help organizations manage projects?
Welcome to How I Solved It,
where we dive into a business challenge
and show how one awesome admin chose to solve it.
I'm Gillian Bruce, principal admin evangelist at Salesforce.
And today, I am joined by awesome admin, Sarah Pilzer.
Thanks for having me, Gillian.
Sarah, it's even more great for me to have you here
because we're going to talk today all about project management.
We've got an amazing demo planned,
and we're going to be talking about
some other awesome admin skills,
including transferable skills.
But before we get started,
I need to quickly share our forward-looking statement.
It's just a reminder to make all your purchasing decisions
based on currently available technology.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's get going.
Sarah, in your six years as a Salesforce admin,
a lot of different Salesforce projects.
Can you tell us a little bit about
how you approach a project?
I usually start a new project by identifying
who the project manager will be, if it's not myself,
and anyone else who will be part of the project team.
We use Slack at my organization.
So we'll then go ahead and create a Slack channel
that is specific to the project.
So we can post updates and questions all in one place.
After that, the most important part of my job
as project manager is to keep
a regular schedule of check-ins
to make sure that the project's moving along,
and these could be short updates or longer meetings,
but it's important to communicate early
and often throughout the project.
Now, let's talk a little bit about why admins
are so well-positioned in their organizations
to act as a project manager.
What's your perspective on that?
you likely have already cultivated relationships
with many of the typical stakeholders,
such as your end users, developers,
if you work with them, even your executives.
You also have a big-picture understanding
of how your company uses Salesforce.
So when you're considering a new feature
or a change to an existing one,
you already have the knowledge needed
to assess the impact on your instance as a whole.
You make a great point there, Sarah.
So talk to me a little bit more about
what's involved with managing a Salesforce project.
when someone comes to me needing help.
For example, keeping track of where everything is at,
the milestones for a project, or next steps.
I'll listen to them to understand their needs
and what the requirements are,
the challenges they're facing.
And then I like to work with them
to put together a solution to solve their problem.
Hey, you know what they say?
Teamwork makes the dream work.
So Sarah, can you walk us through an example
of one of these solutions,
and how you use Salesforce to help solve the problem?
let me show you how I solved it.
I need you to use your imagination.
Let's say that you are the executive director
of the Otter Appreciation Society,
a nonprofit that raises funds to protect otter habitats.
And I am the organization's solo admin.
(audience laughing)
Oh boy, here come the puns.
I can tell that we're going to get along swimmingly.
Anyway, OAS is a busy nonprofit,
and we have a lot of projects going on
across multiple departments in the organization.
As the executive director, you told me
that you have a hard time keeping track of everything
and don't always know who to ask about where things are
and what milestones are coming up next.
So I'm tracking everything in my head
or on some sticky notes all over my desk.
And as the leader of the organization, it's really important
that I have a better handle on what's going on,
so I can help focus our fundraising efforts
Don't worry, I got you covered.
Because you mentioned that you were tracking everything
in random places like your head,
I looked at the way that the organization plans
and runs our projects, and I decided to build an app
in Salesforce to manage and track everything in one place
that everyone in the organization can access
to act as the single source of truth.
Okay, this sounds amazing.
But what do you mean when you say you built me an app?
First, let's take a look here at your homepage.
You can see the current projects, upcoming milestones,
and other important information
without even having to click into anything.
I knew I otter be excited to see what you come up with.
Now, tell me a little bit more about these elements.
How did you architect this app
so that it keeps track of everything?
You otter be ashamed of yourself, Gillian.
(drum sting ringing)
(audience laughing)
But let's talk about console apps.
I built this app as a console app,
because it maximizes the space on the page,
and you can open up multiple records at the same time.
Let me show you more about that.
I created a custom projects object
with milestones and project tasks as related objects.
That means that each project
can have multiple milestones and tasks.
I created a custom project tasks object
because the standard tasks object didn't have what I needed
in order to capture our specific project process.
Because this is a console app, when I want to view a project,
I select the object and it opens a list view.
From here, I select a specific project
and it opens in its own workspace tab.
If I click on a link to a related milestone or task,
they open as sub tabs of the project
to keep everything together all neat and tidy.
If I want to view a different project,
I can click to open the sidebar,
and then open another project in its own workspace tab.
Now, I can easily flip back and forth
between projects to view the different collections
of related records, each in their own tab.
I really appreciate, Sarah, that you made the distinction
between knowing when to build a custom object
versus using a standard one.
That's some awesome admin strategy right there.
So what happens when I create a new project?
To create a new project, you can click this button,
which is a global action I created.
The great thing about global actions is you can access them
from anywhere in Salesforce
to create new records at any time.
Here, you'll see a form pop up to create your new project,
along with prepopulated fields to capture the data we need.
You can also see that the project can be linked
to any of our current fundraising campaigns
with donations that we have in our org,
since we've installed the nonprofit success pack.
When we open the new project,
there's a path component on the record page
to help guide us through each stage of the project.
select a project manager and project sponsor
So those are the key fields that I chose to highlight
during the initiating phase.
All right, this is super helpful.
I love this because this way,
I really get a complete picture of how each project
relates to our fundraising efforts.
So let's say I wanted to update
one of the tasks on the project.
You may have noticed on the home screen
that we had some overdue tasks.
Let's complete one of those
by clicking the mark complete button on the task record.
When you mark the task as complete,
then the automation I built kicks in
and the milestone status is updated.
Because this was the final milestone
in the planning phase of the project,
that phase is now complete
and the project automatically moves
into the execution phase.
This means we're not relying on everyone
to update the status on their own.
They only have to update the task,
Now, I want to see how you built it.
Of course, here are the flows I've built.
First, let's take a look at the flow
when a task updates a milestone.
I created a flow that takes place
once this task status is marked as complete.
for any remaining open tasks on that milestone.
then the milestone is also updated as complete.
Next, let's look at the milestones
updating the projects flow.
I used the same strategy,
so that when a milestone is complete,
the project phase is updated accordingly.
I love a simple set of flows.
They fur sure make me happy.
(audience laughing)
Why did you architect them that way?
You just can't kelp yourself, can you?
(drum sting ringing)
Anyway, I love automation too.
Not only is the simplicity beautiful,
but it keeps things easy to maintain in the future.
A good naming convention also helps with that,
but it's probably a topic for another day.
This is really great, Sarah, but I want more.
I'm an executive director, after all.
What happens with all this data,
now that you're capturing it for the projects?
Is there a way I can use it or see it?
That's one of the great things about using Salesforce.
Each project, milestone, and task is captured by the system.
And that's why I can build you an overview dashboard
to help you get the insights,
like how many projects are in which status,
what's coming soon, and even trends over time,
so that you can plan for the future.
Take a look at how we've grown
as an organization over the years.
We now have more projects than ever to track.
So it's a good thing that we have all the tools
we need to stay on top of that.
Well, that's officially some awesome admin awesomeness.
Thank you, Sarah, for showing us that amazing demo,
and showing us how you solved it.
Now, Sarah, one of the things that I saw in your demo
was that incredible dashboard.
Can you talk to us a little bit about
why data analysis is such an important skill
Yeah, nonprofits are all about furthering a mission
to make the world a better place to live.
So customized dashboards keep users
and executives focused on those goal-oriented stats
that show how well we're achieving
what we've set out to accomplish,
or where there's room for improvement.
Now, something closely related to both project management
and data analysis is business analysis.
That's all about improving the efficiency
Do you have any suggestions as to how admins
can add value to their business by improving efficiency?
I would say, build strong relationships
with your users to better understand their needs.
And then you can identify opportunities for improvement.
You can do this through casually chatting with somebody,
or observing while they do their work
to see how the processes you have built
either help or hinder them in getting things done.
Sarah, that is fantastic advice.
Now, I'd like to talk a little bit about something
I know you're very passionate about,
and that's transferable skills.
you did something that had nothing to do with Salesforce
You studied fish sounds as a marine biologist,
which is super, super cool.
What are some of the skills that you learned
as a marine biologist that helps you today
in your career as a Salesforce admin?
You know, it really doesn't matter
what your education or career background is.
There are always transferable skills
that you can apply to be an awesome admin.
Scientists are like Salesforce admins
in that we're all about the data.
I definitely learned the value
of keeping my notes and records organized.
So when it came time for analysis,
I could easily draw conclusions from what I observed.
We just talked about why data analysis is so important,
and that's something I first learned as a biologist.
Thank you so much, Sarah.
This has been so fun talking about project management.
Thank you for being our guest today on How I Solved It.
Now, if you'd like to learn more
about what you saw in today's episode,
please visit admin.salesforce.com.
With that, I'm Gillian Bruce,
and I'll catch you next time in the cloud.
