Salesforce Setup Wizard

An evaluative UX research study of Cvent's Salesforce Setup Wizard, using heuristic evaluation, affinity mapping, and usability testing to identify usability issues and deliver evidence-backed design recommendations.

Role: UX Researcher
Year: 2023
Team: Cvent
Tools: Figma, Miro, Confluence

Overview

Cvent

Cvent is an event management platform that helps organizations plan, manage, and execute in-person, virtual, and hybrid events while integrating attendee and event data with business systems like Salesforce.

Cvent Salesforce Setup Wizard

The Cvent Salesforce Setup Wizard is a guided onboarding experience that helps Salesforce administrators configure the integration between Cvent and Salesforce. It streamlines account connection, field mapping, data synchronization, and configuration into a structured workflow, reducing setup complexity and enabling reliable data exchange between the two platforms.

My objective

To evaluate the usability of the Cvent Salesforce Setup Wizard by identifying user pain points and translating research insights into design recommendations that simplify onboarding, reduce dependency on customer support, and improve the overall setup experience.

Problem

The existing Salesforce integration setup was complex, manual, and time-consuming for administrators.

Administrators relied heavily on documentation and customer support to complete the setup successfully.
A high volume of support requests and setup-related complaints increased the workload on Cvent's Customer Success teams.
The setup process involved multiple prerequisites across both Cvent and Salesforce, making it difficult to understand and configure correctly.
Manual configuration increased the risk of errors, leading to delays in onboarding and data synchronization.
To address these challenges, Cvent introduced the Salesforce Setup Wizard, which required a UX evaluation to validate its usability and identify opportunities for improvement.

Challenge

Limited access to actual Salesforce Admins; research relied on Customer Support teams and SMEs.
Understanding a complex Salesforce–Cvent integration workflow before evaluating usability.
Distinguishing UX issues from product and technical limitations.
Synthesizing findings from multiple research methods into prioritized design recommendations.

A context board covering what Cvent is, the Salesforce integration, the ideal account-setup process, the admins' dependency on Cvent customer support, and the Salesforce admin persona, Jatin Saha. — The context in one board: Cvent, the integration, the ideal setup, the support dependency, and the admin persona.

My Role

I worked alongside the UX Lead, Product Manager, Customer Success team, and Subject Matter Experts to evaluate the Salesforce Setup Wizard. My responsibilities included planning and conducting UX research, creating moderator guides, performing heuristic evaluations, synthesizing findings through affinity mapping, prioritizing usability issues, and translating insights into actionable design recommendations.

The people I worked with, shown as a row of figures: the UX Lead, the Product Manager, Customer Success, Subject Matter Experts, and me.

Process

The setup that needed fixing

Before the Setup Wizard, admins had to switch between the Cvent Salesforce App, documentation, and the Cvent Event App to complete setup. The process was complex, leading to frequent support requests.

A documentation of the old Salesforce setup problem: screenshots of the Cvent admin home and the documentation site, a numbered list of the four problems admins hit, and the Salesforce admin user story. — The old setup in one page: the tools involved, the four problems admins hit, and the user story underneath.

Why Evaluate the Setup Wizard?

The Salesforce Setup Wizard was introduced to simplify the app configuration process by guiding admins through setup, reducing reliance on documentation, and minimizing support requests. It organized the setup into three stages — Connect to Cvent, Match Attendee Data, and Sync Attendee Data — with guided instructions, progress tracking, and the ability to resume later.

Since the experience was designed based on internal stakeholder workshops rather than validated with Salesforce admins, the usability and effectiveness of the new workflow needed evaluation.

A slide listing the seven goals of the Cvent Salesforce App setup wizard, above a diagram showing the old flow across the Cvent app, documentation and event app being simplified into a single app wizard. — What the wizard set out to do, and the flow it was meant to replace.

A diagram of the setup wizard landing card branching into its three sections: Connect to Cvent, Match Attendee Data and Sync Attendee Data, each listing its individual steps. — The wizard's three sections and the steps inside each.

Journey Mapping

Mapped the old and new setup flows screen by screen to identify simplifications, redundancies, and remaining usability challenges.

A two column screen mapping. The left column, setting up with the wizard, is a short ten step vertical flow; the right column, setting up without the wizard, is a much longer and denser flow with many more screens. — Every screen of both flows, mapped side by side: the wizard on the left, the old process on the right.

The Salesforce admin persona

A persona board for Jatin Saha, a twenty eight year old Salesforce administrator in the United States, with a photo, a user description, a quote about losing time to support dependency, and a short bio. — Jatin Saha, the Salesforce admin the wizard is really for.

The second half of the persona board, listing Jatin's tasks, goals, responsibilities, and the challenges and influences he deals with, including his dependency on the Cvent admin. — His tasks, goals, responsibilities, and the challenges that shape them.

What the desk research surfaced

I also pulled together the post workshop findings and the areas the team wanted to focus on, so the evaluation that followed had a clear target rather than a blank slate.

A three column sticky note board titled Product manager decisions, Technical limitations and UX limitations, each column holding several notes about the setup wizard. — Sorting the early problems into product decisions, technical limits and UX limits.

A table listing areas such as persona, problem areas, features in new setup, application installation and access to Salesforce, each with comments on what still needed attention. — The areas I flagged for the team to focus on going into the evaluation.

Heuristic Evaluation

Evaluated the Setup Wizard against Nielsen's usability heuristics to identify usability issues, assess their severity, and uncover opportunities for improvement.

Evaluation method

The heuristic evaluation instructions sheet, showing how to rate severity, the zero to four severity definitions, and a table of the Nielsen heuristics with their descriptions.

The scenario and task template, listing three scenarios and five tasks, each with a column of heuristics to rate, a severity rating column and a comments column, with some cells already filled in.

A screenshot of a live evaluation session: the Cvent Salesforce prototype open in Figma with the setup wizard card visible, and participant video tiles in the corner.

The brief: the severity scale and the heuristics we evaluated against.

01 / 03

Severity Analysis

Severity ratings were used to prioritize usability issues, helping identify the most critical pain points that required immediate design attention.

The compiled heuristic findings colour coded by severity, with red for usability catastrophe and major problems and green for cosmetic and no issue, laid out task by task so the priority of each item is easy to scan. — Every violation colour coded by severity, task by task.

Summary of findings

Research insights were grouped into high-priority usability issues, forming the basis for design recommendations focused on navigation, progress visibility, task sequencing, and interaction patterns.

Affinity Mapping

After the heuristic evaluation, affinity mapping was used to organize usability findings into recurring themes. This helped identify common pain points, prioritize improvements, and inform design recommendations.

A second affinity mapping board with clusters under exit or quit the wizard, suggestions, overall experience, and locating the wizard. — And the rest: quitting, locating the wizard, overall experience.

Design Recommendations

Key usability themes were translated into actionable design recommendations, focusing on improving navigation, task sequencing, interaction patterns, and system feedback.

A recommendation card titled Toggle Behaviour, tagged usability catastrophe, showing the Retrieve Cvent Custom Fields toggle set to No, a user quote, and a recommendation to redesign the toggle to match its function. — Toggle Behaviour: redesign it to match what it actually does.

A recommendation card titled Quit wizard, tagged usability catastrophe, with quotes about people using Home to exit, and a recommendation to highlight the quit option and redefine its location. — Quit wizard: make the exit findable, not hidden behind Home.

A recommendation card titled CTA in Custom fields, tagged major usability issue, showing the custom fields list with the Retrieve Cvent Custom Fields button, and a recommendation to relocate the call to action. — CTA in Custom fields: relocate it so it stops getting skipped.

A recommendation card titled Section Navigation, tagged major usability issue, showing the wizard progress bar at sixty six percent, and a recommendation to align the progress bar with the section tabs. — Section Navigation: align the progress bar with the section tabs.

Defining the Design Direction

The research findings were synthesized into a clear design challenge: improve the efficiency of the Setup Wizard by addressing the most critical usability issues. Based on the identified user scenarios, the MVP focused on enabling intuitive navigation, improving task completion, providing clear progress tracking, and creating an informative syncing experience.

The problem statement

Defining the MVP

Wireframing the solutions

A wide board of hand drawn paper prototypes exploring the setup wizard: progress bar variations, toggle states labelled off, on and enabled, quit wizard options, and section flows for connect, match and sync. — Paper prototypes working through the toggle, the quit options and the progress bar.

The Redesign

Connect to Cvent

The redesign at a glance

Seen together, the reworked screens show the through line: the quit wizard surfaced, the progress bar and navigation aligned, the custom field toggle and its table cleaned up, and the calls to action placed where people actually look.

A wide board placing the redesigned wizard screens together, with labelled annotations calling out the progress bar, the quit wizard, the dropdown and navigation, the custom fields toggle, the custom field table behaviour and the quit wizard prompt. — The whole redesign in one view, with every change marked.

First Impression Test

The redesigned Setup Wizard was evaluated through a first impression test to validate the effectiveness of the design changes and identify any remaining usability issues before finalizing recommendations.

Page one of the moderator guide, with a forty five minute welcome script and the first section of feedback probes about the wizard screens and the quit option.

Step 01 / 03
The moderator guide: welcome script and the first probes.
Step 02 / 03
Probes for the navigation, the toggle and the field retrieval.
Step 03 / 03
The overall rating and the wrap up.

Step 01 / 03
The moderator guide: welcome script and the first probes.
Step 02 / 03
Probes for the navigation, the toggle and the field retrieval.
Step 03 / 03
The overall rating and the wrap up.

Final Design Recommendations

The first impression test helped identify the remaining usability gaps, resulting in final recommendations to improve filter discoverability and make the wizard exit flow clearer and more predictable.

A recommendation card titled Collecting fields together, tagged medium usability problem, showing the filter by selected fields control, a user quote about expecting to filter by object or type, and a recommendation to turn the filter into a clearer two way action. — Collecting fields together: make the filter read like what it does.

A recommendation card titled Prompt before quitting, tagged medium usability problem, showing the explore more features quit prompt, a user quote, and a recommendation to rephrase it so users understand they can resume later. — Prompt before quitting: rephrase it so people know they can come back.

The sessions

A grid of screenshots from remote moderated sessions, each showing the Cvent Salesforce prototype on screen with participant and moderator video tiles in the corner. — The remote sessions, run over the prototype.