Salesforce Community Cloud: Top 10 Tips to Get You Started

Like never before, we’re tuned into the fact that engagement with our customers and employees is the key to sustaining success. Encouraging interaction empowers all parties to have the best user experience possible. Even better, creating a channel in Salesforce Community Cloud for your users to help resolve one another’s issues helps to create a rich database of solutions and an invaluable network.

When setting up our own support hub using Salesforce Community Cloud, we used some useful resources to that we know you can also leverage, so we’re sharing them with you in our top 10 tips to set up your own community.

1. Use the Success Community Groups

There are many people willing to support with your Community Cloud questions. If in doubt, just ask – someone will surely point you in the right direction. Start with:

Community Cloud Best Practices
Community Cloud
Community Templates

2. Use the AppExchange

There are many apps available. Look for the Community Builder logo.

3. Trailhead Courses

Salesforce Trailhead modules are there for you to succeed in everything Salesforce. Their free, gamified learning modules are unexpectedly enjoyable to learn!

From the  Community  Cloud Basics  Module  to full on  Build a  Community  with  Knowledge and Chat  Projects, there’s a wealth of material.

Just search  Communities on Trailhead.

4. Public Communities Are Free

With at least one Knowledge License, Public Communities are free. Build up to one hundred communities within an org. You need one Knowledge License to create the articles you want to share.

Know the  licenses, so you know what you can extend to the public and beyond.

Bonus Tip

Watch that your community and knowledge language match!  Otherwise, your articles won’t be visible. Watch out for English (US) vs. English (CA) and French (FR) vs. French (CA).

5. Profiles

Guest [public] community users have  their own profile, which isn’t on the regular Profile list in Setup. This is needed to manage Custom Object access, Knowledge Categories, etc.

Setup | All Communities | Builder | Settings | Guest User Profile

Find it…bookmark it!

Only ever use Custom Profiles for users. 

For your licensed users, remember to always clone the standard Profiles, and work from there.

6. Sharing Sets

Sharing Sets are great and now extend to Customer Community Plus and Partner Community licenses users. A Sharing Set gives community users access to records that are associated with their accounts or contacts based on their user profiles.

Community Users sit outside the Role Hierarchy, so normal Sharing Rules on the Objects need help.

Setup | Community Settings | Sharing Sets

Share records within Client Accounts and back to the creator (Applications to Applicants, etc.).

7. Balance Login and Member Licenses

Two things to be considered:

i. How many Community Users do you have?
ii. How often will they log in?

Audit usage and swap users as needed.

8. Lightning Components

Template-based Communities will support your Lightning Components – just try it!

Standard Components, such as Path, also work in Communities.

9. Add Record Pages

Add Record Pages from any Salesforce object, manage access with Page Layouts.

Community users can access Custom Objects (as you choose).

Give these users their own Page Layouts to help the experience.

10. Start Simple, Start With Templates

The  Templates are:

Comprehensive
Simple to add branding
Flexible
Mobile-ready (responsive) 
Easy to use!

Why learn how to build a website when Salesforce did this for you?!  Just go for it.

When you’re ready to extend your template, you can add:

Custom HTML
Connect to the CMS
Leverage Google Analytics
Much, much more!

Once you’ve navigated through building your community, you will, at last, have a platform that offers the ability to interact with your customer every step of the way. Now that you’re offering immediate opportunities to connect and collaborate, you’re officially ahead of the pack. Welcome to Salesforce Community Cloud.

Need a hand? Drop into our support hub to ask or email us at info@diabsolut.com.