Salesforce Admins Solving Problems

For this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re joined by LeeAnne Rimel, Architect Admin Relations, fellow Evangelist, and host of the Youtube video series “Did You Know” and “Expert Corner” to share some tips for how to learn in a virtual world. Join us as we talk about distributed work, how to address concerns with working from home, and how to get a better work-life balance. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel. Join us in the Expert Corner. March is Admin Integration Month, and it also marks the launch of Expert Corner, a new video series that gives our community the chance to meet the product managers that build the tools our admins are using. “One of the things that came up as I was thinking about how we bring technical content and technical conversations to admins was those conversations that we often witness or have with product managers when we’re at in-person events,” LeeAnne says. The video series is a way of bringing that experience to everyone. In short, Expert Corner is a front-row seat to a Dreamforce session for anyone with an internet connection. Tips for working from home Working from home for seven years, LeeAnne has developed some habits to help her keep focused. Her first tip is that if you’re in a meeting, always imagine you’re right there in the conference room. Close any extra tabs, turn off notifications, and do everything you’d do if you were in a conference room with your boss’s boss’s boss. The same goes for taking time for yourself: “treat yourself and your own time and mental bandwidth with the same respect you would for your colleagues,” LeeAnne says. If you’re having trouble getting your manager onboard with a remote working situation, one thing that LeeAnne’s found is helpful is to get specific about their concerns. You can then address those concerns with specific solutions, and sometimes it’s about thinking creatively. Maybe you can address their concern that they won’t know the status of your work with a quick 5-minute status update at the beginning of the day, for example. Admins lead the way “Having an entire workforce change the way they’re working with technology—for any reason—presents an opportunity for admins to be leaders on how their company is using technology,” LeeAnne says, “when there is change, often there is a need and a thirst for some direction and some leadership and some pathfinding.” That can be setting the tone for communicating project statuses, or just how things are communicated within your organization. One thing LeeAnne does to be on top of the ball is consume information from a lot of sources and synthesize it quickly. She takes a lot of notes but aims to cut down 90% of it and find the important takeaways. Finally, LeeAnne recommends taking the time to figure out how to communicate that information in a way that your users will consume it. LeeAnne has tons of great tips for working from home and work-life balance, so make sure you listen to the full episode. Links:    Social:  LeeAnne:  Salesforce Admins:  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 career to help you become an awesome admin. This week, we are talking with architect admin relations, fellow evangelist, host of many YouTube video series like Did You Know and Expert Corner. I think there's probably five other things I should say about LeeAnne, but LeeAnne Rimel is on the podcast to share with us her expertise in learning in a virtual world, and Gillian, this is just such a fun discussion. Gillian Bruce: Anytime we get to chat with LeeAnne it's super fun. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. So if you ever want to know what our team meetings are like, this podcast is pretty much it. So with that, let's get LeeAnne on the podcast. So LeeAnne,...

How to Learn in a Virtual World with LeeAnne Rimel

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got Michele Corwin, Senior Salesforce Platform Administrator at Integrate. We learn how she transitioned from a career in banking and finance into the Salesforce ecosystem. &nbsp; Join us as we talk about how Michele got her first Salesforce admin job through the community, how volunteering played an important role by giving her hands-on experience, and why you shouldn’t be afraid to apply for something even if you don’t have all of the qualifications. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Michele Corwin. &nbsp; How Michele found Salesforce. &nbsp; Michele is a Salesforce admin and a career transitioner, moving to her new role from her previous job in banking and finance. “A lot of clients were in IT,” she says, “if there was a sector that I completely did not understand, it was IT. So I would say if I can do it, anyone can do it.” &nbsp; When Michele’s career stalled out, she started looking at other options. She knew she loved helping people and solving problems, so she decided to take that and look at job descriptions in any industry, regardless of title. “Everything that I kept finding that I loved what the core work was mentioned Salesforce,” she says, “and that’s how it all started for me.” &nbsp; Getting started with changing your career. &nbsp; Michele’s next step was to connect through a family friend to someone how worked as a Salesforce consultant, which led her to Trailhead. She immediately fell in love with every aspect of it, not just the platform but the community around it, which she connected to through a Women in Tech meetup in Indianapolis. &nbsp; The next challenge was how Michele could get her foot in the door. “Everyone wants one to two year’s experience—how do I do that when I can’t get in?” She went to the community to offer her skills for free in exchange for some hands-on experience and got connected with Indy Lost Pet Alert, which had a free Salesforce instance and didn’t know what to do with it. “I got to build it myself with no other resources but myself and Trailhead,” she says. &nbsp; Getting your first Salesforce position. &nbsp; After six months of job applications, Michele landed her first full-time Salesforce position in November 2019, but she only got to spend three months in her physical office. “One thing that really helped me was that I didn’t not put in for things just because they wanted two or three years,” she says. While the job she landed wanted someone with more experience, she felt her other skills would make her a good fit. &nbsp; In January 2021, however, Michele’s LinkedIn started blowing up. “You’re in an industry that is open to all sectors,” she says, “which is so powerful.” She ended up taking 19 interviews, and ended up with 3 offers that all met her requirements. Along the way, keeping her LinkedIn up-to-date was key in making sure she popped up on recruiters’ radars. “Don’t underestimate yourself, don’t be afraid to get out there and do it,” she says, “when I was in it, it felt like it took an eternity, but it’s only been two to three years since I heard the word Salesforce and asked, ‘What is it?’.” Links:  Find your local   Social:  Michele:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  &nbsp; Full Show Transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host, Gillian Bruce. And today we have a very inspiring story for you, whether you are thinking about switching your career, mid career or if you were thinking about trying to get your first admin job or help someone else get their first Salesforce admin job, this podcast is for you today. We are joined by Michelle Corwin, who is now a senior Salesforce platform administrator. She has an...

Your Guide to Getting a Salesforce Admin Job in Today’s Market with Michele Corwin

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re joined by J Steadman, Senior Solution Engineer at Salesforce, to talk through flows, processes, and the easiest way to move things from workflows to Process Builder. Join us as we talk about the tools in your toolbox and how to view them as different things for different jobs, getting technical about workflows, Process Builder, Flows, and more. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with J Steadman. J’s winding path to becoming a Solution Engineer. J is a Solution Engineer at Salesforce, but what exactly does that mean? “I help people who are not yet Salesforce customers become Salesforce customers by building out demos of our technology to their specific requirements,” J says. The way he got to where he is now is one of those classic accidental admin stories we hear so many times on the pod. He didn’t get his first sit-down office job until he was thirty, working the front desk for an organization that happened to use Salesforce. He soon found himself as an admin, and that lead to a career as a Salesforce consultant. The next stop for J in his career path was as a product manager for an enterprise customer with about 2,000 licenses in a big, shared, multi-tennant org with thirteen business units. From there it was a matter of time until he came over to Salesforce, first as a Success Specialist and now in his current role as a Solution Engineer. “It’s really fun in that for our strategic retail accounts, we’ve got a longer deal cycle so it’s not turn and burn,” J says, “so I get to spend time with these customers, learn their use cases, and actually present them functional technology before they even implement anything.” Why you need to transition from workflows to Process Builder. Right now, J is focused on how to transition workflow rules to Process Builder. “We had somewhere around 80 workflow rules that were all active on the opportunity object,” he says, “and I was tasked with not only taking those and migrating them over to Process Builder but also to add a bunch of new logic and functionality.” The fact is that in today’s Salesforce environment, workflows are limited—it can’t do everything that Process Builder can do. For admins looking for fast and efficient automation, Process Builder is the answer, but that can put legacy admins in a difficult spot where they’re split between the new solution and their old automations in workflows. The biggest challenge that J has identified is order of execution. If you have a dozen workflow rules all firing on the same criteria on an object, you aren’t able to control the order in which those rules fire. Between Process Builder and Flow, that order can become very important as we build new solutions because legacy workflow processes can start to get in the way. While you can do all kinds of things to make things work, “when I look at the kinds of orgs I work in and the kinds of orgs I want to work in, I prefer to minimize hacking where possible, especially if hacking is causing me to create any number of false fields at the database layer,” J says. Why J’s first step is Google. J is a thirteen-times certified Salesforce professional—he’s an Application Architect and a Systems Architect, “but even with that degree of knowledge of the platform, my very first step for every single project is Google,” he says. He wants to look at everything from Trailhead documentation to conversations on the Salesforce Community and Stack Overflow to see if there are answers out there, or other problems people are running into. That lets him go back to his boss and his team to point out any obvious gotchas that might force them to course-correct before they get in the weeds. The next phase is actually planning—reviewing the requirements. “I call this ‘having the hood up,’” J says, “while you have the hood up you have the...

Choose the Right Tool for the Job with J Steadman

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to the man behind  the Ultimate Guide to Report Types and the  Ultimate Guide to Report Types Part 2—Evan Ponter, CRM Product Manager at Hostelling International USA. We go over Join us as we talk about all the ins and outs of reports, how to avoid constantly remaking reports, and when you might want to get into more complicated solutions. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Evan Ponter. Why you need to understand the question behind the requirements. Evan got his start on the platform working for a nonprofit, but it wasn’t until he switched to a for-profit company that was working at scale that he really came to understands the ins and outs of Salesforce. “I was one of the main resources at that company their reporting, so I was getting pummeled with requests,” Evan says. When he moved back to the nonprofit world, he was able to bring this knowledge with him and eventually create the  Ultimate Guide to Report Types. “People want any kind of information they can get their hands on,” Evan says, “and since people are putting it all into Salesforce, it becomes even more important to figure out how to get that data back out in a way that’s intelligible and actionable to start to use to make decisions.” That means it’s not just about understanding literally what report someone is requesting, it’s thinking a little deeper to try to understand what question they’re trying to answer. “You can go down that rabbit hole and try to start building that report for them,” Evan says, “but if you don’t know what question you’re trying to answer you’re sort of chasing everything.” How to simplify reporting in your org. If you have an understanding of how your report is going to be used, you can also build it with a mind towards the future, so if they need to answer the same question next year you already have a way to do that. If you’re having trouble getting your report requester to explain what question they’re trying to answer, Evan recommends framing it this way: “We’re going to have tabular data in these report results, what does each row represent?” Basically, you’re trying to get them to think about what they actually want to see. Sometimes even just asking them to draw an example on a napkin or Post-It note can provide a lot of clarification because it makes it concrete. One major thing Evan recommends is setting up a single custom report type for every object you use in your organization without enforcing any object relationships in them. “The trick is, once you set up those report types you can edit the custom report type layout and bring in the field from any parent, grandparent, or great grandparent object,” Evan says. You can pull in data from up to sixty related objects, which means you can reference values from almost anywhere else in your org and get those complex data joins you need. Choosing the right tool for the job. While Evan primarily supports building out from custom report types to get what you need, there are some other tools that you can break out in specific situations. Bucketing can also be useful, depending on what you’re trying to do: an annual report where you’re trying to group people together but you know that the grouping might change, for example. You might use a joined report if you want to hide to the details of each report and just see a summary, like an opportunity scorecard or some sort of members joining versus members leaving overview. “Matrix reports make a lot of sense when you want to group by two different fields but you don’t want to see the same categories repeated in the inner group,” Evan says. That helps you clean up details and just focus on the aggregate values you’re hoping to see without anything distracting from it. “What I think a lot of organizations suffer from is creating a one-off report and saving it...

The Ultimate Guide to Report Types With Evan Ponter

On this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jene Fuller, Salesforce Consultant for UPS. This is the next in a series of episodes recorded live from the Salesforce Worldtour in New York City. We learn how her developer and business analyst background have combined to make her into the awesome admin she is today. Join us as we talk about how having a business analyst mindset, and the soft skills to figure what the real problem is, helps you build the right solution to help fix it. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jene Fuller. How to have a BA mindset. Jene brings her developer and business analyst (BA) background to everything that she does. “I’m all into requirements,” she says, “trying to figure out what is the big picture and how do we get there without all the over-architected processes and terms that nobody understands.” She brings her BA mindset to everything that she does, always starting out with the key questions: who are my users? What do they do? How do they do it? What are their obstacles? Being able to take a step back is a crucial skill to have in order to be successful at understanding the task at hand. As Salesforce admin, being able to put on the BA hat to understand the whys behind what you’re trying to do makes a big difference, not just for your career but the people you’re helping as well. “I try to get who the people are and what are their exact needs,” Jene says, “and then build the solution around it.” From faxes to Salesforce. When Jene first encountered Salesforce, she was basically thrown in head-first. She was brought into the department through a connection, so she was the lowest person on the totem pole, so to speak. “I said to myself, ‘Let me do the thing that nobody wants to do—let me do all the user stuff.’” But as she started working on it, she realized that her BA experience gave her a unique perspective on things. What Jene also realized as she was taking stock of the situation was that there were other departments in the company still doing key business processes on paper and through fax—in 2014. Things like getting signatures for SOW approvals required getting the right piece of paper to right person, which caused a lot of holdups. Jene started going to key stakeholders offering to digitize the process. “If you’re interested, I can teach you how to do it,” she would say, “if you’re not interested, I can do it for you.” She ended up integrated that electronic signature tool into Salesforce—eliminating the need for the fax machine and starting her Salesforce career. When it comes to getting rid of those pesky spreadsheets and making things better for everyone, Jene has some important advice. “We need champions, people that see the vision and can market it on our behalf,” she says. That means getting someone to understand just how much time you can save them so they can really go to the mat for you. The magic that is the Lightning Record Page. Jene is a huge fan of the Lightning Record Page. It lets you tell whether your user is looking at the page on desktop or mobile, and lets you customize it accordingly. Someone checking something quickly on their phone is going to have far different needs than a person sitting down in front of their multi-monitor setup to get to work, and Form Factor helps you help them. Getting a handle on what someone’s mindset can only come from spending time with your users and seeing how they go about their day. Jene calls this a “ride along,” but longtime listeners of the show already know what we call it. SABWA: Salesforce Administration By Walking Around. Spend the fifteen minutes a day checking in on your users—you’ll never know what’ll come up. Resources Trailhead:&nbsp;     Social:&nbsp;  Jene:  Mike:  Salesforce Admins:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce...

Into a Consultant’s Mindset With Jene Fuller

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re joined by Laurie Dusko, the Product Owner of Salescloud at Wiley, for the third and final episode recorded live from the Salesforce Worldtour in New York City. We learn how she balances immediate needs with longterm goals, and how she’s creating a team of super users to help her get her message out there. Join us as we talk about why timing is so important when it comes to delivering functionality, how transparency about your decision making can help you, and how she’s recruiting super users to socialize her ideas. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Laurie Dusko. &nbsp;It’s all in the timing. “I work to help our users be more effective in everything they need to do that’s Salesforce-related,” Laurie says. She does this in a number of ways, but as of now, she doesn’t yet have her Admin certification. “I understand the practical applications of the things we need to do, I can go do it in a sandbox,” she says, “but I have a dev team that builds these things for me so I spend a lot of time writing user requirements and stories and just really wrapping everything up nice and tidy with a bow to make sure it works for our users.” One of Laurie’s biggest jobs is working as the go-between from the technology to leadership. “I work really hard to translate what leadership thinks they want into what they actually need,” she says. One thing Laurie harps on that doesn’t get discussed enough is timing. “If something’s important right now but I miss that window, they might not need it for a full year,” she says, “and there are other things that really could help those users get to the end of their fiscal year or meet their quota that can move up in priority.” In short, the secret is to find a balance between where you’re working toward and what you need right now. How Laurie gets executive buy-in. Balancing priorities is a constant struggle, and that’s really come to the forefront as Laurie’s team as switched to an Agile development model. “If it’s a busy time of year, you don’t want to roll out too much change too quickly that could impact their ability to do their job,” she says. Instead, they’re borrowing from Salesforce to divide the changes they want to make into major releases where they can plan any training they need to do. They still make smaller changes more frequently, but they’re careful to make sure nothing is too disruptive. When Laurie talks to executives, she tries to keep the conversation focused on what they want to get out of any Salesforce changes they’re requesting, rather than getting too much into checkboxes versus radio buttons. “Sometimes we’re really quick to solution and say what we need without really understanding what it is we’re trying to solve for,” she says. Laurie has taken the idea of SABWA (Salesforce Administration By Walking Around) to the next level by using it to get executive buy-in. If you can spend time with leadership to really understand their pain points and what they need, you don’t need to be such a mind reader.&nbsp; Recruiting a team of super users. Laurie’s team’s approach of bundling major changes into releases also meant that they created “release notes” to send out along with them. While that worked OK, they’ve made the decision to shift gears and take a more social approach. They’ve identified their super users both to gather feedback and help them as they roll out new features. To put together this group, they actually used an application process combined with working closely with their sales managers who know their users best. The program also allows them to create the potential for cross-silo communication between super users who wouldn’t necessarily otherwise share ideas with each other. What’s more, it gives Laurie’s team the opportunity to train and possibly hire some of these super...

Socializing Your Ideas with Laurie Dusko

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ll hear from Hayley Tuller, a Project Manager at Arkus and a part of our Salesforce Military community. We learn how she’s applied the lessons she learned from twenty years in the Navy to her career in Salesforce. Join us as we talk about how to eat the elephant one bite at the time, how Hayley approaches radical ownership, and the idea of upward leadership. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Hayley Tuller. Starting with a service mindset. “I think I did have a bit more unorthodox background than most folks do, although I think the Salesforce community is one of those places where everybody comes from a surprising place,” Hayley says. Her story begins when she enlisted in the Navy, where she spent twenty years in service as an Arabic linguist and a cryptographer and ended up deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other places. In 2012, Hayley took advantage of the GI Bill to get into nonprofit work. “It felt like a natural transition for me—I had a service mindset and I felt like I had a lot to offer in terms of data analysis and operational management,” she says, “from that I got into databases and nonprofits and it was probably a very short road from there before the Salesforce community found me, and here I am today.” How to manage lots of priorities. “The military taught me a lot about how to make decisions for priorities and manage lots of taskers,” Hayley says, “but I think one of the biggest things I got out of it is that a lot of it is your mindset.” The first rung on the ladder can feel like the longest reach, but getting there can make everything after it look a lot better. “We used to joke, when I was on deployment, that the only way to eat an elephant was one bite at a time,” she says. One major skill Hayley learned in the Navy that has been helpful in her professional life is risk assessment. “It’s really just a way of looking at the tasks that are in front of you and assessing the likelihood of a problem and the impact of that problem, and using those two factors decide what you need to pay attention the most,” she says, “and when you apply that to everything you do you get a lot of clarity really quickly.” One of the biggest tips Hayley has is to get everything in one place so you can see it and make decisions accordingly. Radical ownership. “Probably the biggest thing I took away from my Navy career is this sense of what a lot of people call radical ownership,” Hayley says, “when I was in the service we just called it accountability.” It’s this idea that the buck stops with you—if you’re responsible for something it’s not OK to throw your hands up in the air and quit. You can ask for help, but you’ve got to work through any difficulties you encounter along the way, and you just might surprise yourself with what you’re able to accomplish along the way. The idea of upward leadership. “Leadership is not something that we just do in a downward focus—we don’t just lead down—you have to lead up as well,” Hayley says, “upward leadership is about being there to support your supervisors, actively asking those questions, stepping forward when you see things that can be solved, and helping them be equipped to make the best decisions that they can possibly make.” That comes down to trust, loyalty, and the ability to be assertive and say what needs to be said if there’s a problem. At the same time, when it comes to leading people under you, Hayley says “the biggest gift you can give to the folks that you work with and who work for you is belief in themselves.” One of the hardest things you have to do is step back and let a subordinate do something and trust that they’ll succeed, but it’s so rewarding to see them succeed. Trailhead:     Social:  Salesforce Admins:  Hayley: Gillian:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or

3 Things the Navy Taught Me to be a Successful Salesforce Admin

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ciara Skiles, a Senior Consultant and Business Analyst at Cirrius Solutions Inc. We learn how her experience in retail translated into a career in Salesforce. Join us as we talk about how a career in retail taught her to break down barriers and communicate successfully, why it’s so important to be genuinely interested in the person and the result, and how your community and friends can support you in your career. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ciara Skiles. Jumping from retail to a career in Salesforce. Just like Mike, Ciara has a background in retail. “When I was in college I did what most college students do, I worked a typical retail job,” she says, and since she had already been promoted into a supervisory role she decided to give it a go after graduation. That lead to a ten-year career specializing in workforce management and operations. “I was a go-to resource in my community to help struggling stores,” Ciara says. In 2012 Ciara met her husband, an active duty service member in the Navy, which lead to a lot of moving around. They’ve lived in Charleston, SC, Newport, RI, Jacksonville, FL, as well as time abroad in Spain and Japan. In Japan, she attended a Hiring Our Heroes event where she heard about the Salesforce Military program. She quickly got her certifications and took a job as a Senior Consultant and Business Analyst at Cirrius Solutions Inc where she’s been working since late October. The skills Ciara learned that translate across careers. “When I found out about Salesforce Military, I was almost turned off by it,” Ciara says, “but when I did more research I found out that Trailhead is actually geared towards people who don’t necessarily have a tech background.” It also turns out that retail is a great training ground that translates into any number of careers. From managing personalities including training people who are working their first job to retirees with advanced degrees who are just trying to get out of the house a couple of days a week, Ciara’s seen it all. “One commonality that I saw across the board is that you really need to figure out how to break down barriers and build trust quickly,” Ciara says, “and I think the key to success for me was that I always went into it with a genuine interest in the person and their end result.” That involves talking to a lot of customers and figuring out how to get them what they really want. “When you’re dealing with stakeholders who may have a broken process who come to you for help, a lot times they feel really insecure and unsure of how to proceed which puts them totally off-kilter,” she says, “I always try to very clearly communicate that I’m on your side, that I’m here to make your job easier, that your success is my passion.” The amazing community that supported Ciara’s journey. Thinking outside of the box is a big part of Ciara’s toolkit. “I’ve always been a natural problem solver, so if I see a friction point I want to do what I can to alleviate it,” she says, “which is what I think made me a really successful retail manager.” It’s the same with consulting—identify the big pain points and solve those first, then clean up the small issues later. There’s no template, however, so you need to coordinate with different departments to make sure everything is in alignment. Through her entire Salesforce journey, Ciara has been able to rely on the support of a strong community of military spouses. “If you have a problem that you need to fix, call a group of military spouses,” she says, “give them twenty minutes and you will have five viable solutions with plans and Powerpoints and spreadsheets and all of the tools and resources you would ever need to make it happen.” Those skills translate directly into a career in Salesforce, and Ciara is proof that you don’t need a tech...

3 Things I Learned from Retail that Made Me a Successful Salesforce Admin with Ciara Skiles

3 Tips to Help Admins Build and Deploy Apps Fast with Justin Kuryliw &nbsp; We have a special bonus episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast for you today, where we talk to Justin Kuryliw, the project manager for the Salesforce Crisis Response App. We learn about the process behind building and deploying this app so fast. &nbsp; Join us as we talk about the importance of recruiting a team and delegating to them, why they spent two days planning out of the week they had to build, and why teams need to overcommunicate. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Justin Kuryliw. &nbsp; Building a product quickly with early feedback. &nbsp; In his day-to-day life, Justin is a Solution Engineer at Salesforce. “Normally, what I do is focus on helping Salesforce customers architect solutions,” he says, “but the project that we started is a crisis response app to help Salesforce customers with COVID-19 in helping to track employee and location impact.” This app, which you can download on the AppExchange, allows companies to keep track of whether or not their team members need to self-quarantine, or even just mark themselves as safe. &nbsp; COVID-19 has drastically changed things quite quickly, so time was of the essence. They started with a paragraph description of what they thought the app should do, while at the same time having conversations with customers who might have a need to find out if they were on the right track. They refined these ideas into potential features based on feedback, which allowed them get buy-in in further conversations and recruit more members for the team. &nbsp; “The best feedback we got was when we actually showed the app to people and gave them a chance to react,” Justin says, but they could only start doing that by building an MVP. They put it in front of people who never used Salesforce—their dads—which let them see where they could add in-app help features to make it easier to use. &nbsp; Recruit a team early, delegate, and communicate. &nbsp; As the team added more members, Justin needed to focus on coordinating his team while still keeping things fast and nimble. He recruited people and transformed the features from his description into products, making each team member a product owner so they could divide and conquer. They coordinated via a working document to make sure they always knew who owned what, as well as what roadblocks they were encountering in their work. This document guided their daily standups and kept them on track through their two-week development cycle. &nbsp; Justin was building this app with a four-member team, and they all were still doing their day jobs, so communication was key to being able to work quickly. “Two weeks is not a lot of time when you consider that that was design, that was building, that was testing, and that was deployment,” he says, “so really we only had four or five days to actually build the app.”&nbsp; &nbsp; The importance of planning. &nbsp; “When you have four different people building the application, consistency starts to become very challenging,” Justin says, “so every other day we’d demo what was new and what was built for each other.” In the first two or three days of work, they published design principles to align the team: have little to no impact on production objects, make it user friendly, and use less code. Using Lightning Flows, Lightning Pages, and other declarative tools helped them accomplish that vision and deliver an app with only four Lightning components and a relatively small amount of Apex coding. &nbsp; They spent two days of their week of building just on planning. “We got a lot of value out of making sure that we all agreed on the data model, we all agreed on what was in scope and out of scope,” Justin says, “so when we finally put hands to keyboard nobody had any questions about what needed to be built.”&nbsp; AppExchange:   ...

3 Tips to Help Admins Build and Deploy Apps Fast with Justin Kuryliw

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

Get Out of Your Own Way with Yves Stewart

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

Best Practices for Building Formulas with Eric Praud

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

How to Get Your First Salesforce Job with Tiffany Spencer

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

Trust Champion: Prag Ravichandran Kamalaveni

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

Think like a Salesforce Business Analyst with Tiffany Thomas

For this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got new Salesforce Admin Courtney Coen. We learn how she set herself up as a superuser and got certified to be a Salesforce Admin, her approach to solving challenges from her users, and why being a Salesforce Admin is one of the most social jobs you will have Join us as we talk about her technique for visualizing the process to communicate to her users, how her story shows how superusers can help you, and why it’s so important to be social as an admin. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Courtney Coen. From superuser to Salesforce Admin. “About four years ago, I was working in a call center and we were doing a lot of things manually, and I hated it,” Courtney says, “I wanted to spend my time helping customers instead of having to count out individual things when we could definitely report on them.” She played around in Salesforce and found the reports and dashboards tab and started figuring it out on her own. Courtney ended up being the de facto admin for her customer services department and, after she had already built over 150 reports and dashboards, the development team at her company realized they needed to talk. It didn’t take long for them to figure out that she should be a full-time admin, so she got started on the path to certification with the support of the team and her supervisors in customer service, which she finally completed this year in May. “It was very much a story of sponsorship and mentorship, and without everyone’s help I wouldn’t be here,” Courtney says. How Courtney uses visualizations to explain process changes. Courtney has a unique visual approach to problem-solving. “The first thing I do when I’m tackling a business challenge is talk to the people who are having the problem,” she says, “and I draw the process we have now and color code it and talk to them about why it’s a problem and what their proposed solution is.” That makes it easier for her to adjust all the different components of the workflow to see where she can save people clicks or add automation to save time. One thing Courtney uses her visualization method for is to keep her users updated about changes she’s making to their workflows. It’s important to her because not too long ago, she was one. “Users don’t necessarily understand all the technical mumbo jumbo,” she says, “but sending them a visual representation of how you’re going to fix something is a much better way to communicate with them.” Why being a Salesforce Admin means you have to be social. Courtney likes to say that being a Salesforce Admin is one of the most social jobs you will have. “As an admin, your users are your customers,” she says, “they’re our customers, they’re our clients, it’s our job to make everything easier on their side.” The first thing Courtney does when she’s handed a new issue is to set up a meeting to talk through the process and, ideally, watch them work through it as it currently stands so she can ask questions. In the current remote work environment, many of us find ourselves in these days, that can be a little trickier because you can’t just do some SABWA (Salesforce Administration By Walking Around). For Courtney, video conferencing has been a lifesaver: “We’re actually meeting more now than we did before,” she says, and those meetings are paving the way for even more improvements in the org. Links:    Social:  Courtney:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  &nbsp; Full Show Transcript

From Superuser to Salesforce Admin with Courtney Coen

On this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we sit down with Ariel Ridley, a Customer Support Specialist and PepUp Tech alum. We learn how you—yes, you—can build an app and list it on the AppExchange. &nbsp; Join us as we talk about why it’s so important to get on the phone when you’re troubleshooting, how Ariel built her app, and why you need to put what you’re working on in front of users to get that feedback loop going. &nbsp; You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ariel Ridley. Why&nbsp;All Salesforce Admins&nbsp;Need&nbsp;Customer&nbsp;Service&nbsp;Skills Ariel is a Customer Support specialist helping people when they encounter issues and creating knowledge articles to answer common questions. While most admins aren’t in a direct customer support role, they still need to work with users to make sure they know how to get the most out of Salesforce. For Ariel, there are a few things that help: “I make sure to ask plenty of questions,” she says, “I’ve found, overall, that it’s helpful between me and the customer if we really discuss what’s going on—sometimes they’ll even resolve the issue on their own just by us hopping on a quick call and going over what’s happening.” The Transition Helper for Salesforce app Ariel created her own app, Transition Helper for Salesforce Lightning. “The main goal of it is to establish a plan for moving between Classic and Lightning,” she says. The app provides documentation and links to help orgs create a rollout plan and stick to it. As you move through the app, it asks you a series of questions to help you learn about the components of Lightning and what you need to know in order to transition smoothly. You can also deploy it to your team to help them, too. For Ariel, there was so much information out there that it felt like many organizations still stuck in Classic simply didn’t know where to start. The Transition Helper for Salesforce helps guide you along a path so you can get started without sifting through pages of documentation and know you’re making the right choices for what you need. How&nbsp;You&nbsp;Can&nbsp;Make&nbsp;a Salesforce&nbsp;App Making the app was a bit of a process. They had to plan everything out on paper, first, writing out what documentation they wanted to include and how they were going to structure everything. Once Ariel started building, she made sure to put it in front of friends who were at orgs still stuck in Classic to get their feedback about how she could make it work better. This feedback loop was key to making something simple and effective. Posting it on the AppExchange was fairly simple. You have to create an account on the Salesforce Partner Community, and then go through some steps to create a listing and complete a security review. “There’s always people available if you have any questions,” Ariel says. “I never would’ve thought that I could have created an app, and now I have one that’s out there that can help a lot of people,” she says, “it’s a great feeling.” Links:    Social:  Ariel:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:

Build and Share Your App on the AppExchange with Ariel Ridley

For this week’s episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mia Pacey, a Salesforce Admin at Surf Life Saving NSW. She shares how she holds weekly campfires with her users to drive adoption. Join us as we talk about her Trailhead-inspired weekly Salesforce meetings for her users, how she gets executive buy-in, and how to make a great demo. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mia Pacey. How Mia drives adoption in a new Sales Cloud implementation. “I was the fix-it person at my organization,” Mia says, “I loved figuring out ways to help my users do things a bit better.” That meant that she soon found herself getting certified as a System Administrator at a Trailhead Bootcamp in Gold Coast, Australia, and dove straight into a Sales Cloud implementation. Hitting the ground running has meant doing a few special things to make sure everyone gets with the program. “I work with our users very closely because I feel like they’re very important for user adoption and the success of your platform as a whole,” Mia says, “so I call what I run a campfire.” It’s a weekly time for her users to get together and watch a demo, do a training, or just chat about what they’d like to see on the platform. What is a campfire? For Sydney World Tour Reimagined, Mia had viewing areas in her office for everyone to catch all of the different channels and content. “The users loved it so much and it was super engaging as an atmosphere,” she says, “so, I thought, why don’t we just do this again but more of an internal conversation?” That’s how the campfire tradition was born. Because she’s working in a new implementation, Mia has found her campfires to be especially helpful when it comes to rolling out new features, landing key demos and training, and just generally making sure that Salesforce is meeting her users’ needs. Right now, they have these meetings on a weekly basis at 30-60 minutes a session, so they’re easy to fit in the schedule and well worth the time. “A campfire doesn’t sound scary,” she says, “so calling it that gives the executives something to promote and doesn’t turn off users.” Making demos that matter to users. “When I’m thinking about what to demo or what to showcase, I just have to remember it’s not scary,” Mia says, “these are my users—they understand the platform because I understand what they’re using.” In other words, you’re not presenting to an audience of strangers who are coming to it cold. You know something about their experience and what matters to them, and you probably already have the material on-hand from user testing and user stories for a new feature you’ve implemented to make a great demo. Mia’s sales users are actually some of her biggest fans, “because if I demo something that’s an end-to-end example of what they’re doing in their day-to-day life, they’ll have so much buy-in, they get so engaged,” she says. And remember, you don’t need to have meticulously crafted demos every week, you can also take the time to highlight features, open discussion, and encourage conversation.&nbsp; Links:    Social:  Mia:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:

How to Drive Salesforce Adoption Using Campfires with Mia Pacey

On this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got Sarah Pilzer, Director of Operations at Country Dance and Song Society and Golden Hoodie winner. She tells us how she uses automation to serve her users. Join us as we talk about why it’s always best to start with standard functionality, how to borrow from what people have already built, and how she checks in with users to make sure she’s building what they need. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sarah Pilzer. How Sarah puts Salesforce to work for her organization. As Director of Operations at the Country Dance and Song Society in Massachusetts, Sarah is in charge of all office procedures, including running their Salesforce instance. “I am the in-house Admin, as well as doing all of the building and architecting necessary to create the systems we need,” she says. Sarah’s organization uses Salesforce in a bunch of different ways depending on the department (sound familiar?), including registration and staffing for their arts education classes and fundraising. Making that work involves a mix of using what’s already in the Nonprofit Success Pack and building some custom solutions. When to use standard vs. custom functionality. To figure out what will work best, Sarah recommends sitting down with your users to find out what they do now and how it’ll best translate to Salesforce. “I try to start with an out-of-the-box feature if that’s possible,” she says, “if it’s already built, we should take advantage of that. We can save our time to work on other issues at the nonprofit like our mission and vision and really get to the programming if we’re not spending all of our time building tools.” Sometimes that means trying a standard feature and seeing what the limitations are. For their program registrations, they started out using campaigns to track who was in which program but ran into some limitations when they also wanted to track donations. In the end, Sarah ended up building out a custom camp program object that fit their needs better. “My advice would be to start standard if you can, and if you find that’s not fitting your needs you can go custom,” she says. Verify that automation helps your users. One thing that helps Sarah help her team is leaning on the automations already built into Salesforce. Flows are a big part of that, including Screen Flows that walk her users through the automation. For the camp registration example, they have a Screen Flow that they expose to external users to create a self-service feature. This frees up time on the backend as they previously had to rely on paper forms that would be manually entered into the system. “I think it’s really important that the automation works for who’s using it,” Sarah says, “so if I’m going to build out automation, I need to talk to the end-users first and make sure that what I’m building isn’t going to make their lives harder.” That’s a combination of conversations with her internal people, and beta testing on forms that go out to the community before they go live. Sarah isn’t afraid to call a quick twenty or thirty-minute meeting to make sure she understands what her users want, and she’s established an internal Salesforce user group to check in every month. Links:     Join Sarah’s Automation Hour presentation on Feb, 26, 2021:  Country Dance &amp; Song Society:   Social:  Sarah:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:

Building Automations That Work with Sarah Pilzer

A Declarative-First Approach with Madeleine Coutanceau This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking to Madeleine Coutanceau, Global Head of Systems &amp; Processes and Salesforce Administrator at simPRO Software. We learn how her company has taken a declarative-first approach to implementing Salesforce wall-to-wall. Join us as we talk about all the different roles admins have in a business, the importance of having key champions in your organization, and why it’s so important to align what you do in Salesforce with your organizational goals. You should  for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Madeleine Coutanceau. Why it’s so important to be fully involved with your implementation. “I’ve always worked with the business on the side of processes and moved through to the systems side,” Madeleine says, “so naturally, I fell into the system administrator role with our implementation.” At simPRO, that means she’s in charge of every piece of software that isn’t the product they develop. That means they’re running systems like CPQ, Chat, Pardot, Engage, Knowledge, Adobe Sign, Zinc, Exactly, JIRA, and more. The secret behind managing so many different Salesforce systems is a great implementation. “We were told to drop everything and be part of this implementation, 24/7,” Madeleine says, so they were involved with everything from training to putting together procedure documents. That really gave them the expertise they needed to lead and train teams across the world. How to automate without a developer. When Madeleine’s company decided to adopt Salesforce, she was told from the start that she wouldn’t have a developer to work with. “We develop systems for our own clients,” they said, “we’re putting you on Salesforce so that we can manage this internally, not have developer resources that take up a lot of time.” That meant they needed to build everything with minimal code so they wouldn’t need extra help, so they leaned on Flows. “I feel like my life changed at work once my Flows clicked into place for me in Salesforce,” Madeleine says, “suddenly, I realized I had all these processes I could just automate—I got a little bit Flow crazy.” This process didn’t happen overnight, however, as it involved a lot of trial and error and really digging into the nitty-gritty to understand Flows from the ground-up. The magic of Flows. When you get Flows working for you, it can seem like magic. For Madeleine, a big challenge was removing users from the org for a company with offices not only in Australia, but also in New Zealand, the UK, and the USA. This process used to involve setting alarms for the middle of the night, but she was able to make it happen automatically without writing a single line of code. Communicating process changes can always be tricky, especially in a large organization with a multinational presence. Madeleine and her team solved this problem by setting up private Chatter groups for each country that are used just for communicating process changes. Whenever they create a new user, they simply log in and subscribe them to the appropriate channels to make sure they get the notifications they need to see. Social:  Madeleine:  Salesforce Admins:  Gillian:  Mike:   Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  Full Show Transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admin's podcast, where we talk about product, community and career to help you become an awesome admin. This week I am talking with Madeleine Coutanceau, global head of Systems and Processes and Salesforce administrator, about how her company has taken a declared first approach to implementing salesforce wall to wall. In this episode, you will hear from Madelyn about how she manages so many systems, how she uses flow to make her admin life easier, and lessons that she has learned after being an admin for four years. So let's get Madelyn on the pod. So Madelyn, welcome to the...

A Declarative-First Approach with Madeleine Coutanceau

On this episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re talking to Lizz Hellinga, Salesforce MVP and change enabler. We’ll go over everything she’s looking forward to that’ll help us help users. Join us as we talk about how the platform has evolved with automation and assistance, all the new setup guides and assistants that make things easier, and why you should start playing with Tableau. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lizz Hellinga. Looking behind the curtain Lizz has recently pinch-hit for LeeAnne on the Admin team at Salesforce, and getting a look behind the curtain has given her a lot of insights into what’s coming up and what admins should pay attention to in the new year. “When you think about some of the new things with In-App Guidance, In-App Learning, Notification Builder, Dynamic Forms,” she says, “all that is to help admins increase adoption and help their endusers do what they need to do when they need to do it.” For Lizz, the new MFA assistant coming out in Spring ‘21 is especially exciting because it helps you focus by giving you a ready-to-go adoption checklist. The bottom line is that you can add the guidance and extra help you need right where your users need it the most. “I remember when I had to do my first implementation, and I created all of these little working guides to help people when we launched,” she says, “and then I realized they would be stale after just a few weeks or months, depending on how much change we added to the platform.” Now you can add a single prompt to keep people up to date, helping your users actually focus on how to use the platform rather than worrying about how to work it. Why you should get started with Tableau Lizz worked with pod regular John Demby and his team on Tableau video content, and she got an insider’s perspective on just how easy it is to incorporate into your org. The biggest thing she learned is that you should just get started trying it out—there are data sets already there to play around with, and sample dashboards so you can see how everything works. “Don’t be afraid, just hop right in,” Lizz says, “Tableau can combine data streams for your organization to give better insights but you just have to start doing it.” For next year, Lizz wants to learn a lot more about MuleSoft Connector. “Admins work on multiple features at one time, we toggle between different features, and we’re constantly using them to enable our end users and enable successful processes,” she says. She’s also psyched about Service Setup, which makes it so much easier to get acquainted with Service Cloud. Links:  &nbsp; Social: Lizz:  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 we're talking with Lizz Hellinga, Salesforce MVP and change enabler. In this episode, you'll hear from Lizz about the fun stuff that she worked on. The exciting new opportunities for admins. And the features she is most excited to learn more about this year. So with that, let's get Lizz on the pod. So Lizz, welcome to the podcast. Lizz Hellinga: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Lizz, you did a ton with our admin team over the last, I will say, it's specifically 249 days, coming on to help us out while LeeAnne was on parental leave. And we wanted to have you on the pod to help send forth admins and give them some wisdom that you gained and insights that you have on where they're going and things they should pay attention to. That's kind of how I'm kicking off our discussion. Lizz Hellinga: Great. It's been such an adventure to support all of you over the last... How many days was it? 259. Mike Gerholdt: 49, but- Lizz Hellinga: 49 days. Mike Gerholdt: ... maybe feels longer. We have a pandemic going...

Salesforce Admins Solving Problems

The Salesforce Admins Podcast