The real power of Salesforce … it’s a community
Mentor Match
An app that easily matches the skills, traits, and location of mentees with mentors while enabling feedback, reporting, and results.
The real power of Salesforce … it’s a community

About the App
I started the Merivis Foundation to help veterans learn Salesforce skills with the help of a personal coach. However, I needed a scalable way to match coaches with students based on key factors like location and trails, so I created this mentor matching app. As a bonus, the app allows reporting and a way to track the outcome of the engagement.



Directions
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Make a list of the factors that are important for matching mentors and mentees. What are the important factors to consider? In this recipe, we will use location, admin skills, developer skills, and branch of service.
Trailblazer NoteWrite down the factors you think are important. The reporting later will allow you to identify gaps, but try to get 85% of the way there.
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Create a custom object for the student and coach contacts.
Trailblazer NoteAlternatively, you can create a custom record type for contacts for both students and coaches leveraging the Contacts standard object that already comes with Salesforce.
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Estimate the weighting criteria and create matching score fields for each of your factors. If you are not sure, just make everything equal for now.
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Create a scoring formula that weights the factors of the coach and the student. If you’re not familiar with formula fields, try this trail.
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Create a “match” object. In my case, a “cohort” custom object was created to join students to coaches for each class. Make sure reporting is turned on so you can see how well your matches are performing.
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Use Process Builder to create processes around common tasks including notifying mentors and mentees of matches, follow-up emails, post-match surveys, or even multistep approvals.
Trailblazer NoteAlternatively, you can also use Flow Designer for larger workflows. Not sure if you should use Process Builder or Flow? Try this trail to see which is right for your app.
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Leverage reporting to measure mentor-mentee match success, your ongoing queue to determine what you may need in the future, but also follow-up and tracking of mentees’ success after the program. Check out this trail for more help on reporting.
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(Optional) Online submissions of mentors or mentees: Configure the application form you'll use using Web-to-Lead. Once configured, Salesforce will provide the HTML needed to embed this form into your website. Simple copy & paste this HTML into the web page where you want the application to appear.