Salesforce CRM - The Definitive Admin Handbook: A Deep-dive into the working of Salesforce CRM, Fourth Edition

If login hour restrictions are set for the user's profile, any login attempt outside the specified hours is denied.

If IP address restrictions are defined for the user's profile, any login attempt from an unknown IP address is denied.

To restrict the range of valid IP addresses through the Profile menu, navigate to Setup | Manage Users | Profiles. Now choose a profile, select the Login IP Ranges link, and then click Add IP Ranges.

Enter a valid IP address in the Start IP Address field and a higher IP address in the End IP Address field.

The start and end addresses specify the range of IP addresses from which users can log in. To allow a login from a single IP address, enter the same address in both fields.

For example, to allow a login from only 88.110.54.113, enter 88.110.54.113 as both the start and end IP addresses as shown in the following screenshot:

To go to the Trusted IP range settings, navigate to Setup | Security Controls | Network Access.

Click on New and enter a valid IP address in the Start IP Address field and a higher IP address in the End IP Address field.

The start and end addresses specify the range of IP addresses from which users can log in. To allow a login from a single IP address, enter the same address in both fields.

For example, to allow a login from only 88.110.54.100, enter 88.110.54.105 as both the start and end addresses as shown in the following screenshot:

For access through the user interface for the first time, the user is prompted to select how they would like to receive the verification code. Here, the verification code can be received by either an SMS text message or an e-mail message depending on whether the company-wide SMS-based identity confirmation is enabled.

SMS text message verification code

To receive the SMS text message verification code requires the setting SMS-Based Identity Confirmation setting to be enabled (since Spring '2014, it has been enabled by default). This feature enables users to receive a one-time PIN delivered via SMS. This is set by navigating to Setup | Security Controls | Session Settings and then enabling Enable SMS-Based Identity Confirmation.

Once enabled, users must verify their mobile phone number before taking advantage of this feature, which will present the following screenshot:

Email message verification code

To receive an email verification code, users must have the setting Email-Based Identity Confirmation Option enabled on their profile or included as a permission set.

Note

The Email-Based Identity Confirmation option is only available to set if the Enable SMS-Based Identity Confirmation option is enabled.

Once enabled, and if verification is required, users will automatically receive an activation e-mail to the address specified in the user's Salesforce user record. Users are notified within the Salesforce, and can enter the verification code as shown in the following screenshot:

Salesforce sends the verification code e-mail to the e-mail address associated with the user's record in Salesforce. Here, the following screenshot shows an e-mail example:

The e-mail instructs the user to enter the verification code into the browser window, which activates the device for verified login into the Salesforce CRM platform.

The activation code within the e-mail is valid for up to 24 hours from the time the E-mail me a verification code button was clicked. After 24 hours, the activation link will expire and the user must repeat the activation process.

Confusion can occur if your company has remote users that connect to Salesforce away from the company network, such as from home or from public Internet connections. The Remote users are likely to have dynamically assigned IP addresses set as their computer identity. Because of this, whenever they attempt to log in, Salesforce will identify it as an unknown IP address, prompt for verification, and the remote user will have to re-verify the device.

The remote user will then have to access the e-mail associated with their Salesforce user record to retrieve the activation e-mail, and it is here where confusion can occur. If the remote user has to access corporate web e-mail using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, the clicking of the activation link may not work because the IP address that is being validated may now no longer be the same IP address used by the browser. This is because the VPN connection may likely be using a web proxy.

Note

It is recommended that you establish a policy to ensure that the user verifies the login while connected to the VPN, or can access non-VPN-based web mail (if this is permitted in your company) to ensure that the validated IP addresses are the same.

(This is covered in more detail in the Session settings section in Chapter 2, Managing Users and Controlling System Access.)

For access using the API or a desktop client (for example, using the Apex Data Loader), the user must add their security token at the end of the password in order to log in. A security token is an automatically generated key from Salesforce. For example, if a user's password is pa$$word, and their security token is XXXXXX, then the user must enter pa$$wordXXXXXX.

Users can obtain their security token by changing their password, or by resetting their security token via the Salesforce.com user interface by navigating to Your Name | My Settings | Personal | Reset My Security Token and then clicking on the Reset Security Token button.

When a user changes their password or resets their security token, Salesforce sends a new security token to the e-mail address associated with their Salesforce user record. The security token is valid until a user resets their security token, changes their password, or has their password reset by a system administrator.

This is the primary language for the organization. All interface text and online help is displayed in this language. Individual users can, however, set their own language, which will override the organization-wide setting.

The default locale setting affects the format of the date, date/time, and number fields.

For example, a given date in the English (United States) locale would appear as 07/27/2020, and in the English (United Kingdom) locale as 27/07/2020.

Time in the English (United States) locale is displayed using a twelve-hour clock with AM and PM (for example, 3:00 PM), whereas in the English (United Kingdom) locale, they display using a twenty-four hour clock (for example, 15:00).

Numbers in the English (United States) locale would be displayed as 1,000.00 and in the German locale as 1.000,00.

However, individual users can set their own locale, which will override the organization-wide setting.

This is the primary time zone in which your organization is located, for example, the head-office location. However, individual users can set their own time zone, which will override the organization-wide setting.

The Company Information page also displays all of the base licenses, active users, and feature licenses that have been purchased by your organization.

In a single-currency organization, you set the organization-wide currency locale for your company and your Salesforce users cannot set individual currency locales.

In a multiple-currency organization, you set the corporate currency instead of the currency locale, and your Salesforce users can also set their individual currency by navigating to Your Name | My Settings | Personal | Personal Information.

Your Salesforce user's individual currency is used as the default currency in their own reports, quotas, forecasts, and any records that contain currency amounts, such as opportunities.

Users can also create opportunities (and all other data records that contain currency amounts) using any other available active currency.

Fiscal year settings in Salesforce by default use the Gregorian calendar year (twelve-month structure) starting from January 1 and ending on December 31. If your organization follows the twelve-month structure, you can use a standard fiscal year. Standard fiscal years can start on the first day of any month, and you can specify whether the fiscal year is named for the starting or ending year. For example, if your fiscal year starts in April 2020 and ends in March 2021, your fiscal year setting can be either 2020 or 2021.

Fiscal year is more complicated than this, you can define these periods using custom fiscal years. For example, as part of a custom fiscal year, you can create a 13-week quarter represented by three periods of 4, 4, and 5 weeks, instead of calendar months.

If you use a fiscal year structure, such as a 4-4-5 or a 13-period structure, you can define a fiscal year by specifying a start date and an included template. If your fiscal year structure is not included in the templates, you can modify a template. For example, if you use three fiscal quarters per year (a trimester) instead of four, delete or modify the quarters and periods to meet your needs. These custom fiscal periods can be named based on your standards. For example, a fiscal period could be called P12 or December.

Fiscal years can be modified any time you need to change their definition. For example, an extra week could be added to synchronize a custom fiscal year with a standard calendar in a leap year. Changes to fiscal year structure take effect immediately upon being saved.

The Language Settings feature allows you to specify the acceptable languages that can be used within the Salesforce CRM application.

This feature can be set by navigating to Setup | Company Profile | Language Settings.

You then choose the languages that you want to make available to users by selecting them from the Available Languages pick list and then clicking on Add.

In the following example, we have added Spanish and French along with English, and these appear in the Displayed Languages list as shown in the following screenshot:

The languages that appear in the Displayed Languages list are now shown as available options in the Language picklist section on the user's Personal Settings page, as shown in the following screenshot:

The following browsers are supported by Salesforce for use with Salesforce Classic 2005:

The following browsers are supported by Salesforce for use with Salesforce Classic 2010:

The following browsers are supported by Salesforce for use with Lightning Experience:

Along with the user interface theme, there are many other aspects of the user interface that can be set up in Salesforce to present the optimum user experience to the users in your organization.

Additional user interface options include User Interface Settings (such as collapsible detail page sections and inline field editing), Sidebar Settings (Collapsible Sidebar settings and Custom Sidebar Components on All Pages), and Calendar Settings (such as Home Page Hover Links for Events and Drag-and-Drop Editing on Calendar Views).

There are also some administrator-specific settings that can improve your users' experience with the application located under the Setup settings. It also includes the Enhanced Page Layout Editor and Enhanced Profile List Views Settings.

Selection of the User Interface option can be carried out by navigating to Setup | Customize | User Interface.

The User Interface screen is as shown in the following screenshot:

Collapsible Sections enables your users to collapse or expand sections on record detail pages using the arrow icon next to the section heading. Sections remain expanded or collapsed until the user changes their settings for that section. Salesforce will store a different setting for each record type if the record types have been set up as shown in the following screenshot:

Clicking on the triangle icon toggles between showing and hiding the section, as shown in the following screenshot:

The Show Quick Create option adds the Quick Create fields section to the sidebar on the Record tab page to enable users to create a new record using minimal data fields, as shown in the following screenshot:

The Show Quick Create option also controls whether users can create new records from within the Lookup dialog. With this setting enabled, users see a New button in the Lookup dialog screen. The following example shows the creation of a new account within the account Lookup dialog while working with an opportunity record:

Clicking on the New button reveals the fields that are available for creating the new record.

The option to create new records and displaying the New button in the Lookup dialog are only available for accounts and contacts. Also, users still need the appropriate Create record permission to enter data with Quick Create, regardless of whether the entry fields are displayed.

The Enable Hover Details option allows users to view interactive information for a record by hovering the mouse pointer over a link to that record in the Recent Items list on the sidebar or in a lookup field on the record detail page. The fields displayed in the hover details are determined by the record's mini page layout, which is set at the page layout edit screen.

In the following screenshot, we are hovering the mouse pointer over a link to a record in the Recent Items list on the sidebar:

In the following screenshot, we are hovering the mouse pointer over a lookup field on the record detail page:

This option enables related list hover links to be displayed at the top of standard and custom object record detail pages. It allows users to view the related list and its records by hovering the mouse pointer over the related list link. Users can also click on the related list hover link to jump down directly to the Related List section without having to scroll down the page.

This option enables the separate loading of record detail pages. First, the primary record detail data loads, and then the related list data. This option serves to improve the display performance for organizations with a large number of related lists on record detail pages. When the page is loaded, the record details are displayed immediately; afterwards the related list data loads, during which the users see a progress indicator for the related list.

You will see that the related list sections are not yet loaded. They appear as [...] while the primary record detail (for the account example) is loaded immediately, as shown in the following screenshot:

After the primary record detail has loaded (the account page), the related lists are then loaded. You can see that the number of records for the Contacts related list is now displayed as [2].

This option does not apply to pages for which you cannot control the layout (such as user pages or Visualforce pages).

This option is related to the setting Enable Separate Loading of Related Lists, and enables a separate loading of record detail pages and related lists of standard and custom objects.

This option allows users to change field values directly within the record detail page, avoiding the need to load the record edit page first. By double-clicking on the field to be edited within the detail page, the field changes to become editable. The new value can then be entered and saved, or the action can be undone using the Undo button.

First, the field is highlighted by hovering over it with the mouse to reveal the pencil icon indicating that the field is editable, as follows:

Double-clicking the field causes the field to switch from View mode to Edit mode to allow a new value to be entered, as follows:

After a new value has been entered, the value is displayed in orange text and the user has the option of undoing the change using the Undo button, as follows:

The changed value and the detail page can then be saved in the standard way using the Save button, as follows:

This option is enabled by default. Certain fields cannot be changed using inline editing, such as System Fields (created by, last modified by, and so on), Calculated Fields (formula, auto number, roll-up summary, and so on), Read-Only Fields, and Special Fields (such as owner and record type).

This option provides the user with the ability to view, customize, and edit list data, which is the resulting data section that is rendered from Views. When enabled along with the Enable Inline Editing setting, users can also edit records directly within the list without having to move away from the page, as shown in the following screenshot:

With enhanced lists enabled, users can perform the following actions:

A mass edit is performed by first selecting the records to be edited using the checkboxes and then clicking on one of the fields to be edited.

Upon clicking on the field, a new pop-up window is displayed asking whether the change is to be applied to just the selected record or to all records that have been selected. In the following screenshot, we see an example where two account records have been selected, and where one of the record's billing street fields has been clicked.

This feature only allows mass edits; users cannot mass-delete:

On the Account, Contact, and Lead List views, there is an Open Calendar link at the bottom of the page to display a weekly view of a calendar underneath the list. A record can be dragged from the list to a time slot on the calendar to create an event associated with the record.

The number of records displayed can be changed per page by setting the view to 10, 25, 50, 100, or 200 records at a time. When this setting is changed, navigation is set to the first page of the list results, as shown in the following screenshot:

If users change the number of records to be displayed per page, that setting is applied to all the lists (not just the current list).

Also, if the option of displaying 200 records is selected, a warning message appears, as it can reduce performance, as shown in the following screenshot:

At the time of writing there are three different user interface themes, namely Salesforce Classic 2005, Salesforce Classic 2010, and Lightning Experience.

Enabling the Salesforce Classic 2010 user interface theme activates the most recent version of Salesforce Classic, the interface theme that predates Lightning Experience. Disabling this option activates the Salesforce Classic 2005 user interface theme.

The Tab Bar Organizer automatically arranges user's tabs in the tab bar to control the width of the CRM application pages and prevent horizontal scrolling. It dynamically measures how many application tabs can be displayed, and puts tabs that extend beyond the browser's current width into a drop-down list displayed on the right-hand side of the tab bar, as shown in the following screenshot:

This option allows users to easily print list views.

If this is enabled, users can click on the Printable View link (the printer logo) located in the top-right corner on any list view to open a new browser window. Within the new window, the current list view is displayed in a print-ready format, as shown in the following screenshot:

This option allows users to click on the Printable View link from any list view, which opens a new browser window displaying the current list view in a print-ready format.

This option allows you to customize the tabs on the Chatter user profile. The way to customize Chatter user profile pages is described in detail later in Chapter 8, Introducing Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and the Collaborative Features of Salesforce CRM. In the following example screenshot, we have customized the Chatter user profile page tabs and added the Learning Zone tab, which results in the following modified page:

The Winter' 2014 release saw this feature being automatically enabled.

This enables you to add custom tabs or remove default tabs such as the default Feed and Overview tabs. Custom tabs are available by customizing Subtab Apps, which are described in more detail in Chapter 3, Configuring Objects and Apps. If this option is disabled, users only see the default Feed and Overview tabs.

When this option is selected, an announcement banner appears on certain pages.

Your users can prevent the banner from appearing on all pages by clicking the Close button, or you can prevent the Salesforce Notification Banner from appearing across your entire organization by disabling this option.

The collapsible sidebar gives users the ability to show or hide the sidebar on every Salesforce page where the sidebar is included. When this option is selected, the collapsible sidebar becomes available to all users in your organization. However, each user can set their own preference for displaying the sidebar. Users can set the sidebar to be permanently displayed or they can collapse the sidebar and show it only when needed.

If you have custom home page layouts that include components in the sidebar, this option displays the sidebar components on all pages in Salesforce and for all users. If only certain profiles are allowed to view sidebar components on all pages, you can assign a Show Custom Sidebar on All Pages permission to just those profiles.

This option enables hover links in the calendar section of the Home tab, and allows users to hover the mouse over the subject of an event to see interactive information for that event.

This option enables your users to drag and drop existing events around their daily and weekly calendar views to reschedule events without having to navigate from the page to the event creation page. Loading performance of the calendar control may suffer with this option enabled. Drag-and-drop editing is not available for either multi-day events or on console calendar views. Also, this option is enabled by default.

This option enables the creation of events on daily and weekly calendar views by double-clicking on a specific time slot and entering the details of the event in an interactive section. The fields presented in the interactive section are set using the mini page layout on the Event page layout screen.

This option enables users to create events by dragging the record to be linked from the list view onto the weekly calendar view. Upon dropping, an interactive section for the event detail is displayed where the fields available are set using the mini page layout.

This option enables hover links for tasks in the My Tasks section of the Home tab and on the calendar day view, and allows users to hover the mouse over details of the task in an interactive section.

This setting adds the middle name field to person objects such as the Contact, Lead, Person Account, and User objects.

This setting adds name suffix fields to person objects such as the Contact, Lead, Person Account, and User objects.

This option enables the Enhanced Page Layout Editor for editing page layouts with a feature-rich WYSIWYG (for What You See Is What You Get) editor.

This option enables the enhanced list views and inline editing on the profiles list page, which allows you to manage multiple profiles at once.

To navigate to the Profile menu, go to Setup | Manage Users | Profiles. Now select a profile and click on Create New View, as shown in the following screenshot:

The following three steps produce a list of profiles that allow you to modify multiple profile settings at once:

Now that the profile view has been created, we can select multiple profiles to manage all at once, as shown in the following screenshot:

You can display multiple lists of profiles that can be selected and actioned, as shown in the following screenshot:

You can also modify multiple profile selection to apply the setting to all the profiles, as shown in the following screenshot:

The Enable Enhanced Profile User Interface option allows you to enable the Enhanced Profile User Interface, which then offers the following features to help you:

This option enables the use of the Force.com Streaming API in your organization. The Streaming API provides near real-time streams of data from the Force.com platform. You can create topics to which applications can subscribe and receive asynchronous notifications of changes to data in Force.com.

This option is a feature of the Streaming API; when enabled, it results in the dynamic creation of streaming channels when clients subscribe (if the channel has yet to be created).

This option allows you to set audit fields (such as record creation date) that are read-only by default when records are created using the Salesforce API. you can create records through using tools such as the Data Loader, which is a client application that makes use of the Salesforce API. This setting also allows you to update records that have inactive owners.

Select the Enable Custom Object Truncate checkbox to activate truncating custom objects, which permanently removes all of the records from a custom object while keeping the object and its metadata intact for future use.

Truncating custom objects is a quick way to permanently delete all of the records from a custom object. Take the example of a custom object that has been created and filled with test records. When testing is complete and the test data is no longer required, you can truncate the object to remove the test records, but keep the object ready to be deployed into production. This is much quicker than batch-deleting records and having to recreate the custom object.

When the Improved Setup User Interface is enabled in an organization, you might notice several differences from the original user interface.

The Setup menu is accessed from the Setup link in the upper-right corner of any Salesforce page. It is arranged into the following goal-based categories:

When enabled, this option allows you to search for Setup pages, custom profiles, permission sets, public groups, roles, and users from the sidebar search textbox within the Setup area. When the option is disabled, you can search for Setup pages only.

As you type in the sidebar Setup search box, any options that match your search term appear in the Setup menu. When you press Enter, you will be presented with a page listing any matching permission sets, custom profiles, public groups, roles, or users.

This option enables the Mass Mail Merge link to be available in the Tools area on the home pages for accounts, contacts, and leads.

When enabled, this option also sets single mail merges requested from the Activity History-related list on a record to be created with the Extended Mail Merge function. The Extended Mail Merge function is activated using a wizard comprising the following steps:

Although the document preview is editable, do not edit it in Word as the changes will not be saved to your current mail merge request. You have to make a new mail merge template and upload this first.

This option stops the sending of the mail merge documents as e-mail attachments, instead storing them in the user's personal documents folder on the Documents tab. Users are still sent e-mails as confirmation when their mail merge requests have completed, and these e-mails contain links to the documents in the Documents tab.

Your search term must have two or more characters. Special characters, such as ", ?, *, (, and ) are not included in the character count. For example, a search for m* will fail to return any search results.

Search terms are not case-sensitive. For example, a search for martin returns the same results as the search for Martin.

Finding phone numbers can be done by entering part or all of a number. For example, to find (512) 757-6000, enter 5127576000, 757, or 6000. To search for the last seven digits, you must enter the punctuation, such as 757-6000.

In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, you can find a person by entering the last name before the first name; searching for howard trevor returns any person named Trevor Howard.

The Limit to Items I Own option allows your users to restrict the search results to find only the records of which they are the record owner when searching in the sidebar.

This option allows users to perform a full text search of a document. When new documents are uploaded or an existing document is updated, its contents are available as search terms to retrieve the document.

This option optimizes searching for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean language sets. It affects Sidebar Search and the account search for Find Duplicates on a lead record in Sidebar Search and Global Search.

This option causes the list of records returned from a user autocomplete lookup and from a blank user lookup to be generated from the user's recently viewed user records. By not enabling this option, the dialog shows a list of recently accessed user records from across your organization.

This option creates a drop-down list in the Search section to appears, which allows users to limit searches by the type of record.

This option is used with the Articles and Article Management tabs, in the Articles tool in Case Feed, and in the Salesforce Knowledge sidebar in the Salesforce console.

When enabled, any search suggest, and searches for alternate spellings of English search terms.

This option provides the functionality whereby, users start typing search terms, the Sidebar Search displays a matching list of recently viewed records.

This option allows users to skip the search results page and navigate directly to the Record Detail page if their search produces a single result.

The Number of Search Results Displayed Per Object option allows you to configure the number of items that are returned for each object in the Search Results page. The current setting is in brackets next to each object where the new value must be between 5 and 50.

A new field-based salesperson has joined WidgetsXYZ and started using Salesforce for the first time. You are the administrator at WidgetsXYZ, and the salesperson is telling you that they are always prompted to activate their laptop and always use the same browser. How would you respond? (Select all that apply).

a) Verify that the Trusted IP Ranges for Salesforce have been configured correctly.

b) Verify that Login hour restrictions for Salesforce have been configured.

c) Verify that browser cookies are being stored on the salesperson's laptop correctly.

d) Explain to the salesperson that this is normal behavior and that the laptop is responding as expected.

Which settings can be modified for individual users? (Select all that apply)

a) Currency

b) Search settings

c) Language

d) Locale

e) User Interface

The WidgetsXYZ company has 13-week fiscal quarters made up of 4, 4, and 5 weeks instead of calendar months. What can you do to enable reports to capture activity for the correct quarter? (Select one)

a) Modify the reports to filter dates using these weekly periods.

b) Modify the Standard Fiscal Year for these weekly periods.

c) Enable Custom Fiscal Years to capture these weekly periods and revert back to Standard Fiscal Years if necessary.

d) Enable Custom Fiscal Years to capture these weekly periods and be aware that you cannot revert to Standard Fiscal Years.

Which settings can be modified in the Salesforce user interface? (Select all that apply)

a) Language settings.

b) Hover details.

c) Time zone settings.

d) Enhanced list views.

e) Enable Printable List Views.

The answer is a) Verify that the Trusted IP Ranges for Salesforce have been configured correctly. Salesforce stores a cookie in the browser and activates that device, and prevents the user from being prompted for an activation code when they log in from different IP addresses. If the user has blocked cookies or is deleting them in the browser they would experience this behavior.

The answers are a) Currency, c) language, and d) Locale. They can be modified for individual users.

b) User interface and e) Search settings cannot be modified for individual users as they are global setting affecting all users.

Default locale, language, and currency are set on the company profile, but these setting can be overridden for users with the values that are set at an individual level.

The answer is d) Enable Custom Fiscal Years to capture these weekly periods and be aware that you cannot revert to Standard Fiscal Years.

Enabling custom fiscal years is not reversible and you cannot revert to standard fiscal years. You can, however, set custom fiscal years to mirror the standard fiscal year. Because fiscal quarter is based on weekly periods and not months, Standard Fiscal Years cannot accommodate reporting, which is why Custom Fiscal Years are required.

The answers are c) Hover details, d) Enhanced list views, and e) Enable Printable List Views. These are all settings within the user interface and affect all users when set.

a) Language settings and c) Time zone settings are specified on the company profile, where they provide the default values; however, users can override these and set them on their personal settings.