Leveraging List Views With Salesforce1

The good thing about Salesforce1 is that you have to rethink your user experience and data access for mobile.  Yes, I said good thing because rethinking data access with the mobile user in mind will result in a better user experience for someone on the road than shoehorning everything from the desktop onto a more limited device would.  With Salesforce1, you can provide mobile users with access to data specific to their needs while on the road thanks to Flexipages.

Try something different just for mobile users.

A local nonprofit where I occasionally do volunteer Salesforce development work wanted a mobile app to provide users with quick access to specific groups of records.  These users need to update about 200 or more records a day using a mobile device.  And they want some flexibility regarding the order in which these records might be accessed.

My first thought was to create Visualforce pages that would offer specific groupings of records, but the nonprofit really needed something more flexible.

So I turned to Flexipages to solve the problem.  With Flexipages, you can design a mobile-specific interface that relies on List Views to provide access to specific groups of data.

At their most basic, Flexipages simply define which List Views for a specific object should be incorporated into the mobile experience, including the Recent Items list.  If you can create a List View that prioritizes Accounts Needing Attention, for example, the mobile user can bypass the Accounts Tab and just access that list with a Flexipage.

But Flexipages don't merely offer a single List View, they can combine multiple List Views and Global Actions all in the same screen.  So a Flexipage might offer access to Accounts Needing Attention and Currently Discounted Products all with a single navigation graphic, in addition to a Global Action for creating a New Contact.

In crafting a mobile experience for your users, consider creating Flexipages and putting them at the top of the navigation menu, above the standard tab navigation options like Account and Contact Tabs.  This gives  users more immediate access to specific records of interest to users on the go.

For the nonprofit, I created several new List Views to combine different records on the same page.  I also added an image formula to signify which records had been updated on the road to help the user easily determine which records still needed attention.  You can read more about using images with Flexipages in a recent post.  I also created about 10 different Flexipages to provide the most flexible access to all the records they update via mobile.

Flexipages are easy to create as text files outside of Salesforce.  They are XML files, which are simply text files with specific textual "tags" enclosed in triangular brackets.  For example, "<description>" is a beginning tag and "</description>" as an ending tag, while the text between these two tags would be the actual description.

Once you create a Flexipage, the easy option for deploying them, currently, requires placing them in a zip file with a particular directory structure and naming convention, and including a second XML file listing which Flexipages to deploy.  The zip file can be deployed with Salesforce Workbench using Migration>Deploy.

For more information about creating Flexipages, refer to the documentation here: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api_meta/Content/meta_flexipage.htm

Once you consider which data is the highest priority for mobile users, simple List Views, combined with Flexipages, provide the view your mobile user needs to the data they most want.

Provide Mobile Users with a Rich Experience Using Flexipages and Salesforce1

How do you make the most useful data available to users on a mobile device?  You may want to limit text and reduce the need for swiping and scrolling.  Think about the types of activities you are most likely to perform using your phone – texting, calling, photographing, listening to and watching or just looking.  We love the multimedia capabilities and the rich data we experience at a glance with mobile devices.  Salesforce1 provides an important new feature to help you create a more engaging and mobile-efficient interface for your Salesforce data.

Red flag understocked merchandise.

 

Flexipages

Make use of Flexible Pages, or Flexipages, to create a more engaging and mobile-efficient interface for your users by providing useful graphics and text in record lists directly off a tab.  Mobile users should be able to get as much data as possible in a glance and images can help make that possible.  For example, you can use image formulas to display graphical representations of a record’s status.  For an Opportunity, you might add an image formula to represent where in the pipeline each record happens to be.  This way, salespeople who are on the road can glance at a list of records to determine which need the most immediate attention rather than swiping and reading through a list of text.

Unfortunately, early Salesforce1 releases don’t support image formulas in the tab view.  Tab fields are determined through the Search Layout options, these are the fields users see when they select an object tab on desktop Salesforce, and image formulas have historically been useful here.  Yet the first time a user selects an object tab in Salesforce1, it won’t display images.  While this may change with later releases, there is another option available to early adopters as well.

For the most rich data experience, you can bypass the object tab using Flexipages and make data with images available with a single tap on the Flexipage tab.  Flexipage tabs access the first few fields of either a specific list view or recent items, both of which can use image formula fields.  Note that for recent items on a Flexipage, the fields come from your defined compact layout for that object rather than the familiar fields your users see in their desktop experience.

Flexipages also give you the ability to combine multiple data objects in a single list to even further reduce the tapping and swiping required for accessing the most critical data with a mobile device.  If you use the recent items list in the desktop Salesforce sidebar, you are already accustomed to seeing multiple objects in a single list, all highlighted with an informative graphic.  Replicate this type of user experience for mobile users with Flexipages.

For an example of how to create Flexipages, check out the documentation here: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api_meta/Content/meta_flexipage.htm

IP Addresses And User Access

As a Salesforce administrator, have you ever wondered when and where your users are accessing their data?  A recent new feature gives you even greater information about user access through a list of IP addresses and browsers used.  If you run a really secure database, looking at the list of IP addresses where users have accessed data is a must for security review, but even administrators of more relaxed orgs can use this information to better understand their users' needs.

User Access History By IP and Browser

You can see where in the world your data has been.

 With the Activated Login List,   you can see every IP address users have used throughout their history with your org.  This view provides even more information than the user login history.  You can even review the access addresses for users you have deactivated.  And, if you have any concerns about an IP address in the list, you can just remove access for that address after talking to the user about where they may be when they access Salesforce data.

Before you remove any IP addresses and browsers from the Activated list, you may want to save the information for future reference.  You will not see the removed data in your recycle bin!  So if you want to keep a record of which users activated their accounts for which IP addresses and browsers, save before you remove. 

Note that Salesforce documentation states that removing a user's IP address activation may only trigger a new activation confirmation request for that address if you remove activations for both the address and the browser used for that access, which you can find in a second list on the Settings>Security Controls>Activations screen. 

Just below the Activated Login List, Salesforce, the browser list contains recently Activated Client Browsers and gives you a more clues about how your users access data. This can be useful when you review your mobile access policies since many mobile devices can be obvious according to the browser listed here.

Unfortunately, the browser and IP address lists don't always coincide.  The browser list does not go as far back in time as the IP address list, and for my own personal activations, I found an IP address I activated at a specific date and time and three different browser activations listed within an hour of activating that address as I used different Connected Apps.

Dynamic, Static, Fixed Or Sticky

If you are surprised by the number of IP addresses that individuals have used to access the database, keep in mind that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and local hosts may provide dynamic IP addresses from a set list of addresses.  In that case, the last digits of the address may be different for one user on a single device. 

Learning about your user's IP addresses and browsers gives you a more complete picture of what is needed to provide or deny data access for users.  Combining the Activated Login List with the login history report gives you a more complete view of what your users have been doing in Salesforce and with mobile applications like Salesforce Touch and Salesforce1.

The Most Important Thing I Learned About Salesforce1 And Connected Apps At Dreamforce

The big news at Dreamforce this year centered around Salesforce1 as a new way of accessing your Salesforce data via mobile devices.  With APIs, you can expect to see a lot of new mobile apps taking advantage of this as well, and you may be surprised to learn that some of your existing Installed Packages from the AppExchange can be monitored more closely now as connected apps.

New Settings to Consider

Restricting access to mobile apps with salesforce.com.

For administrators, Salesforce1 and the mobile APIs require new attention to security settings.  If you have IP restrictions on your Salesforce org, they are automatically applied to mobile apps.  With IP restrictions on user profiles, you can ensure that data is only accessed through your company WiFi by specifying the appropriate address range for Salesforce user profiles.


But, if you are trying to limit the devices from which users can access Salesforce data, IP restrictions may not be enough.  Make sure mobile devices cannot access your WiFi by limiting access based on a device's MAC address or similar security controls that
allow you to selectively allow devices to connect to your WiFi.

To provide access to acceptable mobile devices when they are outside the range of your company WiFi, install a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to give the device access from any location.

Login and Authorization Settings

Mobile and connected apps provide even more opportunities to specify security settings.  In addition to limiting IP addresses based on user profile, you can define how frequently users are required to login from a mobile device and whether users can automatically authorize their own mobile access. To do this, go to Setup | Manage Apps | Connected Apps  Select the application to edit access settings.

Salesforce also provides a means for reviewing who is able to use mobile and connected apps and blocking access for a specific app or revoking any user's access via a specific app.  For example, you may want to revoke access to Salesforce 1 for certain users while leaving it available to others.  Or you may want to block the app altogether.  This option is available through  Manage Apps | Connected Apps OAuth Usage

More Connected Apps Than You Might Think

In addition to Salesforce1, other apps may appear in your Connected Apps list.  For example,  SalesforceA for administrators all appear in the list after it has been accessed in your org.  The list of connected apps extends beyond mobile with the following apps likely to appear among others your users have accessed:

• Saleforce Help and Training, 
• Community, 
• Power of Us Hub, 
• Salesforce for Outlook, 
• AppExchange and 
• Workbench.  

You may also find older mobile applications such as Chatter Mobile, Salesforce Touch and even Mobile CRM.  As administrator, you may want to monitor the apps that have access to your data and consider Blocking some of the older apps or revoking access from selected users.

Installed Packages and Mobile Administration Changes

Administrators will likely also notice another recent change to their org under Installed Packages that is related to Salesforce1 and the APIs.  "Salesforce Connected Apps" along with "Salesforce1 and Chatter Apps", both managed packages, likely have been installed in your org by "Automated Process". This change relates to users accessing the org via any of the connected or mobile apps and is pushed out automatically by Salesforce.

One final consideration for setting up Salesforce1 is whether users should have access to the new mobile interface via the browser on their mobile device, as opposed to via an app.  By default, Salesforce has enabled access to Salesforce1 through the browser.  To edit this so that mobile browsers go directly to the full site instead, use the Mobile Administration options: Setup | Mobile Administration | Salesforce1

Even for administrators who were not planning to roll out Salesforce1, consider looking into the new settings available for connected apps and Salesforce.