Best Practice Importing Data to Salesforce

Assume you already know how to load data Salesforce. In this blog, we'll use Data Loader as tool to import to Account records.

1. Data Clean up
Before loading data to Salesforce, data steward need to prepare the data to make sure data is:

• Clean & no duplication
• Accurate & Reliable

Bad data will cause: 

• Decrease user adoption
• Unusable report
• Untrustworthy data
• Reduce Productivity
• Maintenance nightmare

It is suggest to clean the data before load to the system, take some efforts to get it clean and accurate, it will cost you more to clean the data if already loaded into system.

2. What to Clean

• Delete duplicate records
• Correct spelling and punctuations error
• Naming convention
• Make sure all required field is populated

3. Prepare Your Data

• Make sure all fields to follow naming convention, example: for country, use SG instead of Singapore or SGP. Same for the phone country code and area code
• Change row header match to field name, this will save you time and confirm it is the right mapping
• Set correct record ownership, add OwnerId column, make sure all record have the right OwnerId, you may need to use VLOOKUP() function if using Ms Excel to prepare data
• Split the data, if your Account have point to another Account, example: Parent Account, load account without Parent Account first, so you can get the Account Id 

4. Prepare Salesforce

• Check all unique values from source data map to Picklist field in Salesforce, make sure they are all exist in Picklist values, unless it is no longer use in the future
• It is good to store unique Id from the source data (if any), this will help you to confirm data is loaded correctly and your user may need this on transition period
• Check data visibility setting: Roles, Profiles, Sharing Rules

5. Load Data

• Test batch of 5 records only & verify it in a Sandbox instance
• Load the rest of records (exclude 5 records loaded in test batch)
• Optional: deactivate validation rule and workflow rule, this is depend on the need, example: you do not want workflow to trigger 1000 email alerts to Opportunity owner.
• If everything looking good in Sandbox, repeat the steps to Production

6. Make Data Clean and Valid

• Validation Rules
• Picklist, Multi-Picklist, Lookup fields
• Workflow Rules
• Formula Fields
• Record Type
• Page Layout with Required & Read-Only field
• Field-Level Security

Reference: Importing Data Overview