Salesforce Health Check

Imagine stepping into a world where every interaction with your Salesforce system feels like a seamless extension of your business logic, where data flows like a well-orchestrated symphony, and user experiences are as intuitive as a natural conversation. This is not just a fanciful dream; it’s the pinnacle of what a well-maintained Salesforce environment can achieve. But how do you ensure that your Salesforce instance isn’t just a tool but a robust, efficient, and secure engine driving your business forward? 

The answer lies in a thorough Salesforce Health Check. Just as a doctor’s check-up can uncover hidden ailments and offer preventive measures to ensure your well-being, a Salesforce Health Check identifies areas of improvement and optimizes performance to keep your business in peak condition.

So, know about

• What is Salesforce Health Check
• What does the Health Check Score say?
• Key components of Salesforce Health Check
• Steps to Conduct Salesforce Health  Check

What is a Salesforce Health Check?

A Salesforce Health Check serves as an evaluative tool that inspects the overall health and performance of your Salesforce environment. This tool is especially crucial for organizations relying on Salesforce to manage customer relationships and business operations.

How the Health Check score is determined

Risk Categories and Settings:

• High-Risk Settings: These settings carry the most weight in your Health Check score. They include critical security settings like locking session domains, enabling SMS for device activation, enabling clickjack protection, CSRF protection, setting limits on invalid login attempts, and monitoring expired certificates.
• Medium-Risk Settings: These have a moderate impact on your score. They involve settings like password lifetime requirements, enforcing login IP ranges, enabling XSS protection, password history enforcement, and setting minimum password lengths.
• Low-Risk Settings: These have the most negligible impact but are still important. They include settings like obscuring secret answers for password resets, enforcing session timeouts, and requiring identity verification for MFA registration.
• Informational Settings: These are valuable for overall security and don’t affect your Health Check score. They involve redirection to untrusted URLs, certificate expiration monitoring, key size, and access rights for guest user profiles.

Scoring Mechanism:

• The score is a percentage, where 100% means all settings meet or exceed the standard.
• If a setting falls under the High-Risk category and is not compliant, it will significantly lower the score. While less critical, settings with medium and low risk still have a significant impact.
• The “Informational” category doesn’t impact the score but offers insights into potential vulnerabilities.

Health Check Page and Score Interpretation:

• On the Health Check page, you’ll see your score and a ‘Fix Risks’ button for addressing issues.
• The scores are categorized into grades: 90% and above is “Excellent,” 80–89% is “Very Good,” 70–79% is “Good,” 55–69% is “Poor,” and 54% and below is “Very Poor.”

Recommended Actions Based on Score:

• 0%–33%: Immediate remediation of high risks is recommended.
• 34%–66%: Immediate actions are taken to resolve high-risk issues, while medium-level concerns are addressed over a longer timeframe.
• 67%–100%: Regular review of Health Check is advised to manage risks.

Dynamic Nature of the Score:

• Your score can change if Salesforce updates or alters the settings involved in the calculation.
• New Salesforce organizations typically start with a score of less than 100%, urging administrators to use Health Check to improve their settings.

Key Components Evaluated During a Salesforce Health Check

Security Settings:

• Password Policies: Assessment of password strength requirements, expiration, and history to ensure robust protection against unauthorized access.
• Network Access Settings: Evaluation of trusted IP ranges and login access policies to control and monitor access to the Salesforce environment.
• User Permissions and Profiles: Review user roles, profiles, and permission sets to ensure users have appropriate access rights, minimizing the risk of data breaches or unauthorized changes.

Also Read – Roles and Profiles in Salesforce: Ultimate Guide

System Performance:

• Page Load Times: Analyze the speed and responsiveness of the Salesforce interface and identify areas that may cause delays.
• Process Efficiencies: Evaluating automated processes and approval processes for optimization opportunities.
• Resource Utilization: Assessing the use of system resources like API calls, data storage, and file storage to ensure they are within limits and optimally used.

Data Quality:

• Accuracy and Consistency: Checking for data accuracy, completeness, and consistency across records and fields.
• Duplicate Records: Identify and resolve duplicate data entries to maintain data integrity.
• Data Validation Rules: Ensuring validation rules effectively prevent incorrect data entry.

Customization and Configuration:

• Custom Code and Integrations: Reviewing custom Apex code, Visualforce pages, and integrations with external systems for efficiency and adherence to best practices.
• Configuration Settings: Examine configuration choices like custom fields, page layouts, and record types to ensure they meet business needs and are optimally designed.

User Adoption and Satisfaction:

• User Feedback: Gather and analyze user feedback to identify areas for improvement in functionality and usability.
• Usage Metrics: Reviewing metrics like login rates, feature usage, and user engagement to gauge adoption levels and identify training needs.

Compliance with Regulations:

• Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Evaluating disaster recovery strategies to maintain business operations in case of system malfunctions or interruptions.

Backup and Recovery Procedures:

• Data Backup: Evaluating the effectiveness of data backup procedures to ensure data can be recovered in case of loss.
• Disaster Recovery Plans: Assessing disaster recovery plans to ensure business continuity in case of system failures or other disruptions.

Conducting the Health Check – Step-by-Step Guide

Preparation and Planning

• Identify Objectives: Define what you aim to achieve with the health check. This could include improving system performance, enhancing security, or increasing user adoption.
• Gather Documentation: Collect documentation such as system architecture diagrams, user manuals, and previous health check reports.

Review System Configuration

• Audit User Setup: Verify that user accounts are properly configured with appropriate roles and permissions.
• Validate Profiles and Permission Sets: Ensure that profiles and permission sets are correctly assigned and do not grant excessive privileges.
• Examine Layouts and Customizations: Check page layouts, custom fields, and other customization for relevance and efficiency.

Data Quality Assessment

• Analyze Data Completeness: Look for missing or incomplete records in key objects like Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities.
• Check for Duplicate Records: Utilize the duplicate management features within Salesforce to detect and consolidate duplicate records.
• Review Data Usage: Identify rarely used fields and objects that may be candidates for clean-up.

System Performance Evaluation

• Monitor System Speed: Check the response times for various operations such as page loads and report generation.
• Identify Performance Bottlenecks: Use Salesforce’s built-in tools like the Developer Console to pinpoint performance issues.

Security and Compliance Check

• Run Salesforce Security Health Check: Use Salesforce’s Security Health Check feature to evaluate your org’s security settings against Salesforce’s standards.
• Review Field-Level Security: Protect sensitive data with appropriate field-level security settings.
• Assess Compliance with Regulations: If applicable, verify compliance with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA.

Feature Utilization and User Engagement

• Evaluate Feature Adoption: Assess whether key Salesforce features (like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, reports, and dashboards) are fully utilized.
• Survey Users: Gather feedback from end-users about challenges and areas for improvement.

Analyzing and Reporting

• Compile Findings: Document all findings, categorizing them by severity and impact.
• Develop an Action Plan: Create a prioritized list of issues to address, with proposed solutions and timelines.

Conclusion

Salesforce Health Check is akin to nurturing a garden; regular care, timely pruning, and attentive adjustments ensure it survives. By embracing the strategies and insights shared, you’re not just troubleshooting or ticking boxes in a maintenance checklist; you’re cultivating an environment where efficiency, security, and user satisfaction bloom. 

If you’re inspired to dive deeper into the world of Salesforce and want to enhance your skills further, we invite you to join our Slack community. It’s an opportunity to connect, learn, and grow with peers who are just as passionate about Salesforce as you are.

Moreover, for those who are eager to get hands-on training and work on real-world projects, our online Salesforce bootcamps at saasguru are the perfect place to start. 

These bootcamps are designed to provide practical experience, deepen your understanding of Salesforce, and prepare you for the challenges and opportunities in this dynamic field. Whether you’re starting your Salesforce journey or looking to advance your skills, our bootcamps cater to all levels of expertise.

Frequently Asked Questions [ FAQs]

Where can I get the Health Check tool in Salesforce?

The Salesforce Health Check tool is accessible within your Salesforce setup. Simply go to Setup, use the Quick Find box to search for “Health Check,” and click on it to access the tool.

How do I run org Health Check in Salesforce?

To run an org Health Check, open the Health Check tool in the Setup menu. The tool automatically assesses your org’s settings against Salesforce’s standards and displays the Health Check score, indicating your org’s security status.

What is the best way to implement a Salesforce Health Check from external applications?

Implementing a Salesforce Health Check externally involves using Salesforce’s Tooling or Metadata API. These APIs allow external apps to access Health Check data and modify settings as needed, ensuring secure and authorized interaction with your Salesforce org.