Interviews with Salesforce Product Managers

Salesforce Admins Solving Problems

This episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast features Mari Greenberg, Principal Delivery and Content Lead, Analytics, and Kevin Corcoran, Senior Applications Instructor, both at Salesforce. They’re here to get us up to speed on the new Admin 201 class at Trailhead Academy. Join us as we talk about Salesforce roles as a spectrum, being a T-shaped person, and how working at a gym can make you an excellent Salesforce professional. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mari Greenberg and Kevin Corcoran. The Essential Habits for Admin Success, now on Trailhead Before we get started, you should know that a new module is now available on Trailhead: . That's right, the webinar/trailhead live/ presentation you have all loved and listened to is now a learning module on Trailhead. Head on over and become one of the first Admins to get the new Essential Habits Trailhead Badge! A new Admin 201 for a new year Trailhead Academy is the next level of Trailhead and the Trailblazer program. They’ve taken all the resources out there and sequenced them into courses to help you organize your learning. You get real-time feedback and guidance from instructors and can connect with peers to learn in a group setting.&nbsp; Admin 201 has recently gotten a refresh. It’s still a five-day class, but there are new scenarios and storylines and, most importantly, new topics. It features a much more in-depth focus on Flow and change management, and migrating metadata from a sandbox to production. Taking it one certification at a time. All of this wasn’t possible without a lot of help. We worked closely with the Certification team to make sure that going through Admin 201 will give you a big boost towards those goals. We also got feedback from community members and MVPs to find out what they’re looking for when they’re hiring a new Admin. “We kept in mind what a brand new Admin has to do in the first six months of their job,” Kevin says. When it comes to getting started, it’s a good idea to have in mind what you’re looking to get out of the experience. One of the most important things they do is show you what resources are out there to help you get the extra help you need. “Be patient with yourself,” Mari advises, “there is so much to know in Salesforce and there’s no way anyone can know it all.” About Trailhead Academy Trailhead Academy is empowering businesses to develop expertise across their organization with expert-led learning and credentials that build and validate Salesforce skills. We know learning new skills can be a challenge, and some people need more support than others. We also know companies need to skill up their employees fast and help invest in growing their teams' careers. That's where  come in. With Trailhead Academy you can accelerate learning across your organization with access to Salesforce experts. How can Trailhead Academy support my business? From expert-led classes and credentials to custom enablement solutions and accelerated certification programs, Trailhead Academy has the resources your business needs to be successful with Salesforce. With Trailhead Academy, you can:   Develop your employees’ expertise with insights and best practices from Salesforce experts. Our Salesforce Certified Instructors deliver expert-led classes and private workshops in more than 13 different languages around the world. With in-depth explanations, real-world scenarios, live Q&amp;A sessions, and classes for every Salesforce cloud, role, and level learning from Salesforce experts is one of the best ways to get a deeper understanding of Salesforce.   with Salesforce-certified employees. Build in-house expertise and provide career growth opportunities with role-based credentials.  Empower your teams with custom learning and enablement programs aligned to your business goals. Leverage our  to get guidance and advice to ensure your long-term, sustainable success with...

New Admin 201 Classes with Mari Greenberg and Kevin Corcoran

For this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re chatting with Gloria Ramchandani, Senior Director of Strategy and Business Operations at Copado.&nbsp; Join us as we talk about what DevOps does and how working over a holiday weekend on production deployment set her up for the career she has today. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Gloria Ramchandani. The Essential Habits for Admin Success, now on Trailhead If you haven’t checked out  on Trailhead, make sure to give it a look. We’re really excited for this new Trailmix. What is DevOps? “The term ‘DevOps’ was coined in 2009, to better describe better ways of collaborating between Developers, who actually build new capabilities on a platform, and Operations, who maintain existing production systems,” Gloria says, “and so the term DevOps is really a combination of Developer and Operations and bringing those two concepts together.” It’s people, processes, and tooling combined together into one role. In tech, there can be certain concepts that can be really fuzzy—even when we’re trying to avoid gatekeeping and keep things inclusive. The problem is that many of these conversations are experts talking to other experts. A misconception about DevOps, for example, is that it’s only for Developers and not for Admins. Gloria tells us the tale of her first production deployment. It was over 4th of July weekend, “and instead of hanging out with the rest of the family I was up in my father-in-law’s office,” she says. They had to do so much planning and coordination among their team and it was the first time her eyes were opened to the world of DevOps. “It was less about the ANT scripts themselves and the tooling, but it was more about the organization of the work and the team we had to support it,” she says, “that’s what so beautiful about DevOps: it’s not just the tooling at face value, it’s all the planning that comes with it and the processes and procedures and how you collaborate together as a team.” How we can end release days Nowadays, Gloria works at Copado, an organization focused entirely on Developer Operations. “DevOps is just as much art as it is science,” she says, “so trust your instincts and share what you’ve learned from others because the whole purpose of DevOps is collaboration and working together to continuously improve.” “If I hadn’t spent those nights and weekends doing all of these releases, I probably wouldn’t be where I am right now,” Gloria says. That’s why she works in an organization whose mission is to end release days. “The better you can get at DevOps and working together as a team, the more time you can have back with your family and with others so you don’t have to spend a weekend doing a release,” she says. Listen to the full conversation about the Toyota system, why if you’re an Admin you already have the skills to be a product manager, and how DevOps is like getting a perfectly cooked pork chop and a cool crispy salad to hit the table at the same time. &nbsp; Podcast Swag:    Learn More:     Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Gloria:  J.:  Gillian: @sunnydalelow Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or

On DevOps with Gloria Ramchandani

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, Mike and Gillian are on to celebrate Admin Day at Dreamforce with a story about the origins of the Awesome Admin movement. Join us as we talk about the teamup of the century, how “good stuff no fluff” and “for admins by admins” became mottos the Admin Relations Team lives by to this day, and why the community has been key from day 1. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mike and Gillian. Getting the team together Our story begins with a certain handsome, intrepid Salesforce MVP—our hero, Mike Gerholdt didn’t know it, but he had a date with destiny. The year is 2013 and Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” is number one on the charts. Meanwhile, our other hero, Gillian Bruce, is working Technical Communications and taking meetings with people at Salesforce trying to figure out which direction to take her career. There are rumblings of doing something for “declarative developers” and Gillian is thinking to herself that the term sounds a lot like what the admins she communicates with do. You see, our mild-mannered admin had an alter-ego. By day, a Salesforce MVP, but by night, he was known as the ButtonClick Admin, with a podcast and blog devoted to all the amazing things you could do in Salesforce without code. Back at Salesforce, Gillian was in a fateful meeting where an idea was floated: “What if we hire the ButtonClick Admin?” The Admin team’s first Dreamforce The team’s first Dreamforce together was an important part of the Awesome Admin mythos. With no overarching theme, they decided to go with superheroes for the admin area. There was Super De-Duper, the Mobile Avenger, and Doc Developer. And they had so much help from the community staffing the very first Admin area. They were a small-but-mighty team of three, so they really relied on the community to live up to the phrase, “for admins, by admins.” They even had to do their own advertising for the first Admin Keynote, which wasn’t even supposed to be an official keynote. LeeAnne Rimel was at that time a standout member of the community who created all the demos for this DIY keynote. Today, she’s running the Admin Keynote at Dreamforce ‘22. Listen to whole episode for behind-the-scenes stories on the demo that rocked the world, why they started working more closely with product teams, and why they always show setup. And whether you’re at Dreamforce or tuning in from home, happy Admin Day! Podcast swag    Learn more:        Social  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  &nbsp; Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm Gillian Bruce and I am joined today by Mike Gerholdt. Hi, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: Hey. Gillian Bruce: And Mike, I have you on the podcast today because I wanted to do something a little bit fun given that today is the official Admin Day at Dreamforce. And so if you're at Dreamforce and you're listening to this, wow, nice multitasking. I'm impressed. If you are not physically at Dreamforce, my-oh-my. There's a lot for you to join in with us digitally. And I wanted to use this as a fun excuse to take a little trip down memory lane and tell the real story about the advent of the awesome admin movement, so to speak. So Mike, you really were the inspiration for a lot of this. And so I wanted to go way back. That's the way back machine and take us all the way back to actually 2013, which is when the kernel of this all began at Salesforce. Now, Mike, you were an MVP, not working at Salesforce. And how long had you been an MVP at that point? Mike Gerholdt: I think I got awarded in the winter release. It was the Dreamforce that happened, I want to say in between Thanksgiving and Christmas one year. So, it was a super late Dreamforce. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. That's right. Sometimes,...

The Awesome Admin Story

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rangsk, a Wordle and Sudoku educational YouTuber. Join us as we chat about how solving puzzles every day can help you sharpen your critical thinking skills. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rangsk. The role of puzzles in critical thinking development I’m addicted to word games. They give me a chance to practice my problem solving skills and, hopefully, get better. That’s why I was so excited for this week’s guest, Rangsk, because he makes some of the best educational content out there on how to get better at solving puzzles. For Rangsk, puzzles are a way to develop your critical thinking skills. They give you an opportunity to think about how you think. “Overthinking has a negative connotation,” he says, “all I’m doing is thinking, and there’s nothing wrong with thinking when you’re solving a puzzle.” Practicing your problem solving skills in a low-stakes environment like a puzzle gives you the experience to fall back on in high-pressure situations. The process over the result A key part of using puzzles to develop critical thinking skills is taking the time to reflect on your thought process. When you solve a problem, don’t just move on to the next one. Instead, Rangsk encourages you to do a postmortem so you can learn something about how you think. Look through each step of a solve and analyze your decision-making. Where did you get stuck or tricked and why? What could you have done differently? And where did you make good choices that got you closer to the solution? If you take the time to internalize what worked and what didn’t work you’ll improve your critical thinking skills over time. How to know when to ask for help When I’m solving puzzles, one thing I always struggle with is when to hit that hint button. Rangsk’s advice is to make an honest assessment of your mindset. Are you well and truly stuck? Or have you hit a snag but are still enjoying the process of working through it? In puzzles and the workplace, we might not be able to solve every problem we encounter on our own. Maybe there’s some trick that we don’t know about or some key piece of information we don’t have. Puzzles help you teach your brain how to learn, and that’s something Salesforce Admins need to do every day. Listen to the full episode for more from Rangsk on his approach to teaching and some other word puzzles you might like if you’re already hooked on Wordle. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag      Learn more            Other word puzzles            Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                       &nbsp; Full show transcript &nbsp; Mike Gerholdt: Wordle, Strands, Connections, not just random words, but word games. And I am addicted to them. So, this week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I had to get arguably the best word and logic solver I can find from TikTok and YouTube on the podcast. He goes by Rangsk on TikTok, and I'll put a link below. But David and I are talking about critical thinking and problem-solving using word games. Also, just how that applies to life. This is a phenomenal conversation. Don't be scared about the time because this is such a fun discussion. Also, how looking for answers and the journey of problem solving really applies to just everything that we do, not only as Salesforce admins, but in our learning journeys and as we navigate life. So, this is fun. Let's get David on the podcast. So, David, welcome to the podcast. &nbsp; Rangsk: Well, thank you. &nbsp; Mike Gerholdt: I'm glad to have you on. I feel this is one of those times where I'm way more the super fanboy because I have seen a ton of your TikTok videos and your New York Times solves. But without tipping too much, how did you get into word gaming and solving word games online? &nbsp; Rangsk: Well, it's a long story, but I can give the short...

Puzzle Solving as a Key to Success in the Workplace

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Derika West, IT Application Support Analyst II at KinderCare Learning Companies. Join us as we chat about how she got started in her tech career and how she started her Salesforce journey. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Derika West. Getting started in a tech career Derika started her career in the U.S. Army as a Carpentry and Masonry Specialist. From there, she bounced around between service industry jobs while she tried to figure out what was next. “There’s no way I could get into tech,” she told herself, “that’s way too smart for me.” However, when Derika moved to the West Coast, her friends believed in her. She applied for a position as a QA Test Technician, and spent a lot of time figuring out how to pitch her skills in a way that would make sense for the role. And that position gave her a foothold into an entirely new career. Getting hands-on with Salesforce In her current role, Derika is the SME for her organization’s transition from Classic to Lightning. It’s an org with over 40,000 users, so change comes slowly. She found herself in more and more conversations with end users about their pain points using their Salesforce deployment, and started looking for solutions. One thing that has been very helpful for Derika is to reach out to the people at her organization who are more experienced with the Salesforce platform. Even learning the basics of what they do and how they got to where they are today was very helpful in making the decisions that would shape her career.&nbsp; Why you should go to a Salesforce Admin Meetup Derika resolved to go to the next Portland Salesforce Admin Meetup, where she happened to meet Admin Evangelist superstar Kate Lessard. “I told everyone in the room that I’m new and I know nothing about what I’m doing,” Derika says, “and everyone was so welcoming and so helpful.” Kate connected Derika with Supermums, an organization that provides training and volunteer opportunities to help people get started with a career in Salesforce. She’s about to take her certification exam, and let’s all send her good vibes and good luck. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Derika, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag         Learn more   Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:   Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full show transcript Josh Birk: Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Salesforce Admins Podcast. I am your guest host, Josh Birk, and today I'm delighted to bring Derika West onto the show, to talk about her journey into Salesforce, into the world of tech. And where she is on that journey, where she's looking for to go. Welcome to the show, Derika. All right, welcome everybody to the show. Today we are going to welcome Derika West to talk about her journey into Salesforce, where she is with it right now, and we're her future looks. And Derika, in looking at your CV, it pretty much starts with your military experience. What was it like being in the Army? Derika West: Yeah. The Army was a wonderful thing for development for myself. I've always been a self-starter, I would say. And someone who thinks outside the box. And I just didn't know where that would fit for me in terms of which direction of a career I wanted to take. I initially started in college, and then I met somebody in my math class in college who was actively in... I think it was the reserves at the time, and I think she's full-time active duty now. But we just started talking about options of careers. And I'm always asking questions, as you'll find out. I just asked her, what is it like being a female in the military? And she just said, "There's so many things that you can do as a female that you aren't really told growing up, and even high school." For me,...

Breaking Into Tech With a Nontraditional Background

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to John Wall, co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee Podcast. Join us as we chat about how new generative AI tools are enabling marketers to get more personalized. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Wall. Six core marketing use cases for AI Thanks to Agentforce, generative AI has moved from novelty to necessity for most organizations. It’s a key tool for strategic content creation, customer insight, and business transformation. That’s why I sat down with John Wall, co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee Podcast, with guests like Simon Sinek, Seth Godin, and Debbie Millman. John identifies six key areas where marketers can lean on AI support:   Generation   Summarization   Extraction   Rewriting   Classification   Question answering   These tasks are helping marketers analyze massive datasets, repurpose content, and simulate customer feedback in ways that were previously unimaginable. So my question for John was: what can we, as admins, build to help them out? Better data, smarter personas Marketers use personas to help them think about the specific people in their audience that they want to reach. “Right now, that’s four people in a conference room coming up with cute nicknames like Sally Shopper or Wally the Weekend Warrior,” John says. In the future, however, AI will make it possible to decide on marketing personas based on data-driven profiling. Marketers can extract customer patterns from engagement data and train real models based on statistics, not spitballing. Even more exciting, these new persona agents are essentially customers on demand. You can ask them questions and get their feedback while you plan your next marketing campaign. Why you need a human in the loop As everyone rushes to deploy AI, John emphasizes the importance of the human in the loop. Mistakes are bound to happen, and rushed implementations can harm brand trust. You need to make sure that any solution you deploy has gone through a thorough internal vetting process before it goes live. As John says, AI advancements are probably not going to put you out of a job, but they’ll definitely make your job easier. “The big thing is you have to be curious,” he says, “go play with something and see what you can make it do and what kind of results you can get from it.”&nbsp; Listen to the full episode for more from John about how AI is transforming marketing. And make sure you’re subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag      Learn more   John’s Podcast:    Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:    Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:    Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:    Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     Full show transcript &nbsp; Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admin's Podcast, we're catching up with John Wall, longtime marketer, podcaster, and co-host of Marketing Over Coffee. We're going to dive into the rise of AI in marketing from smart summarization and rewriting tools to full-blown virtual agents. We're going to unpack how marketers can stay ahead and why AI is not magic, even though it kind of feels that way, and what smart Salesforce admins should be watching for next. Plus, you'll hear why having a human in the loop is still the secret sauce to marketing. So give this episode a listen and join me in welcoming John Wall to the podcast. So, John, welcome to the podcast. &nbsp; John Wall: Mike, it's great to be on the mic with you again. &nbsp; Mike Gerholdt: I know, it's been a while. I feel the last time we recorded was in Boston, 100 years ago. &nbsp; John Wall: Yeah, downtown Boston. I remember we were live on Newbury Street. That was like the heart of all the action. &nbsp; Mike Gerholdt: Yep. We were recording the old style podcast. We had an Edison, it was putting it on a phonograph and some wax tubes. &nbsp; John Wall: That's right. Sitting...

AI Is Transforming Marketing From Data to Personalization

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Amit Malik, the Content Portfolio Lead for AI within Product Education at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how we can teach AI effectively to admins and the easiest way to learn Agentforce. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Amit Malik. The shift from knowledge to value As the Content Portfolio Lead for AI in Product Education at Salesforce, Amit is the perfect person to talk to about where admins should get started with learning Agentforce. After all, his job is all about planning the courses that are offered globally about Agentforce and Data Cloud. What Amit emphasizes is that past knowledge matters less than what learners do in the next 12 months. Agentforce’s capabilities are growing with every release, so he recommends focusing on understanding the core concepts of how AI works and building from there. Malik’s agent framework for admins When you’re building with AI, the first step is aligning on why an agent is needed in the first place. From there, he recommends asking five questions to guide your process:   Is an AI agent the best way to solve this problem? Would it be easier to build a flow? Just because you can solve something with Agentforce doesn’t mean you should.   What agent type do you need? Salesforce has several pre-built agent templates for specific use cases, like Service Agent, Employee Agent, or Guided Shopping Agents. Consider those options before trying to build something more complicated.   What topics do you want to assign to this agent? Define the set of business problems you want your agent to solve. There are standard pre-built topics like FAQ or escalation, but you can make a custom topic if needed.   How will you provide data to your agent? AI is only as good as the data you provide it, so you need to make sure you have everything you need in Data Cloud and set up access with the Agentforce Data Library.   What actions do you want the agent to perform? “This is where the magic happens,” Amit says. There are four types of actions: Flow, Apex, API, and Prompt Template.   It’s important to understand that Agentforce is the final layer of the org, the interface. An agent is really an aggregation of the topics you build it to solve. Those topics comprise the specific actions you enable your agent to perform, and those topics, in turn, are possible based on the data you’ve integrated into Data Cloud. Adopting a learner’s mindset For Amit, the most important thing you can do if you want to learn Agentforce is to adopt a learner’s mindset. “The art of learning is to become curious,” he explains, “education is not about the instructor, it’s more about the learner.” Where many businesses go wrong is viewing AI as a solution in search of a problem. But once you start to get curious about the specifics of your business processes, you’ll start to find all sorts of new ways that AI agents can help. And building around these specific, real-world use cases is the easiest way to get started mastering Agentforce. Amit has a lot to share about learning, teaching, and working with Agentforce, so be sure to tune in for the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch a new episode every Thursday. Podcast swag      Learn more   Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:    Trailhead:    Trailhead:    Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     Full show transcript &nbsp; Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're welcoming back, Amit Malik to talk about a topic that's very top of mind for every Salesforce admin right now, which is how do we teach AI effectively? Amit's going to share with us some insights from over a decade of Salesforce instruction diving into why teaching AI is a little bit different now, and how admins can use his five question agent framework to put to better use. Now, whether you're...

What’s the Best Way to Teach AI to Salesforce Users?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce. &nbsp; Join us as we chat about the new Agentforce Adoption Framework and her new YouTube series, “Kate Clicks Through It”. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kate Lessard. A flexible, nonlinear learning journey for admins &nbsp; It’s been a while since we’ve had Kate on the pod, but she’s been cooking up something cool, and I wanted to sit down with her to hear all about it. It’s called the Agentforce Adoption Framework, and it’s your guide for bringing the power of AI into your organization. &nbsp; Kate and the Evangelist team identified a gap: admins needed a structured path to get up to speed with everything Agentforce has to offer. The framework breaks this down into five areas of focus: &nbsp;   Explore what’s possible   Get curious   Try it out   Make it work   Use it often   &nbsp; You can check out Kate’s post on the Admin Blog for more details, but the goal is to help you set goals for your organization and get ready for what’s coming next with AI. Hands-on learning through “Kate Clicks Through It” Kate’s also started a new YouTube series, “Kate Clicks Through It,” where she walks you through Salesforce processes step by step, with demos so you can click along and try them yourself. &nbsp; “I personally am someone who learns best by doing,” Kate says, “I need to get hands-on, I need to do something. In many cases, I need to do it over and over again.” The videos are around 10 minutes long, giving you quick tutorials on subjects like how to build an Agentforce data library, or how to use Org Check as an alternative to Optimizer. A framework for learning just about anything The Agentforce Adoption Framework was developed through tons of research and feedback from admins, Salesforce MVPs, and folks on the product team. We think it’s pretty spiffy—so keep an eye out for more adoption-focused content at Dreamforce or even an event near you. &nbsp; As Kate points out, while Agentforce might be the shiny new toy, the adoption framework can be adapted to just about anything you want to implement. She uses the example of Data Cloud to highlight how important it is to have that fundamental level of adoption for both your users and your external customers. &nbsp; There are so many more great insights from Kate about how to level up your understanding of Agentforce, so be sure to check out the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. &nbsp; Podcast swag      Learn more   Admin Blog:    YouTube Series:    &nbsp; Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     Full Transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admin's podcast. This week, admin evangelist Kate Lessard joins us to dive into the Agentforce adoption journey. From building a foundation AI to launching the new Kate Clicks Through It YouTube series, Kate walks us through how admins can thoughtfully and confidently bring AI into their organizations. We also chat about how feedback shaped the adoption framework and, sneak peek, what you might see at Dreamforce. So if you've been wondering where to start or where you are on your AI journey, this episode's for you. Let's get Kate on the podcast. So Kate, welcome back to the podcast. Kate Lessard: Thanks. It's been a while. Mike: Yeah. January. Was it when we did the kickoff? That was the last time. Kate Lessard: Maybe. Or maybe did we do a TDX, prep for TDX call maybe? Mike: We might've. Other podcasters would remember their episodes, but me, just crank them out. Kate Lessard: Yeah, you're a little busy. Mike: It's okay. So you've been busy as well. Let's talk about Agentforce stuff and YouTube stuff and everything you've been working on. Kate Lessard: Yeah, absolutely. It has definitely been a busy year. It's been flying by. And some...

Agentforce Adoption Framework Helps Admins Navigate AI Understanding

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to LeeAnne Rimel, Senior Director of Admin and Developer Strategic Content at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about True to the Core Deep Dive and how it will give Salesforce Admins more chances to engage with product leaders, ask questions, and influence the roadmap. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel. True to the Core with a spin If you’ve been to a Dreamforce or TDX, you’re probably familiar with True to the Core. Typically, it’s a keynote session with Salesforce product leaders where you can get key insights and engage them in a Q&amp;A. However, as LeeAnne points out, we’ve noticed over the years that there isn’t always time to go deep on a particular topic. That’s why we’re launching a special monthly video series, True to the Core Deep Dive. Each month, we’ll focus in on one core Salesforce Platform product area, with product leaders there to answer questions and really get down to the nitty-gritty. First episode focus: Setup and user access management For our first episode, we looked at the most highly voted topic area on IdeaExchange: Setup and user access management. So we sat down with Senior PMs Cheryl Feldman and Elizabeth Martin to walk through recent feature updates and look at what’s on the roadmap. The highlight was definitely the 40-minute question and answer section, which really let us go so much deeper than your average keynote session. Other product owners Larry Tong and Laurent Kubaski were firing away answering even more questions in the chat. If you missed it, be sure to check out the video on LinkedIn or YouTube.&nbsp; We need you to help pick future topics If LeeAnne wants you to take one thing away from this episode, it’s that we need you to help us pick future topics. That’s right, this series is all about transparency and that includes topic selection. So each episode ends with a survey to determine what next month’s episode will be about. “I read every single comment,” LeeAnne says, “we read all of the feedback and it directly informs every episode we’re going to put together.” So tune in next month for the first community-chosen topic, Flow testing and debugging, and help us figure out what to look at next. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from LeeAnne about what she’s working on for Dreamforce. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag      Learn more   Salesforce Admins Blog:    LinkedIn:    YouTube:    Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                        Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today, we're diving into a brand new way that Salesforce is connecting with the community called True to the Core Deep Dive. So LeeAnne Rimel, who's been on the podcast before, is going to join me and talk about this new series that gives you, the Salesforce admin, more chances to engage with product leaders, ask questions, and influence the roadmap based on your feedback. You'll have to hear how the first episode went. I'll have the link in the show notes. We're going to hear a little bit about what's coming next, but more importantly, how you can shape future topics. So if you're as excited as I am, keep walking or riding the train or listening, and let's get LeeAnne on the podcast. So LeeAnne, welcome back to the podcast. LeeAnne Rimel: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Mike: Yeah, it's been exciting. And last I checked, there was live, there some event that just melted my social feeds about True to the Core, so we have to start there. Tell me what's going on. LeeAnne Rimel: Well, we love True to the Core and we love True to the Core so much that we are bringing it to you virtually throughout the year. So if you're not familiar with True to the Core, if you haven't attended True to the Core in the past, it's a program with...

What Is True to the Core Deep Dive?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jim Ray, Director of Developer Relations and Advocacy at Slack. Join us as we chat about enhancements to Workflow Builder, the Slack features everyone should be using, and the future of AI and Slack. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jim Ray. Usability upgrades to core Slack features Jim and his team have been improving the core Slack experience. “We’ve really been focusing on those little paper cuts, the smaller features that just never quite made it into the next release,” he says. So essentially, Slack is a little better everywhere. One area they’ve focused on is Workflow Builder. In particular, they’ve added new branching functionality—allowing admins to create conditional paths like “if/then” logic. They’ve also been hard at work upgrading canvases and lists. With new data like AI-generated meeting notes, canvases provide a central place for all the relevant information. Jim also urges you to check out lists as a sort of “semi-database” for data you want handy in Slack. Slack’s AI vision centralizes agent interactions For Jim, Slack is one of the best tools to interact with and fully take advantage of the AI agents you build with Agentforce. It’s already the place your team communicates with each other, so why not be able to loop in AI teammates? “In the same way that Slack is the single place where every person in your organization is communicating, now it's the place where you're all working with those agents,” Jim says. And so his team is looking at how Slack can bring together every AI agent your team uses, whether they’re built in Agentforce or another third-party platform. Dreamforce 2025 will spotlight Salesforce-Slack integration I asked Jim for a sneak preview of what he has in store for Dreamforce 2025, and he did not disappoint. We’ve come a long way with tools like Salesforce channels and the ability to deploy an Agentforce agent directly to Slack. Now his team is working on ways to deepen the integration. So look for improvements to search and embedded Salesforce data in the coming year. There are so many more great insights into how you can get the most out of Slack in the Agentforce era, so be sure to listen to our full conversation with Jim. And be sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag      Learn more   Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:       &nbsp; Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                       &nbsp; Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. This week we're catching up with Jim Ray from Slack because it's very conversational. He's going to walk us through what's new in Slack from major releases that you may or may not have been paying attention to on Workflow Builder, Lists, and Canvases to, of course, all of the latest around AI and Agentforce. Plus, we're going to talk about what's coming at Dreamforce this year and how admins and developers like yourself can get the most out of Slack. So whether you're all in on automation or just exploring Slack's potential, I promise you there's something here for you. So you've already got those earbuds in? Let's get Jim on the podcast. So Jim, welcome back to the podcast. Jim Ray: Mike, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be back. I'm excited to talk to admins and maybe we'll talk a little bit about what's coming at Dreamforce. Mike: I mean all the things, because it's not that I didn't want you back sooner. It's just a really big platform and there's so many things to talk about. Jim Ray: Of course. Mike: But we use Slack every day at Salesforce and a lot of our customers do too. So it's been a while since we've chatted, but what's some of the big stuff that Slack has come out with this year that admins should be excited for if they haven't been paying attention? Jim Ray: Oh, that's such a great question, and...

How Can Admins Use Slack to Manage AI Agents More Easily?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to David Simpson, Salesforce Admin at the 1916 Company. Join us as we chat about his process for troubleshooting Flow errors and his unexpected path into the Salesforce ecosystem. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with David Simpson. Why can Flow errors be so intimidating? If you’ve ever received an emergency ticket from a user because they’ve encountered a Flow error, you know just how cryptic they can be. It’s not always clear at first glance what’s going on, or what your user can do to fix it. What’s more, if you’re hearing about an error from a user, that means it’s made it to production. So now you need to start worrying about your testing and anything else that might pop up. And oh yeah, you need to fix the dang thing, too. That’s why I was so excited to sit down this week with David Simpson. He’s doing a Dreamforce presentation about how to better navigate Flow errors and how to prevent them from happening in the first place. Five steps to resolve a Flow error David breaks down the process of fixing a Flow error into five steps:   Gather information about the Flow error. What’s in the error notification? Is it specific to a particular user or record?   Try to replicate the error in a sandbox environment.   Find the fix.   Test the fix in your sandbox, and test for any similar scenarios.   Push your fix to production.   David emphasizes the importance of communicating with stakeholders at every stage of your solve. You don’t need to share every single detail, but you want to make sure your user knows that you’ve identified the error, how long it will take to fix it, and if there are any workarounds in the meantime. Reach out to the community We also discuss David’s path from finance into the Salesforce ecosystem. He started out as a staff accountant, but when he was asked to take over some of the Salesforce administration duties, he realized he loved working with the platform far more than burying his head in spreadsheets. Finally, I ask David about his top tips for getting better at solving Flow errors. He points to the Trailblazer community and Salesforce help articles as two of his best resources. However, he also suggests getting hands-on in a sandbox by trying to build things that might break. It’s a low-risk way to flex your problem-solving skills and will give you valuable experience for when a real error ends up in production. Make sure to listen to our full conversation for more from David about how to solve Flow errors. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. &nbsp; Podcast swag      Learn more            &nbsp; Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     &nbsp; Full show transcript Mike: Ever had a flow error throw your day off track? You're not alone. This week on the podcast, we welcome David Simpson, Salesforce Admin at the 1916 Company who's bringing his session from Dreamforce navigating flow errors as a new admin right into your old earbuds. David's going to walk us through his process for troubleshooting errors, he shares tips for smarter flow testing, and we even talk about his unexpected path from finance into the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, if you've ever stared down an Apex exception email and wondered what is this trying to tell me? I promise you this episode is for you. So with that, let's get David on the podcast. So David, welcome to the podcast. David Simpson: Thank you for having me. Mike: Let's get started with what you do in the Salesforce ecosystem and the topic you're going to talk about at Dreamforce this year. David Simpson: Sounds good. My name is David Simpson. I am a Salesforce Administrator at the 1916 Company. I have been an admin for a little over eight years now and a flownatic for over five years now, and my session is Navigating Flow Errors as a New Salesforce Administrator. Mike:...

Navigating Flow Errors as a New Salesforce Admin

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Nicole Pomponio, Director of Delivery Management and Operations at SaltClick. &nbsp; Join us as we chat about how admins can unlock the full potential of Slack in Salesforce. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nicole Pomponio. Why Slack is changing what it means to be an admin If you’re planning on coming to Dreamforce this year (or catching it at home), you’re probably going to hear a lot about new ways of combining Agentforce and Slack. That’s why I’m excited I got a chance to sit down with Nicole for this episode and have a conversation about her Dreamforce presentation. &nbsp; Nicole is the Director of Delivery Management and Operations at SaltClick, a consultancy for Salesforce and Slack, so she’s eager to find new ways to get the most out of both platforms. The ever-deepening integration between Salesforce and Slack means there are all sorts of new ways to connect users with data. &nbsp; As Nicole explains, all this means that the entire idea of what an admin can do is becoming more and more expansive. Getting organizational buy-in for Slack If your organization isn’t using Slack, how do you get the buy-in you need to overcome inertia? And if you are using Slack, how do you get the most out of it? &nbsp; Nicole is an admin, but she’s also a decision-maker at SaltClick, and when she puts on her leadership hat, she wants to hear about business problems and possible solutions. So the key to getting buy-in is to reposition Slack from something that sends messages to something that can solve real business problems. &nbsp; “I think the magic of Slack is that when you're using it and when you're using it right, it's easily adopted,” Nicole says, “you don’t have to sell it because when you use it, you showcase it.” For example, identify how many meetings can be eliminated with a dedicated channel on Slack, or show how much you can simplify your team’s workflow with the Jira integration.&nbsp;&nbsp; Tips, tricks, and best practices for Slack As Nicole explains, it’s helpful to establish some rules of the road for how your organization will use Slack. Here are a few tips to get started:    Have consistent naming conventions for channels. SaltClick uses prefixes to keep things organized: #ext for external channels, #int for internal channels, and #salt for fun stuff like #salt-babies.   Let your users know how to organize things for themselves, especially how to leave or mute a channel that they don’t need to use every day.   Make a channel for dedicated Slack support, so you can quickly help folks who get stuck.   Establish guidelines for what Slack etiquette means at your organization and any emojis you’re using.   Make space for fun, but mostly on a different channel from work.   &nbsp; Make sure to check out Nicole’s Dreamforce presentation, in-person or online. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. &nbsp; Podcast swag      Learn more   Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:    Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode:    Salesforce Admins Blog:    Salesforce Admins Blog:    &nbsp; Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     Full show transcript Mike: Slack-first doesn't have to mean Slack-only. And today's guest, Nicole Pomponio, tells us why. Nicole is the delivery and operations manager at SaltClick, and she's going to tell us, Salesforce admins, how we can unlock the full potential of Slack and Salesforce. In addition, Nicole shares her journey from accidental admin to leadership, and she gives us some insight into building intentional channel structure, integrating external platforms, like Jira, and reshaping the admin role in this new very connected era. So whether you're Slack-curious or already swimming in salty channels, you're going to walk away with some ideas you can use. And with that, let's get Nicole on the...

Slack Is Redefining the Salesforce Admin Role

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Denise Carbone, Director of Delivery at ImagineCRM. Join us as we chat about her journey from business analyst to external consultant admin and why AI makes BA skills even more valuable. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Denise Carbone. Why business analyst skills are so important for AI Denise was working as a business analyst when she was first handed the keys to a Salesforce org. She remembers getting a plaque in the mail for being one of the first 500 people to become Salesforce certified. Obviously we’ve come a long way since then, but the skills needed to understand a business problem and map out the requirements for a solution haven’t changed. As Denise explains, you have to be “process first, technology second.” I sat down with her for this episode to find out how these BA skills are even more important with Agentforce. The power of asking why In order to really do your job well, an admin needs to be more than just an order taker. But if you’re spending your time running through a list of requests without having conversations with users and really understanding the business process, well, that’s a tough row to hoe. Instead, you need to ask why. That’s where your business analyst skills come into play. You need to have a full understanding of how things currently work, where they could be improved, and who cares about it the most. Admins in the age of AI Another key business analyst skill is change management. You may have built the coolest solution in the world, but how do you get folks to actually use it? As Denise explains, if you want your solution to be adopted, you need to make it adaptive. As you’re building, you need to keep going back to your users for input. If they feel like their feedback is a part of the process, they’ll have ownership over the results. While Agentforce has greatly expanded what the platform can do, it’s still just technology you’re using to help solve a business problem. As long as you understand the why behind a request, you can build solutions that transform your organization. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from Denise on business analyst best practices and the importance of establishing AI governance policies. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag      Learn more   Salesforce Admins Blog:    Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, I'm joined by Denise Carbone, longtime admin, Salesforce MVP, and all-around champion of business analysis. We unpack her journey from BA to external admin through the power of asking why, and why AI makes those foundational skills more valuable than ever. So, whether you're like me and you've just figured out dependent picklists, or you're leading delivery teams, I promise Denise's insight on governance, process and career growth is a must-listen. So with that, let's get Denise on the podcast. So Denise, welcome to the podcast. Denise Carbone: Awesome. Thanks, Mike. I'm really happy to be here. Mike: I know, I've been to a whole bunch of Chicago user groups, I can't believe I haven't had you on the podcast. So, I've tipped the scale a little bit in your favor, but tell us how you got into the ecosystem and what you do in Chicago. Denise Carbone: Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you. Yes, longtime listener of the podcast so happy to be here. So, I actually started in the ecosystem in 2004. I was a BA turned external admin. I was working for a technology company in Chicago, and I was bestowed the ownership of our Salesforce platform. I was a BA operations kind of girl. I've done work in CRM systems like Goldmine and Act!, so really old system. So, when Salesforce was presented to me I wasn't totally intimidated. I knew it was a CRM platform, I just didn't know much...

How Do Admins Use Business Analysis Skills Effectively?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Abhishek Saxena, Technical Architect at Copado. Join us as we chat about how he learned Data Cloud and why understanding context is the key to making Agentforce shine. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Abhishek Saxena. Overcoming the complexity of Data Cloud As a developer and architect, Abhishek isn’t lacking for technical knowledge about the Salesforce platform. But even he found it hard to get his head around what Data Cloud was and what it could do. Abhishek attended community events, scoured LinkedIn posts, studied videos, and even read a book about Data Cloud. But there were so many new terms being thrown around, and he still couldn’t explain the difference between a data lake object, a data model object, and a data source object. “Even though there was a lot of buzz around Data Cloud and how it is such an amazing, innovative solution,” Abhishek says, “I was not able to grasp what it does in an easy fashion.” Luckily, he had an ah-ha moment that helped him see the big picture, and so he’s giving a presentation at Dreamforce to share what he’s learned. What Data Cloud actually does Abhishek’s talk, “A Beginner’s Guide to Data Cloud,” will get you up to speed in 20 minutes or less. As he explains, the main thing to understand is that Data Cloud is about data unification. If you have your data in a bunch of different places, you used to have to dedicate significant developer time to maintaining APIs that allowed Salesforce to share information with your other platforms. With Data Cloud, you have everything on one record, with Salesforce and Slack as the front door. You have a complete 360 view of your customer, regardless of where the information is. Why Data Cloud is crucial for Agentforce Getting a complete picture of your customers is doubly important when it comes to Agentforce. AI agents are extremely context-dependent: they do a much better job when you “ground” them with extra parameters. As Abhishek says, “If you give agents good data, your responses are going to be much more personalized and better.” Data Cloud allows you to give your AI agents a much more specific picture of your customers, opening the door for better and more effective automations. If you’re coming to Dreamforce, make sure to come to Abhishek’s presentation so you can be a Data Cloud pro. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag      Learn more   Salesforce Admins Blog:    Admin Trailblazers Group      Social                     Full show transcript Mike: So have you ever tried to figure out what a data lake is and then ended up wondering where the lifeguard's at? Ditto. Today on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Abhishek Saxena, a Salesforce consultant with a developer's mindset and a teacher's heart. Abhishek's going to take us through his journey of learning Data Cloud and how it went from something buzzworthy to something he could really explain to a five-year-old. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed by new tech or just really weren't sure where to begin this episode's for you. Plus Abhishek gives us a sneak peek at his Dreamforce session and why understanding context is key in making AI tools like Agentforce shine. So with that, let's get Abhishek on the podcast. So Abhishek, welcome to the podcast. Abhishek: Thank you so much for having me, Mike. Mike: I'm excited to talk about this because of all the things going on at Salesforce, we've got a big event coming up in just a few weeks from when this is going to air, and you're doing a presentation there, but before we talk about that, let's find out a little bit about you. How did you get started doing stuff in the Salesforce ecosystem and want to present at Dreamforce? Abhishek: Certainly. So I have been working in the Salesforce ecosystem for about 10 years now,...

Making Data Cloud Understandable for Admins

Triggers for Admins with Shannon Howe

Today on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we’re speaking to Umair llyas, a Senior Salesforce Consultant at Acumen. Umair did a fantastic presentation in December at Salesforce World Tour which was all about helping admins transition to Lightning. Along with having a great presentation, Umair works as a hands on mentor to help admins make the transition to Lightning, learn more, and do better at their job. Join us as Umair shares his journey from the world of nonprofit and teaching to his role as a Senior Salesforce Consultant and admin mentor. We’ll learn Umair’s top tips for admins transitioning to Lightning and hear about some of his favorite Lightning features and capabilities. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Umair llyas. Communication is key. A former teacher who worked extensively in the nonprofit world, Umair didn’t start out in Salesforce. However, he’s used skills from his previous career to help mentor admins. “Salesforce already provides a lot of great resources to help admins learn the system on their own. I like adding to that with soft skills that they can’t necessarily learn online,” says Umair. As Umair points out, “Communication is one of the biggest things you should focus on. As an admin, you’re not the one using the system. Your users are using the system. If you’re not in constant communication with them, how do you know what’s best for them?” &nbsp; Lightning isn’t just a user interface upgrade. How should admins get started with Lightning? Umair says, “I start by helping the admin understand that Lightning isn’t just a user interface upgrade. It’s an entirely new user experience. The way you do things in Classic is not the same as the way as you would do things in Lightning.” Secondly, admins should make use of the resources available to them. “There are plenty of lessons available to you on Trailhead to help you get Lightning ready,” says Umair. He also encourages admins to use Lightning Migration Assistant. “It’s an entirely different page within your set-up that walks you through everything you need to do to get ready for Lightning. One of those pieces is the Lightning Writing Assessment, this really cool report that shows you all the different items you need to touch upon before you can move into Lightning,” says Umair. &nbsp; It’s all about change management. “I’ve seen a lot of people I’ve worked with miss the ball on this,” says Umair. As he explains, “moving to Lightning is not as easy as flipping a switch. It involves communicating with your end users, knowing what’s possible in the system, figuring out how to equip your end users to use the system, providing support after you go on Lightning. It’s a journey that you have to take with your end users, clients, and customers.” However, he says the result is worth it. “Yes, it’s daunting. We’re naturally afraid of things that look different and that we haven’t used. But at the end of the day it’s something that’s going to benefit your users,” says Umair. &nbsp; The first step is hardest. When it comes to learning Lightning, a lot of Salesforce admins don’t know where to start. Umair’s advice: “Just take one step forward and everything works itself out.” “In the beginning, you’re not going to know everything, but that’s the fun,” says Umair. For more insights, make sure to follow Umair llyas on Twitter (@UmairSF). &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

How to Get Started with Lightning with Umair Ilyas

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got Emily Tam, Director of Application Development at Borrego Solar Systems, to learn about her amazing path to being an Admin and how her Lightning rollout is going. Join us as we talk about her unique path to Salesforce, the value of hands-on training, and how her team is managing a transition to Lightning in an org that relies on Salesforce from top to bottom. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Emily Tam. On-the-job training in the days before Trailhead. Emily, like many accidental Admins, didn’t come from a technical background. In fact, when she was growing up, she wanted to be a dentist. “I had a degree in economics and was more interested in the business side of things,” she says, but when the Admin and Dev at Borrego left, “it kind of fell in my lap and I became certified.” Now she has a team of Admins working for her building applications for her company. “When I got certified, I didn’t go to any of the trainings or take the official classes,” Emily says, “I really think the hands-on, on-the-job training was my prep.” Now that she has Admins working for her, she’s amazed that some of her employees went through Trailhead to get their certification without any hands-on experience. The flexibility of the Agile Accelerator. Emily’s team is distributed. While she’s based in the Oakland, a large part of her team is based in Massachusetts and people work remotely all the time. They’ve swapped to an Agile methodology, and the Agile Accelerator app has been a big help. “With the Agile Accelerator we’re able to have that close-knit feeling of a team that’s colocated without being in the same location,” Emily says. It took a bit of time for Emily to sort out how to manage workflow and make it happen with the Agile Accelerator, “but it was pretty intuitive once I spent some time with it. It’s really helped our team communicate across the country and has made our sprints easy.” The customizations that make Salesforce work for Borrego. Emily’s team has built a Salesforce-based way of making requisitions requests. Anytime you need approval for something, whether that’s purchasing, legal, or technical, you use the same centralized tool to make the request. “Managers love it because it’s at the top of their queue, they log in every day and they see what they have to approve; and employees like it because it’s one central place for them to go,” she says. The object’s grown over the years, to the point that even Emily’s own team gets requests over it. Emily’s Lightning rollout. Emily’s team hasn’t transitioned to Lightning quite yet. “Because we’ve been using Salesforce for 13 years, we have a lot of technical debt: a lot we’ve built in the system, a lot of things that pre-date the functionality in Salesforce,” she says. Right now that means that her team needs to be focused on running the LIghtning Optimizer Report, cleaning things up, and doing the Lightning Readiness Check. It’s a lot of clean up. “The hardest part of Lightning implementation, for us, is probably sitting with the user and really knowing what they do day-to-day,” Emily says. What they’ve been trying to do is sit with each particular group of users and adjust the settings live to make sure that they’re able to get what they need. “The good news is that we can do it in chunks,” she says, “we can do it department by department or even person by person. It’s very targeted.” Resources  Agile Accelerator on the AppExchange:  https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000ps3jEAA Learn Salesforce Agile Basics Trail on Trailhead:  https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/trails/learn-salesforce-agile-practices Roll Out Lightning to Your Sales Team Project on Trailhead: ...

Emily Tam's Trailblazer Story

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got Taisha Inesti, Business Manager at AHRC New York City and PepUp Tech alum. We come to you live from a bar in the NYC Finacial District to talk about her journey into the Salesforce ecosystem who is just getting started. Join us as we talk about how she became a liaison between the tech and people parts of her organization, her experience in PepUp Tech, and how she’s approaching breaking into a Salesforce career. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Taisha Inesti. Working to make a difference. Taisha, who goes by Tai, originally wanted to be a lawyer. However, like most of our guests on the pod, life happened and she ended up on a different road that led her to tech. For Tai, it was becoming a single mother at nineteen. She needed to get to work to support her family, so she started at a nonprofit that provides behavioral health services to patients with disabilities. First, she provided direct care, eventually moving into admin and eventually became the Systems Manager. “That’s when my love for systems and technology came into play,” she says. At her agency, Tai is trying to overhaul the systems that are being used, but it’s tough to get momentum, especially when critical day-to-day operations depend upon them. “They’re not using enterprise systems, they’re not even electronic medical records,” she says, “we’re recording on the backend to basically make a bill.” Tai is in charge of making sure they have clean data to make sure everything’s running smoothly, and that they can satisfy their reporting requirements. Translating from IT gruff talk to human. As Tai got more involved in the data side of her nonprofit, she started working with the IT department, which at first fulfilled the stereotype of being a bit rough around the edges. She was a fast study and wasn’t afraid to speak up when trainings had the wrong tone. People took notice, and so she was able to pick up some coding. Eventually, they had a special position created specifically for her to help IT with training. “A lot of people, when they’re learning, they’re learning without understanding why things happen the way they happen,” Tai says, “but when you understand the way something works it’s a lot easier for you to be able to help another person understand that too.” She had a talent for understanding the Why behind a thing, and communicating that clearly to the actual people who needed to execute that task. When Salesforce entered the picture (Selina Suarez strikes again). During this time, Tai also went back and finished her degree in Public Affairs and Legal Studies. She got to design her own major, so she focused on IT, and project management, supplementing that with Khan Academy courses in Java and more to feed her curiosity. “I just wanted to keep learning, and I wish I had heard about Salesforce back then because I would have been a Trailhead master,” she says. So how did Tai get to Salesforce? A childhood friend of 25 years who happens to be Selina Suarez. As Selina was learning Salesforce and getting more involved, she kept telling Tai to come along for the ride. When Selina started PepUp Tech, naturally, Tai got involved. She went to her first Dreamforce this year, and the experience was amazing. “I cried so many times, I was overwhelmed by the love and community that exists within the Salesforce ecosystem,” she says. Tai was particularly moved by Marc Benioff’s discussion of “inclusive capitalism,” the idea that business can help make social change real and achievable. “I think that Salesforce is breaking generational curses, that it’s making the world a better place,” she says. “People who would have been overlooked—they’re in the ecosystem and they’re building and they’re thriving,” she says. Resources  Trailhead:  Build Your Career in the Salesforce Ecosystem...

Aspire to be an Admin with Taisha Inesti

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we get to sit down with Brian Millham, President of Global Customer Success and the thirteenth employee ever at Salesforce, to hear some tips on dealing with senior executives and the importance of admins. Join us as we talk about why tough feedback is key to your career path, why admins are key to Salesforce success, and how to communicate with executive leadership. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Brian Millham. The early days of Salesforce. Brian joined Salesforce in 1999 as the thirteenth Salesforce employee. “Back in those days, we talked a lot about on-demand software or software as a service, the ‘cloud’ term didn’t even exist back then,” Brian says. Throughout his time with the company, he’s worked primarily in sales, with some experiences in alliances and business development as well. “The early days of Salesforce were not as glamorous as they are today, for sure,” Brian says, “but it was a fun time.” “For me it’s been an exciting evolution,” Brian says, “I was very lucky to be able to learn iteratively through the years.” From Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to MuleSoft, Salesforce has evolved through the years and Brian has been along for the ride. Now on the Customer Success team, he gets to see how the scope of the platform is changing companies every day. The tough feedback that makes a great manager. Many Salesforce admins find themselves in management positions, and Brian has some great advice. For one thing, looking for incremental gains through smart hires is vital if you want to keep growing and work efficiently at scale. “Don’t rely on the past to get you into the future,” Brian says, “bring in new people with new perspectives.” For another thing, you need to not be afraid to have honest conversations. That goes both ways. You need to be willing to give tough feedback at times when someone can hear it, but you also need to be able to make changes to your own leadership style and listen closely when someone is being honest with you. “Some of the best learnings you have are not from your successes but from the challenges instead,” Brian says. Ask for the hard feedback you need to hear, and don’t be afraid to be honest with your team. Admin magic. “We live in a world where we get to place the customer at the center of everything that we’re doing,” Brian says, “and we have the ability to go help companies accelerate one of their priorities.” As companies start to think differently about customer engagement and touchpoints, the platform also opens up opportunities for new people to work with new tools to do amazing things with those insights. “I was just with a customer last week who was telling me a story about an admin that built an application that sat adjacent to the product that we’d sold them. No technical skills when they joined the company, but they were able to come in, understand the business requirements of the users, and then built this application that is the most used application in the entire suite of products,” Brian says. How to talk to executive leadership from someone who does it all the time. Many solo or part-time admins are out there trying to figure out how to get support from leadership to add people to their team. The bottom line is that someone in your organization has made the decision to invest in Salesforce. They want it to succeed, so the key is figuring out who that is and helping them understand why they need someone who owns adoption, customizations, and fundamentally understands the technology. When Brian talks to executives, he really stresses the importance of making sure that you’re setting yourself up to get value from your investment by making the right personnel decisions. “The number one hire you must have after you buy Salesforce is a rockstar admin,” he says. In his current role, Brian has a...

Why Admins Matter With Brian Millham

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, listen to the dulcet tones of Jared Jones, Junior Implementation Architect in the Customer Success and Growth Organization at Salesforce. He shares his amazing story and tells us how he’s transitioned his career from hospitality to his current role in implementation, as well as his passion for Service Cloud. Join us as we talk about how curiosity led him from hotel management to Salesforce, how he transformed his team at Salesforce with Salesforce, and how he was able to put himself in front of management and get the support he needed. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jared Jones. A rock star at heart. Growing up (and still), Jared wanted to be a rock star, he majored in jazz and classical piano, played trombone professionally for 12 years and he still plays guitar professionally around his work schedule at Salesforce. They’ve even created a secret Salesforce society of musicians called Jamforce to get together and rock out. So how did he go from working musician to Salesforce Architect? “My journey to Salesforce was very random and completely unplanned,” Jared says, “but as soon as I got here I immediately was like this is what I’m supposed to be doing this is awesome.” He worked in hospitality for about 8 years. The Real Estate organization at Salesforce happened to be trying to build a “hotel-esque” hospitality experience, so they were looking for people with experience to help build that. Jared ended up as a Workplace Service Coordinator, basically the front desk of the HQ offices. That’s not necessarily a very technical role, but Jared was able to make a transition. “Most of the people on that team, to this day, don’t really know what Salesforce does and certainly don’t know the products,” he says. He had encountered a proprietary CRM in his previous work, so when he realized Salesforce was the same basic idea, he got really excited about how he could use it at the front desks at HQ. That lead him to Trailhead and the start of a new chapter. When Salesforce needs the help of… Salesforce? “It was kind of whirlwind,” Jared says, “there was a trail called CRM basics or essentials so I read that and it really breaks down, from the very beginning, what is a CRM, why do you need one for your business, and then what does Salesforce have to do with that and things started clicking for me.” Really, he was just looking for an excuse to learn more about the technology and apply it to his team. “Doing just a few basic trails, I learned that our team was a perfect use case for the platform,” he says. “One of the first things I recognized was that there was too much manual doing of things that could’ve been done not manually,” Jared says. They literally used a hand clicker and a spreadsheet to track visitors, for example. Almost everything was handled with email, “I was thinking, ‘I’m pretty sure Salesforce has a solution for this, I don’t know a lot about it but I’m pretty sure we can make it happen.’” Why wasn’t Salesforce using Salesforce, he wondered. Into the Salesforce-Verse. Jared set about using a Trailhead playground to build custom objects to track things like deliveries. Once he had some things built, he worked with his manager to start implementing them. She connected him with the Technology Director of Real Estate, which gave him system administrator access to a full-production, 1,000 user license org that no one was using. Once he got the keys to the car, so to speak, he was able to really build things out and make a very persuasive presentation and ended up working on his project full-time. One of the things that came up pretty quickly was the problem of scalability. “My app worked great for our offices, but if we were to roll it out globally it would break immediately,” Jared says. In learning more about the data model and solving those...

Jared Jones, Your Friendly Neighborhood Salesforce Spider-Man

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re joined by Yves Stewart, a Salesforce Consultant at Slalom. We learn how to get out of your own way and dig into your problem. Join us as we talk about why you just need to get started, the importance of surrounding yourself with the platform, and the importance of having patience with yourself as you learn. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Yves Stewart.&nbsp; How Yves got started as an accidental admin. “Before embarking on my Salesforce journey, I just never thought about me being this techy person,” Yves says, “I always felt that that wasn’t me, it was for everyone else. But I accidentally became an admin, and it was the best accident of my life.” She was working for a manufacturing company in the energy sector when she met a Salesforce dev and MVP who pushed her to take a serious look at the platform. When they had to leave the company, Yves stepped up to the plate to take over as an admin. Yves’s first big “aha” moment dealt with approvals—they were in the middle of their annual sales meeting when the approval process went haywire. She took a deep dive into the process and sort things out, solidifying her role with the sales team and giving her the confidence to move forward on the platform. “I no longer had to think of myself as an accidental admin,” Yves says, “I actually was an admin who was knowledgeable.” Jumping in and learning as you go. Yves’s company had a major need to keep everyone in sync in the field, which lead to her developing a component that allowed her team to create tickets even if they didn’t have connectivity at their current location. They could put in a request and get all the information they needed as soon as they got a WiFi connection, eliminating what was previously a paper process. “It was very exciting because it allowed us to not work in segments but instead bring all the groups together,” she says, “it allowed everyone to get a complete view of the customer and have people coming from all different angles to make this a win-win situation all the way from the beginning to the end.” The big problems can often be the most challenging to make headway on, and Yves’s advice is to get out of your own way and just start. “You have to start somewhere in order to make it happen,” she says, “actually lay down a roadmap and give yourself some steps to get there. You don’t have to have it all figured out, you just need to get started.” The power of the Salesforce community. Starting out is always tricky and for Yves, as a solo admin, the Salesforce community was a major help in guiding her on her journey. She went to a Houston user group meeting where she learned about the Salesforce Military program. As a military spouse herself, she was able to get connected with a community of people who could relate to what she was going through and help her out. If you’re just starting out, Yves has some sage advice. “Learn about the product and the platform—it’s a phenomenal tool,” she says, “you don’t have to be an expert in everything, you just have to be able to understand the basics of how it works.” It takes time, but you can keep learning through Trailhead and other programs and continue to grow. Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Yves:  Gillian:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  For full transcript, go to

Get Out of Your Own Way with Yves Stewart

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking to Eric Praud, a Service Cloud Delivery Manager at Ladbrokes Coral Group. We discuss best practices for building formulas and how to ask and answer questions on the Salesforce community. Join us as we talk about why you need to learn things with the mindset that you may need to teach them later, why it’s so important to avoid technical debt, and how to be better at asking for and giving help on the Answers community. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Eric Praud. Why it’s OK to get it wrong the first time. Like a lot of people we talk to on the Salesforce Admin Podcast, Eric is someone who stumbled into the platform. He started out working thirteen years in the restaurant industry, but when he was looking to transition into technology he ended up working in Salesforce support. “You start with support and it feels like a sink or swim situation because you don’t know much, to be fair,” Eric says, “but it was the best schooling I could’ve had for Salesforce.” These days, Eric keeps up with his support roots by keeping active in the community, where he tries to answer questions every day and is in the top three. He’s particularly focused on formula-based questions: “I just really like the challenge that is in the question, I like the logic of the formula, and I love it when it works out in the end,” he says. The big thing is to not be afraid of failure. If it’s complicated, you’re probably going to get it wrong the first time, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying. Avoiding technical debt. One problem Eric encountered on the Answers community had to do with how to create a formula to show what fiscal quarter a particular date would fall into. The fiscal quarters for this particular company never seemed to start on the same date, so Eric sat down with a pen and paper to work it out. It took him three days, but he eventually reverse-engineered the method behind the madness. “You don’t want to carry technical debt,” Eric says, “will you remember, in five years’ time, that you have to go back to that formula? You may not even be there, it may be another admin who will have no clue what’s happening here.” Eric is always looking for an evergreen solution that will always work no matter what the circumstances are. In other words, spending three days to figure out the fiscal year formula now is worth it if it means that nobody will ever have to spend time on it again. How to be better at asking for and giving help. When it comes to the Answers community, Eric has some words of wisdom about being a good poster. “Remember that we’re here to help you, but help us help you,” he says, “remember to add a few screenshots, give us the data types of the fields that you mention.” Most importantly, describe the problem you’re facing in layman’s terms. Every business and industry is unique, but a little bit of context can go a long way, and not everybody is going to be familiar with your specific situation. On the other hand, if Eric is giving answers, he has a few strategies for making sure he’s being helpful. “Sometimes you can tell when people are new at Salesforce,” he says. Sometimes they tell you straight away, but there are also some hints from the way they’re phrasing their questions. In those cases, it’s helpful to overexplain your formula so they have an understanding of not just what to do, but why they’re doing it.&nbsp; Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Mike:  Eric:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  &nbsp; Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you become an awesome admin. I'm Mike Gerholdt, and joining me today is Eric Prod to talk about building formulas as a best practice, evergreen solutions and wow, we also dig a little bit into how to ask and...

Best Practices for Building Formulas with Eric Praud

Flow Builder &amp; Automation with John Kucera &nbsp; Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we bring on John Kucera, a Product Manager at Salesforce. We find out all the latest and greatest things that Flows are capable of and why it’s worth it to make the switch from Process Builder. &nbsp; Join us as we talk about the new live ListViews feature, how you can automate hundreds and thousands of record changes (with debugging), and now is the best time ever to get started with Flows. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Kucera. &nbsp; Powerful automation in just a few clicks. &nbsp; One of the biggest changes going into Summer 20 is the ability to trigger Flows when you save a Record. Right now in Process Builder, there are a lot of limitations if you want to build a series of triggers or get records queries. “All this power that people love with Flow you now can invoke directly on record saves,” John says, “you have one tool which can do almost all of your declarative automation.” &nbsp; We know that improving the Process Builder ListView has been a popular request, and the improvements in Summer 20 are the result. You can now have live ListViews with Flow for any of these Record Triggers that you create. “You can have custom ListViews to see them the way you want, you can see the most recent one you edited or different views for different users,” John says, and even make adjustments live in the Flow. After Summer 20, you should start with Flow and see if you can build everything you need there, only moving to Process Builder for the known gaps. &nbsp; Why now is a great time to get started with Flows. &nbsp; If you haven’t yet delved into Flows, now’s a great time to get started. John and his team have worked hard over the past few years to hide and automate variables so you can build things more easily. “We really think that now is a fantastic time for anyone who was deterred by Flow to give it a second look, especially for Record Triggers,” he says. This gives you access to all sorts of automation that can help you streamline your business processes and keep track of things like never before, all with clicks and no need for code. &nbsp; There are a lot of abilities Flows give you that were previously only doable with Apex coding. You can batch edit upwards of 250,000 records a day, and schedule that to happen in anticipation of, for example, a contract ending. Most importantly, there’s now an easy debugging process so you don’t accidentally end up with 250,000 errors the next morning. With learning Flows, John’s advice is pretty simple: “Start small, get your confidence, and really invest in learning these fantastic tools.”   Using Screen Flow Analytics to improve your processes and what comes next. There are so many new features that John and his team are still working on catching up in the Flow release notes, so make sure to listen to the full episode to get all the details. Another massive feature coming to your org is Screen Flow Analytics. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if you knew how long people take to finish your process so you can identify which paths were taken most,” John asks, “so you can identify where things are potentially either confusing and problematic or broken?” You can create dashboards to do just that, and you and your business partners can subscribe to them to get insights automatically pushed to you every month. It’s also a great way to show usage numbers and demonstrate the value of the tools that you create. &nbsp; Looking forward, John and his team are looking to establish more parity between Process Builder and these new features they’ve added to Flows. Look for improvements to debugging, screens, and more. At the end of the day, it’s all about making these tools easier for admins to do more and take advantage of all of the power offered by the Salesforce platform. Trailhead:       ...

Flow Builder &amp; Automation with John Kucera

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re chatting with Purvi Desai, Director Product Marketing for Service Cloud. We learn how admins can get started with this amazing product. Join us as we talk about how to use personas to help you configure service cloud, the amazing powers of macros, and some product marketing insights about how to build a demo. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Purvi Desai. What we learned about Service Cloud at TrailheaDX. We saw Purvi’s segment about Service Cloud at TrailheaDX and knew we had to bring her on the pod to tell us more about it. “This session was really all about how admins can champion productivity for service agents,” she says, “admins wear many hats, they’re product managers where they’re implementing roadmap and rolling out new features, but they’re also very much responsible for the user experience.” In a world where service organizations are measured by average handle time and customer satisfaction, optimizing the experience for service agents means cases are handled faster and customers leave the interaction happier. How to start thinking about Service Cloud users. In her segment, Purvi walked us through everything from automations to Lightning Flows and AI that can save time and make everyone more productive. What’s so crucial with Service Cloud that differentiates it from working with sales is your users are working through the interface you’ve given them at the same moment as they’re dealing with the customer. One thing that comes in handy is leveraging personas: case solvers, expert agents, and team leaders. Understanding who each of these users are and what they need to do will help you optimize their workflow. Another important concept to get your head around is the type of cases your company solves. A software company is going to have a very different workflow than a retail organization, for example. You need to make decisions about what information will be most helpful to your reps in the moment they’re dealing with the customer. “Any little thing you can automate, any second saved is really important,” Purvi says. New Service Cloud features coming in Summer 20. Looking forward to Summer 20, we’re adding several new features that are incredibly exciting. Service Cloud Voice brings a native integration of intelligent telephony to the Salesforce platform. Putting everything all in one place is especially important when several people are working from home and may not have the same amount of screen real estate they’re used to. For team leaders, you have everything all in one place, including voice. Most importantly, you have richer analytics to help you make decisions in real-time. “This is going to help our agents because it’s going to help them focus on the customer rather than writing notes or searching for an answer,” Purvi says, because now there’s live voice transcription. Everything happens through Salesforce’s interface, making it easy for admins to work with and bring key insights to leadership. Trailhead:    Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Purvi:  Gillian:  Mike: &nbsp;  Full Show Transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you become an awesome admin. I'm Gillian Bruce. Mike Gerholdt: And I'm Mike Gerholdt. Gillian Bruce: And today we have an amazing guest joining us. It's Purvi Desai, Product Marketing, Service Cloud to talk how admins can get started with Service Cloud. So without further ado, let's get Purvi on the podcast. Mike Gerholdt: So Purvi, welcome to the podcast. Purvi Desai: Thank you. Mike Gerholdt: As a followup from TrailheaDX, which was an amazing event. We saw you kind of wrap up the Service Cloud session. We wanted to have you on the podcast to talk more Service Cloud, because we know there's so many admins out there that loves Service Cloud that are knee-deep in...

Service Cloud with Purvi Desai

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk with John Demby, Lead Creative Strategist at Tableau. Join us as we talk about how Tableau got its start with Pixar, the amazing things people are doing on Tableau Public, and how to start tinkering with this powerful tool today. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Demby. Producing an impossible report. John first found out about Tableau while he was working in pre-sales at a Salesforce customer. He wanted to create a report to see where people were spending their time, but was running into problems with one company, in particular, that was in their org seventy different times because of all their different legal entities. “With the tools I had in Salesforce, I couldn’t produce a report,” John says, which is how he came across Tableau. “Within 15 minutes, I had a dashboard I couldn’t have had before,” he says. He was able to group data, create aliases and hierarchies, all with a simple drag-and-drop interface. When he was looking for a new opportunity and Tableau became a possibility, it was a no-brainer. Bringing better data visualizations to everyone. Pat Hanrahan, Tableau’s Chief Scientist, originally started at Pixar developing the RenderMan Interface, which helps translate data into visuals. Behind Tableau is the idea of automatically rendering data using design best practices to create the clearest visual representation possible. “Tableau doesn’t ask you, ahead of time, to pick a chart type,” John says, “based on your actions and what you’re doing and how you interact with the interface, it figures out what the best chart type is for what you’re trying to do.” As Tableau has grown, the community has played a big role in driving innovation. There’s all sorts of community-driven content, not just for business reporting but visualizations for Game of Thrones or the Marvel Universe. “The community has really helped us take Tableau to the next level,” John says, “they’re the ones who have helped us find all of the uses cases and all of the goodness and the ability to discover data that has transformed Tableau into what it is today.” How Tableau makes a positive impact. As an organization, Tableau is really focused on having a positive impact on their community through the Tableau Foundation, working to overcome everything from poverty, inequity, and climate change, to global health issues. “Early on, we realized that getting Tableau in the hands of students and teachers was really critical,” John says, and so they offer free one-year licenses for K-college. Listen to the full episode for all of the amazing things you can do with Tableau, but the bottom line is that they’re focused on helping you see and understand your data better. “There’s no other way to explore data unless you can see it,” John says, and Tableau helps you dig deeper than you ever thought possible. Links:      Social:  Salesforce Admins:  John:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  &nbsp; Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you become an awesome admin. I'm Mike Gerholdt. Gillian Bruce: And I'm Gillian Bruce. Mike Gerholdt: And joining us today is John [Demby] from Tableau, to talk about all the amazing things that Tableau can do. And I got to tell you, we really geek out in this episode because there's a lot of fun stuff for admins to learn, and understand, and get into some visualizations. We'll share those in the show notes. So, with that, let's get John on the podcast. So John, welcome to the podcast. John Demby: Thanks. Thanks for having me. Mike Gerholdt: It was so much fun working with you and the Tableau team for TrailheaDX. I told Gillian, as a follow up we had to get you on the podcast. Had to hear your story about how you got started with Tableau and some of the...

How I Fell in Love with Tableau with John Demby

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got Tiffany Spencer, COO of Esor Consulting Group and the founder of HBCUforce. We learn how she helps students gain the experience they need to land their first Salesforce job. Join us as we talk about why process and solving is key to working in tech, how to gets hands-on experience with superbadges and case studies, and some great tips for networking effectively. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Tiffany Spencer. Producing an impossible report Tiffany says she does everything, and she’s really not kidding. “I’m a consultant, a CRM manager, a business architect, a solution architect—it kind of depends on who you ask that day,” she says, “a big part of it is working with individuals that I train and helping them understand how to better utilize the Salesforce platform and how to continue on their journey.” Tiffany started as an admin for a small land development company after only a week of training and quickly became all things Salesforce for her organization. “It was a really great position where I was able to play many roles,” she says, “I was the admin, I was the BA, the project manager, the architect, the trainer, and that sink-or-swim moment set the tone for all of my other positions.” She went on to several roles as both an admin and later a business analyst. The craziest part about her whole journey is that that first job never mentioned Salesforce in the job description. Little did she know that her chance encounter with the platform would shape her entire career. Bringing Salesforce to Students Tiffany is the founder of HBCUforce, a nonprofit organization that partners with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to create programs that provide early access to cloud computing careers through exposure to Salesforce and their partners. She got the idea about two years ago when she visited her alma mater, Bethune-Cookman University, and decided to pop in a classroom. She started talking with some students about their career plans and explained to them what she does, and when she saw their interest she realized she could work with the school to create a program to show them exposure to everything a career in Salesforce can offer. While many students aspire to land a position at Microsoft or Google, Tiffany’s found that they don’t often know that Salesforce is just as big (and innovative) of a company. Not only that, but 97% of Fortune 100 companies use the platform. In technology, it’s really about processes. Tiffany always tells students, “I’m not a coder, you don’t have to be a coder or a programmer or a developer to be in technology. There are all these other pieces of the puzzle that help developers do their job that you can be involved in.” Getting Your First Salesforce Job When you’re looking to get your first Salesforce job, Tiffany has a few tips that she’s seen work for her mentees. For one thing, you can do case studies and superbadges to get some hands-on experience. The other thing that really helps is getting familiar with Agile, whether that’s using a tool like Jira or Trello or even reading the Agile Manifesto. Tiffany also tries to give her mentees opportunities to tackle real-life problems by bringing them into her pro-bono projects. If you don’t have a Tiffany in your life (yet), there are still ways to seek out something to get you started. “There are plenty of Tiffanys in the Salesforce ecosystem,” she says, “people are more than willing to guide and help so the first thing to do is to get involved with the community.” Start with your local community group, or organizations like PepUp Tech or Salesforce Military. “There’s not a shortage of people doing amazing things,” she says, “so you just got to get out there and start networking and connecting.” Links:    Trailhead:    Social  Salesforce Admins:  Tiffany: ...

How to Get Your First Salesforce Job with Tiffany Spencer

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking to Prag Ravichandran Kamalaveni, Salesforce Lead at CloudKettle. We learn all about the new Trust Champions program, which recognizes trailblazers who have expertise in and champion or advocate for good security practices and effective use of Salesforce technology to protect their company’s data. Join us as we talk about security best practices, lessons he’s learned about how to roll out Salesforce security features, and what you can do as an admin to get started. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Prag Ravichandran Kamalaveni. &nbsp;How Prag became a Trust Champion. “For many Salesforce admins, security is something that they’re less comfortable with,” Prag says, “so when I started attending and hosting Trailblazer community meetings, most of my topics were around security.” When people started thanking him for helping them understand complex topics, Prag realized he not only had a gift for decoding security on Salesforce but for explaining it to others. One big tip that Prag has is to use pen and paper before you turn on or off any security feature in Salesforce. “When it comes to security, there’s no user interface for how the sharing works,” Prag says, “so make sure you write down your sharing model and see how data is going to be shared. Spend time on visualizing how security is going to work inside your org.” Take the time to actually map out how everything is going to work to make sure you understand what’s going on. Practical security tips for your org. Admins often have god powers in their own orgs, but when it comes to best practices, you want to restrict access across the org and apply the principle of least privilege for user records. “Salesforce provides so many great features on the verification and authentication process,” Prag says, “and my leveraging these features, Salesforce admins can significantly increase the level of security for sensitive operations by raising the users’ permissions to high assurance under session settings.” A big part of keeping everything secure is taking advantage of the multi-factor authentication (MFA) features that are baked-in to the Salesforce platform. Safeguard access to your user accounts, and make sure that there’s more protecting your accounts than just usernames and passwords written down on a piece of paper somewhere. “As security threats grow increasingly common, it’s essential to implement stronger measures of account security,” Prag says, and he has some tips and tricks for how to get better adoption from users and get buy-in from leadership. It’s important to remember that these security features are complicated and can often be nonintuitive, but you’re not in this alone. “Look to the community if you need help,” Prag says, “there are thousands of community groups in your local area, so feel free to log in and ask your question.” In the meantime, educate yourself and make sure you understand all of the security features Salesforce offers, and see what you can do to roll them out to your org. Links:    Trailhead:   module    Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Prag:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or

Trust Champion: Prag Ravichandran Kamalaveni

For this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re joined by Tiffany Thomas, Senior Salesforce Business Analyst at New York Life Insurance. We learn how getting your users to collaborate can have a huge impact on buy-in and adoption. Join us as we talk about why active listening and good communication skills are the foundation of being an effective BA, how that’s changed with more remote users than ever before, and why it’s so important to remind your users that they are the experts on their own business processes. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Tiffany Thomas. SABWA? More like SABZA. Tiffany always knew she had an interest in technology, but it wasn’t until she got a chance email from PepUp Tech that she got a chance to make those dreams a reality. “PepUp Tech is an amazing organization that inspires and empowers underrepresented people by teaching technology skills, such as Salesforce,” she says, “and also provides a strong network of support to help people launch a successful career in tech.” These days, Tiffany is focused on a new challenge: migrating her org from Classic to Lightning. “We’re not just taking everything that was in our old house and bringing it to our new house,” she says. She’s in charge of meeting with all fourteen service teams to go over their business processes—especially in light of more people working remotely—and creating user stories around them. In other words, Tiffany does SABWA (Salesforce Administration By Walking Around) as a job, though these days it’s maybe more like SABZA (Salesforce Administration by Zooming Around). Maintaining business relationships in a remote environment. When Tiffany first started at New York Life, financial services was a new industry for her. That meant she had to really understand what her users are trying to do and what their workflows look like. Most importantly, she was able to ask why they do what they do, and understand what’s important and what’s not. Prior to COVID-19, New York Life already had employees working from home, so Tiffany had experience helping those users through Salesforce. However, one thing that’s been different is not getting the chance to run into people and find out what’s on their mind. “For me, the most important thing was trying to maintain the relationships I’ve built with my users and letting them still feel like they’re playing a part because they are,” she says. The two skills every BA needs. Tiffany is a Business Analyst working in Salesforce, and she has a couple of tips for how to harness a little BA magic for yourself. “One of the most important skills that a business analyst can have is being an active listener,” she says, “listen to understand.” You might not know all of the business processes, but being able to hear what your users say and understand the Why behind it can go a long way. The other key skill is effective communication. “Communicating back what you’re hearing will help when you’re trying to get buy-in,” Tiffany says. “I like to start each meeting reminding my users that they are the experts in that business process,” she says, which brings them into a collaboration with her on how to improve their workflow and, ultimately, helps drive adoption. Trailhead:    &nbsp;  Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full Show Transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm Gillian Bruce. Mike Gerholdt: And I'm Mike Gerholdt. Gillian Bruce: And today we are talking to Tiffany Thomas. She is a senior Salesforce business analyst at the New York Life Insurance Company in New York. And we had Tiffany hop on the pod to talk about how to think like a BA or a business analyst. It's very helpful for admins. She had some great tips. And so without...

Think like a Salesforce Business Analyst with Tiffany Thomas

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking to Jason Teller, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce. We cover all the new features coming to Flow in Winter ‘21 and how you can make big performance gains for your org. Join us as we talk about how auto-layout mode helps with blank canvas anxiety and why the before-save trigger offers big performance improvements for updating fields. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jason Teller. Why the admin community had a big impact on Jason. You might recognize Jason from the Winter ‘20 Release Readiness video, where he teamed up with Gillian to talk about all things automation and Flow. He’s a certified Flownatic, and he joined Salesforce specifically to work on the Flow team. “The thing that impressed me so much about Salesforce when I joined was actually the admin community,” he says, “because Flow and automation gives somebody like the admin the power of a developer, it allows you to build things that help people actually do the work they need to do.” What Jason loves so much about automation at Salesforce is that the focus is always on putting the people first. “In order to do that, you need a level of automation that makes you able to build out richer screens, to build things quickly and easily that fulfill people’s needs in terms of whatever job they need to actually do,” he says. Luckily, there are lot of features coming out specifically in Winter ’21 that’ll make things easier than ever before. New Winter ’21 features. Working with Flow is great until you can’t figure out why it’s not working. Luckily, Jason and his team are coming to the rescue with new debug features in Winter ’21 and more on the way. There’s an autolaunch flow that visualizes what path your flow took when it run, which helps you see how it’s working and where it might’ve gone wrong. Auto-layout mode (beta for Winter ’21) can help you get your ideas out there faster and clearer. “I did a lot of work around trying to eliminate ‘blank canvas’ anxiety,” Jason says, “auto-layout gives us the ability to provide an easy bit of guidance and make flow building a lot more straightforward and easier.” It’ll take you through a step-by-step process to make building a flow simple and intuitive. There’s also some special super powers coming that were once previously only available to devs. Things like trigger-on-delete, scheduled flows, before-save triggered field updates, and after-save trigger. These triggers save time, but they also have a big impact on performance because they only run when they need to. This is all to help make Flow your go-to tool for building anything you need. Listen to the full episode for more about this and the ins and outs of Swiss double cream. Links:     Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  &nbsp;

Powerful New Salesforce Flow Features in Winter 21 with Jason Teller

For this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we sit down with Marco Casalaina, SVP, Product Management, and GM of Einstein at Salesforce. We go over all things Einstein and what you should do with that all-important free prediction. Join us as we talk about how to translate what you need to know into an Einstein prediction, how to know if you have enough data, and understanding what to do with the recommendations you get. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marco Casalaina. The werewolf behind Einstein. Marco started at Salesforce way back in 2005, working on what is now the Service Cloud as one of the original developers before eventually moving into product management. “A lot of old school admins who are listening to this podcast might know me as ‘Werewolf,’” Marco says, which was his handle on the old Answers and developer.force.com discussion boards where he has literally thousands of posts. While Salesforce has gone through a lot of changes since his developer days, some of Marco’s original code is still a part of the platform. “Whenever you click to dial a phone number...I wrote that code myself, it’s still there,” he says. Today, Marco is the GM of Einstein, an AI that adds intelligence to the apps you build and use in Salesforce. With over 45 different Einstein applications and platform capabilities available today, “but the philosophy behind it is that it should be accessible to a Salesforce administrator,” he says, “you shouldn’t have to know how to code to use Einstein and you certainly shouldn’t have to know how to use algorithms.” How to get started with Einstein. If you’re like a lot of us, with all the Einstein options available it’s hard to figure out where to get started. Marco recommends taking a look at the pre-built applications. Many of these are included in the base Salesforce licenses, and even more importantly, they give you valuable insights on your data you can use right now. This includes smart features like opportunity scoring and case classification, a new feature in Winter ‘21 that can automatically read emails and classify them based on what it already knows about your previous cases. This feature is super easy to set up but can potentially save your organization tons of time, and it’s included in the base service cloud license. To support you, there’s a new Prediction Builder module on Trailhead to help you get a handle on everything. “When it comes to Prediction Builder, you as an administrator—you’ve got to apply yourself a little bit,” Marco says, “you’ve got to think through what is it exactly that you’re trying to predict.” That means getting specific and boiling it down to KPIs you can put into the application. “You can predict a yes or no question or a number so you have to reduce it to that,” Marco says, “then the next question is, do I have enough data to make this prediction and is that data in Salesforce?” Einstein needs a minimum of 400 records to make a guess, but with algorithms, the more the merrier. What you get is a probability, and it’s up to you to translate the results and figure out what to do about it. What to do with your free prediction. So you get one free prediction to make the case to your organization that they should invest more in Einstein—what should you do? Marco highlights a few common predictions, including late to pay, prospect scoring, and the likelihood of churn (which is basically the likelihood of something not happening). Next Best Action is another powerful freemium feature that is only getting better, so check it out. One of the coolest things about Einstein is that it’s constantly learning and retraining itself. Lots has changed in 2020 and businesses need to be nimble—you may find yourself selling to a new market, or in a new way that you hadn’t considered before. Unlike other lead scoring methods where you need to...

Get Started with Salesforce Einstein with Marco Casalaina

In this week's special bonus episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re joined by Woodson Martin, EVP and GM, Salesforce AppExchange. He shares some amazing success stories of Salesforce customers that have made transformative adaptations over the past year. Join us as we talk about why a balance of speed and preparation is the key to any successful project, how to practice presenting to stakeholders, and why it’s important to make the case for why what you want to do is better than the alternatives. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Woodson Martin. The keys to a successful project Woodson runs the AppExchange on Salesforce, delivering over 5,000 applications that help you get a head start on your projects or deliver new functionality for your users tightly integrated into Salesforce and ready to go. “If I look at the history over the last 20 years of all the Salesforce projects that I’ve been part of, really successful ones share this careful blend of speed and preparation,” he says. For speed, if you’re leading a new project or upgrade or anything else, really focus on that question of what is your Minimum Viable Product? What is the simplest set of functionality you need to deliver in order to learn what your users really need, and how do you set yourself up to iterate on that? We use the Agile methodology at Salesforce and it’s really based on this core principle of deliver early and deliver often, and the AppExchange can help you do that by speeding up your ability to deliver. If you’re looking to implement something new from the AppExchange, you’ll need to get leadership to buy in. And as an executive, we wanted to know if Woodson had any advice for how to convince stakeholders to go with your plan: “I want confidence that a presenter knows the subject matter, has done the homework, really understands the problem, and is bring well-defined alternatives forward,” he says. In other words, it’s not just about what you want to do but why it’s better than the other options on the table; including doing nothing. An admin at heart “One of the incredible things about the Admin community at Salesforce and with our customers is just how amazing that group of experts has been this year at adapting to such incredible, disruptive change,” Woodson says, “we have seen so many of our customers take giant leaps forward in digital transformation, digitizing their business, automating process, and going virtual.” There are so many great stories from the past year that team created a  just to put them all in one place. Woodson actually started his Salesforce career as an admin, and he sees them as a crucial component in customer success. “Behind every successful Salesforce project there is an admin who has sweated the details, really invested to understand their users, what people are trying to accomplish, looked beyond executive objectives, and tuned into the users and the jobs they need to get done every day, and then customized or built what users need to make their businesses successful,” he says. “Salesforce doesn’t magically happen in companies—all of our success is tied to the work of the admin community.” Links:     Social:  Preena:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   &nbsp; Full Show Transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm Gillian Bruce. Mike Gerholdt: And I'm Mike Gerholdt. Gillian Bruce: And today we have a very special guest joining us. We have EVP and GM of AppExchange here at Salesforce, Woodson Martin, joining us to talk about presenting to executives, awesome admin AppExchange magic, all kinds of good stuff. So without further ado, let's get Woodson on the podcast. Mike Gerholdt: Woodson, welcome to the podcast. Woodson Martin: Thank you. It's great to be here. Mike Gerholdt: For those that haven't...

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