task record appears with details.
❯❯ Go to associated records. Click links in the Name column, the Related To column, or the Account column.
❯❯ Complete the task and enter any details before saving. Click the X link in the Complete column. You can also use this link to update a task, but if you haven’t completed the task, remember to adjust the Status field before you save it.
❯❯ See more tasks. If you have several tasks in your list, the View More link appears at the bottom of the My Tasks section on the home page. Click it to see more tasks on the list. The Day View appears, and the My Tasks section appears in the right column.
FIGURE 3-4: Reviewing the My Tasks section on the home page.
Using dashboard snapshots from the home page
If your company has customized your home page, you may also see and select up to three key charts or tables from your dashboards. Dashboards display important information from reports in Salesforce that can provide key performance indicators on the health of your business. Each dashboard chart or table is composed of at least one component. (See Chapter 24 for details on building dashboards that can measure and analyze your business.) As of this writing, dashboards are available in the Group, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited editions.
If you see a chart or table on your home page, you can also perform these actions from the Dashboard section:
❯❯ Click a chart or table to drill into the detail. A report page appears with the data that supports the graphic.
❯❯ Choose a different dashboard. Click the Customize Page button at the upper right of the section. The Customize Your Home Page page appears; here, you can select from available dashboards if you have the proper administrator permissions. Your home page displays a snapshot of only the three components along the top of any dashboard.
❯❯ Refresh the dashboard snapshot. Click the Refresh button at the top of the section. In the left of the section, a date and timestamp appear showing when your dashboard was last refreshed.
Accessing information with the sidebar
The sidebar is the column on the left that appears on just about every page of Salesforce except for dashboards and reports. On the home page, use the sidebar to quickly go back to pages you recently accessed, stay informed about important company messages, click links to useful websites, and create new records.
Creating new records
Use the compact Create New picklist on the sidebar to quickly create any new record.
Revisiting recent items
The Recent Items section displays up to ten records that you most recently clicked. Use the list to quickly get back to records that you’ve been working on, even if you logged out and logged back in. The recent items show an icon and the name or number of the record. These items include mostly the records that are organized under a tab heading, such as Accounts, Contacts, and so on. To visit the detail record of a recent item, simply click a listed link.
Getting more out of your home page sidebar
With the help of your administrator, you can offer other tools and information from the sidebar on the home page to improve productivity and drive overall adoption. Review the following tips, see Chapter 17 on customizing Salesforce, and consult with your administrator if Custom Components could help your organization:
❯❯ Display company messages. Your administrator can add a section to the home page that displays text to keep users informed of important announcements. For example, if you’re in sales management, you may want to use the home page to alert reps to end-of-quarter goals or bonus incentives.
❯❯ Emphasize important custom links. If you rely on other websites to carry out part of your work, your administrator can help you post them for all your users or just ones that fit certain profiles. For example, if you have a company intranet, your company can add a custom component that is a link to that internal website, and insert it on the Salesforce home page.
Salesforce allows you to organize tabs into groups. These groups, also known as apps, help reduce screen clutter and give you quicker access to the tabs that you use the most. For example, a marketing manager may rarely use the Cases or Opportunities tabs but spend most of her time looking at Campaigns and Leads.
With the Salesforce.com Force.com platform, your company can now create custom apps for more specific uses within customer relationship management (CRM) – or for anything else, for that matter. Sales reps can use an expense reporting app, and product managers can use a product release app to manage their product requirements. The mind-blowing part of all of this is that apps can be composed of standard tabs or custom ones that you create. Anyone in your company can benefit from sharing one set of data. And don’t worry if you’re not the most creative type. Salesforce.com has a bunch of prebuilt apps available (for free or for an additional charge), which we discuss in more detail in Chapter 19.
Discovering the app menu
In the upper-right corner of any Salesforce page, you can find the app menu (see Figure 3-5). The drop-down list allows you to switch between apps. You find some standard tab groupings, such as Sales and Call Center. Administrators can also add or create new apps to address what their specific users need to see. Don’t worry if you choose an app and see new tabs. You can always go back to the drop-down list, select your previous app, and have your familiar tabs return.
FIGURE 3-5: Choosing apps by using the Force.com app menu.
Uncovering the App Launcher
From the app menu, selecting the App Launcher option takes you to the App Launcher page where all your apps are now displayed as clickable tiles, as shown in Figure 3-6. Clicking a tile is the same as selecting that app in the app menu, as described in the immediately prior section. Depending on what other systems your company has integrated with Salesforce, you may also see installed app icons for other applications used at your company, like Gmail or Concur.
FIGURE 3-6: Viewing apps in the App Launcher.
Finding out about the tabs
In
