A year-long care plan for nonprofit Salesforce admins
One can’t really over-emphasize how important the Salesforce admin role is in a nonprofit org. Not only are you responsible for the data and the quality of the reporting, but you have people who need you to show them the way, through your example, your service to them, and through the resources you share.
Their perceptions about you can range from “intoxicated adolescent with diesel-powered model airplane” to “masterful co-pilot with parental instincts,” all depending on how you approach it, at any given moment.
One thing’s for certain; if you plan ahead, and you plan for people, you’re flying farther, and most likely nobody will lose their nose.
The nonprofit Salesforce admin recurring task template
Keep your Salesforce data healthy and your users happy with this annual administration care plan.
Every Day
- Update your own log with configuration changes you make and why
- Login, review your cases, activities, Chatter feed
- Address any critical security threats to centralized systems or devices
- Review any emails that may have arrived from Salesforce regarding system changes
- Respond to any user help requests, even if you can’t get to it right now
Every Week
- Address moderate security threats to centralized systems or devices
- Do your best to completely resolve any user requests for the week. Happy users are more engaged!
- Apply bug fixes if they resolve a problem you have
- Merge duplicates in Salesforce
- Review adoption, Chatter, support, and sales/revenue dashboards
- Visit the Power of Us Hub for tips and solutions, as well as new announcements from Salesforce Foundation
Every Month
- Update any outstanding bug fixes
- Review new release notes for Salesforce or any packages, if available
- Maintain certification credentials if needed
- Attend local Nonprofit Salesforce User Group meeting
- Address low level security threats
- Review backups
- Run a Health Check on the Nonprofit Starter Pack and address any issues reported
- Review documentation, solutions, Knowledge articles for out-of-date information
- Review data quality reports
- Review data storage and file storage usage
- Review user login histories, and verify all active users should still be active
- Seek and gather feedback from users about issues, needs, and ability to meet goals
- Challenge yourself and others to advance toward any goal for skills development or data quality
- Recognize good practices by others with a Chatter post or a badge
- Try to answer at least one question for someone outside of your organization. Community power, yeah!
Every Quarter
- Review and activate new features
- Review AppExchange for new ideas and new options to solve problems
- Review package version upgrades
- Unzip backups and verify samples of contents
- Close tasks that are left open/abandoned
- Review list views, removing those that are not needed, and building those that can benefit your users
- Review page layouts and Salesforce1 mobile layouts, seeking opportunities to simplify and clarify
- Review cases that have been left open
- Review workflows and triggers, seeking new opportunities to automate and refine practices as standards evolve
- Review Chatter feed tracking, ensuring that important changes will be visible to followers in their feeds
- Review email templates
- Review help text for accuracy and usefulness
- Review sandboxes, and refresh as needed
- Remove reports that are no longer used or relevant
- Review object fields for consistency and completeness, consider removing fields no longer relevant
- Evaluate use and performance for strategic alignment
Every Year
- Review all scheduled reports, dashboards, and folders for use, accuracy, and access
- Audit all user profiles, field level security, permission sets
- Audit integrations
- Systematically refresh documentation
- Schedule user training refreshers, and remind them to check out the Nonprofit Starter Pack Workbook
- Review your spend on AppExchange packages, and verify that your solutions still provide the right mix
- Seek new training opportunities for all users (yourself included), and reward high quality work
- Actively engage executive management and others in updating strategic and tactical plans/goals to ensure next year’s work is on target.
We posted this template because although we’ve seen outlines like this in the past, we rarely see them address both technical maintenance requirements and social needs . Of course, there will always be things to add, so if you know of another must-do task, post it in the comments! We’ll update this post over time and be sure to thank you and your org with a revision history at the end. Please subscribe for new our posts about digital systems for nonprofits. Have a question or idea? We aim to keep it relevant for you, so please say so!
