The Chrome Extensions I Still Use Every Day

Whenever I’m working with folks that are new to the Salesforce world, especially when we’re doing screenshares, one of my favorite things is to be able to say things like “we can make that fast for you.” Or, “there’s an app for that”. And I remember that not everyone knows about the tools that I use every day that make my life easier. Someone told me about them but did I tell anyone else? And the answer is yes, of course I tell people about them all the time, but only when I see them doing something that could be solved by using one of them. So, now I’m telling YOU!

I see new and shiny chrome extensions all the time, but these are the ones that I ACTUALLY use EVERY DAY (or at least most days) and the ones I try to tell everyone about.

Salesforce inspector

First up – Salesforce inspector. This extension adds a little sidecar menu to your Salesforce pages (that only you can see of course) that gives you a whole slew of tools. This is one of the ones that I truly use every day. In the picture below, you’ll see the menu that pops out when you click the little triangle icon.

The features I use most are Show all data and Data Export. Show all data gives you a screen with all fields and their values from the record you are looking at. This is especially helpful when I’m trying to diagnose issues but the field I’m looking for isn’t on the layout – this allows me to see the populated value without having to update the layout or login as someone else. Super helpful for those hidden formula fields we all make!

And Data Export allows you to build and run SOQL queries! This comes in really handy if I want to quickly find a set of records but don’t want to build a report. I use this a lot to get RecordType Id’s and stuff like that. You can also save your queries so you don’t have to rewrite them each time if there’s something you lookup often. This is really helpful – and they are saved in your browser so you can use the same queries across different orgs.

If you’ve got a complex org and have to look at your limits often, this will give you a quick view, which comes in handy!

Salesforce Colored Favicons

Next up – Salesforce Colored Favicons. Since I work in multiple customer orgs each day, and even for those customers multiple production and sandbox environments, this is super helpful for quickly telling everything apart, just by browser tabs. For each instance, you can set a different color. Right now, I set colors by customer, with different shades for different org types. When I just worked for one company, I used to do like my sandboxes green or yellow and my production org red so that I wouldn’t accidentally be making updates in the red one. Sometimes its the simple things that help us the most! You can’t really tell from this picture, but the icon will also denote what kind of org it is. S for sandbox, DX for developer org, etc.

If you’ve got myDomain enabled, which I think everyone should by now, it will say the domain name instead of the instance, which is great.

Salesforce.com Quick Login As

Next – Salesforce.com Quick Login As. Again, this is one of those ones I use EVERY DAY. Rather than having to navigate to a user and then clicking login as, just click the extension icon and choose your person. You’ll get logged in as them and still be on the same page you were on, saving time again from navigating back to whatever you needed to check out. This also gives you your user list views you’ve created, so if you didn’t want to search for someone with the search box, you can quickly navigate to a list view and select your person. Takes one pain out of troubleshooting!

Salesforce Change Set Helper

Change Sets are great, but they leave a lot to be desired, am I right? I use Salesforce Change Set Helper to help with that feeling! I think the BEST part of this extension, and what I use most often, is that it moves your last modified changes to the top of the list for you so you don’t have to go find them or paginate through pages and pages of alphabet to find what you’re looking for. It also lets you search by parent object, metadata type, etc to narrow in on what you want to add to your change set. It also adds some additional buttons to compare metadata between orgs. I don’t really use that, but I can see how it is helpful if you needed to! This tool makes creating change sets not super fast, but definitely faster than without it. Especially faster for those change sets that contain a lot of custom fields.

Chrome Web Store

Haven’t used the Chrome Web Store before? Its super easy! Choose an extension, read all about it, and then click Add to Chrome. That’s it! Of course, whenever you add an extension, be sure to check out the privacy practices and read the reviews to make sure you know what you’re getting.

Do you use any other extensions that are super helpful for your Salesforce work? Sound of in the comments! I could always use another extension 🙂