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10 Free Apps on the AppExchange & 5 Chrome Extensions Every Salesforce Admin Should Have

Posted by Greg Coolidge, Practice Consultant

There are many great apps on the  AppExchange to enhance your Salesforce Org.  Below is a list of 10 free apps that I regularly use and have recommended to clients.

  1. Clone This User – While setting up a new user is not a hard task, it can be time consuming. Clone This User allows an admin to take an existing user and clone it. The admin simply has to add the name and email address of the new user and generate the username and password.
  2. Opportunity Push Counter – Sales executives want to know how often an opportunity has been pushed. With the Opportunity Push Counter, a field on the opportunity gets incremented every time the closed date gets changed.  Admins can then set-up workflow notifications when an opportunity has been pushed so many times. This field can also be used in reports and on dashboards to quickly see which opportunities are moving around.
  3. Data Quality Dashboards – Data quality is the responsibility of every user. The Data Quality Dashboard pack from Salesforce Labs uses custom formulas to apply a score to fields on an object. These formulas look at how complete each record is and then can be used to identify data deficiencies and users who are not fully completing the records they own.
  4. Field Trip – Admins are asked on a regular basis to add a new field to an object.  Field Trip is another data quality tool that allows admins to see how often a field on an object is being populated.  
  5. Mass Edit & Mass Update – Mass Edit & Mass Update allow users to mass modify records from a list view. These buttons can be easily customized and placed on any object. Users can then check all of the records they wish to modify and do so with the push of a button.
  6. Mass Delete – Similar to Mass Edit & Mass Update, Mass Delete allows a user to delete a large number of records from a list view with the press of a button.
  7. Former Positions – Many times your contacts move from one account to another. This brings up the question do we create a new contact record for them or simply edit the existing record? With the Former Position app, you can follow the contact as they move around, yet still maintaining a related link to their former accounts. This app is also great to clean up old inactive contacts by moving them to a generic inactive contact account.  Use the process builder to automate the process when a contact is marked inactive.
  8. Hoopla Countdown – Keep your sales team on their toes by using Hoopla’s Countdown tool to display how many days are left in the month, quarter or year.  A custom date can also be set for competitions or other strategic events.
  9. Chatter Unfollow – When you have your Chatter setting set to follow any record you create, the limit to the number of items you can follow can quickly be reached. Chatter Unfollow rules can be set up by an admin and scheduled to run daily. Rules can be set to unfollow cases or opportunities so many days after they are closed or Contacts when they are marked as inactive.
  10. Metadata Search – Metadata Search is another time-saving tool for admins. It allows admins to search metadata such as Approval Processes, Workflow Rules, Validation Rules and Triggers.

 

In addition to the great apps on the AppExchange, there are a number of great Chrome Extensions that can make the life of a Salesforce Admin easier.  

  1. Salesforce.com Enhanced Formula Editor – The Salesforce.com Enhanced Formula Editor transforms the normal formula text area into a code editor. It adds syntax highlighting, tabbing, parenthesis matching, find and replace, and allows for full screen.
  2. Salesforce API Fieldnames – Salesforce API Fieldnames allows an admin to toggle between the field labels and API names on a page.
  3. Boostr for Salesforce – Boostr for Salesforce is a tool any admin can appreciate.  It allows for the ability to search when adding items to a change set, to filter by type when adding to a change set, it adds a check box to the header in the admin areas to allow for the admin to check or uncheck all items in the column, and allows for the admin to automatically create API names in Pascal Case.
  4. Salesforce.com Quick Login As – Salesforce.com Quick Login As allows an admin to login as a user from any page in Salesforce rather than having to navigate to the user record.  When logging out as the user, the admin is returned to the original page they were on.
  5. Salesforce Inspector – The Salesforce Inspector allows an admin to see all the data on a record without having to have all the fields on the page layout. It also allows the user to quickly see the field API name by hovering over the field label.

 

These apps not only will make an admin’s life easier to find solutions, they can increase a team’s productivity and help a small or medium-sized company do business like a large one.

If you’d like to ask Greg more about apps for the Salesforce Org, please email him at [email protected].


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