Tips to Leverage Salesforce AppExchange: Dreamforce 2016 Session Excerpts

Salesforce AppExchange is the business app store from Salesforce. The Dreamforce 2016 session on AppExchange witnessed the tips and insights offered by some of the prominent App experts. Here, we are presenting you the extracts from the talk “Salesforce AppExchange Tips From App Experts”, in which some of the prominent Salesforce MVPs shared their secrets for maximizing value from AppExchange and the Salesforce ecosystem.
 
Amanda Nelson, Senior Manager, AppExchange Content and Community, Salesforce was the host of the talk show. Talking to her were three leading MVPs- Leyna Hoffer (Salesforce MVP at Edmentum), Matt Lacey (Salesforce MVP at Proximity Insight), and Geraldine Gray (Salesforce MVP at Endiem).
 
Leyna Hoffer, Salesforce MVP, at Edmentum shared a few tips for admins and partners.
Tip for admins:
Leyna has been working with AppExchange since its inception and she believes that AppExchange has changed a lot over the past 10 years and is still undergoing changes. So, the admins are supposed to keep themselves updated with the AppExchange. They need to check out the apps that are new, learn and apply what could be a right solution for their company. They must also be aware of which apps are free and should have a fair understanding about their partner support.
Tip for partners:
More apps are getting launched and more changes do happen, so partners must be able to differentiate or distinguish the right apps, and apply those apps to their business. Partners can look at the app reviews and find out how their apps are faring, try to overcome the objections, and come back with a very positive customer service.
For both admins and partners, the stage is going to get bigger, better and more competitive.
According to Leyna, the quick tips for selecting your perfect app include: the ability to search for the latest and greatest app in AppExchange using filtered list, using search features, keywords, budget (what is free). You must narrow your search depending on your requirement.
 
Geraldine Grey, Salesforce MVP, working at Endiem gave a brief idea on how to identify the importance of certain apps and how to make sure whether the apps you have installed give you the results you need.
 
Prior to installing an app, you must encourage your customer to find out if there is an app that is free. Admins also need to check if they can do it in Salesforce without using an app or building anything custom. If you already have an app, study what is the actual problem that needs to be resolved, and understand the end result when the problem is solved.
 
For example, you need to automate a bunch of documentation that you need to send to a customer or a partner, or send further down the supply chain. Your app should have the ability to take the information from Salesforce and automate documentation flow within a couple of clicks. Thus you can save 2-3 hours of one person per week. If we have two people doing the process manually, three days a week, and each takes two and half hours, that will increase your labor cost and time. Evaluate the manual effort against the app effort and this will help you choose the right app.
From the customer point of view, think how much time the app is going to save, assess the benefits, the quantity of mistakes it could make, time and money. Also, when somebody is on vacation, you don’t need to worry about it and whole workflow gets executed smoothly in the office. A perfect example would be Salesforce CPQ.
 
 
Matt Lacey, Salesforce MVP, working at Proximity Insight gave an App Builder’s perspective of Lightning.
Now, the entire ecosystem is based on lightning. Lightning is a fundamental set of changes in the architecture as the pages are built very differently. They are delivered to the users in a unique way, not just the way you see them, but also how the apps work technically. Now pages are built on components which control each other. These are interactive, updated and are reactive to what a user does. The app developers have plenty of opportunities now to build tools that users need. Previously everything was based on specific objects, but now things are more natural and process oriented. Talking from a developer standpoint, Matt says that it’s a very new era of technology that is different, and also offers us scope to do things differently and is always exciting.
In terms of coding, everything is written in JavaScript now.  It has been enhanced from the developer’s perspective to bring about more from Visualforce with more high level functionalities that look much better, smarter and faster. The new Salesforce DX (Developer Experience) has evolved to make the life of a developer much easier.
 
From the admin perspective, the ability to develop and build pages and do more in Lightning can be done using Salesforce Classic.
 
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