Get your Chatter on!

If you’re a Salesforce Admin, one of the best things you can do for your users and for your own sanity is to understand how Chatter works and to begin using it yourself. The Chatter layer within Salesforce provides an awesome communication model throughout all of your Salesforce applications that you don’t need to invent, you just need to use. Remember that leading by example is the first – and one of the most effective – adoption strategies you have in your toolbelt. You will soon become a model for how effective communication can work within your organization, and over time I promise others will follow your lead. In just a little over an hour, the new Chatter Basics module on Trailhead will help you ramp up and you will soon be well on your way to the land of Chatter success.

Getting Started with Chatter: Trailhead Module

One of the things I love about the Chatter Basics Trailhead module is that it takes you down a very logical path of education and actions. If you’re just getting started (or your organization doesn’t use Chatter), here are a few suggested actions to consider as you go through the module:

1. Introductions to Chatter, Profiles and Groups: consider using this content as the basis of your training materials for your own users!

2. Create Groups: do yourself a favor and create a Salesforce Help & Training group! Use it to post training materials, ask users for feedback, drive user questions there, and train your colleagues to use it as the first place to go to ask questions. (Pro tip: receive an email notification on every new post so that you don’t miss anything!). Also, consider seeding the Chatter environment even further by creating a deliberate structure of groups that mimics your organization’s teams, offices, and products (like this). Work with the respective team/office/product leaders to help them understand how they can use the group and identify use cases; then, make them the group owners and help them drive adoption of those groups by contextualizing uncategorized posts to their appropriate groups.

3. Follow users, groups, records: before you do any of this, be sure to complete your Chatter profile – this is 100% mandatory for all Awesome Admins! It takes 2 minutes to upload a picture, add your contact information and a quick bio. After you do this, when you follow someone in Chatter they’ll receive a notification that will include your picture and “About Me” section – this simple act communicates volumes to them about your commitment to the org as well as your interest in them, which in turn will increase the likelihood that they will follow your lead and complete their own profile.  And this is great because, of course, Awesome Admins ? adoption.

You’ve completed the module…now what?

After you complete the module, your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to immediately put what you’ve learned into practice! Complete your profile, set up your Salesforce Help group, enable feed tracking on key objects, and start campaigning your colleagues to follow your lead. As admins, one of our primary goals is to take unstructured data and turn it into valuable information that our colleagues need to do their jobs; the communication aspect of our own jobs is no different. Remember that Chatter shouldn’t add to your plate, rather it should be something that helps you and your colleagues become more efficient. As an admin, discovering the power of Chatter was a magical transformation for me and I challenge all admins to make the same Chatter magic happen for their own organizations.
Chatter on, Awesome Admins!