Important Salesforce Assistance Tools

When it comes to Salesforce assistance, you have finite options beyond the pretty good support Salesforce offers (with their basic distribution). Of course, the problem comes not so much in there being no good assistance or training mediums for Salesforce, but with the changes that Salesforce can undergo as a result of extensions, custom forms and reports, and other things that it famously allows to be tacked on. The result of these modifications and additions can render Salesforce assistance documentation and tutorials kind of redundant, inaccurate or obsolete pretty easily. Even if they don’t, it won’t cover the extended functionality and processes that may have been added, especially if it’s an extension or custom item designed in house by your company. That leaves a bit of a problem on your hands, because it’s hard to not use the custom objects and the App Exchange that Salesforce offers, if you want to get all it has to offer. So, what are your options here? Well, you have two real channels to go with, those being using an LMS for fast training procedures, or using an onboard system for dedicated guidance. Well, let’s look at these two solutions, and weigh out which is best. LMS systems like Moodle are great for training procedures. They offer things like Wiki databases, glossaries, video integration, real time chat and communication and other communal bases. Of course, they have intuitive course models and the like, too. However, beyond introductory training for employees to use Salesforce, and perform CRM-related jobs overall, this isn’t quite as practical, because it just wasn’t designed for that. But, Moodle and a couple other LMS designs are open source, so the parts of them that work for this could in fact be condensed and made into a good reference platform. However, the onboard solution is a much better option. WalkMe pretty much defined the onboard concept, and it was designed for this sort of thing. As a tutorial creation system, it integrates into web forms, where it can interact and monitor the states of form elements. It can use this to track user patterns and identify conditions and actions. Using this kind of sensory and control, it can follow pre-set logic patterns to guide users through forms, prevent mistakes and detect recurring places where users become confused. With an attractive prompting system, it can effectively guide users through tremendously complex processes. It’s kind of the idea of having an expert talking a user through a process step by step, only it’s not a human being. You could integrate this system into Salesforce permanently, and if you use the point and click scripting, you could instruct it only to intervene when necessary, and remain a permanent resident guidance system to get users, whenever needed, through new or confusing eccentricities that may have come about by modification or addition of functionality. So, honestly, while your options are limited for Salesforce assistance, WalkMe is quite a good option, and it more than makes up for the lack of variety on this topic. This technology has a lot of potential, and has begun to revolutionize other fields like self service and analytics capture as well. More assistance is available on how to use salesforce.
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Amanda is the Lead Author & Editor of Rainforce Blog. Amanda established the Rainforce blog to create a source for news and discussion about some of the issues, challenges, news, and ideas relating to Salesforce usage.