The Future of Salesforce Setup

Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ben Sklar, Director of Product Management at Salesforce.

Join us as we chat about how he’s making setup into a better, more consistent experience.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ben Sklar.

The problems with Salesforce setup

If there’s one thing Salesforce Admins know a lot about, it’s setup. It’s time-consuming, complicated, and varies wildly depending on what you’re looking at. Answering a simple question like what objects does this user have access to and why turns into an arduous process.

That’s why I was so excited to bring Ben Sklar on the pod to talk about how his team is fixing setup in Salesforce. We’ll find out how they’re laying the groundwork for faster updates and creating a more consistent user experience.

Gradual improvements to setup

A big question I had for Ben was how the changes he’s making to setup will show up for those of us who use it every day. “All these amazing enhancements we’re making to the setup platform are really behind the scenes,” he says, “if we do this right way you don’t really even need to know that it’s there.”

However, you might notice a few improvements here or there. For example, there are new user summaries that allow you to see all the permission sets that a user has, all in one place. They’re also working with the Sales Cloud Go team to make sure that you can turn on features, discover new ones, and assign permissions, all in one place.

Creating a consistent experience

At the end of the day, the goal is to make things easier for the people who use it the most (that’s you!). “We’ve heard our admins often complain about inconsistent experiences,” Ben says, “and by being able to reuse components across setup you’ll be able to see more consistency.”

As Ben says, setup was turning into the “Wild West” and it would feel different across experiences. His team has done a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that setup always has a consistent look and feel, and they’ve established a setup design council to create guidelines that make sense. The future of Salesforce Setup is bright, and a whole lot easier.

You should listen to the full episode for more from Ben, including what’s next for setup and why he loves ultimate frisbee. And subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.

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Full show transcript

Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking about Setup, and I joked before I pressed record with Ben Sklar, Admins live in Setup. We probably could pay a mortgage based on the amount of time that we spend in Setup. And the reason I talk about Setup and Ben Sklar is Ben is one of the product managers who's tackling Setup and fixing Setup, and he's working very close with another product major that you may have heard of, Cheryl Feldman. And so that's how Ben came to the podcast. He was a suggestion from Cheryl. Hey, you got to talk about all the cool stuff that Ben's working on with Setup on the podcast. And so we cover that and I'm sure many of you probably have seen some of the very cool stuff that Ben and his team are working on in Setup, but at Dreamforce last week, and so we're going to talk about that. But of course, before we get into it with Ben, just a quick reminder, wherever you're listening to the Salesforce podcast, if it's in app, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button. That allows you to get new downloads anytime a podcast drops, and every time a new podcast drops, you what time that is? It's Thursday mornings, so that way new pod right on your phone. If you're listening on the website, you don't have to worry about it. You should sign up for our Admin newsletter though, because we highlight podcasts in the newsletter. But enough about that, let's talk about the exciting world of Setup. It's really where all of us Admins live, and all of the cool stuff that Ben and his team are doing. So let's get Ben on the podcast. So Ben, welcome to the podcast.

Ben Sklar: Hey, Mike. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Mike: Yeah, well, when Cheryl comes knocking at the proverbial podcast door and recommends a guest, I can't turn her down, because every time Cheryl Feldman gets on stage to talk about the future of something in Salesforce, Admins flock to those sessions. So she recommended that we have a discussion. I'm very excited for this, but before we get into that, why don't we learn a little bit about you? So tell us briefly how you got the journey to becoming a PM at Salesforce.

Ben Sklar: Yeah, absolutely. So I started at Salesforce a few years ago. I joined as a product manager in our backend data services area. I became the product manager for our UI API, or user interface API, and I also launched our GraphQL API. And the reason I mention these things, I've been working on improving Setup, and it all starts at improving the way that we can pull in the right data and metadata inside of Setup. And so I'm really excited to talk more about how we're going to be fixing Setup.

Mike: You said the magical words, Setup. Now we're all excited. I've been in Setup, I think Admins live most of their work days in Setup. What are some of the challenges that we have with Setup right now?

Ben Sklar: Absolutely. We've heard a lot from our Admins and our customers. We've heard it can feel like when you're inside of Setup, it's really like being stuck on a deserted island.

Mike: Oh.

Ben Sklar: You're using these primitive tools and you really need a survivalist guide just to use it. So there's a lot of challenges we've heard. We've heard that it's very time-consuming and it takes forever to find out, what does a user have access to? Why do they have access to this object but not this other object? So we've heard a lot of challenges so far inside of Setup.

Mike: So to be clear, are you working on all of Setup or just Setup around users?

Ben Sklar: That's a great question. So we are working on all of Setup, but we needed to start somewhere. Where we started was around user access and user management, and as we've started building up, what we're calling, the Setup platform, and by the way, the Setup platform really allows us and will allow us to build features in Setup much faster than we ever have before. It's also allowing us to move experiences that are broken in Classic into Lightning.

Mike: Gotcha. Fun thing we should try out is naming this platform, because I can't envision Salesforce is going to go with the Setup Platform. That doesn't feel like us.

Ben Sklar: That's right.

Mike: We have Hyperforce and we have a lot of things, something force, we should... Is this like Benforce, Cherylforce, the Ben and Cherylforce? I don't know, Ben and-

Ben Sklar: Setupforce.

Mike: Setupforce. Yeah, people should share their ideas for the name of it. Setup1, there's a cadence of things. We got to have a one, and then that won't work for a while, and then we got to have a Thingforce, right?

Ben Sklar: That's right. What I will say is, all of these amazing enhancements we're making that we're calling the Setup platform, it's really behind the scenes. It's really just to let you all know that we're making amazing foundational changes to Setup, but if we do this the right way, you don't really even need to know that it's there.

Mike: So does this mean that as releases come out, the Setup menu's going to change for me? Or is this going to be a gradual thing that maybe I might not even notice because it's so seamless in the background?

Ben Sklar: That's a great question. This is more of a gradual change that you shouldn't notice at all, really, if we do our job the right way. What you will see are new features. You'll start seeing more consistency inside of Setup, where it looks like features are being developed by the same Salesforce and not disjointed experiences. And there's a lot of cool new things that are going to come every release because we can finally start moving, like I said before, these broken Classic experiences into Lightning?

Mike: What's one example that you think, well, that's top of your list to move, that you know Admins are running into?

Ben Sklar: Yeah, so if you were able to catch Dreamforce last week, you probably saw that the user list view, which was for some of our customers, a completely broken experience, we have finally moved that over into Lightning. And we're going to be expanding the functionality in that new Lightning Experience, release over release.

Mike: Wow, and you mentioned, so you called it the Setup platform. Platform implies a lot. Allowing Setup to become a platform, what is that going to give us in terms of an advantage in the future?

Ben Sklar: Absolutely. I think it really goes back to time to market for new features. As we build new features inside of Setup, like I said before, we can really build these features faster than we ever have before. Just to give you a little bit more context and information, when we're building features inside of Setup, in order to really populate that page with the components and all of the data that you see, we need to get it somewhere. And so we've really enhanced the way that we retrieve this data and put it on the page. And all of this is allowing us to really build the features much faster. And we've heard our Admins often complain about inconsistent experiences, and by being able to reuse components across Setup, that's when you're going to start seeing that consistency, and that similar look and feel for all these new features that are to come inside of Setup.

Mike: Can you share with me an example of that? Because I know when we went to Lightning Page Builder, I think we just call it Page Builder now, but I also noticed that as we launched some of the Agentforce Prompt Builder and Copilot stuff, that the configuration looks very similar. Is that what you're referring to in Setup?

Ben Sklar: Yeah, there's a few things to call out here. So the first is, I'm not sure if you've already seen the new summaries that we've built inside of Setup. So a good example would be if you go inside for a particular user, and you're trying to understand, okay, what permissions does this user have? What permission sets are they a part of? We can now see a summary of all that information in one place. We built one component, one summary component, but we're reusing that, not just for user but also now for objects, and for permission sets, and permission set groups. So this Setup platform really allows us to build once and use all over the place. And so the next thing that we are focusing on are list views, and so you will now see that new user list view. You're going to see list views being built across Setup, us moving from Classic to Lightning. And one last example, the Sales Cloud team has developed a framework inside of Setup, called Sales Cloud Go. And this allows Admins really to turn new features on, faster. It puts it all in one place. And we've been partnering with that team, and in that same experience that you go to turn on your features and discover new features, you'll also be able to assign permissions in that same place.

Mike: So I've seen the release notes on Sales Cloud Go, there was some stuff that came out in our most recent release about that. Is that an example where now we have a standard template and framework for all of the other teams to use? Was that one of the reasons that Setup had so many different experiences, is when somebody would put an item into the Setup menu, they really controlled the experience and there was no real, I guess, you're a UI guy, there was no real UI dictation for what it had to look like or act like?

Ben Sklar: That's right. Exactly. So in the past, it often felt like Setup was starting to turn into the Wild West, where teams who were building inside of Setup could really do so many different things, and make it look and feel so different across experiences. What we're trying to do now is really templatize this so that we have a similar look and feel for all new features, and we've even established a Setup design council, which helps teams.

Mike: Ooh.

Ben Sklar: Yeah, it helps teams who are building in Setup, understand how should this look and feel? How do I get started using these new features and templates that have been created? It's really exciting, all the things that are coming out for Setup.

Mike: To think of the amount of time that I've spent presenting and talking about even deployment best practices, and user acceptance testing, and feedback, you're always thinking of the frontend of the app, where the user will use the app. And it's just neat to think of, wow, we actually have a design council for the people that, when they click Setup, they click the gear, there's people that that's their world to think about, because for a lot of us, that's the world we live in. You think of, too often, there's so much emphasis put on the outside design of a car, but you know somewhere, at one of the manufacturing plants, somebody's job has to be, yeah, but what happens when you pop the hood? How much of a mess does that engine have to be and what's that like for the mechanic to work on it? And I feel like that's what you're telling me. No, we're actually thinking about it. What happens when you have to live under the hood of the car all day in Setup, what that experience looks like? So that's really neat to hear.

Ben Sklar: Absolutely.

Mike: So you mentioned platform. I'd be remiss for some of our very experienced Admins, when I hear platform, I think, "Well, maybe there's an API that I can tap into." Is there going to be any kind of developer experience for this new Setup platform?

Ben Sklar: That's a great question. We often are asked by our Admins and ISPs, "All of these amazing new enhancements that you're making to Setup and changes to existing APIs, or may be new APIs that are being created, can we have access to these?" And what I would say is, we are really enhancing the same APIs that some of you already use, know and love today, including our UI API or user interface API and our GraphQL API. We are enhancing these APIs to improve the experience and the ease of bringing data and metadata directly into Setup. And so for all of you ISPs and Admins out there, again, those are the same services that we already make available externally. We are just improving the ability for us to tap into these APIs directly from Setup. We're reducing the barrier that we had before in accessing these APIs, and we're making it a lot easier for us to develop inside of Setup.

Mike: Hmm, well, that's really cool. Can it envision how much farther we'll be, maybe a year from now when we've got all the user stuff tackled?

Ben Sklar: That's right, and that leads me to say, we really started with user access and user management, really is the first customer or consumer of these new Setup platform enhancements we're making. That was really just the start, and we're now really talking to and partnering across our clouds, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud, Industries, Commerce, you name it, so that they too can make sure to take advantage of all these new things we're doing inside of Setup, to build better features for all of you Admins.

Mike: Yeah. That way it feels more unified, like everybody's building from the same playbook, right?

Ben Sklar: That's right.

Mike: Yeah. So Ben, when you're not fixing Setup, which I feel like is a 24/7, 365 thing, is there anything fun you like to do on the side? I know I've talked to product managers and some of them have smelted metals, and some run marathons and play board games, and they have all kinds of fun hobbies. Do you have any fun, tangible hobby you'd care to share with us?

Ben Sklar: I do. During the summer, I'm a big Ultimate frisbee player.

Mike: Oh, what's Ultimate frisbee? Tell us.

Ben Sklar: It's like a combination between football and soccer, and maybe some other sports, it's-

Mike: But with frisbees.

Ben Sklar: But with frisbees. It's a non-contact sport. But once you catch the frisbee, you become the quarterback, like in football, and everyone on your team becomes a wide receiver that you can throw to. And when you're on defense, everyone, including you on your team, is like a cornerback in football. So you're trying to intercept the frisbee from the other team when you're on defense. And when you're on offense, you're trying to either throw the frisbee into the end zone for a touchdown like football, or catch it in the end zone like a touchdown in football.

Mike: Wow. Do you have flags on the side since it's no contact, or you got to get that frisbee, that's the only way to stop the... is be to play good D.

Ben Sklar: That's right. So once you catch the frisbee, you cannot move. So there's no flag that you're trying to-

Mike: Oh, oh, you didn't say that before.

Ben Sklar: Yeah. Yep.

Mike: See, I didn't know that.

Ben Sklar: So as soon as you catch it, you have to stop, and then the only way you can continue to move the frisbee forward is by throwing it to someone on your team.

Mike: Okay. Okay. All right. I was envisioning people running and throwing, and I've never played this frisbee before, clearly. This sounds awesome. I fell into a rabbit hole of frisbee golf on YouTube for a while, and I live by a big, there's a big recreational dam by me that's like a, 10 minutes away, and they have a huge frisbee golf course, and it's through woods, and streams, and stuff. I played it once and I was like, "Wow, this is really cool." And I totally banged my friend's frisbees against the trees a lot. Are they like the same frisbees used with frisbee golf? Are they harder? Some of them that I would use had the hole in the middle.

Ben Sklar: Interesting. So the weight is definitely different between a frisbee you use for Ultimate frisbee versus frisbee golf, and the shape can be a little bit different too. Like you mentioned, there's could be a hole in the middle for frisbee golf. Ultimate frisbee, it's a standard size and weight. There is no change to that, unlike frisbee golf where-

Mike: Right. Yeah.

Ben Sklar: ... you can use different types of frisbees.

Mike: Yeah, I know there was a driver and he had a putting frisbee.

Ben Sklar: That's right, a driver frisbee, putter frisbee, et cetera.

Mike: Well, how many is on a team?

Ben Sklar: Typically, you go up to seven people out in the line. Depending on if you're on a serious team or not, you might have an O line of seven and then maybe you switch out for a D line of seven. But typically, for the most part, I really just play pickup.

Mike: [inaudible 00:19:55].

Ben Sklar: And so just seven of us get together onto one team, seven of us onto another team.

Mike: Wow, that's a lot of people.

Ben Sklar: Yeah.

Mike: I don't know, for a pickup game.

Ben Sklar: Yeah, we often get maybe over 20 people who will show up, so we'll sub out and allow other people to come in and have fun too.

Mike: Sure. Wow, that sounds cool. I'm going to have to check that out. See, there's always stuff that people that work in technology do that's very tangible, because at the end of the day when you turn the monitor off, where did the Setup go? Well, it's off because there's no power, right? But extreme frisbee, and frisbee golf, and stuff, it still exists when you turn the monitor off because the frisbee's in the corner. So-

Ben Sklar: That's right.

Mike: That's awesome. Well, Ben, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. I'm sure I will do my best if the recordings are up, post-Dreamforce, to link them in the show. Otherwise, I know our social team will share them out, and I look forward to seeing all of the updates and new things coming to the Setup menu for all of us.

Ben Sklar: Thanks, Mike. Again, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Mike: Okay. How much fun was that? Oh, by the way, Ben's into extreme frisbee playing golf tournament rugby. It sounds cool and it's a hundred percent not anything I could play, but I promise you this, I would sign up to watch that if some sports network put that on a television because that looks like fun to me. I don't know. Have you ever frisbee golfed? I frisbee golfed. Have you ever extreme frisbee'd? It sounds like fun. I can't throw very well, so maybe that's why I didn't do it. But anyway, how about all that stuff coming to Setup? I'm excited for it. I know that jumping around in Setup has felt a little different, and there's a lot of things to work on, and it's just cool that somebody's tackling... Also, there's a whole group of people that sit around and think about what the Setup experience should be like in UI, that is just like a warm glass of cocoa next to a crackling fire on a snowy winter's day, for me. That's what that makes me feel like. And a teddy bear. Let's throw that in for fun because it's fall, so I'm sure you got to have something pumpkin spiced. Anyway, I appreciate Ben coming on the podcast. I appreciate you listening to the podcast and being this far into the episode. We've got a lot of really cool guests lined up, and working on getting even more. So with that, be sure to join us next week, and until then, I'll see you in the cloud.