Pardot Admin Out-of-office Handoff (Salesforce Marketing Setup Administrator)

September 28, 2021
Salesforce Ben | The Drip

If you’re responsible for a Pardot org, leaving the office to go on take a break can be a daunting idea.

As a Pardot Admin, you love your Pardot org. You’re anxious that things could potentially go wrong without your watchful eye over everything – the reality is, yes, many things could happen but that’s no excuse for not taking time off. We all know about the dangers of burnout in demanding tech roles.

There are user permissions that give temporary “marketing admin’ user privileges to handle Pardot setup tasks coming in Winter ‘22. These grant access to the “Marketing setup” within Salesforce Setup, instead of whole “System Administrator” access. This removes the ‘all or nothing’ access that would terrify Salesforce Admins, and instead, only granting the permissions required (for everyone’s peace of mind).

Note: this permission is also for Pardot Admins that don’t play a role in any Salesforce configuration. We have another guide coming in a couple of weeks that will dive into implementation use cases.

Pardot Super Users

Wise Pardot Admins train up a ‘Pardot super user’. This involves taking a colleague ‘under their wing’ and enable them to take care of common admin tasks, such as:

User access requests
Data import
Form/form handler troubleshooting
Connector sync troubleshooting
Connected campaign setup
Campaign reporting

This means Pardot can keep operating smoothly, without user productivity being compromised. Think of your super user/s as your sidekick to swoop in to save the day when you are absent or overloaded – and also to continually champion Pardot within their teams.

Set Up a Delegated Pardot Admin

Now, there’s some configuration involved here. You will need to create a custom permission set. Don’t run just yet, we’ll take it step-by-step!

If you have a Salesforce Admin team, do not create any permissions without them knowing. Permissions in Salesforce can easily turn into ‘org spaghetti’ if not planned into the permissions framework, as a whole.

New to permission sets in Salesforce? check out this other guide I wrote.

Step 1: Administrator Pardot Role

Grant the super user the Administrator role in Pardot. Go to the Pardot app → Pardot Settings. Find users in the left-hand navigation, then edit your selected user. Also, check that their record has a blue Salesforce logo beside it, which shows they are not a Pardot-only user.

Step 2: Create a Custom Permission Set

Now, hop into Salesforce setup. Search for, and click on “Permission Sets” → New.

Name: eg. “Marketing Administrator”
Description: Grants access to “Marketing Setup”. Designate a marketing admin to handle Pardot setup and management tasks.

Under “System Permissions”, click ‘edit’ then select:

View Setup and Configuration
Manage Marketing Setup Tasks

TIP: I use command + F/Crtl + F to locate these permissions in the huge list. Don’t know what I would do without it!

Also, note that Salesforce will add any permissions that are dependent on the permission you intend to add.

To handover the Pardot Email in Lightning Experience admin settings too, also under “System Permissions” select:

Manage Profiles and Permission Sets
Assign Permission Sets

This is for the delegated admin to grant other users the correct access to the email builder, as this is entirely managed through Salesforce user profiles and permission sets.

Step 3: Assign the Permission Set

Assign the permission set to their Salesforce user record by either:

Click ‘manage assignments’ on the permission set, or
Go to their user record, hover over ‘permission set assignments’ → ‘Edit assignments’

Step 4: Remove Access

When you return, remove the permission set and switch their Pardot user role back to what it was previously. Hopefully there were no Pardot emergencies while you were gone!

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