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30
Jul

5 Tools to Check Salesforce Org Health

Posted by Seethu Maria Mathew

minutes read

Salesforce has over 150,000 customers across the globe, thanks to it’s secure and scalable features that appeals to SMBs and Fortune 500s alike. But it does require a strategic plan that moves along with rapid business changes. Rather than waiting for issues to barge into your operating systems, proactively running a Salesforce health check helps you keep security risks at bay. Salesforce health check in effect gives you a  reality check on where your Salesforce org stands currently in terms of security and performance.

What is Salesforce Org Health Check

A Salesforce org health check gives a detailed view of your org’s processes, security settings and workflows and enables you to understand and resolve all associated vulnerabilities. The health check can be conducted every six months, quarterly or even on a monthly basis if you’re aggressive about your org’s well being.

Advantages of Salesforce Org Health Check

  • Enhances ROI and improves the efficiency of your Salesforce org
  • Gives a clear picture on how to move ahead with your Salesforce org’s optimization
  • Provides a deep understanding of your Salesforce org’s data security
  • Improves user adoption and productivity

In this blog we will cover 5 important Salesforce org health check tools that  diagnose issues in your Salesforce org.

1. Salesforce Health Checker Tool

As a Salesforce Administrator you can use Salesforce’s own health checker tool to analyze vulnerabilities in your Salesforce Org, all from a single page.

Tools to Check Salesforce Org Health

Using the health check tool you can compare and calculate total health check score against a Salesforce Baseline standard. It determines low to high risks that need to be addressed as priority. If you want to tread in a different direction from the Salesforce Baseline standard, you can even upload a customized set of baselines with a limit of five.

Advantages

  • Cost effective and quick results
  • Provides a detailed report on your Salesforce org issues
  • Easily set medium to high risk settings to Salesforce Baseline standard with a few clicks

2. Apex PMD Tool

You may be already familiar with the PMD tool which is a popular source code analyzer for Java and similar languages. Salesforce joined hands with open source developers to create this powerful tool Apex PMD which supports the Apex language. It is a great tool to create Salesforce org error reports. The Apex PMD will look out for these two key issues :

  • DML operations: Salesforce recommends not to conduct DML operations inside a for loop due to governor limits. 
  • Software query within a for loop: Salesforce recommends not to perform a software query within a for loop.

Apex PMD tool will shed light on these Salesforce best practice breaches. 

Advantages

  • It’s free and open source
  • You can define your own custom rules 
  • It can be part of ANT build script to generate error reports
  • All programming bugs like unnecessary object creation, unused variables, empty catch blocks etc can be found out using Apex PMD

3. Checkmarx Apex Code Scanner

Checkmark Apex Code Scanner is a tool which is powered by Salesforce. It runs a security scan on your Salesforce org and  gives a detailed report on risks based on your code quality and security. It figures out every loophole present in your apex code and checks if it aligns with Salesforce best practices. This is one of the best tools that provides precise information on your code security. All you need to do is to go to the portal and type the username of your Salesforce instance and choose the type of scan. You can choose  Security Profile or Quality Profile or both before scanning using Checkmarx Apex Code Scanner. Once submitted, the entire code will be reviewed and you will be emailed a report explaining the issues and also ways to fix them effectively. Although it is an expensive tool(12 Developers for $59k USD per year), it is worth the cost due to its exceptional testing capabilities.

Advantages

  • Scans through each and every line of your code in your Salesforce org
  • Reduces the chance of an array of bugs before next upgrade

4. Salesforce Accelerator

Although not commonly heard of, Salesforce Accelerator is a great tool tool to help you get your Salesforce org back up and running. This tool is mostly available on demand. It allows users who face technical issues in their Salesforce instance to get individualized technical support on demand. This expert guidance will then help you figure out your Salesforce org issues and solve them. Once you run a health check using a Salesforce Accelerator, you will get a list of issues and recommendations on possible ways of fixing them.

Salesforce Accelerator can be availed by organizations who are part of a Salesforce Premier Success Plan. Once you submit a request for a Salesforce Accelerator on Help and Training portal you will get in touch with certified specialists. They go through your current challenges over a particular time period (which is 3-4 weeks) and provide you with a report on what’s wrong and how you can get better outputs.

Advantages

  • Enhances on-time delivery of business requirements 
  • Churns out reasons behind decrease in performance and deep-rooted technical debt
  • Amplifies Salesforce platform value

5. Manual Org Assessment

If you don’t prefer tools, you can always conduct a manual org assessment to analyze the health of your Salesforce Org. But be mindful that there needs to be a method to your madness. You cannot directly go into the Salesforce system, hunt down specific issues and start resolving them right away. It’s best to follow a pattern while doing so. 

You can start preparing your org assessment report with the below-given criterias:

  • Data Storage 
  • License Usages 
  • Workflows v/s Triggers Implementation
  • Standard vs Custom Development
  • Unfiltered Automations on sObjects

Once you have prepared the report, the next step is to  categorize these issues based on priority and complexity. Some issues can be fixed quickly while others need specific workarounds.

While these tools are great in getting an aerial view of your Salesforce org issues, it is always best to take assistance from an experienced Salesforce partner to make the most out of your Salesforce org Health check up. 

Also, do you have any other health check tools to suggest that we haven’t mentioned above? If so, do mark them in your comments below.

Reference

https://www.salesforceben.com/secure-org-salesforce-health-check/

https://www.sfdcpoint.com/salesforce/salesforce-health-check/

https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/?id=906F00000009pkdIAA

https://sfdcfanboy.com/2016/12/21/salesforce-code-scanner-health-check/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sw9rdZv0Gg&t=3009s

 



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