In an earlier post , I mentioned a tool I'm using to import Salesforce data - via SOQL or existing reports - into Excel. This post is more about using that tool, XL-Connector from Xappex . Here, I'll walk through the (simple) process of importing and refreshing a report, and I'll provide a simple VBA macro to automate the refresh. In a future post, I'll expand on that macro to show a friendly view of my opportunity pipeline and a single-page view of how each of my sales reps are doing against a series of KPIs. Importing a report is simple enough. From the XL-Connector tab, select Log In and enter your credentials. I'm using the old id and password (as opposed to SSO), so I provide that along with my 'token'.  (Don't remember your token? Log in to Salesforce via your browser, click on your photo, select Settings, then 'reset my security token'.) Once you're logged in the lock turns green. Back in Excel, on the XL-Connector tab, select

I've put a 'penalty box' on my reps' dynamic dashboard. This section of their dashboard calls out items that they own that require attention. Their penalty box includes issues such as open opportunities with a close date in the past forecasted opportunities with no quote issued open opportunities that include inactive SKUs MQLs that haven't been addressed after some period of time stale opportunities (untouched in, say, 30 days) early-stage opportunities with near-term close dates These are intended to keep the reps honest and help them keep their pipeline clean. But I have my own Salesforce hygiene issues to keep up with. So I've created my own dashboard to keep these front and center. I can't necessarily fix all the issues today (who gets those leads when the territory is vacant?), but I want to fix what I can, and then keep sight of others needing attention. My personal cleanup dashboard includes the following: Open opportunities ow

We've all customized our Salesforce orgs, adding custom fields and placing them on the page layouts, grouping related fields and trying to make the most important fields the most obvious on the page. But it's easy to focus on the body of the page (the 'details' tab in Lightning Experience) and overlook some other layouts that can help you and your users see what matters most. Here, I'll discuss Search Layouts, Compact Layouts, and Related List customizations on the Page Layout. The screenshots here are from a Trailhead org with minimal customizations and not a lot of data. Hopefully you can still appreciate the potential benefits from making these layout customizations in your org. Search Layouts When you perform a search, the result is a list of matching records, whether those are all of a single object type, or a selection of the best matches from different objects. But what fields are shown in the search results? That's governed by each object's

I'm a fan of change sets to migrate my development work from a Salesforce sandbox to production. (Check out the Trailhead module on change sets here ). After I make my updates, I create an outbound change set and add all those updates to the change set. Assuming the deployment settings in my production org allow inbound change sets from the sandbox, I upload from the sandbox to my production org. That change set encapsulates all the updates which will be validated and deployed (or not) together. That is, if the deployment fails, all of the updates get rolled back. After a few minutes (wait even a few minutes beyond when you get the email telling you the upload succeeded), switch to the production org, open Setup and go to the Inbound Change Sets. From there, select the new change set and choose Validate. Once that kicks off, switch to the Deployment Status Page and watch the green circle fill in. Assuming it stays green, the next step is Deploy. Sometimes, however, that circle

Obviously, Salesforce has strong built-in reporting tools. And I'm a big fan of the dashboards, especially filtered dashboards and dynamic dashboards. WAY better than the old approach of creating a unique set of reports and a corresponding dashboard for every conceivable view. Still, I often want to pull my Salesforce data into Excel. This might be for further manipulation / processing, aggregating data that doesn't live in Salesforce, or distribution to non-Salesforce users (hey, those licenses are expensive!). Reporting Tool - XL-Connector: I'm using a new (to me) tool when I have to repeatedly pull Salesforce data into Excel: XL-Connector  (fka Enabler 4 Excel) from Xappex. There's a lot you can do with XL-Connector. My primary use is just to extract data from Salesforce, and this can be done in two ways: reports or SOQL queries. The great part is that once you've captured data into an Excel file, refreshing the data is trivial. I've stored my credential

We use Conga Composer to generate documents out of Salesforce; for those unfamiliar, I describe it as a really smart form-fill using Salesforce as a data source. Our primary use for Composer is quote generation, and the myriad parameters allow us to generate fairly custom quotes for a whole slew of cases (direct or via the channel; new or renewal; show discounts or not, etc., etc.). Conditionally Disable Composer One set of parameters that I've really come to like work in tandem: DC - Disable Conga Execution, and DCL - Disable Conga Execution Label. The idea is that if DC=1, so Composer is disabled, then the value of DCL is displayed to the user. As an example, suppose we have &DC=1&DCL=Opportunity+Is+Closed. When the user attempts to launch Composer, it won't run, but instead will display 'Opportunity Is Closed'. On the other hand, if DC=0 then Composer runs as normal. So how do we use this? As I said, we use Composer mostly for quotes. And there are a