Interviews with Salesforce Product Managers

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kris Harrison, Director of Product Management at Salesforce for data, integration, and metadata focusing on Enterprise API and External Services. We’ll dive into all those technical topics and more as we dive into APIs and how they affect everything that goes on in your org. &nbsp; Join us as we talk about why you should be thinking about APIs and how to learn more. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kris Harrison. &nbsp; Why APIs are important for admins to understand. &nbsp; Kris is a Product Manager at Salesforce focused on the Enterprise API Product Suite. “The encompasses the REST, SOAP, and Bulk APIs that provide programmatic access to the core Salesforce data that we know and love and run so many important functions across many different businesses,” he says. That includes the API framework and specific API operations and resources, like the query operation. &nbsp; While interacting with APIs sometimes feels like it’s out of the scope of your average admin, so much of what goes on happens either implicitly or explicitly through an API request. Even if you’re not writing code, tons of things you’re doing on your org interact with APIs, and it’s important to understand how they work and how they affect your day-to-day. “If you’re interacting with an org, there’s an API that’s part of making that magic happen,” Kris says. &nbsp; New API changes in Spring ‘21. &nbsp; For Spring ‘21, Kris’s team has added the FIELDS() function to the SOQL query. This lets you pull back a pre-defined grouping of fields within the results set you can reference. You can return standard fields, custom fields, or even all fields in the resulting data to save on keystrokes and research to make that exploration on data within an org much easier. That means you can stay within the SOQL query and interpret that results without having to toggle back and forth—one of the most requested ideas on the IdeaExchange. &nbsp; They’ve also created a plan to retire versions 7-20 of the SOAP, REST, and Bulk API. “Every new release we stamp out a new version of the API,” Kris says, “in Spring ‘21, we issued version 51.” So there’s now a plan to retire the oldest versions of the API (version 7 is from Summer ‘06, for example). There’s information in the Release Update tool in Setup on how to think about how to prepare for this change and what steps can be taken to ensure the org and it’s integrations won’t be impacted by the retirement plan. This helps you take advantage of the newest innovations that ship with every major release. &nbsp; Adding to capabilities to your org. &nbsp; For admins, we’re always looking for areas of opportunity—ways we can make the environment better and more efficient. While we’re often focused on new declarative features, looking at API improvements can give users and developers access to new innovation. &nbsp; “As the CLI capabilities are able to evolve and become more feature-rich, they’re plugging into new capabilities that are expressed through the API,” Kris says, “so there’s a win-win there. As you upgrade and make steps to take advantage of the capability that ships with every major release, that’s an opportunity to refresh the state of any older, pre-exisiting integrations with the org, take stock of them, and see if they would benefit from some of those newer capabilities that have been brought to market and question if they’re still needed and providing a viable service for the org.” Links:         Social:  Kris:  LeeAnne:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Full Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. This week, LeeAnne is sitting in for Gillian, and the two of us are talking with Kris Harrison, who is the product...

Why API Versions Matter with Kris Harrison

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we sit down with Adam Doti, VP and Principal Design Architect at Salesforce. He tells us about the team he leads that empowers Salesforce designers. Join us as we talk about how Adam and his team have brought designers together at Salesforce, and the resources they’ve put together to help you apply design thinking concepts in your org. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Adam Doti. A small but mighty team of designers. “Salesforce Design is a small but mighty team that sits at the intersection of our product user experience design team, our customer success group design team, and our creative team in marketing,” Adam says. They have two main goals: build a culture and community of design at Salesforce, and bringing design to our ecosystem. When they started, they knew they had a lot of design capability at Salesforce and they needed to find a way to harness it. They wanted to learn from each other and inspire each other, but they didn’t know how that would work. “Everything is designed,” Adam says, “whether intentionally or accidentally—stuff is designed.” And indeed, they ran into all sorts of people who were making design decisions: from professional designers to admins and developers making choices in their orgs. What they realized was that they needed to help people understand how to think about and see design. Why Admins make design decisions every day. The Salesforce Lightning redesign brought the platform forward in a lot of ways, “but it actually exponentially made the need for good design even more important,” One concept they focus on is relationship design, a creative approach to driving social value focused on building relationships with customers, employees, and community. One thing they’re doing is a video series for Be an Innovator focused on the design thinking process. It’ll take you through the six phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, build, and validate. Each episode will have an exercise to help you put those concepts into action in ways that make sense for your org.&nbsp; Links:  Blog:  Podcast:  Podcast:    Social:  Adam:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or

Design Thinking for Admins with Adam Doti

On this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re featuring a conversation with LeeAnne Rimel and Farhan Tahir, VP of Product Management at Salesforce. We discuss the key product features that help you put design features into action. Join us as we talk about the future of declarative app-building on the platform, and what’s coming soon. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Farhan Tahir. How the pandemic pushed digital transformation forward We want to dive into how to build great pages that center the user experience, so we’ve brought Farhan on the pod to help us learn about new approaches and features. He owns Salesforce Pages and AppBuilder, so we thought he’d have some great insights to share. “My mission is to democratize app development in the local space—I want to make app development easy so all of our Trailblazer community can build apps on top of the Salesforce platform and it’s not just restricted to developers,” he says. The pandemic has forced years worth of digital transformation into months, and Farhan’s team are creating tools like dynamic forms and dynamic actions to build, automate, and innovate at scale with a point and click interface. Automation is a big part of that, and Lightning App Builder and Flow Builder make it easier than ever to do it declaratively. What’s next for no and low code app building 88% of IT leaders plan on using low code solutions to help transform their digital experiences. Driving that is the anticipated need for 500 million applications by 2023—more applications than have been created in the past 40 years. IT departments will need the help of business users to not get backlogged and continue to innovate. Salesforce is also getting AI and automation involved to help make things even easier, like Guardrails. Looking forward, Farhan and his team are trying to move away from a UI on top of a database model. Instead, they’re building “mutli-entity experiences” to bring all of the data into one place without having to write a single line of code. “There’s never been a better time to be really thoughtful about the fundamentals of design,” LeeAnne says, especially as we get more and more tools to shape the user experience. That’s why we’re covering this topic thoroughly in a special&nbsp; Be an Innovator episode event to help you get your bearings and center the user experience in everything that you do. Links:    Social:  Farhan:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike: &nbsp;  Full Show Transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm Gillian Bruce. And today I am joined by one of our favorites, LeeAnne Rimel, who is here to talk to you all about something very, very special and important that we're all talking about this month. And that is design thinking admins. We are designers, whether we would like to acknowledge it or not. And what we've got going on this month is a special Be an Innovator event to help all admins learn how to be better designers. Now, when we think about design thinking, well, we've got some specific product and features that are very critical to helping us make better experiences for our end users. And we have an amazing product leader joining us today on the podcast to talk specifically about that. We're joined by Farhan Tahir, who is vice president of product management here at Salesforce. He's been at Salesforce for 14 years. So he has had a huge part in helping evolve the platform to where it is today. And he's here to share with all of us some of the incredible products he and his team have been working on and how they fit in to this idea of design thinking and how you can best leverage them. So without further ado, let's welcome LeeAnne and Farhan on the podcast. Farhan, welcome to the podcast. Farhan Tahir: Thank you. It's a pleasure. I'm super excited to be...

The Future of Automation with Farhan Tahir

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got Reid Carlberg, Vice President of Trailhead Mobile at Salesforce, to share how the partnership between Apple and Salesforce lead to Trailhead GO and what he learned through the process that is super relevant for admins. Join us as we talk about the difference between product managers and project managers, how to think about delivering value to your users, and how to listen to feedback. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Reid Carlberg. &nbsp;Launching Trailhead GO. Reid was last on the podcast back in the salad days of the ButtonClick Admin. These days, he’s working in product management and, specifically, on something new called Trailhead GO. It’s live right now, so if you haven’t already you should definitely pull it up on your iOS device so you can follow along. “If you were at Dreamforce last year,” Reid says, “you know that we’re kicking off a strategic partnership with Apple,” and he found himself in charge of making that vision a reality. “One of the things that I found myself thinking about,” Reid says, “is an experience that I’ve heard a lot of admins relate to, where they were kind of handed something. They got to take this thing—a lot of times it’s Salesforce—and help understand what people really wanted out of it and try and figure out how they could launch it out and be successful for the group.”&nbsp; How to use a “walking around deck.” At Salesforce, if you’re working on something big you need to create a presentation that eventually becomes a “walking around deck.” It doesn’t necessarily describe what the product will be, but it shows you a lot of aspects of what it could be. For Reid, that meant showing what it would be like if people could get into Trailhead content wherever they happen to be. Obviously, this struck a chord with Mike and his concept of SABWA: Salesforce Administration By Walking Around. “When you’re in a very collaborative environment,” Reid says, “you have to go broad and wide with whatever it is that you’re pitching so people can say, ‘Yes, I’ve heard about it, yes I know what the vision is, and yes, I agree with this vision.’” The thing is, as soon as you start talking to people about your vision, you’re going to get feedback about it. Some of it is going to encourage you and some of it is going to point out where you’re wrong. This discovery process is incredibly helpful because you can get your users to tell you directly what they want and don’t want before you build anything. The difference between a product manager and a project manager. Once you release something, you can spend a lot of energy fighting fires, as Mike says. A feature doesn’t work right, or something needs to be tweaked, for example. So how does Reid balance the need to maintain what he and his team has already rolled out with the need to keep an eye towards the future? “If I think about those things as fires, it can tend to get me worked up and have a sense of urgency,” he says, “or I can start to think about things not necessarily as fires but as opportunities.” Changing your outlook gives you permission to take your time and perhaps group things together to see the broader picture and maybe make a bigger change down the road. For Reid, that’s the distinction between a product manager and a project manager. “When you’re a product manager, you have to do all these trade-offs and say, ‘Okay, how do I understand what value this can deliver and in what order should I deliver that value?’” Resources  TrailheadGO   For iOS    Social  Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns&nbsp; Reid: @ReidCarlberg Mike: @MikeGerholdt  Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  review us on iTunes! Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk product, community, and careers to help you become an...

Trailhead GO: From Idea to App Store With Reid Carlberg

We’re back with another special bonus episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, this time with Vin Addala, Product Manager on the Lightning Platform. We’re discussing how dynamic forms and pages are changing the game for what’s possible for admins. Join us as we talk about the new dynamic features coming in Summer ‘20, how admins and devs make a dynamic duo that can solve any problem, and why drag-and-drop tools punch above their weight. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Vin Addala. From the IdeaExhange to your org. Vin started out his Salesforce career as Product Manager, working to launch Dynamic Actions. He went out and heard a lot of feedback about both how great actions are and, at the same time, the limitations people had been running into when they were trying to put them to use. The goal was to make actions more flexible and adaptable to a modern application development environment. Look for Dynamic Actions in the Summer ‘20 release for production orgs to try out for themselves. Right now, Vin is working on the number-one-rated item on IdeaExchange, Dynamic Forms. “Some people wonder whether PMs read IdeaExchange,” he says, “but I make it a point that all the people that work with me go read what’s up there.” They’re working up Dynamic Forms from scratch on Lightning, and you should look for a version you can play with yourself in production in Summer ‘20. The power of Dynamic Forms and Actions. One of the biggest advantages of moving to Dynamic Forms and Actions is that it removes the need for tons of different page layouts for each different user in your org. “App Builder will become a one-stop-shop for building your pages,” Vin says. “I’m inspired by the conversations I have with our customers,” he says, “and when I see that there’s something we can solve to make people’s lives easier and more efficient I want to be there and that’s what really motivates me.” More broadly, Vin is always thinking about how that developer/admin relationship. “It’s one of the things that makes our platform, and working on our platform so unique,” he says, “both are first-class citizens and they can work together to solve a problem greater than what they could have solved separately.” How to reevaluate what you think is possible. “When something becomes a habit you might just get used to the inefficiency so it feels normal to have all these clicks,” Vin says, “but I think it’s time=—when all these features start coming out—to reevaluate those habits and ask if there’s a better way of doing this.” These tools are drag-and-drop, but the power is there to solve big business problems and make it simple, too. “The fun thing about my job is we have all these complex systems, and how do we simplify it in a way to make it accessible without losing that complexity,” Vin says. At the end of the day, what that means is putting more powerful tools in the hands of admins so they can solve key business problems with simple solutions. Don’t miss the full episode, where we talk about SABWA (Salesforce Administration By Walking Around), Vin’s 250+ board game collection, and more.  #lowcodelovevirtual Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Vin:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or

Dynamic Pages with Vin Addala

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we bring on Tim Dubois, the Product Manager for In-App Guidance at Salesforce. We learn how admins can take advantage of this cool feature and some best practices for creating these cool prompts. Join us as we talk about best processes for floating prompts versus docked prompts, how to add the information your users need, and the metrics you need to look at for user engagement. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Tim Dubois. New In-App Guidance features for Summer 2020. “In-App Guidance is the ability for an admin to create in-app learning where it makes the most sense for the users,” Tim says, “where they’re going to get the best context and be able to do that little bit of learning right in place.” It’s built into the platform itself with no coding via Lightning and lets you be right there with users to draw their attention to the right thing at the right time. If you’re making a change with App Builder, In-App Guidance lets you show your users what’s changed and where there are new fields. At the same time, when you’re onboarding new users, you can use this feature to help show them around. In Summer 2020, we’re adding multi-step prompts to create a Walkthrough for more complicated processes to traverse multiple pages or even guide users across multiple apps. Pacing your prompts. While In-App Guidance is a powerful tool at your disposal, it’s definitely possible to overuse the feature. “You have to think about it from the user’s perspective,” Tim says, “you definitely want to make sure you tease these out at a rate that’s not going to overwhelm them because the last thing we want is burnout.” If you think about popups on the web, it’s definitely easy to understand what overstimulation looks like. There are controls in In-App Guidance that makes everything a lot easier, letting you decide how many times you show prompts to your users. There are also a few different types of prompts that can help you display information in the best way for people to take it in, so choose wisely. Metrics to help you make an impact. When you’re trying to get buy-in from your stakeholders, you can rely on In-App Guidance’s built-in user engagement metrics to give you an idea of how you’re doing. You can better understand how many people saw your prompt versus how many people clicked on the action, which gives you the ability to tweak things and make sure you’ve got it right. One customer used permissions for country to have different prompts show up in different languages, and the design allows for a lot of flexibility and creativity in terms of how you employ it. These days, In-App Guidance uses the Translation Workbench to make sure prompts show up in whichever language the user has set up, including the URLs for any videos you’ve included. We’re super excited to hear about you get up to when you get your hands on these exciting new features, so reach out and let us know. Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Mike:  Tim:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. I'm Mike Gerholdt. And joining me today is Tim Dubois, the product manager for In-App Guidance. Man, is this thing cool, let me tell you. So we're going to talk about how admins can utilize In-App Guidance, some of the best practices for creating those cool prompts, and a whole bunch more. I promise you is such fun episode. I wish I had In-App Guidance for the episode, but we don't. We have Tim, so let's get Tim on the pod. Tim is the PM for In-App Guidance. And we're going to talk about how admins can utilize In-App Guidance, some best practices. I don't know where the conversation's going to take us. But Tim, welcome to the podcast. Tim Dubois: Thank you, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: Let's get...

In-App Guidance with Tim Dubois

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking with Niket Trivedi, the Product Manager for Salesforce Optimizer at Salesforce. We find out what’s new for Salesforce Optimizer in Summer 20, and it turns out there’s a lot going on. Join us as we talk about what went into converting a PDF report into an app, how you can use Optimizer to get on the same page with leadership, and what the future looks like. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Niket Trivedi. From a PDF to an app in Summer 20. Some admins out there might remember their first introduction to Optimizer as report that got put into their docs and emailed to them. We’ve come a long way since then, and the Summer 20 release is set to change the game. “We are relaunching Optimizer as a Lightning app,” Niket says, “I’m looking forward to all the great feedback we’ll get from admins and the value they can get out of these recommendations that were previously in a PDF report and now are in a brand-new dashboard interactive format.” “We don’t want to read a 100-page document to get to something that we want to act on,” Niket says, “we wanted to give something to admins where they’re spending less time scrolling through the report and more time fixing things in the org.” The Lightning app brings all of Optimizer’s recommendations out of the PDF and into the core where you can work with it, letting you jump to the relevant page straight from the app. “Your transition from the Optimizer app to the rest of your org is very seamless,” Niket says, “you’re not spending time doing an offline analysis and going back and forth.” How Optimizer helps you set your goals. Optimizer has almost fifty different recommendations. In other words, there’s almost certainly more than a few things you can work on. “What we’ve done is prioritize that list in the order of where you need the most attention,” Viket says, “the list, when the dashboard loads for the first time, is pre-sorted by how many immediate actions are needed for each of those items.” Their goal is to make it easier for you to attack Optimizer’s recommendations and whip your org into shape. At the minimum, Viket recommends running Optimizer at least once every release, “but I don’t’ think I’ve seen any admin just doing the minimum,” he says. Instead, he recommends that you run the app every time you release something new. Any new development you do can create new issues, which is exactly what Optimizer is here to help you iron out. It doesn’t cost you anything to run, so you can even consider running it every two weeks or once a month. Using Optimizer to win over stakeholders. Sharing is caring, and Optimizer reports are best shared with anyone who needs to make a decision that affects your org. Viket recommends using the app to set your priorities and pointing to the report to explain why. “Sharing the data with those team members may be helpful so that they understand what you are busy with and how you are adding value and making your end-user experience as efficient and productive as possible,” Niket says. Optimizer is especially useful in the common scenario where you’re coming into an already-existing org. “In a lot of the cases, admins have no one to tell them why certain things are the way they are, and they are so scared to make a change because they don’t know if something is going to break,” Niket says. “This is the tool, it’s like a Swiss Army knife,” he says, “it does hundreds of things for you and helps you uncover and discover those things.” Links:    Trailhead:    Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. I'm Mike Gerholdt and joining me today is Nicket Trivedi, TM for...

Salesforce Optimizer with Niket Trivedi

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, we’re joined by Wade Wegner, SVP Developer Platform at Salesforce and Product Leader for Work.com. We learn about the new collection of tools and resources, built on the Salesforce platform, to help businesses navigate the reopening process safely and responsibly. Join us as we talk about how Wade and his team were able to build out Work.com in a matter of weeks, the new considerations companies face as they look to reopen, and how Work.com’s suite of tools and resources can help you. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Wade Wegner. Why Salesforce is the perfect tool to help with reopening. “About a month and a half ago, I started having conversations with some of our internal leaders around how Salesforce was going to start thinking about reopening our offices,” Wade says, “and given the global pandemic, this is a topic that is on everyone’s mind right now. How do we reopen and do so safely?” As they were working through all of the challenges that that entails, they realized that the answer was right in front of them the whole time: the Salesforce platform. “We have an amazing platform that can do just about anything you can imagine,” Wade says, “and so we started imagining a lot of the ways that we could use the platform to help reopen Salesforce.” At the same time, the executive leadership started talking to customers and realized that everyone was going through the same process, and could probably use some help. Those conversations turned into Work.com, a comprehensive set of resources and tools to help you reopen your businesses and offices safely. New Employee Standard objects to help. The Work.com team was able to go from an idea to a full-fledged solution so rapidly because they built it 100% on the platform. With all the information you need to track, Salesforce makes a lot more sense than cramming everything across a hundred different spreadsheets. For one thing, you’ve got all sorts of compliance and privacy concerns with health information. For another, you need to compare a bunch of data about your employees while also keeping track of key metrics, applications where Salesforce is the perfect tool for the job. The one thing they’ve added into core is an employee data model with a set of standard objects to help keep track of all of the new information. It’s been backported so it will be available as part of the Summer 20 release. “We’ve met with the CDC and other medical experts to code and create survey templates that define the questions you should ask and the type of information to collect,” Wade says. There are flow templates, a page layout for a command center with key information from both what you collect and public data sets, dashboards for facilities managers, and more, all of it customizable to fit your individual needs and mobile-ready out of the box. How reopening impacts the ENTIRE organization. There are many challenges facing companies looking to reopen in a safe responsible way. “The experiences we’re going to have in the office will be different,” Wade says, and training and enablement will be key. Built-in to Work.com are content kits that provide best practices (again, customizable templates) that will help those who can return be ready to do it safely. How do you properly social distance in an elevator? What happens if and when someone gets sick, and how do you notify your employees? “You don’t want to manage this through spreadsheets,” Wade says, “you need a set of best practices and tools that facilitate this.” “Pretty much every company in the world is thinking about this,” Wade says, so you can be sure pretty much anyone in a management position is eager to talk about this, whether they run facilities, HR, or are scheduling shifts. “I think there’s a real opportunity to talk to them about a solution that brings this together and provides the platform to reopen on top...

Getting to Know Work.com with Wade Wegner

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’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

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking with Neha Ahlawat, Director Product Management at Salesforce and the Product Manager for Custom Metadata. We dive into all things Custom Metadata: what it is and why you should care about it. Join us as we talk about how Custom Metadata types can make your app more sophisticated, and why you shouldn’t fear the CLI. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Neha Ahlawat. Why Custom Metadata types are better than Custom Settings. “Custom Metadata types are custom versions of metadata that you, the customer or developer, can create and use,” Neha says. It works very similarly to a Custom Object, but it works like metadata, letting you unlock some powerful Salesforce features. With low code or no code, you can simplify common processes like replacing hardcoded data on validation rules and making them much easier to maintain. In the past, you may have used Custom Settings to help you out, but Custom Metadata types have a few advantages that you should take advantage of. They’re reusable, because the rules of a Custom Metadata type are application metadata, allowing you to redeploy and package them for other purposes. There’s also better protection mechanics to cover not just the type, but the individual records. You can create relationships between Custom Metadata types, and even reference them in validation rules. “Basically, you can make an application a bit more sophisticated and customizable by using Custom Metadata,” Neha says, in ways you can’t do with Custom Settings. Don’t fear the CLI. Neha and her team just released a CLI plugin for Custom Metadata types. “Do not fear the CLI, admins, it’s very simple to use,” Neha says, “it’s very simple to use those single-line commands that can allow you to do much more powerful stuff with Custom Metadata directly from the command line.” You can bulk insert records for a Custom Metadata type, allowing you to add up to 10,000 records with one command execution. If you’ve been using the third-party Data Loader tool and run into some roadblocks, you might consider switching to the CLI plugin so you can get help directly from Salesforce. New features for Winter ‘21 and beyond. With the Winter ‘21 Release, there are a few new things coming to Custom Metadata. The CLI plugin is out, but so is the ability to create relationships with the geolocation compound field. Looking forward, they’re trying to focus on bridging the gaps that exist between Custom Settings and Custom Metadata types to make it easier to switch over.&nbsp; Links:    &nbsp;  Social:  Neha:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full Show Transcript

Product Manager Neha Ahlawat Talks About Custom Metadata Benefits for Admins

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re joined once again by Shannon Hale, Platform Product Leader at Mulesoft. We learn what Mulesoft Composer is and what it can do, why she’s so passionate about making admins’ lives easier, and what the Shannon Hale Salesforce SWAT Team is. Join us as we talk about what Mulesoft Composer can do for you and your org, and why admins hold a special place in Shannon’s heart. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Shannon Hale. Integrating multiple systems “It’s always a challenge when you have data in one system and data in another system but your workflow doesn’t necessarily take that into account,” Shannon says, and if you don’t have any sort of integration you’ll find yourself manually entering data from one to the other. Not only is that highly prone to error, but it’s time-consuming. “Anytime you can automate those processes,” she says, “you can save yourself time and you can streamline those business processes.” To solve this problem, Shannon and her team are building a new Design Time tool, Mulesoft Composer, for building integrations across different systems to connect your data sources together, developed specifically for admins. “You’re just a person, trying to do a job, and your job happens to have data in two systems and you want them to talk to each other,” she says. Why Mulesoft Composer makes Integrating easier When it comes to how to put Mulesoft Composer to work for you, Shannon says to start with the things that are time-consuming or error-prone in your org—anything that happens frequently. So you can identify where you need your integration to happen, then which data you need to move over and whether or not there are multiple steps involved (like sending an email or Slack message), then switch over to the composer. Mulesoft Composer comes as a Managed Package, so it’s embedded directly into Salesforce, so the next step is to start a new flow and create your integration. From there, you log into both systems, choose the fields, objects, and triggers you want to work with, and then choose an action and a system to do it to. Think about it like Flow Builder, but for creating integrations between two systems. At the end of the day, this is about putting tools that were previously only in the purview of developers into the hands of admins to help them work their magic and make things easier for everyone. Listen to the full episode for more info about how to get executive buy-in and why Mulesoft Composer is a lot like the point-and-click tools you’re already used to using. Links:    Social:  Shannon:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   &nbsp;

Shannon Hale on Mulesoft Composer

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...

Admins Unlock Success Using AppExchange with Woodson Martin

For this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got Grace Li, Product Manager for Admin Home, In-App Learning, and Guidance Center at Salesforce. She’ll fill us in on everything new in Spring 21 or Guidance Center and In-App Learning, and be sure to check out January’s Release Readiness broadcast for even more info. Join us as we talk about the powerful new features you can use in Spring ‘21, and what’s in store for the future. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Grace Li. The keys to a successful project. “We’ve been hearing from admins that they really want to know more from Salesforce, they want guidance, they want to know best practices and they just really want to know how to set their org up for success,” Grace says. In-App Guidance takes all of the knowledge we’ve gathered talking to customers all over the world and puts it right in front of you. If you’re spinning up a new org and you want to follow best practices, you’re going to see a new thing called Guidance Center. It’ll give you a checklist of all the things Salesforce thinks will be helpful for you as you’re setting up your new org. It’ll tailor itself according to your level of experience, so whether you’re a first-timer or a seasoned veteran, you’ll get some timely advice and a spotlight on features you’ll want to play around with as you get everything configured. Coming up in the future, Grace and her team are looking to broaden the scenarios where In-App Guidance can play a role. For example, to help you prepare for an upcoming release and get a handle on new features. Learning has always been an important part of being a Salesforce admin, and In-App Learning kicks it up a notch. “We’re bringing that fun Trailhead experience right inside the application where you’re doing your work,” Grace says, and this can also help you train your users by putting the right training in the right place. You can also assign Trailhead modules to specific users in your org, so if you have someone who needs to review something they can simply open their panel to see what you’ve put in there for them. You can also give business leaders the opportunity to customize what shows up for their team without needing admin privileges, so they can take the lead on training and coordinating their team. Links:    Social:  Grace:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:

New Spring 21 Feature: In-App Learning with Grace Li

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re sitting down with Ruchi Kumar, Product Management Senior Manager on the Core Service Team of Service Cloud at Salesforce. We’ll cover what’s new in Spring 21 for Admins with Service Setup Assistant and Macros Builder. &nbsp; Join us as we talk about everything she’s working on for Spring ‘21 and how you can get involved. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ruchi Kumar. &nbsp; New features for Setup Assistant. &nbsp; The Core Service Team that Ruchi is in charge of the “bread and butter” of Service Cloud: Service Consoles, Quick Text, Macros, Knowledge, and more. Ruchi’s team, in particular, is in charge of improving the setup experience and making the admin experience better so they can discover and adopt new features. &nbsp; In Spring ‘21, there are a ton of improvements coming to Setup Assistant. “If you think of your journey as an admin, the power of the platform of Service Cloud and Salesforce is supermassive, but sometimes you just want to have a prescriptive out-of-the-box experience so that you can get ready right away with your new app and let your team focus on what they do best,” Ruchi says. It sets up a new Service App for you preconfigured with the best productivity tools so you can get going as soon as possible, drawing on all the knowledge of best practices Salesforce has. &nbsp; The power of Macro Builder. &nbsp; Ruchi’s other team works on productivity tools, especially macros. “It really cuts down time and creates instructions so agents can automatically perform routine tasks such as closing a case or sending an email,” she says, “you just need to write the instructions for the macro and they just hit a button.” Macro Builder is a Lightning tool that makes creating macros a point-and-click affair. Just highlight the component and choose the actions you need to happen. &nbsp; In Spring ‘21, you can switch between tabs to create a more complex macro for your complex page layout where you can run more multi-steps and navigate easily between pages. “Any way we can make macros easier to build makes them easier to implement, and helps you deliver faster resolution times to make your agents and customers happier,” Ruchi says. &nbsp; Most importantly, Ruchi and her team want to hear your feedback about how they can improve on the admin experience. Consider this your invitation to the Service Admin Advisory board to be a part of creating and coming up with the next set of admin features. Links:   &nbsp;   &nbsp; Social:  Ruchi on the  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or

New Spring '21 Feature: Service Cloud Macros with Ruchi Kumar

On this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we hear from Mat Hamlin, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce. We’ll dive into multi-factor authentication (MFA), and why all Salesforce users will be using it by February 1st, 2022. Join us as we talk about multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, tracking and adoption, and a little bit about barbeque. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mat Hamlin. How should you manage MFA in your org? So should you use an existing single sign-on (SSO) implementation or roll out a standalone MFA? “As a general rule,” Mat says, “if your organization does have a centrally-managed single sign-on solution that can or does support multi-factor authentication for its login processes, that’s the recommended solution.” Your internal IT department already thinks about managing identity and security risks all day long, so letting them have control over your authentication and verification processes helps them centralize and apply policies. For some organizations, however, it might make more sense for you as the Salesforce admin to manage MFA on the platform. You can even configure it to handle all of your Salesforce products in one place: Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and more. Think about it as a great excuse to start a conversation with your IT folks about what works best for your org. A helping hand to monitor adoption and more. There are also some great tools to monitor adoption and general usage baked-in to Salesforce. You can generate reports with the login history fields to get a picture of what’s going on. There’s also the new Security Command Center feature to help you keep track, and there will be even more login metrics coming in Spring ‘21with the Lightning Usage App. MFA Assistant will be with you every step of the way, giving you suggestions and references to make things simple. That said, MFA will add a step to the login process. “As administrators, as you start rolling out MFA, it’s good to be very communicative about the process but also the reasons,” Mat says. You want to explain why it’s so important to reduce the risk of data loss and protect your organization. Finally, it’s helpful to show your users exactly what the changes to their login process look like. “Fear of the unknown can cause people to be anxious,” Mat says, but if you can show them how easy it is and what to expect you’ll find a lot more success. As you’re showing them, make sure to emphasize that you’ll be there to support them whenever they need help. Links  Watch Release Readiness Live &nbsp;  Social  Mat:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:

MFA vs. SSO: What's better for my org(s)? with Mat Hamlin

On this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking to a Salesforce dream team of Zayne Turner, Senior Director of Architect Relations, and LeeAnne Rimel, Architect, Admin Relations. We’ll cover integrations and the tools coming down the road to make them even easier. Join us as we talk about why you’re already doing integrations as an admin, what questions to ask about integrations, and the Trailhead content you should look at to get started. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Zayne Tuner and LeeAnne Rimel. Admins are integrators. “Admins are integrators—admins often are responsible for integrations at their organizations, they are often the ones making important decisions about what to do with existing integrations,” LeeAnne says, “so how do we give you the tools to think about integrations in the larger business scope for your company?” If you connect your data in Salesforce to something else, somewhere else, then you’re already dealing with integrations. Salesforce has been working hard to get better guidance out there to help admins who have to make these kinds of decisions. “One of the biggest things is to really understand what it is you’re integrating,” Zayne says, and while that might be data, “there’s this whole, powerful realm of processes and process integration—when something has to start inside Salesforce and continue outside.” Understanding the two sides of integrations, process and data, is key to making sure you can make a solid plan for whatever it is you need to do. Salesforce tools to help you get started with integrations. The important thing to remember is that the habits you’re already honing to be the product owner of your environment are going to relevant for integration management. Questions like what kind of security you should have, or what kind of data access should have apply equally to your org and to integrations. “Loosely coupled” is a term that’s thrown around a lot when discussing integrations. It’s the idea that data and process moves easily between systems, but they’re not chained or locked together in a way that can’t change. The Mulesoft Anypoint platform, for example, gives you a middle layer that adds some flexibility. At the same time, we live in a world with budget constraints, so if you’re using out-of-the-box tools, you need to go through a process to identify what really needs to be integrated and what might be better served with a simpler solution. There are also some new Integration Pattern Architect Trailhead trails that can help you get a handle on everything, so take the time to brush up on your knowledge. Listen to the full episode for more about integrations from this expert guest lineup, and don’t be afraid to jump into Mulesoft Composer and get started. Links:    Social:  Zayne:  LeeAnne:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full Show Transcript

Interviews with Salesforce Product Managers

The Salesforce Admins Podcast