Salesforce Admins: The Environment Hub – Jenny’s Admin Tip #30

Screen Shot 2015-06-18 at 14.27.56As a Salesforce Admin, part of my role is to provide Admin support to my company and our clients. This requires me to access a number of different orgs, Live and Sandbox, several times daily. Now for anyone having to do the same, you’ll know that sometimes logging into these orgs can be problematic. The most obvious hindrance is the ability to remember passwords.

Perish the thought, but unless you have the same password for all your Salesforce organisations, a cheeky reset of the password is ‘generally’ the next step. Now, I know there are a number of external tools out there that can help eliminate this issue, the most obvious that springs to mind as a user of it myself is Lastpass – A password Manager.

Lastpass is great for storing your password in a vault secured environment, however, again I believe this has it’s faults. Most noticeably, the auto-fill form is a little flakey and  sharing of credentials can only be done to those with Lastpass accounts. It’s great for email accounts and any other password restricted site, but for Salesforce there has to be something better. And there is – The Environment Hub.

Admins, if you are looking for a solution to your multiple password woes then here’s why the Environment Hub could be the best option for you:-

Benefits of using it.

If you are not familiar with the Environment Hub (although it’s been around for a few years),  it basically lets you view, connect, create, and log in to multiple Salesforce organisations from one chosen location – the Hub. Here are some other reasons why the Hub is great:-

  • Secure and centralised customers login credential – No more sharing passwords.

  • Eliminates forgetting passwords once the organisation has been added.

  • Single Sign On access for your chosen organisations.

  • Automatically adds any related organisations once the Live org has been added (you will have to add the login credentials).

  • Edit profiles or permission sets to assign users access to specific features.

  • Open to customisation – Enabling Environment Hub adds the EnvironmentHubMember standard object where you can declaratively add custom fields, page layouts. validation rules, workflow rules, approvals etc..

  • Great for Admins, fab for Developers –  Devs no longer have to ask Admins for login credentials when carrying out development work. Simply navigating to the Hub tab, clicking the correct organisation will log them in instantly. Nothing says efficiency better!

Sold on the idea? Then crack on with the installation. However, before you do, it worth noting that the Environment Hub will first need to be enable by Salesforce Support and can take up to 24hours to be enabled.

Installation Guides.

Once, enabled, in just a few simple steps, you and your users can be up and running with the Environment Hub in no time. For great information on the Environment Hub click here and for instructions on to install click here.

Once the Environment Hub has been setup, it’s worth taking a peek at the Environment Hub best practise.

Happy connecting Admins!

See you next week.

Jenny

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