Data Spaces -- Making 'em easier to build

Related products: None

Please buy a round of drinks for the team who built Data Spaces -- they make [i]so much possible that was out of reach before. In just this first week of using them, I've had reason to build them for NPS Survey Responses, Opportunity Field History, CTAs, and Opportunity Products.





There are some things I'm discovering would make them work even better:




  • 'Favorite' fields: I find myself adding the same Account and Customer Info fields to every data space, since they hold info about the customer's type, tier, products, contract dates, and health. It would be great for these to always be more readily available. There are many ways to skin that cat, such as: making them always available in the Report/Rule/etc. when there's an Account ID in the Data Space; or making them appear at the top of the Data Space builder's list of fields; or putting them in a collapsed section within the Data Space builder's list of fields with an "Add All" button

  • When I'm building a Data Space from a very detail-level object -- like NPSSurvey Response, or Opportunity Product -- I have to drill several times to get to fields on, say, the Account. It would be nice if the search box for field names also returned results from within the objects that I haven't explicitly expanded.

  • There are times when I'm mousing through the list of fields, and the Add Field and Add Filter buttons are blocked by the Mac scrollbar, as shown here: https://cl.ly/3T0N0N161q0R

  • It's a chore to rename the fields to something that indicates which object they come. It would be better if the field picker in Reports, Rules, etc. were a hierarchical set of submenus, so that I can navigate from object to object; or, if that field picker indicated which object that field was from.



  • I'm sure that this goes without saying, but it will be great to have Data Spaces in Vault! 🙂

  • As I build out an array of Data Spaces, I'm going to lose track of what on earth I built them for. In the Data Space Manager, it would be great to see [i]where each Data Space has been used.

  • When I'm using a Data Space, and I realize that I forgot to add a field, it's a chore to open a new tab, navigate to Data Space Manager, find that Data Space, and click Edit. Instead, it would be great if there were a 1-click hop from the Report/Rule/etc. directly to the editing interface for that particular Data Space.

  • As a SQL expert, it's intuitive to me that certain Data Spaces will yield multiple "copies" of the same record. (For example, if I create a Data Space on Opportunity Product, and then create a report based on it that lists out just the Opportunity Name, then the same Opportunity can be listed repeatedly, once for each Product that's attached to it.) I really don't have a solution to propose here, but some sort of warning would be helpful for folks less experienced with constructing database queries.
Thanks again!
Hey Seth, great to see that you have adopted this feature with gusto ! Rest assured, the team will get their rounds of drinks 🙂.





Regarding the enhancements you mentioned, 3 of them are already on our radar to be done over the next couple of quarters. The rest are all really great requests, which I will try and accommodate in our roadmap. I will let you know when they are picked up. I will also follow-up on your use-cases over a call if you're okay to make your experience better. Sounds good?





Thanks again.
Sounds great! Thanks for the reply, Sudarshan.
Seth, your encouraging remarks really inspire us.  Thanks for taking the time to share your successes and also your input.    
I would like to see a drag and drop functionality added. It would be easier to drag a field over into a field or filter instead of having to click to add it.
Hey Lane, I will keep your thought in mind and see if we can include a drag/drop feature in upcoming releases. Thanks !
Just getting my feet wet with Data Spaces, but already I see this will be such a valuable feature! Agree with Seth's comments here on making things easier to create, especially bullets 1, 4 and 6!





I was hoping this might help me solve the problem of trying to associate users on the Account Team Members object to Customers so that we can automate workflow (CTAs, Relationships, etc) to other account team members (besides the CSM) on an account, but I cannot see how to make that work.
Jeff, what happens when you build a Data Space starting with the Account Team Member object (or whatever its technical name is in salesforce)? I would imagine that you would build that, and then navigate to all the Account and Customer Info data that you would need in the Data Space as well.
Hey Seth! It's funny...no sooner did I post this, than I realized what I was missing/doing wrong. (I wish there was a delete or undo option on this message board sometimes lol)





I am still in the process of building, so I will let you know how it turns out.  
haha super 😉 good luck!
It. Friggin. Worked!





I was able to trigger a CTA and assign to a member of the account team who is NOT the CSM and not directly attached to the Customer Info or Account record!!
SEE?!1?!






Latching on here to also say that I'm also loving data spaces!! 





One small tweak that would make things easier is to have the button to add a new field always on the right when hovering over a field to add instead of the filter button showing up on the right if it's available. It would be quicker to add multiple fields if I was able to scroll and not need to move the mouse left and right. 





Maybe I'm just being lazy, but I think it would make things smoother 🙂
Glad that you are using Data Spaces!  Important to hear the user feedback.  Definitely want it to be as easy as possible. Thanks.