Salesforce app from scratch. This is a step by step tutorial on creating Salesforce app and ideal for beginners.

Stay tuned to read the next blog in our Salesforce tutorial series. In the meantime, I would suggest you to create a Salesforce account and play around with the Salesforce app. You can try building your own app by following the instructions mentioned above.

If you want to become a professional skilled in Salesforce then, check out our Salesforce Training in Columbus which comes with instructor-led live training and real life project experience.

Original article source at: https://www.edureka.co/

#salesforce #app 

Design-system-ui-kit: Lightning Design System UI Kit

Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) UI Kit

The Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) UI Kit is a collection of design resources to support designing and prototyping using Lightning Design System components, tokens, and design patterns. There are also useful resources to help make design workflows more efficient with artifacts like page templates, wireframes, key product screens, and components for writing specifications.

Quick start

Download and install these libraries through the SLDS Plugin for Sketch. 

Requirements

Sketch

Download and install the most recent version of Sketch. 
If you do not have Sketch, you can use the Framer SLDS UI Kit or Figma SLDS UI Kit, however, they may not be as up-to-date as the Sketch files here.

SLDS Plugin for Sketch

Download and install the most recent version of SLDS Plugin for Sketch.

Salesforce Sans fonts

Download and install Salesforce Sans from the Design System repository. 

Getting Started

The installation of SLDS Sketch libraries is handled through the SLDS Plugin for Sketch. Visit the plugin page on the SLDS website to read more. 

Design File Descriptions

SLDS Components for Web 
Sketch equivalents of component blueprints and tokens as seen on the SLDS website

SLDS Components for Mobile 
Sketch collection of native mobile patterns and mobile web coded components

SLDS Icon Library 
A file of design system icons which is automatically generated from design system code

Pattern: Builder 
Builder design guideline customized component symbols

Pattern: User Engagement 
User engagement design guideline customized component symbols

Pattern: Chart 
Chart design guideline customized component symbols

Pattern: Rules, Filters, and Logic 
RFL design guideline customized component symbols

Standard Artboards 
Based on user data, Sketch artboards are sized to the common viewport dimensions used

Spec Library 
A collection of symbols to use when documenting dimensions and details of designs for engineers

Wireframes 
Grey box stencils of common Lightning interfaces

Key Screens 
A collection of the most common product screens on mobile (and desktop coming soon) 

Contributing, Feature Requests and Bug Reporting

The SLDS team welcomes your feedback to help maintain these design resources. Please add any bugs or feature requests under the Issues tab of this repository.

External contributions are currently closed 
Throughout a release, Salesforce's design team contributes to these Sketch files through an application called Abstract. Public contributions become unmanagable to review and merge since GitHub doesn't have the capability to view binary files. 

Download Details:

Author: Salesforce-ux
Source Code: https://github.com/salesforce-ux/design-system-ui-kit 

#sketch #salesforce #lightning 

Learn Salesforce from Scratch

In this Salesforce tutorial for beginners, you will learn Salesforce from scratch. Through this tutorial, you will get to know the various aspects of Salesforce architecture such as the Batch Apex, Force website, AppExchange, Triggers, Process Builder, and more.

Salesforce Introduction

Let us start this Salesforce tutorial with a brief introduction of Salesforce to help you get a comprehensive understanding of the same. As customers have become the pivot around which the growth of any company revolves, it has become extremely important for companies to deploy appropriate customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions.

However, customer requirements are diverse, and most companies do not find a suitable CRM solution that best fits their needs. In this situation, Salesforce has emerged as a market leader. With flexibility and reliability as its primary features, Salesforce is most likely to continue dominating the marketplace in the coming years.

If you are a developer, you know the pain of following numerous code components in order to create an application. Well, Salesforce comes to your rescue here. In this Salesforce Developer tutorial, you will learn about Salesforce so as to understand it perfectly. With Salesforce, you can create applications in just a few days or weeks and make them visible to as many clients as you want with the provided customizations. Isn’t it amazing? By the end of this Salesforce Developer tutorial, you will start to love everything about Salesforce.

Here are the topics that will be discussed in this tutorial:

• Why Learn Salesforce?
• Salesforce CRM
• What is SFDC?
• Why SFDC?
  • Traditional CRM vs Salesforce CRM
• Salesforce Benefits
• Features of Salesforce
• History of Salesforce
• Salesforce Products
• How to Access Salesforce?
• Why Choose Salesforce?
• Why is Salesforce Gaining Popularity?
• Differences between Salesforce CRM and Dynamic CRM
• Cloud Computing
  • Differences between the Services and Components Managed by IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
• Problems with Traditional Software Methodology (Legacy Platforms)

Now the question is how does Salesforce work to provide its customers with a platform like it? Salesforce is basically a cloud-based platform that provides tools to its clients for building applications or platforms by using Salesforce products.

Why Learn Salesforce?

Salesforce started off as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company providing a CRM platform on the cloud.

Along with SaaS, Salesforce now provides a platform where its clients can create their own applications; this is called Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Although most of Salesforce’s revenue comes through PaaS, SaaS is also used by many Fortune 500 companies.

Salesforce CRM

Salesforce CRM helps companies to manage relationships with their customers and integrate with other important systems. Salesforce CRM is a SaaS tool that aids companies in creating personalized solutions for their marketing, services, sales, and e-commerce problems.

All Salesforce CRM data is cloud-based, so it can be accessed remotely from anywhere. It helps accelerate a company’s productivity and hence, is a major factor in growth.

What is SFDC?

Salesforce Dot Com or SFDC is another name of Salesforce. SFDC is the official website of Salesforce. It was launched in 1999 by Marc Benioff.

You can visit the website and register on it. You can also start your free trial for 30 days. This will help you get hands-on experience of SFDC.

SFDC is laden with resources and demos that will help you get a better understanding of Salesforce.

Why SFDC?

SFDC is a market leader in CRM. Here are some of the reasons why:

• SFDC altogether reduces the development time and cost, and delivers the applications in a much shorter time.
• SFDC allows the buying and selling of applications. SFDC’s AppExchange feature has proven to be a good marketplace for users to sell their custom made applications.
• SFDC’s availability on cloud makes it accessible from anywhere in the world.

Traditional CRM vs Salesforce CRM

CRM is considered to be the most efficient technique to create relationships between customers. It can be used to target contacts, leads, and opportunities. You can also use CRM software for dealing with tracking, product planning, manufacturing, and shipping.

Next up in this Salesforce Developer Tutorial for Beginners, we will take a look at why Salesforce is gaining so much popularity.

Salesforce Benefits

Salesforce offers its customers many benefits that make it a leader in the CRM space. Some of the benefits of Salesforce are mentioned here for your reference:

• Salesforce is a complete feature-loaded solution for sales, marketing, service, community, and partner management.
• You can store your Salesforce data in a cloud; this will help your team to access the data from anywhere in the world.
• Salesforce is versatile and caters to companies of different sizes.
• Salesforce offers its services on a pay-as-you-go service model.
• Salesforce helps you in accelerating sales productivity and increasing customer loyalty retention and satisfaction.
• Salesforce offers easy integration with third-party apps, which can help in the growth of your company.

Features of Salesforce

Salesforce offers many features to its customers to help them grow their businesses. Here, we have mentioned some of those features for your reference:

• Contact Management: Pulls a customer’s data such as customer communication, activity history, etc.
• Marketing and Sales Lead: Measures customer engagement through email activity tracking and converts leads to customers
• Build and Run Innovative Apps: Builds, scales, and manages apps
• Salesforce Analytics: Builds dashboards, pulls data, and performs analysis
• Sales Community: Helps companies to connect with customers, employees, and partners
• Salesforce Engine: Helps build personalized contacts with customers for various campaigns designed by the marketing team
• Lead Management: Helps track the progress of leads
• Partnership Management: Helps build partner communities and share goals, activities, and objectives
• Workflow and Approvals: Offers a simple interface to simply drag and drop.
• Sales Forecasting: Offers real-time view of the sales team forecast, etc.

History of Salesforce

Salesforce had a humble beginning in San Francisco, just like many other tech giants. It was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, an ex-Oracle employee, Frank Dominguez, and Parker Harris. As the company grew, its IPO was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and raised US$110 million. In 2014, Salesforce announced the development of a Customer Success Platform that would merge all its services such as sales, service, marketing, analytics, etc. In 2017, Salesforce launched the Facebook Analytics tool; in 2018, Salesforce collaborated with Apple to improve its apps for businesses. Later, Salesforce started offering its services in 16 languages worldwide. Today, Salesforce has 150,000+ customers and employs more than 20,000 employees.

Salesforce Products

There are a number of Salesforce products that cater to the different requirements of the customers. Some of the products are mentioned below:

• Sales Cloud: Sales Cloud is the primary Salesforce product. It helps companies with their sales.
• Marketing Cloud: Marketing Cloud helps companies with digital marketing services.
• Service Cloud: Service Cloud helps customer support teams.
• Commerce Cloud: Commerce Cloud enables users to sell their products.
• Experience Cloud: Experience Cloud lets users create different platforms as and when required.
• IoT Cloud: IoT Cloud is used to process and store IoT data.
• Analytics Cloud: Analytics Cloud provides a platform for data analysis and storage.
• Health Cloud: Health Cloud provides a CRM platform for healthcare and life science organizations.

How to Access Salesforce?

You can access Salesforce by registering for a 30-day free trial. Let us now discuss the procedures for accessing Salesforce.

• Visit this link here (official Salesforce website link for registering)

• At the bottom, click on the Start Free Trial button
• Add all the mandatory information required

• It will take some time to set up the free trial account

• Once it is set up, you can see the welcome screen with the demo data.

• Create a New Account for your company by clicking on New in the Account tab.

• A pop-up will flash wherein you must add required data in the respective fields.

• At last, click on Save, and you will be redirected to the welcome screen where you can now see your new company account.

Why Choose Salesforce?

The following are some of the reasons that make Salesforce the no. 1 CRM platform currently:

• Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform that helps in accessing data easily from anywhere in the world.
• Salesforce is affordable for even the smallest companies or startups.
• Salesforce offers a multitude of capabilities to build and run apps or businesses, which attracts large companies.
• With Salesforce, you do not have to worry about the setup, installation, repairing, etc.; you can just focus on building apps. You also do not have to install any software to run business activities or to build an application.
• Salesforce can be easily integrated with third-party applications such as Gmail, etc.
• Salesforce is easy to use—its interface is simple, it deploys apps swiftly, and it offers efficient outputs.
• Salesforce reduces development costs.

Why is Salesforce Gaining Popularity?

Source: Salesforce

It is quite evident from the graph how Salesforce has topped the market consecutively since 2017, leaving behind Microsoft and Oracle. Although it costs more, Salesforce provides the best user-friendly interface when compared to any other CRM software.

Salesforce offers an entire range of applications, which can be very useful in lead generation and improving sales and deal closure. Along with that, Salesforce also helps in the domains of marketing, customer service, and analytics.

The following are some of the reasons why Salesforce is gaining so much popularity:

• Scalability and customization
• Multi-tenant architecture
• Partner ecosystem
• Data security
• Continuous enhancing of the application and the platform

Differences between Salesforce CRM and Dynamic CRM

In today’s market, there are a lot of options for choosing a CRM platform. The major players are Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamic. The battle is between Salesforce CRM and Microsoft Dynamic CRM. So, let us discuss the differences between Salesforce CRM and Dynamic CRM:

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is internet-based computing that involves shared resources, information, and software, which has been provided by computers and mobiles.

In other words, a cloud is a unique place where you can store as much data as you want, to make it accessible from anywhere in the world by just having an internet connection and a device to access it. Instead of storing data on your device, uploading the data onto the cloud and then viewing it from some other place is called accessing the cloud.

There are three types of cloud services:

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

When a cloud service provider uses IaaS, they mostly concentrate on infrastructural services such as servers, hosting, storage services, etc.

Salesforce does not use IaaS as there is no need for installing any software or hardware program. Instead, all data and apps are stored securely on the cloud. There is also no need for any backup as the cloud takes care of it automatically.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

PaaS provides a platform for users to develop and deploy apps. Users can customize this according to their business needs. They just need to manage their data and application resources. PaaS is primarily used by developers. The provider takes care of the underlying infrastructural parts, and the users are given predefined tools using which they can build their own applications. PaaS is also used by Salesforce.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

SaaS is a software delivery model wherein software is licensed on a subscription basis and is hosted centrally.

Salesforce uses SaaS as there is no need for installation, download, or setup. You just need to log in to your Salesforce account and start using your subscribed apps over the cloud.

Problems with Traditional Software Methodology (Legacy Platforms)

In the traditional software methodology, to create an application, developers had to follow these steps:

• Formation of an idea for building an application
• Buying and setting up hardware
• Installing software
• Defining users and providing them with different accesses
• Setting up means for reporting and analytics
• Building security around the application
• Making the application mobile phone accessible

A usable application is created, but the entire process is tedious and time-consuming. It generally takes around 6–12 months to implement these steps.

To solve this problem, Salesforce came into the picture and became popular.

With Salesforce, developers are not worried about buying and setting up the hardware, installing the software, defining users, setting up means for reporting and analytics, building security around the application, and making it mobile phone accessible. All these core components come as a single package in Salesforce.

Developers can go ahead and create an application and release it to their clients. As the developers do not need to worry about any of the core components, Salesforce has gradually increased their productivity as well. Now, developers can straightaway build applications on the platform provided to them by Salesforce and release them on to the cloud.

#salesforce 

Cakephp-salesforce: Salesforce Datasource plugin for CakePHP 3.x

Salesforce Datasource plugin for CakePHP 3.x

For earlier versions of CakePHP (2.x)

Please use the 2.x branch and follow the readme instructions under that for usage instructions

Installation

This plugin is now in Beta

• API Compatible Saving & Reading is working
• Schema & Connection Caching is working
• Bear in mind that any API interaction is expensive, you should be using this with a deferred execution method.

You can install this plugin into your CakePHP application using composer.

The recommended way to install composer packages is:

composer require voycey/cakephp-salesforce

Information

This has been somewhat of a learning curve for me, due to the nature of how Datasources are created in 3.x. I have tried to follow the patterns of the other SQL-like datasources, Eager loading is used (as in SQL sources) and there is a limited dialect.

I would have liked to do some processing on the WSDL as I did in my 2.x datasource in order to create the schema however this wasn't possible as I now needed to see the status of certain fields (readable / updateable) which has caused a need for a further call to the API.

Any API connections are cached for 1 hour (Salesforce timeout is 2 hours), after this time the connection will be refreshed (but this shouldn't matter as you are using this with a deferred execution method right?)

Notes

1. This uses the PHP-Force.com toolkit as a dependency
2. This uses SOAP and NOT REST (Because of Reasons™)
3. I have only tested this with the Contact and Account SObjects, the Contact example is included in the plugin, to create more models to interact with other SObjects copy SalesforceContactTable as a template (see instructions below).
4. Feel free to submit pull requests - here are a few examples of things I'd like to implement / test
   1. Associations between native Cake Tables & API Tables (I'm not sure this is actually possible though!)
   2. Tests (Most can probably be ripped from the core tests I assume) - I don't plan to do many as to test properly would require access to the API.
   3. Testing with all SObjects (currently I have only tested with a few but from experience with my version 2.x datasource this is usually enough to work with all SObjects)
   4. Efficiency increases.

Usage

1. Do composer reqire as above
2. Add Plugin::load('Salesforce', ['bootstrap' => true, 'routes' => true]); to your bootstrap.php
3. Create the connection in app.php like this:

  'salesforce' => [
     'className' => 'Salesforce\Database\SalesforceConnection',
     'driver' => 'Salesforce\Database\Driver\Salesforce',
     'persistent' => false,
     'username' => getenv("SF_USER"),
     'password' => getenv("SF_PASSWORD"),
     'quoteIdentifiers' => false,
     'my_wsdl' => 'enterprise.wsdl.xml'
  ],

    **Your SF_PASSWORD should be your password + security token**

1. Get your Enterprise WSDL and place it in the app config directory
2. Create a test controller that looks something like this

 <?php
    namespace App\Controller;
       
    use App\Controller\AppController;
    use Cake\Event\Event;
       
    class SalesforcesController extends AppController 
    {
       
       public function beforeFilter(Event $event)
       {
           parent::beforeFilter($event);
       }
       
       public function index()
       {
           $this->autoRender = false;
           $this->loadModel('Salesforce.SalesforceContact');
           $query = $this->SalesforceContact->find('all')
                       ->select(['Id','Email','LastName'])
                       ->where(['Email' => "info@salesforce.com"]
                   );
   
           foreach ($query as $row) {
             echo "<pre>";
             print_r($row);
             echo "</pre>";
           }
   
       }
    }

Then browse to /salesforces and you should have a couple of the standard Salesforce records. If not then go back and repeat these steps. If you get an interesting error message then.... well sorry, I'm sure it will get fixed as I use it more.

Interfacing with other Salesforce Items

This should simply be a case of extending "SalesforcesTable" rather than Table with your chosen Item (e.g. Account)

 <?php
  namespace App\Model\Table;
  
  use Salesforce\Model\Entity\Salesforce;
  use Salesforce\Model\Table\SalesforcesTable;
  
  class SalesforceAccountTable extends SalesforcesTable
  {
      public $name = "Account";
  
      /**
       * Initialize method
       *
       * @param  array $config The configuration for the Table.
       * @return void
       */
      public function initialize(array $config)
      {
          parent::initialize($config);
  
          $this->table('Account');
          $this->displayField('Name');
          $this->primaryKey('Id');
      }
  }

Author: Voycey
Source Code: https://github.com/voycey/cakephp-salesforce 
License: 

#php #cakephp #salesforce #orm 

Introduction to Salesforce CRM

Introduction to Salesforce  | Salesforce Tutorial for Beginners | Salesforce

This video will give you an introduction to the Salesforce CRM and talk tell you how & why Salesforce has emerged as one of the leading cloud computing companies today.

This video covers the following topics:

• 00:00 introduction
• 00:35 Agenda 
• 01:06 What is Cloud computing 
• 02:38 What is Salesforce 
• 05:28 Benifits of cloud computing & Salesforce 
• 08:35 Working of salesforce 
• 25:57 Hands on

#salesforce 

Security and Audit Trail in Salesforce

Salesforce Security

In Salesforce, security is required to protect the applications and data. we implement our individual security method to change the structure and requirements of the organization. Preserving the data is a common requirement for Salesforce and users. The features of Salesforce allows you to enhance the users in doing their jobs effectively and securely. Audit trail assists the salesforce users in tracing the modifications of their organization.

About Salesforce Security

Salesforce restricts access to the data that takes action accordingly.

1. Malware and Phishing

If you observe something doubtful associated with the salesforce implementation, then it indicates some malware or phishing attack. Transparency will build trust.

2. Security Health check

Admins will use Health check to detect and solve possible weaknesses in the security settings all from an individual page. To show the measures of the organization against a security benchmark, we will use the summary score.

3. Auditing

Auditing gives information regarding the utilization of the system, that can be essential in real security problems.

4. Salesforce Shield

It is a triplet of security tools that developers and admins may use to build the next level of transparency, compliance, trust, etc. into business-essential applications.

Salesforce Data Security Model

Security data model fulfils several and particular live business cases and provides a security model to safeguard data at several levels. Salesforce gives sharing tools to unlock and enable safe access to data according to business needs.

The salesforce data is stored in three formats: fields, records and objects. In the database, objects act as tables. Fields are identical to columns present in the table. Records represent the data present in the table. Salesforce uses field-level, object-level, and record-level security to get access to the field, object, etc.

Read more at our website.

#salesforce 

Salesforce SOQL

Introduction to Salesforce SOQL

The Name SOQL is Popularly Known as Salesforce Object Query Language. Salesforce endorses some of the features of SQL. It is almost similar to SQL(Structured Query Language). With the help of SOQL, we can retrieve the data.

Characteristics of SOQL

- SOQL Minimizes our time and Workload.

- SOQL queries are necessary for Apex Programming.

- We can understand SOQL easily, compared to SQL.

- Good Knowledge in SOQL helps for becoming the right Developer.

- SOQL assists in Code Optimization.

As it is Case insensitive, we can use both lowercase and uppercase letters in SOQL Queries. SOQL Code optimization gives fast results. Data is retrieved from Salesforce standard objects and custom objects with the support of Salesforce Object Query Language.

Want to enhance your skills in dealing with the worlds best CRM, enroll in our Salesforce Training

SOQL Syntax

we use “Select” Keyword to retrieve data from objects and fields.

Example For SOQL Query:

SELECT ID, Salary FROM Employee

Through the above SOQL Query, we can retrieve the ID and Salary of the Custom Object called Employee.

Fields exist in a SOQL Query are as follows:

1. Fields: This field exists to represent the fields to be selected.

2. Object: The object field is used to represent standard and custom objects.

3. WHERE: This field is used to specify the condition in a field.

4. OFFSET: To represent the starting row of the record

In SOQL Queries, we use API names for fields.

In Standard Objects, Field names represent API Name.

In Custom Objects, Column Name Represents API Name.

Read more at our website.

#salesforce #careers 

Salesforceエンジニアの年収は？仕事内容や必要な資格を解説

Salesforceはアメリカのカリフォルニア州に本社を構える外資系の企業で、法人向けのクラウドサービスを提供しています。主に顧客情報や営業情報を一元的に管理・共有できるクラウド型のアプリケーションを提供しています。

今回は、Salesforceを扱うエンジニアの仕事内容や、年収などについても詳しく解説していきます。

【目次】
00:00 オープニング
00:49 Salesforceエンジニアの年収は？
01:09 Salesforceエンジニアの仕事内容
03:05 Salesforceエンジニアに必要なスキルや資格

#salesforce