Admin Tools for Configuration Management

Admin Tools for Configuration Management

Purpose and Scope

CRM Administration is a challenging ride that primarily involves mapping your organization problems to CRM solutions, followed by efficient execution or "configuration" of those chosen solutions. At this point, a key factor to remember is that, it's an administrator's responsibility to not only create these useful configurations but also monitor their usage periodically, throughout their tenure as an admin. There could be workflows that are outdated, templates that fail to call the respective merge fields, and reports that are no longer valid.

Also, in case of multiple CRM administrators, there could be scenarios where Administrator A has configured settings for ad-hoc needs and these get abandoned when they leave. In such cases, it's all the more important to periodically take stock of which of these CRM settings are still useful and which are no longer necessary. If you do not clear out these junk configurations, you may end up with the following inconveniences.
  1. a system that no longer works as expected
  2. running out of limits for each configuration (example, workflows, templates, fields).
  3. breaks in your teams' functions
It is therefore essential to weed out unused/outdated configurations in your CRM system, and here's where Admin tools enter the picture. Admin Tools offers you a better interface to view a master list of configurations and delete the ones you don't need anymore. 

How Admin Tools Works

Admin tools currently lets you delete unused templates, custom views, workflow rules and reports in Zoho CRM.


Once you access Admin Tools, you will see a master list of all available configurations in the selected feature and module. 
For instance, here is a master list of all custom views in the Leads module.



You may delete the unused custom views in two ways. 
  1. Selecting configurations manually 
    This is ideal, when you know exactly which configurations you want to delete. For instance, you created a couple of custom view with wrong criteria by mistake. In this case, instead of manually deleting each view from the Custom Views section, you can access Admin Tools and delete these specific views by selecting the entries and deleting them. 
  2. Filtering configurations using criteria
    This is ideal, when you wish to delete a set of configurations that meet a certain criteria, but are not exactly sure of the names of the settings or the number. For example, you want to delete all configurations created on a specific date, or by a person. Then you may use criteria to filter these configurations and delete the settings in bulk. 

Selecting Configurations Manually 

  1. Go to Setup > Data Administration > Admin Tools. 
  2. Click Get Started. 
  3. Select the feature in which you would like to view and delete configurations and the applicable module. For example, Custom Views in the Leads module. 
  4. Select the ones you don't need anymore and click Delete Custom Views to delete them in permanently 

Filtering Configurations Using Criteria 

    1. In the Admin Tools page, once you have selected the feature and module, click Add Criteria. 
    2. Enter the suitable criteria and values. For instance, if you want to filter out Custom Views that were last accessed a year ago.
      Then you can use the Last Accessed date as part of the criteria and get this done. All you need to do is choose "Last Accessed date is before a certain date value."
    3. Click Show Result. This action will fetch the complete list of custom views that were last accessed before 11 March 2021, as per this example. 

      For instance, in this example, you see some "untitled" views and some with random names. These could be junk settings that may have been created as part of a test run and ignored later. However the presence of these settings could be a hindrance for your processes and mess with your feature limits. Now, after you have filtered these views using the "last accessed" criteria, you may either select all views or select the ones of your choice and click Delete Custom Views. 

    Criteria in Admin Tools — Examples and Suggestions 

    The criteria available for you to filter configurations to delete them will vary based on your choice of feature and module.
    For instance, the criteria available for Templates is different from those in Custom Views. 
    Following are the features and associated criteria you can choose from. 

    Templates 
    Custom Views
    Workflows
    Reports

    1. Created By
    2. Created Time
    3. Folder Name
    4. Last Modified
    5. Last Used
    6. Modified By
    7. Subject 
    8. Template Name

    1. Created By
    2. Last Accessed
    3. Last Modified
    4. Modified By
    5. Last Used
    6. View Name

    1. Created By
    2. Created Time
    3. Execute On
    4. Last Executed
    5. Last Modified
    6. Modified By
    7. Rule Name 
    8. Status


    Depending on your specific need, you can choose criteria of your choice to filter the right set of configurations to delete. Following are some examples in this context that you can often come in handy for any CRM admin.  

    a) Time based criteria

    In any CRM account, there will be a need to use time based criteria to filter out unused configurations. Anything that was last used a long time ago is a good candidate for removal from the system. The "Last used" time factor can be used frequently for all settings — Custom Views, Reports, Workflows and Templates. 


    a) People based criteria

    In another scenario, you may have the need to filter settings done by a particular user. Example, say a user called Amelia Burrows is quitting the organization and you need to delete all Custom Views made by Amelia, you can use the filter "Created by" and choose the user. Custom Views that match the said criteria get displayed. You can select them all and delete them.


    Similarly you can use the most suitable set of criteria to filter out configurations of your choice and delete them. "Last Executed On", "View Name", "Folders" — are a good set of criteria for workflows, custom views and templates, respectively. 

    History of Deletion

    You can also view the history of all deletions done via the Admin tool by feature, and by time.


    Note:
    1. This feature will be rolled out in a phase-wise manner, starting this week (22nd March, 2022). 
    2. Enterprise Edition and above. Not available in Trial Editions.
    3. The configurations removed via Admin Tools are deleted forever.
    4. System-defined configurations will not be displayed in the Admin Tools for deletion. 


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