Salesforce Admin Best

Practices

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 Salesforce Admin Best Practices
SNo. Phase Best Practice Following?
Use a proper project management tool like JIRA or Agile Accelerator to capture
Requirement
1 user requirements, define solution approach, collaborate between the 🗆
Gathering
stakeholders & track status
Requirement Get a formal sign-off from the business user on the requirements captured. This
2 🗆
Gathering will ensure that everyone is on the same page and avoid any misunderstanding
Gather reporting requirements upfront and keep this in consideration when
Requirement
3 coming up with solution design. Reports & dashboards must not be an 🗆
Gathering
afterthought
Think through and come up with a design first before starting to build the system.
4 Design Use tools like Lucidchart to come up with Architecture Diagrams, ERD, Process 🗆
Flows etc.
Leverage on Salesforce’s native, out-of-box and declarative capabilities before
5 Design 🗆
going down the custom coding route
If the business requirements are too complex and require heavy customization,
6 Design 🗆
explore using an AppExchange package
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 Salesforce Admin Best Practices
SNo. Phase Best Practice Following?
Always keep Salesforce org & governor limits in mind during the design (e.g
7 Design 🗆
maximum no. of custom objects, fields, process builders, sharing rules etc.)
8 Design Leverage on standard objects rather than creating custom objects 🗆
Define & enforce naming convention for the metadata. E.g. prefix all custom
9 Design objects with ‘<XXX>_’, all triggers name should be ‘<object_name>Trigger’, all test 🗆
classes should start with ‘Test<ClassName>’ and so on
Use Camel Case in naming convention and/or separate with underscores where
10 Design 🗆
appropriate
11 Design Have the designed reviewed by a peer to catch your blind spots 🗆
Update Company Information with correct contact information, timezone, default
12 Build 🗆
language, currency and locale in your Salesforce Org
13 Build Configure & use ‘My Domain’ in your Salesforce Org 🗆
Create custom objects and fields judiciously. Always consider the existing data
14 Build 🗆
model and fields before deciding to create a new one
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 Salesforce Admin Best Practices
SNo. Phase Best Practice Following?
Don’t over-customize and over-use standard objects (e.g. case object). Sometimes
15 Build 🗆
you will be better off creating custom objects.
Reduce technical debt whenever you get the opportunity (e.g. when
16 Build 🗆
adding/updating a component)
Always use the “Description” field when defining the metadata (e.g. custom
17 Build objects, fields etc.) in Salesforce. Use it to document the purpose of the 🗆
component, where it is used, integration with any external system etc.
Fill ‘Help’ text on custom fields to guide users on what information is
18 Build 🗆
captured/displayed in these fields and make it more user friendly
19 Build Setup field history tracking on important fields in different objects 🗆
Restrict the number of validation rules on an object and/or enforce validation rules
20 Build at different stages of record life cycle. The system must be easy for users to use, 🗆
otherwise they won’t use it at all
21 Build Have only one Process Builder per object 🗆
22 Build Use Record Types in validation rules to avoid conflict 🗆
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 Salesforce Admin Best Practices
SNo. Phase Best Practice Following?
Don’t hard code values in configuration and code. Use custom labels, custom
23 Build 🗆
settings or custom metadata as appropriate
24 Build Don’t hardcode profile names in validation rules. Use Custom Permissions instead 🗆
When defining picklists, choose the option “Strictly enforce picklist values” to
25 Build 🗆
ensure data quality
Follow the principle of least privilege for granting access to users, including
26 Build 🗆
integration user. Give them access to only what they need and nothing more
Ensure that ‘External Sharing Model’ for all Objects is not set to Public Read or
27 Build 🗆
Public Read/Write (Setup -> Sharing Settings)
Secure System Administrator’s access through Login IP Ranges, Two-Factor
28 Build 🗆
Authentication or both.
Be careful when granting delete permission on objects to users. Organizations
29 Build generally prefer to mark the record as ‘Inactive’ or ‘Archived’ rather than allowing 🗆
users to delete the records
Do not give ‘View All Data’ or ‘Modify All Data’ to anyone except system
30 Build 🗆
Administrators
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 Salesforce Admin Best Practices
SNo. Phase Best Practice Following?
Do a peer review of each other’s work to ensure that all the best practices are
31 Build 🗆
being followed before deploying to the QA environment
32 Test Always always always test in a sandbox before making any change in Production 🗆
33 Test Test in all the browsers that your users will be using 🗆
Create test scripts to test the scenarios. Test for both positive and negative
34 Test 🗆
scenarios
35 Test If possible, use a testing automation tool (like Selenium) for regression testing 🗆
If there are custom coding in your project, run Force.com Code Scanner to ensure
36 Test 🗆
that your code adheres to Salesforce coding best practices
Maintain a deployment log to document all deployment steps and specifically the
37 Deploy 🗆
ones that needs to be deployed manually
38 Deploy For larger/critical deployments do a dry run of the deployment in another sandbox 🗆
Maintain proper documentation at all times. This includes user requirements,
39 Deploy solution design document, technical design document, data model, deployment 🗆
log, test scripts
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 Salesforce Admin Best Practices
SNo. Phase Best Practice Following?
Use a proper ticketing system (you can consider JIRA here as well) to capture, track
40 Post Go-Live 🗆
& resolve all issues reported by users
Install Data Quality Dashboards from AppExchange & monitor the quality of the
41 Post Go-Live 🗆
data
42 Post Go-Live Install Adoption Dashboards from AppExchange and monitor user adoption 🗆
At least one a month, perform Salesforce Health Check and take corrective actions
43 Post Go-Live 🗆
as recommended by the health check report (Setup -> Health Check)
Run Optimizer Report monthly / quarterly to keep an eye on the health of your
44 Post Go-Live 🗆
Salesforce Org (Setup -> Optimizer)
Weekly/monthly review, test and activate the Critical Updates (Setup -> Critical
45 Post Go-Live 🗆
Updates)
Quarterly review the sandboxes your organization has and either delete or refresh
46 Post Go-Live 🗆
these sandboxes (Setup -> Sandboxes)
Log a ticket with Salesforce Support to enable ‘API Client Whitelisting’ to explicitly
47 Post Go-Live 🗆
control which 3rd Party Apps can connect to Salesforce
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 Salesforce Admin Best Practices
SNo. Phase Best Practice Following?
Setup ‘Compliance Bcc Email’ to bcc all emails sent out from Salesforce to a
48 Post Go-Live compliance email address as per your organization’s security policy (Setup -> 🗆
Compliance BCC Email)
Setup ‘API Usage Notification’ to receive alerts on when your Salesforce Org
49 Post Go-Live exceeds a specified limit for the number of APIs requests made in a specific span of 🗆
hours (Setup -> API Usage Notifications)
Setup ‘Apex Exception Email’ to receive the notifications when Apex code
50 Post Go-Live 🗆
encounters unhandled exceptions (Setup -> Apex Exception Email)
Periodically review the login history data to identify any anomaly in the login
51 Post Go-Live attempts. This can help discover any brute force attack in Salesforce (Setup -> 🗆
Login History)
Schedule Data Export to take a backup of your Salesforce Org data at least once a
52 Post Go-Live 🗆
week. (Setup -> Data Export)
Quarterly check licenses under Company Information to ensure that your
53 Post Go-Live 🗆
organization is using the all the bought licenses (Setup -> Company Information)

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 Features & Functionalities Recommendation
SNo. Rather Than Using This Consider Using This
1 Classic Interface Lightning Interface
2 Visualforce / Lightning Component Lighting Web Component
3 Workflow Rule Process Builder
4 Trigger Process Builder and/or Flow
5 Custom Wizard Style UI Flows
6 Trigger (for Duplicate check) Duplicate Management
7 Custom Setting of ‘List’ Type Custom Metadata
8 Remote Site Settings Named Credentials
9 Notes Enhanced Notes
10 Attachments Salesforce Files
11 Email Enhanced Email
12 Named Based Checks (i.e. Profile Name) Custom Permission
13 Multiple profile with little differences Permission sets

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 Features & Functionalities Recommendation
SNo. Rather Than This Consider Using This
14 Assigning Permission Sets Individually to Users Permission Set Groups
15 Custom Objects for Archiving Data Big Objects
16 Same picklist across different objects Picklist value sets (i.e Global Picklists)
17 Integration (Polling) Platform Events or Change Data Capture
18 Using Username/Password in Integration OAuth using Connected Apps
19 Customization/AppExchange Packages for Survey Salesforce Surveys

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 Document Change Log
Version Changes

1.0 First Release

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