This is a complete guide for consultants detailing how to set up and leverage Elements.cloud across your consulting practice.
Elements is not just a powerful productivity accelerator for individual contributors, it helps to standardize and improve quality and speed of delivery during every phase of the client engagement.
Benefits of the consulting license
Elements has a unique, separate value proposition for consulting organizations. You can purchase 'consulting' licenses which are assigned to individual consultants.
All Elements benefits for consultants
All Elements benefits for consultants
Unlimited consulting spaces:
Create as many consulting spaces as needed, typically one per client.
Each space comes equipped with standard Salesforce connection and analysis, diagramming, change tickets, and collaboration tools.
You can connect consulting spaces to multiple Salesforce orgs, including production and sandboxes.
Project collaboration:
Assemble project teams from a broad pool of consultants, not limited to just those within the same firm.
Add any number of licensed consultants to any number of consulting spaces at no additional cost.
Grant clients read-only access for review and feedback, with options for further engagement if needed.
Standardization of service:
Build and provide your consultants with standard implementation templates for different Salesforce solutions
Build libraries of business requirements and user stories that you can bring to every client engagement, customize and link in context to their unique processes and metadata information
Alignment and risk management:
Shared workspace provides visibility into workload distribution, progress, backlog, and overall project velocity.
Automatically flags potential technical conflicts and provides alerts for out-of-scope org changes, helping to de-risk projects.
Post-project support:
Maintain consulting spaces and connections to Salesforce orgs for as long as needed.
Expedite issue resolution during warranty periods with quick access to project documentation and historic work.
Conduct root cause analysis efficiently by keeping spaces aligned with Salesforce configurations.
Managed-services arrangement:
Ensure seamless ongoing support, optimized performance, and continuous alignment with clients' evolving needs.
Deliver exceptional managed services, fostering long-term client partnerships.
Position your firm as a trusted industry leader by leveraging Elements.cloud beyond individual projects.
Types of consulting license
There are two types of consulting licenses:
Standard consulting license: allows consultant to set up and work with unlimited number of clients in unlimited number of 'consulting spaces'.
Those spaces allow consultants to use the design, analysis, and impact assessment capabilities and support the standard Salesforce connection capability. You can read more about consulting space capabilities here.
Premium consulting license: the same benefits as the standard license, but consulting spaces come with additional 'editor' licenses that can be shared with clients to engage them in the design, analysis, and collaboration.
Consulting spaces - features
A standard consulting space allows only the consultants to create and change content within spaces, like diagrams, change records, documentation, and engage with advanced analysis tools, like dependency analysis.
Clients can be invited to those spaces as viewers but they cannot change any content or use advanced analysis. You can however upgrade to premium consulting space without those limitations. More on that here.
A standard consulting space offers following capabilities to consultants:
Metadata Management
Salesforce metadata dictionary for core Salesforce capabilities
Dependency analysis
Custom metadata views and reporting
Metadata change history
Analytics 360
Org documentation
Diagram-Led-Change
Business process diagrams in UPN format
Salesforce architecture diagrams
Change management
Business requirements
User stories
Add-ons:
ElementsGPT: Our AI add-on product that allows you to generate process diagrams and user stories, accelerating discovery and business analysis
Salesforce metadata add-ons: Not all Salesforce metadata insights are available by default. For following insights on your consulting spaces, you need to purchase an add-on (all of those coming in Q4 2024)
Salesforce Automotive Cloud
Salesforcer CPQ / Revenue Cloud
Salesforce Education Cloud
Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
Salesforce Health Cloud
Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud
Salesforce Public Services Cloud
Premium consulting space:
The premium consulting license allows you to create consulting spaces for client engagements that come equipped with available editor licenses that can be granted to client users.
These licenses allow clients to co-own and co-create content related to their Salesforce Org and processes. For more information, contact our team.
Using Elements for client engagements
Here is a list of consulting projects for which you can leverage Elements consulting spaces:
Org Discovery and Brownfield implementations: You can use Elements to quickly de-risk your projects and understand the architecture, complexity, and dependencies involved in working in client Org on any type of project. It also empowers you to scope, price, and justify the budget.
Greenfield implementation: Using our architecture and process diagrams, as well as the template content, you can design and scope the full list of business requirements and user stories, to make sure complete solutions get built for customers.
Managed Service: You can use Elements to continuously manage your client's Salesforce Org, document the work you've done previously, and track changes since the last time you worked in it, accelerating your delivery and customer satisfaction.
Set up your consulting organization
Consulting license can be purchased by solo-consultants. If that is you, you can skip the following sections and continue reading on consulting spaces.
If your consulting organization has multiple consultants, the following section applies to you.
As part of the setup process, Elements.cloud will provision one user, nominated by your firm, to be the first Corporate Admin.
Corporate Management is the application that allows your organization to see and control all users and spaces that belong to your corporate domains. And Corporate Admins are responsible for allocating licenses, setting up SSO, and adding people to projects.
Access corporate management
To access the Corporate Management feature log in to your elements.cloud account and then locate and press the gear icon in the upper right portion of your screen.
As shown below, select the gear icon and then select "Corporate settings".
Add more corporate admins
As a Corporate Management Admin you can provision additional admin users provided they have an email address on one of your registered domains. The minimum number of admins is one but we recommend you nominate more and maintain a health pool of assigned and active admins at all times.
There is no limit to the number of admins you can delegate from your domain, however you will benefit from a carefully chosen group.
To add a new Corporate Management admin-- from within the Corporate Management app, click on the "Admins" icon in the left global navigation menu and then press "Add Admin" in the upper right corner.
If your nominee does not have an Elements account associated with your corporate domains, you won't be able to make them corporate admins.
If this is the case, as your next step please direct your nominee to register for a free Elements.cloud account from here: https://app.q9elements.com/signup. Once the registration step is complete you can proceed with adding the user.
In the dialog box, start typing the name or email address of the user, optionally add a Message which will be included in an email notification sent to the nominee when you press "Add".
Upon pressing "ADD" the system will send an email notification inviting them of their new permissions. However, they do not need to take any additional action, permission has been granted.
Remove corporate admin
Remove corporate admin
Occasionally you'll need to disable a Corporate Management admin.
You must have a minimum of one active Corporate Management admin and it is best to have multiple.
Remove an admin
As a Corporate Management admin, from within the Corporate Management app navigate to the Admins menu item in the left global navigation menu.
Locate and select the name of the Admin you wish to disable.
Press the "Remove Admin" red-colored button on the right side of the screen.
Follow the prompts to completion.
Assign consulting license to users
Click on the cog icon in the upper right corner of your screen in the main application and select "Corporate settings" from the dropdown list.
Go to the users' list, select a user, and assign a license by turning on the "Multi-space editor" toggle in the right sidebar. That user now has consulting licence allocated !
If you don't see the user you wish to grant a consulting license to, it is most likely that they do not have an account registered under your corporate domains.
Either provision them to Elements using your identity provider or ask them to self-register.
Revoke consulting license from users
If you wish to revoke user's consulting license, and return it to your pool of available licenses so it can be granted to another member of the team, simply follow the same steps outlined above.
Find the user you wish to take the license from, and turn off the toggle that says 'Multi-space editor'.
If you take away someone's license while they go on vacation, sabbatical or other temporary absence, you can easily re-assign their license later on.
However, if their absence is more permanent, you can consider following options:
Deactivate their account
Deactivate their account
Should you wish you may make a user inactive which suspends their Elements.cloud account regardless of licenses and permissions. The user will not be able to log into Elements.cloud to access any features or content.
You can reactivate the account at any time.
From the User screen as above:
Locate and select the user account you wish to suspend and watch the right sidebar update with the user account information
Press the "Make Inactive" button
From the popup confirmation screen press the "MAKE INACTIVE" button to complete the process.
You can always re-active user from the 'Inactive' users tab.
Delete their account
Delete their account
Corporate Admins can delete users which removes them from the system and terminates their accounts.
When deleting a user account, the Corporate Admin can decide which other user will take ownership of the deleted user's content ensuring nothing is lost as a result of the deletion. You can read more about content transfer further below.
Following the steps above log into corporate admin, select Users from the left menu, locate the account you wish to delete and instead of pressing the "Make inactive" button as shown in prior steps press the "Delete User" button showing in the color red.
Unlike prior steps this action will have significant impact on access and ownership models as described in the warning popup. After reading the warning you may wish to make the user Inactive and ensure "Multi-space editor" is deactivated.
If you choose to proceed you will be prompted with the following message and request for your Elements Password as confirmation of the deletion.
Create consulting spaces
Before you create a new consulting space...
As you will be working with multiple clients, we recommend that you come up with a naming convention for your spaces. You might consider using account name + project type, like "Zenalpha Managed Service" or "Acme CPQ".
To create a new consulting Space, consultant with the multi-space license follows the same procedure as when creating any new Space.
However, in the window there will now be the option to create a 'consulting space'.
Select it and press 'create'.
That's it! Your new Space will be visible with an orange tag 'consulting'.
Upgrading an existing space to 'consulting'
You cannot upgrade a TRIAL space to consulting.
You may not want to create a consulting space straight away. You may want to create a standard 'free' space and upgrade it to a consulting project later.
You won't be able to upgrade if there are any editors on the Space who are not holders of the consulting license.
You will need to take away those rights first before you proceed.
Manage team roster/ who works on what
Using Corporate Management, you can have full visibility of all client spaces created by your consultants, and even manage who works on which client engagements.
Click on the cog icon in the upper right corner of your screen in the main application and select "Corporate settings" from the dropdown list.
In Corporate Management app, click on 'Spaces' in the left menu, filter the list by 'Consulting' plan type. That is the list of all consulting spaces under your corporate domains.
If you click on the 'share' tab in the right panel for the selected space, you can see who already is working on that space and you can also add new team members to the Space.
Limitation: Corporate Admin can add users to spaces, they can grant them edit rights on the space or make users Space Administrators. But they cannot remove users from spaces.
That permission still rests with the Space Administrator on the space.
Connect and sync client's Salesforce Org
Normally, when you want to connect a Salesforce Org to Elements, you need Space Administrator permission to do that.
In consulting spaces, however, only consultants can hold editor rights and have such permissions (unless it is a premium consulting space).
Thankfully, in consulting spaces we made a special exception - you can invite your client as a viewer to the space and they can connect their Org themselves - without needing any additional permissions within Elements!
That allows you to connect, scan, analyze, and assess customer Org without requiring an additional Salesforce license for yourself from the client.
Transfer ownership of consulting space to the client
From your Elements.cloud account: Navigate to Corporate Management by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your screen and selecting "Corporate Settings"
In the Corporate Management Utility select the "Spaces" icon from the left navigation menu and then in the list of spaces select the Space you will be transferring.
Click on the Sharing Icon in the right menu bar and verify a representative of the recipient org is both represented in the list of users and is also listed as a "Space Admin"
If a representative is not listed follow steps for adding a new user as a Space Admin listed below.
Otherwise: Press the "i" icon in the right sidebar menu and press the "Update" link to the right of the "Domain" field.
Select the recipient domain from the popup window that appears:
Press "Confirm"
Note the newly updated Domain entry on the right sidebar.
Note that the Space you transferred no longer appears in your list of Spaces in Corporate management.
Note: Any users from your organization who had access and roles within the space retain the same level of access however, the Corporate Admins associated with the newly assigned domain and/or Space Admins assigned to the space can change your user's access at any time.
Every Space you create has a domain associated with it based on the email domain of your user account.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are there users and spaces already associated with my Elements.cloud account?
Why are there users and spaces already associated with my Elements.cloud account?
Any person with a corporate email address associated with your company who has registered for an Elements.cloud account will automatically be associated with your corporate account-- regardless of how long ago it happened.
Think of this as as an indication of past interest. The Corporate settings utility will allow you to review and purge any user account you deem fit. It is also useful to review the user list to ensure everyone you wish to issue a consulting license to has registered for a free account. Remember they need to first register as a free user before you can assign them a paid license.
Why am I seeing Spaces already associated with my Elements.cloud account?
Why am I seeing Spaces already associated with my Elements.cloud account?
Similar to the above situation-- any prior usage of Elements.cloud by people using a corporate email address will be automatically associated with your newly established corporate account. You can review the Spaces and decide what action to take. One such action might be to delete a space and another might be to upgrade it to a consulting space.
I tried to allocate a consulting license to a user but I received an error that I did not have any licenses available. What now?
I tried to allocate a consulting license to a user but I received an error that I did not have any licenses available. What now?
First check to see how many licenses you've allocated vs how many you own. You can find that information on the details page of your Corporate Management app under the section titled: "Number of allocated Multi-Space licenses". The first number is the number assigned and the second number is the number owned. Check to ensure those numbers make sense to you.
Secondly you can review the Users who have been issued consulting licenses by navigating to the Users icon in Corporate Management and then changing the filter in the "Role" field to show only Multi-space editor. And lastly, for any user you wish to revoke a license from, you can simple select their name and deactivate the Multi space editor slider.
I tried to deactivate a mutli-space license assignment from a user and was presented with a warning that the user was the only admin assigned to a space. What do I do?
I tried to deactivate a mutli-space license assignment from a user and was presented with a warning that the user was the only admin assigned to a space. What do I do?
A space needs at least on admin and if you try to manage that user in a way that would violate the minimum number of space admins rule your action will be blocked.
Fortunately you as Corporate Admin can delete the offending space if appropriate or add another user to the space and assign the role of space admin. To do this, navigate to the spaces incon in the Corporate management app and press the "delete space" button OR add another user to that space with the role of Space Admin.
Once completed you can then continue with your original user administration.
If my client wishes to become the owner of the space we created for them what do I need to do?
If my client wishes to become the owner of the space we created for them what do I need to do?
Firstly your client will need to purchase and setup an Enterprise account with Elements.cloud. We can help with that. After that, the steps for transfering the Space to them is easy. You can find the steps outlined in this support article.
Also note that your consultants can remain part of the space and continue their work without interruption despite ownership being transferred but their access would be governed by the client rather than via your Corporate Admin console.