With Salesforce solutions, CaringBridge tackled technical

debt, optimized systems, and enhanced performance,

ensuring they are ready for future growth.

CaringBridge is a no-cost, 501(c)(3) nonprofit health platform that surrounds family caregivers with support while they care for a loved one on a health journey. A donor-supported nonprofit founded in 1997, the organization offers tools to share and document a health journey, simplify care coordination, and connect caregivers with a supportive community. CaringBridge addresses feelings of overwhelm, isolation, and loneliness by improving emotional health and social connectedness, helping people come together in support of healing. With 300,000 people on the platform every day sending or receiving support, there are over 1,600 messages of love, hope, and compassion posted every hour. And every 12 minutes a new CaringBridge page is started. The CaringBridge community includes all 50 states and more than 242 countries around the world.

CaringBridge, a platform supporting individuals through health challenges, faced obstacles due to large data volumes and the development of new features, including a custom integration with their platform, building out Account Engagement (Pardot), and creating custom tracking methods for management, fundraising, and finance teams. These customizations and new features led to the accumulation of technical debt, which became unmanageable due to limited system admin resources.

The technical debt was not well-documented, residing mainly in personal notes of individual administrators, making it difficult to prioritize and address issues effectively. This lack of documentation and the growing complexity of their system underscored the need for a comprehensive approach to identify and manage technical debt, prompting CaringBridge to engage with Redpath for their Managed Services.

Redpath initiated the solution by conducting collaborative working sessions with CaringBridge, taking a thorough look at their technical debt. Through detailed documentation using Salesforce System Requests, they began cataloging and prioritizing the identified technical debt.

Additionally, Redpath reviewed release notes systematically, uncovering previously unnoticed technical debt that required attention. With a comprehensive understanding of the technical landscape, Redpath and CaringBridge teams partnered together to address and mitigate the documented technical debt.

A main challenge addressed by Redpath involved the optimization of CaringBridge’s automations. This included the migration of outdated Workflow Rules and Process Builder processes to Flow. Redpath analyzed existing automations, ensuring relevance and necessity, then transitioned or rebuilt these processes using Flow, enhancing functionality while streamlining operation.

The impact of this enhancement included users experiencing noticeable improvements in loading and uploading times, along with a reduction in automation errors. Moreover, this modernization effort ensured that CaringBridge’s system remained aligned with current and future requirements.

Beyond addressing technical debt, Redpath undertook several projects to further enhance the operations of CaringBridge:

• Revamping Apps and Page Layouts: Redpath redesigned the apps and page layouts based on each team’s needs, improving the user experience for CaringBridge’ users.
• Tracking Partnership Data: A new system was built for the Partnerships team to track partnership data efficiently in Salesforce.
• Building a Knowledge Center: Redpath is in the process of developing a new Knowledge Center using Experience Cloud, preparing for the launch of the new CaringBridge platform.
• Migrating to Messaging: In preparation for Salesforce’s future retirement of Chat, Redpath is migrating CaringBridge from legacy Chat to Messaging.
• Migrating Security Permissions: Anticipating Salesforce’s upcoming requirements, Redpath is migrating security permissions from Profiles to Permission Sets.

Throughout the engagement, Redpath’s team of experts continued the engagement by providing support. Any new enhancements or issues were addressed and resolved, giving CaringBridge a path forward with a smooth and successful transition.

CaringBridge found value in bringing in the Redpath team to get an outside perspective and pull them out of the internal tunnel that was preventing them from efficiently addressing their technical debt. By leveraging the expertise of Redpath’s team, CaringBridge gained an extension of their workforce, enabling faster resolutions and the development of more thoughtful and strategic solutions. This alleviated the burden on resource-constrained administrators, allowing them to focus on core tasks while Redpath tackled technical challenges.

As a result of these efforts, CaringBridge experienced tangible benefits

• They became better equipped to handle new releases.
• They were able to adopt new functionality promptly.
• The ongoing work on technical debt not only improved system performance, but also enhanced the team’s readiness to embrace future advancements seamlessly.