Salesforce Attachment: Processes, files and more

The growth of the Salesforce platform into a multi-faceted technology ecosystem with dynamic process orientation, has literally made it the choice of millions of companies and organisations. The businesses of today have migrated or eager to migrate to this new found panacea for all the ills of the day to day business rigmaroles, is because of the layers of new features and applications that get added on to the ecosystem, on a daily basis. The robust technology, that Salesforce has grown to be, also promises enterprises a stable environment to not only use the platform for customer interaction, but also to metamorphose into the quintessential business process re-engineering ecosystem, with systemic benefits heaped on the migrating organisations, in terms of resource optimisation as well as cost reduction without compromise on quality output. Such a scenario has come into play, only in the recent months, if not years, because of the constant upgrade of the platform to be much more than the regular CRM tools that are available out there.

To be able to leverage on the strengths of the technology, the consultants need to be able to clearly differentiate between the functions of a "File" and "Data". Salesforce attachments and documents and related stuff primarily form part of file storage, while all records, events etc are categorised under data storage. All queries and search criteria needs to be based on this distinction, so that data flow trees can be developed and process flows can be delineated, based on the location of a specific type of data. This form of distinguishable storage mechanism makes Salesforce the most potent data and file library for most enterprises. This also means that the cost reductions associated with not maintaining redundancy in multiple places, comes into play quite early, in Salesforce implementation. The ease of such procedures has now encouraged companies to not only move storage, but also complete processes into the Salesforce ecosystem. However, this would mean that the storage requirement within Salesforce for the ever increasing Salesforce attachments will only go up and that would come at a cost. The strategies to decide, if this kind of storage needs to be internal to an organisation or can be hired from external agencies, in a matter of executive decisions making, depending upon factors like cost, security, access control etc.

Some would argue that this storage cost which companies face today are a temporary expense, compared to the speed at which storage technology is growing, making cost of storage redundant with every passing day. In the meanwhile, companies would be well advised to take a closer look at the Salesforce attachments, for minimising storage costs. Salesforce attachments are being focussed upon, because they tend to bloat any communication with large diagrams, images, presentations etc. But there is light already at the end of the tunnel, as many Salesforce third party vendors and solution providers already provide unlimited Salesforce attachments as an USP to their respective products, making it a viable alternative to more expensive storage solutions.

Pratik Gaikwad Content writing