How to Effectively Use the Salesforce AppExchange

The Salesforce AppExchange is a free, critical resource accessible to the entire salesforce community. Let’s examine how to effectively use the Salesforce AppExchange to find new solutions.

What Is the Salesforce AppExchange?

Primarily, the Salesforce AppExchange is an online marketplace offering cloud-computing applications and consulting services. The AppExchange empowers businesses to extend the functionality of their Salesforce Platform©. You’ll find 5,000 solutions, 80,000 peer reviews, and 6 million customer installs to fill any, every business need. 

Additionally, the AppExchange houses native solutions, tools like Accounting Seed that are fully built on Salesforce. Being built on the same architecture, means these apps should be your prime consideration for easy system management. Let’s look at how you can refine your search and explore the solution you need. 

How to Use the Salesforce AppExchange?

The main way that Salesforce users use the AppExchange is to find apps created by other Salesforce users that would fit their needs. Here are some ways you can navigate and use the site.

Search 

To search the Salesforce solutions, you simply start at the Salesforce AppExchange home page. Once there, you’ll see many technology categories you can choose from such Sponsored solutions, Product Collections, and others. On the right, you’ll see a column of categories like finance, sales, customer service, and other types of software. Simply click on the type of app you need. 

Having trouble finding a solution? You can team up with an expert via the site. Just move to consultants and you can contact Salesforce professionals to answer your questions. Additionally, you can enhance your search process by validating apps by accessing reviews and demos.

View Reviews and Demos

If you’re curious about a certain app, be sure to look over its reviews. To ensure you can make confident decisions in your purchase, the AppExchange houses thousands of legitimate user reviews of the product in question.  You can also get an idea of what other real people think of the product, its effectiveness, and its features. Once you click onto the details page of the app, you’ll also find a section featuring a demo of the app. These demos are important for showing you how the solution looks, works, and impacts your Salesforce experience. Take advantage of this feature and if it looks promising you’ll be able to try it out further.

Install Apps

Salesforce admins can choose to install an app published to the AppExchange. Installing a published app from the AppExchange is safe and simple. Depending on the solution, you’ll likely want to be in touch with the developer to ensure pricing and proper adoption. The contact information is available on the site as well. 

Who can Use Salesforce AppExchange

Anyone can browse and test drive any of the AppExchange listings. However, only Salesforce administrators and users with the “Download AppExchange Packages” permissions can install the AppExchange apps. To publish an app on the AppExchange, a user must have “Create AppExchange packages” and  “Upload AppExchange packages” permissions. Without the proper permissions, you will not be able to install or publish any apps.