6 Must Have Salesforce Chrome Extensions

Ok forgive me for the click-baity title, but I really wanted you to see this post.  I promise, this 2 minute read will give you back HOURS each month. 

I try to optimize everything in my life, its just part of my strange.

Example 1: if my stove’s overhead light is on High (it has 4 settings, High, Med, Low, Nightlight), it takes 4 clicks to turn off.  I discovered that if you click the Night Light button it only takes 2 clicks, Night Light on, Night Light off.  I thought I was changing the world with this one…Mary (esposa) patted me on the shoulder and said ‘wonderful.’

Example 2: I wash my towels with my laundry.  I dunno, apparently this is not a thing people do according to the Book of Mary, but hey, there is room in the washer, my towel is in the hamper, this is going down.

Naturally, reaching peak efficiency in Salesforce has become a focus area of mine as well. I was a longtime dedicated Firefox user, but Salesforce Chome Extensions led me to make the change this past fall.

Since then these 6 Chrome Extensions have changed the way I work, helping me be Lightning fast without sacrificing carefulness or accuracy.


CRM Science – Admin Assistant

Profiles and permission sets can be miserable work.  Whether creating a new custom profile from scratch or adding new fields and objects to existing profiles after a deployment, there can be hundreds of boxes to check across dozens of profiles.  Luckily CRM Science delivered the Admin Assistant.

While this only works in Classic, I promise you its worth the switch!

I primarily use the Profile – Fields function, that allows you to check all the Read and/or Edit boxes on a particular object.  Even though you’ll need to fine tune by clicking checkboxes to dial your settings in the way you want, this eliminates 90% of the work upfront.  This same app has options to check/uncheck all Apps AND assign a starting value to tabs (Tab Hidden, Default Off, Default On) for all profiles.


ORGanizer for Salesforce

This is a pretty popular one and for good reason.  ORGanizer keeps track of all your logins, like many other Chrome Extensions, but this one takes it like 13 steps further.

First, it allows you to assign a color to each org, so if you are working across a production, sandbox, and dev/trailhead org, you can keep all your tabs organized easily.

It also lets you quickly jump to the Home, Setup or Dev console from the extension menu.

But wait, there is more!  You can also create quick links in the setup menu to stash your favorite pages, much like Salesforce’s new bookmark feature in Lighting – so this is a great add for Classic users.

While some will point out ORGanizer also has an Enhanced Formula Editor AND Change Set Helper, I actually prefer two other extensions for both those functions.


Salesforce.com Enhanced Formula Editor

Below is an image of the ORGanizer Formula Editor, with the Salesforce.com Enhanced Formula Editor underneath.

Though the user interface looks a little dated, we are here for function, not form. With lookups, undo buttons, font size adjustments, and other helpful tools, Enhanced Formula Editor packs a much bigger punch than the ORGanizer formula editor.

It also provides the option to turn off the highlights AND toggle the editor back to the Salesforce default, saving you time and clicks if you want to revert to the standard interface quickly.

Most importantly, if you click on a bracket (), it shows you its matching pair by highlighting it in red…think about how much time that will save you when troubleshooting formulas.  ORGanizer is great for many things, but Salesforce.com Enhanced Formula Editor is the way to go for this one!


Salesforce Change Set Turbo

My frustration with deployments led to our very first Haiku Contest, a pretty popular bit of Salesforce  cheekiness that produced a lot of laughs and thought provoking, inspirational haikus.  Shortly after the episode that led to my haiku storm, I started using Change Set Turbo, so next your’s contest will start with a different theme (Hey Knowledge, you’re up on my haiku hit list…).

Change Set Turbo lets you add items from every component into your chance set without going back to the change set screen.  It lets you search by name, last modified date, and last modified user, as well as sort by any of those values.

So many times when creating change sets, I only want to add fields and objects created or edited after the sandbox refresh or those I created/edited.  With Change Set Turbo, this makes building those change sets a breeze.  This extension has saved me HOURS on deployments and I am happy to say my first time deployment success rate has gone from 0% to about 50/50.

That is big progress

in green circle, fish, red…crap

world of deployment.

Caveat: it only works in Classic, but who cares? It’s awesome. 


Salesforce.com Id Clipper

I’m a grinder.  I’m not the brightest Salesforcer in the world, so my only path to success is to try and outwork everyone.  This leads to lots of late nights and my clients love to joke about my 1AM emails.  With a 3 year old I take to school every morning,  some of my days are held together by the 24 ounces of french press that pick me up my hair.

This is relevant because either if I’m tired or have the caffeine jitters, zeroing in to clip the damn SFID from the URL can be maddening.  ID Clipper solves this with a simple, yet effective extension.  Open a record, click ‘Clip This Id!’ (yes, its excited to clip it too!), and the record id is ready for you to paste.

So simple, yet so effective.  A+ effort guys.


Salesforce Mass Editor

This one is last, but certainly not least.

It works in Classic & Lightning and gives you the ability to mass edit all columns, mass clone, mass delete, and export to csv from a list view.  Slow down and read that again…yeah.

Nothing else to say here, picture covers it all!


 

Ok, so those are all my must haves…I’m always looking to save time, so feel free to share your favorites in the comments below!

Comments

  1. Victoria Tegg says:

    This is a great list. I’m definitely going to have to look into check my links…that looks like a really helpful too. I already use Grammarly and it’s be great at correcting spelling and punctuation errors. I do have trouble with it sometimes on Facebook. When I have a spelling error in a post an click to correct it through Grammarly, the post just closes and then I have to start over. Hopefully they will fix that bug soon.

  2. Paul Brown says:

    Great post, but you said Chrome is the world most popular browser. That is Google’s aim to be the only browser. Remember when Google’s logo was “”We won’t be evil.””? Too late now. Soon Chrome will force web developers to build in code to slow down Firefox or Duck Duck Go. Like Microshit did with Wordperfect.

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