SALESFORCE #TIPS – Share a list view to several users

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To whom may wonder how to share a same list view to a certain group of users, you should leverage Public Groups.

When creating a list view in Salesforce, you can create it :

  • for your own
  • for all users (you cannot be too selective on your filters, on a wide-open list view)
  • for a set of users from within roles / roles and subordinates

However, when you do want to share a list with a limited number of users, from the same role for example, you could feel that you should need to create a subrole just for it, or open it up to all users because you think you cannot do any other way.

Share a List View – No possibility to share to a group, if no Group had been created first

To be able to target a list of specific users, you could leverage Public Groups

To do so, navigate to Setup > Public Groups > New, create a public group with a relevant name, that would be easy to understand for users who would need to share their list views.

Share a List View – Creation of a Public Group

Once done, you will see that you are now able to share list views with Groups ; this option is now available among the list sharing options :

Share a List View – Sharing to a Public Group is possible when at least a Public Group exists

Here, we share the new list view, with the newly created Public Group :

Share a List View – Example when sharing to a group

To read more on the subject :

URL Hack to reset Salesforce user security token

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This is not a very new topic, but that is something that I need to explain a few times a year, because I am frequently asked this question by consultants.

When trying to reset a User Security Token, consultants or administrator are navigating through the user settings to discover that the Reset My Security Token is not present anymore in the personal section of Settings menu, on the left side of the page.

Reset Security Token – Click Settings to access the personal settings page to access the Reset Token menu

In My Personal Information menu, in the settings panel, you can see that there is no option to reset the security token, in this instance (example, on the screenshot on the right, where the menu option is missing).

That can be the case when an IP range has been defined for your profile / user.

Reset Security Token – No Reset option

However, if you need to get a Token value, in this case, please consider the following URL hack :

  • Go to the URL navigation bar
  • Append to your Salesforce domain, the following text : 
_ui/system/security/ResetApiTokenEdit
  • And click enter, once done.

A new page (in an old-fashioned Classic look) then appears, unlocking the reset option. From this page, you will now be able to reset the security token of this user, by pressing the Reset Security Token button.

Reset Security Token – Option unlocked within Classic page

To read more on the subject :

Scale Center for Salesforce Org Performance review (beta since Summer’23)

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Salesforce has made available, an org analysis feature, called « Scale Center » to all their Unlimited Edition Client. It has been made available on Full Copy sandboxes as well.

The feature is accessible from the setup menu (look for « Scale Center » in setup’s Quick Find box). You still may try to contact your Salesforce AE, to get, or try to activate the solution for your Salesforce instance.

First, get to Scale Center section, select Org Performance, and activate the feature.

Scale Center – Welcome screen to launch the analysis feature

Once activated, Scale Center will run to collect and analyse your data. It will need a couple of hours to gather all measures.

Scale Center – First data collection process

After performance measures collection, the admin system will be able to define either a quick observation range (last 4h / last 12h / last 24h until now) or define more accurately the time frame for data observation.

Scale Center – Simple range definition on last few years
Scale Center – Custom base range between 2 dates

The Admin System will also be able to compare the time frame, with a previous one, by clicking on Compare checkbox, and then define the second timeframe.

Scale Center – Time frames comparison

Here is below a sample of a performance measure chart on a long time frame

Scale Center – Restitution of the overall performance on a time range

The tool allows the Admin user to define a 30-minute long slot, to deep dive on outliers, or anomalous data that may be highlighted in such chart.

Scale Center – Deep dive on a time slot selection

From this 30-minute long selection, the System Admin will be able to generate either :

  • a dedicated report on a specific axis (Apex, or Database..)
  • a consolidated report, gathering metrics related to all topics of the list below

Scale Center – Report generation starting from the previous time range definition

Start a new analysis report, see report status,

Scale Center – Report definition

From the Setup menu (Setup > Performance > Scale Center > Performance Analysis) a system admin can access all performances reports generated from within the previous screens. You can consult there the last 100 reports generated within your Salesforce Organization.

However, be aware that the generated reports will expire after 30 days.

Scale Center – Analysis report generation in progress

The Performance Analysis report will take a few minutes to be generated. During this preparation time, when clicking on the report in progress, the report is not yet available.

Scale Center – Analysis report not available because in progress

When ready, the report will be accessible by refreshing the page ; it will be tagged as available, in the Analysis related list, from the previous screen.

Scale Center – Analysis report available for consultation after generation

To read more on the subject :

Winter’24 – Permission Set Summary (Beta)

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In Winter’24 preview, there is a new feature that is in beta testing, that allows to consolidate and present an overall vision of all permissions present within a given Permission Set.

To access this summary, you should navigate in Setup, to the given permission set, and click on « View Summary (beta)« 

A complete summary of all included permissions, of this Permission Set, is then displayed, without needing to deep dive in the usual permission menu (that you could see in the grey section of the bottom of the previous screenshot).

The top section of the page displays :

  • A first block with the Permission Set summary information,
  • Information about all permission set groups, which include the Permission Set

The section below presents :

  • The System Permissions present within the enabled Permission Set (before you had to go to the System Permission sub menu, and scroll through the whole page with all System Permissions, to see which ones have been enabled),
  • The Object permissions
  • The Field permissions

Salesforce Summer’23 – API v21-30 retirement (Summer’25!) – Integration problem with Microsoft Power BI

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For Summer’23 release upgrade, Salesforce have originally announced that they will stop supporting API (Soap, REST, Bulk) version from version 21.0 to 30.0.

Salesforce Platform API Versions 21.0 through 30.0 Retirement

Release Update announced for Summer’23

For information, as you can see in recent Summer’23 related communications, these versions will be retired but will continue to run technically until Salesforce Summer’25 release !

That extra-time gives every Salesforce teams 2 years to update all API usages to newest API versions, and concomitantly ensure in the meantime that the « oldest » API are not used anymore by applications or tools connected to Salesforce (to push data to Salesforce, or get data from Salesforce), in your clients IT landscapes (ETL/ESB, data visualization tools, Salesforce custom API requests from client websites or mobile applications…).

https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2023/05/an-important-update-to-our-legacy-api-retirement-plan

To prepare for the API retirement, for our clients, we may organize technical discovery sessions with application owner (of all the applications connected to Salesforce) to discover which API version is used by these applications / these usages… but you will need to investigate technically as well through all the applications connected to Salesforce.

To get all these usages, you may use a VS Code extension like SFDX-Hardis (and especially Detect Legacy API use function)

Extract of Apex version legacy usages – retrieves with Hardis SFDX extension

I wanted to highlight a special usage I identified about a very well-known (and used) data visualization application : Microsoft Power BI.

Microsoft Power BI connection to Salesforce uses default v29.0 version, when the vesion is not explicitly configured in the report source.

A PowerBI configuration file, without mention of Salesforce API Apex version

To be able to make PowerBI use the desired Salesforce APEX API version, Data or Business consultants have to mention the API version to use, directly in the connexion configuration (Salesforce Login URL could be replaced by the domain name URL of the concerned Salesforce instance) : 

Source = Salesforce.Data("https://login.salesforce.com/", [ApiVersion=57.0])

Just be cautious about :

  • Always work with the version of your production environment

In Salesforce release preview periods, you may have preview sandboxes on version N+1, although your production and non-preview sandboxes are in version N. It would generate errors if a configured API connection, based on the sandboxes you are testing the reports with, are deployed in order to connect with the production instance. Always leverage on the API version of the production instance.

To read more about 

Salesforce Spring’23 – Data model – new Gender Data Fields

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In Spring’23 release upgrade, Salesforce deployed new gender fields : Gender Identity & Pronouns.

This data model upgrade concerns Lead, Contact, and Person Account objects :

  • API names on Lead & Contacts : GenderIdentity & Pronouns
  • API names on Person Account : PersonGenderIdentity & PersonPronouns
Change modal to accompany clients to adoption of Gender Data

By the past, Salesforce had already implemented these fields in their Non-Profit Success Pack (NPSP). With Spring’23 release, it is now integrated in Salesforce core platform, beyond mere client referential, feeding all the clouds, especially marketing products.

New GenderIdentity standard field on Contact standard object – Picklist values
New Pronouns standard field on Contact standard object – Picklist values

Equality is a strong core value at Salesforce, one among the 5 core values on which Salesforce relies (Trust , Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and the more recent Sustainability) and develop all its business.

As Salesforce mentions they wish to provide to their employees an ecosystem where they can feel themselves the way they are, it was natural for them to deploy in their products, for their customers, the same kind of attention, they provide to their employees.

Just be cautious about :

  • The fields are not yet available on unrefreshed Non-Preview Sandbox.

The fields had been deployed/delivered by Salesforce on production environments (with Spring’23 release upgrade, early February) and on preview sandboxes (early January). However, be aware that non-preview sandboxes had not been upgraded with these fields. So you may experiment some CI/CD issues or deployment errors, if you use automatic integration/deployment processes and tools, because they will identify a data model discrepancy, and they will not be able to deploy these standard fields. A sandbox refresh is still possible to update your non-preview sandboxes to match Spring’23 delivered data model, but it is still a laborious operation that needs to be planned and well organized among all teams / users / stakeholders.

  • These fields may not appear on your extractions. They may even generate errors !

As the fields came in with API v57.0, you will need to use this last v57.0 API version to access these fields. Otherwise Salesforce API will not let you access them.

Error when querying new gender fields in current « not v57.0 compliant » Salesforce Inspector / API

For example, Salesforce Inspector is still in version 1.14 aligned with Winter’23 release (v56.0) while a GitHub Pull Request has been created in Salesforce Inspector’s GitHub repository to ask the author to make the extension compliant with latest Salesforce API.

To read more about (publications et guides written by Salesforce)

Salesforce Trailblazer TDX 2023 – 5 FREE Integration User

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Free Salesforce swag is always something that Trailblazers, Salesforce clients, and Salesforce-addict consultants are looking for… but when it comes to free licences, that’s a whole other issue !

In last TDX 2023 (TrailblazerDX 2023) on March 7th and 8th, Salesforce announced the addition of 5 FREE Integration user (= API Only) users for their clients (with Salesforce Enterprise and Unlimited editions), to be deployed, in a phased way as of March 14th, with additional licences at a very challenging price.

And, here they come !!

Salesforce, with its last Spring’23 patch 13.1, introduced the Salesforce Integration user license along with a Profile named API Only.

As indicated by its name, this new profile is dedicated to back-office operations / integrations.

5 new licences added for free and available for integration/technical user assignment

Naturally, in past and ongoing Salesforce implementations, Salesforce Architects and Technical Lead still recommend to use dedicated user (with either System Admin or Custom technical-oriented profile) to handle integration use case within Salesforce (still with proper connected app configuration as a best practice).

Each integration type is often covered by a dedicated user (or at least it should be).

That often leads to contexts with up to 3 or 5 dedicated integration users for integrations. Even if is aligned, this way, with administration & security standards, all these users consumes « all included » highly-priced « business » licenses slots.

From an admin point of view, there is no need anymore to create / clone new custom profile (who has cloned it from System Admin profile with out modifying it ? Moreover, who has always handled them directly as Admin ? ). The new API Only profile is here on the shelf.

New Profile – API Only naturally – accessible in Salesforce setup

As it is an « API Only » enabled profile, the users who will be assigned this new profile, will only be dedicated to integration use cases, because users would not be able – as it should always be the case for technical / integration users in order to avoid security-related access issue – to login to Salesforce login page by using the user credentials (that generally never expire, by the way).

The existing and new users – dedicated to integration use case – are now to be transferred / created with this new license and profile. Have fun & free some licenses !

Just be cautious about :

  • Automatisms / Apex code / bypass triggers… that may leverage profiles names. They should be taken in account concomitantly with the profile assignment switch to the new license/profile.
  • Check your integration after your license switch (with non-regression testing) on sandbox before impacting the configuration. Obvious comment, but that does not hurt to write it 😉

License and profile are available, as the others, in user creation setup page

For information, to be complete, an known issue has been logged by Salesforce, because some clients, who had already created a custom « API Only » profile with the same security idea, have encountered issues in their code. The issue is currently handled by Salesforce and will be solved in an upcoming patch.

In addition :

  • A Integration licence will be available in Developer Editions to test the feature
  • For customers who would need additional licenses, it will be possible to buy additional licenses at a very challenging $10 per user per month price (current public licences price shared by Salesforce).

To read more about Integration users :

QuickText issue when deploying to Salesforce instance

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When deploying profiles to Salesforce, if you ever encounter « You can’t edit tab settings for QuickText, as it’s not a valid tab. », that probably comes from a configuration discrepancy between your Salesforce source and target instances.

« Quick Text »-related error, when deploying profile (here with Gearset solution)

This setting is already enabled in « Lightning version » setup page.

« Quick Text  » activation setting in your well-known setup page (User Interface > Quick Text Settings)

As Salesforce help mentions, only Classic instances, with chat enabled, have this setting automatically enabled. Otherwise, you will need to activate it manually, as done below.

So do not forget to switch to Classic, and to activate it too.

« Quick Text  » activation setting different from Lightning’s one

Once both settings are enabled, you can keep on deploying your Salesforce project ! Our QuickText issue will disappear as it appeared.

To read more on the subject :