5. Setting Library Permissions – Granting Users Access to a Library
Another feature of Salesforce CRM Content is setting Content Permissions and I’m on the Library Permissions screen. It’s not really named consistently because you got to search for Content permissions to bring up the Library Permission screen and set up. And this link here for Content Permission library permissions, I’m not finding it in Lighting Experience.
We’ll be looking at other features related to libraries in Lighting Experience and later lessons here in this section. But for now, let’s just focus on the Content Permissions library permissions found inside of Salesforce Classic. And so there’s a few library permissions available out of the box such as Library Administrator and Author and a Viewer.
And you can add additional permissions here as far as giving a permission name and description, and then the various options as far as what you will allow that user to do. And then you can assign these users to a library and give them a permission. And so, for example, I’m just going to make an example permission called Content Delivery.
Then I’m going to check this Deliver Content action which allows users to deliver content from this library. Click Save. And so now this is a custom made library permission. Now, if we go into libraries on the content application in Classic here, if I go into a library, we have our one library called Asset Library. I could add members to that library by clicking Add Members and let me add Jim Doe, who we created previously, and click Next. And here are the Library permissions.
So now the Content Delivery is an additional permission that I previously created, so I’ll click Save. So another thing to note is that you can not only add individual users to a library, but you can also, via the Add Members button, select Add Public Groups, Standard Users, Customer Portal Managers, or Partner Users as well. And so for example, to add a public group, you would select them from the list here. We previously created a public group for Tier Two support, so I’m going to add them to the library as well. So that way anyone that’s a member of this public group could then be added en masse to this library. So that would be an example of another use case for creating public groups and another area where public groups can come into play.
So just remember as well, because this may appear on the exam, and I’m going to finish this out by giving them Just Viewer Permissions to the library so they can access any content in the library. And I thought I added them here. Oh, that’s individual users. So to show any members that are in public groups, you’ve got to change the filter here. But then as well, other options are standard users, customer portal managers and partner users. So bear that in mind that it goes beyond just the ability to add users one by one. Ones.
6. Working with Libraries in Lightning Experience (via Files)
I’ve switched over to Lightning Experience. I’ve got the Content application open. If you recall, we just have Home and Chatter as tabs in the Content app. So really limited functionality. And I want to show you how to find libraries inside of Lighting Experience. So if you click on the app launcher, you won’t find libraries under All Items or via Search as far as All Items or Applications either. And where you want to look is for Files. Files is the new thing for Lighting Experience. And Salesforce is migrating away from documents. The Documents tab is no more in Lighting Experience, but instead they are returning documents in favor of files.
And so I have here on the Files tab now, which opens when I selected files from the All Items, it’s not been added necessarily to the Content application. It’s just an additional tab because I selected files from the All Items list. So here are all the documents or files that I have in my own. You see the lawn darts for the 2022 Olympics. We created a previous course in this series. And then the Content packs that we created, the PDFs and PowerPoint files that we uploaded previously. And then this link here at the bottom for Libraries is how you get the libraries inside of Lightning Experience. So we have that same asset library that we were working in previously in Classics.
If we click on that, we have a couple of files here in this library and you can manage members and add members to the library by clicking the Manage Members button, which gives you the ability to then add members either via public groups or people. Now that’s a little bit more limited in scope inside of Lightning because we just saw earlier previous lesson that you could do a few other options as well. So it’s confusing because there’s not parity between Classic and Lightning, which concerns me because at the time of this recording, salesforce is really on a death march trying to get everyone to abandon Classic and move entirely over to Lightning.
So, as you see though, we have tier two support and a user already selected that we did previously. But if we wanted to do I don’t think I have any other public groups, but we could add other people perhaps. And I’m not sure if I’ll be able to add Integration User, and you can select the different permissions. So let’s just do content delivery again and add integration. User and so once we’re done, you just click the X here. There’s no save button. Once they’re added, they’re added as far as members of the library. And so here, if you’ll notice, you can add files to the library. So I want to discuss basically a mess, which is Salesforce CRM, content Files, documents and other forms of files or content. And we’ll go over that in the next lesson.
7. Documents vs. Files vs. Attachments, etc.
I want to cover some ground related to Documents versus Files inside the context of Libraries. And I’m on the Libraries link here underneath Files, which once again you can get the files from all Content or all items from the App launcher, selecting Files and then selecting Libraries. So let me go ahead and create a new library, just so that we’re clear on Documents versus Files. And let’s just say that this is a new library. I really struggled and thought long and hard for that creative name for that library. Not going to add an image, but you can and I’ll click Save. So now in my new library, what I can do is click on it and then I can add files. Clicking Add Files brings me to a list of files that I own.
And then I can also look at other options such as shared with me recent files that I’ve worked on. You’ll see as well that Content Packs can be selected and added into a library. So I’m going to throw a few examples here of Files into this library. So files and then a content pack as well. And then another thing is some of these items don’t have a preview available, such as Content Packs. At least in Lightning you can preview, others if they’re supported. In Lightning you can download, you can share, et cetera, et cetera. But what I really want to talk about is this concept of files and how to relate that or contrast that to the old way of doing things in Salesforce, which was Documents. And so if we switch over to Salesforce Classic, you will find under the all tabs menu, by clicking the plus sign, you will find a tab known as Documents. Now, documents are the old way of doing things inside of Salesforce that predates files and documents are not making their way into Lightning Experience. And so let me see if I can find any examples of Documents.
So I don’t have any documents per se in my Salesforce. org. If I were to create one, I’m just going to include or make a document out of one of these PDFs for my Live Admin course, click Open and Save. I’m saving a document to my inside of Salesforce Classic. Now, this document will not make its way over to Lightning Experience or be accessible. I need to actually move that document over to Lightning Experience. Now, for sake of time, I’m not going to do that. But I want to reference a Help article that will show you options as far as how to do that. Because basically let me go ahead and switch back to Lighting Experience first and show you how I can’t find that document. If I go under Files returning back to Files owned by me, we don’t find that document. So what you need to do is you need to move or convert the document to a file. And so in this help article called Moving Documents to Salesforce files It notes that the Documents tab is an available Lighting Experience. And what they recommend that you do is that you convert documents that you need to use in Lightning over to Files so that you can work with them inside of Lighting Experience.
Now, how you can do that, or how do you move files from the Documents Tab into Lighting Experience? They unabashedly say there isn’t a one click solution. Well, nor does salesforce. What they’re recommending that you do is one of the following. Either export the documents in the weekly export, and then upload the documents into Salesforce files, or use a third party data export tool from the App Exchange, or use an API based tool. And they note that the chatter rest API supports uploading asset files. And so things are admittedly in a state of flux here. I want to show you just briefly this first option as far as the weekly export. So if we go back into Lightning Experience and go to Setup and search for Export, you’ll find the weekly export option. And it’s here that you can export all items or specific items, and one of which would be Documents.
So clicking on Data Export and typically you’ll be exporting all items on a weekly basis. And if you want more than a weekly basis, you could do that through a third party tool. But you can set the scheduling here. You’re probably familiar with this if you’ve attained the Admin certification. So I’m not going to go into the scheduling side of things, but let’s see if we can find Documents. All right, so there’s documents here include Images, documents and Attachments. So you’ll want to check that. And then you can include Salesforce Files and Salesforce CRM Content Document versions in order to include that as well. Let’s see where else Document appears.
Content Document Links case external Document Content Document List view Mapping So I think really the only options you are really concerned with are including these two include checkboxes. So that would give you any documents in your weekly export, and then you would import them as files. That’s a manual proposition. Now, to further swim in this messy ocean of content management on the Salesforce platform, I want to refer you to another help article. And this just details the differences between not only files and documents, but also Salesforce CRM content and salesforce knowledge. And then oh yeah, attachments. If you remember in the Notes and Attachments Related list, there’s an option to upload attachments.
So there’s for real at least five different areas that you can have some sort of file mechanism, whether it’s a file or Content or Knowledge article or Document or an attachment. And frankly, this is a disastrous mess. I think Salesforce needs to just put everything in one place. Hopefully they will, but as time goes by, it seems like this just fragments further. Now giving you a little bit of history or perspective. There’s been more and more marching away from Documents in favor of Files as the slow death march towards Lightning over Classic continues and is getting closer to becoming reality. And so eventually I think documents will go away. But there’s so many orgs out there that have a lot of documents that it’s not easy to just turn off. You’ve got to convert. Once again, just as a reminder, you will want to migrate over from Documents to Files, per that other moving Documents to Files Help article that I just showed you. But then as well, there’s some changes to the notes and attachments related list I need to also go into. And I know that this lesson is just kind of messy, if you will, because typically you want to cover one thing, but this is covering five things, and that’s because it’s not so easy to say, hey, learn about salesforce CRM content. Because you also have to concern yourself with documents, attachments and files in addition to just straight up CRM content. But before I show you the notes and attachments notes in this other tab here, let’s just scroll down and you can peruse this Help article.
I’ll link to this in the resources of this lesson, but it gives you a purpose of each and a lot of these purposes kind of overlap, frankly, but it will provide you with some insight as to the differences between the purposes of these five different solutions for the same thing. Basically they’re a little different, but not really. It should just be one. So Salesforce is not a good content management system, let’s just leave it at that. Common uses between the five, the supported files, the maximum size and then it comes to its inglorious end. And so here on the right related attachments for further flavor and nuance and confusion, just go to changes to the notes and attachments related list and the buttons New Note and Upload Files. This is almost funny if it weren’t so sad and true Knowledge Article Three 2929. And I’m not going to read all this, but just struck me as kind of funny and I can only imagine the technical writer that was tasked with trying to explain this.
In the winter 18 release, the Upload Files button will remain available in the legacy notes and attachments related list despite the Spring 17 release notes which read why you should add the Files related list to your page layouts previously indicating it would no longer be available. So basically I said, oh, this is going away and it’s still available. So yes, you do have notes and attachments still available in Lightning, even though they’ve said for a long time that it’s going away and you need to use Files instead. So highly recommended for administrators, and I’m sure this was a decision of a technical writer. I’m going to bold this so that people will read it. I used to be a technical writer for 15 years, so I can feel this person’s pain and then they just go into more nuance related to this mess that they find themselves in. Despite the new Note and Upload files buttons remaining in the Notes and attachments list that we told you would go away, it is still highly recommended to instruct users to leverage the new Note button in the Notes related list and the Upload Files button in the Files related list instead of the Notes and Attachments related list.
So basically they’re saying that the notes and attachments related list will eventually be phased out in favor of the individual files and Notes related lists. So what used to be notes and attachments, where it would be all combined in one related list salesforce has added individual related lists for files and another individual related list for Notes that they intend to replace the one combo notes and Attachments related list. But for now they have all three of them. So it is a mess, it is confusing, it is what it is. And so I’ll just leave it at that. Let me just leave you with some parting thoughts so that I can demonstrate this by looking at a record. And if we go into an account record, for example, we have the notes and attachments related list on an account and you have the ability to upload files from the notes and attachments related list.
Now we could go in and edit the page, clicking the Gear icon, selecting Edit Page, clicking the Details section in the canvas will then reveal which of the four page layouts are we currently on so that we don’t have to go into page layout assignments. Clicking on the one that says Previewed going to that. I’m trying to get to the enhanced page layout editor and going to Related Lists. Here on the top right towards the bottom of the list are the related lists and I’m going to add the Files related list. We’ll add it next to Notes and Attachments to try and demonstrate this. And then I don’t see a Notes related list so I’m going to click Save and we need to enable Notes. If I go into setup, go into Notes settings and enable Notes and click Save. Screen Refreshes doesn’t confirm that it’s actually saved.
Not the best design, but it is what it is. So now if we go back into Object Manager, going to the account page layout that we were just in, I’m over this thing popping up over and over. And if we go into page layouts and account Layout, which is what we just edited, and then Related Lists, which is at the bottom of the top left list of options. Now we have the lovely individualized notes related list. If you really want to confuse your users, if you hate them, if you want to make their lives miserable, give them all three options notes and Attachments and Files and notes all in one page layout. They’ll not thank you for it. So I’ve updated the page layout for the account layout. I’m going back to the tab that I was in that brought me here, and I don’t need to save the overlapping Lightning page.
We’ve not made any changes to the Lightning page, but the underlying page layout and the enhanced page layout editor. So I’m just going to click back here to go back to where I was, which is that one account record. And let’s see if we need to refresh or not because Lightning also is terrible with caching issues. So it did work. It didn’t just bring us back the previously saved cached version of this account. But if you don’t see the files related list and the notes related list that you just added to the page layout, then you may need to click the refresh button in your browser. And so this is brought to life. That hilarious knowledge article was trying to explain, which, hey, salesforce, let’s go ahead and add some pictures here. And this thing just goes on and on.
But back to my screen here. You have the ability to upload files through the files related list or add notes through the notes related list, as opposed to the notes and attachments related list, where you can upload files but not necessarily add notes unless those notes were in the form of an attachment. So with with that, now we’re ready to bounce out of CRM content. Let’s move on to the next knowledge area in the advanced admin exam, and that would be change management starting in the next lesson.
