Handbook on Best Practices for Implementing Salesforce
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Chapter 3: Salesforce Customization Best Practices
Salesforce’s flexibility is one of its greatest strengths, allowing organizations to customize the platform to fit their specific business processes and needs. However, with that flexibility comes the responsibility of ensuring that customizations are strategic, efficient, and aligned with business goals. Customizing Salesforce involves configuring its features, creating custom objects and fields, and setting up workflows that automate tasks, all while keeping scalability, user adoption, and system performance in mind.
In this chapter, we’ll explore the best practices for customizing Salesforce and how to balance configuration and customization to maximize Salesforce's potential while minimizing complexity.
3.1 Understanding Customization vs. Configuration
Before diving into customization, it is important to distinguish between configuration and customization:
As a best practice, prioritize configuration over customization whenever possible. Relying too heavily on customization can lead to higher maintenance costs, potential compatibility issues with future Salesforce updates, and increased complexity. Only customize when configuration options cannot meet your requirements.
3.2 Customizing Salesforce Objects and Fields
Salesforce comes with standard objects such as Accounts, Leads, Opportunities, and Contacts, which are often sufficient for many businesses. However, organizations frequently require additional fields or entirely new objects to capture specific data related to their business processes.
3.2.1 Custom Fields
Custom fields allow you to capture additional data that isn't covered by standard Salesforce fields. When adding custom fields, it’s important to:
3.2.2 Custom Objects
Custom objects allow you to create entirely new entities in Salesforce to capture business-specific data. Examples might include objects to track contracts, assets, or projects.
When creating custom objects:
3.3 Customizing Page Layouts and User Interfaces
Salesforce allows you to customize how information is displayed to users through Page Layouts and Lightning App Builder. Customizing the user interface is a critical part of ensuring that users can easily navigate and interact with Salesforce.
3.3.1 Page Layouts
Page layouts control the organization and display of fields, sections, related lists, and buttons on an object’s record pages. Best practices include:
3.3.2 Lightning App Builder
The Lightning App Builder allows you to create custom page layouts for the Lightning Experience using a drag-and-drop interface. Best practices for building Lightning pages include:
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3.4 Automating Business Processes with Workflow, Process Builder, and Flow
Automation is one of the most powerful features of Salesforce, allowing you to streamline routine tasks, improve efficiency, and ensure consistency in processes. Salesforce offers several tools for automation, including Workflow Rules, Process Builder, and Flow Builder.
3.4.1 Workflow Rules
Workflow Rules are simple if/then statements that automate basic tasks such as sending email alerts, updating fields, or creating tasks. Use Workflow Rules when:
3.4.2 Process Builder
Process Builder is more powerful than Workflow Rules and allows for multi-step automation and greater flexibility in defining criteria. It is ideal for use cases where:
3.4.3 Flow Builder
Flow Builder is Salesforce’s most advanced automation tool, allowing you to build complex workflows and processes. It is used for automating tasks such as:
Best practices for automation include:
3.5 Best Practices for Salesforce Customization
To ensure that customizations are efficient, scalable, and maintainable, follow these best practices:
3.5.1 Keep It Simple
Whenever possible, use Salesforce’s declarative (clicks-not-code) tools instead of building custom code. Simple solutions are easier to maintain and less likely to break with future Salesforce updates.
3.5.2 Future-Proof Your Customizations
Design your customizations with future scalability in mind. Consider how the system will evolve as the organization grows or as new features are introduced.
3.5.3 Use Custom Metadata and Settings
If your customizations require storing configuration data, such as thresholds for automation or user preferences, use Custom Metadata Types or Custom Settings. This makes your customizations more dynamic and easier to modify without altering the underlying code.
3.5.4 Limit the Use of Hard-Coded Values
Avoid hard-coding values into automations, triggers, or workflows. Instead, use custom settings or environment variables to ensure flexibility and scalability.
3.5.5 Test Thoroughly
Before rolling out customizations to all users, thoroughly test them in a sandbox environment. This helps catch issues early and reduces the risk of disrupting business operations in the production environment.
Conclusion
Customizing Salesforce is a powerful way to ensure that the platform meets your business's unique needs, but it requires careful planning and execution. By prioritizing configuration over customization, simplifying user interfaces, and automating processes effectively, you can create a scalable and efficient Salesforce environment that supports your business goals. In the next chapter, we will explore automation in greater detail, focusing on best practices for implementing workflows, Process Builder, and Flows in Salesforce.
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