As a Salesforce Admin, one of the hardest things to find is time. Finding time to ensure that your Salesforce Org is kept spick and span and running at its optimum performance level is like finding Gold Dust.

Over time, clean up tasks that we push aside to “do sometime next week” turn into larger groups of tasks that we push aside to “do sometime next year!” It’s time to stop procrastinating and take action.

Now is a great time to take stock, clean up and improve your Salesforce Org ahead of the busy months in Autumn and Winter. These are my top 5 considerations to consider helping you clean up and optimise your Salesforce Org.

1) Review Inactive Automations

Old, unnecessary, and inactive automations often stack up.

Old automations that have been inactive for a while can often be removed safely. It can sometimes be good idea to keep previous automations in place (in case reversion is required) but once it is crystal clear that it will not be required, unused automation should be removed. This applies to all automations including Flows, Workflows, Process Builders, and Triggers.

Evolve can assist with reviewing Automations present in your system and take the hassle out of finding those which are inactive with the view of deletion.

2) Review Field Usage and Data Quality

Understanding your Field Usage and Data Quality is vital when cleaning up your Salesforce Org.

All Salesforce Orgs have their own custom field requirements. Some are hardly ever used, some not used at all, and ultimately some are more important than others.

A good place to start is by using a third-party tool to help identify important fields, unused fields and analyse the data quality within fields. One of our favourites is ZoomInfo’s Field Trip app available on Salesforce’s AppExchange.

The tool promises to analyse the fields of any object, what percentage of records have that field populated, and the overall health of your data. The aim is to achieve a clutter-free page layout for all objects.

Salesforce also has some native functionality that assists with analysing the use of fields. By clicking into Field via the Object Manager on the Setup Page of Salesforce, an Admin can use the button labelled “Where is this used?” to see if the field is still used somewhere.

To ensure better quality of data moving forwards why not try implementing Validation Rules to ensure that data is entered with the correct information? Make sure you run tests when deploying validation rules, to ensure that you’re not unintentionally breaking existing code.

For assistance with managing and improving field usage and data quality, get in touch with the Evolve team – we’ll be happy to help!

3) Review Page Layouts, Lightning Record Pages and Record Types

A good practice to start is the setting of periodic reviews of Page Layouts, Lightning Record Pages and Record Types. A good timeframe for this may be once per quarter, or maybe even once a month if you think you would benefit from more regular reviews.

The aim of these reviews should be to explore what content is needed on Page Layouts and Lightning Record Pages and remove that which is unnecessary and creating clutter. The review should also act as an opportunity to explore Record Types with the view of deactivating any unused record types. These can be deleted later down the line.

Performing these regular reviews will not only help establish what needs to be “fixed” now, but also may inspire improvements and inclusions that you may have otherwise not thought of.

The best way of conducting these reviews is by getting all relevant Stakeholders in one room (or on one call) and working through everything together, analysing the potential benefits before deciding on a plan of action.

4) Review Profiles, Users, Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups

Keeping a grasp on your Salesforce Org’s Profiles, Users, Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups is imperative for a clean and tidy Salesforce Org.

Custom profiles without any users assigned to them can be safely removed, providing there is not a possibility of them being used in the future. The same applies to permission sets and permission set groups.

It is also important to make sure that when an employee leaves the organisation that you deactivate their user so that they no longer have access to your system, but there are some essential steps to follow:

1. Make sure that all Contacts, Accounts, and any other “live” objects that you use are reassigned to active users

1. Reassign any live opportunities, grants, monitoring records that are owned by the inactive user to ensure that any outstanding activities can be completed on the record.

There’s often a lot to consider in regard to Profiles, Users, Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups, so a call with one of our Evolve consultants could be a good starting point. In general, it’s preferable to utilise permission sets over profiles where possible, due to their modular nature.

5) Make Cleaning Up Your Salesforce Org Habitual

It goes without saying that implementing the 6P method is always the best foot forwards to ensure a clean and optimal Salesforce Org:

“Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance”

My top consideration when thinking about cleaning up and optimising your Salesforce Org, is to ensure you have a plan of action. Salesforce Clean Up tasks shouldn’t be a single mammoth task, but rather a something you tackle in bite size chunks. Diarise some of these activities and you’ll find yourself keeping on top of it all!

For more information on how to keep on top of Admin activities like these, I recommend reading Salesforce’s Blog Articles. Salesforce published an article in August 2021 that has some additional handy tips in regard toregarding making your Data Management activities habitual that I recommend here.

If you would like Evolve’s assistance with anything in this article, please do get in touch.