[#Blogged] - Salesforce Administrator Guide: Propelling your Career Forward - Part 2

Part 2: Basic Admin Skills to Master in Salesforce

In Part 1 of my series for Salesforce Administrator Guide: Propelling your Career Forward, I discussed things to consider as you pursue your Salesforce Administrator Certification. Here, in Part 2, I want to discuss Basic Admin Skills to Master in Salesforce, whether you already have your certification or it’s a work in progress. If you’re looking to challenge yourself, make it a goal to become more proficient in each of these areas by the end of the year, focusing on one skill every few weeks. Before you know it, you’ll be an efficient Salesforce ninja, ready to tackle new ideas and help your company in ways you never thought possible! Let’s get started!

1. Creating New objects - As intimidating as it sounds, understanding how to create a new object in Salesforce is a crucial skill you can use as your company continues to grow. Furthermore, with solid knowledge of when it’s appropriate to create a new object, you can help guide solutions to use the best feature for your needs. 

2. Reporting & Dashboards - This is the bread and butter for management and how they analyze the health of your company and your customers. Get some practice slicing and dicing with different report types, how to summarize a report, and how to manipulate data within the report. Also, explore dynamic dashboards, and practice by assembling a dashboard that could be useful for your Sales team. You’ll be a hero for mastering this skill!

3. Permissions - As scary as permissions can be, understanding them is crucial for keeping your org in great shape. Make sure you know what Organization Wide Defaults are, and how to use Profiles, Permission Sets, and Field Level Security. Permissions “make or break” so much in your org, from reports, to process flows. This is worth a large investment of your time, and one I highly recommend learning sooner rather than later.

4. Creating Fields - Understand how to create a custom field, and how those fields differ from Standard Salesforce fields. There are so many different kinds of custom fields, so make sure you play around with each one. This is where it really gets fun, as you can explore which ones are your favorites, and it may spawn some ideas on current projects you’re working on. 

5. How to Set up a User - Make sure you are comfortable creating a user, and understand the license types you have and the limits of each one. Learn the difference between Freezing a user and Deactivating, and the implications of deactivating a user when they own records. 

6. Data Cleanup - Knowing how to clean up your data is a really important skill that seems to elude a lot of admins. Learn some best practices you can recommend to your org, and how to backup data with dataloader and also, mass update data. It’s also important to understand what it means to export data, and who should have those permissions. 

As an admin, with these skills under your belt, you’ll be on your way to furthering your career in no time!