I know you’ve heard it a million times, but I never get sick of saying (typing?) it: Here at Salesforce, Trust is our #1 value. Trust starts with Transparency, which is exactly why we pioneered cloud transparency by developing our Trust site (trust.salesforce.com) as a one-stop shop for customers to see the availability of their Salesforce instance. I’m sure you already have this site bookmarked. It should be the first place you look when you (or your users) are having issues logging in or things are working slower than normal. You may have also sat there before refreshing the Status page (status.salesforce.com) waiting for a maintenance to complete or for a performance issue to resolve. That’s a pain. We heard your feedback and we developed Trust Notifications. Trust Notifications were in Beta earlier this year and became Generally Available in June 2017.
What are Trust Notifications?
Trust Notifications are near-real time email notifications that are triggered by updates to an instance’s availability on the Trust Status page. No more sitting and refreshing your browser! If our global system monitoring team detects and confirms an issue, they update the Trust site and subscribers to the impacted instances will get an email notification to the email address of their choice. These notifications provide a brief overview of what’s going on and link directly to the incident or maintenance record.
For example, if your instance is undergoing an instance refresh, you’ll receive a Trust Notification once the maintenance begins and once it is completed. If there are updates throughout the maintenance posted to the maintenance record on Trust, you’ll get Trust Notifications about those as well! Another example: If there is a service disruption impacting your instance, you’ll receive a Trust Notification when we detect it and updates regarding resolution status and a notification once your instance is back to full availability.
The good news is, subscribers can customize their subscription settings at any time. Don’t use Live Agent? No need to subscribe to Trust Notifications for Live Agent! Only want to know about service disruptions? Don’t subscribe to performance degradation or maintenance Trust Notifications!
Who should subscribe?
This is totally dependent on your organization. Anyone can subscribe to Trust Notifications – you don’t even need to have a user license to subscribe! However, those that would find these most valuable are likely the Salesforce stakeholders within your organization (you included!). Managers of teams dependent on the application may want to subscribe so they can know when their teams may not be able to use Salesforce due to an incident or maintenance so they may plan and communicate accordingly.
How to subscribe?
Our Trust Notification User Guide walks through how to subscribe and manage your subscription settings.
What to do when you get a Trust Notification?
Don’t panic! Just because you receive one, doesn’t mean your org is currently unavailable. Some Trust Notifications just denote updates to a maintenance – new time, shortened maintenance window, reminder, etc. Some Trust Notifications indicate a performance degradation to a part of the application that your org doesn’t use! Read the notification, check out the incident/maintenance record linked and determine the impact to your org. If you’re not experiencing an issue – delete! (or archive if you’re an email hoarder like myself). If you are experiencing impact, open a case with Salesforce via Help & Training and keep your eyes open for subsequent Trust Notifications with updates. This may also be a good time to email your end users and let them know what’s going on and that you’re actively monitoring (as is Salesforce!).
Next Steps
Determine who is best in your organization to subscribe and have the conversation about Trust Notifications! I’d also recommend create a strategy around communicating impact to end users when you receive Trust Notifications. It’s super easy to subscribe and manage your subscription settings right on our Trust site. Want more information? Check out the User Guide linked above or the Trust Notifications article in Help & Training.