Updating your user information

In Salesforce, you have a user record that corresponds to you. You can use that record to keep other users up to date on your contact information.

To find out how to navigate to the My Settings area, see the preceding section.

To modify your user record, follow these steps:

1. Click the Personal heading on the sidebar (refer to Figure 4-2).

   A series of options appears below the heading.

2. Click the Personal Information link.

   Details of your user record appears in Edit mode. Review the accuracy of your personal information and update it.

   Especially if you travel frequently, make sure that you update your time zone both in Salesforce and on your laptop, reflecting your current location. This is particularly important if you’re managing your schedule and synchronizing with offline tools, such as Outlook.

3. When you’re done, click Save.

   Your user record appears again with the updated information.

Changing your display

If you log in and feel as if you really need only a fraction of the tabs or a select number of related lists, you can customize your display. Your administrator can still override your personal setup, if necessary — for example, after installing an AppExchange application that comes with additional tabs.

Salesforce already provides many standard tabs and groups some of them into apps that you choose from the Force.com app menu. Companies can also create their own tabs. Most users just don’t need to see all those tabs at the same time.

To customize your tabs, follow these steps:

1. Click the Display & Layout heading on the My Settings sidebar (refer to Figure 4-3).

   The Display & Layout heading expands.

2. Click the Customize My Tabs link if you want to add, remove, or change the order of your tabs within an app.

   The Customize My Tabs page appears.

3. Select which app’s tab set you want to customize from the Custom App drop-down list.

   The default Selected Tabs list changes when you change the Custom App selection. Salesforce pregroups its tabs into several standard apps for various common business functions. Depending on your business, having these tabs visible may be perfect, or you may want to see more or fewer tabs.

4. Use the Add or Remove arrow buttons to highlight a tab and then add it to or remove it from your display, respectively, as shown in Figure 4-4.

   For example, if you’re in marketing and spend most of your time with leads, you may decide to add the Campaigns tab and remove the Customizable Forecasts tab from your Sales custom app.

5. Use the up and down arrows to change the order of the tabs.

   The only exception is that you can’t move or remove the Home tab.

6. When you’re done, click Save.

   The My Settings page reappears, and your tabs reflect your changes.

Customizing pages

You can also personalize your display by changing the layout on a record page. Doing so enables you to see the most relevant sections first. For example, if you work in a call center, you may want to see cases at the top of your related lists on an account page.

To customize the display of a page, follow these steps:

1. Click the Display & Layout heading on the My Settings sidebar (refer to Figure 4-3).

   The Display & Layout section expands on the sidebar.

2. Go to the Customize My Pages subsection and select a specific tab that you want to modify (the Accounts tab, for example). Then click the Customize Page button.

   The Customize My Page page appears for the tab you selected.

3. Select a list item from either of the two list boxes, depending on whether you want to add or remove it from your page.

   For example, if you sell directly to customers, you may want to remove the Partners related list from the Account’s Selected List column.

4. Use the up and down arrows to change the order of how the items will appear on your page layout.

5. When you’re done, click Save.

   The Customize My Pages page reappears.

Setting up social accounts and contacts

If researching a person’s or company’s background is a large part of your job, Salesforce saves you some mouse clicks by letting you quickly see the social profiles associated with accounts, contacts, leads, and person accounts right from that particular record.

To activate viewing of social accounts and contacts, follow these steps:

1. From the My Settings page, click the Display & Layout heading.

   The Display & Layout section expands to show its subsections.

2. Click the My Social Accounts and Contacts subsection.

   The My Social Accounts and Contacts detail page appears.

3. Make sure that the Use Social Accounts and Contacts check box is selected.

   A list of social networks appears. If you have a LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook account, this will allow you to later sign in to those social networks from within Salesforce, to see profiles for the people and companies that you’re researching.

4. Select any check boxes next to the social networks that you’d like to have enabled (see Figure 4-5).

   Don’t worry, the ability to see an account’s or contact’s social network information is available only to the individual Salesforce user who enables this for himself. Your colleagues will need to enable this for themselves, and have accounts to those social networks, if they want to take advantage of this feature.

After Social Accounts and Contacts is enabled, you’ll only be able to see as much as your account on that social network allows you to see, and what the person or company that you’re looking at wants you to see.

Granting login access

When you need help from your administrator, Salesforce.com customer support, or customer support from a third-party AppExchange package that was installed in your organization, you can grant any of these folks temporary login access to your account. By gaining access to your account, the person helping you can provide better assistance from your perspective, because she can view your pages as you do.

To grant login access, follow these steps:

1. Click the Grant Account Login Access subheading from the Personal section of the My Settings page (refer to Figure 4-3).

   The Grant Account Login Access page appears.

2. Grant support and/or administrator access for a duration of up to one year by selecting the appropriate time frame from the Access Duration picklist.

   Your administrator, Salesforce.com support, or the AppExchange vendor’s support contact will be able to log in as you through the expiration date.

3. When you’re done, click the Save button.

   The My Settings page appears.

If you’re an administrator and a user has granted you access, you can log in to the user’s account as follows: Below the Manage Users heading on the Setup sidebar, click the Users link and then select the Active Users picklist view. From the list of users displayed, click the Login link to the left of the user’s name.

Downloading and installing Salesforce1

In today’s world of tablets and mobile devices, you can be anywhere and access Salesforce. To best experience Salesforce from your mobile device, find the Salesforce1 app in the iTunes App Store (if you’re an iPhone user) or the Google Play marketplace (if you’re on the Android operating system). They’re free to download and you get instant access to your most-viewed accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, leads, and any other custom tabs specific to your company.

The downloadable Salesforce1 app is not supported on the BlackBerry; however, some BlackBerry users (Z10 and Z30 phones) can still access the mobile browser app.

To download and install Salesforce1 on iOS via the App Store, follow these steps:

1. From the home screen of your iPhone or iPad, select the App Store icon.

   The App Store home page appears.

2. In the Search field, type Salesforce1.

   A list of search results appears.

3. Select the Salesforce1 app in the list of search results.

   The Salesforce1 app page appears.

4. Tap Free and then tap Install to install the app.

   You may have to enter your iTunes account and password for the download to begin.

   The download begins and finishes, and the app appears on your home screen.

5. Select the Salesforce1 icon on your home screen and click I Agree.

   You’re prompted to enter your Salesforce account’s username and password.

6. Select Login once you’re done to enter Salesforce1 and get started.

Now that you’ve installed Salesforce1 on your device, let’s talk about the configuration options you have to make it your own.

Configuring Salesforce1 for your needs

Much of Salesforce1 at this point is just enabling it for your users and organization. However, there are a few things you can customize and tweak to make it easy and efficient to work in the field. You can define the users who can access Salesforce1, customize how data appears in it, create actions to add new records, and tweak it to make it match the look and feel of your company’s branding. Let’s look at how to find and accomplish some of these configurations.

Salesforce makes this customization simple by giving administrators the Salesforce1 Wizard, which guides users with step-by-step customization options to make sure admins don’t overlook any features.

To start configuring Salesforce1, navigate to the Setup menu, and follow these steps:

1. Click Salesforce1 Quick Start from the menu’s left-hand sidebar (see Figure 4-6).

   The Salesforce1 Setup page appears.

2. Click the Launch Quick Start Wizard button.

   The Quick Start Wizard page appears.

3. Click Let’s Get Started.

   In the first step, you can set up the left-hand navigation menu for your users in the Salesforce1 mobile app. You can reorder or remove items using a drag-and-drop interface.

4. Click Save and Next to move onto arranging your Global Actions.

   Global Actions allow users to create new records quickly and easily, but these records aren’t tied to any other records in Salesforce. For example, an opportunity record won’t be automatically tied to an account record. For more information above global actions and how to create them, see Chapter 17.

5. Click Save and Next and then Create Compact Layout to move onto creating a compact layout.

   The compact layout used by Salesforce1 determines which key fields will be displayed at the top of the record detail display on the app. For example, you can choose to display a contact’s name, email, and phone number at the top of your contact records in Salesforce1 for quick viewing.

6. When you’re finished, click Save and Next to preview your basic configuration thus far.

   Here you can look at different aspects of your configuration and see a simulation of the mobile app.

7. After previewing what Salesforce1 will look like, click Next to invite some pilot users to take a test drive and give you feedback.

   This page allows you to email those users directly. Start typing their names in the To field and, if they exist in Salesforce, they’ll be suggested as you type (see Figure 4-7).

8. Click Send and then Finish when you’re done.

   Congratulations! The basic setup of Salesforce1 is complete and you’re taken back to the setup menu. Now you can configure some other aspects of the app, such as in-app or push notifications, the appearance and branding of the app, or user access to it.

Navigating in Salesforce1

The Salesforce1 application is very easy to navigate and was designed in a way that is similar to many other apps you probably use. Let’s look at a few navigation tips and tools to get you well on your way to using the app like a pro.

The Salesforce1 Navigation menu is where you should begin. You can toggle the navigation menu by selecting the menu icon on the top left of the app (see Figure 4-8).

The Navigation menu is customizable, so if the default configuration doesn’t meet your organization’s needs, you can change the items that appear and the order in which they do.

You can select the items that will always appear at the top of the menu, such as tasks or dashboards. This is called the selected list. The first item you choose for the Selected list will be the landing page for the app. In other words, that’s what users will first see when they log in.

Keep user adoption in mind when setting up your Navigation menu. Put the items that users will use most often at the top of the list, because the Navigation menu is not user-specific and the entire organization will see the same Selected list.

Under the Selected list, you see a Recent list, which shows you the most recent objects you’ve accessed, either on the browser or mobile version of Salesforce.

Finally, the last section is the Apps menu.

Anything that is represented as a tab in Salesforce can be visible to a user in the Navigation menu. Users can only see the tabs and items in the Navigation menu that they have permission to access via their Salesforce profiles.

To customize Salesforce1 navigation, go to the full site, and follow these steps:

1. Choose Setup ⇒ Mobile Administration ⇒ Salesforce Navigation.

   The Chatter Settings page appears.

2. Use the Add and Remove arrows to move the items you want into or out of the Selected column. Use the Up and Down arrows to rearrange the order of the items in the list.

   The item named Smart Search Items becomes your Recent list (discussed earlier) and expands into multiple items that you’ve recently accessed. Anything above the Smart Search Items element becomes part of the Selected list in the menu, and anything below it falls under the Apps list in the menu.

3. When you’re done, click Save to save your work.

   Your navigation setup is complete! Now you can log in via your mobile device to see the changes you’ve made.

There is a great tool that you can download via the Google Chrome Web Store, called Salesforce1 Simulator. It displays a large mobile interface on your desktop where you can toggle and preview the changes and customizations you’ve made to Salesforce1.