SearchThe Salesforce platform is incredibly flexible in its ability to deliver applications and automate business processes with point and click configuration. However, there are still some gaps in functionality that we as consultants frequently encounter. In these situations, it may be cost and time effective to look toward leveraging third party solutions available via Salesforce’s marketplace, called AppExchange. The AppExchnage has thousands of cloud based applications that can be “installed” to further expand the capabilities of the platform. Below are three of the apps we commonly leverage to better deliver for our customers.
Nintex DocGen or Conga – Many business processes require some type of friendly formatted document or report to be generated as part of the process or a final output. For example, you might want a client friendly invoice, receipt or certificate to be generated. Both Conga Composer and Nintex DocGen allow admins to export data into word, pdf and excel templates. Branded templates are created with merge fields for Salesforce data such as contact information, product information, etc. With the click of a button, a user can generate the documents and quickly send them off in a variety of delivery methods, including email and routing via signature solutions, such as DocuSign.
Rollup Helper – Rollup fields allow admins to create read-only fields that aggregate numerical data of child records up to parent records. (Think total estimated revenue of all open opportunities associated with a specific account.) While Salesforce allows for the creation of rollup fields, there are several constraints that limit their use cases:
• The relationship between the parent and child object must be a master detail relationship.
• Each object is limited to two master detail relationships.
• Data must be numerical
Rollup Helper allows admins to rollup data using ANY lookup relationship across a variety of different data types. While developers could write code that queries and aggregates accordingly, Rollup Helper provides an initiative wizard to configure the rollup jobs, as well as the necessary reports and tools to monitor those jobs.
ClickDeploy.io – Anyone who has ever used change sets to move changes and development between environments knows the pain. While it’s great to have a native point and click to move changes, the current Salesforce tool leaves much to be desired. ClickDeploy greatly improves the deployment process by giving admins faster, more informative tools to build packages and move them between environments. Users can quickly filter down change set components using a series of dropdowns and text filters, as well as filter for “New” and “Changed” components. My favorite feature of ClickDeploy is the “Diff” tool, which allows the user to look at a side by side comparison of the metadata between two environments to clearly see what is actually different between the two components of the package. ClickDeploy greatly improves efficiency by reducing deployment issues often encountered using the native toolset.
At eimagine, we aim to support everyone in their Salesforce needs. Whether you are interested in using a CRM for the first time, want to switch from your old CRM to Salesforce or need experts to manage your existing Salesforce software, we’re here to help. Simply enter your information and click ‘I Need Salesforce’ and we’ll be in touch!
