Nonprofits are by no means left out of the Salesforce ecosystem. As the title of this article says, we’ll be looking into Salesforce’s very own Nonprofit Cloud, a cloud designed and dedicated to optimising nonprofits’ internal and external operations.
Stick around as we delve into the facts and functions of Nonprofit Cloud – you may just discover a new cloud to use or recommend!
What is Nonprofit Cloud?
Nonprofit Cloud is one of Salesforce’s constituent management solutions, tailored for charity and nonprofit organisations. Nonprofit Cloud enables users to connect every function of their nonprofit organisation (including but not limited to fundraising, marketing, operations, grants and donations), and holds all this information in one central place – Salesforce!
Within Nonprofit Cloud is the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). This is a set of managed packages that sits on top of your Salesforce org and is preconfigured for the types of use cases that nonprofits organisations need. NPSP provides users with custom objects like ‘Donations, Households, Organization‘*, etc, everything specifically designed for nonprofits!
How does Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud fit into the wider Salesforce ecosystem?
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud was built with nonprofits in mind. However, this isn’t to suggest that nonprofits are in any way sidelined or prevented from scaling up with the full power of Salesforce. Since it’s built on the same world-leading platform, Nonprofit Cloud can work together with other clouds. For example, Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) can be added to Nonprofit Cloud to enhance its overall performance for effective donor engagement.
So Nonprofit Cloud integrates with other Salesforce Clouds and provides access to other powerful resources too. Here are some of our favourite Cloud combos, functionality and resources that work well with Nonprofit Cloud:
Salesforce.org – The social impact centre of Salesforce.com, focused on “partnering with the global community of nonprofits and schools to tackle the world’s biggest problems.”
Sales and Marketing Cloud– Nonprofit-compatible Salesforce Clouds that work to provide personalised marketing content and help you manage sales data.
The Power of Us Hub – the portal for Salesforce.org product documentation, how-to videos, webinars, and community groups of all kinds… and the place to get 10 free nonprofit licenses!
Digital Experiences– an external, interactive platform that sits on top of your Salesforce CRM to enhance external user experience. Check out our blog on Experience Cloud for more information!
With Nonprofit Cloud, nonprofit organisations get a centralised constituent management hub for all their internal and external communication, interaction and monitoring. Onboarding and administration can also be centralised so donors receive a more personalised experience, plus, users can get a better overview of personnel management, such as volunteer data. Nonprofit Cloud is scalable, which means that you can grow your Salesforce implementation as your nonprofit organisation grows.
For clarity, here are the main benefits of using Nonprofits Cloud:
The Power of Us Hub, a support hub that is Nonprofit Cloud specific with communities and how-to videos.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and ProvenWorks in action
How can ProvenWorks, a Salesforce ISV, work with Nonprofit Cloud? First off, we’d like to highlight that nonprofit organisations get a discounted price for any of our paid solutions that take their fancy! Secondly, we love (we really mean it!) working with nonprofits. We won the Salesforce Partner Innovation Award 2021 in the Nonprofit category for our work with Malala Fund.
Our solutions work seamlessly with Nonprofit Cloud and empower you to:
Import donor and recurring donations data easily;
Verify address data from the point of entry;
Ensure compliance for marketing calls to UK donors and partners.
Manage and organise donor data with SimpleImport
SimpleImport does what it says: it makes importing into Salesforce simple. Do you have volumes of donor data or recurring donations from external platforms that need centralising in Salesforce? SimpleImport and its intuitive Lightning component, ManagedImport, empowers you and your team to import this data quickly with a simple drag & drop. It’s quick to adopt and fast to use, so no vital time is lost from your nonprofit goals.
Verify and authenticate address data at the point of entry with AddressTools
AddressTools verifies your constituent address data to ensure only clean data lives in your org. Need a postal address format for donors, volunteers and partners? We’ve got you covered! Working with the UK Gift Aid process? AddressTools helps keep any manual updates within this process to an absolute minimum (<0.05%*) enabling efficient and timely processing of Gift Aid claims.
Ensure compliance for marketing calls to UK donors with PhoneTools
Cold calling donors or potential donors for your nonprofit? The UK has strict data privacy laws against cold calling, allowing UK residents to register to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and UK businesses to the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS). PhoneTools is a native Salesforce solution that screens your donor numbers against the TPS and CTPS lists to tell you directly if you can call that phone number.
You may think we’ve been quiet for a little while with AddressTools releases, but we’ve been hard at work to bring you AddressTools 8.0 🚀
We’re always aiming to provide a better product to our customers so in this post, we’ll go through the changes and improvements we’re bringing in this latest update of AddressTools.
Enhanced support for State & Country/Territory Picklists
At it’s core AddressTools has always been compatible with Salesforce State & Country/Territory Picklists. However we acknowledge that it was a real chore to configure and could lead to a world of confusion when deploying the tool.
We’ve streamlined this and drastically improved the experience to provide clearer support to the end user when Salesforce State & Country/Territory Picklists are enabled. You will now see picklists available in all AddressTools components and there is better compatibility between your AddressTools dataset and the Salesforce State & Country/Territory Picklists dataset.
With the upcoming custom address field type which is locked to using Salesforce State & Country/Territory Picklists, this update will streamline your setup time drastically. Keep your eyes peeled as we continue to improve this experience!
What’s changed so far?
Added support for Salesforce State & Country/Territory picklists in override page.
Added support for Salesforce State & Country/Territory picklists in record page component.
Improved the unison between datasets minimising the task of aligning the two.
Correct acknowledgement of inactive State & Country/Territory data.
Introduced support for the use of text and picklist fields simultaneously (Address field type ready!)
New Address Label data returned with address verification
Do you send international mail and sometimes wonder how to format the address? In this release we have implemented a useful feature ideal for international mailing. Address Label outputs – enabling a hassle-free label, ready for printing.
When using verification, you will now be able to configure a text area in Address Blocks and it will automatically be populated with how the address should be formatted for the country it will be sent to, ready for postal services to handle. Check out the updated documentation here.
Improved page layout management
We always try to make life as easy as possible for our users. In this latest release, the AddressTools override page will place all required functional fields onto the page layout for you.
No more wondering why the address status didn’t update, no more trawling through page layouts to ensure they have all the fields you need, no more confusion. Just a quick setup that’s ready to go out of the box.
New storage information & installation options available in the AddressTools Administration Page
Storage-related issues have been the #1 cause of raised cases in the last few weeks. That’s why we’ve added some extra information and options when configuring the tool so that you can be your own data hero.
Users can now select what data points they want to install from the AddressTools dataset. Don’t need US County data? Then leave it unchecked during install! Just testing in a sandbox? Why not just use Country and State data.
We’ve also added your current storage size and total available storage to the overview panel so you have all the information to make the right decisions with no distractions.
And there’s more…
On top of the highlights we’ve explored here, AddressTools version 8.0 brings a ton of quality of life enhancements. If you want to see the full list of features and improvements, you can check out our release notes.
How do I update to AddressTools 8.0?
You can upgrade your version of AddressTools by installing the package from the Appexchange.
Education Cloud is a platform built on Salesforce CRM aimed at the education sector, including schools through to higher education institutions like universities and colleges. This cloud is aimed at keeping students, alumni and staff connected.
Our blog will take you through the key aspects of Education Cloud to provide you with more knowledge on what you can do with this Salesforce Cloud, and more importantly, to decide whether this is the right cloud for you. Let’s get started!
What is Education Cloud?
According to Salesforce, Education Cloud is intended to ‘deliver the personalised engagements, proactive advice, and connected experiences students expect’. Education Cloud has a few extra benefits such as the Power of Us hub, K-12 focus, K-20 focus and Education Data Architecture. All of these features enable Education Cloud to better connect students, staff, schools, districts and universities, as well as give schools and universities a 360-degree holistic view of the education journey.
Quick glossary:
We’ve mentioned a few key terms for this cloud already so welcome to the glossary! Here we’ll define some of the terms we mentioned above.
Power of Us hub: A community support hub that helps Education Cloud users access 10 free subscriptions and find discounts on other subscriptions, products and services from Salesforce.
K-12: Refers to the term given to the school years for children from Kindergarten to 12th grade in high school. However, in this respect it shows the type of institution this CRM platform is aimed at, with the ability to scale as the school grows. It also acts as a ‘single source of truth’ for each student and their family with all their data held in one place, making it easier to personalize interactions between school, student and the student’s family.
K-20: Refers to the term given to the school years for children from Kindergarten right through to degree. This means that both K-12 and Higher Ed institutions can use Salesforce’s Education Data Architecture to create a connected holistic view of their students. For Higher Ed, this means giving universities a flexible way to ‘track dual enrolment, universal learner profiles and more’ with a focus on lifelong learning.
Education Data Architecture: This is Salesforce’s flexible architecture that provides the foundation of Education Cloud. It’s designed for higher education institutions to get started with Salesforce faster by providing objects, logic and automation tailored towards student data, program enrolment, alumni, engagement and more. This trail on Trailhead is a great place to learn more!
What can you build with Salesforce Education Cloud?
Salesforce Education Cloud is a set of functionality built on the powerful Salesforce CRM platform. This means that when you’re using Education Cloud to manage your data, support your students and create an online community, the world is your oyster!
Here are some real-life examples of things you can do with Education Cloud to enhance your student and staff experience:
Streamline student services on one platform to deliver unified experiences
Manage the entire admissions process
Provide external users with an interactive and beautiful looking interface for all your community interactions – think student registration portals! Check out our blog on Experience Cloud to learn more
Engage with prospective students, students and alumni with personalised marketing material to build lifelong relationships
Create beautiful reports and dashboards on recruitment and admissions data
💡 Top tip: Using Education Cloud can increase enrollment by 10%
Why should you use Salesforce Education Cloud?
With students and families now expecting a unified online journey, having a system in place that facilitates more time on education and personalising the student experience and less time on non-academic needs is vital.
Since Education Cloud is student, teacher and family centric, it provides one single platform on which to manage and support the full learning experience, from admissions to alumni.
Put simply, Education Cloud:
Enables you to give students and their families, prospective students and staff applicants a personalised and centralised journey for an optimum experience;
Gives you access to Power of Us hub – a support community network;
Secures an internal and external communications hub;
Enables you to access 10 free licenses and discounted services from Salesforce;
Is scalable, customisable and compatible with other Salesforce Clouds, integrations and third-party vendors to help you deliver an exceptional education experience for students;
Is built specifically for schools and universities.
Salesforce Education Cloud and ProvenWorks in action
Education Cloud empowers the education industry with a world-leading single platform that adds great value to your institution. It creates endless new and improved opportunities for interactions between your students, alumni and staff.
ProvenWorks offers solutions that work seamlessly with Education Cloud to:
Open up import jobs to external users simply and securely
Empower internal and external users to in put verified addresses at point of entry
Open up importing jobs to your internal and external users safely
Regularly importing volumes of student-related data is time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. SimpleImport empowers users and admins to quickly import files – XLS, XLSX, ODS & CSV – into your Salesforce CRM. No more wasting time on manual administrative tasks.
Empower users to provide verified address data from the point of entry
Ensuring your mailed communication gets to the right individual is crucial. Incomplete address data contributes to a poor admissions or student experience and increases failed delivery costs! AddressTools empowers users to enter verified addresses at the point of entry, even on student registration portals. Our solution solves your address data concerns, so you remain focused on giving students and their families the best education journey possible.
If you’ve stumbled upon this blog and want to find out more about what a Salesforce ISV is and why you should work at one, please check out part 1 of this mini-series: Why work for a Salesforce ISV?
As part of my role, I am directly involved in recruitment at a scale up ISV. In this second part of our mini-series, I’m going to share what I’ve learned along the way through many hiring processes.
We’re going to take a look at some of the key skills you need to work at a Salesforce ISV, regardless of role, as well as a few top tips to give you the edge over the competition. There’ll even be a sneak peak at some real job interview questions!
What skills do I need to work at a Salesforce ISV?
Being adaptable is going to be incredibly important in having a long-lasting career at a Salesforce ISV. Not only do you have to keep up to date with the ISV’s product releases but you also have to be two steps ahead of Salesforce releases too. This goes hand in hand with having to be super organised. If you can prove that you have these two skills, you’re going to go a long way!
Another thing that I look out for is passion. Regardless of relevant experience, if you can show passion and determination to learn and get stuck in, there’s a high chance you will be able to get your foot in the door to begin your career in this industry.
What will give me the edge over other candidates?
Get on Trailhead! It is a FREE online learning platform filled with bitesize modules which are applied to real life scenarios to help users understand every aspect of the Salesforce platform.
Not only will it help you to understand if this industry is right for you but it will also give you the competitive edge. Not sure where to start? I recommend this module to begin with.
What are the interview questions like?
Having interviewed plenty of people here at ProvenWorks, the most common questions I ask for an entry-level role are:
What are the main benefits of using Salesforce?
Can you explain what a CRM is to someone who has never heard of it before?
What is the app store called that has over 5,000 Salesforce applications on it?
What product(s) do we sell?
Why would a customer want to use our product(s)? (This one is crucial: I want to know if you understand the value of our products)
Top tips from Salesforce experts
You’ll find that people who work in the Salesforce ecosystem are always happy to collaborate. So when I reached out to a variety of people that have either worked with ISVs, previously worked at an ISV or currently work at one, they were happy to share their experience.
Ben McCarthy
Ben McCarthy has been in the Salesforce Ecosystem since 2012, and is the founder of SalesforceBen.com, the largest Salesforce news site in the world. He’s spent his career working across end-users, consultancies and ISVs.
ISVs are a great place to thrive as a Salesforce professional, but it can require a mindshift when moving from an end-user or SI.
ISVs sell Salesforce products, and therefore no matter where you are working in the business, sales, marketing or customer success, you need to understand the value the product provides. Even if you are not in sales, employees of an ISV should always be looking for ways to further help their customers, and help them extract more value from the product.
Ensuring you learn about the industry and product of the company you are applying for is a sure fire way to impress your interviewers.
💡 Check out a wide range of ISV opportunities all over the globe at SFB Jobs!
Mike Davis
Mike is currently the Founder of GTM Guides, a consulting company that helps smart teams with great tech become successful companies in the Salesforce ecosystem. Mike has been navigating the Salesforce ecosystem for over a decade and has developed a deep knowledge of what works within it. His experience includes time at Xactly, Conga, and TaskRay. While the majority of his career has focused on the revenue side of the house—specifically in sales and alliances leadership—he has experienced every functional aspect of the Salesforce ecosystem within ISVs.
If you are new to the ecosystem, your most likely entry point into an ISV is going to either as a Support analyst or SDR/BDR in the sales function. I personally started as a support analyst and it gave me a wonderful opportunity to learn the Salesforce platform and customer service skills that served to inform my approach to sales (and all things go-to-market).
When you are applying for any job, know that there are hundreds of others that submit their resume alongside yours – how do you bubble up to the top 10 that get a phone screen?
If you are spending 10 hours per week applying for jobs, I would recommend spending 2.5 hours per job and apply to 4 jobs vs. spending 30 minutes per job applying to 20 jobs as you need to stand out. Someone needs to understand why they are going to take a chance on you as an unproven candidate in the ecosystem. Showing up with “why you and why them” messaging and Trailhead badges completed are two easy ways to stand out.
Summary
Now you’re all clued up on why you’d want to work for an ISV and how to get a job at an ISV, why not check out our careers page! We look at every CV we’re sent, even if we’re currently not advertising for a specific role.
And remember, even though it can feel really tough at times trying to move into a new sector, there are things you can do to set yourself apart. Keep going, it WILL be worth it!
Salesforce recognises how vast and vital the healthcare sector is to everyone, and has established a cloud focused on this sector to improve patient and internal user experiences.
In this blog we’ll look into what Health Cloud does and what you can gain from using it.
What is Health Cloud?
Health Cloud is built on Service Cloud, one of Salesforce’s most popular offerings. Health Cloud is a set of functionality that allows patient liaisons and healthcare professionals to monitor, segment and prioritise patient data. This cloud partnership provides the healthcare sector with improved and personalised customer service, as well as, internally, showing healthcare professionals a 360-degree holistic view of their patients. These advantages are possible through features such as smart case management functionality, EHR-to-Salesforce API connections and secure record management.
Now that we’ve covered an overview of Health Cloud, let’s define some of the key terminology!
Quick glossary:
Service Cloud: The key Salesforce Cloud that Health Cloud is built on. It enables users to create a tailored and personal customer experience, to ‘increase satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value’.Want to learn more about Service Cloud, check out Trailhead’s Service Cloud Basics module!
Smart case management: According to Salesforce:“A case management system lets a company collect and organize customer service interactions that occur on any channel.” What makes it smart? “Modern case management platforms pull customer requests into a database, where customer service agents can view and respond to them…”
EHR-to-Salesforce API connections: An add-on API Salesforce extension specifically for Health Cloud. These connections enable your Salesforce CRM to receive and translate EHR, and other sources of medical data, for patient records.
What can you build with Salesforce Health Cloud?
Salesforce Health Cloud is a set of functionality built on the Salesforce CRM platform. This means that when you’re using Health Cloud to communicate patient needs, collaborate with other healthcare professionals and track and monitor patient progress, everything is in one place!
Popular examples of things you can do with Health Cloud:
With Health Cloud, you can access the right health information about patients from a range of sources, including EHR systems and wearables. Healthcare professionals can prioritise tasks and segment patient lists, provide real-time and collaborative messaging for providers, patients, family members, and care teams. All this enables patients to receive the best and most personalised care possible.
Health Cloud is native to Salesforce, so there is no requirement to switch between solutions which can lose you time or worse, cause confusion in interpreting and working with siloed data.
Put simply, Health Cloud allows you to:
Remain on Salesforce – everything you need is in one place!
Personalise patient services
Receive and manage all medical data records and contacts in one, central and secure system
Engage with health liaison officers, patients and more using community hubs
Tailor, configure and scale your cloud as you grow
Salesforce Health Cloud and ProvenWorks in action
As a set of functionality, Health Cloud adds tremendous value to your healthcare practice by creating endless new and improved opportunities for you to interact with your patients and partner healthcare providers.
ProvenWorks offers solutions that work seamlessly in Health Cloud to:
Empower internal and external users to provide verified addresses at the point of entry
Open up import jobs to partners simply and securely
Import data into Health Cloud efficiently
Is data importing a pain point impacting your and your patients’ experience? SimpleImport enables simple and secure importing into Salesforce without losing precious time for patients or healthcare professionals.
Empower internal and external users to provide verified addresses
Managing patient information and keeping records clean with up-to-date data is essential for the healthcare industry. AddressTools ensures all address data is verified from the point of entry. AddressTools solves your address data concerns, while you focus on treating your patients.
If you’re looking to work in software, you might well have heard of Salesforce, but did you know there is a whole ecosystem of jobs around Salesforce?
We’re going to explore the opportunities available in the wider Salesforce ecosystem, focusing on Salesforce ISV partners, and the reasons why you should consider working there.
But first, perhaps it’s worth explaining a few key terms.
What is a Salesforce ISV?
ISV stands for Independent Software Vendor. An ISV is an organisation specialising in making and selling application-specific software – in this case, solutions for Salesforce.
ISV partners create apps that are unique and expand, adjust or supplement the existing functionality that Salesforce offers. You can find a whole range of apps listed on the Salesforce AppExchange.
What is the Salesforce AppExchange?
We’ve all got apps on our phones. The AppExchange is a marketplace exactly like the App or Play store but specifically for Salesforce.
What are the benefits of working at a Salesforce ISV?
So now we know what a Salesforce ISV does, why should you consider working at one? A few benefits spring to mind:
1. Remote working
The majority of ISVs you come across will offer remote / hybrid working. It’s something that Salesforce pushes heavily so it makes sense that ISVs follow suit.
2. Events
It’s likely everyone you come across in the Software / Tech industry will have heard of Salesforce but not as likely that they will know about every single ISV that exists (there are more than 5,000 apps on the AppExchange to give you some context here!). So naturally, whatever your role at an ISV, you’ll be encouraged to go to events or community-run user groups to get the company’s name out there.
🍕 I’ve not been to an event that hasn’t offered free food yet so what’s not to love!
3. The ISV community
Whilst you will find the first two benefits in most software companies, what makes ISVs unique is their collaborative nature. It’s an incredibly welcoming and friendly ecosystem. There’s even a huge Slack group exclusively for Salesforce ISV partners to share ideas, ask questions and work together! Chances are there will be opportunities for collaboration, co-hosting events, knowledge sharing, and no doubt you’ll make some great friends along the way!
Why work for an ISV?
Working for an ISV is incredibly rewarding because not only are you learning all about the Salesforce platform but you are also learning about the ins and outs of the product the ISV is selling too. One thing to bear in mind is that all ISVs are different. Like with any organisation, there are small ISVs and large ISVs. That’s why I’ve been in touch with a few people from different ISVs (who have different roles within their ISV) to get a few perspectives.
💡 Note: It’s highly likely that anyone you speak to within the Salesforce ecosystem is going to be willing to help you out. So if you want to know more about what it’s like to work at a certain ISV, why not get in touch with them to see if they can give you some insight?
Ruth Cawdron
Ruth Cawdron discovered the Salesforce ecosystem when she joined ProvenWorks, a British ISV, a year and a half ago. Switching industries after five years in the education sector, Ruth brings a keen passion for storytelling and creative collaboration to her role of Marketing Manager.
I think what’s struck me most working for a Salesforce ISV is that I have the best of both worlds. Obviously there are global ISVs out there but I’m lucky enough to work at a scale up. The size of our team means I get to wear lots of different hats and every day I see the direct impact of my contribution and decisions for the business. Equally, as a Salesforce Partner, we’re privileged to attend lots of huge (like REALLY HUGE!) events and gain access to opportunities that smaller software companies in other industries wouldn’t get. Yes, I work at a scale up, but I have potential to tap into the Salesforce’s 150,000-strong customer base and meet 200,000 trailblazers at Dreamforce!
The other thing I’d add is that there is a long term career in the Salesforce ISV industry if you want one. The skills you learn at one ISV and, equally as important, the contacts that you make, are completely transferable from one ISV to another regardless of size and industry.
Jack McCurdy
Jack is Salesforce DevOps Advocate at Gearset, guiding and educating Salesforce customers on how they can streamline delivery of their Salesforce applications. Jack spends most of his time in and building the community, with the aim of creating happier, more successful, and empowered professionals.
Working at an ISV gives you so much opportunity to understand how and why Salesforce teams do what they do. With that you can add a lot of colour, and a lot of value, to conversations across the ecosystem with the Salesforce professionals you meet who are looking to overcome the challenges that either you solve, or have spoken with others about.
We are all Salesforce end-users ourselves, or building AppExchange applications. That of course means there are roles in ISVs if building is your thing. But, if you’re looking to expand your horizons, apply your Salesforce knowledge differently, or gain exposure to how organisations work from every angle, then an ISV could be the place for you.
Are there other ways I can get involved in the Salesforce Ecosystem other than at an ISV?
Yes! There are two other main routes:
SI (System Integrator)
End Customer
Want to know more? Here’s a webinar hosted by Salesforce Ben and Hays Technology to tell you everything you need to know! (PS. I was talking on the webinar too!)
Summary
We’ve looked at what a Salesforce ISV is, and how it sells apps on the AppExchange. We’ve taken a dive into some of the key benefits of working at an ISV and heard from different people within the ISV community. Hopefully that’s given you some insight into why you might be interested in working for a Salesforce ISV!
As part of their Summer ‘22 Release, Salesforce has announced the retirement of a number of legacy APIs.
Versions 7.0 through 20.0 of the Salesforce Platform SOAP, REST, and Bulk APIs will be deprecated and no longer supported as of the Summer ’22 release.
This means that these legacy APIs, and third-party integrations that rely on them, will cease to function after the release.
When are the Legacy APIs being retired?
Salesforce announced that June 10 and 11 2022 is the final release weekend when all remaining Salesforce instances are upgraded if they haven’t been already.
Legacy API Retirements and ProvenWorks solutions
To ensure that you do not encounter any issues with AddressTools, SimpleImport, IndustryComplete or PhoneTools, we recommend ensuring that your current version is or is later than the versions listed in this post. If you need advice on how to upgrade an AppExchange managed package, please see the resources linked at the end.
We have listed the version of each tool, including a link to its latest AppExchange listing, that you must be on in order to be using supported APIs.
You might hear people talk about “Community Cloud”… You might be wondering how a Digital Experience is different to Salesforce Experience Cloud… Or you might be asking yourself where a partner portal fits into all of this…
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered in this article!
What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?
Salesforce Experience Cloud is a set of functionality built on the Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Experience Cloud enables you to build beautifully-branded “digital experiences” that are connected to your CRM with a key focus on engaging customers and empowering partners. You can use Experience Cloud to create multiple sites and experiences within your Salesforce org to address different purposes.
We’ve already thrown in a few tricky words so why don’t we take a quick pause to define some key terms.
Quick glossary:
Salesforce CRM platform: More than a database, this powerful software is your single source of truth for managing your customer relationships. It’s for you and your business.
Salesforce Experience Cloud: Formerly known as “Community Cloud”, it’s a set of functionality to deliver external-facing digital experiences (see below) that sit on top of your CRM. It’s for you, your business and your external stakeholders.
Salesforce Community Cloud: The old name for Salesforce Experience Cloud.
Digital Experience: The external-facing ‘site’ you can build with Salesforce Experience Cloud.
Site: Another name for a Digital Experience instance.
Partner portal: One example of a Digital Experience.
Help forum: Another example of a Digital Experience.
DXP: You might see Experience Cloud referred to by this acronym; it is Salesforce’s digital experience platform (DXP).
With those definitions in mind, Salesforce’s online learning platform, Trailhead describes digital experiences and Experience Cloud:
“A digital experience built using Experience Cloud provides a window into your Salesforce world.”
So hopefully we’ve cleared up some terms and their definitions. Now let’s investigate what this means in reality!
What can you build using Experience Cloud?
Salesforce Experience Cloud is a set of functionality built on the powerful Salesforce CRM platform. This means that when you’re using Experience Cloud to build a digital experience, the world is your oyster!
You can create a digital experience for any situation where you want to present a beautiful external-facing interaction with your Salesforce CRM.
Popular examples include:
Partner portal
Account portal
Storefronts
Microsites
Industry solutions
Customer service hub
Help centres
Support site
Mobile app
💡 Top tip: Salesforce has created Lightning Bolts. These are pre-built industry-specific Digital Experience templates (amongst other things!) created to help you go to market quicker.
Why should you use Experience Cloud?
With Experience Cloud, you’re giving stakeholders what they need. Not only this, but you’re doing this completely integrated with your CRM. This means you’re maintaining and cultivating a single source of truth with an even bigger picture of your business, your customers and your partners.
We keep repeating that it’s built on the Salesforce platform… but that’s because it’s important! By building on the Salesforce platform, you’re building your partner portal or support forum on world-leading software that is scalable, secure, customizable and centralized.
A few more perks to consider at a glance:
Go to market fast with industry-specific customizable themes
Create multiple experiences for specific needs
Design for every device since all digital experiences are 100% mobile optimized and fully responsive
Partner users cannot import data to Salesforce in a digital experience
Standard Salesforce does not allow users to import data in a digital experience.
We’ve seen that Salesforce themselves describe Digital Experiences as a “window” into your Salesforce world.
However, many businesses and organisations need more than a window; they need a door.
Salesforce Digital Experiences (Communities) built on Experience Cloud have been growing in popularity. It’s easy to see why they’re so popular, since digital experiences can be used in so many contexts: partner portals, e-commerce sites, help centres and even franchisee hubs.
With so many different digital experience audiences come lots of reasons why users need to import data.
It’s worth bearing in mind that standard Salesforce does not allow digital experience users to import data.
Experience Cloud and ProvenWorks in action
In case you can’t tell, we love Salesforce Experience Cloud. As a set of functionality, it adds tremendous value to your business by creating endless new opportunities for you to interact with your stakeholders.
However we’re not just fans of Experience Cloud; as a team of Salesforce experts who create data management solutions to save you time, we see the powerful potential of Digital Experiences.
We’ve created solutions that work seamlessly on Digital Experiences to:
Open up import jobs to partners and business users simply and securely
Empower external users to provide verified addresses at the point of entry
Empower external users to import safely and simply via a digital experience
Think partner deal registrations or subsidiary sales information. Safely empower users to import data into your Salesforce through preconfigured mappings using our two-step drag and drop wizard – introducing the ManagedImport component.
Reduce cart abandonment and improve user registration with fast address verification
Think user registration portals and ecommerce checkouts. Create powerful user experiences with our Address Verification Flow Component that verifies address data at the point of entry in 5 key strokes or less.
If you, like many of us, have been eagerly awaiting the custom address field type in Salesforce (it’s only been like 10 years or so?), then you’ll be pleased to hear that Salesforce has announced it is in Beta from the Summer ‘22 release!
At ProvenWorks we’ve been fortunate enough to participate in the closed pilot since day one so we have been able to follow its progress. We’re now excited to be able to share with you some information so that you can be prepared for its release.
Isn’t the custom address field just like the standard address field type?
Sort of – however, be prepared that State & Country picklists are enforced for all new custom address fields in Salesforce, regardless of your existing org settings. This is largely why we’re writing this article.
State & Country picklists provide a neat solution for ensuring clean data at the point of entry, but admittedly, we’ll be the first people to warn you about the integration issues, customization headaches, and maintenance anxiety you may face when using Salesforce State & Country picklists.
…Nevertheless we are address experts in Salesforce so we’re going to embrace State & Country picklists head on and let you know how to prepare if you wish to migrate from custom text fields to the new address field type.
❗ Important:If you’re steering clear of State & Country picklists and you wish to remain using text fields then keep doing what you’re doing! There is no need to change if it works for you. The rest of this article may still be helpful to understand how to standardize data stored in State and Country text fields.
Standardization is critical
Keeping org data clean is the driving force behind Salesforce’s decision to enforce State & Country picklists for the new field type. If you, like many others, have been excited to migrate away from five custom text fields to a single address compound field, then we’re going to have to standardize that data before the migration process.
The rest of this article will walk you through a fast and efficient way to standardize your existing data from within Salesforce using AddressTools Premium. We’ll cover two approaches:
Create a standardization trigger leveraging AddressTools and run a “mass update” to execute the logic.
Export a standardized list of address data ready for reimporting back into Salesforce.
Both approaches require the same initial steps for configuring AddressTools’ standardization functionality so we’ll start there and break out into the two options later.
The use case
The scenario we’ll be following will be looking at a custom object called “Warehouse”. The Warehouse object contains five custom text fields that when put together create an address. We will refer to these fields collectively as an “address block”.
The five custom fields are:
Street
City
State
Postal Code
Country
The fields are populated from a number of different sources – web forms, integrations and user entries – so we cannot guarantee that the data is standardized.
To prepare this data we’re going to expedite the process by using AddressTools Premium available on the AppExchange. As users (and developers) of the package we have heaps of experience and even some hidden tricks that’ll save days. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours from start to finish.
Installing the AddressTools Premium trial
If you’re not already using AddressTools Premium in your organization you’ll need to first install it from the AppExchange. You can do this in a sandbox if you want to test the functionality before pushing it to production.
Note: AddressTools Premium is a paid-for product that comes with a 14-day free trial. This could save you days of work so the cost may be something worth considering, especially if you have wider address requirements.
Select Install in Production or Install in Sandbox depending on your requirements. It is best practice to test in a sandbox before moving to production.
Agree to the terms and conditions.
Select Confirm and Install.
You may be prompted to log in again. If so, log into the org you want to install the package to.
Select Install for Admins Only.
Press Install.
Check Yes, grant access to these third-party web sites.
Select Continue.
Let the process install the package. AddressTools Premium has a lot of features so it may take some time to install (you may receive a warning saying it’s taking a long time, this is normal). When the package has completed its installation you’ll receive a success email.
Once the package has been installed, navigate to the AddressTools App (via the App Launcher) and open the AddressTools Administration tab. You’ll immediately be on the Installation sub-tab.
Under the Installation tab, select Create Token.
A green tick will appear next to the first step.
Next we’ll want to install the AddressTools Premium dataset. This is a list of countries, states, alternative names, ISO codes, (and heaps of other address-related data).
Warning: This dataset is large. Ensure you have enough storage available if you’re testing this in a sandbox. If your allocated storage is low or you are unsure you can select Only install sample data but beware this will not populate any alternative country and state values that will be used to expand the acceptable standardization data for countries and states. This can be manually added later if you so wish.
Under Data Installation, select Get Started.
Optionally choose Only install sample data.
Select Install.
A final warning will appear in relation to storage size. When you’re ready press Yes.
This may take some time and will preconfigure some functionality for your org. Feel free to continue reading this guide so that when you’re done you’ll be ready to rock.
Once the installation has finished, refresh the page to see that green tick.
Disabling the out-of-the-box functionality
A trigger is provided out of the box for the Account, Contact, Contract and Lead objects. If this is a fresh installation of AddressTools Premium in your org we’ll want to disable these triggers so that we don’t impact current business processes when we begin enabling functionality further down the line.
After the data installation:
Select Settings from the left navigation.
Scroll to Trigger Settings.
Disable each of the trigger settings in this section.
Select Save.
If the address fields you want to standardize exist on one of the four objects, the triggers can be re-enabled at a later point.
Configuring the address block
As mentioned earlier we’ll be referring to the five custom text fields as an “address block”. We need to configure AddressTools Premium with each of the text fields. This will allow the tool to execute standardization on the custom State & Country fields.
On the AddressTools Administration page, select Address Blocks from the left navigation.
Use the Add button in the top right.
Select the object where your address block exists. We’re choosing Warehouse__c.
If you have record types enabled on the object, leave None chosen.
Select Next.
Under Postal Address Fields, select the relevant fields for each picklist:
Country
State
City
ZIP/Postal Code
Street
With the object and address fields now specified, it’s time to choose the settings we want to enable for the block.
Whilst still on the new address block modal:
Scroll down to Global Settings.
Check Standardize Country.
Check Standardize State.
Note: there are plenty of other settings here that may take your fancy. A tooltip is provided next to each giving you some insight into what’s available. You can come back to this page at any time should you wish to explore the other capabilities of AddressTools Premium.
We’ll complete this step by selecting Save.
Configure standardization values
Standardization is the process of converting multiple acceptable values to a single value. For example let’s take a look at the country Egypt:
Full name – Egypt
ISO-2 – EG
ISO-3– EGY
Local name (Latin characters) – Miṣr
Local name (Native characters) – مِصر
Each of the above values are technically correct entries for Egypt but a picklist won’t allow all of these values to be entered. Using a text field to accept all the variations of the country name will ease the stress for end users, integrations and streamline future expansions of your org. It’s then best practice to standardize the values to a single preferred format for analytical purposes after the data is inserted.
To identify the acceptable values for each country we’ll take a look at the Countries object installed with AddressTools. This is one of the objects that the data installation will have populated records for and is fundamental to the standardization functionality.
Select App Launcher.
Search and select Countries.
Select All from the available list views.
To help understand the data, select the United States country record from the list view.
Looking at the Country record, you can find dedicated fields for:
Full name
ISO-2
ISO-3
Local name (Latin characters)
Local name (Native characters)
The good news is that each of these field’s values are automatically configured to be accepted in text fields configured with AddressTools Premium. When the AddressTools trigger functionality is enabled the values will be standardized to a defined format on insert and update.
Let’s take a look at another example for acceptable data by talking about United Kingdom, or do I mean Great Britain, or England?… You get where I’m going…
State & Country picklists don’t support the inputs of these variations, and these variations also don’t fit into the five dedicated fields on the Countries object. This is where we introduce Alternative Country Names.
Whilst still looking at your existing country record, select Related.
Select Alternative Country Names.
This list may be empty depending on the country you’re looking at or because you only installed the sample dataset. Don’t worry, you can add as many records here as you find necessary.
To add a new Alternative Country Name:
Select New.
Write the value into the Alternative Country Name field.
Ensure the Original Country field is populated with the Country.
Is Obsolete: Unchecked.
Select Save.
And it’s that simple, you’ve now added an Alternative Country Name that AddressTools will be able to identify during the standardization process.
The State object is configured similarly. To access States navigate to the related list on the Country record. For example, navigate to the United States Country record, select Related, and here you’ll find a list of states belonging to the United States.
Each State record has a:
Full name
ISO code
An Alternative State Name object is available where you can add a list of acceptable values. After all, we can’t seriously expect all our users to spell Mississippi correctly every time… So practically speaking if there are common misspellings or abbreviations you find in your org you can add them here to be standardized.
That covers configuring all of the acceptable values. Now we need to define the formats for the data to be standardized to.
Defining the standardized formats
Whilst we’re still looking at Country and State record data, we’ll configure the State format first.
This is managed on the Country record and can be controlled on a per-country basis.
Navigate back to a Country record (i.e. United States).
Enable or disable Use Subcountry Code in State field.
This option can be enabled/disabled to standardize the state value to either its full name or ISO value (i.e. Texas vs TX).
Lastly, we need to define the Country format. This is an org-wide setting and applies to all country values.
Go to the AddressTools Administration tab.
Navigate to Settings in the left navigation.
Use the pencil icon next to Standardization Enabled.
Check Standardization Enabled.
Edit the Country Standardization Format to match the desired format.
Select Save.
Note: These settings can be changed at a later date if you need to change your format. You’ll then need to run one of the following jobs to standardize the data to the new format.
It’s configured, now what?
We have two options to mass standardize the data:
Enable a trigger on the object, run a mass update and have the trigger standardize all the data during the update.
Invoke a job via the Developer Console to export a standardized list of data that can be manually reimported into Salesforce.
Choose the approach that best suits you. If you’re unsure what route to take we have instructions below walking you through both.
Option 1: Create a trigger on the object and run a mass update.
We’ve configured all the standardization settings so now we need to tell the object to follow them. As we’re working with a custom object in this example we’ll need to create a new trigger in the org to invoke the AddressTools functionality.
A trigger is provided out of the box for the Account, Contact, Contract and Lead objects. Follow the relevant steps to enable or create a trigger for the object where your address block exists.
If you’re working with either of the Account, Contact, Contract or Lead objects:
Navigate to the AddressTools Administrator tab.
Select Settings from the left navigation.
Scroll to Trigger Settings.
Enable the trigger on the object you’re standardizing.
Select Save.
If you’re working with an object that isn’t Account, Contact, Contract or Lead:
Go to Setup.
Navigate to Object Manager.
Locate the Object you want to create the trigger for.
Select Triggers and New.
In the box, replace the existing code snippet with the following:
trigger ValidateOBJECTLABELCountryFields on OBJECTAPI (before insert, before update) {
pw_ccpro.CountryValidator2.Validate(Trigger.new, Trigger.oldMap);
}
Replace OBJECTLABEL with the label name of the object you’re creating the trigger for.
Replace OBJECTAPI with the API name of the object you’re creating the trigger for.
Select Save.
With the trigger enabled for the object, we need to turn on the standardization setting in the AddressTools Administration tab:
Navigate to the AddressTools Administrator tab.
Select Settings from the left navigation.
Under Feature Enablement, check the box for Standardization Enabled.
Confirm that the Country Standardization Format is set as you desire.
Select Save.
Before we do a mass update we can test the standardization functionality on our address block.
Navigate to a record where your address block exists.
Edit the record.
Change the country text value to a variation of the value currently present (e.g. if the country is United States, change it to USA or US).
Save the record.
The record will standardize to the format specified in the settings. (If you entered the desired format, the value won’t change on save as it’s already in the expected format. Try changing to another format to confirm the test).
Before save:
After save:
Now the test has been confirmed we need to invoke the trigger on all existing records. This will involve running an update on every record in the object. There are many different ways that you can achieve this so if you can already think of one then do what you know best.
If you need some guidance, we have a separate article on how to run a “mass touch” using Salesforce Flows. Check it out here.
Once the mass touch operation has successfully run, all State and Country values that matched the AddressTools dataset will now adhere to your defined standardization format.
There may be some leftover values and this will require some manual intervention. If you find a repeat offender you can add the value to the Alternative Country or State Name objects and re-run the process to catch them.
Option 2: Export the standardized data for importing later
Before we start, it makes sense to see the result of these instructions so let’s take a look at what our exported file will contain.
For every record on the configured object that can be standardized, the data will be exported with the following data in the file:
Record ID
Current text field values (Old)
Standardized versions of the text field values (New).
Note: The export will ignore records that are already in the desired format or that contain data that cannot be standardized (i.e. an unrecognized value).
To prepare AddressTools Premium to execute this export:
Navigate to the AddressTools Administrator tab.
Select Settings from the left navigation.
Under Feature Enablement, check the box for Standardization Enabled.
Confirm that the Country Standardization Format is set as you desire.
Add your email address to the Batch Verification Alerts Email Address field.
Select Save.
This process will need permission to send an email to the email address configured in the previous section. You may need to change your org’s Email Deliverability settings to support this.
To check/change your Deliverability settings:
Go to Salesforce Setup.
Search for Deliverability in the left search.
Select Deliverability from the left navigation.
Make note of your existing Access level, you can revert the setting back to this once you’re done.
Change Access Level to All email.
Select Save.
For some of you reading this guide, you may not have worked with the Developer Console before so follow closely and let’s execute some Apex!
Note: If this is your first time we recommend doing this in a sandbox so you don’t affect any production data.
Go to the cog in the top right of your Salesforce page.
Select Developer Console.
The Developer Console window will open in a new window.
Select Debug | Open Execute Anonymous Window.
Under Enter Apex Code, type the code below
pw_ccpro.BatchValidateAndGenerateCSV M = new pw_ccpro.BatchValidateAndGenerateCSV('OBJECTAPI');
Database.executeBatch(M);
Change OBJECTAPI to the API Name of your Object. We’ll be typing ‘Warehouse__c’.
Select Execute.
This will now begin the standardization process. The length of time it will take to execute will vary depending on how much data you have in your org.
Once the job is complete you will receive an email with a .csv attachment containing all of the standardized data from the address block ready for importing either into the existing fields or ready to migrate into your State & Country picklists.
And there you have it – your standardized file is waiting for you! When you’re ready to import this data back into Salesforce, use an importing tool* of your choice and ensure to update the records matching the Record ID found in column A.
Warning: Be vigilant when running mass update operations in a production environment. Where possible backup your data first.
*Pssst if you’re looking for a new favorite importing solution, why not try out SimpleImport for this import job!
Summary
So there you have it, we’ve walked through how to standardize your existing data ready for the new custom address field type in Salesforce using AddressTools Premium.
If you have found this guide to be helpful, please ensure you share it with others so that they can learn how to standardize their address data stored in text fields. If it has saved you time then it may save them time too!
If you have any questions about AddressTools and any of its capabilities we’d love to hear from you. Get in contact with us at info@provenworks.com.
Following Salesforce’s announcement that they will be retiring Workflow Rules and Process Builder, it’s clear that Flows are the future and the future is here to stay.
With that in mind, we are so excited to introduce our Address Verification Flow Component, now available on the AppExchange! Verify addresses in a flow using global postal authority data for over 240 countries.
Why should you verify addresses?
Did you know that verifying addresses up-front can reduce failed delivery rates by up to 70%? Improve customer experience and save wasted costs with verified addresses.
We’ve designed the Address Verification Flow Component to make it as easy as possible for Administrators to ‘hot-swap’ the vanilla Address component with our own component followed by a quick re-binding of any set flow variables.
So it’s easy to set up. How about some facts and figures too?
Create an exceptional user experience by reducing data entry time by 78% and errors by 20%.
Unlike Google, access global postal authority data such as Royal Mail, USPS, Canada Post for truly verified data, reducing failed delivery rates by up to 70%.
Autopopulate any address fields in 5 keystrokes or less.
The use cases
Digital Experience – Do you use an ecommerce checkout or a user registration portal? Verify addresses at the point of entry!
Internal Flow – Capture user addresses quick with type-ahead verified data. Perfect for Service Cloud users!
Endless possibilities – Wrap our solution in a custom Aura component for total flexibility!
Try out the Address Verification Flow Component
Why not start off with a free trial of the component?
Drag and drop the component into your Flows and you’re ready to flow!
If you get stuck or have any questions, feel free to contact our Support team who are more than happy to help you: support@provenworks.com.
Interested? Chat to us
The Address Verification Flow Component is an extension of our popular solution AddressTools. Pricing of the Address Verification Flow Component depends on your use case. Get in touch with us to discuss your requirements and we’ll get you the most accurate information!
