When planning to migrate your data into Salesforce, there are a few key considerations to keep in mind. In the following article, we will walk you through the process of preparing your data to upload to Salesforce, including data cleansing, order of operations, and prepping your Salesforce for the data.
Key Considerations for Data Preparation:
Presence of Record Duplicates
While Swantide and Salesforce offer options for avoiding and deleting duplicates once they are in Salesforce, there is currently no program to detect duplicates within your upload. To ensure clean data from the start, Swantide recommends doing de-duplicating your data prior to uploading it into Salesforce, using a tool like Excel or Google Sheets.
Required Fields for Upload
Natively, Salesforce requires a variety of fields (or column headers) to be present in your data upload. Data without the required fields is blocked from entering Salesforce.
In addition to the required fields, Swantide recommends that you include additional fields for sufficient data. See the list below:
Object | Required Fields | Recommended Fields |
Lead | Company, Last Name | Email, Phone, First Name |
Account | Name, Owner | Industry, Website, Type |
Contact | Last Name, Account Name | First Name, Phone, Email |
Opportunity | Account Name, Close Date, Owner, Opportunity Name, Stage | Type |
Validation Rules in Salesforce
Validation Rules in Salesforce (e.g., Require that Opportunities are started in the first stage) are a common reason that uploads fail. Prior to uploading your data, be sure to check for any validation rules that might impact your upload.
Check for Validation Rules by following these steps:
Navigate to Setup (gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your Salesforce)
Click "Object Manager"
Search for your Object (Lead, Account, Contact, Opportunity)
Click Validation Rules
If you want the validation rules to apply to your data, be sure to adjust your data to meet the criteria listed in the validation rule. However, many validation rules will not apply for legacy data, so Swantide recommends temporarily deactivating your validation rules while you complete the uploads.
Steps for deactivating Validation Rules
Click on the Validation Rule
Select "Edit"
Uncheck the "Active" Box
Upload data
After upload, be sure to reactivate your Validation Rules by re-checking the "Active" Box
Including Picklist Values
Any data that exists as a picklist (or dropdown) option will need to match those in Salesforce. So, for instance, if your Lead Source column includes "Referral," "Conference," and "Sales," but your Lead Source picklist in Salesforce only includes "Referral" and "Conference," all of your Leads with "Sales" as the source will error out of your upload.
Swantide allows you to see and adjust picklist values for custom fields directly in the Swantide app:
Navigate to the "Custom Fields" Tab
Select the Object whose fields you want to edit
Find the correct field
Select "Edit"
Input new data
Click "Update"
However, for Native Salesforce Fields, you will need to log into Salesforce to modify the picklist values:
Navigate to Setup (gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your Salesforce)
Click "Object Manager"
Search for your Object
Click on "Data Type" to sort the fields by type
Scroll to fields with "Picklist"
Select the field
Scroll to the Active Values
Click "New" and add in the missing value
Audit Fields
Salesforce automatically populates Audit Fields (Created By, Created Date, Last Modified By ID, Last Modified Date) with the date of upload and ID of the uploader. However, most customers want to keep track of their Legacy Data when migrating their data to Salesforce for the first time. Luckily, Salesforce makes it possible to override this feature for net new data uploads.
**Note: you can only override these fields when uploading data. Once the data is in Salesforce, you will not be able to adjust them.
Steps for enabling override Audit Fields (note: must be a System Admin to complete these steps) :
Navigate to Setup (gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your Salesforce)
In the Quick Find box, type "Permission Sets."
Select "New"
Label the Permission Set "Override Created Date" and save
Navigate to System Permissions
Select "Set Audit Fields upon Record Creation" and "Update Records with Inactive Owners" and save
Select "Manage Assignments"
Click "Add Assignment"
Add Users who will be responsible for data migrations
Field Character Limits
The next consideration to account for is character limits for your fields.
The following lists the Text fields, along with their limits:
Text Area: up to 255 characters
Text Area (Long): 131,072 characters
To edit a field type, follow these steps:
Navigate to Setup (gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your Salesforce)
Click "Object Manager"
Search for your Object (Lead, Account, Contact, Opportunity)
Find the field you want to edit
Click "Edit"
Click "Change Field Type"
Note: Native Salesforce Fields cannot be changed.
Consistency of Data Between Objects
Many customers relate fields across Objects (such as "Account Name" on the Contact). It is important that any of these fields that you change on one Object must also be changed on any related Objects.
Perhaps the most crucial of these consistencies is ensuring that the Company Name on Contacts and Leads and the associated Account are an exact match. This will ensure that your Contacts can always be mapped to any Accounts that already exist in your database.
Consistency in User Fields
Similarly, it is crucial that the data in any user fields is clean and consistent.
For example, before uploading any data, ensure that all of your Account and Opportunity Owners exist as users in Salesforce. Then, ensure that the names in your sheet are an exact match to the names in Salesforce. This process will help to match Account owners with their proper Accounts.
Consistency in Amount Fields
When exporting Amount fields, double check to confirm that the numeric value is the same amount as ARR (often, it is; however, if this amount is not the same as your ARR, Swantide recommends adjusting it).
Additionally, rather than uploading an amount value, Swantide recommends uploading 1 product per Opportunity (called 'legacy product') with a unit of 1 price that equals the amount.
Date Format
Salesforce will block your upload if your date fields are not properly formatted. Therefore, ensure that all of your fields are in the YYYY/MM/DD format, and if your date includes time, YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.
Order of Object Upload
When going to upload data, the order in which you upload the different objects is important for matching purposes. Swantide recommends the following order:
Accounts
Contacts
Leads
Opportunities