Three Important Salesforce Check-Ups

With only 3 business weeks left in 2020 here are 3 simple check-ups you can perform to determine the health of your Salesforce org. Now is a good time to set a recurring calendar entry to repeat these checks each year!

2020 has certainly been a year like no other. I hope you’ve stayed well away from COVID and been able to survive with the restrictions imposed on both business and personal activities.

During 2020 Artisan moved out of the publicly traded PS+C Group and is now part of a larger Cloud Solutions business which is partly owned by Australian superannuation funds. We remain one of only a few Platinum Tier Salesforce Consulting Partners which is proudly Australian owned and operated.

With the end of 2020 rapidly approaching now is a great time to check your Salesforce org is in good shape and ready to support your business throughout 2021.

Check-Up #1 - Make sure your Salesforce data is Secure

Whilst Salesforce is highly secure your data is only as secure as the choices you make when configuring access controls. During the 2020 major seasonal releases Salesforce has made a number of key changes in security controls so now is a great time to check how your org measures up against best practice.

ACTION REQUIRED – Ask your Salesforce Administrator to run the Salesforce Health Check from within the Security area of the Setup menu. The Health Check report is presented and you can see how well your org meets Salesforce security standards. Reduce your security risk and limit data loss by aligning your settings with the Salesforce Baseline Standard (or create your own baseline which represents your organisation’s approved IT policies). Save the web page as a PDF and review regularly. Aim for 100% compliance and treat any high-risk critical gaps as important.

Check-Up #2 - Review the Access Controls specific to Portals

Salesforce Communities and Sites provide data access to people outside your organisation so it is especially important to make sure more data is not exposed in unintended ways. Poor configuration can mean one customer can see another customer’s data. Data can even be inadvertently exposed before an external user logs in!

ACTION REQUIRED – Ask your Salesforce Administrator to run the Portal Health Check from within the Security area of the Setup menu. The Portal Health Check is actually made up of 4 reports with a summary presented. If you have any:

-         profiles flagged as exposing your data, or

-         guest profiles which can access data, or

-         objects with a public sharing model, or

-         external users who can see data due to sharing rules,

then dig deeper to understand why and whether this has put your organisation at risk of a data breach.

Check-Up #3 - Review your Salesforce Optimiser Report

The Salesforce Optimiser analyses your implementation to find ways to simplify customisations and drive feature adoption. Salesforce recommends you run the Optimiser as part of your monthly maintenance, before installing a new app, before each Salesforce release, or at least once a quarter.

The Salesforce Optimiser can create a PDF report on-demand or on a schedule.

ACTION REQUIRED - Ask your Salesforce Administrator to run the Portal Health Check from within the Security area of the Setup menu. Either click the “Create PDF” button to initiate the full report generation, or allow the app to have access and schedule the regular generation of a more limited report. The process to prepare an Optimiser report can take a few minutes to a few hours depending on the size of your org. The full report (which can be 150 pages+) is uploaded to Salesforce Files when it is ready and you will receive an email to notify you when it is available. Focus on the items with an orange or red icon which flag features which don’t comply with Salesforce best practices.

Artisan Consulting can Help with Salesforce

Here are four ways Artisan Consulting can help your organisation:

1 - Resource Augmentation

If you know what you want to achieve with Salesforce but lack expertise or capacity, then Artisan can help with a range of elastic resourcing options to augment your internal team. Artisan can provide Salesforce resources on a long-term or short-term basis, and resources can be either full-time or part-time.

Beyond the provision of Salesforce expertise through Artisan, other parts of our business can provide skilled resources for other technologies, as well as generic roles like project managers, solution architects, integration specialists, business analysts and testers. 

2 - Project and Program Delivery

If you have a Salesforce project or program to deliver then Artisan can provide the team you need to be successful. 

Our project team can either take full responsibility for the project outcomes, or we can work with you to assemble a team can which is a hybrid of our resources and your own internal staff.

3 - Operational Support using Artisan Assist

Artisan has an app in the Salesforce App Exchange called Artisan Assist which allows your Salesforce Administrator to ask for help when needed, one work item at a time. The Artisan team will estimate the work effort and will only proceed once you approve the estimated delivery cost. 

All data tracking the work remains in your Salesforce org for safe keeping. 

If you need Artisan to have access to your Salesforce org you can grant login access without using up one of your valuable Salesforce licenses.

4 - Technical Audit and Issue Remediation

Artisan can help to interpret the Health Check and Optimiser reports. 

We can also conduct a full technical audit which involves a more detailed forensic scan than is possible using these automated reports and includes a code review. If you engage an independent auditor to verify your financial reports as an accurate representation of your business, then think of an Artisan Salesforce Technical Audit as a similar service, providing an independent regular review of the health of your Salesforce org together with recommendations to align with best practice and reduce the risk of a data breach.

Additionally, we can work with you to take the actions necessary to remediate issues found in your Salesforce org.

Contact Us

If Artisan can help in any way please contact us today by emailing [email protected]

Richard Clarke, Artisan Consulting Salesforce Practice Director