Before you start cleaning up fields, permissions, automation, or imports — get a working picture of what exists, what is risky, and what needs review first.
Read-only diagnostics · Review-ready workbooks · No package install · No Connected App
Most Salesforce admins, RevOps operators, and consultants inherit at least one org in their career. It arrives with a handoff document that is either missing, incomplete, or six months out of date — and a list of requests that assume you already know how everything works.
The instinct is to start fixing things. The smarter move is to get visibility first.
This checklist gives you a practical first-pass review path for fields, permissions, automation, and object-readiness before cleanup or change work begins.
This is a first-week survival guide for the person who just picked up the keys. If you need a repeatable, structured assessment you can run and hand off as a deliverable, use the inherited Salesforce org assessment framework.
The first problem with an inherited org is that you do not know what you do not know. Cleaning up a field that is still referenced in automation, changing access that a business-critical process relies on, or importing records before you understand the object constraints — these are the mistakes that happen when you skip the diagnostic step.
Before cleanup or change work starts, build a working picture of four things:
None of this needs to take weeks. But it does need to happen before you start making changes.
Before any deep review, spend the first half hour building orientation, not making changes. The goal is to learn how large the org is, who depends on it, and where the obvious risk sits — so the rest of your review has context.
The fastest way to break an inherited org is to act on something that looks unused but is quietly load-bearing. These are the changes to hold until you have validated them with the right owners.
Treat everything here as a review candidate, not a delete instruction. For fields specifically, fill rate is only the first signal — see why fill rate alone is not enough and why you should review field usage by record type before acting.
Field bloat is one of the most consistent patterns in mature Salesforce orgs. Fields accumulate from old projects, departed admins, integrations that were turned off, and reporting requests that were never cleaned up afterward.
The challenge is that a field can look abandoned while still carrying data, referenced in a formula or validation rule, or visible to users on a layout they rarely open. Review candidates need validation before any action is taken.
Relevant Workbook
Field & Object Audit surfaces field utilization, fill rates, layout coverage, and cleanup candidates across selected objects in a review-ready workbook.
Permission sprawl accumulates quietly. Profiles and permission sets get copied, stacked, and modified over time. Users who changed roles keep access they should not have. Permission sets get assigned by exception and never reviewed.
An access review is typically the first area to surface real risk in an inherited org. Permission findings require business context, especially for sensitive data and external users — this is a first-pass diagnostic, not a full security assessment.
Relevant Workbook
Permission & FLS Audit maps profiles, permission sets, object permissions, field-level security, user assignments, and access-risk findings into a downloadable review workbook.
The question "what automation is running on this object?" sounds simple. In most inherited orgs, it is not. Flows, Apex triggers, validation rules, approval processes, and workflow rules can all be present at the same time on the same object — sometimes covering overlapping or conflicting logic.
This is not about tracing every dependency in detail. It is about knowing the landscape so you can make changes with awareness of what automation exists and where review is needed.
Relevant Workbook
Automation Inventory catalogs available Salesforce automation metadata across Flows, Apex classes, triggers, validation rules, and approval processes into a review-ready workbook.
If your handoff includes a data migration, a UAT cycle, or any record creation into production objects, there is one more check worth running before you start.
Required fields, restricted picklists, record types, and active validation rules can block record creation or create downstream data-quality issues if they are not reviewed before import or test-data setup. Finding these constraints in advance is significantly less expensive than debugging a failed import or a UAT cycle that produces unexpected results.
Relevant Workbook
Automation Impact Awareness analyzes selected objects to surface record-readiness factors such as required fields, required lookups, record types, restricted picklists, validation rules, Apex triggers, and flow metadata where available.
Fields, permissions, and automation are the core of a first-pass review, but they do not exist in isolation. Reports, external integrations, and managed packages all consume the same metadata — and they are a common reason a change that looks contained turns out not to be.
You do not need a complete dependency map on day one. You need enough awareness to avoid breaking a dashboard an executive reads every morning or an integration that syncs records overnight.
The accumulated weight of these dependencies is what makes inherited orgs hard to change safely. For a broader view of where that weight builds up, see the Salesforce technical debt assessment.
A diagnostic pass is not the same as cleanup. It is the foundation for cleanup.
Once you have a working picture of fields, permissions, automation, and object constraints, you can:
KeelCadence workbooks are designed to support that review process: findings, evidence, recommendations, and remediation tracking in a format you can share with admins, managers, consultants, or project teams. If you are a consultant or fractional admin inheriting a client org, see how to use these as client discovery workbooks.
A condensed version of the full first-pass review, in the order most teams work through it.
Capture every item as a finding with evidence and an owner — not as an action already taken.
You can run a first-pass review by hand. A diagnostic workbook is worth it when the org is large enough, or the stakes are high enough, that you need a repeatable, shareable artifact instead of scattered notes.
KeelCadence diagnostics are read-only, with no package install and no Connected App — see the diagnostic tool security checklist for the full trust model, or browse the resources hub for related guides.
Start with visibility. Review fields, permissions, automation, and object-readiness before making cleanup or configuration changes. The goal is to understand what exists, what is risky, and what needs review first.
No. Unused or low-usage fields are review candidates, not automatic delete instructions. Validate with business owners, reporting owners, automation owners, and integration owners before removing fields.
Review profiles, permission sets, object permissions, field-level security, user assignments, and over-privileged access patterns. Permission findings require business context, especially for sensitive data and external users.
Start by cataloging available automation metadata across Flows, Apex, triggers, validation rules, and approval processes. Use the inventory to identify review areas, modernization candidates, and ownership gaps.
Review required fields, required lookups, record types, restricted picklists, validation rules, triggers, formula/read-only fields, and flow metadata where available. These items can affect record creation, updates, UAT, and bulk imports.
Flows, Apex triggers, validation rules, approval processes, and workflow rules can run on the same object at the same time, sometimes with overlapping or conflicting logic. Inventorying automation first means you change fields, permissions, or records with awareness of what depends on them, instead of discovering a dependency after something breaks.
Document what you reviewed, the findings and supporting evidence, the review candidates that still need business validation, the owners who need to sign off, and the order you plan to work in. A review-ready workbook keeps findings, evidence, recommendations, and review tracking in one shareable artifact so the next person has a starting point.
Start with the read-only Field & Object Audit to surface field inventory, fill rates, hidden populated fields, and cleanup candidates in one review-ready workbook, then layer in the permission, automation, and impact workbooks. See the free on-screen summary before purchase.
Opens audit.keelcadence.com. Best run from desktop, since the diagnostic uses your active Salesforce browser session. On mobile, view the sample workbook or save this page for later.
Read-only · No package install · No Connected App setup · No Salesforce writes
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