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Fields and Field Types. Databases are made of up fields. You probably have some idea of what a field is, but to be precise, a field is container of data. To illustrate, there are five fields highlighted in red below. Fields in Salesforce are always set up to contain a certain *type* of data. For example the Keep Reading

Page Layouts. The last post focused on Fields, which are central to databases because they store the actual data. Now we’re going to talk about how different kinds of information can be *displayed* differently on a “Page Layout”. The Page Layout determines what one sees when looking at a Record Page. Each of the different outlines in the Keep Reading

Reports and Dashboard Capabilities. So far in this series, I’ve done a quick and broad overview and then did a deeper dive into Fields and Page Layouts, which are the bread and butter of using Salesforce. In this post, I’ll talk more about Salesforce’s Reporting and Dashboard capabilities. Before launching into the technical capacities, I want to Keep Reading

Using Alerts to Stay On Top of Everything.  If your nonprofit is like most, you’re keeping track of a million different things: lists upon lists of to-do’s; upcoming dates to submit grants; remembering to send reports; deadlines to plan board meetings; keeping up-to-date on the progress of your programs. You probably have an assortment of Keep Reading

The Core of Salesforce. Salesforce was built for for-profit companies’ sales teams, but they specifically created a module called the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) for nonprofits that tailors the built-in features for nonprofits. You can think of NPSP as simply “Salesforce for Nonprofits”. Salesforce with NPSP has become the go-to app of choice for nonprofits globally. NPSP Keep Reading

What is a “Customer Relationship Management” database? Salesforce is a specific type of database focused on “Customer Relationship Management” (CRM). The idea behind a CRM is that you want to track more than just info about your Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, etc (link) – you also want to track communication, specifically (1) communication with your staff and Keep Reading

Intro to Automations.  One of the best parts of Salesforce is the ability to automate everything. One nonprofit Executive Director used to manually compile excel spreadsheets to for payroll and allocation purposes. Now Salesforce does most of this for her, and she estimates she saves 250 hours per year! Another nonprofit I work with has a monthly requirement Keep Reading

Apps Save Time.  One of Salesforce’s main advantages is its ability to integrate with a wide variety of different apps, programs, and systems. There are also hundreds of both paid and free Salesforce integrations and plugins that solve a need that Salesforce doesn’t have an out-of-the-box solution for. I find it useful to differentiate between an Keep Reading