Safeguarding Your Nonprofit’s Salesforce Login Access: A Preparedness Guide for Administrators

It’s Monday morning, and you’re excited: You’re the Salesforce Admin for your nonprofit organization, and an hour from now, you’re running an onboarding session with a new hire. You open your browser to sign in and get ready for training. You fill in your usual credentials and hit enter.

“Access denied.” Oops, that didn’t work. Maybe you made a typo? You try again, but your password still isn’t working. You panic. You’re the only admin and you can’t log in to Salesforce! Now instead of training your new colleague, you have to spend most of your day opening cases, making phone calls, and working to get access back.

As your organization’s admin, you know how to help everyone else – but what about yourself? How do you gain access if you’re locked out? Prevent a Salesforce login access crisis, ensure the continuity of your organization’s operations, and protect your valuable data by implementing a robust access management strategy.

Proactive Measures for Uninterrupted Login Access

• Establish a Multi-Administrator Model: It is imperative to avoid relying on a single Salesforce administrator. By appointing at least two users with administrator access, you create redundancy and ensure critical tasks can be performed even if one individual is unavailable. Take advantage of Salesforce’s user management features to assign varying levels of access and permissions to different administrators, ensuring that essential functions are covered.
• Designate Backup Users: In addition to multiple administrators, designate one or two additional users to have sufficient permissions to perform basic troubleshooting or grant access to others if needed. They need not be full admins, and they don’t have to hold admin responsibilities in their day-to-day jobs, but they should be able to log in and manage other Salesforce users in case of emergency. This step provides an extra layer of protection against unforeseen circumstances.
• Comprehensive Training and Documentation: Conduct regular training sessions for all Salesforce users, focusing on essential tasks such as user access management, login procedures, data management, and reporting. (Maintain thorough documentation of all these processes as well!). Make it a habit for you (your admin) to review the documents at least quarterly, ensuring everything is up to date.
• Contingency Planning: Develop a contingency plan that outlines the steps to be taken in the event of an administrator’s departure. This plan should include procedures for transferring ownership of essential records, reassigning permissions, and communicating with relevant stakeholders. As with the documentation above, it’s crucial to schedule regular reviews and updates to this plan.

Troubleshooting Access Issues

No matter how prepared you are, unexpected issues can arise. (That’s why we make backup plans!) If you encounter a Salesforce login access issue, the first step is don’t panic. Then follow these troubleshooting steps:

• Verify Login Credentials: Double- and triple-check that you are using the correct username and password. (By the way, you’re using a password manager app, right? Not just typing in your credentials from memory? (Check out this post for more on why that’s important.) Especially for things like sandboxes where there might be more than one account, it’s easy to get things mixed up. Consult with your designated backup user colleagues, or refer to the documentation for assistance.
• Login Page Variations: If you usually access Salesforce via a custom domain login page (e.g. yourorgname.my.salesforce.com), try going to the main login.salesforce.com site instead. Sometimes cached settings or domain configurations can cause login issues.
• Clear Cache and Cookies: If you are still unable to log in, try clearing your browser’s cache and cookies. This can often resolve temporary issues related to authentication.

If all else fails, you can always reach out to a Salesforce support partner (like us!) for troubleshooting help, to get you back on track and ensure the uninterrupted flow of critical operations.