The Future of Salesforce Setup

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ben Sklar, Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how he’s making setup into a better, more consistent experience. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ben Sklar.

The problems with Salesforce setup

If there’s one thing Salesforce Admins know a lot about, it’s setup. It’s time-consuming, complicated, and varies wildly depending on what you’re looking at. Answering a simple question like “what objects does this user have access to and why?” turns into an arduous process.

That’s why I was so excited to bring Ben Sklar on the pod to talk about how his team is fixing setup in Salesforce. We’ll find out how they’re laying the groundwork for faster updates and creating a more consistent user experience.

Gradual improvements to setup

A big question I had for Ben was how the changes he’s making to setup will show up for those of us who use it every day. “All these amazing enhancements we’re making to the setup platform are really behind the scenes,” he says, “if we do this right way you don’t really even need to know that it’s there.”

However, you might notice a few improvements here or there. For example, there are new user summaries that allow you to see all the permission sets that a user has, all in one place. They’re also working with the Sales Cloud Go team to make sure that you can turn on features, discover new ones, and assign permissions, all in one place.

Creating a consistent experience

At the end of the day, the goal is to make things easier for the people who use it the most (that’s you!). “We’ve heard our admins often complain about inconsistent experiences,” Ben says, “and by being able to reuse components across setup you’ll be able to see more consistency.”

As Ben says, setup was turning into the “Wild West” and it would feel different across experiences. His team has done a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that setup always has a consistent look and feel, and they’ve established a setup design council to create guidelines that make sense. The future of Salesforce Setup is bright, and a whole lot easier.

You should listen to the full episode for more from Ben, including what’s next for setup and why he loves ultimate frisbee. And subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.

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Full show transcript

Mike:
This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking about Setup, and I joked before I pressed record with Ben Sklar, Admins live in Setup. We probably could pay a mortgage based on the amount of time that we spend in Setup. And the reason I talk about Setup and Ben Sklar is Ben is one of the product managers who’s tackling Setup and fixing Setup, and he’s working very close with another product major that you may have heard of, Cheryl F