It's not quite astronomical spring here in New York yet, but it is meteorological spring… so it's time for some spring cleaning!
As the admin of your PatronManager account, you're probably pretty busy most of the time, creating reports, refining processes, answering questions for your users… there's plenty to do. Outside of those day-to-day functions, though, there are lots of other tasks that don't need your constant attention but still shouldn't be forgotten about forever. In our next three posts, we'll make some suggestions for things you might include in a quarterly cleanup of your Salesforce account.
Automation and Forms Audit
With workflows, Processes, web forms, and triggers, your PatronManager/Salesforce account can take care of a lot of work on its own, without needing direct action from you. It's kind of like driving a car that's equipped with cruise control -- you get on the highway, you get up to speed, and then you can take your foot off the gas and relax for a bit. But your car doesn't magically transform into a self-driving one -- it's probably not a great idea to take a nap or read a book and trust the machine to do ALL the work for you. You still need to check in every once in a while and make sure that everything is working smoothly and safely. Today's "spring cleaning" checklist is about auditing your automation.
1) Workflows and Processes
"write a description?!"
- Do you know what all of your workflows and processes are doing? Is everything that's active something that actually should be active? When you created those automation actions, were you kind enough to yourself to write a clear and helpful description that you can look back at now and understand? If the answer to any of these questions is "no," now's a good time to fix it.
- Review everything that's active in production, and write some notes on any of the ones that aren't clear. If there's anything that's a real mystery (and that'll probably be a Process more than a Workflow, in our experience), hop over into your sandbox (refreshing it if needed) and experiment with it until you understand what it does.
- Also, if you've been using your account for a while, you might have a whole bunch of older Workflows that can now be combined into a single Process!
2) Web Forms
"please give us money"
- If you're using PatronManager, you probably have at least three places on the web that your patrons use to interact with your organization: Your ticketing site, your donation form(s), and your email signup form(s). When was the last time you tested those forms yourself? Do you have a good sense of your patrons' experience online?
- Bring your colleagues into the conversation too! Make sure people from sales, fundraising, and marketing also review and their respective forms. Are you effectively communicating the right message to your patrons? Do the forms reflect your organization's current priorities?
3) Email Templates
ack!
- Related to both automation and web forms -- your account probably sends out all sorts of emails automatically. (Donation acknowledgements, order confirmations, volunteer schedules… etc.). When was the last time you (or anyone!) read and updated them? Again, rope in your colleagues to make sure that you all still like / agree with whatever you're saying in these automatic messages.