Best Practices for Data Governance and Testing

• Every effort should be made to assign a student to an appropriate Account; rather than relying on the Unknown School as a placeholder. Consider using the most recent Enrollment History record to determine the proper Account to assign to the student. Having too many students assigned to a default account, such as Unknown School, can cause row-locking errors and hamper your recruiting processes.
• Use DemandTools to periodically merge duplicate records. Consider constructing Master Rules and automating DemandTools jobs with an extremely low probability of producing false positives. Manual de-duplication of records is extremely time-consuming. A common ‘matching scenario’ to implement would be exact first name, last name, and email address.
• If you have DemandTools scenarios that are scheduled, make sure that these scenarios and schedules are stored on a central server that is always turned on. If a job is mission-critical but stored on a local machine, you risk the local machine not being on when the job needs to run.
• If you periodically export data from Salesforce via Informatica (or any other ETL tool), ensure that you only export records that have been modified since the last run. For instance, if you are running an export job daily, then you can include syntax within the data filter such as : 

LastModifiedDate >= LAST_N_DAYS:1
 

This will greatly reduce the amount of time the jobs need to run and will also reduce the number of API Calls required.

• For each new Test data type (i.e., ACT, GRE General, etc.), create a new record type and a corresponding page layout. There should be a 1-1-1 relationship between test object data types, record types, and page layouts. This will ensure that only relevant fields are displayed for each test data type on the corresponding page layout.
• When designing workflows and processes, look for existing workflow rules or processes triggered by the same object and use the same criteria. Then, you can embed your immediate actions inside these existing workflows and processes. Workflows and processes use SOQL queries to evaluate criteria. Since there are SOQL query limits in Salesforce, it is good practice to utilize existing workflow rules and processes to execute immediate actions when possible.
• If a new user needs slightly different permissions from an existing profile, consider using a Permission Set to append any additional permissions instead of creating an entirely new profile. Creating permission sets allows for more flexibility per User and cuts down on the number of profiles that need to be maintained.
• Use the TargetX Permission Scanner to create permission sets to append to existing profiles to ensure that no necessary permissions are missing from users. This is an automated way to determine which permissions are missing and assign those missing permissions without extensive troubleshooting.
• Consult at least three different sources before submitting a case to facilitate learning and adoption and encourage self-service instead of waiting for the answer via case:
  • Google (or any internet search)
  • TargetX Help Center
  • TargetX User Community
  • Colleague
• When creating/cloning/editing a Portal Configuration, ensure that a solid naming convention clearly indicates the version number and editor's initials. Within the Description field, it's best to include a description of the actual attempted changes. A good example would be Undergraduate Applicant Portal - v3 - JT, Description: Updated content within the Next Steps block. This ensures that if a portal needs to be rolled back, then it is easier to determine which portal version to roll back.