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Summer 16 Lightning for Admins with Matt B

How to switch to Lightning with Alex Sutherland

Lightning Components for Admins with Eric Jacobson

This week on the podcast we&nbsp;are getting you ready for Dreamforce by&nbsp;looking at how&nbsp;you can&nbsp;prepare to make the switch to lightning by replacing all of your URL hacks. Michael White will be presenting two sessions called "Preparing for Lightning: Replacing URL Hacks with Actions". These are a must-attend session for any Admin who has URL hacks in their org, or wants to learn more about actions and the switch to lightning. More about Michael's session: Join us as we teach you how to replace common URL hacks with global and object-specific actions that work in Classic, Lighting, and Salesforce1. Using the Success Community as the primary source, we'll take a few commonly posted URL hacks and walk through the process for duplicating the functionality using Actions and demo the results in Lightning, Salesforce1, and Classic. You'll leave with the knowledge necessary for replacing URL hacks in your org with Actions that will help you in your migration efforts from Classic to Lightning. Links   Krystal's sessions at Dreamforce   Preparing for Lightning: Replacing URL Hacks with Actions:&nbsp;https://success.salesforce.com/Sessions?eventId=a1Q3000000qQOd9EAG#/session/a2q3A000000LBfuQAG  (Repeat) Preparing for Lightning: Replacing URL Hacks with Actions:&nbsp;https://success.salesforce.com/Sessions?eventId=a1Q3000000qQOd9EAG#/session/a2q3A000001x5qcQAA    #ButtonClickGuest We want to get your suggestions for guests&nbsp;on the podcast and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc using the hashtag #ButtonClickGuest to help us get more AwesomeAdmins&nbsp;on the podcast. We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don't head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It's super easy to do and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Preparing for Lightning with Michael White

Today on the ButtonClick Admin podcast, we’re speaking to Mark Tossell, a brand new admin based in Sydney, Australia. In May of 2016, Mark left his previous career where he didn’t have any CRM experience to take a job as a Salesforce admin. We’re very excited to share Mark’s inspirational story in our last episode of 2016. More on Mark’s session: Join us as Mark shares his journey as a brand new admin. We’ll learn about some of the challenges he’s faced and how he’s overcome them with the help of Trailhead, Premiere Plus Support, and the Salesforce community. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mark Tossell. &nbsp; Make Trailhead your best friend. “It seemed to be the right fit at the right time. I love technology; I love changing the way things work and solving problems,” says Mark when asked why he decided to take a position as a Salesforce admin. To prepare, Mark says, “I spent a week furiously watching YouTube videos, many of which were from Dreamforce, until I met my new best friend which is Trailhead. I spend 40-50 hours a week going through Trailhead.” Know how to visualize a process and implement it in the system. When asked what his biggest challenge has been as a brand new admin, Mark says, “Being able to accurately picture a process in the system that will work in the business.” You need to be able to imagine how the process can be done in Salesforce and then create it in the system. “The second challenge for me has been the people side of things: convince people the benefits of the system, get them using it, get them active in the system, enforcing data integrity and all of those adoption issues,” says Mark. Salesforce in a Day helps with adoption. Adoption is something every admin struggles with. A Salesforce in a Day training session can help. “I put together a program which began with an overview of Salesforce: what it is, what it does, what it can do. Then I just touched on the basics: navigation, leads, context, reports, chatter,” says Mark. “By the end of the day, I felt that people had a good overview of the system. I thought it was very helpful in our organization,” he says. Use Trailhead and Premiere Plus Support to prepare for admin certification. Since beginning work as an admin in June, Mark has received his Salesforce admin certification. “I took it for the first time on Saturday, and I’m really excited I passed!” he says. When asked what helped him prepare, he says, “once again, Trailhead was a massive help. Also we have the Premiere Plus Support, so because of that, we have videos from the Salesforce University that are made available to us. Those were really helpful.” Documentation is key. If he could go back and do anything different, Mark says, “I would have better documentation, not only concerning changes I’ve made to the system but also documenting conversations I’ve had with staff and management concerning their requirements, responses to questions that I have asked because sometimes those things come back later on and it’s good to have a paper trail.” Mark also says, “Salesforce can do so much, and there are so many aspects of it that sometimes I am trying to achieve ten objectives at once. Once thing I’m learning to do is become more focused and concentrate on one or two key objectives at a time. I believe if I had done that earlier on, I’d be further along in the project than I am now,” he says. Harness the Power of Community. The community has had a huge impact on his journey. “The broader Salesforce community has been a tremendous help and encouragement to me over the last six months. The local Salesforce community has been very supportive and helpful as well,” says Mark. For more insights, make sure to follow Mark Tossell on Twitter (@MarkTossell). Links:  Mentorship Central with James Goerke True Facts About Baby Echidnas by ZeFrank Mary Scotton...

Admin Inspiration from Down Under with Mark Tossell

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

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’re talking about what our amazing Salesforce Admins and Developers are doing to create more entryways for more people of color in tech. As our guests, we have Shonnah&nbsp;Hughes, a Salesforce MVP, mentor and women in tech chapter leader; Selina Suarez, a Product Manager at Salesforce and advocate for education equality; and Rakia Finley, a CRM and Salesforce Developer and the Chief Strategy Officer at Surge Assembly. Join us as we discuss some of the amazing things our Salesforce Admins and Developers are doing to encourage diversity and bring more people of color into tech. Learn how Shonnah Hughes is using Trailhead to teach Salesforce to students in her community and how Selina Suarez has partnered with Monroe College to create Salesforce Bootcamps. You’ll also get the inside scoop on how Rakia Finley worked on the Obama administration’s White House Council on Women and Girls to help create more pathways for women of color to get into tech. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Shonnah Hughes, Selina Suarez, and Rakia Finley. &nbsp; Engaging students with #Trailhead4All. As Shonnah explains, #Trailhead4All is a community-based initiative that provides Salesforce training via Trailhead to youth in her local community. “It’s a call-to-action for all community members to reach out and give back to their community utilizing Trailhead,” says Shonnah. “I took that call-to-action personally. Who doesn’t love Trailhead? It’s an amazing tool. It’s used by everyone in the community and makes learning Salesforce easy and fun,” she says. As Shonnah explains, #Trailhead4All has had a huge impact on her life. “I’m able to go into local classrooms and talk to them about my career, my journey, my path and how Salesforce Trailhead can help them as well. Being able to see the looks on their faces, the joy and the fun they’re having while learning is priceless,” she says. &nbsp; Partnering with Monroe College to create Salesforce Boot Camps. When asked why focusing on technology and college students so important to her, Selina says,&nbsp; “my passion comes from the fact that I grew up in the inner city of New York City. I came from an area that no one I knew went into technology. I wanted to change that and give people who had the potential a blueprint.” She’s partnered with her alma mater, Monroe College, to create Salesforce boot camps. As Selina shares, “last year, we did a two-day full immersion boot camp where used the user group community in New York City and Salesforce employees, and we created a curriculum that did a couple of different things. First, we focused on: what Salesforce is, the ecosystem, what kind of skillsets you need, and what kinds of jobs are out there.” “Next we went through Trailhead to show them how to build an app from beginning to end,” she says. As Selina points out, “If you’re going to use social media to grow your career you need to be where your industry is. We ended the two days by having LinkedIn come in and tell the students how to leverage social media to grow your career.” &nbsp; Be intentional about making diversity a priority. While it’s crucial that we partner with elementary, high school, and college students, it’s also important to partner with government entities. Rakia Finley worked on the Obama administration’s White House Council on Women and Girls to help create more pathways for women in color to get into tech. While she saw lots of amazing initiatives that targeted students, she felt something was missing. “The companies that were going to hire these people, they weren’t prepared for this workforce. They didn’t have true institutional knowledge of how they can create an inclusive workforce, how they can create checks and balances to make sure that inclusive workforce is founded on equality and inclusion. I wanted to be a...

Be a Change Maker with Shonnah Hughes, Selina Suarez & Rakia Finley

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Geoff Flynn, Salesforce Community MVP. Geoff is a prolific leader of the Salesforce Answers community, with expertise in cross filters and formulas. Join us to hear about Geoff’s best practices and tips for conquering our fears about presenting — how he tackled it to go up twice (so far) on the Dreamforce stage. We talk about how he solves problems on the Answers community and look at how he’s using his developer’s edition to migrate to Lightning. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Geoff Flynn. Breaking into Salesforce Geoff’s first job was guiding his company’s implementation of Cognos from a business perspective, as opposed to an IT perspective, and from there he was quickly put in charge of implementing Salesforce. As Geoff says, “I was always that bridge between the business users, who get paid to sell stuff, and the IT users. Those two don’t always talk well together, and I was the one who tried to bridge the gap and talk the common language.” Because of Geoff’s broad skillset and because finding the balance between business and IT is key, Salesforce made sense for him. From Answers to Dreamforce Presenter “Growing up, I was petrified of speaking,” Geoff says, but when his boss surprised him by putting him up in front of a town hall, he came to an important realization, “you’re a lot more nervous than you come off.” The bottom line is that practice makes perfect. Another thing that helps is to make sure you’re talking about something you know well. If you go up there and talk about something you’ve just implemented or are really enthusiastic about, that passion and insight will come through. Formulas in Salesforce Geoff gravitated to formulas because of a need for more powerful reporting options, even importing data from other sources into the Salesforce dashboards to get the reports he needed. Spending a lot of time trying to get the reports to do what he needed them to do naturally lead Geoff to an expertise in cross filters and other formulas. Geoff explains that a key to getting formulas to add value is to figure out “how to make your data work for you.” Solving Problems and Finding Answers “You always want to try and break it down into little pieces, and really understand what the need is, and not what’s been put in front of you.” Geoff keeps focused by continually asking why someone is asking for something, and using those answers to pull the problem apart. For complicated problems, Geoff looks at the documentation and pulls out his Swiss Army Knife full of developer editions: “I’ve got so many developer editions that I need a password manager just to manage my Salesforce passwords.” Another rich source of answers is the wide variety of blogs that are out there. Using Developer Editions as a Scratch Pad Another great use of multiple developer editions is as a scratch pad because it lets you show prototypes as you go. You don’t need to track all the changes that you make, which means that you can iterate faster and show the different ways that things can look, especially in Lightning versus Classic. Each time Geoff gets started he makes an edition called “The Playground,” and on the homepage of that org he puts in big red text: “Do not expect this org to be right in any way, shape, or form.” Acknowledging that it should never be part of the development stream gives him the freedom to treat it as a whiteboarding session using the client’s own software. Being able to show, rather than tell, makes a big difference in finding the best solution to the problem at hand. For more insights, make sure to follow Geoff on Twitter (@geoffreyflynn2). We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. to @SalesforceAdmns to help us get more Awesome Admins on the...

Formulas & Lightning with Geoff Flynn

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Michael Gonzalez, a Director of Product Management at Salesforce working on App Builder. Michael is an expert in how App Builder is changing the way Admins can customize their pages and user experience. Join us to hear about the Lightning App Builder, the magic of Components, and what improvements are coming up in the Summer ‘17 release. We talk about how the App Builder team continues to make tweaks to give Admins more powerful tools, and more flexibility. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Michael Gonzalez. The Magic of Components Michael fell into the tech industry. Out of college, he went into the family retail business. But then he got bit by the tech bug and moved from marketing into building products. This kind of journey is perfect for working on App Builder because he’s also the target audience, which gives him a passion for components. “Components are magic,” Michael says, “they’re the building blocks of all of our pages that end users are going to see.” You can kick off processes through them, and they give Admins a lot of control: you can rearrange the layout of the page, update the properties, and more. Michael’s favorite standard component is Path. With the ability to add it to custom objects, “it’s a great way to visualize the life cycle of a particular process,” and it keeps getting better from release to release. The Future is Lightning If you’re a longtime Admin who is concerned that all of the time you’ve invested in Record Types and Page Layouts will get thrown out in the move to Lightning, Michael thinks you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Everything will render and look great, but beyond that a new feature in the Spring Release allows you to create custom pages and assign them to specific Record Types and Profiles. As Michael says, “if you’ve pre-created a lot in classic, this gives you another layer to leverage the work that you’ve done to be able to build tailored experiences.” The Powers of the Lightning App Builder Right off the bat, the great thing about App Builder in Lightning is that it’s a WYSIWYG tool. “When you open up a page you see real data in there. It takes all the guesswork out of knowing exactly what your end user sees as you go through and you customize it.” This helps you keep focused on what will work best, and not whether it will work at all. In addition to that, you have a library of Components: Standard Components, Custom Components that a developer would build for your org, and custom managed ones that come directly from the App Exchange. Once you’re familiar with those two things, you can jump right in and start dragging and dropping. It’s easy to make adjustments through the Component Properties feature. You can edit details, update properties, and see how they change in real time. As Michael puts it, “you know exactly how your page is changing as you’re going through and modifying it.” &nbsp;Looking Forward to the Summer ‘17 Release Coming through the pipeline is a pilot feature in the  Summer ‘17 Release, which allows you to control the visibility of a Component on a page. Instead of going through and recreating different custom Lightning pages by Record Type and by Profile, you can just control the visibility of an individual Component. “Having a dynamic page control is something that our customers and users have been asking for quite awhile,” and something that Michael is excited to deliver. If you’re interested in experimenting, reach out to your account teams to get ahold of it. For more insights, make sure to follow Michael in the Salesforce Success Community. We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. to @SalesforceAdmns to help us get more Awesome Admins on the podcast. We want to remind you that if...

The Magic of Components with Michael Gonzalez

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Jesse Grothaus, one of our newest Salesforce Admins from Vetforce. Join us to learn about how Jesse applied the skills he learned in the army to his role as a Salesforce consultant, how a newcomer thinks about the Salesforce Ohana, and some great tips for preparing for Certifications. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jesse Grothaus. A Made-for-TV Movie Journey to Salesforce From a young age, Jesse knew that he wanted to be a Special Operations Soldier and, “sure enough, on my 18th birthday I was in the recruiter’s office.” He spent the next eight years doing his childhood dream job while also getting his degree through the army, which led him to tech. He started in tech support and moved into sales, where he first encountered Salesforce. Jesse liked working Salesforce to build reports that could help his team, but his life changed drastically when he was involved in major car accident. He had to take two years off from work to recover, partially because of undiagnosed head trauma. His therapy for that required him to learn a new language and new skills, which is how he came across Vetforce and Trailhead. Learning Salesforce was actually therapy for Jesse, and helped him in his recovery. Part of his condition affected his memorization and abstract memory, so he had to break down for himself, “how do we as humans remember and memorize things?” A wiki site called ArtofMemory.com helped him learn the techniques of professional memorizers, people who can memorize the order of 50 decks of cards. With that help, he passed his Certification and Vetforce invited him to Trailhead DX, where he made the connections that eventually landed him a job in Salesforce consulting. If they were casting the movie, Jesse would love to be played by Hugh Jackman. Vetforce Vetforce came to Jesse’s attention via a friend on LinkedIn, he saw something offering free job training for veterans involving Salesforce, which he had already had experience with through his previous job. The program is a part of the Salesforce Ohana Group and links to veterans in the workforce. “I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but veterans have a big struggle in terms of getting good employment when they get out of the military. A lot of veterans get these awesome, amazing skills in the military but it turns out that ‘kicking down doors’ isn’t necessarily the best thing to put on your resume,” Jesse says. Salesforce wanted to help, so they started offering free training classes and curated Trailhead training courses to help vets get job placements. In Jesse’s military work, he would advise high-level commanders in a particular region on psychological warfare strategy and tactics, “and now as a Salesforce consultant I’m often meeting with high-level business executives and giving them guidance on what I think they should or should not be doing based on their Salesforce organizations to help their business grow.” For Jesse, the most useful skill is “sitting down with leadership, looking at the big picture, and figuring out how we can contribute to their big picture.” Trailhead DX “I had no clue what Trailhead DX was until I was invited to come out,” Jesse says. He didn’t know what to expect. He knew there’d be some great talks, but the surprise was that on day one the folks from Vetforce promised him that by the time he walked out of Trailhead DX he’d have a job. Being at a Salesforce event was so much more than Jesse thought it would be, “It was like drinking Kool-Aid out of a firehose.” The Ohana is a big part of that and is really what makes everything work so well. Jesse puts it well: “Salesforce doesn’t horde business for itself. It doesn’t try to hide its API or make it some big secret. Instead of competition, it encourages a family or gathering around it, and they’re very...

Jesse Grothaus on our Vetforce Ohana

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we have the second half of our live taping from Dreamforce. We have Aaron McGriff, Salesforce Business Systems Analyst at Masco Cabinetry in Detroit, and we’re joined by the original Button Click Admin himself, Mike Gerholdt. Join us as we talk about the differences in their experiences as someone who’s just learned Salesforce and someone who’s been with the platform for over a decade, and stick around for a special community Lightning Round. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Aaron McGriff and Mike Gerholdt. Getting comfortable at Dreamforce. For Mike, it’s his tenth Dreamforce. He’s evenly split them with five as a Salesforce customer and five as an employee. At the same time, we also have Aaron on the stage at his very first Dreamforce, so there’s a big contrast in experience represented on this episode. “I’m comfortable at Dreamforce this year,” Mike says, “it doesn’t feel as crazy and hectic and you’re just able to let it soak in. When I was in Aaron’s mode I remember getting back and thinking that I wished I spent more time in the hallway just talking to people.” Mike started using Salesforce in 2006, while Aaron has only been on the platform for a year. With the contrast in experience on the stage, we wanted to hear what the hardest thing was for Mike about learning to be an admin. “The biggest thing I struggled with was understanding how data relates to other data,” Mike says, “understanding how objects relate to other objects and how they link together just never made sense.” One day, he took a class with Salesforce instructor Wendy Braid that clarified everything. She drew a diagram on the whiteboard visually relating records and identifiers, and suddenly it all made sense. Learning and sharing Salesforce. “A lot of my friends are finding out that I’m a Salesforce admin now,” Aaron says, “and I didn’t realize how many of them use Salesforce for their jobs.” Even though he’s relatively new to the platform, he’s been able to use his knowledge to teach others. One of his friends needed to create a bunch of reports but she had no idea how to do it, so she came over and he was able to show her the ropes. For Mike, one of the first things he got taught was how to use roll-up summary fields to count items below items and sum them up higher. “It’s so much easier now to do stuff in Salesforce. I rebuilt an org the day before they rolled out a WYSIWYG editor,” Mike says, and with all the new tools the difference between when he started using the platform and where it is now is stark— “it’s the difference between digging a pool with a spoon and digging a pool with a shovel.” How to jump in with the community. “Volunteering is one of the best ways to get experience, and there’s tons of nonprofits everywhere, so find your local nonprofit user group and see what you can do for other people,” Aaron says. For Mike, “what’s interesting is that getting involved with the community constantly changes. You have to look at where you are in the world and also in your career.” If you live in Montana there’s probably not a user group within 60 miles of you, so it might be worth it to invest some time in social. “Treat Twitter like you’re going to a party,” Mike says. You don’t go around to everyone announcing that you’re there— you spend time listening. The same goes for if you are in a position to go to a live event. Spend time listening and focus on having quality conversations, and it’ll snowball from there. “Find one person, either online or at a community group,” Mike says, and focus on building that relationship. Attend a Global Gathering near you! The Trailblazer Community is #LivingtheDream and bringing the best of Dreamforce to you! Join a Global Gathering near you to connect, learn, have fun and give back with Trailblazers like...

LIVE from Dreamforce with Mike Gerholdt & Aaron McGriff

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re live from the Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group to hear a special panel of nonprofit admins put together by Laura Derby. If you’re in the nonprofit spaces or thinking about getting involved, tune in for some great insights from Laura Derby, Salesforce Admin at the Nature Conservancy and co-leader of the Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group; Shay Davis, Salesforce Admin at the Assistance League; and Heather Hart, who has a new role as VP of Information Technology at the Huntington since this podcast was recorded. Join us as we talk about how to fit everything into your budget, translate language like sales and leads to the nonprofit space, and how data modeling can work for these orgs. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Laura Derby, Shay Davis, and Heather Hart. Getting comfortable at Dreamforce. This week on the pod, we’re lucky to attend an Ask the Expert Admin panel with three experts in the field. Laura Derby is the Salesforce Admin at the Nature Conservancy and co-leader of the Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group. She’s relatively new to the position, “but we primarily use the opportunities and contracts object to track land.” The Nature Conservancy will do things like pay farmers to intentionally flood their fields in order to protect a key bird habitat, and Salesforce helps them keep track of what they’re doing.  Shay Davis is Salesforce Admin at the Assistance League, having come over recently from the for-profit world. Her organization has 23,000 volunteers spread all over the United States, and their signature philanthropic program, Operation School Bell, addresses issues like literacy and hunger in local communities. “They brought me on because they said they have a lot of data in Salesforce but don’t know how to get it out, so I’m working on reports, dashboards, customization with click-and-pledge, screen steps, and more,” Shay says. At the time of this recording, Heather Hart was the Director of IT and Salesforce Admin at the Broad Museum, a contemporary art museum in LA. “Our mission is to make contemporary art accessible to the broadest popular public, and we use Salesforce in a lot of ways to achieve that mission,” Heather says. Salesforce is their central database for collecting information about the general public, whether that’s ticket reservations, shopping in their store, or subscribing to their email newsletter. “Reporting is really important to us, and we want to know exactly how many people are coming and encourage them to come back.” Like so many people on this podcast, Heather is an accidental admin. When she started she was the 7th employee and the museum was still under construction. “There was no infrastructure at all— we had a flash-based website,” Heather says, “it was a really great opportunity to build a really solid, integrated solution from scratch.” Because they decided that they needed to manage their data more effectively from the outset Salesforce was the obvious solution, so Heather went to an admin training and hasn’t looked back. The museum attracts 150,000 people a year with only 40 full-time staff members, and Salesforce is a big part of that. Shay is also an accidental admin, getting her start in the world of education as an administrator at Pepperdine. From there, she worked for a for-profit test prep and admissions consulting company. “We had a Salesforce admin but he was also our developer and our Director of College Prep,” she says, “our instance needed some TLC so I took it upon myself to go through Trailhead and get certified, which brought me to my new role at a nonprofit.” “I had familiarity with Salesforce but not as an admin,” Laura says, but she didn’t get a chance to dive into it until she became a temp at a grassroots environmental nonprofit. She happened to work for Paige Von Riper (who now...

LIVE from Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got Rikke Hovgaard, Solution Architect at Salesforce, to talk Einstein analytics. We go into how to use these tools in your daily life as an admin and to help your organization. Join us as we talk about what Einstein analytics can do, how Rikke got where she is today, and how analytics can allow you to tell complex stories with your data and get stronger insights. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rikke Hovgaard. The winding path to Salesforce. Gillian first got to know Rikke when she was preparing for a presentation about Einstein analytics on the Admin Theater Stage at Dreamforce. The presentation was so good she ended up getting hired to help people with Einstein full time. Like many, her path to the platform was a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work. “I ended up in a job interview and the guy that was interviewing me started talking about Salesforce, and I started panicking because I didn’t know what it was,” she says, so she thought she didn’t get the job. She got called in for a second interview and decided to bone up, which landed her in a job implementing Salesforce for customers. “Back then we didn’t have the wonderful tool of Trailhead so I couldn’t learn myself,” but Rikke’s colleagues had her back. Through little tasks and helpful pointers she was able to work her way up to building demos, and within a month and a half, she had her admin certification. From reports specialist to Einstein analytics expert. Rikke got involved in Einstein because she was in charge of report training for customers during Salesforce implementation. When Einstein was introduced, Rikke’s manager immediately put her into a four-day training in Paris (not as romantic as it sounds) so she could leverage her knowledge of reports. From there, she kept up to date by doing different use cases and actively teaching herself. Why should you think about using it at your organization? “Every single record we create makes more and more data,” Rikke says, “and we want to know how much more we have to do to get the job done.” There are limitations on reporting and sometimes you need more flexibility. Rikke’s presentation is about taking the standard Salesforce reporting that we know and love and then looking at what Einstein analytics brings to the table. There’s a bunch of features you can use, but Rikke really gets into when and where they can be deployed. She also gets into Einstein discovery, which is bringing even more to the table. Making Einstein work for you. “I like to call standard reporting operational— we want to have a list, we want to have that quick, instant look,” Rikke says, “but Einstein analytics is more for a strategic purpose.” It gives you the ability to get an overview but also drill down into your data and make a data story. “The way that Einstein analytics works is when you’re on your dashboard you can click on any of the widgets and everything starts reacting to it,” Rikke says, “and once you’ve found your data, you can take actions on it.” If it would be useful to notify the account manager that they need to take action on an opportunity, you can use global actions to empower that at scale with Einstein Analytics. Other tools like custom maps and compare tables give you the ability to create something useful from your data, immediately. We can create complex formulas right in the UI with no code, like to calculate “what is the percentage change in my opportunities from month to month.” Attend a Global Gathering near you! The Trailblazer Community is #LivingtheDream and bringing the best of Dreamforce to you! Join a Global Gathering near you to connect, learn, have fun and give back with Trailblazers like you. Register for a Dreamforce Global Gathering at dreamforce.com/globalgatherings. Resources  Rikke’s Dreamforce Session: The Admin's Guide to...

How to Get Started with Lightning with Umair Ilyas

The Salesforce Admins Podcast