Note-Taking in Salesforce: Transitioning from Traditional Notes

I can’t tell you how much of my time has been spent taking notes in my career. In team meetings, I’m typically the one that raises a hand to make sure our notes are captured, complete with organized topics, next steps, meeting tone and mood, whether it was a successful use of the team’s time. With platforms like Salesforce becoming so widely used, I find traditional note-taking is organically starting to take a back seat to more modern, on-platform functionality that transforms notes into usable and actionable data.

The Disadvantages of Traditional Note-Taking

There are two chronic problems we have when it comes to note-taking — the first is that notes are so flexible that we can lose sight of structure. What does this mean exactly? Well, take a look at a notebook nearby and you’ll see what I mean. In mine, one page is filled with action items for the day. The next is a handful of lines from a meeting, including paraphrased and quoted summaries of status updates for a consulting project. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t plenty of pages with scribbles that are essentially meaningless, which is more than half of my notebooks.

While digital methods like Notion, OneNote and Google Docs can curb my scribbling, they also welcome the risk of taking too many notes. I frequently find myself tracking many of the small details that I’m not going to need later.

The second issue is that notes are just that. Oftentimes, we take a note as it pops into our heads and the moment it’s written down, it’s essentially gone forever. Things move quickly. We’re all in meeting after meeting, and the chances that we have enough time to review and organize notes for all our meetings is so, so very low. Now, there is always a chance this doesn’t resonate with you. If it doesn’t, I would consider you far above average in the organization department. But I’m willing to bet that if you don’t have a problem with this, others close to you do (and I’m also willing to bet you’ve already noticed).

It’s hard to reign in things like notes when you’re always busy, ten things are happening at any given point throughout the day, and you don’t have structured resources and tools to help keep your thoughts organized.

What Solutions Does Salesforce Provide?

Salesforce Notes

Pros: Out-of-the-box (OOTB) feature that comes enabled in Salesforce orgs, ability to take private Notes only available to the user
Cons: Can’t run Reports on Notes, can’t customize fields available on the Note page
Summary: Notes are a quick and dirty go-to if you’re looking to take a couple simple notes.

Tasks

Pros: Ability to customize fields for your needs, ability to run reports, all the standard capabilities a task management system provides
Cons: None, this is the best place to store your tasks (but only your tasks) 😌
Summary: Tasks are the best place to store action items. It’s quick and simple to throw some quick notes into a list of Tasks with the ability to come back and refine them later, and they can be customized for your organization’s specific needs around task management.

Custom Fields and Architecture

This is the solution that will transform your unstructured notes into real, actionable data, and for the majority of use cases, I would recommend this to organizations in some capacity. Quite simply, it’s one of the areas where you get real ROI out of Salesforce as a platform.

Example: If Admissions Counselors are regularly asked to gauge applicant sentiment during the application process, add a picklist field on the Individual Application object with a predefined list of engagement/satisfaction values. Or, if applicants are asked to provide feedback directly, create and email a form to applicants to request input.

Pros: Endless possibilities with customizing data model and structure, ability to report on custom objects and fields, ability to build a more refined or robust custom process around data points
Cons: Can sometimes be more robust than needed if reporting and analytics are not relevant (though I would typically challenge this sentiment)
Summary: For any data points that can be standardized across a team, this is the way to go.

Transitioning to Salesforce is also a great opportunity to think about which business processes really need to change, including what data points you can build a true data model around, as well as what you want to analyze and act on in the future.

JJ’s Final Note on Notes

There are so many nooks and crannies in Salesforce that it would be difficult to provide a list that truly covers all the options teams have to transition notes into Salesforce. My hope is that the options above are used as a kicking off point and to begin conversations around what really works best for your team. Generally, the flexible and unstructured nature of note-taking really means that every solution above has a place, and I would recommend checking all of these out to determine what works best for your business processes and needs.

Because of the infinite possibilities of Salesforce, I always recommend teams start out with a wish list of items before bringing in outside experts or consulting teams. If you’d like to discuss your team’s needs, book some time with me by scheduling an appointment.