Spring has sprung! The daffodils are blooming, Easter candy is in abundance, and it’s a great time of the year to declutter with some spring cleaning.
Just like the back corner of your closet, it’s easy for “stuff” to accumulate in a Salesforce org. It’s worth taking some time to see what still fits, what’s no longer flattering, and what you may be able to get rid of. Business priorities and workflows are constantly evolving — and chances are, there may be customizations that you no longer need.
Page Layouts & Custom Fields
Take a look at your existing page layouts. Are these optimized for users, or do they have to scroll for days to find what they need to see? Are there sections or fields that are no longer in use that could be pared back?
Are all of your custom fields necessary, or have some become redundant or obsolete? Make a list of these and consider decommissioning.
If you haven’t looked at Sales Path yet, this can also be a great way to clean up the Opportunity Page Layout. It looks stunning in Lightning, and can really help streamline views for users.
Installed Packages from the AppExchange
Continuing with the “closet cleaning” analogy, I’d compare free AppExchange packages to random sweaters and clothes you get for Christmas.
It looked nice when you opened it, maybe you wore it once, but now you can’t even remember who gave it to you. Are there any AppExchange tools that you’re not using that are still sitting in your org?
Duplicate & Bad Data
Are there duplicate contacts, accounts, and leads that could be merged? Using DemandTools, Data.com Clean, or another AppExchange product on an ongoing basis can make this process significantly easier.
Email list quality deteriorates rapidly – on average, 30% of any contact list will decay year-over-year. Ongoing email marketing can help keep leads and contacts warm and weed out bad addresses. If it’s been a while since your audience has heard from you, consider running a permission pass or using a tool like NeverBounce to scrub the bad addresses from your list.
Outdated Reports & Dashboards
Unless properly organized in folders, outdated reports pile up like an ever-growing heap of mismatched socks. How many of yours are categorized as “Unfiled Public Reports”? Would anyone miss them if they were gone?
With regards to Dashboards, an easy thing to check is the “Last Refresh Date.” Are there any that haven’t been run for months (or even years)?
List Views
List views are one of the worst culprits of clutter. These are a little harder to monitor usage of, so we recommend taking an inventory of ones to consider deleting and asking users for feedback.
Shameless plug: our Grid product helps address this by making it easier for users to search and filter data on their own – no list views or reports needed! If cluttered list views are an issue for you, I definitely recommend you check it out.
Salesforce Optimizer: A Great Place to Start Your Spring Cleaning
The Spring ’17 release included a feature that we’re really excited about called Salesforce Optimizer. Available under “Setup,” the Optimizer evaluates your implementation and ways to improve, including an audit of many of the areas we’ve identified above.
Decommission with Care
Once you’ve made your spring cleaning list, research and review usage carefully. Christopher Marzilli from Salesforce lays out a great process for decommissioning customizations from your org with the following stages:
As your org gets more complex, as your customizations become more interdependent, and as you add admin resources to your team, a methodical approach to decommissioning becomes increasingly important.
The Case for Regular Spring Cleaning
Would you go for years without cleaning your closet? How old is your Salesforce org, and when’s the last time you did a review of what you’re actually “wearing”?
So get ready to revamp that wardrobe, Awesome Admins. What tips do you have for your fellow users looking to “clean house”? Is there a particular area that seems to attract clutter in your org? Share your thoughts in the comments!