Salesforce Admins

Today on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we’re speaking to Michael Lupino, the CRM manager for L’Oreal corporation. Michael is currently helping L’Oreal migrate from Classic to Lightning, while creating new apps and other amazing things within the tool. He’s here to share his experience and a few helpful tips for you to be successful with Lightning. More on Michael’s session: Join us as Michael shares his journey with CRM and how he moved L’Oreal corporation from Classic to Lightning. From getting buy-in from users to designing new apps, we’ll learn how Michael managed this transition with the help of Trailhead and the Salesforce community. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Michael Lupino. &nbsp; Use Trailhead to keep track of possible capabilities. Michael got started with Lightning about a year and a half ago. “When we started to look at Lightning, we saw lots of positive benefits in being able to adopt the tools and build more modular, reusable applications that can serve a variety of purposes and reduce some of the code and technical debt of having some of the other tools in the platform previously,” he says. So, how did he get started with the process? Michael says, “I found that Trailhead was a very excellent resource for keeping track of all of the possible capabilities, in addition to providing a roadmap to help figure out the art of the possible. Trailhead helped us develop ideas that could then translate to our business.” &nbsp; Get buy-in from the users. Getting buy-in from users wasn’t hard, explains Michael. As he points out, “everyone loves the modern look and feel of Lightning. I love the capabilities of being able to provide a more innovative user interface that can be customized to the application that they’re using.” Michael says, “I was fortunate enough to build some new applications within the tool for our users to bring them into Salesforce. It allowed me to start from almost a clean slate, to gather requirements and to deliver something to suit those needs.” &nbsp; Embrace the move from Salesforce One to the Napili Template. Michael was also involved in moving a community that was built on Salesforce One to the Napili template. “Moving to that template has been incredibly powerful. Our users have a very large international participation, so we were able to provide a consistent look and feel that would mirror on a mobile device, a tablet, and a desktop. The brand was incredibly excited about this and continue to be excited about the possibilities of what they can do inside the community,” says Michael. &nbsp; Don’t expect moving to Lightning to be an overnight process. Moving to Lightning has been an ongoing process, and he’s learned a lot. As Michael explains, “A lot of planning went into the process. In some cases, we had to wait for Salesforce to catch up with the Lightning release, which they’ve done a tremendous job of doing. Because of that, we’ve been able to effectively determine which sets of users are the best ideal candidates to move.” When it came to moving from Visual Force to Lightning, Michael says, “the very first thing I look at was: what skill set is needed to go from that journey in Visual Force to Lightning? Going through the material and attending a Salesforce University course provided a good framework for the types of skills that are needed.” &nbsp; Stay up to date with blogs and webinars. When asked what tips he’d have for admins looking to stay up to date on all things Salesforce, Michael says, “In addition to looking at the release notes and the changes that are happening, I found that the blogs, such as admin.salesforce.com, have been a good source of information. What I really love is the success community. Being able to read each other’s posts and comment has been a very exciting place. Joining webinars has been another great source.” &nbsp; For...

How L'Oreal is rolling out Lightning with Michael Lupino

Let's face it - life is better when you dance! That's why we're inviting all #AwesomeAdmins to take part in a special dance challenge guaranteed to get you movin' and shakin'!

It's as easy as 1-2-3 to get involved in the challenge! First, learn the dance moves! Second, share a video of the dance! And third, nominate 3 #AwesomeAdmins to take the challenge!

#AwesomeAdmin

#AwesomeAdminChallenge

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Adam Rodenbeck, Senior User Experience Team Member at Salesforce, to wrap up our two-part series focused on building accessible apps. We look at his experience developing accessible apps from both the admin and the developer side of things and do a demo live on the pod of what it’s like to navigate with a screen reader. Join us as we talk about how a screen reader works and the technology behind it, Adam’s amazing journey through tech, and what you can do to bring accessibility to your users. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Adam Rodenbeck. Adam’s journey to Salesforce. “When I started my Salesforce journey, I sent an email out that said I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up until I saw this presentation from one of the accessibility specialists at Salesforce,” Adam says, “I always wanted to do something with computers that would give back to the blind community.” Adam got his start at a nonprofit, training people who had lost their sight later in life to use the computer again, but this role was an opportunity to put together everything he loves in one role. “We started using Salesforce as our system of record to store information on all the clients,” Adam says, “and it blew me away just how well it was working.” In 2009, it was rare to encounter an enterprise software program that was reasonable to navigate with a screen reader, and that helped him dive into the platform. He eventually found his way into the IT department as a developer. “I work with designers on new features on the platform,” Adam says, “that’s usually discussing what it’s going to take to make this accessible, how is the keyboard interaction going to work? What are the things that are going to be visual that might need to get called out to a person who is using a screen reader?” From there, it’s working with engineering teams to actually make that happen. The basics of screen readers and how to test for them. A screen reader has two pieces to it. For one thing, it’s actually reading the screen aloud (and you get to decide things like how the voice sounds). But the other component is a Braille display, which connects via USB or Bluetooth and represents what’s on the screen in Braille with dots that can be raised and lowered. “Because I work a lot with code, I really need to have that Braille reinforcement to read what’s on the screen at the same time that it’s being read to me,” Adam says. “If you’re an admin and you’re using the components that Salesforce put together, then accessibility should be available to you,” Adam says, “but a quick test to make sure that everything is working well is to see if you can get to the control you want by tabbing down the screen.” Sometimes it’s arrow keys, but try using the keyboard and seeing if you can get to anything a user is going to need. Having conversations to improve accessibility. “If a designer can describe something to me, how it should act or what they want to happen, and make me, as someone who is blind, understand what it is that their design does it gives us both a better understanding,” Adam says. If you can’t describe your customizations in a way that everyone can understand, you’re probably not doing it right. The key to creating something that works for your users is to have conversations with the people you want to support. Screen reader users often use the find command, so they want as much information as possible on the screen to get to what they need quickly. Screen magnifier users, on the other hand, are looking for an uncluttered display since everything is enlarged for them. Do your research, but also have the conversations with the people you are supporting. Hear how a screen reader user navigates Salesforce for yourself. In order to make things that work better for a screen reader,...

How to Build Accessible Apps with Adam Rodenbeck

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re welcoming back podcast favorite Zayne Turner, Lead Developer Evangelist at Salesforce. We chat Lightning Web Components, a new technology that helps reconfigure how we build Lightning components. Join us as we talk about what Lightning Web Components means for our implementations and applications. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Zayne Turner. How Lightning Web Components changes the game. Lightning Web Components is a new way of building components that lets you apply the experience you already have in other web development technology outside of the Salesforce ecosystem. “Under the hood, some of the standard components you see in the top of the explorer and app builder have maybe been Lightning components for a while now and we didn’t know it,” Zayne says, and the beauty of this technology is that you don’t have to. As Gillian says, you can make a components turducken and it’ll just work and be delicious. “When we introduced Aura, the web was different,” Zayne says, “there weren’t as many things that the browser knew how to do out of the box so we had to build a lot of it for you.” That meant that it needed to be built custom, which made it confusing for developers because they needed to learn different ways of doing the same thing. It also made things slower. Now that the web is smarter, we can leverage widespread technology to make things easier. What does Lightning Web Components mean for admins? For admins, there are a few things that you need to think about with the release of Lightning Web Components. “If you’re wondering what’s going to change when I open up App Builder,” Zayne says, “you shouldn’t have to change anything.” The bigger change is that you help your developers make a better choice, especially with performance or adding new talent with other web development experience. We can help developers be more efficient by bringing our Admin Magic to the table. If we really understand the business processes at play in a particular situation, we can show them how a particular component fits into the broader landscape. That means a more efficient team that gets more done. Get your hands dirty. If you’re looking for how to get your hands dirty and understand what the Lightning Web Components app opens up, you can start with the Recipes sample app. “It shows you how to solve a lot of common problems in 30 lines of code or less,” Zayne says, whether or not you’re a developer. You have so many different ways of doing what you want to do, and it’s valuable to understand what those options are even if it’s not in your normal toolbox. Coming up, there are the Global Developer Week meetings in February where people can get together to talk about what’s new and where there are challenges. At the end of May, of course, there’s TrailheaDX. Check out your local community group for more information, and there are always great resources available online (and in our show notes). Resources  Lightning Web Components Launch recoding Sample Apps Gallery Global Developer Week events TrailheaDX  Social  Zayne: @zaynelt Gillian: @gilliankbruce Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  review us on iTunes! &nbsp; Full Show Transcript Gillian Bruce:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you become a more awesome Salesforce Admin. I'm Gillian Bruce and today we're welcoming back one of our favorites to the podcast, Zayne Turner Lead Developer Evangelist here at Salesforce. Zayne has been doing a lot of work on Lightning Web Components. Lightning Web Components is an exciting new technology that we launched not too long ago to help reconfigure how we build Lightning components. Now most of this has...

Lightning Web Components for Admins with Zayne Turner

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking with Shannon Hale, Senior Director Product Management at Salesforce in charge of Flow. We find out about this amazing declarative automation tool and the changes coming up with the Spring ‘19 release. Join us as we talk about Shannon’s journey from the music industry into product management, how her team has made Flow easier to use, and where we’re going next. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Shannon Hale. From indie music to software development. Shannon is an OG guest of the original ButtonClick Admin Podcast with Mike and Jared. When she flunked out of her engineering degree, she started getting involved in the music scene, taking pictures and writing about bands “for really obscure indy rags that you’ve never heard of,” she says. She went back and did a writing program at 27, but “I could not find a writing job to save my life. I had a really fabulous CD collection but I could not pay my rent.” Shannon ended up working as a secretary for an engineering firm in a very small office. “I’d always liked computers and had access to them from an early age,” she says, “and so I started doing things like putting the hard drives in the computer or taking the CD-ROMs out.” They saw her interest and offered to sponsor her for classes in programming. “I ended up accidentally moving into tech,” she says, moving into teaching and eventually user experience, which led her to Salesforce. “A good part of it is just saying yes to opportunities, even if you don’t necessarily have all the skills but you know that you have some of them and are pretty sure you can get the rest,” she says. The magic of Flow. A lot of the time we identify a business problem that we want to solve as admins, but we don’t necessarily know what tools to use to do that. “Wanting to solve the problem is 75% of the battle,” Shannon says. That’s why working on great tools like Flow is so valuable—it puts powerful solutions in the hands of problem solvers. If you have a business process that is complicated or idiosyncratic, it can be hard to make sure that all the correct forms and fields are populated 100% of the time. Flow can help by providing validation to make sure that happens. “But Flow is also a little bit more powerful than some of our other tools,” Shannon says, “it has more code-like aspects to it.” It makes it easy to take people screen-by-screen through a business process and only ask them for the information that they have at that time. Flow can string things together across records in a single operation, rather than having to go through three different places to get it. Exciting new changes for Flow in Spring ‘19. Flow has had a lot of power, but there have always been some elements of it that maybe made it intimidating to the average admin. For Spring 2019, Shannon and her team are trying to make the experience match other aspects of Salesforce, like Process Builder and Lightning App Builder. That makes even the more complex aspects of Flow feel more familiar. “I have this phrase that I use periodically called, ‘Our programming is showing,’” Shannon says, “places where the complexity of the technology is really showing in the user interface but doesn’t necessarily make sense to people who aren’t writing the technology.” Spring 19 has represented an opportunity to clean a lot of that up and make it more approachable. That also includes adding options for larger text and better contrast. Just some of the things you can do with Flow include being able to quickly enter information that is going to appear in three different records. You can also delete child records when the master is closed, but you probably want to be careful with your implementation, Shannon recommends. Coming up in the future look forward to undo/redo and copy and pasting elements, along with more...

Shannon Hale on the New Flow Builder

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we have another great PepUp Tech story from Sasha Manford, Salesforce Admin at Carl Marks Advisors. We get a chance to hear her amazing career story and how she moved from a power user to a full-blown admin. Join us as we talk about building your career, Selina Suarez’s amazing mentorship, and the entrepreneurial spirit you need to be a great Salesforce admin. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sasha Manford. The Salesforce Princess. Like many admins, “my journey to Salesforce started accidentally,” Sasha says. She was working at a company that really invested in employee training and happened to use Salesforce to keep track of everything. “I remember the first day of orientation I was so enamored with the platform,” she says. She took to it quickly as a user, and when the previous admin left she took over the role. It came with a great new nickname: the Salesforce Princess. As a new admin, Sasha needed a lot of help to get started, “but that’s the great thing about the Salesforce ecosystem—everybody wants to help you out,” she says. Between Trailhead and user groups, she felt fully supported by the community as she grew into her new role. Her company had major struggles with Salesforce, however, so after about a year, she had to leave her position. Before that, however, Sasha attended a Women in Tech User Group meeting where she met Selina Suarez. The amazing mentorship of Selina Suarez and PepUp Tech. As soon as Sasha told Selina her story, “she immediately was like, ‘Here’s my number, text me, come to the Word Tour and find me.’” When she went to that event (on her birthday!), Selina took her around and introduced her to just about everybody. “It was the most magical day of my life,” she says, and just like that Sasha was signed up for the Spring semester of the PepUp Tech Bootcamp. Sasha actually got a job before class had even begun, in part thanks to a book Selina recommended called Knock ‘em Dead. Even though she had a Salesforce position, the bootcamp was super valuable. “I was able to learn a lot of stuff I never knew I was able to do on the platform,” she says. Currently, Sasha is a Salesforce admin at Carl Marks Advisors, a financial services firm. When she was interviewing, she was nervous because she only had a year of admin experience under her belt. Throughout the process, however, Selina was like a guiding angel. “I told Selina that they’re wary of me because I don’t have my certification,” she says, “and Selina was like, ‘Who cares? Read the book, study up on the company, and knock ‘em dead.’” The keys to being an awesome admin (it’s not just your tech skills). “Being a Salesforce admin I feel like I’ve grown so much—it’s helped me have a voice,” Sasha says. “Being an admin, you really have to have an entrepreneurial spirit,” she says, “you’re in charge of the platform, you are the guru, you are the expert.” Because of that, you’re in charge of your own work and responsible for your own growth. “People look to me for help, and to me, that’s the biggest achievement ever,” she says. After getting the job, Sasha started immediately looking for problems that needed to be solved to prove that they hired the right person. She fixed her company’s Box integration, created custom dashboards for a user, and generated a timeline to clean up their instance. Moving forward, Sasha is focusing on the finer points of being a great admin. “A lot of people think that being an admin is technical; it’s technical but you also have to have really great people skills,” she says. “You’re going to be dealing with a lot of people who have different personalities who don’t want to use the platform, and you have to persuade them.” It’s challenging, but it also means that there’s something to look forward to every day at work....

Discover Your Admin Voice with Sasha Manford

On this week’s Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got Shannon Gregg, President of Cloud Adoption Solutions and author of It’s About Time. We discuss the ins and outs of adoption from her unique position as both someone who consults in it and also as a researcher studying it for her Ph.D. dissertation. Join us as we talk about what you can do as an admin to position Salesforce in your organization to make it successful and help your users become more efficient. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Shannon Gregg. That feeling when you fall in love with Salesforce. Shannon first encountered Salesforce because she was running the Sales department of her company. “They were like, ‘Here you go, you run sales operations, therefore Salesforce comes along with it,’” Shannon says. “Once I started digging around inside of it, I was instantly hooked,” she says. A lot of the work she was already doing used Excel to track things like RFIs and pricing volumes, but Salesforce took that to the next level. The organization Shannon was working for was acquired by another company, which didn’t have a true Sales Operations department. “When I got to work for that company, I came in and said, ‘Now let’s look at the power Salesforce can give us for collaboration, for communication, and find the best way for us to sell,’” she says. That approach worked great, and as the business continued to grow and make more acquisitions, Salesforce use just kept growing and growing. “Our board of directors just loved it,” she says, “they loved the ability to look at their phone at 2 o’clock in the morning as see what’s happening with their business.” How a governance committee can give you support for broader adoption. “One of the things I love the best about adoption is opening somebody else’s eyes to help them see the power of the platform to help them be more efficient and effective in their workday,” Shannon says. If you want someone to commit themselves fully to Salesforce, they need to understand what’s in it for them. It’s a simple goal to shoot for, but takes a lot of effort and thinking to make it happen. Beyond that, establishing a governance committee can be a big help towards encouraging broader adoption in your org. Shannon recommends figuring out which executive ultimately is responsible for the Salesforce spend at your business and getting them involved. Get them on Chatter, help them get the Dashboards they need, get them to better understand the platform and they’ll be a big mouthpiece for you. Look at people in Sales, Finance, Project Management, the people who are involved in Salesforce every day or who require the outputs, and meet regularly to go over what’s working and what’s not. Balancing your Awesome Admin goals. Managing all of the demands on your time as a Salesforce Admin is tricky. “You could be doing this job 24 hours a day, and many of us would like to because we love it that much,” Shannon says, “but for me, I like to say what am I managing by metrics and what am I managing by objective?” Look at your own metrics as a Salesforce Admin to make sure that you’re getting your bigger goals done, and find a way to visualize it, whether that’s Calendar View, the Kanban Board, or a custom Dashboard. The research Shannon is doing on adoption. “My Ph.D. dissertation is really focused on engagement and time-to-mission,” Shannon says. She’s looking at how nonprofits use Salesforce to allow them to improve productivity while also being more controlled with what they’re doing day to day. She’s working closely with nonprofit user groups to learn the challenges of engagement and implementation, which ultimately affects how effectively they can reach their goals. Shannon’s research combines IT theory, change management theory, and adult education theory, all three of which combine to create engagement....

How to Build Accessible Apps with Adam Rodenbeck

The Salesforce Admins Podcast

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