Are you just getting started with Salesforce.com? AI can help!

#Salesforce #OpenAI #ChatGPT #AI

Authors: Jonathan Habbick , Andy Forbes

With Salesforce, businesses can quickly and easily automate their sales and service operations (and much more, but for this article, let's focus on the native sales and service features) and provide a better experience for their prospects and customers. But "quickly and easily" applies to using the out-of-the-box Salesforce features. Configuring and customizing Salesforce to meet the unique needs of your business can become a time-consuming process that requires considerable experience and knowledge. Thankfully, there is now a way to get cost-effective and timely help learning how to configure and customize Salesforce: using Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI solutions like ChatGPT are helping companies with Salesforce development, allowing them to focus on delivering outstanding customer experiences. In this article, we'll explore how AI can be used to accelerate your Salesforce configuration and customization work.

The first step is to spend some time on the free Salesforce Trailhead site: Trailhead. We recommend starting with the Admin Beginner trail.

Next, you'll want to sign up for a free (as of Dec 2022) ChatGPT user account: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

Even if you have a Salesforce developer sandbox, for following the examples in this article we recommend using a free developer edition org: Salesforce Developer Edition Signup

Below are some examples on how an AI can help you get started on your Salesforce configuration and customization journey.

Create a Salesforce report

Creating a Salesforce report is a reasonably basic process but still – try to figure this out by searching Salesforce sites or using a search engine to search the internet! ChatGPT does a nice job of quickly providing step-by-step guidance.

Remove some fields from a Salesforce page

With the move to Lightning, the above activity is not as clear as it could be. It would be helpful to have ChatGPT explain some of the gotchas. Still, these are good step-by-step directions on how to delete fields and what to keep in mind. As with the report, these directions are to the point and quicker than having to search Salesforce sites or the internet.

Create an Account child object

These directions are a little wonky. The process is correct, but some details are not quite right. This is why it is important for you to spend time working through the Salesforce Trailhead site materials so you understand and can evaluate what the AI is telling you to do rather than blindly following directions.

Map Lead conversion fields

The challenge with mapping Lead fields to the Account and Contact objects is that this is generally done once for an org when setting up the org. Even if you have completed a Trailhead unit on how to do this, the only way you're going to remember how to do this is if you're a consultant that sets up Salesforce orgs regularly. This is where the power of AI kicks in, e.g. it extends and augments your knowledge and memory.

Create a basic Flow

These are decent directions on how to create a Flow. At the same time, it is important to note that what the AI produces is only as good as the prompt. The prompt doesn't say which user is supposed to follow new accounts that are in California, and it doesn't specify which Account state field to use (there is more than one). As noted in the mapping Lead fields example, an AI doesn't replace your needing to know how Salesforce works and being able to translate a requirement into something actionable.

Create a custom Lightning Web Component

This is a very basic custom LWC, but with this LWC you have moved from Salesforce configuration to Salesforce customization! Congratulations! We recommend spending Trailhead time on LWC development before extending/enhancing this LWC, but when you're ready to do so, AIs can help you code LWCs (and many additional capabilities) to address very complex business requirements.

As you embark on your "Salesforce configuration and customization" adventure, using an AI is like having an experienced and highly certified Salesforce developer sitting next to you, providing guidance every step of the way. Admittedly, when this article was written (Dec 2022), the guidance can sometimes be a little wonky, but it's already faster than having to search the internet for answers and AIs are improving at a fantastic rate.