Preparing a New Org

With the impending arrival of the Winter 2010 (aka 162 or Winter'10) edition of Salesforce CRM, as with every other release, comes a prerelease org. (You can get one at https://www.salesforce.com/form/trial/prerelease_winter10.jsp.)

Every time one encounters a fresh org, there are maintenance tasks to perform. I usually go through an org (whether a Developer Edition org or a Prerelease version) and do the same tasks, generally in no particular order. This time, however, I wrote down what I did as I did it. Looking at the list, it's hardly in any "best practices" order at all - it's just how I did it.

There's no need to follow every step, and it is not a complete list of all possibilities, but this should give you some idea of the possibilities and available tweaks: (*** indicates some of the new features in WInter '10)

1. Save login with 1Password/Roboform
2. Reset (Set) Security Token
3. Administration Setup | Security Controls
• Session time 8 hrs
• Passwords never expire
4. Create Record Types (and Business Processes) for Lead, Opportunity, Case
5. (Campaigns were not enabled in this prerelease org) - would have configured them here, similarly
6. Activities section: Calendar link on sidebar
7. Download latest versions of Connect for Outlook, Office Edition
8. Opportunities:
• Enable Similar Opportunities
• Enable Opportunity Teams
9. Create Account Master Record Type
10. Enable Account Teams
11. Create Contact Master Record Type
• Note: Asked to add to page layout. Not asked for Opportunities.
12. Enable Case Teams
13. Enable Public Solutions
14. Solutions:
• Enable Solution Browsing
• Enable Solution HTML
• Could have created a Solution Process & Record Type
• Did not enable multilingual solutions
15. Enable Self-Service
16. Enable Web-to-Case
17. Create default Owner, etc (auto prompted)
18. Enable PRM and Partner Portal (though have no licenses)
19. Salesforce to Salesforce
• Enabled S2S
• Set up S2S Connection Finder ***
• Added fields to page layout - Kept read-only for all profiles except System Administrator
• Enable Public & Private Tags
20. Enable Console for all Profiles
21. Search Settings - Enable Enhanced Lookup & Auto-Complete
22. User Interface
• Separate loading of related lists
• Spell Checker on Tasks & Events
• Collapsible Sidebar
• Custom Sidebar on all Pages
• Enhanced Profile Management ***
23. Set myself as default Workflow User
24. Looked at Develop | Custom Settings ***
25. Created a Default Queue and added myself
26. Set all Sharing Rules to Private
27. Update Home Page to the way I like it
• Order of wide section (top down): Calendar, Tasks, Items to Approve, Dashboard
• No changes to narrow section

Other things that may be possible in other orgs:

• Enable Customer Portal
• Customize Campaigns
• Set up Sites

Again, this is not meant to be a complete list. Also, it is not intended to be a how-to; for more information you may search the Help link at the top of every org page, check Salesforce Community, or Developer Force.

Happy configuring!