Three great free Apps for Salesforce Admins

In my last post on Salesforce, I talked about the methodology I use when tackling a Salesforce implementation. One of the key points to my methodology is to do code only where it is absolutely necessary (In fact, this is my methodology when using almost any product).

I came across a situation for a client that I knew would require a trigger – the business requirement is that they enter the names of the two people involved in the purchase into the lead. These two people (Person A and B) must exist as separate Contacts in their own right but be joined as part of this purchase (Person A may then make another purchase with Person C at another time). For this scenario, the standard Salesforce Convert Lead to Opportunity button could not be used.

Object Converter

Following my methodology I first looked in the App Exchange for Apps that could help with converting Leads, and found Object Converter a free app written by a small Indian dev team. Object Converter’s summary is “Using Object Converter you can convert any standard or custom object to one or more standard or custom objects with a single click of button or link. With Object Converter you have freedom to define the field mappings for creating different objects”. After using Object Converter for a while, I think the summary should say something like “Put the control in the hands of the Salesforce Administrator, not the Developers!” This is such a great app that it is now one of the few apps that will be installed first for every Salesforce implementation.
To simplify what Object Converter does it allows you to create or update a record in any Object (the Target Object) from data stored in another Object (the Source Object).

The team from Object Converter have been so helpful in helping me get up and running with the product and I have now used it very successfully to solve four business issues that would have otherwise involved having to code a trigger.

The Documentation for Object Converter is a little hard to understand in places, so I have created a document of Tips And Tricks For Using Object Converter, which I will try to keep up to date as I use the product more.

Here are some real world scenarios where I have used Object Converter:

• Convert a Lead into the following Objects:
  • Account
  • 2 Contacts, linked to the Account
  • Opportunity
  • A child Object under Opportunity
• Convert a Lead into the following Objects:
  • If the Lead is for an Organisation:
    • Account
    • Contact
    • Opportunity
    • Opportunity Products
  • If the Lead is for an Individual:
    • Contact (which triggers the creation of the Account for the Contact in the Nonprofit Starter Pack)
    • Opportunity
    • Opportunity Role (again required for the functionality of NPSP)
    • Opportunity Role
• Convert the Imported details from the Web to Case functionality to:
  • If the Case is for an Organisation
    • Account
    • Contact
    • Case Roles
  • If the Case is for an Individual
    • Contact (which triggers the creation of the Account for the Contact in the Nonprofit Starter Pack).

Aspira XObject

The second free app that I found is Aspira XObject. Like Object Converter this tool puts the control back with the Administrator and allows functionality to be built that would normally require triggers. This product does require creating triggers in Eclipse or a Sandbox, but Aspira does all the code for you so it is a simple copy and paste. Put simply, Aspira XObject runs the Workflows on the target object when the source object is updated.

The free version of Aspira XObject runs only on standard Objects, but the pro version that allows for using XObject on custom Objects is very cost effective (comparing to development costs and ongoing maintenance) US$695 with 40% off for NFP’s.

Two scenarios where I have used Aspira XObject:

• As soon as the Lead is converted (a purchase has been made), which creates or updates the Account and Contact record, this triggers a Workflow on Cases to see if there are any Cases waiting for that purchase, and alert the Case owner with an Email.
• Automatically updating some details on the Case whenever the Account or Contact record is changed, to keep the details in Sync.

Dynamic Buttons

The third excellent free app takes a bit of fiddling to get it set up, but once it is working it is a great little addition to the Administrator Toolkit. The app Dynamic Buttons came from the Cloudspokes.com challenge “Magical Disappearing Salesforce Button with jQuery”. To get Dynamic Buttons up and running, it is best to run through the videos on the blog post by the Dynamic Buttons developer. As I said, it is a bit technical, but well worth the effort.

A few places I have used Dynamic Buttons:

• Hide the Convert to Client button created for Object Converter after the conversion has been completed.
• Hide the Submit for Approval button on the Case until certain details have been filled in on the Case (yes, you can still use the button on the approvals related list, so this isn’t entirely foolproof).

All three of these apps take a little bit of fiddling to get them up and running, but once you see some of the things that can be done with them, it opens up a whole range of other possibilities as to how you can use them.

Please let me know in the comments if you have used any of these great free apps and how you have used them, and if you have some more great apps that help Salesforce Administrators do more with Salesforce, then please let us know also.