Impact analysis is a process that helps your organization understand the potential consequences of making changes to your Salesforce environment. It involves identifying and assessing the impact of proposed changes on both Salesforce and outside of Salesforce. In this article, we'll explore why impact analysis is important and how to conduct it effectively.

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Why Impact Analysis is Important

Imagine this scenario: The Partner Relationship Team requests the addition of a picklist value to the Partner Type field on their Partner Signup Form, which is hosted on a PRM (Partner Relationship Management) system. When a partner submits the signup form, the data is sent to Salesforce as a lead. The Partner Relationship Manager asks you, the Salesforce admin, to add the picklist value to the Lead Type field. It seems like a simple enough task, right? You estimate it will take just 10 minutes, add the picklist value, and move on with your day.

However, the next day at work, you find yourself in a challenging situation:

1. Minimizing Risks: Everything seems to be in chaos. The Lead Type field is used extensively in Flows and Lead Assignment Rules, and the addition of the new picklist value has caused things to break. Not only do you need to fix the bugs, but you also have to track down the affected records and correct the data.
2. Maintaining System Integrity: Your Salesforce instance is integrated with Outreach, and because the picklist value was not added to Outreach, you are now experiencing sync errors. This highlights the importance of considering the impact of changes on connected systems.
3. Effective Communication: Sales team users reach out to you, expressing their frustration because partner leads are being incorrectly routed to them instead of the partnership team. This miscommunication and lack of proper impact analysis have led to confusion and disrupted workflows.
4. Efficient Resource Allocation: What initially seemed like a quick 10-minute task has now escalated into a 10-hour dumpster fire. Unfortunately, you have other projects and responsibilities on your plate, making it challenging to juggle everything simultaneously.

Hopefully, this scenario illustrated the importance of conducting a thorough impact analysis before making changes to your Salesforce environment.

How to Conduct Impact Analysis

1. Analyze Custom Fields: For custom fields, Salesforce provides a useful feature called "Where is this used?" It allows you to see all the places where a custom field is referenced, such as page layouts, reports, apex, validation rules, and flows. Carefully review the list of dependencies to understand whether your modifications will break any existing functionality or require updates to other parts of your Salesforce org. In the Partner Type picklist value example we used above, we need to review and update Lead Assignment Rules, Flows, and likely reports.
   

1. Utilize Third-Party Apps: Let’s be honest, ain’t nobody got time to manually review those standard fields. To analyze the impact of changes to standard fields, you can leverage free third-party applications like HappySoup or Salto (freemium). 

HappySoup is one of the OG "Where is this used?" for the standard field. It’s still my go-to in consulting if I just want a quick answer. (Psst, they don’t send you marketing emails.)

Salto is another great one! Unlike HappySoup, it doesn’t re-fetch the metadata every single time you authenticate. Plus it’s super handy for CPQ since it shows you the configuration data as well.

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2. Consider Integrations: Don't forget to assess the impact of changes on any integrations connected to your Salesforce environment. These are much harder to assess and rely heavily on your working knowledge and documentation. System Architecture Diagrams are often time super handy for this. 
3. Document Findings: Document the findings of your impact analysis, including the areas affected, potential risks, and mitigation strategies. This documentation serves as a reference point for stakeholders and helps ensure a smooth implementation of changes.
4. Collaborate with Stakeholders: Identify the individuals or teams who need to be involved in the change process, including those who should be consulted or informed about the changes. Engage with the relevant stakeholders throughout the impact analysis process. 
5. Develop in Sandbox: It's a common temptation to make seemingly small changes directly in the production environment, especially for experienced Salesforce admins. I fell into that trap many times. Sometimes I regret it, other times I REALLY regret it. Follow best practices and always develop in a sandbox. 
6. Test, test, and test some more: Before going live with your changes, make sure to test everything. Don’t forget to involve end users in the testing process because they are the ones who need to use the tool in their day-to-day!

There you have it! Hope this helps.