Solution Showcase, EasyCrud, contact counts in SFMC...hello from Kicksaw! ?

Hello friend,

Happy holidays to those who celebrate!

We're introducing a new segment in this month's newsletter. At Kicksaw, we're builders and makers, and every other week, we get together to show off some of the work we're most proud of. We decided to start sharing some of this content with our newsletter subscribers, so that you can see what we're up to and maybe be inspired by some of what our very talented team has come up with to solve some interesting problems.?

Solving interesting problems is at the heart of what we do here. As anyone who works with Salesforce can attest, interesting problems abound, and working through these problems to create a scalable solution is what makes us tick. We love it, and we hope you'll pick up a hot tip or two as you follow along with us.?

~Kenny Goldman,?co-founder and CEO

Solution Showcase

Welcome to our first solution showcase! In this ongoing segment, we want to highlight some of the unique, interesting, and/or innovative solutions that our team has created for clients, for ourselves, or for fun. Enjoy!?

This month, we want to highlight the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) app that Kicksaw Solution Architect?Brandon LaFave?built. The app provides an easy way to track UAT items between a customer and Kicksaw. It’s meant to be installed in the customer’s UAT environment, but it could be installed in production if needed.

The Kicksaw UAT App comes with Reports and a Dashboard that can be used to track the progress of the UAT testing period. It supports two types of processes: Feedback and Test Cases.?

The Feedback process is intended to be an easy way for end users to provide feedback on Salesforce functionality (such as an error message or a page layout change) from wherever they are in Salesforce. This eliminates the need for a user to switch to a different application, such as a shared Google Sheet or a Word document, in order to provide important feedback.

The Test Cases process provides an individual user story, business requirement, or training item that a user should be testing, with criteria derived from the customer’s requirements and business processes. To get a good grasp on the success of a Test Case, we calculate KPIs such as pass and fail percentages and total tests completed, which are used to determine if an individual Test Case needs further development or user training.

Want to see it in action? Click on the video below to watch Brandon demonstrate the app.

Understanding Contact Counts in Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Numbers not adding up? We're here to help.

One of the things we hear from clients again and again is "Why am I over my contact limit in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC)?" The answer isn't as straightforward as you might think! Knowing what counts and what doesn’t count towards your contact limit can make the difference and help your organization avoid overage fees, disruptions to service, and keep your SFMC instance free of technical debt. Click here to read the article.

A Quick Peek Inside Our Toolbox

Kicksaw Consultant?Ian McQuade?has another tool recommendation for us, and it's a time-saving gem.??

Sick of spending what feels like forever updating profiles and permission sets??EasyCrud?is a great resource that can update CRUD and FLS, along with permission sets (even though the extension summary doesn't mention this), in bulk from a single screen. Check it out!

Enhance Record Choice Sets with Formula Fields

Flowmaster General?Aaron Haag?brings us more flow advice, holiday style!?

Letting users select one or more records via a record choice set is a powerful flow feature. During configuration, you select a field from the record to display, such as ‘Name,’ and a record to store, such as ‘Id’. This lets your users correctly see the data they need to choose, and you have the data you need to process their selection. In some use cases, though, one field is not enough! For example, if you are asking users to select a group of similar products, it is often useful to create a formula field that concatenates several fields and show: ‘Product Name - Size - Family’. This formula can then be chosen as the display field for the record choice set, and voila! Your users now have all the information they need to complete the task at hand.?

Let's say you need to ask users to select the most appropriate group of reindeer for a particular journey. And maybe some users would benefit from a strong visual cue. In this situation, we can combine the power of static resources, formula fields, and a record choice set.

For this solution, you can upload images as static resources with the names ‘rednose’ and ‘reindeer.’ On the reindeer’s contact record, the following formula will show the 'reindeer' image, unless, of course, that reindeer is a certain star of the show!

IF(LastName = "Rudolph",

IMAGE("/resource/rednose", "rednose", 12, 12),

IMAGE("/resource/reindeer", "reindeer", 12, 17))

Now, if I want that reindeer’s associated image in the record choice set, I can make an additional formula field to show the reindeer’s name and the image (and any other information I might want to share)?

Reindeer_Type__c + " " + LastName

The result is a nice visual cue so that everyone knows who should guide the sleigh tonight!

Out with the old, in with the new!?

Hard to believe that we're approaching the end of 2022 already, but time got away from us yet again. This past year has been a total whirlwind at Kicksaw HQ — we hired 36 employees (most for new roles!), acquired 132 new customers, completed 220 engagements (what!!), participated in the Salesforce HLS advisory board, saw an employee compete on?Legends of Low Code,?hosted our first-ever in-person company retreat...what a ride.?

We're excited for what 2023 will bring, and we're eager to continue building our relationships with you, dear readers. If you have any feedback on our newsletter, suggestions for content you want to see, want to know more about us, or just have a question for us, send us a message and we'll be in touch!

Smell ya later 2022,

The Kicksaw Team