Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant – Account and Contact Management

1. Set Up Contacts to Multiple Accounts

So in this video, we’re going to see how to associate a single contact with multiple accounts. So this situation mostly arises in large organisations where a single contact is responsible for handling multiple headquarters or multiple locations of a common business or common organizations. So in that case, if that organization, for example, is your customer, and if you have multiple accounts hierarchies for that customer made in your salesforce, then adding that particular contact to each account is not a very good practise as it allows for contact duplication in your salesforce. So to handle this problem, you can associate that single contact with the multiple accounts in your sales force. To enable this feature, simply go to your salesforce setup page and search for account settings. If you scroll down on the Account settings page, you’ll see an option, a checkbox labelled “allow users to relate a contact to multiple accounts.” You can now see a related list of multiple accounts when you allow users to associate the same contact with multiple accounts.

So simply click on this checkbox and save this page. Now, once this process is executed by Salesforce, simply go to your account settings on your account page to see this option enabled. There are some other options as well. When this process is done, when users delete an account that has direct contacts that are related to other accounts, you have the option to either block users from deleting that account or allow users to delete the account and automatically delete all direct contacts. You can simply read these options. When you practise that in your own free developer account, you can see what these options are all about. For now, I’m going to simply save this, and we’re going to go straight to our account records to see how our page looks. Now, on our account record, let me go to this contact on the related list. So I have this contact at American Banking Corp. by the name of Kira. So what we need to do is assign that contact to multiple accounts. But first of all, there’s a separate related list called “related contacts” that’s now available on the account layout. Simply drag and drop the list of related contacts onto the layout.

And once you save, you should be able to see these related contacts in your page layout of accounts. Once I refresh the account, you’ll be able to see the related contacts list, which was previously not available. And here I can add the single contact to multiple accounts. So here I can search for another account, and I can relate any contact to this particular account. As of now, Kira Blair is associated with American Corp. Now I’m adding this contact to another account, and as you can see, the same contact can now be seen associated with a new account as well. And you can see which accounts are associated with this contact in the related contact section of this account layout. So it’s a very handy method where you have a single contact that is associated with multiple accounts in your sales force.

2. Understanding Account Hierarchy

Now let’s take a look at what is meant by “account hierarchy” in salesforce. So I have this account open in front of me that is called American Banking Corp. And if I edit this form, as you can see, there’s a standard parent account field here that is a lookup to the account only. So what this does is that you can actually add a parent account to this American Banking Corp. so that you can have a whole hierarchy of accounts in Salesforce. So here I’m creating a new account, American Banking Corp. But the location I’m setting it as is India, and I want this to be a child record of this American Banking Corp. Which is, let’s suppose, the headquarters of all the offices that are open globally? As a result, American Banking Corp., India is the child account of American Banking Corp., Inc.

I am creating another child’s record. Let’s say the location here is now Australia. So again, in the parent account, I can simply select American Banking Corp. To specify that this current record is a child record of American banking And once I click on Save, I have successfully created two accounts, mentioning that the parent account is American Banking. Now this is the parent’s account. If I click on the hierarchy button on the parent account, you will be able to see the whole three-level structural hierarchy of all the accounts, including the parent account and its associated child accounts. So this is a very good feature of Salesforce, which lets you create multiple accounts—multiple child accounts—and latch them to a single parent account. Again, you can see the same thing in the reports as well. You can see the parent account of all the child records and the reporting structure in Salesforce. Let me just create another child record here so that we can have some more records in our tree structure.

When I click Save, a new child record will be created. So make sure that whenever you create a new account, if you are not specifying the parent account on this current account, then the system will not know just by the name that this account is a child record of an already existing account. So there we go. As you can see, all the child records are linked to this one parent account. You can click on any one of them to go to the record page. So this is how the account hierarchy works in salesforce. Let me go to the parent account again. Now, if I want, I can get another parent account and attach it to this current record so that the American Banking Corp. itself can be treated as a child record of another account. So let me go to the related list of accounts and add a related list of contacts to see what contacts are available and what contacts are available for all the child records for this parent account record. So similarly, I’m going to the contact object, and I’m going to add another related list. In the page layout, I’m going to add the related accounts list. Simply drag and drop the list of related accounts at the bottom of the screen.

Once done, simply click on “Save.” Now, if I go to the account and contact records, I can see that I can have and here I have the related list called related accounts, where I can see that this contact has a relationship with two accounts, American Banking Corp. and Beth. You can associate this current contact with another account by adding it to the related accounts. So I am adding American Banking Corp.—Sydney to this current contact record. Now, once I click on Save, the same contact record is now linked with three related accounts. Now if I go back to the account page in the account hierarchy, you can see that a whole tree structure is already here. You may want to add more fields to the tree structure, or you may want to remove the fields and columns that appear here. So you can do that. You can control what information you want to see on this page. So simply go to the account object and click on the hierarchy columns. Then, in the account hierarchy display, simply select which columns to add or remove. Now that all columns are selected, simply click on “Save.” And once I refresh this page, the new columns should be available to me now. Yes, as you can see, the contact name is in the first column. The second column is now the account name. And I’ve added some new columns and fields to make it easier for the user to track and see all of the account’s information, all of the important information, on one page.

3. Account & Contact Visibility

Now we will look at organization wide default settings in Salesforce, which is also called as Odd’s organisation-wide defaults (OWD) in Salesforce are the baseline level of access that the most restricted user should have. Essentially, OWD are used to limit your users’ access. and then you can open up your access. You can grant additional access through various other means, such as sharing rules, role hierarchy, sales teams, account teams, and manual sharing, which we will discuss as we progress through the course. In the simplest terms, you can say that OWD specifies the default level of access users have to each other’s records. As you can see on this page, we have opened “our own” in our setup by searching for the sharing settings. And here you can see all of the objects in Salesforce.org. And in the next two columns, we have default internal access, default external access, and the last sentence says grant access using hierarchies. Now let’s see what these mean. When I include this, I see that all of these options are a drop-down menu with three major types of values: private, public read only, and public read and write. But there are some additional values as well. For example, in the lead, I can see that the value says public read, write, and transfer.

So what this means is that there are basically four levels of access in OWD. Let’s take a look at the private one. So if an object is set to “private,” then that means that only the record owner and the users above that role in their hierarchy have access. That means any manager or any manager of a sales representative will be able to see the record of its reportees. Only the record owner and users above that role in that hierarchy can view, edit, and report on those records. That simply means that if your organisation has account object set to private, then that would mean that the user who is the account owner will be able to access this record, as will the user who is above the role hierarchy of this user. In most cases, for example, a sales representative’s manager will be able to see his or her record in the sales force. Now, roles can be defined in the role settings in the Salesforce setup menu. So again, the “react privately” option means that only the record owner and any user above the owner’s hierarchy will be able to access the record. Then the next option is “public read only.” So in this option, all users can view and report on records, but only the owner and the users above that role hierarchy can edit them.

So, for example, if your accounts object has been set to “public read only,” that means all the users will have access to each other’s records, but they will not be able to edit them. Only the account owner and the user above the account owner’s role hierarchy will be able to edit the record. The following is then made public. Read. Write. This option means that all users can view,  edit, and report on all records in Salesforce. Given that they have object-level permissions set to their profiles, The public is then invited to read, write, and transfer. This is only available in cases involving two objects. That is what leads and cases are. Then we have a column called “Grant access using hierarchies.” Now, suppose you do not want your users who are above the record owner’s role hierarchy to have access to these records. Then you can simply disable this access. And with this, the users that are higher in the role or territory hierarchy will receive automatic access to the record.

4. Data.com

So let’s talk about data. Data is another tool provided by Salesforce that is used for data gathering and enrichment, such as accounts, contacts, and demographic data. So you can easily create a new contact and account record by searching in Salesforce’s Data tool. The user must have data permission to use the data. So here I have given permission to the Data.com user type. You can simply select the Data.com user in this dropdown, and once you click on it, the user will not be able to use the Data.com tool. The Data.com monthly addition limit is the second option. You can set a limit to the number of contact,  lead, and account additions available each month for this user. So data is a feature of Salesforce that comes at an additional price, but it’s available for use in the free developer account. So here I am on the company information page, and you can see how many licences you have for the Data.com users.

So, if you scroll down in the Feature Licensessection, you’ll see that Data.com user total licences provided and the Free Developer account is two, and we’ve already used one. So we have one remaining license. So let’s search for the Data.comfield mapping in the setup page. And this is the field mapping section, where you can map the data.com fields with your account fields in Salesforce. So, once you find a new account in the Data.com tool, you can create a new account in your system with a few clicks; an automatic account will be created, and the new fields will be populated with the Account field that you specify in the field mappings. There are some other options here with licences and limits, based on prospective preferences. You can go through it here. I’m not going to go through much detail about this because in the exam you will also not be asked such detailed questions on Data.com, but just a few general data enrichment questions.

So here you can add the field mappings for the Data.com field and your account. And similarly, if you scroll down, you will see the Contact and Lead section as well for the field mapping, and once you have mapped your fields, as of now, Data.com is not available on the Lightning platform. So we have to go to the classic version of this app. So as you can see, once I have setup the data, I can see some new options available here, more insights, and some more buttons. Get more contacts. Get more contacts. So once I click on these, we can get contacts for this account because it is not associated with Data. Add or clean this account using Data.com Prospector Clean to get record-related contacts. Since this is an account that is not shown in data.com and hasn’t been added to the system using the tool, the salesforce is unable to fetch information about this account. So, if I go to Salesforce’s classic version and click on the plus sign in the navigation bar, I can see the Data.com option here. When I click on the data, I can now find contacts and accounts in the Salesforce provided database to add to my salesforce.org.

So here I can find any contacts and accounts regarding all the organisations in the provided database. If the information is present in the provided database, I can have the latest contacts and accounts. And since this is accurate information, you won’t have to deal with the data cleaning exercises afterwards regarding the contact names, emails, and accounts. So, as I said earlier, this comes at an additional price once you purchase your sales cloud from Salesforce. So in the developer account, I can show you the demonstration here. So as you can see, I have searched for the company Google, and you can see that there are two search results for two cities in the United States. And I have the option—at Salesforce, I have a button where I can select or add all of the search results to my Salesforce account object. So you added one new account. If I go to the Accounts tab, I can see that Google has been added as an account to my salesforce using the data, and all the information such as address, industry, phone numbers, and website is provided automatically. So there’s a button called “Clean with Data.” Once I click on it, you can see some comparisons between the data in the salesforce and the information in the data.

As you can see, all the checks are in green. That means in our Salesforce record, in this Google account record, all the fields are matching with the fields provided in the database of data, since we just added this from that database only, so it’s showing us that all the fields are up to date. Similarly, you can do that with other accounts as well. So in the setup, you can get this PDF file on the implementation of the data. It has all the details, all the tips, and all the steps to implement data.com in more detail. So you can go through this PDF; it’s available in your salesforce only, and you’ll be able to download this PDF. So all the many considerations and many customization options are here. You can simply read this. You can even schedule data.com clean jobs in Salesforce so that it becomes an automatic activity in your salesforce.org. So let me search for the jobs on our setup page, and you can get all the steps here through this PDF only. So go to “Jobs,” and here you can schedule this cleaning job of all the records. You can schedule automated jobs to compare your records with data to keep your records clean. And jobs are queued according to your schedule settings, and they run independently for accounts, contacts, and leads. So here you can schedule your job frequency and your job time, and your records will be cleaned automatically.

5. Duplicate Rule

So now we’re going to look at how to manage duplicate records in Salesforce, which is basically a part of our data management section. So we’re going to take a look at Salesforce’s internal duplicate management tool, which has duplicate rules and matching rules that prevent the duplication of records in Salesforce. So let’s take a look. Now, if you’re already using Lightning, your organisation must be using the standard potential duplicate Lightning component, which is available in the app builder.

If not, I strongly advise you to use the standard feature, which basically states that if the current record that the user is viewing has any potential duplicates, and it greatly aids in reducing duplication in your salesforce. Now I’ve simply dragged and dropped this component, and on the related list I can see this component. Now, as always, let’s go to the text menu and search for duplicates. Now, you’ll be able to see two results here. The first is matching rules, and the second is duplicate rules. So these two tools are basically used to stop users or alert your users if they are trying to create a duplicate record somewhere in Salesforce. And you can set up these rules to warn them or stop them from creating any duplicate records. So first, I’m going to go into the duplicate rules here. And now we are going to create a new rule. These are the rules I’ve already established in the past. Some are standard, and one is a custom rule that was created. So the below three duplicate rules, which are on-lead, contact, and accounts, are ten duplicate rules that come up when you sign up for your salesforce.org. So here we are going to create a new rule altogether.

So let’s get started. So, if I click on the new rule, I’ll have to now select the object on which I want to base this rule, so you can see all the objects that you have in your salesforce.org. So here we are going to create a duplicate rule on the contact object. So first, as always, we have to name our rule. So let’s name it “contact duplicate.” Then just add a brief description of what this rule does. Now, we have a section here called “record level security,” in which we have two options here. The first says enforce sharing rules, and the second says bypass sharing rules. So let’s take a look at what these are all about. When you choose enforced sharing rules, the matching rule only compares records that the user is currently accessing or creating in Salesforce. Then the matching rule compares only those records that that particular user has access to. And the resulting list of possible duplicates includes only records the user has access to. So let’s suppose I am a sales user and I have three accounts under my name: a, b, and c. If I’m creating a fourth account that is very similar to your account A, then the duplicate rule will show you an error about this fourth record. However, if account A already has another owner and you are creating a new account that is very similar to account A, Salesforce will assume that both accounts are very different and will not warn you or prevent you from creating that account.

However, if you check the second option, then regardless of any account that you have access to, you will be thrown an error if your record matches with any other record, regardless of who is the owner of that record. So using the second option is always a good idea, primarily because it checks all of the records in salesforce, regardless of who is the owner or who has access to those records. Then we have the actions. So here we have to specify what will happen when a user tries to save a new duplicate record. So we have two actions here: actions on Create and actions on Edit. You can now choose whether to only throw an error on Create or to completely prevent that particular user from creating a duplicate record. So here, if I choose Allow, then I can select two options: alert and report. And if the alert is checked, that means that the user will see a warning message on the screen whenever they’re trying to create a new duplicate record. So here I have selected the block action, and the second action on Edit is used. When you already have a duplicate record in Salesforce and you try to save a new transaction, you’re trying to update that duplicate record, I’ve chosen to allow that save in Salesforce. Then the next option is matching rules.

So in this section, we are going to set up, basically, what records we are going to match so that we can throw the alert. Because you could have different fields in your object that you want to match, or different rules and objects you want to look at to find the matching rule. For example, you can create a duplicate rule on a lead to prevent the system from creating a lead in Salesforce if there is already a contact matching the email ID, name, or any other criteria with the lead. As a result, in the matching rule Basically, we define how to match and how to know when to throw an error or block the creation of duplicate records. In the matching rule, we are going to define what standards we want and what fields we want to compare before we throw an error of duplication at the user. So let’s go ahead and create a new matching rule here. Then in the next section, we have to specify which fields we want to match. So here I want to match the contact’s email ID and email address, and I want to throw an error if the contact’s email ID exactly matches any other contact record with the same email ID. So that’s why I’ve set the matching method to exact. Then there’s “match blank fields,” which basically means that if the email fields of two records are both blank, Salesforce assumes they’re both duplicates. So that’s why I unchecked that box. Then I set the mobile as well as the matching method check. I want the mobile to be checked precisely here.

So here, I want the mobile to be exactly the same. If we want to throw an error, we have the last name of the contact. So I want the last name to be fuzzy-logic, where only a certain number of characters in the last name in a particular series match with another contact in the same series and the same characters. Then, in that case, the rule should take effect. Then we can also change the filter logic of these rules. So currently this logic is set to 1, 2, and two and three. That means all three conditions should be met to throw the user an error. But in this case, I’ve set it to one, two, or three. That means if either of these conditions is met, we can either throw an error to the user or block the creation of the duplicate records. Then, once you have created your matching rule, make sure to activate it. Then let’s go back to our duplicate rule and select this newly created matching rule. Optionally, you can also add conditions to filter out only a particular set of records that must go through these duplicate rules. So in the below section, you can choose what kinds of records should be processed under the duplication rule. For example, match for those accounts where the account record type is a particular value. Or you can set it for all the records where the owner is part of a particular profile. Once you have set everything, let’s save and activate a duplicate rule. Okay, so I have not set any action on edit, so let me just make a report action here. It will basically tell us how many times the user encountered the error while editing this duplicate record. So here we are going to check our duplication rule.

Now I’m going to make a contact very similar to Amanda Garcia. So let’s fill up some of this information. I’m setting the last name as same, and you can see that there’s already a warning that you cannot save this record because a duplicate record exists. And that is because we have chosen to block actions on a duplicate rule so that whenever a new record gets created and the system finds that this new record is a duplicate record, we will block this action completely. Let’s change our last name to Dale so that we can bypass this matching rule. Then let’s try to save this record. And you can see that this new record is now saved without any challenge. Now let’s test for editing a duplicate record. So I’m going to add the already-existing email ID to this new record. And you can see that the email ID got saved because, on Edit, we are only reporting it and not showing any errors to the user. However, if we check the alert option as well as the duplicate rule, the user will start receiving error messages as well. So let’s edit our duplicate rule and checkbox this alert option as well, then save. Now when I try to edit and save this record, this should throw me an error. Now let’s add the same email ID, and you can see that this record looks like an existing record. Make sure to check for any potential duplicates. If I click “save” a second time, I can save because the action on “edit” is set to “allow.” So this is how you can use duplicate rules and matching rules to create a powerful system in your sales force to save you from all those duplicate records.