Salesforce

Salesforce is the most trusted name in the world of CRM software. Salesforce has taken customizability to the next level by allowing its customers to choose between two different user interfaces: Salesforce Lightning, and Salesforce Classic. Salesforce Classic as the name suggests is the original and older version whereas Salesforce Lightning is the new version that carries several new features that aren’t available with ‘Classic’. What’s new in Salesforce Lightning? Salesforce Lightning is the latest version of the salesforce org’s interface. The intuitive and intelligent design will empower users to navigate the platform seamlessly and work with greater efficiency. This will influence better decisions and help teams to close more deals From Campaign, Leads, Contacts, and Accounts to Opportunity, Pricebook, and Products, etc everything has been re-organized to provide a modern visual appeal. The intent behind redesigning the interface was to make the tool,as well as the data more accessible to Sales Reps so that they can close more deals that too quickly. Let’s take a quick look at the Opportunity display screens images displayed below to draw a clear comparison between the two versions i.e. Salesforce classic and Salesforce Lightning: Salesforce Lightning Screen Salesforce Classic Screen Listed below are some features which have been introduced in SalesforceLightning: Customizable Home Page: Users can now customize their home page. Now they can show the information they need the most on the Homepage. Enhanced Reporting Lightning has the Lightning Report Builder which helps in creating improved reports. It also provides improved and efficient visual reporting which saves time involved in creating and reading reports. Columns on Dashboard In Lightning, Dashboards are not confined to 3 columns anymore. Activity Timeline With this Sales Reps can now easily keep a track of their planned and accomplished activities for a specific lead, account or opportunity. Lighting Experience Lightning Experience comes with no extra cost.   In the below image you can see list of new features introduced in Salesforce Lightning. Source of the above table – https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/lex_migration_introduction/lex_migration_introduction_rightforme   Key Benefits of Salesforce Lightning: Integration with Einstein AnalyticsEinstein Integration is available in both the Classic and Lightning Version of Salesforce for creating reports and dashboards, but the Lightning version has more integration with Einstein as compared to the Classic.Einstein is a game-changer in itself as it carries its own database that fetches the data from salesforce instance and updates reports and dashboards each hour automatically. It even comes with features like: Export Dashboard as a picture. Ability to edit widget on dashboard. Ability to do advance formula calculation. Improved Security Salesforce Lightning comes with enhanced security features like ‘Locker Service’. Locker Service helps in safeguarding the platform from malicious data by preventing Lightning components to interact with each other. Besides this ‘Locker’ uses the Content Security Policy to prevent cross-site scripting, which helps in avoiding code injecting attacks. Opportunities Kanban View It is a visualization tool for opportunities. In the Kanban view, Opportunities are displayed as cards. The lanes/columns in Kanban view represent the different stages of the Opportunity. Sales Reps can now change the Opportunity stage by simply dragging them from one column to another. Sales Reps can even customize, and personalize alerts on key deals.   New Design One of the major differences between the old and the new version of the salesforce is the User Interface. The Salesforce Lightning offers a better UI experience to its users as it includes features like news about key accounts and deals and performance charts, which were unavailable in the Classic version. No Extra Cost Salesforce Lightning doesn’t cost an extra penny more than theSalesforce Classic and remains pretty much the same. Long-time users of the Salesforce Classic can move to Salesforce Lightning without paying anything extra for a new license. Features Unavailable in Salesforce Lightning Listed below are some of the features that are unavailable in the new version: Custom JavaScript Buttons: Custom buttons that have JavaScript running in the backend in the Classic version will no longer be supported in Lightning. In the Lightning you will be able to replace JavaScript content by using tools like Process Builder, Visual Workflow, etc. Apps from AppExchange: Many apps that were working in theSalesforce Classic will not be supported in Salesforce Lightning unless they are made Lightning Ready. If any app is not supported in Salesforce Lightning, even then you can continue to use them in Salesforce Classic. Search: Salesforcehas completely revamped the way search used to work in Salesforce Lightning by removing the Sidebar Search and the Search All button. Which one should we Opt for? As the sayings goes “Old is Gold but New is Diamond”, in the same way Salesforce Classic was something huge in the early 2000’s but with revamped UI, enhanced analytics, better security, etc. Salesforce Lightning has become a preferred choice. Though the new version i.e Salesforce Lightning offers several new features over its classic counterpart, it’s important to measure the pros and cons of both the system before making a shift. About Girikon – As a Salesforce consulting partner, Girikon is an excellent Salesforce Implementation Partner as it helps businesses in the effective implementation of the Salesforce CRM.

Customers continue to be the most important assets for any organization and to ensure long-term relationship with your customers, it’s important to cater to their needs in the best possible way. One of the most effective ways of doing so, is to constantly upgrade your products and services, in a way that fulfils the evolving requirement of your customers. In other words, create new version of your products through new releases and upgrades. If you are leveraging the Salesforce platform, you will have to keep pace with all the upgrades that it keeps releasing time and again. What is Salesforce Upgrade? Salesforce releases new upgrade from time to time and to improve the performance, logic, and usability of your software, it is essential to upgrade it to the new version. Besides releasing regular upgrades that could be used to improve a products functionality and performance, Salesforce has illustrated seamless upgrades that are critical to customer success. Salesforce takes up to five minutes for upgrades and users will not see any difference when using the new Salesforce release. Changes with the new release will not activate by default and only salesforce admin can activate the new features using the Setup menu. What is the Impact on Interface? During the upgrade, our customizations are preserved, and Salesforce gives the same effects having the same consequences. During the upgrade, the Session Id is inactivated, and if any interface is running at that time, we’ll get ‘INVALID_SESSION_ID’ error. We cannot run our batches during the upgrade period, as the upgrade window can break our batch, we’ll have both valid and invalid data in our org. To manage this, what we need to do is: Monitor the validation/deployment results and check the post-deployment steps. If we need to run a batch after deployment checks the execution result of the batch. If it failed, we have to run it again. This has an impact on our scheduling (stop cascade batches and implement a retry every 30 minutes for example) We need to plan our batches after or before the upgrade period. We need to implement to run the same batch once again to continue the process without altering the data already processed. For a batch update to keep data consistency, we need to use transactions. It is native for batch Apex, but when using the API (custom development, ETL connector (i.e. TALEND, dataloader, etc.), we are not able to keep data integrity. The only way to keep it is by creating Apex Webservices that will be accessed by our batch. Is there any impact on Connected Users? During upgrade all the users need to invalidate their Session Idso that they are unable to connect the Salesforce until the upgrade process has finished. Users receive an error message letting them know that the service is unavailable during the upgrade and are prompted to log in again when the upgrade is complete. To manage this, we need to do: Share an upgrade timeline plan with all users so they know when you will upgrade, and how often Inform the user when they can log in into the system Share the new document, if any, if there is a change in the Salesforce UI/UX Best Practices to be followed If the Salesforce upgrade is not planned, there might be cases where end-users may not be able to access Salesforce after the completion of the update. In order to avoid unexpected service disruptions, we may need to take the following actions: 1) Enable “My Domain” NOTE: “My Domain” is required for customers who have requested the org migration. 2) Update the hard-coded references if any, for e.g. test-abc.salesforce.com and make sure to update them to the right URLs (for example, <yourdomain>.salesforce.com, abc.salesforce.com) prior to the org migration. Also, if there is any hardcoded Id in the code, make sure to update them dynamically. 3) If the Salesforce org has set up corporate network settings or any email security filters to restrict the access to only certain IP ranges, make sure to update the lists to include the newest ranges. You can whitelist the IP ranges in the Network Setting of Salesforce. 4) If there is an issue in integration following the maintenance, prepare to refresh integrations. Why to Upgrade and what are the benefits? Salesforce has the capability to work with earlier released features even if those features are supplanted by new functionality. Salesforce keeps all customers on a single version—i.e. the most recent version—of the product. Therefore, Salesforce provides the same experience, coolest Feature, advancement on compatibility and the latest bug fixes. Conclusion It is very much required to upgrade the Salesforce version to the latest release as it can eliminate the technical risks involved during the implementation. We understand that there could be a service disruption for couple of minutes but it is must have for your organisation since it could also increase your productivity. As we know that Change is the only Constant, hence we all must go with the flow and suggest the users/clients to upgrade to the newest version as soon as it is live. About Girikon:  Girikon is a Salesforce Consulting Partner, committed to deliver excellence by providing customers with wide array of quality services including Salesforce implementation, Salesforce consulting and Salesforce support.

Introduction CPQ stands for Configuration, Price and Quote.It is a sales tool for companies to provide accurate pricing of the products with any given product configuration. CPQ helps sales rep to provide discounts, increment or decrement in the quantities, customizations on products while preparing the quote. This feature allows sales rep to quote prices quickly and more accurately. Purpose of the Document The purpose of this document is to provide the knowledge on CPQ and CPQ product pricing with attributesto the user. In this, user can understand below important topic related to CPQ pricing with attributes: Introduction of CPQ Why we need CPQ pricing based on attributes How can we achieve this? Benefits of CPQ pricing with attributes Need of CPQ Pricing based on attributes In most of the business there will be products which don’t have any configuration. We can easily handle those kinds of products in salesforce because there will be nothing other than products and their Prices. But now a days business and industries are growing rapidly. This growth introduces products with some specific configuration. For Example: Let’s take the example of clothing industry; according to below table we have a product(Polo T-shirt) and we have some fields with respect to that product (Size, Color, and Price). Here Size, Color and Priceare the attributes of Product. After selecting the product, user need to select the corresponding attributes and their values of the product and user will notice the price will occur once he/she selects all the attributes of the product. Also, if user changes the values of the attributes then Price will automatically change for that particular product. Product Name Size Color Price Polo T-shirt L White $25 Polo T-shirt M Off White $30 Polo T-shirt L Black $15 Polo T-shirt M Grey $20 This kind of requirement is difficult to fulfill without CPQ attributes, because user needs to create each product separately with every single attribute. But with CPQ Attributes user needs to create only 1 Product and all the configuration can be mapped to the corresponding attributes.  Configuration Attributes Configuration attributes are used to gather information during sales and perform some product actions (like showing / hiding / selection products, performing validations / alerting the sales agent) or pricing actions. A single product can have many configuration attributes, depending upon the variations in their fields. How to setup CPQ Product Attributes for Salesforce CPQ Below are the steps for setting up the CPQ product pricing based on Attributes: Step 1: Create a custom object ‘CPQ Product Attribute’ Fig 1.1 Step 2:Create the required field in the CPQ Product Attribute object, which will be displayed on the Product Attribute Step 3: Set the Page Layout and Search Layout accordingly Step 4: Create the required attributes field in the Quote Line Item (SBQQ__QuoteLine__c) object Step 5:Go to field sets in Quote line object and add the new field in that by dragging Step 6:Create a Price Rule for copying List Price to Quote Line Item, based on Product Attributes. This will automatically display the List Price on the selection of fields Step 7:For creating the new product attributes for a product: Create a product in salesforce Fig 1.2 Make the Price Book entry at 0 pricing, as shown below Fig 1.3 Now upload the list of CPQ Attributes from Data Loader into the org, by selecting the object as ‘CPQ Product Attribute’ Fig 1.4 This will create the entries within the CPQ attribute with the entries as uploaded Fig 1.5   Step 8: Now create an opportunity and choose the pricebook in which you have entered the above products Step 9:Create a Quote and select the CPQ product. On selection of the product, all its attributes will get displayed. Due to the pricing rule, we will be able to see the list price displaying automatically on the List_Price attribute Fig 1.6 Use Case: HTC Media ltd runs a small Media House on a digital platform and publishes one typeof magazine and oneweekly newspaper. They target youth in magazines and children’s in weekly newspaper. They publish their products with different specifications. They earn their revenue based on sale of these products. Customer can take subscription based on their interests. Product Name Language Size Subscription in Months Price Tech Info English Full 3, 6, 9, 12 months $15, $12, $9, $7 Learn & Grow weekly newspaper English Full 3, 6, 9, 12 months $15, $12, $9, $7 Tech Info French Full 3, 6, 9, 12 months $18, $15, $12, $9 Learn & Grow weekly newspaper French Full 3, 6, 9, 12 months $18, $15, $12, $9 Tech Info English Half 3, 6, 9, 12 months $10, $8, $5, $3 Learn & Grow weekly newspaper English Half 3, 6, 9, 12 months $10, $8, $5, $3 Tech Info French Half 3, 6, 9, 12 months $12, $10, $8, $6 Learn & Grow weekly newspaper French Half 3, 6, 9, 12 months $12, $10, $8, $6   According to the table, we have one type of Magazine and one weekly newspaper as product. Language, Size, Subscription in Months and Price are the attributes of the products. As we can see in this table on the basis of attribute, price of the product will generate. If any of the attribute is changed by the customer or user, the price will change. Now we will try to understand how we will achieve this requirement without CPQ attributes. In order to achieve this, we need to create each product with every single attribute in Salesforce system. So in this scenario, one has to create 32 different entries of products in Salesforce in order to capture every attribute. Sr. No Product Name Price 1 Tech info English Full 3 months $15 2 Tech info English Full 6 months $12 3 Tech info English Full 9 months $9 4 Tech info English Full 12 months          $7 5 Tech info English half 3 months $10 6 Tech info English half 6 months $8 7 Tech info English half 9 months $5 8 Tech info English half 12 months $3 9 Tech info French Full 3 months $18 10 Tech info French Full 6 months $15  11   Tech info French Full 9 months  $12 12 Tech info French Full 12 months $9 13 Tech info French Half 3 months $12 14 Tech info French Half 6 months $10   15 Tech info French Half 9 months $8 16 Tech info French Half 12 months $6 17 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English Full 3 months $15 18 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English Full 6 months $12 19 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English Full 9 months $9  20 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English                  Full 12 months  $7 21 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 3 months $18 22 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 6 months $15 23 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 9 months         $12 24 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 12 months $9 25 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English Full 3 months $10 26 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English Full 6 months $8 27 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English Full 9 months $5 28 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper English                  Full 12 months $3 29 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 3 months $12 30 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 6 months $10   31 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 9 months $8 32 Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper French Full 12 months $6   As you can see without CPQ attribute it would be a very tedious task for anyone to create products. In this scenario we have only 2 products with limited number of attributes and their values. But what happen if we have many products with multiple different attributes and with different values. To resolve this kind of complexity, CPQ Attributes functionality comes in the picture. User need to create CPQ Product Attribute All the required fields will be created under this object. Add the same fields to the field in the Quote Line Item object. Add the required value to the field in CPQ Product Attribute Add the same value to the field in the Quote Line Item object. Add the required field in the Price Rule. Make the Price Book entry at 0 pricing. Now upload the list of CPQ Attributes from Data Loader into the org, by selecting the object as ‘CPQ Product Attribute’. As we understood how to set up Configuration Attributes in above section, now we will understand how product will display on Product selection window. Product listed on product selection window: Tech info Learn & Grow weekly Newspaper All the corresponding Attributes will display on the QLI after selecting the product. Benefit of CPQ pricing based on Product Attributes:   It is easy to manage the products in Salesforce with the help of CPQ attributes.  As we have seen in use case without CPQ attributes we need to create separate product on the basis of attributes and their values. This problem can be overcome with CPQ attribute. Easy to generate reports on the basis of attributes. User can pull the report on the basis of attributes in order to get the revenue information. Change the Product Prices for a campaign. User needs to download the existing CPQ Product Attributes sheet and replace the campaign with the new one and update the prices for the respective product. No need to remember the prices of the product on the basis of attributes and their values. After selecting all the attributes of the product on QLI, price will come automatically. In this case, user doesn’t remember price of the product. The view on QLI will be compact with less number of products. QLI is always manageable with less number of products. Also, it will be easy to select the product when count is less. Conclusion: CPQ pricing is, without any doubt is a great feature of salesforce for evaluating the pricing of the products. CPQ pricing with product attributes fulfills the need of a business when market demands a lot of customizations and specifications on any product. CPQ makes it easy for user to manage the products and their prices when different types of attributes are present. User doesn’t need to struggle with the attributes, number of products and how pricing could achieve in salesforce. In a nutshell, CPQ pricing with product attribute is the solution for attributes related issues. About Girikon: Girikon is a reputed name in the Salesforce consulting and Salesforce implementation space. Over the years they have carved a niche for themselves by catering to clients requirement by providing them with quality services and solutions.

Are you facing the following challenges while migrating data to Salesforce? Tired of deleting the duplicates manually in Excel? Excel keeps hanging up because of large data? Applying VLOOKUP again and again for the same data set? Duplicating the whole data again for UAT and Production environment? Cannot apply complex transformation to your data set? If you have answered yes to most or all of the questions above, then the solution to your problem is TALEND. What is TALEND? TALEND is an open source software integration platform which helps you to turn data into business insights effortlessly. When we hear the term “Data Migration”, questions like – What is data migration? Why is it needed? How is it done? etc., pop up in our mind. This article addresses all the basic queries on Data Migration along with the reasons for choosing TALEND as an ETL tool for Salesforce migration. Which tool should be used in Salesforce Data Migration? Selecting the right data migration tool depends largely on your needs. There are several data migration tools, but they won’t be of help if they  fail to meet the specific goals and objectives of your company.. Listed below are some points that you might need to consider while choosing an ETL tool. Let’s understand the Data Migration process before we go ahead and address the aforementioned issues. What is Data Migration and How Does TALEND Fit in? As the name itself suggests, data migration is the process in which data is transferred from one system to the other. These transfer systems can be data storage types or file formats. Data from the old system is transferred to a new system through a particular mapping pattern. The above diagram is a job in TALEND showing how simple it is to extract data from a Source, apply any tansfomation logic and push into different Target destinations. How is it done? Source Data: TALEND can be used for importing the raw data from different sources, andprocess multiple types and formats of Source data for exampleFile, Database, CRM or API. Data Cleansing: In this process we perform the following steps: Detect and Correct (or remove) corrupt or inaccurate records from the dataset. Identify incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate or irrelevant parts of the data. Replace, modify, or delete the dirty or coarse data. Data Deduplication: After Cleansing the data, Duplicate copies of data are removed from the dataset based on a pre-approved field set. Data Transformation: In this process we transform the data from the Source to match the Target Data Upload: After the transformation the data is uploaded to the Target system in which TALEND supports multiple platforms for example Excel, SQL server or Salesforce org. Why choose TALEND? Open Source Software: There are no cost implications for using “Talend Open Studio” or “TOS” since it is an open-source software. Cost is applied if there is a demand for joint data collaboration. Multiple Source/Target Format supported: We can extract the data directly from Salesforce, transform it, and push it directly into Salesforce without the need of an Excel or any Database. If in any case we do not have an Org to Org connection, we can still extract the data using Excel, manipulate, and load the data into Salesforce using TALEND since it supports all the Excel formats. Faster: We can process and transform the data much faster than Excel as TALEND provides functionalities in which we can change the format, append new data onto existing one and create or remove columns on the go. Reusable: In TALEND once the job is created the same job can be used for different target locations we do not need to transform the whole data again for different environments like (UAT or Production). In the case of any future modification we just need to append the same job and we will be spared from going through the whole process of transforming the data again. Supports Complex Data Transformation: TALEND provides the tools to perform highly complex transformations and manipulations on the data. It also provided the functionality to write custom scripts in JAVA wherever there is a need for custom transformations It can also process huge amounts of data which is difficult to manage in Excel. Conclusion: While there are several other tools for data migrations in the market, TALEND has become a preferred choice as it provides with the functionality of accessing data more easily, processing it more efficiently and moving it across various target systems very easily. About Girikon:  Girikon is a Salesforce consulting and development company offering quality IT services to clients across the globe. Based out in Phoenix, Arizona, the company has presence across Australia and India.  

Customer relationship is the key to Organizational growth and so it should be managed as efficiently as possible. Salesforce CRM can be leveraged to remain more connected to your customers while ensure better business performance. The user can do some changes in their salesforce environment according to the requirement of the customer/client to ensure that it continues to run efficiently and to improve the business. These changes can be as small as the minor updates to existing features or can be as large as new application development project. All these changes have one thing in common i.e. deployment because once the development is done and tested, it will be deployed to production. A salesforce deployment is essentially the final stage in any project, during which changes made to your instance are pushed live. NEED The changes made should be deployed to production once you are satisfied with the solution you have built (tested on UAT) but it can be challenging for the user if any of the followingis not found after deployment, Any updated or a new Component or Class which is required. Required permission is not assigned to any component or class or to any user after the deployment. HOW TO CATER THE NEED? To overcome the challenges, you must create a proper strategy and a deployment checklist. With the help ofa checklist, you can easily track the TO-DO changes that need to be done on production environment and it can be prepared during the UAT deployment. UNDER THE HOOD AND TECHNICAL INSIGHTS In order to make sure you have zero defects during deployment, there are a few best practices every business should observe and enforce to ensure the success of their Salesforce deployment. This would require usersto create two deployment checkliststo ensure smooth and hassle-free deployment Deployment checklist should be prepared in two different ways: Pre Deployment Checklist – Before Deployment Ask the user/client– Before deploying any changes to production,users/ clients should be asked about system usage so that if any error occurs, they will not be affected by it. Mostly it is done on weekends to have minimum or zero impact and the users/clients are already informed about that. Prepare excel sheet-While developing a new functionality or updating anexistingone in our sandbox which will be further moved into production,you can create an excel file where developer/admin can write the names of all the apex classes, visual forcepages, lightning components,apex triggers, validation rules, workflow rules, custom objects, fields etc. which have been created or modified for deployment. The following actions must be covered: Creation of a User Profile User Creation Creation of Roles based on the user hierarchy provided by the customer Creation of a Public group and provide access to the newly created user Roles Creation of Lead Queues and provide access to the newly created Public group Add Field value for the new Business in ‘Commercial Team’ field of Users, Campaign etc. Ring Fencing of Data; Create Sharing Rules on Accounts, Opportunities, Campaign so that no other user outside the business can view the data Creation of Price book based on the events; Share the price book with Public group Creation the Price Rules and Product Rules, if the application is CPQ. This sheet will reduce the risk of missing any above actions need to be done by the user during the deployment. Create test scripts– During the deployment process,minimum 75 % coverageis required for the test class to deploy with its apex class or apex trigger. It is highly recommended that you create a test class just after the creation of apex class or apex trigger and try to achieve coverage of 75 % or as much as possible to avoid coverage error during deployment. Backup of existing features – Take a full export of the production area where deployment has to be done. In case, something goes wrong,thenyou would have the backup to upload the data again. Disable email deliverability – Mass changes can trigger lot of system mails and notification, so disable the email deliverability during deployment to ensure your users aren’t bombarded with an avalanche of mails. Deactivate rules – Deactivate the validation rules, workflow rules, flows, process builders anything that might impact changes or prevent them from deploying correctly. Make a list of what you’ve deactivated so you can reactivate it once the deployment is completed. Make sure that you run tests afteryou’ve reactivated the previous ones andthe new ones to ensure a usergets a fully functioning environment. Prepare training and documentation – Your users may end up getting confused if you continue making changes without updating them. To avoid any type of confusion, it’s better to organize training sessions and prepare necessary documents so that the changes can be easily understood by them.                         Post Deployment Checklist – After Deployment Reactivate-Reactivate the rules or flows that you have deactivated before the deployment. CPQ Setup – If the deployment is of a whole new CPQ application then setup the CPQ configuration,create the Quote template and assign the permission to the users of this application. Assign Permissions to users – Assign permissions sets/access to the users so that they can perform the required operations which they want to perform. Visibility of Fields and Components – The fields and components which are deployed must be visible to the assigned users who should have the permission to access them. Unit Testing – After reactivating the rules and flows and assigning the permissions to the users,it’s important to perform unit testing on production to make sure all the changes arein working mode. Provide Support – If any functionality is not working or users want some changes, provide support to the users so that they can explain their concern to the support team. BENEFITS: Salesforce deployment is much more than just pushing a configuration. It isn’t complete until you’ve thoroughly evaluated it for quality assurance in production.You definitely don’t want to impact the business and the customer relationship. The‘Deployment Checklist’ creates a reliable point of reference for testing and to not encounter any challenges in your deployment. It will give you the probability of having no error on production andwill increase the efficiency of the projects deliveringand will make it more effective. CONCLUSION: Deployment can be a complex and time-intensive process. Rather than jumping into it, it’s prudent to scrupulously plan everything ahead to ensure that everything is accounted for before going LIVE. We should carefully consider the implications of the deployment and take sufficient time to build and test different scenarios before starting the actual deployment, and for that ‘Deployment Checklist’ comes up as a suitable solution. About Girikon:  As a Salesforce consulting partner, Girikon is committed to deliver excellence by providing high-end Salesforce consulting, Salesforce implementation and Salesforce support services. 

Maintaining effective customer relationships is the cornerstone of every business undertaking. In fact, it has become a key determiner of success for organizations. Today, forward-thinking organizations are leveraging robust technology solutions like Salesforce to provide superior service to their customers. As a cloud-based CRM, Salesforce helps organizations to accelerate their sales, grow customer loyalty, and augment their marketing capabilities. Most interestingly, it provides teams across an organization the ability to access the latest customer details for streamlining business processes and creating quality services and solutions. But, for this to happen, organizations require developing a Salesforce integration strategy to ensure that it partners or connects with other important systems, applications, and services. Successful third party integration is critical to turn it into a valuable business tool. The process of integration is beneficial both for users, as well as the Salesforce platform. Besides helping the platform to expand its services, integration services help in improving the operational functionality of the platform, which ultimately allows organizations to increase their customer base. It makes sense to engage with a reliable Salesforce consulting partner to know more about Salesforce integration services. What is the Need for Integration?  Today, several businesses have realized the significance of integrating their Salesforce platform with other systems and are thus trying to develop point-to-point connections with adjacent systems. However, such integrations aren’t sustainable as there are several touchpoints, which, when integrated with Salesforce, can provide value to an organization such as developing partner ecosystems, dealing with legacy systems, and more. All these will help in uncovering new opportunities to add value to your customers etc. Considering the variety of Salesforce integration needs, the integration process might become challenging and can be addressed using common integrating patterns. Common Salesforce Integration Patterns Enlisted below are some of the most commonly incorporated integration patterns that can be used to facilitate seamless third-party integrations: Migration Pattern: Data migration involves moving a data set from one system to the other. The migration pattern involved in integration allows developers to create migration services that are automated and allow the developed functionality to be shared across all the teams in an organization. Developers have the option to set configuration parameters to get access to API calls. This will provide seamless migration of Salesforce data in and out of the platform either basis as and when required via API or on command basis. Developers can also develop reusable services for facilitating periodic migrations while saving considerable time for the users. Data migration pattern can be utilized for other Salesforce integration such as data migration from legacy systems to Salesforce, Consolidating CRM systems, creating data back-up for customers, and more. The migration pattern is particularly useful while handling vast volumes of data. Broadcast Pattern: It is a one-way synchronization process that helps users to move data from the source location to multiple systems in real-time. As compared to the traditional 1:1 relationship, this pattern implies 1: many connections. Unlike the migration pattern, the broadcast pattern is more efficient as it functions on a transactional basis and facilitates faster processing of data, besides keeping it secure and up-to-date across all the platforms it has been shared across. It is recommended to ensure the reliability of this pattern as it lacks human supervision, and the majority of processes are initiated through push-notifications that are pre-scheduled. Aggregation Pattern: In contrast to the broadcast pattern, the aggregation pattern helps in migrating data from multiple sources to a single destination system. This pattern does away with the hassle of running various integrations regularly besides ensuring more reliability and data security. The template created due to aggregation patterns can be used by users to merge multiple data sets for creating reports in different file formats. Some of the most important uses of the aggregation pattern include: Creation of orchestration API that pulls data from multiple sources and processes it into a single response. Creation of a central data repository that could be used for compliance and auditing purposes. Bi-directional Sync Pattern: This pattern brings together multiple data sets across the different systems, causing them to act as a single system while allowing them to acknowledge the presence of other data sets that are being transmitted. This integration pattern comes in handy when different systems are required to accomplish other functions along with their specific tasks in the same data set. The usage of this integration pattern allows users to have a real-time view of the transmitted across the systems. Some of the use cases of this system include: Integrating multiple systems to Salesforce that leads to improved operational efficiency. Streamlined quote to cash while serving as a system of records for data that requires to be synchronized. Co-relation Pattern: While this pattern is quite similar to the bi-directional sync pattern, it differs in the fact that it singles out data sets that intersect with each other and provides bi-directional synchronization of scoped data provided that data occurs in the system naturally. This will lead to the creation of new records if they are found in all other systems apart from the concerned one. This pattern only synchronizes objects as long as they are present in both systems naturally and doesn’t discern the origin of the data object. This integration pattern is useful in cases when two systems wish to share data only if both the systems have records that represent the same contacts or objects. The Bottom Line:  Clearly, there are numerous benefits of Salesforce integration for managing data within enterprises. However, to get started using these patterns, you must get in touch with an experienced Salesforce implementation partner who can help you make the right choice. So, develop long-term and strong customer relationships by gaining a unified view of your customers through Salesforce integration.

Data loss poses a severe threat to businesses of all sizes. When sensitive data is compromised or stolen, the financial health, productivity, and reputation of a company take a hit. As data volume is increasing exponentially, opportunities for thefts and breach of proprietary information are rising significantly. While businesses are adopting strategies to prevent the loss of their confidential data, it isn’t entirely possible to avoid the same. While organizations using robust CRM systems like ‘Salesforce’ might develop a false sense of security as they store their data in the cloud, yet these systems aren’t prone to outages. While Salesforce till now provided data back-up recovery services for retrieving lost data, especially in scenarios such as ‘data import’, which might at times go wrong. However, Salesforce is about to cancel its data recovery services by the end of July 2020.  What makes Salesforce retire from their data recovery services?  Salesforce doesn’t consider their data recovery service worthy enough to be continued due to the time and cost involved in retrieving the data. Apart from this, some data cannot be recovered using Salesforce data recovery services, and an excellent example of it is the metadata. In fact, only data as old as three months can be recovered and is recommended as a last resort that, too while recovering large quantities of data. While the Salesforce recovery process requires you to pay a hefty rate of $10,000, it takes several weeks before you receive the CSV file much before you restore data to your org. What’s more bothersome is that Salesforce doesn’t assure of complete retrieval of data. With such poor services, Salesforce finally decided to call off its data recovery services without any replacement.   Alternatives to data recovery services by Salesforce  Salesforce provides three out-of-the-box options that require manual intervention: Data Loader: Using Dataloader, you will be able to export all your data manually. With a developer by your side, you will be able to automate the export process easily. Data Export Wizard: This function enables you to program a downloadable copy of your data. Once the back-up is ready, you will be notified regarding the downloading of the files via email. This allows you with 48 hours to download all the data before they expire.  Reports: The reporting function, just like Data Loader, can be used to export your data. However, running extensive reports can be taxing and time-consuming.  What is the Best Fit? In such a situation, the best approach is to use third-party applications that are available on AppExchange for data recovery and back-up. However, it would help if you looked out for features like multiple snapshots of data, comparison between production and sandboxes, and data hosting solution coupled with a mechanism for querying data. Since, the Salesforce platform is designed to facilitate integration with third-party tools; it provides for a back-up data solution.  Conclusion:   While it isn’t easy to prevent data loss, the good news is that it is easy to avoid the loss of Salesforce data with a robust disaster recovery strategy. Though Salesforce intends to back out from their data recovery services, it certainly provides for a back-up solution.  Girikon – a reputed name in the Salesforce consulting space offers wide array of IT services that can be leveraged by organizations across different sectors to fulfill their specific business needs.