Dashboards for Platform Users

Here is another issue that can be difficult to figure out.

We have a lot of clients using Platform licenses for many of their users. This is a good deal for a client because they get all the power of Salesforce Enterprise edition for well under half the price. Enterprise Edition is about $125/user/mo. The Platform Edition is a lot less - about $50/user/mo. I've seen people get it for as low as $20/user/mo if they worked a deal with Salesforce.

The limitation of the platform edition is that you don't get the Salesforce "Applications" like the Sales Cloud (Leads & Opportunities), the Marketing system (Campaigns), the Support Cloud (Cases, Assets), etc. So this can be a significant limitation depending on your needs - but for those who don't need those objects, you can save a lot by using custom objects rather than the salesforce standard objects. BTW, you do get Accounts, Contacts, Reports, Dashboards, Chatter, and a whole bunch of the other Enterprise level systems with the Platform such as workflow rules, approvals, the API, full visualforce capability, custom profiles, record types, etc - so it can be a great option if it fits your needs.

But there is one little thing that I kept running into that I finally solved: Platform Users running Dashboards.

In researching this issue I found out that people on the forums simply say: platform users can't use dashboards - BUT THAT ISN'T TRUE!

It's actually pretty simple - if you want a platform user to be able to see a dashboard, the running user must also be a platform user. Simple as that. Make a new dashboard. Set a platform user as the running user. Build your reports and dashboard elements.

If you need help on any salesforce.com issue, feel free to contact me at www.snapptraffic.com. Our consulting services at Snapptraffic Consulting are geared towards helping the salesforce.com customer get the most out of their system. From troubleshooting to full scale implementation and development - we can help.