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The record does not exist, duplicate values, cannot view data, failed to upload, unhandled exceptions, Syntax error – Ahhh! Yes Admins, lurking around your Salesforce Organisation can be some scary phenomena waiting to attack you from all Objects. While these unwanted errors may occur, the aftershock of such threats should not be long lasting. There are some horror stories however that can be a little more tricky and mind boggling to figure out. Here’s a horror story that will have you running to the safety of your permissions sets!
It all started off with an innocent request, ‘Can I have Admin rights’. With your busy schedule, you take a shortcut to let the requested user have their way to resolve/implement a request that you were unable to do at the time. With the greatest intentions your assign them the System Admin Profile. Dun dun duun!
It isn’t long before you start to notice strange happenings. First a few fields start moving around the page layouts. Then you notice an app has been installed from the AppExchange and you start to question yourself – ‘Did I do that, it’s handy, but when did it get installed?’ But due to your busy work schedule, you soon forget about it.
Then things get a little spookier. Records disappear, users float higher than you in the Role Hierarchy, a new Object has appeared, Fields are being updated by themselves. It’s all too much! As you are about to scream, you wake it up to find it was all a nightmare. But, one that could very well become a living nightmare.
To to avoid losing control of your org here are some spooktacular steps I would take to figure out/prevent paranormal activity in my Salesforce org:-
If you haven’t implemented a basic project management tool, than something great like Jira will most certainly help.
You can stay on top of; your EPICS, the big jobs like installing new apps from the AppExchange; your Sprints, the smaller jobs that make up the epics; your stories, the littlest jobs that are assigned to Admins and Developers to complete.
If you are not using a project management methodology the above mentioned suggestions, very lightly covers the Agile method, which I use and LOVE!
Get the easiest start with Agile ever by buying this book.
Your saviour to finding the when/what /who when it comes to changes being made in your org – Audit Trails. You can; See who created and last modified a record; Review a list of successful and failed login attempts; Track changes to selected fields, and more importantly, Admins can view the Setup Audit Trail which enables you to see any modifications made to your orgs config.
If changes are required in your Live Org, always, ALWAYS, make these changes in your Sandbox and upload the tested changes using – Change Sets. That way you can work more closely with your development team during deployments and have a deeper insight into your company’s org configuration. Not aware of Change Sets, then here is a Trail for you to sink you teeth into.
Use delegated administration to assign limited administrative privileges to users in your organisation who aren’t administrators. The delegated Admin is able to; Create and edit users in specified roles and subordinate roles; Reset passwords; Unlock users; Assign users to specified profiles and permission sets and more! Especially handy should the Administrator need to focus on other Administrative tasks.
Spook you next week.
Jenny
Our independent tech team has been servicing enterprise clients for over 15 years from our HQ in Bristol, UK. Let’s see how we can work together and get the most out of your Salesforce implementation.
