your identity if you forget your password. Use this password from now on unless your administrator resets the password.
3. When you’re done, click Save.
The Salesforce home page appears.
Logging in
You log in to Salesforce just as you would any other secure website.
To log in, open a browser and follow these steps:
1. In your browser’s address bar, type https://login.salesforce.com and then press Enter.
The Salesforce.com login page, shown in Figure 3-1, appears.
2. Enter your username and password, and then click the Log In button.
Your username is typically your corporate email address. Click the Remember Me check box if you want your computer to remember it. After you click Log In, you may be asked to register your mobile phone. This is an additional, optional security step. After this step, your main home page appears.
FIGURE 3-1: 1 Logging in to Salesforce.
Every time you log in to Salesforce, you begin at your home page. The look and feel of the elements on your home page are similar to other users’ home pages, but the tasks and events that appear in the body of the page are specific to you.
Use the home page to manage your calendar and tasks, stay informed of the latest Chatter conversations, jump to other areas by clicking tabs, or access recent items by using the sidebar. If your company has customized the home page, you may also see key charts or graphs from your company’s dashboards (visual snapshots of key performance metrics based on your custom report data).
Finding records with Search
At the top of every Salesforce page, you’ll find the Global Search bar. You can find a majority of the information that you want by using Search. To search for information, follow these steps:
1. At the top of Salesforce, enter keywords into the Search field and then click the Search button.
A Search Results page appears, as shown in Figure 3-2. Salesforce organizes the search results in lists according to the major types of records, including accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities.
2. Scroll down the page. If you find a record that you want to look at, click a link in the Name column for the row that represents that record.
The detail page appears, allowing you to review the record and its related lists.
3. If you see too many results, you can limit them to items you own or search for an exact phrase by clicking Options to the right of the Search Again button on the Search Results page. You can also select a single type of record from the list in the sidebar.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try adding the asterisk (*) wildcard before, after, or in the middle of your keywords to expand your search to words that start with, end with, or are similar to your keywords.
FIGURE 3-2: Looking at a Search Results page.
Managing your calendar
The calendar section of the home page defaults to a calendar of the current month and your scheduled events for the next seven days. Like other calendar tools, the calendar allows you to drill down. Your scheduled events are based on events that you assigned to yourself or that other users have assigned to you.
From this calendar section (shown in Figure 3-3), you can do the following:
❯❯ Schedule a new activity. Click the New Event button, and a New Event page appears in Edit mode. (See Chapter 5 to see how to complete a new event record.)
❯❯ View an event record. If you see a listed event, click the link. A page appears with details on the activity.
❯❯ Drill into your schedule. Click a date on the calendar to drill into your schedule for a specific day. The Day View page appears.
❯❯ Schedule a group activity. Click the Multi User View icon (which looks like two little people). A page appears for the selected day that displays the availability of multiple users. From there, click the New Event button and follow the same instructions for scheduling a new event, as described in detail in Chapter 5.
FIGURE 3-3: Looking over your calendar options.
Tracking your tasks
On the home page, you see a section entitled My Tasks, which displays tasks that you created for yourself or that have been assigned to you.
A task is an activity that you need to do, and it can have a due date. Unlike an event, however, a task doesn’t have a specific time and duration. For example, if you want to remind yourself to send a proposal, you typically create a task instead of scheduling an event. (See Chapter 5 for additional tips on managing tasks.)
From the My Tasks section (shown in Figure 3-4), you can do the following:
❯❯ Add a new task. Click the New button, and a New Task page appears in Edit mode.
❯❯ Change task view. Use the drop-down list at the top right of the My Tasks section to select from a list of common task views. For example, select Overdue to see your open tasks that are past their respective due dates.
❯❯ Review a task.
