Bringing Data into Sales Cloud

You’ve designed a system that meets the requirements and completed the build. However, to bring the system to life, it needs data. It is commonly accepted that any CRM or database-powered system is only as good as the data in it. What data, how much of it, and how to go about it are the next big decisions.

This chapter gives you the understanding and tools you need to identify, plan, and execute loading data into Sales Cloud Objects. We’ll start by learning how to decide what data to load, which is informed by the requirements and limited by the sources available. We’ll explore the tools that are available and consider their key attributes in order to make a selection. We’ll then go on to learn about the data-loading process and what should be included in a plan to load legacy data into Sales Cloud Objects.

We’re going to cover the following main topics in this chapter:

• Identifying data to load
• Selecting...

Supporting tools and information

For this chapter, you will require tools to manipulate data, tools to load data into Salesforce, and an Org with your configured solution design available. We will look at the permissions required to load data in the section on tools as it varies for the Salesforce Data Import Wizard and other tools.

For practice or a solution with limited complexity and smaller data volumes, you can use a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel or a web-based spreadsheet program such as Google Sheets.

Use Google Sheets to manipulate data, the Salesforce-supplied tools to load data, and a Dev Org to practice the data load on. Microsoft Excel currently has a row limit of 1,048,576 and Google Sheets has a limit of 10 million cells or 18,278 columns. If you expect to reach these sorts of limits, you will want to confirm these limits are still current at the time of reading. Usability will become a problem here, so if you are working with large volumes, you...

Identifying data to load

Your solution design determines the exact data you need to bring into Sales Cloud. However, all solutions typically include Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities. They also often include Products, Price Books, Opportunity Products, and Leads. Your business maturity will determine the volume of data available to load, and the type of business performed will determine how much historical data you need to have available.

The first and most important step is deciding what set of data to load. It is tempting and common practice to simply load all the data available without any critical analysis. During the later stages of implementation, there is usually a desire to get the system running as soon as possible, and loading all the data available may seem like the path of least resistance. However, this can turn out to be a mistake. There are consequences, including an ongoing maintenance cost, to holding data.

There are obvious costs, such as data storage, but...

Selecting your data-loading tool

There are a range of tools available that you can use to load data into Salesforce. Salesforce provides two tools: Salesforce Data Import Wizard and Salesforce Data Loader. There are also several third-party tools ranging from free basic data-loading tools to enterprise ETL tools and integration platforms. These have different strengths, which we will explore.

It is worth noting that the tools that you choose determine the loading template you use, which defines the format and structure you need your data in. This defines the amount of transformation required on your source data. For example, the Salesforce Data Import Wizard loads Account and Contact records from one template. With all other tools this data will need to be added to two separate templates.

Some third-party tools allow you to use a database or SFTP site as the source.

Salesforce-supported tools

In the following sections, we explore the capabilities and characteristics of...

Loading data

In this section, we will go through the steps required to load some data, starting with an overview of the process.

The loading process

The overall steps for loading data are common regardless of the tool that you use. They are as follows:

1. Define the data template.
2. Format data on the template.
3. Execute the data load:
   • Select the operation
   • Select the file/source
   • Confirm mapping and settings
   • Load data
   • Review errors
4. Validate all data has loaded correctly.

In the following sections, we will look at each of these steps in more detail.

Creating a template

Often, the easiest way to create a template for loading data is to create a record in the target system with realistic data in all the fields that you want to load. Then, using the selected tool, you can export the record. This will give you all the headings and show you an example of the format of the data. You will have one template per object.

This is a good option for tools such as Salesforce...

Planning your legacy data load

Now that you have confirmed what you are going to load, selected the tools, and determined any transformation required, it is time to plan your data load. An initial data load is typically part of an implementation, so it is essential to have a plan that can be communicated and scheduled with other implementation activities.

In the following sections, we will learn about the elements you should think about when planning your legacy data load. The first element to consider is how to transition Users from their current system to Sales Cloud while keeping data up to date and accurate. We will look at the options for business transition in the next section.

Business transition

Sales is a live and often fast-moving function. It is essential that salespeople have continuous access to their data. For this reason, it is important to plan how you transfer data from the s-is system to the to-be system. The options available will depend on the volume of...

Ongoing data-loading activities

Loading data is an essential part of getting your Salesforce Sales Cloud implementation up and running, but you may also find that you have an ongoing need to load data. Examples of this include loading Leads and Contacts captured from marketing activities, or adding or updating Account data from other internal or external sources.

If you are asked to load data on a regular basis, there are a few key questions you will want to ask to decide on the best approach. The first is as follows:

• The first and most important is, do we have permission to store this data?
• Then, we have the following practical questions:
• What is the volume of data?
• How regularly does this happen?
• Could this create duplicates?

This will allow you to ultimately answer the following two questions:

• What tools can we use?
• Who should do this?

Within Sales Cloud, you can give the Users permission to access the Data Import Wizard so they...

Summary

In this chapter, we have learned about how to identify and evaluate sources of data in order to make a recommendation on what data to load into Sales Cloud. We explored the tools that are available to load data into Salesforce and learned about the key questions and considerations when selecting tools. We learned about the data-loading process, how to create templates, common formatting requirements, what causes errors, how to identify errors, and, if required, how to undo a load. Finally, we looked at what needs to be included in a plan to load legacy data. With this information, you should be able to plan and execute data loads in Sales Cloud.

In the next chapter, we will be learning about getting sign-off for implementation milestones, including what this means and why it is an important part of your implementation delivery.

Further reading

Salesforce Record Size

• Salesforce Record Size Overview: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000383664&type=1

Data Import Wizard

• Field Mapping for Importing Leads:

  https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.field_mapping_for_importing_leads.htm&type=5

• Field Mapping for Other Data Sources and Organization Import:

  https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.field_mapping_for_other_data_sources_and_organization_import.htm&type=5

Importing Data

• How to Import Data into Salesforce Series:

  https://salesforce.vidyard.com/watch/ARIjWm2qrDkJVJxEhReFug

Bulk API

• Trailhead: Large Data Volumes > Load Your Data: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/large-data-volumes/load-your-data
• Trailhead: Platform API Basic > Use Bulk API 2.0:

  https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/api_basics/api_basics_bulk

• Introduction to Bulk API 2.0 and Bulk API:

  https://developer...