DemandTools is one of the most in-demand tools for our Salesforce data management.
Overall Satisfaction with DemandTools
As an organization, we use almost every feature of DemandTools on a daily basis. My personal use involves frequent data manipulation using MassImpact, MassEffect, and FIndIDs. I also use it to seed test data between Salesforce environments and do ad-hoc object backups using the BulkBackup. It is honestly difficult to cover all the use cases in only 200 words, but recently we had to change a number of tasks "Assigned to" values, as well as "Assigned to" values on a related custom object. MassImpact makes this easy and efficient by letting me preview the changes before loading and giving me the option to only edit changed records; this is especially helpful in a very active and highly automated SF org because many bulk loads/edits involve record locks and timeouts. And validation rules sometimes get in the way of data cleansing, so being able to quickly re-run failed records while the rule is temporarily deactivated (or making mass changes to address the validation) is awesome. DemandTools defaults to offering all fields on related lookup when working with a single object. It is also the simplest way I have found to restore large batches of deleted records without having to reload them, which is critical when there are deleted related records or data that can only be retrieved from the original record.
Pros
- Restores large batches of deleted records.
- Allows mass changes to entire objects or subsets of records based on declarative queries (no SOQL required).
- When mass changing User SFIDs, allows me to select the user's name without having to look up their ID.
- Provides a very powerful and convenient way to match record and lookup fields to SFIDs to prepare data for import.
- Powerful duplicate management tools.
Cons
- I would love to be able to batch/bulk export "IsDeleted" records. (Right now I believe I need to use APEX Data Loader to do that.)
- The user interface looks a little dated, which is a bit of a trivial complaint, but it betrays the technical quality of the tool.
- I would love to have the ability to put a query/filter on the BulkBackup (might be in MassBackup, but I use the 64-bit version, which doesn't allow MassBackup). I think something like what is in the MassImpact conditions would make this a much simpler tool for quick exports as opposed to using SF reports.
- We used to be eligible for a free license, but when that changed, it was almost a "no-brainer." We'd love to see the no-cost model re-instated for non-profits, but in our case, it is easily worth the annual cost.
- I would estimate that each of our DemandTools users saves approximately 100-200 hours annually using this tool, which easily covers the cost of the tool.
- Training costs are next to zero for this tool due to the guided declarative interface.
I have also used the free Salesforce tools (Workbench and Apex Data Loader). The only thing those tools provide (that I use) over DemandTools is querying (Workbench) and exporting (Apex Data Loader) of deleted records. DemandTools is a superior tool in terms of features and usability for uploading new or manipulating existing data. (It obviously also includes dupe management tools that Workbench and ADL don't, but I don't use those features personally).
Comments
Please log in to join the conversation