Salesforce Spring Cleaning

Birds are chirping, eyes are itching from pollen, and the dark days of winter are a thing of the past. That’s right, spring has sprung; let the fresh air inspire you to freshen up your database as well. Here are some areas that tend to get messy in everyone’s database, but fortunately, there are ways to quickly clean them up.

Note: unless you’re an admin, don’t mess around with other departments or other people’s data. Your standards for what’s recent or relevant may not match theirs, and you wouldn’t want to delete valuable information or ruffle your coworkers’ feathers. That being said, the recycle bin is always available if you delete something accidentally and need to retrieve it.

• Reports/Dashboards

Quickly see which reports you haven’t used recently by filtering them by date. Make sure to look out for annual or biannual reports, which may not have been accessed on purpose. Determine a length of time (three months, six months, one year, etc.) to use as a cutoff and then go through the list of reports that haven’t been run since your cutoff. The same goes for Dashboards; if they’re filled with reports that are out of date or haven’t been run/updated for months, it’s time to let go.

Also watch out for reports with duplicate information. Sort by name to find similar titles and data. If they’re one-for-one matches, pick whichever was updated most recently to keep. If they’re only differentiation is date range, or another small customization, consider downsizing. You can edit and customize information when you’re running the report; you often don’t need to save them separately and fill up your folder with a report you don’t truly need.

• Email templates

It makes sense to archive the emails you send and receive (I have a ton of folders to help keep them all organized), because you never know who might need what, but old email drafts and templates that are taking up space in your mass email or marketing automation platform aren’t doing anyone any favors. Clear them out!

The communication templates you use in Salesforce or other mailing tools could also probably use a comb-through. It’s natural that as your internal processes and systems evolve over time, the way you communicate will also change. The welcome email campaign you haven’t updated since 2012 is going to be out of sync with where you’re at now, and that’s a good thing! If you’ve been relying on old templates, update them. If you’ve replaced old temples with new ones, go ahead and kiss the old templates goodbye. They only make it harder to find the ones you're looking for.

• Closing out old projects or leads

Writing expiration dates into your leads and reminders into your projects will help you automate their maintenance. After a certain amount of time without any updates or activity, the status of our leads move to Closed: Expired. The lead doesn’t go away and you still have the record and information if that lead reopens, but it won’t clog up your pipeline and reports. Similarly, set automatic reminders if a project sits in the same phase for too long. Getting a reminder in your inbox that your project had been in limbo for two weeks will remind you to follow up with, or close it out, if you know it’s not going anywhere.

Wrapping a project up and closing it out at the end of the engagement is often more complicated. If there’s ongoing work or engagements at the end of your projects, you’ll need to create a procedure to manage how you deal with this internally. But if your projects have a clearer endpoint, occasionally comb through them to ensure none were accidentally left open. This is especially important if there are any triggers that occur when projects are closed (such as a customer satisfaction survey).

Umbrella issue: Another thing that can get out of hand in Salesforce ins naming conventions, and this goes for almost all objects. For example, if your organization is trying to keep all campaign names in the same format, it’s worth pulling a report and getting any of those named beyond your conventions cleaned up.

• ‘Moved On’ users/employees

If you save employee’s passwords, logins, and associated accounts in Salesforce, these lists can get long quickly. Skip scrolling through pages of information associated with employees who have moved on by keeping these lists updated. The same goes for the backend-- clear out old users and permissions at the backend of your Salesforce instance, LinkedIn and social accounts, and in any other licenses your company holds.

If you’re still inspired to clear out the cobwebs, check out our blogs on avoiding dirty data and maintaining a healthy system post-launch.

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