Salesforce Administration – WeLearnSalesforce

Salesforce Data Security: Trusted IP Ranges versus Login IP Ranges. This one always twists my brain 🤯

A Salesforce org is like a multi-level office building. If you have a meeting with a customer in their office building on the 13th floor, you have to get through several security checks in order to meet them there. Starting with the main entrance, followed by the elevator, followed by the office entrance, followed by the meeting room. Each one requires a security pass to get through. Salesforce’s data security model works just the same. In this article we want to focus on the ‘main entrance’ security check. I’ll walk you through the options Salesforce checks for when someone attempts to enter a Salesforce org, including the importance of Trusted IP Ranges as well as Login IP Ranges.

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

How Salesforce Trusted IP Ranges and Login IP Ranges Fit in With The Data Security Model

Salesforce’s data security model essentially consists of four layers:

The first layer determines a user’s access to the Salesforce organization, like their username and password, and also their login location such as their IP address.

The second layer determines what users can see and do in Salesforce such as viewing specific types of records (a.k.a. Objects), edit or delete records.

The third layer specifies whose records users can access. Not only records they own or created, but also records of their colleagues.

And the fourth layer is all about the level of detail (=fields). How much information should a user be able to see. For example, should a sales user be able to see credit card information? Possibly not! But the finance department may need to.

This means, the first layer is your ‘main entrance’ security check of the office building, a.k.a. your Salesforce org.

What Does Salesforce Check For When A User Attempts To Log In

User authentication starts by entering a valid username and a password. If that is a match, Salesforce checks whether the User has logged in before or not. What happens it that Salesforce places a cookie in the user’s browser (unless the browser uses a cookie blocker). If Salesforce finds the cookie, it will grant access. If it doesn’t find that cookie, it will require the user to verify themselves.

This means they will receive an email notification under their registered email address containing a verification code. Once they enter the code and verify, they will be able to login.

Whitelisting Login Locations With Trusted IP Ranges

While this verification process is an important security measure, it can become rather bothersome when users switch locations from time to time or switch computers or browsers they work from. We are talking about IT users supporting a Salesforce org, or Salesforce trainers like myself, or team managers etc.

I remember one particular training roster with a government customer. There were several training sessions happening in different office location. Plus they were happening in different Sandboxes, hence different Salesforce logins. Each time I had to verify myself, and that turned out to be very time consuming, not only for myself but for the trainees too. So I took the IP addresses and whitelisted them. Problem solved!

Whitelisting IP addresses is done under Setup/Network Access by adding Trusted IP Ranges. This means. If a user tries to log in from within a Trusted IP Range, they do not have to go through the verification process.

In other words, if they try to login from outside a Trusted IP Range, they will only get access after they completed the verification process explained above.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This verification method is (currently) not supported in combination with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Since MFA has been enforced in all Salesforce orgs, the cookie placement has become redundant (for now, as always check the release notes for updates). This means, every Salesforce user trying to log in to a Salesforce org has to confirm their authenticity through a MFA method, like using the Salesforce Authenticator app. MFA can theoretically be turned off, making the verification process relevant again. I’m NOT saying you should turn it off though, just something to keep in mind.

Restricting Login Locations With Login IP Ranges

Here comes the brain twister. A Salesforce Admin can restrict access to specified IP Ranges. Let’s say, you want to ensure that your Salesforce users can only ever log in to their Salesforce org from their office building. Some organizations like banks, hospitals, government agencies etc. with extra high security measures, may prohibit anyone to work outside of their office, or access their Salesforce org from outside their office. Some organizations though use VPN to enable users to work from home. But still, access is limited to the VPN connection.

Restricting the locations users are allowed to log in from is done by adding Login IP Ranges to User Profiles. Here’s what this does: When a user attempts to login from outside the listed Login IP Range, Salesforce recognizes the setting on the user profile, and the user will not be able to log in, at all.

Salesforce Data Security with all its different security layers is covered in detail in our comprehensive Salesforce Administrator Certification Course. It’s all connected! I walk you through each step, building up your expertise as you progress. 🤓

Restricting Login Based on Login Hours

Apart from the login location, Admins can also restrict access by office hours. Let’s say a Marketing user should only be able to access Salesforce during office days and office hours. However a Sales user needs to be more flexible to accommodate their customers, and should therefore be able to access their customer data on Salesforce 24/7.

There would be nothing to do for the Sales user, however for the Marketing user, you’ll need to add Login Hours to their respective User Profile. Be aware when locking an entire day, like Saturday and Sunday, you’ll need to select the same start and end time.

Once this has been added, upon login attempt, Salesforce will check the user’s associated Profile to verify whether there are any Login Hour restrictions to determine whether or not the user will be allowed to log in.

Managing Password Policies

Remember from earlier that the very first items Salesforce verifies are username and password. This is the very first security check to overcome. Therefore, we want to make this part as difficult as possible, especially for unauthorized people.

That’s where the Password Policies come in. You’ll use them to specify things like password complexity, number of login attempts, how often passwords need to be changed and more. But don’t make too hard though, otherwise you may loose on user adoption…

I hope this helped untie the twists in your brain. Do let me know what you find most difficult when it comes to managing data security in Salesforce. I’d love to know!

WHAT ELSE…

We make learning simple with our range of well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooks and realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, make sure to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

Managing User Permissions – Best Practices & What Is Happening To User Profiles

Managing User Permissions in Salesforce has always been quite the challenge. Especially when you are new to Salesforce. The entire topic of data access and security can make you want to bang your head against a wall. The good news is: Salesforce provides cushioning. This means, Salesforce heard you and is making user permission management a fair bit easier. In this article, we’ll discuss what is happening to User Profiles and how you should be using Permission Sets moving forward.

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

How Salesforce User Profiles and Permission Sets Fit in With The Data Security Model

Salesforce’s data security model essentially consists of four layers:

The first layer determines a user’s access to the Salesforce organization, like their username and password.

The second layer determines what users can see and do in Salesforce such as viewing specific types of records (a.k.a. Objects), edit or delete records.

The third layer specifies whose records users can access. Not only records they own or created, but also records of their colleagues.

You guessed it! User permission management therefore belongs to the second layer of the data security model, even before you determine whose records or what fields they get access to.

Types of Salesforce User Permissions – What Users Can SEE and DO

As mentioned earlier, the second layer determines what users can see and do in Salesforce.

What users can ‘see’ relates to settings which specify which Apps users will have access to from the App Launcher and which tabs will be available in the navigation bar. Even if you give Users access to the Sales App for example, you can still restrict access to the Opportunities tab if they wouldn’t require access to this particular tab.

You can also specify what types of records users can see. For example, Accounts may be differentiated by Customer Accounts vs Partner Accounts. Some users may only need to see one or the other.

Plus, the ‘see’ permissions also determine how pages and fields will be displayed to users. You can arrange the order of the information, group them, highlight important details etc.

What users can ‘do’ with what they can ‘see’, is all about what they will be able to do within the Apps, Tabs and Pages they have access to.

This includes Standard Object permissions such as creating opportunity records. Or Custom Object permissions such a creating candidate records.

You also have App Permissions available to choose from. These are permissions only relevant to a specific app to fulfil a particular task, for example converting leads as part of the Marketing App.

And then there are System Permissions which are cross-object permissions like creating reports or creating list views and so on. This means, these permissions are relevant for all types of records.

Salesforce Data Security and Access is part of our comprehensive Salesforce Administrator Certification Course. You’ll learn how it all connects to Salesforce Objects, User Setup and more:

Tools To Assign Salesforce User Permissions

Let’s go back to the future first and understand how things used to be done, and are partially still going to be done. Then, we’ll look into to the future to see what Salesforce is going to change and make easier.

The tools available to a System Administrator to manage user permissions are Profiles, Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups. BTW, these are not going to change as such. Phew! 😅

Let’s start with Profiles and how they have been working up until now: Profiles are used to specify a baseline of permissions users require to do their jobs. Hence, an Admin would pick form the types of SEE and DO permissions to determine this baseline. For example, the Admin would include the Read permission on the Accounts Object.

Such a Profile will then be assigned to one or more users within a particular job function or department. This means, a Profile is often assigned to multiple users within the same job function or team.

Here are the Standard Profiles Salesforce provides out-of-the-box. These have been set up with pre-selected permissions to save the Administrator a lot of time ticking a lot of checkboxes. Standard Profiles are not editable but can be cloned to tailor to specific business requirements. This cloning process creates a so-called Custom Profile, which is simply another version of the Standard Profile.

Permission Sets are an extension to Profiles, to grant additional permissions for specific job functions, for example the Create Accounts permission.

Some organizations are very restrictive about account creations and thus only allow a small number of users, if not only one, to create them. Hence, this type of permission would not be added to a Profile, but to a Permission Set instead.

Therefore, Permission Sets usually contain only 2-3 permissions and are only created as needed and assigned to individual users at a time.

This means, the Admin can pick from the same pool of SEE and DO permissions but selects only what is not already available to the User through their assigned Profile.

The Profile and Permission Set(s) assigned to an individual user essentially determine their total access.

Permission Set Groups were introduced by Salesforce only a few releases ago, and are used to bundle multiple Permission Sets and assign to selected users. This means, that Administrators no longer have to painstakingly assign Permissions Sets one by one. They can now bundle them into a Permission Set Group and assign the entire group of Permission Sets in one go.

Here’s an example of two types of Users within the same department. You can see that some Permission Sets are the same for both, but then there’s one Permission Set which is only required by the Sales Manager. Therefore, we created two Permission Set Groups based on each user’s job function, added the required Permission Sets (which had been created beforehand) and then assigned to each User as appropriate.

Permission Set Groups can be assigned to multiple users, and that’s exactly why they are so handy. Especially in larger organizations where you may have something like five Sales Managers and 20 Sales Assistants or 20 Sales Representatives, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of time when allocating user permissions.

In summary, up until now you would have done the following:

Set up a Custom Profile containing the minimum permissions, like Read and Edit Accounts (Alert: This part is changing!)
Create Permission Sets by job function – Remember: DON’T add too many permissions into one Permission Set. It’ll be almost impossible to tell what you have added
When you realize you have too many Permission Sets to assign to certain users, you’ll create a Permission Set Group to bundle them and make your life a lot easier

Complexity of Salesforce User Profiles and Permission Sets

What happened so far was that System Administrators created a lot of Custom Profiles to allocate business specific permissions. Then they created a lot of Permission Sets for all those additional permissions of each job function. And then they also started creating a lot of Permission Set Groups. 🤯🤯🤯

There’s suddenly A LOT OF everything!

What does this mean? If you don’t have a smart document that tells you which Profile and which Permission Set does what and which user has what assigned, you’ll be running far far away. 🏃‍♂️

Yes, you can create reports or export a file with Dataloader, but it’ll still be rather difficult to put it all together.

What Will Happen To Salesforce User Profiles

To reduce the amount of Profiles and to add more flexibility to the way you assign or remove user permissions, Salesforce is planning the following changes starting Spring ’26:

👉 Removing most (but not all) user permissions from User Profiles.

IN LIEU, you will need to use Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups, like you already have. But in the future, you’ll manage MOST user permissions through Permission Sets.

Here’s what they will remove from Profiles and ONLY make available through Permission Sets:

👉 ESSENTIALLY, the concept of using Profiles, Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups doesn’t change. Certain permissions like access to Apps, Record Type and Page Layouts will still be managed via Profiles.

BUT, the types of permissions managed through Profiles changes so much so that you will no longer have to create so many Custom Profiles.

Don’t wait for Spring ’26! Start your New BEST PRACTICE already:

Starting a new best practice already will save you time later moving permissions from Profiles to Permission Sets. Here is what this may look like:

Clone the ‘Minimum Access’ Profile and only use to assign Apps, Record Types and Page Layouts for a particular group of users, like Sales Users or Marketing Users. Nothing else!
Name the cloned profile after the role or job function, use a meaningful naming convention
Create Permission Sets by job function – Remember: DON’T add too many permissions into ONE Permission Set. It’ll be almost impossible to tell what you have added. Rather have more Permission Sets with a very precise description
Bundle job function related Permission Sets into a Permission Set Group, give it a meaningful name, and assign to relevant users

FINAL STEP, if not even the first, DOCUMENT what you set up!!! It doesn’t have to be a fancy schmancy paid document service, it can be a simple as a Word document to get you started. BUT PLEASE, write it down.

Our Salesforce Administrator Certification Course takes you through the setup steps and best practices in a logical order. You’ll be a pro in no time!

How Salesforce Will Help You With The Transition

Salesforce is making a plan to help you make the move from User Profiles to Permission Sets. Here is what they have announced so far. As always, refer to the Release Notes for any further updates on these:

Spring ’23 – Salesforce is introducing the ‘User Access Policies’ feature. It will help you ‘migrate’ user permissions based on specific criteria and attributes. HOWEVER, it will be in Beta and only available to orgs with Enterprise and Unlimited Editions (for now).

Summer ’23 – Field Level Security can be switched to Permission Sets. This is ALREADY in BETA. And is planned to become GA (generally available) in Summer ’23. BEWARE: You must have all your Permission Sets sorted and assigned to Users BEFORE you switch this over. Otherwise, it may get ugly…

Spring ’24 – Turn off ability to assign retiring (EOL = end of life) permissions on User Profiles.

Even though Spring ’26 may seem far away, it’ll arrive sooner than you’d like. And then suddenly, you have to migrate hundreds of user profiles.

Start with the New Best Practice mentioned earlier. For example, if there is any new Custom Profile you have been asked to create, don’t create it right away. See if the New Best Practice may actually be a valid alternative already.

Start making a plan for all your Profiles already on how to move the EOL permissions from User Profiles to Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups. Take it step by step, like department by department or job function by job function.

I hope you found this walk-through helpful. Got a question? Please do leave me a comment below! 👏🏻

WHAT ELSE…

We make learning simple with our range of well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooksand realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, make sure to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

What Do Baking and Salesforce Have in Common?

This is not your typical Salesforce blog. Today, I want to share a baking story…

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

I was baking some self-made granola the other day. They completely got burned because I mixed up the temperature and my timer was set based on the correct temperature. 🙈 It started to smell strangely and it hit me, and I ran into the kitchen. All my granola turned black (literally). Well, I had to start over. Not a super big deal, I still had enough of the ingredients left.

Now, what does granola have to do with Salesforce? A LOT!

Baking is a lot like being a Salesforce Administrator – you have to take the right steps and find the perfect balance in order to end up with an edible result. Just like how I had to mix up the temperature and timer for my granola, incorrect setups in Salesforce can quickly turn sour.

When it comes to our work with Salesforce, one wrong move can have (more or less) disastrous consequences for those that are relying on us. We all want to avoid these errors and ensure our Salesforce Users don’t get “burned” by mistakes.

I’ll never forget my first time working with Salesforce when I didn’t attend any Salesforce training beforehand. I was missing out on plenty of features that could have made my job much easier, or more importantly, the job of my Salesforce Users! That’s why it’s so important that we equip ourselves with the right knowledge in order to be able to make the most of Salesforce and its capabilities.

Just as careful preparation goes into baking granola, joining a proper Salesforce training can have a huge impact on our professional lives. With all of the available resources out there, taking full advantage of the right Salesforce learning materials can increase your confidence and ensure success – both in the job itself or in any job interview leading to your Salesforce dream job.

Therefore, I’ve put together the perfect recipe and baking tools, a.k.a. Salesforce learning materials, in my Salesforce Certification Courses.

And it gets even better, we currently have an incredible Salesforce course offer! It’s your one-stop-shop to mastering Salesforce – our all-in-one Salesforce Certification Training Bundle includes our three fundamental Salesforce Certification Courses, complete with video tutorials, study workbooks and practice exams.

This is the perfect bundle to get you ready for both your job and Salesforce Certification Exam in no time. Whether you’re an experienced professional or a newbie, you don’t want to let this amazing offer slip through your fingers. Act quickly before it expires at the end of January!

You’ll get LIFETIME access to ALL of our Salesforce Certification Courses worth $1,491.

All for only $197!!

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”
Abigail Adams U.S. FIRST LADY (1797-1801)

WHAT ELSE…

We make learning simple with our range of well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooksand realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, make sure to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

The Power of One – The Greatest Formula Ever Written

Have you ever had a moment learning about a Salesforce feature thinking to yourself: ‘Why hasn’t anyone told me about this earlier?’ Shaking your head in complete disbelief?? I know the feeling… So, here’s another one you probably haven’t heard of yet. Let me introduce 🥁🥁🥁: The ‘Power of One’ formula. A must-know for every Salesforce Administrator!

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

It’s referred to as the greatest formula ever written. And it is so simple, you’ll shake your head even more. BTW, it can actually be found on Trailhead when you dig deeper into formula fields. No, you can’t search for it. I tried, no luck. I stumbled over it when working my way through the Formulas and Validations Module. And bam, there it was.

HOWEVER! This module isn’t quite detailed enough to explain the full context. Therefore let’s talk about the problem first, the problem that led to this solution. You may not even know you had a problem! 🤓 Plus, there’s one more feature you need to know about too, which likes to compete with it…

The Reason the ‘Power of One’ Even Exists

Let’s take this Opportunity report as an example. This particular report contains a list of Opportunities which have been Closed Won. When you look at the total number of records it displays ’20’. Since this is an Opportunity type of report the count refers to the Opportunity records. However, the report is grouped by Accounts and it may appear as if the total count refers to Account records. So, if you’re not sure, the first thing you can do is verify what type of report it is, such as Opportunity vs Account vs Cases etc. You can see the report type at the very top of the report where it says ‘Report: Opportunities’.

Now, sticking to this report, what if you wanted to know the number of unique Accounts in this report too? Well…you won’t get it. This example report is a rather small report, so you could easily do a manual count but that’s not how we want to use Salesforce right? And just imagine you’ve had a super long report with hundreds or thousands of records in it.

So what did I do at the time? I’ve twisted the report and recreated it in different ways, but I simply couldn’t get that unique count. I even looked for a solution on the AppExchange, but nothing straight forward.

Eventually, I stumbled over the ‘Power of One’ solution. AND… Salesforce introduced a report feature not too long ago which likes to compete with the ‘Power of One’ but is not as good (yet). Read on to find out why!

Watch video tutorial including follow-along demo (‘Power of One’ starts at 1:40min but I recommend watching the first part too):

The ‘Power of One’ Formula Solves Unique Record Counts in Reports

Let’s look at the ‘Power of One’ first before we discover the report feature solution. What we want to add is something like this:

The solution: Adding a custom formula field to the Account object called ‘Unique Accounts’. But wait, aren’t we talking about the ‘Power of One’? That’s right. We still want to name the field after what it’s meant to do. What it does behind the scenes is what we refer to the ‘Power of one’. So, what is it then?

🌶️ BTW, this content is part of our Salesforce Platform App Builder as well as Advanced Administrator Certification Courses:

How To Create the ‘Power of One’ Formula

The magic (or power!) lies in how you design this particular formula field. BTW, this is probably the most complicated formula ever, NOT!

This particular formula field merely contains the number 1. That’s it? That’s it! 🤯 It’s a count of ‘1’ against every single Account.

And now, all you need to do is to add the new field ‘Unique Accounts’ to the report as a column and you’re done! You’re kidding? Nope!

And now? Do I need to create a ‘Power of One’ type of field for all additional unique counts I want to add to the report? NO! Luckily, Salesforce introduced a report feature a couple of releases ago which is called ‘Unique Count’. But…

What About the Unique Count Report Feature?

Salesforce seem to have acknowledged the many headaches, since a lot of Admins still don’t know about the ‘Power of One’, so they have added a new report feature right into the Report Builder. Phew!

All you need to do is go to the drop-down arrow at the top of the column and select ‘Show Unique Count’. But…

🌶️ There’s one caveat: This feature only works for columns that are not grouped. You’ll notice in the example above, the Account Name column is not grouped. If it was grouped like the first example report, this option does not even appear:

Combine ‘Power of One’ and ‘Show Unique Count’ in Reports

Because of the caveat I mentioned, follow these steps as your best practice:

Create your report
Add column and/or row groupings as needed
Create a ‘Power of One’ formula for grouped columns/rows as required
Use ‘Show Unique Count’ option on other columns which are not grouped

I hope you are as relieved as I was when I found out. Now tell me: Did you know this existed? Did you even know there was a problem? I’d love to know.

WHAT ELSE…

We make learning simple with our range of well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooksand realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, make sure to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

Is Salesforce Classic still relevant? A Comparison to Lightning Experience

If you are new to the Salesforce ecosystem, you have probably been learning the ropes of Salesforce in Lightning. I’m referring to Salesforce’s user interface (UI) called Lightning Experience.
Did you know that Salesforce used a very different UI called Salesforce Classic? It’s the original UI which is actually still in use. But no-one really talks about it anymore. Why is that?

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

In this article I want to answer the following questions to you:

What happened to Salesforce Classic?
What is Lightning Experience?
Is Salesforce Classic still in use?
What are the differences between Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience?
Can Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience work alongside?
Can Salesforce Users be forced to use Lightning Experience?
Do new Salesforce Administrators still need to learn Salesforce Classic?

What happened to Salesforce Classic?

Salesforce Classic simply became out of modern fashion. It couldn’t keep up with the high resolution screens and interactive ways of working anymore. A new fresh and modern UI was needed.

Here’s an example of a record in Salesforce Classic:

What is Lightning Experience?

In 2015 a new UI called Lightning Experience was released. While it looks fresh and modern to the end user, it’s now also providing a much more flexible framework for Salesforce Administrators and Developers to design and maintain the UI for Salesforce end users.

Here’s an example of the same record displayed in the Lightning Experience UI:

You can already tell this one looks much more exciting doesn’t it? Let me know in the comments what you think!

🌶️ Our Salesforce Courses are all based on Lightning Experience. BUT, we show you the Salesforce Classic UI too and tell you when you may need to use Classic over Lightning.

Is Salesforce Classic still in use?

OH YES!!! It won’t go anywhere anytime soon! Because…not all Salesforce Customers are ready to move to Lightning Experience (LEX) just yet or ever. This is due to the fact that they are using functionality which is either not available in LEX or doesn’t work as intended.

Salesforce focusses all their development efforts on LEX but still supports Classic simply because larger customers depend on its functionality. Plus, certain customizations could theoretically be moved into LEX but require a hell lot of development work to make this happen. So understandably, these Salesforce Customers will stay away from LEX for as long as possible.

What are the differences between Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience?

There aren’t too many features and functionalities not made available in LEX, but those few can be significant enough to hold customers back from moving to LEX.

Salesforce provides you with a comprehensive list of differences (comparison tables). You can refer to these when making the decision whether or not a transition to LEX is appropriate or requires more investigation:

Go to: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.lex_gaps_limitations.htm&type=5

👉 BTW: New Salesforce Customers automatically get the Lightning Experience user interface. No need to worry about Salesforce Classic at all.

Can Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience work alongside?

Absolutely, but…! Some Salesforce Customers are even using LEX for certain departments like Sales, while other departments still use Salesforce Classic.

This combo CAN work BUT has an impact on reporting and other features. And even when departments using different interfaces talk to each other, they may confuse themselves because their UI looks different.

🌶️ It is however possible to switch between the two interfaces. The so-called Switcher can be accessed from your user menu. This makes it super simple to switch between both UIs.

Switcher in Lightning Experience:

Switcher in Salesforce Classic:

Can Salesforce Users be forced to use Lightning Experience?

Yepp! You guessed it, it’s a permission which can be disabled. You can either use a Profile or a Permission Set and tick the checkbox “Hide Option to Switch to Salesforce Classic” and the Switcher will disappear. Users assigned to this Profile or Permission Set will no longer be able to switch to Classic.

Do new Salesforce Administrators still need to learn Salesforce Classic?

If you are currently studying for your Salesforce Administrator Certification Exam, you don’t necessarily need to know the Salesforce Classic UI inside out. However, you should have a rough idea about what it is and how to switch. I’d also recommend to look through the Setup items just so you know what it’s all about.

You’ll notice that most of the features you are learning throughout your certification studies work exactly the same in both interfaces, they just look a little different.

And if you are a more experienced Salesforce Administrator but haven’t used Classic yet, it’s still worth taking a look at it because you may need it at your next job. 🤓

Here’s what an example Setup item looks like in LEX, like the Object Manager:

And this is where you’ll find the same item in Salesforce Classic, under the Build/Customize section:

Try it out! Create a new field in LEX, then switch to Classic and see if it’s there. Now, create another field in Classic, then switch to LEX and see if it’s there. Tell me what you think in the comments! I’d love to know which one you liked better.

WHAT ELSE…

We make learning simple with our range of well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooksand realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, make sure to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

Salesforce Certification Exams have just switched over to the Winter ’23 Release. How do you know what’s new?

Are you currently preparing for your Salesforce Certification Exam? If so, do you know what’s new in the Winter’23 release cycle? Salesforce are unlikely going to change all that many exam questions, because the fundamental concepts don’t change. BUT! You may find the occasional question related to an important release update. So you want to be prepared! In this article, I’ll walk you through how you’ll identify what else you may need to learn. We’ll consider anyone who’s either sitting their exam very soon already or anyone who’s just started learning.

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

🌶️ BEFORE YOU EVEN LOOK AT THE SALESFORCE RELEASE NOTES

The Release Notes are a VEEEEERY long list of new features or updated features that Salesforce are releasing in that particular release cycle. It can feel very intimidating just looking at the screen. 🤯 At least that’s what it felt like to me the first few times I needed to get my head around the release updates. And that while I was preparing for my very first Salesforce Administrator Certification a few years back. If that wasn’t enough already! Now they also wanted me to understand the Release Notes too. Phew!

In particular when you are relatively new to Salesforce and are just starting to learn about its features and functionalities, you need to process everything SOMEHOW. Right? Right! You can’t possibly learn and understand everything at the same time.

Trust me when I tell you: Don’t even try. I did try and almost threw the towel. Therefore: Learn your Salesforce Fundamentals first! Only WHEN you feel at least ‘relatively’ confident, THEN start looking at the Release Notes.

UNDERSTAND WHICH RELEASE CYCLE YOUR SALESFORCE CERTIFICATION EXAM WILL BE IN

This is where you ALWAYS need to go back to: The exam guide for the Salesforce Certification you want to take. That’s your single-most source of truth. Whether you are just starting to prepare for your exam or you have booked your exam day already, this page is where you need to check the latest exam relevant knowledge topics AND the exam relevant release cycle.

The exam release cycle is displayed at the very top of your exam guide. Here’s an example of the exam guide of the Salesforce Certified Administrator. However, this applies to any exam guide:

🌶️ If you have already booked, or you are planning to book, your exam day in the near future, have a look at the Retake Policy too! It not only explains what happens in case you don’t pass, but it also includes the certification release cycle dates.

If the exam close date is around your planned exam day, you may want to plan around it. If possible, try to take the exam within the release cycle, so you don’t have to worry about it (for now). However, if that’s not possible, I’d suggest choosing a date at least 1-2 weeks after the exam launch date, so you have time to not only get familiar with the changes but also practice them in your Trailhead Playground.

View here: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/help?article=Retake-Policy-for-Proctored-Multiple-Choice-Exams

👉 NOTE: The listed dates may vary. Therefore, it’s best to review this page around the planned exam launch and close dates to be sure. And of course, check the exam guide whether it already displays the new cycle.

HOW TO IDENTIFY WHAT CHANGES ARE RELEVANT TO YOUR SALESFORCE CERTIFICATION EXAM

And now comes the tricky part. What changes are actually relevant for the particular exam you are preparing for? In this article, I’ll use the Salesforce Certified Administrator as an example. If you are taking any other certification exam, then just apply the same concept.

First, you need to find the release notes to start with. Of course, you can simply type “Salesforce Release Notes” into your search machine (I mostly use Google) and it will probably come up as the first search result:

🌶️ Otherwise, I’d recommend to get familiar with the Salesforce Help pages. They are your go-to-place for anything Salesforce features and functionalities for any Salesforce Product, a.k.a. Salesforce Clouds (think Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, etc.). It’s Salesforce’s system manual, like the manual of your washing machine. 😉

👉 BOOKMARK IT! Since you’re likely going to need to review the release notes on a regular basis (if you want to be a role-model Salesforce professional), it’s best to bookmark it in your browser, so you don’t have to worry about finding it again.

And finally, here’s how to pick out the topics relevant to your upcoming exam:

1 – Look through the Release Notes main menu and focus on the topics that already sound familiar based on the topics listed in your exam guide. Here are the ones I usually look at when it comes to all things Salesforce Administration (declarative).

2 – Then go through each step-by-step. Expand their sub-topics and see what they entail.

In most cases it’s sufficient to browse over. However, if you’re really not sure what it’s about, it helps to take a closer look, a.k.a. go into one of your Trailhead Playgrounds and have a look for yourself.

The Release Notes sometimes include screenshots and a ‘How’, but unfortunately this is not always the case. I’ve often had times where I’ve been scratching my head 🤔 how the heck this features is supposed to work or where exactly in the Setup I need to go.

Plus, some of those features are not available in your Tailhead Playground (=Developer Edition. Refer to ‘Where’.) so you can’t actually test it out, but you still need to know about it. HOWEVER, it would usually not be an in-depth exam question, more a general knowledge type of question to test whether you’re familiar with general concepts and general features.

3 – Repeat this process with each menu item you’ve identified.

Even though you may be feeling pretty confident with your exam relevant knowledge, it may still feel rather overwhelming. And that’s perfectly normal. The first few months learning Salesforce are the hardest because there’s so much information thrown at you, but know that it takes time and that YOU WILL GET THERE!

Find out whether you are ready to take the real Salesforce Certification Exam

If you’re still unsure whether or not you are ready to take the real exam, then you can take Practice Exams. That’s what they are there for. 🤓

They help you identify the knowledge areas you still need to deepen. And they help you get familiar with the exam format and complexity, because they are similar to the real exam. There’s no better way to prepare!

Since the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam is one of the hardest, Salesforce provide you with two Practice Tests. And to give you even more options to practice, we give you an additional 5 Practice Exams.

You do not have to take any of these of course, but they can give you a lot of peace of mind because you’ll know what to expect!

👉 Administrator Certification Prep Interactive Practice Test: https://developer.salesforce.com/files/ti/thi/THI-000393/administratorpracticetest.html

👉 Administrator Practice Test: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/help?article=Administrator-Practice-Test

👉 WeLearnSalesforce Practice Exam Bundle (incl. 5 Practice Exams, 60 Questions each): https://www.welearnsalesforce.com/courses/salesforce-administrator-certification-practice-exams

👉 Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam (the real one) – Register via Webassessor: https://webassessor.com/salesforce

I hope you found this article helpful. Let me know in the comments what you think about the Release Notes. Do you follow the same process or have you identified another way to process the release changes? I’d love to know!

WHAT ELSE…

We make learning simple with our range of well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooksand realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, make sure to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

It’s about time to learn Salesforce Flow or isn’t it…

Yes, Salesforce are in the process of deprecating Workflow Rules and Process Builder, leaving you with the Flow Builder. BUT!!! This ain’t happen over night. You’ve still got time to learn all about Flow Builder. And please know that Flow Builder is not rocket science. You will be able to learn Salesforce Flow, no matter what your background is, techy or not techy. Everyone can learn this. And I will tell you how! 👏🏻

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

Let’s have a word! Shall we?! While there is indeed some urgency creeping up around learning Salesforce Flow, let me tell you that Workflow Rules and Process Builder are NOT going away over night.

Yes, Salesforce are in the process of deprecating both, leaving you with the Flow Builder. BUT!!! This ain’t happen over night. You’ve still got time to learn all about Flow Builder. And please know that Flow Builder is not rocket science. You will be able to learn Salesforce Flow, no matter what your background is, techy or not techy. Everyone can learn this. And I will tell you how! 👏🏻

In this article, we’ll talk about:

By when you need to learn Salesforce Flow
What will happen to existing Workflow Rules and Process Builders
What you need to know before you touch the Flow Builder
How to learn Salesforce Flow either as a Newbie or as an Experienced Salesforce Administrator
Supportive tools you need to know as an Admin

By When Do You Need To Learn Salesforce Flow?

First, let’s look at a rough (estimated!!) timeline of what Salesforce are planning. This was published during the recent Release Readiness session. Please ALWAYS refer to the Release Notes on the latest updates on these timelines:

Spring’22 – ‘Migrate to Flow’ tool released to migrate Workflow Rules (WFR) to Flow

Summer’22 – ‘Migrate to Flow’ tool supports even more WFR configurations

Winter’23 (Current)– Remove capability to create new WFR -> existing WFR can still be edited, activated, deactivated

Spring’24 – ‘Migrate to Flow’ tool to support Process Builders too

Summer’24 – Remove capability to create new Process Builders (PB) -> existing PB can still be edited, activated, deactivated

End of Support for WFR & PB some time in 2024-2025

As you can see, you should get started learning Flow around NOW. 🤓 But that’s no reason to freak out. You’re not alone on this journey! I’m here to support you, in fact the entire Trailblazer Community is here to help you skill up. 💪🏻

What Will Happen To Existing Workflow Rules and Process Builders?

As mentioned above, existing WFR and PB are going to be around for another while. Even though Salesforce provides a ‘Migration to Flow’ tool, not every organization will be able to migrate all their WFR and PB right away. It does involve a fair amount of testing to ensure the desired automations still run as intended after migration.

What does this mean for you as the Admin? This means, that WFR and PB can still be edited, activated and deactivated. Therefore, you still need to know how WFR and PB work.

🌶️ By the way: If you are not much familiar with either WFR or PB, you can still learn about both tools. Even now that Salesforce have removed the Create New capability from Workflow Rules, you can still create and learn Workflow Rules in your Trailhead Playgrounds or other Developer Orgs (for another while at least). Phew, Salesforce is not evil after all.

Before You Learn Salesforce Flow

Ask yourself how well you know the Salesforce platform yet? Are you brand new to Salesforce or do you already have a good amount of experience with the Salesforce Setup as an Admin or as an Admin-to-be?

👉 IF YOU ARE BRAND NEW! Please don’t jump into any Salesforce Flow course just like that. You MUST understand the fundamental elements of the Salesforce platform in order to make sense of what you are looking at when building a Flow.

There are many Salesforce Flow courses out there, but without the fundamental knowledge, you are going to get lost. Trust me! I’ve been there too and pulled my hair out. But going back to the basics and taking it step-by-step just made all the difference.

👉 IF YOU ARE ALREADY EXPERIENCED with the Salesforce Setup, then you may of course jump into learning Flow right away.

🌶️ Click the ‘Follow‘ button to save this Trailmix to your Favorites.

What Tools Are Provided To You By Salesforce

Migrate to Flow

Salesforce have introduced a migration tool, simply called ‘Migrate to Flow‘. It helps you easily turn your existing Workflow Rules and Process Builders into Flows, like a magic wand. 🪄 The tool currently only supports Workflow Rules but will add Process Builders as they go.

This migration tool supports most types of Workflow Rules. And for those that are not supported, you can refer to the comparison table to understand how to re-create a Workflow with the corresponding elements in Flow Builder:

Equivalent Features in Flows and Workflow Rules

Where are you in your Salesforce Flow learning journey? Leave me a comment, I’d truly love to know. 👏🏻

WHAT ELSE…

We make learning simple with our range of well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooksand realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, make sure to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

Salesforce Basics – Create Salesforce Custom List Views and Increase Productivity

You could see Salesforce List Views as mini Salesforce Reports. Because List Views work somewhat similar to Reports in a way that you can set filter criteria and thus focus on the Records that matter most. The biggest benefit is that Users can work directly from List Views without having to open individual Records unless required. Plus, Users can create their own custom List Views without any admin support. Let’s look at the different types of List Views and how they support daily productivity.

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

Salesforce List View Types

There are three main types of List Views, the Table View, the Kanban View and the Split View.

In the old Salesforce Classic days, we only had Table Views available. With the introduction of Lightning Experience, Salesforce added Kanban Views. And now, we also have Split Views which were originally limited to Service Cloud viewing features, but is now generally available to pretty much any Salesforce Cloud. This gives Users different ways of working with their records depending on what they need to accomplish.

Table View

List of records with inline editing capabilities of single or even multiple records at a time.

Kanban View

Summarized views allowing Users to manage things like their sales pipeline. Kanban Views can be displayed in different types of groupings such as Status, Industry, Priority, and others.

Split View

Users can work on individual records. At the same time they can still see a list of remaining records on the side, or new records being added. It’s almost like working through a to do list.

As you can see each type of List View has a different purpose, but they also have different editing features.

Salesforce List View Controls

List View Filters

You can add filter criteria just like in Reports and only display records that matter.

List View Charts

Adding a visible display of the results can provide a different perspective. Just clicking on the chart icon will open a pre-defined chart. You can choose different chart displays or even create an entirely new chart.

List View Search

When you have a long list of records in your List View but need to find a particular record, Salesforce now gives you a search field just for the List View right in front of you.

List View Inline Editing

Users can edit single or multiple records right from the List View. Kanban Views have even more editing options. Simply hover over the field and a pencil icon will appear.

🌶️ Beware editing of multiple records at a time! This can lead to accidental changes which are hard to identify. Admins can choose to turn off “Mass Edits from Lists” on relevant User Profiles or Permission Sets. This is particular relevant for data clean ups.

🌶️ List Views which contain a mix of Record Types are not editable. Either add a filter for the Record Type or create multiple List Views by Record Type.

Data Security and Sharing of Salesforce List Views

Any data security settings always apply! It doesn’t matter how Users look at records, whether it’s through Reports, List Views, Dashboards (except Static Dashboards), Search Results and so on. If they don’t have visibility to certain records, they won’t get them just by changing their view or display. 🤓

The same applies to sharing. Users can share List Views they created themselves by selecting the relevant sharing options. What they share is the design of the list view not the data. The results of records always depend on the type of record access set up in your Salesforce org.

🌶️ Beware proliferation! If you enable Users to create their own custom List Views your Salesforce org may end up with loads of redundant and irrelevant List Views. This can cause confusion and inconsistency. Hence, Admins can choose to turn off the “Manage Public List Views” permission on User Profiles or Permission Sets. Especially in larger organizations, List Views are often pre-created by Admins or by a small selection of Users, such as Team Managers.

And now, let’s take a look at List Views together and understand how you can build your own custom List Views specific to your business needs. You can follow along from your own Trailhead Playground or Developer Org.

VIDEO TUTORIAL WALK-THROUGH SCRIPT

Open the Sales app and go to the Opportunity tab. By default you will see the Recently Viewed list view.
Let’s select All Opportunities for now. Remember you can use the pin icon to make this your default view if you prefer this over Recently Viewed.
By default you will see the standard table like list view.
On the top right you will find a little table icon which you can expand. This is where you can choose your display options.
Let’s select Kanban which gives you the same results but with more information such as the process bar and sub-totals. Your records display as action cards under the related category, in this case the status. This little drop-down arrow allows you to edit, delete or change the owner of this particular record.
This Kanban is grouped by stage which means if you want to edit the stage you can simply drag and drop the opportunity action card. Hover over the card until your mouse turns into a little black cross, then click your mouse and drag the card over. It automatically updates the number of records and sub-totals.
You can manage how the grouping and sub-totals display. Go to the gear icon and expand. We will look at the other options shortly. For now go down to Kanban settings and select. You will see a pop-up with two drop-downs. Under the first one you can choose from the numerical fields available on your opportunity records. Here, we have two available. Let’s leave this as is. Under Group you can choose from picklist fields or the owner field. This will change the way how your process bar will look. Feel free to play around with this.
Let’s switch back to the table view. We want to see how you can create your own list view. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating it from the table or kanban view, this is more a personal preference.
On the top right go to the gear icon and expand. You have various options, such as new or clone the existing and simply edit into a new version.
Select New for this example. Let’s call this one “My Pipeline”. Click into List API name which will populate automatically.
Under Who sees this list view you can choose to keep it to yourself, or share with everyone or choose from groups of people based on their role. We will go with the first one for now and click Save.
The list has been created and now we need to add some filters to make sure it includes exactly what we want. In this list we want to see opportunities that belong to yourself and that haven’t been closed yet, meaning they are still in the pipeline.
You’ll notice that the filter pane on the right is already open and contains one filter. This comes up automatically. You can click on this filter and change the selection if you wanted to. However we’ll leave this as is. When you look at the Stage column you’ll notice that closed opportunities are listed as well as we haven’t added the filter yet. Since we want to see open opportunities only, we will add another filter on the Stage field to exclude closed opportunities.
On the right we’ll click Add Filter. This opens a pop-up on the left. From the top dropdown you’ll select the field which contains your filter criteria. In this case we’ll scroll down to Stage and select.
We’ll change the Operator to Not Equal To. And from the Value drop down we’ll select Closed Won and Closed Lost and then click Done. Once we save this you’ll get to see opportunities that belong to yourself and do not have the status closed won or closed lost.
Now click Save and notice how the list applies your filter settings. Let’s close the filter pane, click on the filter icon.
Let’s take a look at the column settings. Go to the Gear icon again and go down to Select Fields to display. On the right you can see the fields or columns displayed already. If you don’t want some of these, for example the Alias field, select it and click the arrow pointing to the left. On the left you can select fields you’d like to add as columns, for example the Delivery Status field. Select it and click the arrow pointing to the right. It’s automatically added to the end. However, you can use the arrows on the right to change the order, select and click the arrow up or down.
When you’re done, click save. Your new list view has been added to the list view dropdown and can also be viewed as a Kanban view.
Switch to Kanban. And one more thing. Notice the chart icon, you can even add a chart view on top of your list or kanban views.

And now go ahead and try one on your own. The more you play around with this the more you deepen your expertise. 🤓

Let me know in the comments what type of list view you created. I’d love to know!

WHAT ELSE…

This video tutorial is part of our Complete Salesforce Certification Courses. They cover everything from Salesforce Basics to advanced Salesforce features and functionalities every Salesforce professional should know about.

We provide you with different types of study materials, so you can choose what works best for you. This includes well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooks and realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, I’d recommend to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

Salesforce Basics – Getting Started With The Lightning App Builder

Help Salesforce users navigate more efficiently through the user interface. The better the user interface the higher the user adoption, and the more successful the Salesforce organization will be. You’ve got a few user interface management tools, amongst which is the awesome Lightning App Builder. Plus, it’s a declarative tool, no coding skills are required! In this tutorial, you’ll get to know the basic components of the Lightning App Builder. And, you will build your very first Custom Lightning Page with me. 👏🏻

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

It’s All About The Salesforce User Interface

The user interface also referred to as the system front end, is what Salesforce users get to see and work with on a daily basis. You want to give users an intuitive user interface they enjoy working with and that helps them get their work done as quickly as possible. Nothing is more frustrating than looong loading times, too many manual clicks, and too many manual data entry points in general. 🤬

Here’s your toolset you can use to provide a super effective user interface:

Enable relevant User Interface Settings

This is a list of checkboxes to enable or disable features such as Collapsible Sections, Hover Details, Salesforce Notification Banner, and many more. These settings apply across the entire database, hence impact all users.

Beware: Many of these are only relevant to the Salesforce Classic User Interface. In Lightning, many of these are enabled by default and can’t be turned off, like the Inline Editing of List Views. You can only turn off Mass Edit through the Profile or Permission Set settings. Therefore, I’d recommend to test these out in a Trailhead Playground/Developer Org or Sandbox first.

Design smart Lightning Apps and Record Pages with the Lightning App Builder

This is where you can get truly creative and design a tailored experience for your Salesforce org by business function. You can create entire Apps, Home pages, or Record pages. You further tailor the experience by desktop, or mobile use, or both. Plus, you can assign these to either the entire org, or differentiate by App and/or Profiles. And that’s not all. You can even add filter settings and display buttons or fields based on predefined criteria. The Lightning App Builder is getting more powerful with each release and has been replacing a lot of what used to require coding.

Here’s an example of a Lightning Record Page for the Account Object:

Provide List Views and Kanban Views by Business Unit

Users don’t necessarily need you here, they can create List Views and Kanban Views by themselves. BUT! Similar to Reports, leaving this completely up to users can lead to proliferation and inconsistency.

This means, you can already specify the most common list views users are going to work with, and pre-create them. You can restrict access to selected List Views.

You can even restrict editing capabilities to selected Users/Profiles if required. You’ll need to enable the permission “Manage Public List Views”.

TIP: Did you know that Kanban Views are merely a display variation of a list view? Kanban Views are just another way to look at a list of specified records. Instead of a list (a.k.a. Table view), they are displayed as a Kanban.

Other Tools Relevant For The User Interface:

Tab Settings by Object & App Manager to arrange tabs visible in the Navigation Bar
Console views primarily used in Service Cloud
Quick Actions to display buttons, links
Reports and Dashboards to summarize critical business data
And more…

Let’s take a look at the user interface options together and then create a new Lightning Home Page. You can follow along from your own Trailh e ad Playground or Developer Org. Simply click the gear icon ⚙️ in the upper right corner to jump into the Setup.

VIDEO TUTORIAL WALK-THROUGH SCRIPT

Go to the Setup. In the Quick Find type in User Interface.
You will notice that you get two results. One is the User Interface section which contains all your tools you can use to manage very specific user interface settings.
And then within this section at the very bottom you’ll find the general user interface settings. And that’s what we want to take a look at.
This contains a long list of features you can enable or disable for your users. A lot of these are more relevant for the Classic Interface like the ones at the top here and others are more relevant for the Lightning Experience interface like the Navigation Bar personalization or the transition assistant reminder.
Most of them are quite self-explanatory, others maybe not so much. You’ll find a handy link to the Help pages on the top right here, which explains them all.
When you take a look at these you’ll notice that some of them reference Classic or Lightning. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been done for all of them, hopefully, Salesforce will fix that at some point.
We won’t go through each of them, you can play around with these in your own time. However, let’s take one as an example so you can see how they work and how you can test them out. Let’s take this one here “Disable Navigation Bar Personalisation”. Before we tick this, hang on for a moment and don’t do anything. Let me quickly show you what this relates to. You may remember earlier when we walked through the navigation unit you learned about customizing the navigation bar using the pencil at the end of the navigation bar? That’s what this is about. So back to the user interface settings. Tick the checkbox and click save. Go to the Sales app and refresh your browser and the pencil is gone. If not, refresh again. If it’s still there, check your user interface settings again. Maybe it didn’t save. Let’s go back anyways and deselect again and save as we want to be able to use this later on.
Now let’s take a look at the Lightning App Builder. Before jumping in though, let’s have a look at what we want to use it for. Let’s go to the Sales app and select the Home page. The components you see here can actually be rearranged or removed or new ones can be added. Let’s go to the Account tab and select from your recently viewed or another list view. It doesn’t matter which one. Record pages like the Account page contain of a number of components like the highlights bar, the Activity tab, the Details tab and the other ones. These can also be re-arranged or removed or new ones can be added.
We will take the Home page as an example to see how you can achieve this. Let’s go back to the Setup, in the quick find type in app builder, in the search result click on Lightning App builder. You will see existing ones listed here that you can edit or create new ones. We will now create a new one.
Click New in the middle of the screen. You can now choose from three options, App, Home or Record Page. We have just looked at the Home and a record page. The App Page option is for entirely new tabs where you can add selected components like a report or dashboard which makes it something like a summary page and you can give the tab your own label. For the purpose of the example we want to go through, we will select Home page and click next. Let’s call it “Curious Home page” or give it any name you like and click Next.
You can create a page from scratch or clone an existing one. We will create one from scratch and use the Standard Home page which is preselected and click Finish. Though you’re not actually finished. But the page is created and now we need to add the components we wish to see.
This will now open a blank canvas. On the left, you’ll find a menu with the components you can choose from. At the top, you’ll have the standard ones and at the bottom, you would see custom ones.
For example, when you create custom pages or install an app from the app exchange, these options will become available in this section. At the moment we don’t have any custom components available.
On the right, you will be able to specify each component you selected. We will add four items for this example, we will use the List Views, Chatter Feed, Tasks and Events, some of the others are not set up in the Playground org.
So let’s start with the List View component. You click on it, keep the mouse clicked and drag it over into the top section. It highlights in green, which means you can drop it.
On the right-hand side, we want to select which records we want to see in the list. Account is selected by default. From the drop-down, you can select from any of your other record types. We will keep Account selected, click on it to close the drop down. Below it says All Accounts. From the drop-down, you can choose from the existing list views. Let’s change this one to My Accounts. Then you can choose the number of records to display. Let’s change this to 5.
We will leave everything else as in. Now let’s go back to the left and grab the next item, Chatter Feed, that we will drag and drop to the right of the list view. On the right we will select the Feed option that should display. Let’s change this to “To Me”. Then we’ll go back to the left, grab Today’s Tasks and add this below the list view on the left. That’s it for this one, nothing to do on the right. Now it might appear as if you couldn’t add anything else below Today’s Tasks however you can. It just represents a column to which you can add on. Let’s add Today’s Events below Today’s Task to see how this works. On the left grab Today’s Events, and hover over Today’s Task. It highlights in green and depending on where you are, further towards the top you will see a green bar or further towards the bottom which will then show the green bar there. And that’s where we want to add the Events. Hover over Today’s Tasks, green bar at the bottom and drop. And that’s it. Let’s leave it there for now. We will now Save this new page and select where and who we want to make this available to.
On the top right hand side you click Save. Give it a moment, a pop-up will appear. You can tick this box to hide this moving forward, however I like to have this as a reminder, especially when you get started with the Lightning App Builder.
Let’s click Activate. Again, wait a second or two, the pop-up changes. You will now choose where this new Home page should be available. You have three options. The Org Default means it will be available to anyone and anywhere. The App Default means you can choose specific apps that should use this new Home page by default. This will then change for all users using these apps.
The App and Profile options let’s you choose specific apps as well as specific groups of users. We will use the last one, App and Profiles, and click Assign to Apps and Profiles. You can now select Apps that are available in the Lightning Interface. Other apps may need to be converted to a Lighting App in order to become available. That’s why you may not see all of those you would find in the app launcher. Let’s go with the Sales app for this example. Tick and click next. Now you choose your groups of users by their profiles. We will talk about profiles soon. Let’s scroll down and select System Administrator which should be the profile selected on your user record if you are using your Playground org. And then click next. Review your selection and click Save. If you’re quick enough you might notice this brief “Activation successful” message. Would be good if it was there a bit longer. Let’s click the back space to return to the Setup.
Now let’s go to the Sales app, select the Home tab. Refresh your browser window and you should now be able to see your new Home page. Congratulations, you have build your first Lightning app page!

And now, go ahead and create another one. Maybe try out a Record Page instead and see how it works out. The more you practice hands-on using your own imagination (a.k.a. potential business use case), the better you’ll learn how to get the best out of the Lightning App Builder. 🤓

Do let me know in the comments what types of apps or pages you’ve been creating. Have you come across any challenges? I’d love to know!

WHAT ELSE…

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, I’d recommend to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

Salesforce Basics – What is Advanced Currency Management in Salesforce?

If you have been using multiple currencies in your Salesforce org you may have been wondering about how to keep the ever-changing exchange rates up to date. Have you? That’s why you are here. In the previous tutorial we’ve talked about how to activate and set up multiple currencies, and how to update the corresponding exchange rates. As promised, in this tutorial we’ll talk about how to manage dated exchanged rates with the help of Advanced Currency Management.

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

Why You Need Advanced Currency Management

If we went back to the previous tutorial where we updated the exchange rate for an existing currency, what do you think would happen to existing Salesforce records? Exactly, they would get overwritten.

This may actually be acceptable. How come? Let’s look at Opportunity records, since this topic is most relevant to sales data (and for another reason I’ll explain later). As long as an Opportunity record is still open, it may not matter too much if the proposed sales price is still being evaluated. However, as soon as an Opportunity is successfully closed, you may not want the sales amount to change anymore. Because…changes to the final sales price will not only impact revenue tracking but also financial reporting.

Manage Dated Exchange Rates

In order to avoid closed Opportunities being overwritten, you’ll use Advanced Currency Management to manage exchange rates based on date ranges. It’s therefore referred to as ‘Dated Exchange Rates’.

How does this work? First, you’ll need to enable the Advanced Currency Management (ACM) feature. Once ACM is available, you can add multiple exchange rates to each currency you’ve set up. This means, for any given period of time, you’ll determine a specific exchange rate.

The amount on the record will then use the exchange rate of the period the Close Date falls into. Your periods can be days, weeks, fortnights, months, whatever is relevant for your organization.

Let’s look at monthly exchange rates as an example. In September we specify the exchange rate to be 0.6, in October to be 0.8 and in November to be 0.73. Each starting on the first of the month. Since our Opportunity record is closed in September, it will use 0.6 for the conversion accordingly.

Let’s see this in action. We’ll turn on ACM and find out where you need to go to add multiple exchange rates to every single currency in your Salesforce org.

You can follow along from your own Trailhead Playground or Developer Org. Simply click the gear icon ⚙️ in the upper right corner to jump into the Setup.

VIDEO TUTORIAL WALK-THROUGH SCRIPT

In the Setup go down to the Company Settings and select Manage Currencies.
At the top you will find two options you can enable. The first one is the Advanced Currency Management and the second is the Parenthetical Currency Conversion. This is already enabled and displays the user’s currency in brackets in case it’s different to the currency on the record. You can turn this off if required.
You will now enable the first option, the Advanced Currency Management.
In the pop-up window tick the Yes checkbox to confirm and then click Enable.
A new window may open with the updated page which will now look different.
You will now see a new button at the bottom, Manage Dated Exchange Rates.
Click on this and then click Continue.
This will list all the currencies you have in use and displays the exchange rate for each based on the period that is selected on the top right.
To add a new exchange rate for a specific period, you simply click New Exchange Rates.
Select the starting day and type in the relevant exchange rate, I’ll do 1.3. In case you have more than one currency set up, feel free to add a new exchange rate for your other currencies as well.
And then click Save.
Let’s go to the calendar on the top right and select the date next week. Now you can see the exchange rates for that day and after. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the exchange rates for different periods side by side. So use the calendar to view them.

Advanced Currency Management Considerations

Dated Exchange Rates can only be used on Opportunity records and related Opportunity records such as Opportunity Products (Line Items), Opportunity Product Schedules, Campaign Opportunity fields, and Opportunity Splits.
Dated Exchange Rates are not applied in Forecasting or other types of records containing currency fields.

These are the two most important you need to be familiar with. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the full list of considerations.

Can you automate Dated Exchange Rates?

Very good question! The answer is Yes you can. BUT!!! Depending on the type of business of your organization, having exchange rates updated automatically can have a not-so-desired impact on critical sales data and reporting.

While exchange rate automation is not available out-of-the-box, there are quite a few partner apps available on the AppExchange.

Let me know in the comments if you have been working with exchange rates in Salesforce. Do you add them manually or do you use an app? I’d love to know!

WHAT ELSE…

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