7. Considerations when importing data
So I just wanted to tell you some of the considerations that you need to understand when you’re inserting and updating records in Salesforce, because it’s quite important for the exam. So when you’re inserting records into Salesforce, you have validations within there, you have code in there, and you have all kinds of different things that could stop the record from being updated or created. So one of those could be validation rules. And the validation rules, you could have one there that says, “Hey, accounts must have the type field filled out for them to be allowed to be created in salesforce.org.” And if you’re using this data loader, for example, to insert those records into Salesforce and the validation fails, then that record will not go into Salesforce. But it’s quite important to understand that if you’re inserting, say, four account records or four contact records, and the validation fails, say on the first record, but not on the other three, the other three will go into Salesforce perfectly fine and get inserted, but the first one will fail.
So when you get the report back from Data loader, you’ll get the two spreadsheets: the one with the successes, which shows the three successful accounts that have been created, and the one with the failures, which is the validation rule. So then you can review that log and act on those records, fix that record, maybe fill out that field, and then try the data loader again to load up those errors, and then eventually they’ll kind of get into Salesforce. But there are other things; it’s not just validation rules that stop it from happening. So, for example, there’s duplicate management.
Now, duplicate management is a bit similar to validation rules. You could have a rule there that says, “Well, if there’s a duplicate, don’t allow the user to create that record.” And the data loader follows the same rules. So if Data Loader tries to insert the record and there’s a duplicate and you’ve got the rules set up in a way to stop users from creating the record, then Salesforce will throw the errorback to the data loader and say, “Hey, you can’t create that account, but there’s also code.” So Salesforce allows you to create code within the platform to do more complex logic within Salesforce. And there could be a bit of code in there that’s stopping that record from being updated or created due to some business rules that are in the code. That’s another way of stopping these records from being created or updated. Then finally, we’ve got just bad data quality.
So that could be that if you’re using the wizard and you’re trying to update or create a contact record based on the email address and you haven’t included the email address in your spreadsheet when you uploaded, then it’s going to throw you an error. Or you could be using the data loader and actually have two email addresses in the same email field, and Salesforce will throw an error saying, “Wait a minute, this is not a valid email address.” I’m expecting something at Symbol, followed by something else. And to have two symbols in the same field, I don’t understand that. And again, it will reject that record. So these are the things you need to understand when you’re pushing and updating data into Salesforce. So if you do have any questions on this, please be sure to post a message, and I’ll get back to you. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video.
8. Backing up Salesforce Data
Let’s talk about backing up Salesforce. Now, there are two different areas for backing up Salesforce. One is backing up all the configuration and setup of Salesforce, and another is backing up all the data within your Salesforce.org. Now, for the exam, Salesforce concentrates on backing up the data within Salesforce. So this is what we’re going to drill into now. But there are a number of different protections that Salesforce puts on your data within the platform itself. So it may be based on what you’re using Salesforce for. You may actually not need to back up the Salesforce data, or you may really want to backup the data because of critical requirements for using it and potentially putting your company at risk if you don’t have that data backed up.
But as I said, there are a number of different protections. So one of those is the recycle bin. So every time you delete a record, it goes into the recycle bin for a period of time. So potentially, you can restore records from there. So that’s one safeguard. Another one is, say, on the configuration side, if I delete a field in Salesforce, essentially that field disappears from the user’s view. But you do have the possibility of undeleting that field and essentially restoring the data back into it, as long as you do it within a certain time frame. However, for more severe disaster recovery cases, Salesforce does offer an “org restore” service that allows you to restore your entire Salesforce.org database back to a point in time, but it is extremely expensive. I think the prices start at around $10,000, but potentially this could be your fallback scenario if something goes wrong. But we’re going to drill into what’s relevant for the exam, which is the number of ways you can declaratively backup your salesforce. Organize the services available to you.
So first we have the data loader. So the data loader is a tool that you can install on your computer, and you can basically use that to backup Salesforce data. So you can export all the objects you need whenever you need to do so. And this stores them on your computer, on a server, or in a location somewhere in CSV format. Now, you can automate this using the data loader. It is a bit fiddly, but it’s there for you to use. So that’s one application that you can use for backing up your Salesforce data. The next step is manually exporting reports. So now that we know how to create reports in Salesforce, we can then run those reports and export the data by clicking that export button on the report. But this is manual. You have to physically go to the report, click the download button, and download that data to back it up. So again, it’s potentially not ideal if you want to create automated backups and constantly back up your data in Salesforce. The next step is using an app exchange service. There are loads of tools on the Salesforce in-app exchange for backing up your data. Because one of the key problems with Salesforce is backing up data, yes, you can backup data, but it’s tricky to restore that data.
So there are a number of tools on the AppExchange to allow you to restore data as well. Now, one of those is what I use when I go into salesforce.org, so if I go to Brandnew Studios and then App Exchange, I’ll just search for backup. And as you can see, there are loads of different tools. Backup is fine, thanks to Cloud Ally, and there’s one that I kind of use quite a lot: spanningBackup, which is quite a cool tool. And this allows you to regularly back up your data. But also, and most importantly, be able to restore that data if you need to, which is kind of cool and gives you loads of data and information about it. But yes, there are a number of tools; check them out. So if you do want to get tools that allow for easy restoring of the data, then yeah, I would definitely take a look at these kinds of tools. But there is also a way you can do this in Salesforce manually. And this is using the salesforce data export. So let’s take a look at that. So I’m just going to search for “Data Export” in my setup menu. And here it is. Data export. So here we are in my data export. Because it’s in my British format 2017, you can see that there’s a scheduled export on April 1.
So if I click Schedule Export, this is where I can configure what Salesforce is going to back up within my salesforce.org. So I can choose to include images, documents, and attachment files. I can then schedule the frequency of that backup. So do I want it every month or on the first day of every month? Now, depending on your Salesforce.org, you might be able to do this more frequently, so maybe every week, but this one is just every month. Then I select a time range or date range from which I want this to return, as well as a preferred time. So I’m having it at 11:00 at night. And then you can select all the objects that you want to backup. Now, typically, I just click “include all data,” so it’s going to back up all my data within Salesforce, and that’s it. And I’ll just click “Save,” and then from now on it’s going to back up my data. But I can back up the data right now. So if I click the “Export Now” button, I can now choose what I want to include in my export. So I’m going to include all my attachments and documents and then choose which objects I want to back up. So I want to export all my data, and I’m going to click Start to Export.
And now this is going to send the request to Salesforce; it’s going to be added to the queue, and Salesforce is going to process that export request. And eventually I’ll get a load of files potentially appearing here, which is going to allow me to download the backup. So there is a bit of manual processing involved in this. I can schedule it to run, but I still do need to download the zip files from here, and then I can extract those CSV files. But what’s really good about the data export is that I use it quite a lot when users have accidentally overwritten records within Salesforce. So I had a situation once when somebody called and said they’d had a conflict with their Outlook integration and Salesforce, and for some reason their meeting notes had just totally disappeared and got overwritten. So all I did was download this data export, look at the data from the week before for those particular records, check them with the user, and say, “Oh, are these the notes that are missing?” And they said, “Yeah, that’s perfect.” And then I kind of restored that data back into those meeting requests. So, it’s a pretty cool tool for situations where records are overwritten. So that’s what I use data export for.
So let’s just review the different types of data export. So we have a data loader, which allows you to export your data on a regular basis. It could be done every day, or even every hour if you wanted to. Then we got the manual export of the report, so creating reports and exporting them Then we’ve got the App Exchange Service, which allows you to restore the deep data as well as back it up in an easy way. And then finally, the data export, which again is just backing up that data regularly within Salesforce, is included in all salesforce.orgs. But, once again, if I wanted to restore it, I’d have to download those zip files, extract the CSV files within them, which contain all of my data for each of my objects, locate the records I need to restore, and then restore them, possibly using data loader. So it is again a little bit fiddly, but if you do want a foolproof solution, I’d definitely have a look at the App Exchange services. Also, if you’re not concerned about backups or believe that the actual risk of my salesforce going completely down and having to pay the $10,000+ fee to have it all restored is acceptable to you, So those are the different kinds of ways you can back up Salesforce.
9. Mass Action Functions
Onto the mass action functions. And there are two main mass action functions. There’s the mass transfer feature and the mass delete feature in Salesforce. And this allows you to transfer records from one person to another or delete records from within Salesforce. And this is really important because the bedrock of the salesforce security model revolves around ownership of the records. So it’s really important to make sure you get the ownership of your records correct. So, when users change departments or leave the company, you transfer ownership of their records to the appropriate person when they leave their department or, as I mentioned, leave the company. So let’s go and take a look. So here I am in setup.
So I’m just going to take a look. I’m just going to type in “mass,” which will put up the options. And you can see here that we have mass transfers, mass deletions of records, and mass updates of addresses, but we’ll leave that for a bit later on. First, let’s take a look at the mass transfer records. So, as you can see here, the main objects that you can transfer are accounts and leads. But you may be wondering where the opportunities are now. They’re actually hidden under the accounts section. So if we dive into this, we can transfer our accounts from one user to another. So, for example, if I pick this object myself and transfer all records to James, I then have the option to say, “Well, what am I going to do with the associated records within that object?” So I have the option of transferring the open opportunities not owned by the existing account owner, transferring closed opportunities, transferring open cases owned by the existing account owner, or transferring closed cases. Now, this all depends on, for me, when a person leaves a company or if they’re transferring roles within the company. And that really depends on what I choose.
So for example, if they’re just moving from one department to another, it may be that I don’t actually transfer the closed opportunities because I want to keep that history, that they were the owners of those opportunities when that sale went ahead. But it might be that I want to transfer all open opportunities to the new account manager because the person is moving to a different team and therefore will lose access to the ownership of his accounts. I could then use some filter criteria to say, “based on all accounts with the billing country set to United Kingdom,” but I’m going to leave it blank for now. And I’m just going to click “find,” and here we go. It’s found all my opportunities that are currently assigned to me. So now I can basically pick the ones that I want to transfer, or I can transfer all the records in bulk change. But I’m just going to transfer this one account, transfer all the open opportunities, and I’m going to click the transfer button, and voila. One account has now been transferred to the new owners.
And you can see here that it’s now disappeared from my list. And if I take a look at that record, you can see that it’s now owned by James. Okay, so let’s dive back to the wizard. So essentially, that’s it for mass transfer. It’s quite straightforward. You can also transfer custom objects as well. So it accounts for leads and custom objects. Essentially, there are these other standard objects within Salesforce, but really, you don’t really need to worry about those. But I will just show you what a transfer lead looks like. So, as you can see here from the mass transfer leads, it’s a lot simpler than the account transfer. We don’t have opportunities there to transfer. It’s literally just transferring from one user to another, selecting the fields criteria they want, finding those records, and then transferring them to the new owner. Also, you have the option of creating queues for leads because you can create a queue on a lead and set the owner as a queue rather than a specific user. Essentially, that is it. Now there are a couple of little things or more details around transferring ownership. If you have a look at the help, it does go into a little bit more detail. So for example, if we scroll down here, it essentially says that if you do transfer accounts, there are other things that get transferred as well, like open activities, essentially open opportunities if we choose that, and close opportunities, but attachment notes, things like that. So just be aware of that, but you shouldn’t need to know that for the exam.
So let’s dive on to the mass delete. So mass deleting is, again, pretty straightforward. We’re just mass deleting records based on a criteria, but it does allow you to control exactly which records you want to delete based on the associated records on, for example, an account. So if we dive into account, you can see here that it’s actually broken down into multiple steps, and you can see here that the first step is what will happen when you do that mass delete. So you can see here that the account notes will get deleted, and all the contacts associated with the account and the related contact data will potentially get deleted. All opportunities on the account, as well as all activities, are moved to the recycle bin. However, keep in mind that the recycle bin has a limited amount of space, so you may end up raising all of this data. So be really careful. And this is where step two comes into it. Back up your data. If you’re ever going to make mass changes to data by deleting, transferring, or doing mass updates using the data loader or wizard, make sure you back up your data. Next are the criteria. What records do you want to delete?
So I could say, “Hey, I want to delete all of them.” So I can search based on all the records that appear at the bottom. Again, similar to transferring, but now we can be more selective about what gets deleted. So we can say that, actually, if we tick this box, we will delete accounts that have associated closed opportunities. So we could say that if it’s not checked, the accounts will not be deleted, which can be really handy. So, if you just want to clear out a bunch of accounts that don’t have any opportunities in this really cool little feature, this is the way to go. So the next step is, if you basically keep this unticked, it essentially means it won’t delete accounts where there are other opportunities that are owned by other people. So, for example, if I’m the owner of this specific account that I want to delete, I’ve got my opportunities on there, and I’m quite happy for those to be deleted, but somebody else has created an opportunity, and they’re the owner of it. It may be upsetting if the account suddenly disappears for that other person’s opportunity.
And so this is a bit of protection to say, “Hey, let’s not delete accounts that have opportunities in other people’s names.” So again, if you do actually want to delete those records, you can tick, and it will delete them all. Then finally, we’ve got the permanent delete records, which means they’re going to get arrays; they’re not going to go into the recycle bin. So be really careful with this. This is going to permanently delete records. I never choose this option because, basically, if you mess up in some way, you want a way to get the records back, and the recycle bin is a handy backup for that. So all I have to do is select the records that I want to delete, click delete, and they will be deleted. So it’s kind of straightforward, but there are other features. So, mass transfer approval requests, but this isn’t in the scope of the admin exam or the syllabus in any case, but you never know, it might come up at some point, so keep an eye on it. However, if people leave or move jobs and there are pending approvals, you can transfer approval processes.
So for the exam, you just need to understand that there’s a mass transfer and a mass delete option within Salesforce. A mass transfer allows you to transfer accounts, leads, and service contracts, and those are the only standard objects you can do that with, as well as any custom objects that have that owner field on the object.Then you’ve got the mass delete functions, which again have some smart little bits of logic within them to prevent you from deleting. Assume, for example, that there are accounts with opportunities owned by someone else. But essentially, again, you’ve got these two options that allow you to mass delete and mass transfer records within Salesforce. So, if you have any questions about this, please leave them in the chat comment section. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video.
10. Salesforce Content
Hi, force gurus, and welcome to Salesforce Content. Now, Salesforce content is a little bit of an odd one. It’s actually an old app that Salesforce purchased from a company years ago and kind of put into Salesforce; this predates chat and files. So this may help us understand, when we go through it, why there’s a lot of crossover between files in Salesforce and content in Salesforce. So let’s take a look. So the first thing is that if you look at your or your users’ records, you’ll find an option for Salesforce CRM content users. As a result, if this is not checked, salesforce content will not be accessible within their salesforce. So firstly, make sure your users have this checked. Then, if we dive into the tab bar, you’ll find that there are two parts to Salesforce Content. We have the Content tab, and we have the Libraries tab. Now the libraries are a collection of content.
So a library could be a library focused on training, with a plethora of training files on various aspects of Salesforce, and content could be a specific piece of content or group of pieces of content that you’ve grouped together. So let’s take a look at libraries first. So here we are in my library. Now you can see here that I can tag library assets. So I’ve got popular tags here, I’ve got my recent activity, so what files I’ve uploaded and such, and I’ve got the most active contributors on Salesforce Content. And as we haven’t got anything there, you can’t see anything. We also received a list of the top content based on who had starred or downloaded it. And you’ve arrived; I’ve brought my asset library with me. So if I open that up, you can see that I’m now looking at a specific library. So before I was looking at all libraries, now I’m looking at just the asset library. And then from here, I can contribute to that library, which means that I can upload content to this library. So if I click “Content,” I can then select a file and upload it.
So I’m going to upload a random picture from Dreamforce. So actually, this is Dreamforce 2015. So I’m going to click on that, wait for it to load, and then give it a title. So I’m going to say Dreamforce, spelling Dreamforce 2015. And now I can say what type of sharing is going to be saved in my private library. I’m going to publish it in a shared library. If I choose to publish to a shared library, I then get the option to say which library I want to share it with. So I’m going to share it in my asset library and then the type, which is basically the record type of this piece of content, of which at the moment I only have one record type, which is general. I then got the option of adding tags. So I’m just going to tag this Dreamforce and then publish it. It’s now published in my Salesforce content. So I’ve done publishing. And now if I refresh that page, you’ll see that I’ve now contributed a Dreamforce piece of content to my asset library. And you can see here that I now have a popular tag because I’ve tagged that content.
So if I click on this, it will select all the files that have that tag. If I go back again, yeah, that’s cool. And now I can add members to this library section. So I’ve added all this content, and now I can say, “Hey, add these individuals, public groups, or standard users to the Salesforce Content Library.” So I can add James again and then click Next. I then decide what his permissions are. I’m going to say he’s just a viewer and hit the Save button. So essentially, libraries are collections of assets or documents. PDFs could be all kinds of stuff, which you can tag and then give access to members. But as you can see, it’s very much like files. But there is a very cool little feature in content that you don’t get in files, and that is creating a content pack. So I’m going to click here to create a content pack. And now I’m going to search all my libraries for some content. So I’m going to search for Dreamforce. There’s my picture that I just uploaded. That’s me talking about something I have no idea about. But then we click “Add to Content Pack,” and I can search for content from other libraries or select different libraries to search from.
So I could go to all the libraries if I wanted to go all libraries. And I get the London’s Cooling logo as well. As you can see, this is actually coming from actually from Chatter. Chatter files and content kind of go together. So I could add that as well to my content pack. So now I’ve got two files in my content pack, and I can click Save on that. Give this a name. So I’m going to call this my Dreamforce pack and click save. So now that I’ve made that pack, I can give it to someone else. So if I click into my pack, here’s my preview, so I can see my two images that I’ve uploaded into my pack. And now I can deliver content. And this is quite a cool feature. So if you click Deliver Content on this, I’m now using that content pack.
I’m going to create a delivery that I can send to someone. So this is my delivery. It auto-filled out this delivery name. So it’s the Dreamforce Pack. And the date I’m going to say to enable all those Yeah, allow the recipient to download as a PDF. Allow the recipient to download the original format. I can get notified if it’s viewed or downloaded, but I can also set a date on which this will expire. So if it’s a quote or something like that, you can basically expire the link, and therefore it won’t work anywhere anymore, which is really cool. Also, I can put a password on the content as well, which again is something you can’t do with files. And finally, I can relate it to a record within Salesforce, either your custom objects or some standard objects, as you can see in this list. But I’m going to do that; I’m just going to go save. And next, it’s now going to create that pack for my presentation, and it will finally give me a link. Here we go. So it’s now created that, and I can actually just copy this link out or I can click the preview button.
So if I click the preview button, it’ll just pop open a new window, and there we go. It is valid for a password. I can just pop Pack, tap in that password, click Go, and voilà. I’ve now got all the files that are in this pack, which my customer can now download. So they can either download as a PDF if there are PDF or Word documents within it that are compatible, or they can just click Download. Or if it was a file like a PDF in my pack, they could view it online as well, which is kind of cool. So I’ll close that window. There’s the link, and there’s the password. So I can just copy this out if I want to and paste it into an email, send it off, and job done. The other thing it has is versioning. so you can version the files. Again, this is very similar to files, but essentially, that’s pretty much it. It’s just the delivery of content, which is very cool. I can show those content deliveries, how many times they’ve been viewed, and when they were last viewed. That’s where I think the real benefits of these packs are. Oh, and one more thing: we looked at the user settings, but there are also some content-related features on the profile.
So, if I go to my standard Salesforceprofile, my RadNet standard user, and search for content, you’ll see that you can deliver uploaded files, personalise content, manage content permissions, manage content properties, manage salesforce, and CRM content. In essence, they are the admin permissions for Salesforce content. That’s pretty much it for Salesforce content. You just need to know that you have this concept of libraries, which is a collection of files within it to which you can give access to different people. You can also create content deliveries, and within those content deliveries, you can password protect the content and see if people have viewed it or not, which can be really handy. And that’s the difference between Salesforce files, where you can share files and generate a link to give to people, but you can’t password protect it, and you can’t see if anybody’s viewed that content that you’ve sent the link to, whereas you can in Salesforce Force content, which is really cool. So if you’ve enjoyed that or if you have any questions, be sure to post them in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video.
11. Document Folder & File Uploading Review
Hi, force gurus! Before we get started with Salesforce Documents, I’d like to go over the various methods for uploading files into Salesforce. Because this is yet another method for uploading files into Salesforce, it can become somewhat complicated. So let’s take a look. So the first way is from chatter. So from Chatter, I can basically attach a file or select a file that has already been on Salesforce and upload it into Salesforce. That’s one way.
Another way is to look at a record. And then attaching a file to that record using the Attach file button on that Records page layout. And so from here, I can click Attach file, attach any file I like, click Attach, and click Done. And now that file is associated with this record within Salesforce. And there it is. There is also what you can do: upload files using libraries and content. So if we dive into Content, I can click “Contribute” and contribute a file to a library within Salesforce. That’s another way. Finally, there are Salesforce Documents and Salesforce Documents is another way you can upload files to Salesforce.
Now that we’ve had a quick look at this when we were creating the app image, let’s take a bit more of a deep look. So in here, I can basically create a number of folders. So I’ve already created my “Logos” folder, but I’m going to create another one. I’m going to create this one as my public folder. But then, most importantly, I can’t select the different permissions for this folder. As you can see, I only received Read Only and Read Write. So there’s no create, delete, or anything like that. Unfortunately, there are only two options unfortunately. So as this is a public folder, I’m going to say it’s Read Write.I’m then going to set the permissions based on the groups of users. So I’m going to say this folder is accessible by all users, but I can also say this is hidden from all users. Or this is only accessible to the following specific groups of people: So it can either be public groups, roles, or subordinates. And as you can see here, I can’t actually set specific users either. It can only be groups of users. But I’m going to say that this is a public folder.
This folder is accessible to all users, and the permissions for those users will be read and write because this is only for the public folder access. Now that I’ve created that public folder, I can now contribute to that folder. I then have the options for entering the information, which we’ve kind of gone over before. Now, if you are creating that appimage, remember to make sure it’s externally visible; otherwise, it won’t show up. You also have an indication that the document is internal. Now, this literally just indicates that it should only be an internal document and shouldn’t be shared, but it doesn’t stop anybody from sharing it. So just be aware of that. Then you can set keywords for this document, upload your document, or set a path with the URL to where that file is on the internet. Click Save, and it’s saved up in Salesforce. So Salesforce Documents, I really only use them for app images now, but I do use them occasionally for uploading content for apps, icons, and other similar things. But for developers, there’s yet another way to upload files as well. Now, so I don’t typically use documents that much. Now there is a system of permissions around Salesforce Documents that manages public documents.
So if you want to give access to a user to allow them to manage those public documents, you can, which kind of overrides those folder security settings for public documents. But apart from that, it should be all pretty straightforward. So for the exam, you really need to understand the differences between the different types of ways you can upload to Salesforce. So you’ve got Salesforce Files, which allows you to contribute files to Chatter. On the records, you can also contribute files, either on the page layout using that attach button or, if chatter is enabled on that record, in the chatter at the top of the record. Also, you’ve got Salesforce Content where you can create those delivery packs with password permissions on them as well as see who’s opened those packs or not. And then finally, you’ve got Documents, which allow you to create an image for your apps as well as make them public read-only or public read, write to people, or specify individual users that you want to have access, which is very similar to Salesforce Files and Chatter. So if you do have any questions on that, please give me a shout. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video.
