Chrome Extensions for Salesforce - A comprehensive review

Evgeny Azimzhanov works on the team at Aquiva Labs. They build customer-centric cloud apps on several platforms - especially Salesforce. Evgeny shares his experience trying a variety of Chrome extensions (and the pros and cons of each) below (hopefully some of these tools will help greatly increase your productivity on Salesforce):

Asking several colleagues, who are experienced with Salesforce.com, I was surprised that many of them are using 1-2, and sometimes even 3 Chrome extensions for Salesforce. While quickly checking Chrome store, I found at least 20 extensions which could increase your Salesforce.com productivity. I divided them into 3 groups:

Best - these drastically increase effectiveness of every consultant/developer

Pretty Useful - these, in some circumstances, could spare you a pretty good amount of time

Less Useful - these either don’t work properly, or aren’t really useful. Let’s take a quick look at my findings - hopefully these are beneficial to other Salesforce community members out there!

THE BEST:

1. Salesforce navigator

What it gives you:

• Fast access to most Salesforce pages(i.e. - manage users, list of records of an object, list of apex objects etc.)
• Dynamical creation of fields via special typed-based commands(example of command: cf Account newFieldName text 100)
• “Login as” function via special type-based command(example of command: login as Phil Ivey)

My take: Simple must-have for every consultant/administrator/developer.

2. Salesforce Inspector

What it gives you:

• Allows you to review by all record’s fields (analogue to workbench), that are available for current user.
• Allows you quickly (in two clicks) check the list of child records for current record, defining needed fields and conditions.
• Allows you to show API-names of fields by hovering on them.
• Allows you to import/export records from/into EXCEL/CSV/JSON

My Take: Adds small, sliding menu to the right that contains several spectacular functions that drastically increase efficiency of every developer/consultant. A Must-have.

03. Apex debugger

What it gives you:

• Converts standard, plain Salesforce debug logs into a more convenient format. Highlights User_Debug, SOQL query, Exceptions etc.
• Adds hotkeys for fast access to most used pages of Salesforce: Shift + D for Debug logs, Shift + L for last Debug Log, Shift + U - to manage users, Shift + P - manage Profiles and etc. Try it yourself! 🙂
• Allows you to hide user’s methods and system methods.

My Take: Debug logs become readable. With a pretty dark background and neat white-green-yellow text,I’ve almost forgotten how standard debug logs look like now!

04. Salesforce Colored Favicons

What it gives you:

• Replaces color of standard blue icon(in chrome’s browser tab) to color that depends on org’s server. Adds “S” letter for sandboxes.

My take: A simple extension that raises efficiency when working across multiple orgs. Allows you to understand which tab contains which org, and whether it is a sandbox or production. org Also allows you to separate salesforce.success.com/developer.salesforce.com tabs (that have same blue icon as your orgs) from orgs.

05. Salesforce logins

What it gives you:

• Login into org with one click
• Login into org in incognito mode
• Import/Export of your orgs credentials with XML/JSON.
• Protect your credentials with pin-code.

My take: This extension is very useful to anyone. The more orgs you have, the more useful this tool becomes; it’s like a dream come true when you have lots of orgs to juggle.

THE PRETTY USEFUL

06. SF Quick Metadata Lookup.

What it gives you:

Fast access to needed Class/VF Page/Trigger/VF Component/Custom object/Custom setting/Static resource/User

My take: Adds a small, sliding menu to the left, that allows you to open a needed object/element of control. Good in use together with Salesforce Navigator. A small disadvantage is that you can’t access the menu by shortcut and it’s not possible to search through all elements simultaneously.

07. Salesforce Tool

What it gives you:

• On Debug logs page adds button “Delete ALL debug logs”
• On Debug logs page adds button “Add current user to logging”
• On the page of a class adds button “Show code coverage”
• Allows you to find selected record in context of Salesforce - but, this was not something that worked correctly when I tried it.My take: Small extension that makes several, seldom used operations a little bit more convenient.

08. Salesforce Admin Check All

What it gives you:

• Adds “check-all” checkboxes to several places(i.e. to Object permissions/Field permissions in Profile).

My Take: A small, but very useful extension for consultants

09. Grey Tab

What it gives you:

• Allows to view current sessionId, orgId, orgDomen.
• Allows to view short information about a record(CRED availiability, Field Name/Field Label/Field Value)

My take: By clicking on extension’s icon, provides the user with some brief info about a record. Provides less info than Salesforce Inspector, but could be useful if you don’t really need all fields on an object, and want just to check several fields quickly.

10. Salesforce API Fieldnames

What it gives you:

• On a record, ability to check API-names of ALL fields by clicking an extension’s icon

My take: Although it serves a single function that, this is periodically useful - especially in cases when an object has many fields and we know only the field’s API-name.

11. Record and Metadata Comparator for Salesforce

What it gives you:

• Ability to compare ANY two records of ANY org. Shows differences in metadata and differences in fields values.

My take: A unique extension that could be very helpful during tests or debugging.

12. Salesforce Hotkeys (Beta)

What it gives you:

• Allows to use hotkeys for most useful operations - Save/Edit/Account List/Reports and so on.

My take: Must-have for those who like to use hotkeys in order to increase their efficiency. Could be used also by non-consultant and non-developer users.

13. Salesforce Advanced Code Searcher

What it gives you:

• Fast access to needed Class/VF Page/Trigger/VF Component/Custom object/Custom setting/Static resource/User/ E-mail template

My take: Same functionality as Salesforce’s Quick metadata lookup, but with a slightly different interface. Viewable only in setup, and adds access to e-mail templates (a capability which Salesforce Quick metadata lacks).

14. Salesforce Debug Logs Analyzer

What it gives you:

• Filters logs by log type Searches text in a current log

My take: Pretty useful, but is unstable with the Apex Debugger extension, therefore not really useful. Also, be aware this tool is case sensitive, so if you type Debug instead of DEBUG - it’ll show nothing.

THE LESS USEFUL

15. Salesforce Developer Tool Suite

Neat, well-written tool, but I didn’t find as much utility as I had hoped when considering how I would use it in my day-to-day work. I also noted some odd behavior (eg., on “events” tab nothing’s shown). Not useful to work with debug logs, since shows only limits, and sometimes a random part of code.

16. Notify!

Notifies a Salesforce user in browser that a record was changed. The huge disadvantage and a main reason I found it less useful - you need to install an application from AppExchange, configure it, then install this extension (which is not free) - and only then you’ll be ready to use it.

17. Run Force.com SOQL Paginated

Allows you to execute SOQL requests in the window of this extension and export them into a .csv. The extension’s good, but you can get the same (and more) functionality from Salesforce inspector.

18. Salesforce.com Sandbox Favicon Extension

Before creation of Salesforce Colored Favicons - this extension was invaluable. But, as Salesforce Colored Favicons now provides customization of favicons this extension has lost its utility.

19. SOQL Extractor and Analyzer for Salesforce

Based on the description and screenshots, this could prove a very useful application. But, it was difficult to install and configure, making it much less useful and it didn’t work for me at all.