Welcome to this step-by-step tutorial on making the best use of your evaluation period. We're very excited that you decided to try Pharos and we'd love to show you around! 

 

Prerequisites 

1. Make sure you have the necessary permissions to perform package installs and configuration. Pharos configuration requires the following permissions:

• Customize Application
• See All Data

Ideally, your profile is System Administrator, or some version of it that's close to a full admin.

2. If you do not have the necessary level of access, please reach out to your Salesforce admin so they can assist you with this process.

 

Let's Go!

As you know, Pharos is a native application that runs on your salesforce instance. Your first order of business is to decide which org to install the app to. 

Below are the installation options, each detailed with a set of steps to be performed in order. Once you've completed all the steps, feel free to skip the rest of this section and proceed to the next phase.

Note: The higher up in the list you are the better the evaluation experience. We highly recommend option (2) if option (1) is out of question.

 

1. Install Pharos Into Your Production Instance 😎

ETA: 10 minutes

Pharos is running on hundreds of productions orgs to date and chances are it will run smoothly on yours. This option is especially great if you're standing up a brand new org or simply have the authority to install applications in prod. In absence of the above we recommend option (2).

To proceed with this option simply do the following:

• Install and Configure Pharos in your production org by following the steps here.

 

2. Install Pharos in a Sandbox

ETA: 10-20 minutes

This is a more realistic option for most and provides real live production experience while eliminating the risks of physically running the app on your prod instance. The disclaimer is that we won't be able to track all production errors, just the more common ones. To proceed with this option, follow the steps below:

1. Install and Configure Pharos in your sandbox org by following the steps here.
2. Setup a live error feed from production as described in these steps. (Optional) 
3. Install Pharos Error Generator and simulate errors as described here.

 

3. Install Pharos in a Developer Edition Org

ETA: 10-20 minutes

We can only recommend this option if you want to try out our logging framework. Feel free to experiment with the code/flow logging as much as you need. 

Note: chances are that a dev org will work fine for all of your other needs, but you should know that some of the automated error capture functionality that Pharos provides may be impacted in these environments. For example, we cannot guarantee that the Error Generator will always work correctly.

1. Install and Configure Pharos in your developer org by following the steps here.
2. Setup a live error feed from production as described in these steps. (Optional) 
3. Install Pharos Error Generator and simulate errors as described here. (Optional) 
4. Explore our logging framework and deploy Pharos Triton.

 

Help, I'm Stuck!

No trouble, we are here to help. There are 3 ways you can reach us with questions:

1. Send an email to support@pharos.ai providing your Salesforce Organization Id and any screenshots or necessary details in the email.
2. Reach out via our support chat on the website by pressing the blue Help button on the bottom left.
3. Use the support chat from Pharos Admin if you've gotten that far. The chat is accessible via the same blue button on the bottom left of the Admin interface. 

We'll try to be online for you as much as possible but in the event that we do go to sleep, drop us a message via the chat and we'll reach back out via email.

 

I'm Done With the Installation, What's Next?

Great job! Now that we have everything in order, we can move on to the fun stuff.

If you installed in production or an org with a live production error feed, at this point you can expect to see some errors, though perhaps not immediately. The amount and frequency of error logs generated depends on the level of customization of your org and the overall "traffic" of users. Smaller orgs with few customizations will generally see less errors.

Check the Logs and Issues tabs to view the details. Don't forget to refresh the dashboard on Pharos Home tab! It's a great tool for keeping an eye out for daily problems. You should expect to see at least a couple of errors within a week. If you don't see any Logs or Issues after a week please reach out. 

If you've got live errors from production, it's also a good idea to subscribe to the Pharos dashboard.  To do that check out the steps below:

 

For more information on Logs and Issues please refer to the following videos:

• Log Details
• Issue Tracker Overview

Pharos Error Generator

If you're either waiting for errors or chose not to set up a live production error feed, you can also explore Pharos by simulating errors with the help of the mighty Error Generator. This nifty little tool is especially useful for seeing notifications (detailed in the next section) in action.

 

Once you feel like you've got the hang of Logs and Issues, let's move on to alerting.

 

Houston, We Have a Problem... Getting Notified

Notifications and alerts are powerful tools to stay informed about problems. Don't take our word for it, though. We'd love for you to experience this in action. Luckily, this is very easy to configure once Pharos is able to connect to your Slack or MS Teams. Start with the first article listed below. If you'd like a deeper dive into notifications, feel free to watch the video in the 2nd link.

• Log and Issue notification basics
• Notifications deep dive

I've Got All the Basics... Is there More?

You betcha! There's lots more functionality to explore. Below is a list of articles that are a more detailed excursion around other key parts of Pharos. We definitely encourage you to at least familiarize yourself with what else Pharos has to offer.

Remember, you can always reach out to us for details on any aspect of the application, or even request a demo of areas that interest you.

Exploration Roadmap

To save you some time digging through our documentation we've put together a list of functionality to check out. Feel free to explore the list below in order... or in no order at all, depending on what you find interesting.

1. Action and Collaboration with Jira/Azure DevOps

Pharos tracks issues and alerts you so action can be taken. This is where your Salesforce team can start collaborating on a solution to the problems discovered. Pharos streamlines ticket creation and linking and lets you create tickets on demand or setup criteria-based rules for an automated experience. For example, you can auto-assign your flow issues to an admin on your apex issues to a developer. Or, you can enter a ticket once a corresponding Issue has exceeded a certain number of occurrences.

There are quite a few possibilities and we'd love for you to have a look here for more information.

Note: If you're using Azure DevOps, most of the Jira content still applies with some minor differences called out in the article.

 

2. Issue Analysis

Ever feel stuck working on a problem? Perhaps you don't know much about the org or simply don't have more than a minute to spare? Not to worry, we got you! Issue analysis leverages Open AI to provide a quick root cause analysis and a severity estimate, along with a justification. 

 

3. Monitoring

You may think that a system outage is highly unlikely with Salesforce and you'd be right. However, your org can very well have an "outage" without the underlying Salesforce service being down. For example, you could be running into a crippling process issue resulting in users not being able to perform their job functions; an integration may break silently and stop sending/receiving important data; community users unable to submit a case or an application. These problems can cause user angst, reputation damage the the cost to your company in money and resources can be tremendous. 

This is where monitoring comes in. Check out this video for more details. 

 

4. Log Retention Policies

Data storage is expensive with Salesforce! In the unlikely event that Pharos Log and Issue records start consuming a sizable percentage of your data storage, don't worry! Retention policies exist exactly for that reason.

Learn how to setup retention rules and clean up older logs here.

 

5. Multi Environment Monitoring

Is your company a large enterprise and owns several production Salesforce instances? Or, perhaps, you have multiple sandbox environments that you'd like to manage from one place? Perhaps your company has established a Center of Excellence and wouldn't it be great to aggregate all logs from all environments in one place?

If you've answered yes to any of the above, check out this video on setting up Connected Orgs. This is taking observability to the next level by bringing your entire Salesforce stack together 

 

6. Dynamic Tracing

If you are a developer or an admin faced with a tough troubleshooting problem... you know, the one that makes you want to rage quit and destroy your computer in the process? Well, before you break any equipment, have you tried pulling Salesforce debug logs? This can be an arduous task for many reasons so we're here to help. With Dynamic Tracing you simply set a log pull schedule based on past occurrences of an Issue and we do all the work! Once there's a relevant debug log, we'll bring it to your attention. Check out this demo of tracing in action. 

 

Grow Your Expertise

• Observability - Road to Clarity
• Logging vs Observability

This is a longer watch but worth it if you want a deeper dive into observability and devops: