Accelerate CRM Analytics with Apps

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Understand what prebuilt CRM Analytics apps can do for your business.
Describe what the CRM Analytics platform and prebuilt CRM Analytics apps are.
Sign up for a special CRM Analytics Developer Edition org.

Shine a Light on Your Data

Do you know the story about the guy down on his hands and knees after dark looking for something on the sidewalk underneath a street lamp? A woman walks by and asks him what he’s up to. He answers, “Looking for my keys.” The woman says, “Where did you drop them?” Our hero answers, “Over there, near the corner.” The woman asks him, “Well, why are you looking for them here, in the middle of the block?!” He says, “The light’s better here.”

Personal looking for something using the light of a street lamp

When you analyze data, looking for business intelligence where the light is better is easy. Looking in the dark corners can be complex—especially if you’re not a data expert. Prebuilt CRM Analytics apps remove the complexity and shine a light on all your Salesforce data.

Person locating their keys with the light from a torch

CRM Analytics apps give you actionable analytics with ready-made dashboards automatically populated with Salesforce data. With minimal setting up, they provide best-practice dashboards. These dashboards show you key performance indicators (KPIs), so you can quickly see the state of your business and explore your data through visualizations. You can then act quickly on those insights.

Sales Wave dashboard action menu

A Salesforce Administrator’s Job Is Never Done

You’re the longtime Salesforce administrator for DTC Electronics, a leading provider of tablets, phones, and other devices. You thought you’d seen it all, but suddenly, everyone around the company is clamoring for CRM Analytics apps. The CEO sounds particularly psyched: She passed you in the hall yesterday and said they’d heard you’re going to solve all the world’s problems with these apps. (It sounded like they chuckled when they said that, but you’re not sure.)

As in so many companies, Salesforce admin isn’t your only work for DTC—you’re also a business analyst and project manager, and sometimes you even meet with customers. Who’s better equipped than you to anticipate the eventual needs of users throughout your organization? And who better to roll out CRM Analytics apps and learn about your team’s more detailed needs as they start to use them? You’re giving everyone in the company a flashlight, and you’re there to guide them to the insights hidden inside their data.

The team relies on your work for its success. They depend on quickly discovering key insights from data and taking action. The CEO made it clear that CRM Analytics apps are the future of business intelligence at DTC, so you need to come up to speed quickly.

This module helps you do that. You learn what CRM Analytics apps are, how they relate to the CRM Analytics platform, how you set them up, and how to use them. Along the way, you learn some essential principles and terminology to help you dive deeper into apps and the CRM Analytics platform.

So What Are CRM Analytics Apps?

CRM Analytics apps tell easy-to-follow stories about your Salesforce data—stories written based on many years of helping businesses manage customer relationships here at Salesforce. They tell their stories through interactive, ready-made dashboards that give you a visual summary of your data. The sales app, Sales Analytics, tells its story using data from the Sales Cloud. Service Analytics does the same with Service Cloud data. And Event Monitoring Analytics pulls its data from Salesforce event logs. They show you the state of your business using the data you have in Salesforce. And they can help you turn that data into smarter actions to accelerate new business.

App setup is easy. Most apps include a handy configuration wizard. The wizard asks you a few simple questions about how you use data. Either go with the default answers or make your own choices. You can create some apps without using the wizard. CRM Analytics does all the heavy loading and lifting for you. And if the app’s datasets, lenses, and dashboards aren’t just right, you can quickly tailor them through customizations that draw on the power and flexibility of the CRM Analytics platform.

The CRM Analytics Platform and a Bit of Terminology

So, what is the CRM Analytics platform? CRM Analytics gives everyone in your org with the right permissions access to powerful business intelligence through its intuitive point-and-click visual interface. It’s Salesforce-secure, trusted, scalable, and, of course, mobile. Whether you’re on a desktop browser or a mobile device—iOS or Android—get the answers you need from your data to run your business.

The CRM Analytics platform lets you combine Salesforce data, data from external sources, and even spreadsheets from across your business. It gives your team one place to explore information, find insights, and take action.

Now for a bit of terminology:

Dashboard. In CRM Analytics, you explore your data through dashboards—collections of interactive widgets that bring your KPIs to life.
Lens. You create lenses to get the views you want from a dataset’s data. They’re the visual tools you use to explore data and the building blocks for dashboards.
Dataset. These are sets of source data used to build lenses and dashboards. The data is specially formatted and optimized for interactive exploration.
App. Apps provide containers for sets of related dashboards, lenses, and datasets.

Creating an app from scratch requires a fair amount of know-how: you have to load and transform the data, create lenses from the data, and design the dashboards. But prebuilt apps are like grab-n-go analytics. They have ready-made datasets, lenses, and dashboards built with your Salesforce data. They’re built on the platform, so the power of CRM Analytics is always close at hand. The CRM Analytics license includes the Sales Analytics and other apps.

Okay, enough talk. It’s time to get your hands on an app. In this module, you use Sales Analytics, the sales app, to run through all the basics, which you can apply to any CRM Analytics app. First, you go through the app creation process. Then, you learn the admin setup steps so you and your team can get busy using the app for analytics.

Try Prebuilt CRM Analytics Apps with a Developer Edition org

You can’t use a standard Developer Edition org for this trial. You must sign up for a CRM Analytics Developer Edition org. This org comes with a limited version of the license for your app and contains sample data for this Trailhead module.

To get setup so you can log in and start working with your app.

Go to https://trailhead.salesforce.com/promo/orgs/analytics-de.
Fill out the form.
After you fill out the form, click Sign me up. A confirmation message appears.

A confirmation message asking you to check your email.

When you receive the activation email, open it and click the link.
Complete your registration, and set your password and a challenge question. Tip: Write down or remember your credentials. To log in and play, go to login.salesforce.com.
Click Save. You’re logged in to your new CRM Analytics Developer Edition org.

You now have a Salesforce org with DTC Electronics sales data and are ready to create your app.

Resources