Organized and secure file sharing on Salesforce Community by Bridgepointe

Last updated on Oct 19, 2023

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About Bridgepointe

Bridgepointe Technologies is the nation’s leading tech advisory firm that helps drive transformation and create faster time to value. The company, which offers a range of tech advisory services, has been growing quickly and is focused on delivering innovative tools for its team, strategists & clients. As part of that focus, both the internal & external teams at the company use Salesforce and SharePoint on a daily basis.

Bridgepointe has a network of agencies and independent strategists who work with clients to help them with the entire lifecycle of their technology investments. These individuals are granted access to Bridgepointe data through the Salesforce community portal, allowing them to view specific deal & company records. Engineers, who are internal Salesforce users, work together with external strategists on this data. A seamless SharePoint experience is necessary, as much of this collaboration involves working on files.

Process Before

The process of collaborating on files between strategists and engineers used to rely heavily on email. However, this led to cumbersome, time consuming & sometimes insecure file sharing practices.

Cumbersome

In the past, engineers and strategists collaborated on files through email. Typically, the engineer would maintain the file locally. The file would frequently be updated and sent back and forth as an email attachment. Improving the experience for both engineers and strategists was identified as a must in order streamline the conversation and eliminate email overwhelm.

Unorganized

In addition, due to the large number of engineers, an unstructured file hierarchy was created for company administrators to manage. Finding relevant files in this unorganized folder jungle took a lot of time.

CloudFiles Implementation

Bridgepointe utilized several CloudFiles features to streamline their process. These included a widget for easy file viewing & editing, access control management for community files, flow components to automate folder processes, and file analytics for added insight.

As part of its offering, CloudFiles has exposed a simple lightning web component on both internal and community records. With this widget, engineers and strategists can see SharePoint files in the connected folder directly from the records. They can also upload files into it and preview them right there. A simple button for strategists enables them to create and connect these folders dynamically on the records when needed.

Access Control for community users

Internal engineers have additional control over which files they want to be accessible from community portal. They can decide this on a granular level, for example, granting read access to one file while granting write access to another. Strategists only see the folders for the deals they have access to, and they only see the files that they have access to, which removes any potential security threats.

Flows for folder hierarchy

The Bridgepointe admin has disabled the ability to manually create folders and has instead provided predefined buttons to create them. These buttons trigger flow-based automations in Salesforce that create the folders in the correct nested hierarchy. For example, a company folder would be created under the strategist, and a deal folder would be created under the respective company. This approach enforces a clean folder hierarchy that cannot be disrupted by individual users.

Analytics retrieval for strategists

Strategists share the final versions of these files with prospects. Instead of sharing them as email attachments, they now share them as CloudFiles links that are easily accessible from the community portal. These links collect detailed and drill-down analytics, which are visible from the community portal as well as internal records. Thus, admins, engineers, and strategists all have visibility into content consumption.

Process After

With various CloudFiles components implemented, the process now runs smoothly. Engineers and strategists can use simple buttons to create folders and upload files. Plus, engineers can control file access from records, and both parties can collaborate on files and receive live updates from each other without the need for emails.

Folder Hierarchy

Engineers create folders for agencies and strategists by clicking a simple button on the respective Salesforce record. The flows are intelligent, meaning that an engineer can click this button on the strategist level and the flow will ensure that the agency folder already exists and is connected.

Strategists can create bottom-level folders for deals and companies. Once again, the intelligent flows ensure that all respective top-level folders are created when an strategist tries to create a bottom-level folder.

File Collaboration

Both engineers and strategists can upload files into these folders. Engineers can also choose which files to show to the strategists. Both parties can update files, and the changes are instantly synced with SharePoint. This allows both parties to collaborate on files in real-time.

Strategists can create publicly shareable links of files from the portal itself. They can add security settings such as expiry, password, or email collection. These links can then be shared with clients. When clients view the files, details such as views, downloads, page-wise time spent, etc., are displayed on their portal.

Benefits

The smooth process has proven beneficial for all stakeholders involved. Engineers have greater control, strategists have greater insights, and admins have greater peace of mind.

For engineers

Engineers have stopped sending files from emails. They no longer need to search for old attachments to update or send new ones, even when there's a minor change. Instead, they can simply update their locally synced documents in the appropriate folders, and the strategist will immediately receive the latest file from their portal. This saves them a lot of time managing the numerous files they deal with every day.

For strategists

Strategists can enjoy the same benefits of file organization and easy access through the community portal. Moreover, the analytics adds a layer of insightfulness to their own sales process. View, download and page-wise time spent data is often useful for focused follow-ups. The need for this analytics keeps them coming back to the community portal, making adoption quick and easy for both internal and external teams.

For admins

Thanks to the automated and well-integrated process, admins have streamlined the folder structure and improved overall security. The entire folder hierarchy is managed through flow components, leading to zero stray folders. There is no need to provide SharePoint access to outside strategists, as everything can now be managed through Salesforce community portal. Moreover, the analytics layer always keeps them updated on content consumption.

About Christina

Christina Andrus is a Salesforce administrator at Bridgepointe Technologies. She has been instrumental in setting up this implementation and rolling this out. She could quickly understand the flow actions and widget options that CloudFiles offers and complete a seemingly large implementation in weeks.