The Salesforce Admin

The Salesforce administrator—or “admin” is a Salesforce user with system administration duties and other super powers. Admins are responsible for setting up Salesforce for their organizations and making sure it runs smoothly.

Admins have special permissions. For example, they can add user accounts and specify what people can see and do in Salesforce. Admins can create custom Salesforce objects, workflows, validation rules, reports, and more. Admins can manage user profile information and delete Chatter feed updates, including posts and comments. Admins are planners, problem-solvers, and heroes. All Salesforce organizations have at least one administrator. Your administrator’s role can be as simple or as complex as your company’s size and structure. In smaller organizations, the admin is often someone who also uses Salesforce the way other users do: to sell products or provide customer service, for example.

Salesforce offers lots of features and items that you can set up and configure yourself. For some things, though, partner with your trusty admin to help you get the best of what Salesforce has to offer.

Here are a few examples of the kinds of things your admin can help you with or do for you.

• Find or use an object, field, or feature you heard about during training.
• Create a custom workflow that lets you find out when a case is closed.
• Create a custom approval process that allows you to sign off on employee expenses.
• Create a custom report for your sales region.
• Give you a user permission that’s not granted as part of your user profile.
• Answer questions about your own or others’ access to records.
• Address those cursed error messages that ask you to contact your administrator for help or more information.

How you contact your administrator, and when and why, depends on your company’s internal business policies and practices.