The Importance of Data - Salesforce Lightning Third-Party Tools

As a Salesforce admins, we know that if the data can’t be trusted, the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is worthless. In this process we gather the data before we process it. Sometimes, we might gather bad quality data, caused by poor migration or out-of-sync. With that said, the bigger the organisation, the higher the risk of data quality. In this article we will make sure that we try to prevent any possible problems and solutions to those problems.

Handling your data in Salesforce Lightning

Although many believe that, it can be challenging to gather good quality data in Salesforce Lightning because people have a dislike towards something new. Truth to be told, is if you can handle the data in the Saleforce Classic, Lightning won’t be anything new. There is a good pallet of provided tools and options which are the same in terms of functionality, so if you can do one, you can do both.

Here are a few starting points to consider when dealing with data management:

Access the quality of the Current Data – First thing’s first! Make sure that the data circulating through your system is reliable. You can use ETL tools (Extract, Transform, Load), or you can do this through Excel spreadsheet.
Dashboards – Building reports will help you identify all success metrics and problems for all stakeholders in your organisation.
Document Everything End-to-End – Always make sure everything you’ve done, not only in what processes need to be, but all relevant changes and real cases that occur. Using this approach, by analyzing, you avoid any potential damage.
Come up with a Backup Plan – Sometimes, Salesforce’s proprietary data recovery can cost you more than 10,000 USD, so you need to find other storing alternatives with redundant backup.
Link your Salesforce instance with external services – Explore third party integrations for different functions – from visual data representations to all sorts of applications.

Third-Party Data Management Tools

Data management tools are more of a DIY project, they’re available on the company’s AppExchange marketplace. Some of them are free, some are paid, but all of them will allow you to Extract – Transform – Load more easy and more automatic. Some tools that we recommend using:

Dataloader.io (free): This app helps users securely import, export, and remove unlimited data, quickly. You can pull out related objects simultaneously, so you don’t have to re-associate them once in Excel. You can schedule imports and exports down to an hourly basis, too.
RingLead Data Cleanse (custom): This simple app helps beginners spot and merge duplicates in Salesforce with no training. It doesn’t promise to be perfect, just fast and easy, removing 95 percent of duplicates with no effort.
RingLead Duplicate Solutions (custom): This “complete data quality suite” removes duplicates and prevents new ones from forming through web forms, manual entry, and list imports alike. It merges Lead, Contact, and Account dupes, too.
Jitterbit (free): This data migration app helps users automatically import and export data between flat files, databases, and Salesforce. It uses drag-and-drop mapping, with no coding required, and allows for scheduling, automation, and monitoring.

Extract – Transform – Load with Excel

Data management with Excel SCV files and specialized client applications which are installed directly on your computer is the ‘old but gold’ recipe for a quick and easy-going venture into the world of data.

For the Salesforce Data Loader you could say it’s the bigger and more responsible brother of the Import Wizard which offers bigger possibilities and higher limits.

This application, once installed, you could use it for various ways of interacting with your data: insert, upsert, export, update and delete. There are number of maximal record that can be imported is drastically increased to 5,000,000. Also several backend settings supporting any scenario that might come into place.

Regardless of which action you’re trying to execute, the first step will always be preparing the csv file (except when you’re exporting data) and additionally that you need to remember that you can only carry out a function for one object at a time.

‘Insert’ function – You must ensure that you have a pre-prepared CSV with columns in your CSV file that match the fields in the object you are inserting into. You must also ensure that the column data is in the proper format for the field.

‘Update’ function – If updating records, you must follow all the rules of the “Insert” function, but with the exception, you need to include either the Salesforce ID of the records you are updating or a valid External ID field.

‘Upsert’ function – Can do both Insert & Update functions.

‘Delete & Hard Delete’ functions – If deleting records, the only field you need within your CSV is the ID of the record you are deleting

The ‘Export & Export All’ functions – No preparation needed, export to your heart’s content!

Wrap it up

I hope that everything discussed so far was useful and you’ve found it informative and insightful. Furthermore, if you haven’t given data the credit that it deserves, please reconsider and back up.

Go to top