Salesforce Blog & Technical Advice - FMT Consultants Inc.

Fondly referred to as “Delores” by Salesforce professionals, the Declarative Lookup Roll-Up Summaries (DLRS) managed package was created by Andrew Fawcett, CTO of FinancialForce.com to make your analytical dreams come true. The package is an open-source community application that is constantly improving with each new release. This powerful tool allows the declarative creation of roll-up summaries between loosely related objects with lookup relationships, rather than the usual requirement of a master-detail relationship to create roll-up summary fields.Salesforce roll-up summary fields allow users to aggregate and summarize data across relationships. In the native version of Salesforce, roll-up summary fields can calculate and display the sum, minimum, maximum, or count of a set of related detail records on a parent record. This can be useful for creating a snapshot of important information, such as total sales or the number of open cases, on a parent account or opportunity record. Roll-up summary fields […]

The rumblings you hear are true, Salesforce will turn on Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) in all instances starting February 1, 2022. What does this mean and how can I prepare? Let us review the impact and ensure we are all prepared for this security enhancement. First what is MFA and why now? Cybersecurity is a hot topic right now and not one to be taken lightly. Ensuring access to your Salesforce instance is secure and unwanted parties are not getting access to the data that resides there is why MFA is being turned on. MFA consists of two things, something the user knows (password), and something the user has (authenticator app, security key). This will help protect against common threats such as phishing attacks, credential stuffing, and account takeovers. What/Who is impacted? Internal Salesforce users who are logging into Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Pardot will all be […]

Introduction: Lightning components are versatile and useful tools Salesforce administrators can leverage to extend the base functionality of Salesforce and make Users more efficient in their daily tasks.  These come in a myriad of shapes and forms, each having their uses and benefits for end Users. One fantastic way to utilize Lightning components is to embed report charts directly onto records in Salesforce rather than requiring Users to navigate away from the record to analyse data for that record.  In today’s blog, we will walk through the process of creating an embedded Report Chart Lightning component that will help increase the efficiency of our end Users as they view a given Account record in Salesforce. Challenge: To be able to view Opportunity data for a given Account in Salesforce and determine how much revenue we have in each Stage of our pipeline for that Account. Solution: Report Chart Lightning Component […]

One useful feature of Salesforce is being able to view numerous records within an object at once via a feature called List Views.  List Views can be customized, filtered, and modified extensively to allow Users to view all or subsets of object records from a single location.  Users can even, in some cases, make updates to multiple records at the same time via a List View, eliminating the need for excessive clicks and navigation.  All of this can be done without the need for constructing complex reports or custom components, ensuring your Users can see what they need to and do their job effectively without delay. Challenge: A User needs to be able to view and interact with a subset of records for a given object in Salesforce. Solution: List Views, of course!  List Views are available by default for any standard or custom object in Salesforce that has an […]

As you may have read in our recent blog post on Lightning Components, Salesforce Lightning page layouts have the amazing ability to support a variety of standard and custom components that can enhance the functionality of your pages and provide Users with useful capabilities. However, at times you may want to permit only a subset of Users from being able to view and access Lightning Page Components rather than have them visible to all Users at all times. This is where utilizing Lightning Component filters can be quite useful. Challenge: For the sake of example let’s leverage the Related Record component we built in our previous blog post. If you did not read the previous blog, we created a Lightning Related Record component on the Contact Lightning page layout that displayed a variety of key fields from that Contact’s Account, without having to navigate to the Account directly (see screenshot). […]

At its core, Salesforce fundamentally functions as a relational database.  That is, it not only stores data from various objects and records but allows those objects and records to be related to one another, which in essence “connects” them and shows their relationship. For example, a basic relationship in the standard Salesforce data model is the classic Account and Contact relationship.  Accounts are organizations you sell to or do business with, while Contacts are individuals who work at those organizations in various roles, from CEO to frontline workers and everyone in between. Contacts are “related” to Accounts to show that they work at a certain organization and fulfill a role there.  An example would be Mark Zuckerberg; he would be considered a Contact for the “Facebook” Account in Salesforce with a Title of CEO. Challenge: The nature of this relational model allows for some powerful reporting and insights while using […]

If you’re a Salesforce user, you may have received an email from Salesforce saying they will require you to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) by February of 2022. And . . . we think that's a good idea! As phishing attacks increase and the global threat landscape continues to change, why wouldn’t you want to implement stronger security measures? Here are answers to some questions you may have about Salesforce multi-factor authentication. What is multi-factor authentication? Instead of just a username and password, multi-factor authentication requires two or more pieces of evidence (factors). One factor is something you know, like your username and password. The other factors are verification methods that you have – like an app on your phone or a USB key provided to you. Interested in learning more about MFA and Cloud Security? View this post. Why should you want multi-factor authentication? Usernames and passwords are no longer […]

2020 has been a year like no other in recent history, and the US manufacturing industry has felt the impact. Declines in production, forced shutdowns and inconsistent value chain behavior during the ‘peak’ of the pandemic will likely drive industry behavior for years to come. In what could become a permanent change for the industry, most manufacturing leaders are reevaluating the role of their workforce. One way to enhance digital capabilities in the workforce is to develop an ecosystem comprised of today’s top manufacturing talent (like your Chief Procurement Officer, or CPO) built on the back of a world-class Customer Relationship Management system. Data-Driven Decisions There are a few common themes we are seeing more and more in the manufacturing world nowadays. The need for agility and accuracy in data management, customer centricity and the ability to make data-driven decisions seems to have taken over and remodeled company cultures. Furthermore, […]

In a world where data consolidation and analysis are becoming ever more vital to business, it can be difficult to know how to best set up your organization’s data strategy to meet future demands. Furthermore, in the business of manufacturing, where there are so many proverbial moving parts and areas to focus on, it can be challenging to note the advantages and cost savings associated with a coherent data strategy when compared to other areas of the organization (i.e. sales, operations, research and development, procurement, quality assurance, etc.). However, having access to well-defined and accurate data can lead to insights and cost savings that propel a manufacturer to the next level of their business as well as outperform competitors, for several simple and powerful reasons cited by Kevin Snook, author of Make It Right: 5 Steps to Align Your Manufacturing Business from the Frontline to the Bottom Line. If you […]

We've seen many assume their Salesforce orgs are secure enough: why should they care about FMT's recommended key Salesforce security best practice? Consider that phishing attacks are increasing and 2020 stood out. 88% of organizations around the world experienced spear phishing attempts. Remote workers are being targeted more than before. And in a successful attack, nearly 60% of organizations lose data, nearly 50% are infected with ransomware, and nearly 35% of organizations experienced financial losses. Those are scary statistics. How can we keep our Salesforce data secure? Let's say you implemented Salesforce a while ago and everything is working well. It's flexible enough so that you can easily change a picklist value or add a little automation. But you probably haven't thought about security since you implemented Salesforce. In my experience, most implementations configure data access (which users can see or edit which records and which fields). But very little […]

Are you ready for an Artificial Intelligence Chatbot? In 2018 Gartner predicted that Chatbots will power 85% of all customer service interactions by 2020. It’s 2020 now and they were probably overstating the rapidity of AI Chatbot adoption.  But they weren’t that far off the mark. Chatbot technology has made rapid advances and our understanding of what makes a good Chatbot has also grown. Now that our know-how and the technology are ripe – should your company start implementing AI Chatbots? We’ll look at Salesforce Einstein Chatbots to see if we can answer that question. What is a Chatbot? A Chatbot is an application that simulates human conversation via text message. It allows your customer to talk to a computer that then directs the customer to the resources that they request. Chatbots allow you to add an additional channel of communication to your sales and support strategies.  You may have […]

For manufacturers, with all the moving parts of the business it's crucial to have visibility across the organization.  This isn’t always easy.  With all the software solutions used to run the business today, it’s even harder.  But Salesforce has not only heard the need, they’re addressing it.   In the last month, Salesforce.com has enhanced it’s functionality and focus for Manufacturing Customers.  They’re calling it, wait for it, Manufacturing Cloud.    And we’re pretty excited about it!   With 20+ years of manufacturing experience implementing and optimizing ERP’s and CRM’s, like Salesforce.com, we understand the pains manufacturers work through on a daily basis.    Manufacturing Cloud will make it easier than ever to cure those pains and bring key functions of the business together to accelerate business and profitability.   Why Manufacturing Cloud?   Some key functions within Manufacturing Cloud from Salesforce.com are:   Sales Agreements/Forecasting Contract Management Price Management […]