Salesforce familiarity?

[Zealot]

Might be a longshot, but I was wondering if anyone here has ever worked with Salesforce before who could talk me through designing a basic app I need to do for work.

[Mabubeezareel]

I've been working with Salesforce as an admin for the last 2+ years, and should be able to help you out. What kind of an app is it and how familiar are you with the platform?

[Zealot]

Thanks! I've been using it off and on for about three months so I think I have a handle on all the constituent parts of this assignment but I don't really know how to tie them together.

I've got make a Timecard app that:
A) lets people enter their hours (simple enough, I just made an App called "timecard" and a new Timecard object with a field for hours and the date)
B) Has 4 users - 1 management, 1 upper management, and 2 outside contractors (pretty sure this is just handled by the heirarchy field and licensing permissions)
C) Lets the contractors see their own timecard submissions but not anyone elses (For this I just set the OWD for the object to Private, I think that's all that needs to happen)
D) Gets sent for approval to one manager, and when they approve it it then goes on to upper management for a second approval.
E) Each Timecard needs a "Saved" "Submitted" "Approved" and "Rejected" status.

Any kind of advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

[Mabubeezareel]

I've got make a Timecard app that:
A) lets people enter their hours (simple enough, I just made an App called "timecard" and a new Timecard object with a field for hours and the date)

Think about what other data elements you might want to also capture. Consider things like, are there different time codes they need to enter? Are they all working on the same project, or are there are multiple projects they all need to bill to separately? Depending on what other information you need to capture, you may end up needing another object or two to tie into your original object/app.

Also consider adding in a validation rule or two. For instance, are the contractors limited to a specific number of hours they can work per day? What about days of the week? Let's say if they can log up to 12 hours per weekday, but only 4 on weekends, then validation rules should cover you here.

B) Has 4 users - 1 management, 1 upper management, and 2 outside contractors (pretty sure this is just handled by the heirarchy field and licensing permissions)

Be sure to edit the profile permissions for each distinct profile across your userbase. You'll need to provide access to not only the app itself, but also the tabs within it, the object(s), and field-level security. If they all share the same profile, then this is cake, but you'll need to repeat it for every profile if their are multiple ones.

Also, depending on how many OTHER users are in those profiles, it may be better to open up access to the app via a permission set. For example, if a contractor has the same profile as a regular employee, and you don't want the regular employees to see the timecard app, then use a permission set to open access to the app and assign the permission set to just the contractors.

C) Lets the contractors see their own timecard submissions but not anyone elses (For this I just set the OWD for the object to Private, I think that's all that needs to happen)

That'll work, just make sure that the contractors and managers are assigned roles that fit within the hierarchy. If your role hierarchy is setup as something like...

Upper Management
    -> Management
        -> Contractor

...then you'll be all set

D) Gets sent for approval to one manager, and when they approve it it then goes on to upper management for a second approval.
E) Each Timecard needs a "Saved" "Submitted" "Approved" and "Rejected" status.

I haven't worked a whole lot with approval processes, but I believe that you should be able to automate them entirely here. For instance, you can add a Status picklist field to the Timecard object with your four statuses, and have the default be set to "Saved". Then, when your approval process is fired, have the Status set to be "Submitted". Finally, upon approval/rejection via the approval process, have it update the Status field accordingly.

[Zealot]

Oh. Well. I probably don't know as much as I thought.

May I PM you with these project details? It's just supposed to be a basic test of Salesforce ability but I'm completely lost now.

[Mabubeezareel]

Hah! Yeah, I can be a bit notorious when it comes to TMI, but tbh, I can't quite help it. Sure, feel free to PM me with more details.

[Ratatapa]

Hah! Yeah, I can be a bit notorious when it comes to TMI, but tbh, I can't quite help it. Sure, feel free to PM me with more details.

Question myself which sadly might be empty of information but i'm not aware of much atm

At work we use SAPB1, and they want their sales reps to access they data (their sales inventory, their clients etc) I heard that Salesforce can read the SAPB1 DB (SQL server 2008) without altering the SAPB1 data

is it true?

[Mabubeezareel]

Nothing that I'm aware of directly, but you could possibly do an OData integration to expose the SAPB1 data as an external object within Salesforce. It also looks like there are two-way syncing solutions out there, like this one:

APPSeConnect Salesforce of SAP B1