1. Personalising your tabs
Tabs are a great way to find the things you need in your daily work. But tabs are not always in the order that makes the most sense to you.
Let’s say your job is to create new accounts, maintain them and call them for appointments. What you need is your Accounts and Contact tab right at the beginning and not at the end. Well, Salesforce allows you to do just that. You can change the order of things just for you, your colleagues will not even notice. So.. how do you perform this trick?
Easy! Look at the end of your tabs bar. Do you see the little pencil?
Click that little pencil and you will be presented with a list of tabs, that can be re-ordered. Next, you just have to select a tab and drag it to a new place.
You can do this for as many tabs as you’d like. Just make sure that you click ‘Save’ in the end and voila, your tabs are re-arranged!
2. Create list views quickly
List views are basically the core of your work day. They are filtered views on the records in an object. You can create list views to help you with segmentation, data cleanup, reporting, quick access to the records you need and much, much more. And it’s really easy!
Let’s say that I want to segment my customers to only show my direct customers. I want to create a list view so this is what I do:
Step 1: Create a List View
- Click on the little arrow next to the cog wheel
- Click New, type in a name for your list view (like My Direct Customers) and click on Save.
Step 2: Set Filter Criteria
Now we start putting in filter criteria. If you don’t see the filters, click on the filter icon (the little funnel under Import).
- The first filter we will change is the one by Owner. Click on the box Filter by Owner and change it to All Accounts. This way you make sure you catch all the accounts you want to segment.
2. Next we need to add a filter. Ofcourse we now click the Add Filter link. You can add more than one filter to a list. Did you know you can use every field on the record to filter on? Some make more sense than others. You would, for example, not filter on Account name unless you have a a lot of accounts with the same name. In our case we will use the field Type.
3. Next we will choose the operator. The type of operator depends on the type of field. If you have a picklist (like we do) you will have quite a few choices, like equals/not equal to, bigger/smaller than, contains/does not contain, Starts with.., etc. In our case we will just use ‘equals’.
4. In the last field we use a value. Again, since we are using a picklist field, the choice is easy. Just click on the arrow of the Value box and choose which ever types you like (tip, you can choose more than one). In our case we will use Customers – Direct. Just select the option and click away. Now you can click Done and Save. As you can see, the total number of results now only shows our Direct Customers.
Step 3: Order fields
1. Click the cog wheel again and select “Select fields to display”
2. Choose fields from the left column and use the arrow between the two columns to move them from the one to the other.
3. In the right column, select a field and use the up or down arrow to rearrange the fields.
Step 4: Optional features
1. If you want to show a graph, click on the pie chart icon 
2. If you want to change your view in Kanban, click the icon next to the cog wheel. 
More on Kanban later in this blog post
Personally, I think list views are one of the coolest features in Salesforce. Did you know that:
- 90% of users never bother with creating or changing list views?
- You only need 3 minutes to create a list view?
- That you can edit multiple records from within your list view?
- That you can automatically create a graph from a list view?
- List views help you save time by providing an overview of the records you need?
- Create a Kanban view that totals the columns?
3. Inline Editing
One of the coolest things you can do with a list view is edit multiple records at once. You will know if your list view is ready for this when you see these little check boxes in front of your first column. If you don’t, it means that your org uses multiple record types but there is an easy way to solve this. Add an extra filter to your list view that reads: “Account Record Type – equals – choose one record type from the list”.
Once you have the boxes, you can edit multiple records at the same time. Just tick the box in front of the records you want to update (say State), double click the field State of one of the chosen records and add or change a value. You then have the choice to change this for one or for all ticked records.
4. Kanban Magic
A Kanban board is an extremely useful tool. Did you know that you can use it to:
- Track the status of your opportunity in the pipeline with one view?
- See the relative value of each stage in the sales pipeline
- Create a task and an event on each opportunity, directly from within the Kanban board?
- Use Kanban on almost every list view you create, providing that there is at least one number field and one field on which you can group?
- See to which segment a certain account belongs?
For more information on how to use a Kanban board to your advantage, please visit our Training page or contact us directly.
5. Clean up your Chatter feed with streams
Chatter is a cool collaboration tool but sometimes it’s hard to track the status of certain posts. With Chatter streams, you can see posts from only the profiles, groups, and records you choose. Moreover, you can have up to five streams, and each stream can include up to 25 items. Your streams show up in the left sidebar of your Chatter feed, where you can edit or delete them. You can, for example, create a stream that includes updates from the accounts you’re most interested in or all the people in your org you work with most closely.
By creating specific chatter streams that concern a certain topic, you can easily track the status of those topics. How cool is that?
6. Open a record or list view in a new tab
And we have some more magic for you! When you are working with Salesforce, chances are you need to have more than one window open at the time. Great if you have dual monitors but not so great if you are working from a laptop.
There are several ways to open a record in a new tab. For one, you can use the browser feature Right Click – Open in new tab/window. But Salesforce now offers you the same functionality. Click on the arrow next to the tab in which you have a record open (i.e. click on the arrow next to Accounts if you have a certain account open) en use Open “record name” in new tab.
On the new tab, you can also pin this account to your tabs, which is very handy. For this, click the arrow on the new tab and click Add “Record name” to Nav Bar.
And what’s more, you can use the same trick on a list view. Open the list view, click the arrow next to the tab, open “list view name” in new tab. On the new tab, use Add “list view name” to Nav Bar.
If you ever want to remove this tab, click the little pencil under your profile picture or see tip 1 on this blog page.
Eager for more Salesforce tips?
Then please let us know via the comments below. We’re dedicated to help Salesforce users become masters at using Salesforce.com technology.
If you need more help using Salesforce or would like to have your staff trained, reach out to us! Our Certified Salesforce.com trainers can compile a curriculum tailored to your needs to train your staff. Simply check out our training & support -page or contact us directly via our contact – page or via mail by clicking here.
