Creating Salesforce Communities: A Step-by-Step Guide

Salesforce Communities is a tool that enables businesses to connect with their customers, partners, and employees in an engaging and secure environment. By creating a Salesforce Community, organizations can foster collaboration, streamline communication, and enhance customer support. 

This step-by-step guide covers the essentials of planning, designing, and implementing your custom Salesforce Community to help you build it from scratch.

Step 1: Define Your Community Goals

Before diving into the technical aspects of creating a Salesforce Community, it’s crucial to establish clear goals and objectives for your community. What do you want to achieve with your community? Are you looking to improve customer support, collaborate with partners, or enhance employee engagement? 

By having a clear vision of your community’s purpose, you will guide you through the setup process and ensure that your community aligns with your business objectives.

Step 2: Plan Your Community Structure

Once you have defined your community goals, you’ll need to plan your community structure. Consider the following aspects when designing your community:

• User Roles: Determine the roles and permissions of different user types within your community, such as customers, partners, and employees.
• Navigation: Plan a user-friendly and intuitive navigation structure to help users find the information and resources they need quickly and easily.
• Content Management: Decide how you will manage and organize the content within your community, including knowledge articles, discussion forums, and multimedia resources.

Step 3: Choose a Salesforce Community License

Salesforce offers several community license options to suit various business needs. Some of the most popular license types include:

• Customer Community: Ideal for companies looking to provide self-service support and resources to their customers.
• Partner Community: Designed for organizations looking to collaborate with partners, manage leads, and track opportunities.
• Employee Community: Suitable for internal collaboration and communication among employees.

Select the license type that best aligns with your community goals and budget.

Step 4: Enable Salesforce Communities

To create your Salesforce Community, you must first enable communities in your Salesforce organization. Follow these steps to enable communities:

1. Access the Setup menu.
2. In the Quick Find search box, type in “Digital Experiences”.
3. Click on the “Settings” option.
4. Tick the box labeled “Enable Digital Experiences”.
5. Input your preferred domain name.
6. Save the changes made.
7. Proceed to the “Role and User Settings” section.
8. Select the checkbox that allows the usage of standard external profiles for self-registration, user creation, and login.
9. Click “OK.”
10. Save the changes made.

By doing these steps, you can successfully enable Salesforce Communities and start utilizing its features.

Step 5: Create Your Community

After enabling communities, you can create your custom community by following these steps:

1. From Setup, use the Quick Find box to search for “Digital Experiences.”
2. Click “All Sites” and then “New” to begin creating a new community site.
3. Choose “Salesforce tabs + Visualforce” as the site type, and click “Get Started.”
4. In the “Name” field, enter a unique name for your community site.
5. Optionally, you can also enter a name for the URL path, which will be appended to your Salesforce org’s domain name (e.g. if you enter “mycommunity,” your community URL will be “https://myorgname.force.com/mycommunity“).
6. Important: Keep in mind that this URL path cannot be changed after it’s been set, so choose carefully!
7. Finally, click “Create” to create your new community site.

Step 6: Customize Your Community

With your community created, it’s now time to customize its appearance and functionality. Salesforce offers a wide range of customization options, including:

• Branding: Customize your community’s logo, colors, and images to reflect your brand identity.
• Page Layouts: Design custom page layouts to display relevant information and resources based on user roles.
• Components: Add and configure pre-built or custom Lightning components to enhance your community’s functionality.

Step 7: Configure Security and Permissions

Security and user permissions are critical aspects of any Salesforce Community. Set up sharing options, user profiles, and permissions to control who has access to what information and resources inside your community.

Step 8: Add Users to Your Community

Once you have customized your community and configured security settings, you can add users to your community. You can add customers, partners, or employees to your community by creating new user accounts or enabling existing Salesforce users, depending on your community license.

Step 9: Test and Launch Your Community

Thoroughly testing your community’s functionality, security, and user experience is essential before launching it. Engage a group of users to test your community and provide feedback on any issues they encounter. Use this feedback to make any necessary adjustments and improvements.

Some aspects of testing include:

• User registration and login process
• Navigation and search functionality
• Access to resources and features based on user roles
• Responsiveness and performance on various devices and browsers

Step 10: Launch and Promote Your Community

Once you have tested and refined your community, it’s time to launch it officially. Use a variety of platforms to inform your target audience about the opening of your community, including email marketing, social media, and your company website.

Encourage users to join and engage in your community by highlighting the benefits and resources it offers.

Step 11: Monitor and Optimize Your Community

After launching your community:

1. Continue monitoring its performance and user engagement.
2. Utilize Salesforce’s reporting and analytics tools to monitor and analyze critical metrics like user activity, content engagement, and community growth.
3. Consistently evaluate this data to uncover patterns and opportunities for enhancement.
4. Incorporate user feedback to drive data-driven decision-making and refine your community. This may involve revising content, enhancing navigation, or introducing new features based on user requirements and preferences.
5. Regularly iterate and optimize your community to deliver an exceptional user experience.

Also read – How to Setup Email to Case in Salesforce?

Summing Up

Building a Salesforce Community from scratch may seem daunting, but with careful planning, a clear vision, and a step-by-step approach, you can create a thriving community that supports your business objectives. 

By following this guide, you will be well-equipped to create, customize, and launch a successful Salesforce Community that engages your customers, partners, and employees. Remember, the key to a successful community lies in continuous monitoring, optimization, and adaptation to your users’ needs and preferences.

To explore the world of Salesforce Communities further, we invite you to join the slack channel.