Common Issues for Organizations New to Salesforce (And How to Avoid Them)

This blog was originally published on June 7, 2018.

So you’re just getting started with Salesforce, a powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that offers users a great deal of functionality, and unlimited possibilities! Or, maybe you are using Association Management Solutions (AMS) powered by Salesforce, such as Fonteva or Nimble AMS.

What is the best way to hit the ground running with your shiny, new CRM? Our fusionSpan Salesforce team shares a few common issues, and tips on how to avoid them as a new Salesforce user.

Salesforce Admin = Company Know-All Source

While it is expected that the Salesforce Administrator should be the in-house Salesforce expert, it is also important that they have a complete understanding of all of your company’s business processes. Without a complete understanding of the business processes, a Salesforce admin is more likely to build an overly complicated process. Think of it like asking a baker to make a wedding cake without telling them when or where the wedding will take place.

Ideally, the Salesforce Admin should get business process training in all aspects of the company, so that person or team can then map that business knowledge to Salesforce. This can allow for better data and the correct setup of object structures.

Defining Report Requirements

In most organizations, only a few staff members are tasked with creating reports for everyone else to use. This is especially true for companies who are utilizing Salesforce, as reports can be tricky to build without proper training.

A common issue that arises is when someone requests a custom report to be built. Once it is provided to them, they find that their requirements have not been appropriately met, such as fields not accessible from the report type.

Understanding the report needs before building the report will reduce the likelihood of having to restart from scratch. If you are one of the report builders at your company, it would be helpful for you to follow up on the report request by asking the following questions:

• Why are they building this report?
• What is the intended business use for the report?
• What information does the user need to get from the report (especially ALL fields they want to see)?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can start building the report with confidence that you reach the desired end result.

Utilizing Permission Sets

Sometimes Salesforce Admins will create multiple custom profiles to grant permissions to groups of users. These can include enabling additional abilities to transfer or delete object records when the profile only allows read, write, and create access. We recommend not to have too many profiles, as it can be difficult to manage and cause troubleshooting issues.

Salesforce Permission Sets allow the administrator to grant additional access to certain users within a profile, eliminating the need to numerous profiles with similar abilities.

Password Confusion

If your Salesforce entity has a customer community, staff may not realize that they have two separate user accounts: Staff Portal and the Community Portal. This can cause confusion—and sometimes frustration—if they use the same email address for both their staff and community login, especially when they try to reset the password.

We recommend that the Salesforce Admin append one or both of the user accounts with a standardized indicator of which portal the user account is tied to. For example, you can choose to add “.staff” to the end of the user account for the Salesforce user or “.community” to the end for the Community one:

• Salesforce Login:
• Community Login:

It’s up to you and your staff to decide which username should have an indicator (or both, if that makes sense for you).