Preparing Your Salesforce Account for 2020

Why Prepare Your Salesforce Account for 2020?

Some industries, like retail, go full steam ahead through the end of the year and the holidays. For other industries, the holidays are a time to slow down, as people take time off from the office, the kids go on holiday break, and there can be a lack of motivation with office and family parties scheduled each week. 

December is a great time if you’re a Salesforce Administrator to review the last year’s usage of your account and make improvements going into 2020. Here’s a short list of ideas of organizational and maintenance activities that will help keep your account running smoothly and optimized for the new year. 

Oceanforce Solutions recommends reviewing the following as the end of the year approaches: 

• Transition to the Lightning experience: The Lightning Experience will auto–activate on Jan 7, 2020. If your account hasn’t switched over yet, take the time to do it before January 7th. It will make it easier to onboard anyone who is having trouble with the new interface, and to work out any kinks. 
• Salesforce Certification Maintenance Exam: Administrators and other user types may be required to complete 1-3 certifications each year to maintain their account standing. If your account is required to complete the December 11th exam, know that you’ll have until April 10, 2020 to complete that test. Check your account certifications to see if you are required to take this exam. 
• View and manage your organization’s users: Every organization loses and gains new employees and contractors, which means that your company’s account may have previous employees still registered as users in your Salesforce account. Now’s a great time to clean up old and new accounts. You can also ensure user permissions are accurate for all current employees as well. 
• Monitor data and storage capabilities: Depending on the size of your account and the number of users, you could be pushing up against the data and storage limits that are set for your Salesforce account. You can view both File Storage and Data Storage under “Setup” and “Storage Usage”. This is also a good time to think about exporting back-up data for the past year. 
• Update security: Salesforce has a long list of ways that you can increase the security of your account so that your account meets any necessary security standards that your industry may require. Even if you don’t have any thresholds to meet, cybersecurity is always an important area to take the time to invest in. We recommend looking into the following options to increase your security, depending on your account type and the size of your user team:
  • Shield Platform Encryption
  • Turn on Identity Verification
  • Device Management (may work best for smaller teams)
  • Validate certificates and key pairs
• Monitor training history: Ensure your users are keeping up to date on all things Salesforce and updates. You can look at a top level view of all the training classes that each user has taken, so if anyone needs a gentle reminder before the end of the year, you’ll know in advance. 
• Complete your integrations: If you haven’t finished integrating your third-party apps and programs with Salesforce, make your analytics and reporting more streamlined for 2020 
• Check in with your users (or team leaders): Are your users getting the most out of their Salesforce account? The end of the year is a good time to review how users interacted with your account and are getting the most out of it. What feedback can you get from them as well? Are there easy improvements that can be tweaked to improve usability? What about long-term projects that should be on your radar for 2020? 
• Budget accordingly: You might have submitted budget requests earlier in the year, but if you need to, see if you can make allocations for any account improvements, integrations, or tech support to keep your account functioning efficiently in the new year. 

Each industry and individual account will have its own customized list of tasks for the end and beginning of the year. We provide this list as a way of getting a head start on generic account maintenance that makes sense to look over as the year comes to a close.  

What Else Can You Do?

If you aren’t sure where to start with your Salesforce account, you can always schedule a Salesforce Health Check where our experts will look over your account and work with you directly to make sure everything is working optimally. Preparing your Salesforce account for 2020 isn’t a monumental task, but it can reap huge benefits when it comes to starting the new year off strongly.