A Music Teacher Shares Why Apps are Music to Her Ears

Sandi Nuss Zeller may be the Assistant Vice President of Salesforce Product Management at ConnectOne Bank, but her story goes way beyond the walls of this commercial loan establishment. She’s a former music teacher, a brain surgery survivor, PepUp Tech teacher, #LifeWithGoldie owner, and with over 600 Trailhead badges, you could say she’s got a big ol’ #Trailheart.

Sandi is an AppExchange fan (she’s currently on the homepage of appexchange.com), so Christine Lee on the AppExchange team sat down with Sandi to learn about her journey from piano keys to keyboard keys, and the AppExchange apps that made her the passionate, purposeful Salesforce admin that she is today.

How did you get started with Salesforce?

Sandi: I got into Salesforce without knowledge of technology. I fell in love with what I could create, and built my career from there. I’m thrifty, and I love free. I started at a nonprofit, and I’m always seeking free solutions. I looked to AppExchange for existing tools to help me address a challenge, and discovered that Salesforce Labs are some of the best basic helper tools that an admin can find. Plus, they’re free.

Tell us a bit about how ConnectOne Bank uses Salesforce.

Sandi: We’re a new Salesforce org, with less than a year on the platform. Bringing a complete system change to any organization is a big upheaval. AppExchange solutions help me with change management, from adoption, to training to data quality. We monitor how our users are logging into Salesforce from a testing and adoption perspective, and AppExchange apps help us do that.

So are you using Salesforce Labs apps for adoption?

Sandi: Yes. While I can develop reports and dashboards on my own, why reinvent the wheel when there’s an app with pre-built reports and dashboards? If someone built it before me, I can take it to the next level from there. That’s a huge time saver. Plus, the installation is extremely easy. You install and go! (Put it in your Sandbox first, of course.)

What’s your favorite adoption app?

Sandi:  Salesforce Adoption Dashboards. I’ve installed this app into my last two orgs, but it was extremely helpful in my most recent role, where we implemented Salesforce and needed onboarding and adoption. We looked at what users were creating in Salesforce, and how they were using the platform. This app helped us templatize the experience, and even determine the custom objects to build, which we put on future dashboards as well. We uncovered users’ challenges and pain points, and built better solutions, such as a different validation rule, based on the adoption reports. I tweak how data inputs are presented based on adoption dashboard findings.

Can you share a specific use case?

Sandi: We have a custom object called “loans.” I put that in our adoption dashboards with the rest of the objects, and found that one of the key reporting fields for execs was hardly ever completed. That realization lead us to create a specific action button on mobile to update those fields with one click. After we implemented that, we saw the data quality of that field increase significantly.

Let’s talk about another helpful app.

Sandi: Data Quality Analysis Dashboards is so important to drive Salesforce adoption. This app is for the main standard object. I customized it to the most-used standard object, and added a few similar reports modeled after the existing reports in the app. For instance, using the data quality app, we noticed that users weren’t entering the zip code, but they were entering the rest of the address information. Admins are always looking to make the experience better for users, and little improvements over time sure do add up.

You have a mobile use case as well. Tell us about that.

Sandi: I use Salesforce for iOS and Android Adoption Dashboard and Reports in my current and last orgs. It’s a great starter pack of dashboards and reports to see use of the mobile app. In my last role, most of our employees were on the road, so this app was ideal for monitoring the activity, logins, and health of Salesforce on mobile. It also helps understand the progress of your mobile implementation.

Recently, the app helps when reviewing the user ratio of iPhones vs Android devices. We look at the way our users are logging in, and the versions of the app. I am using this data for planning mobile app testing, i.e. making sure I have created a plan to test the best functionality on devices and formats. This helps us ensure that upcoming feature roll out works smoothly across devices.

Thanks for your time today, Sandi. Any final thoughts on these apps?

Sandi: Salesforce Labs are a time saver. Reports and dashboards are a basic admin skill, but admins are always asked to do more than what can fit in their day. I appreciate anything that can save time, and give me more tools in my toolbelt to move faster. These apps are true workhorse tools that every admin should have in their toolbox and be better off for it.

Check out all of the Salesforce Labs apps on AppExchange.