Salesforce Admins

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

How L'Oreal is rolling out Lightning with Michael Lupino

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

LIVE from Los Angeles Nonprofit Community Group

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

Einstein Analytics for Admins with Rikke Hovgaard

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re switching it up and focusing on productivity. We pull together some of our best interviews of 2018 to bring you the best tips we’ve heard focused around productivity. We talk to Carlos Umana, Principle Business System Analyst at BMC Software, Matt Vickery, Salesforce Administrator at the Washington State Housing and Finance Commission, and Anusha Surepeddi, Product Manager for Analytics at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about how Carlos, Matt, and Anusha each approach productivity and the tools that you can use for your own org. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Carlos Umana, Matt Vickery, and Anusha Surepeddi. How Carlos simplifies complex lead processes. Carlos Umana came to the admin role from more of a development background. He focuses on productivity at a big organization, particularly in the area of lead processes. He does a lot of customizations, both in declarative and in code, to help make their complex marketing and sales teams work more smoothly. “We have a unique process around leads,” Carlos says, “so we had to devise a way to ensure, based on extremely specific criteria and logic, that leads would open for our reps.” He first tried to solve it with code but ended up realizing that using Workflows was a more efficient way to make that happen. As far as favorite apps that help Carlos get more done, he’s a big fan of SalesEdge by Savo, which renders content in your opportunity based on the stage that you’re in. LeadData lead-to-account matching has also been really helpful for leveraging account information on the lead. Finally, Andy and the Cloud’s Declarative Rollup Summaries tool, which improves customization and gives the reps the information they need. Productivity for social good. Matt Vickery is an admin in the public sector, so his interview is an interesting window into how those orgs are able to accomplish complex tasks for a good cause. The Washington State Housing and Finance Commission runs a tax credit program focused on building housing for low-income families, the elderly, farm workers, and other targeted populations. Another program helps first-time home buyers with down payment assistance and first mortgage programs to give them more favorable lending terms, which helps families get into their first home. What this translates to is a lot of things to track in their org. “One of our biggest challenges is that we have a lot of different divisions with a lot of different, overlapping needs,” Matt says. “We needed a database that allowed us to silo some information off, as well as have some integrations and overlap.” Process Builder plays a key role in facilitating and automating the flow of records throughout the organization. Matt was also able to identify redundant data entry and build processes and flows that populate key information wherever it needs to be. The magic of structure. Finally, we go back to a conversation we had earlier this year with Anusha Surepeddi, whose team delivered the top three IdeaExchange idea of all time: subfolders for reports and dashboards, which came out with the Summer ‘18 Release. Anusha had a lot of great things to say about dashboards and report last run date, which can help drive productivity throughout your org. “You have to evaluate your folder structures,” Anusha says, “do you want to organize by role? By region? You can do both, but keep it clean. Each folder structure should have a meaning.” Another big thing is to not be afraid to delete legacy data. Sort by report last run date and go crazy. With dashboards, you can use dashboard linking to drill through your dashboards and paint a picture with them without making them too cluttered. “If you’re in a meeting, it’s a nice way to tell a story with how these two things connect,” Anusha says. Resources  LeanData, Inc.: ...

Top Productivity Episodes

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re continuing our review of great episodes of the past year. This time, we’re revisiting some of our top episodes and guests focused around innovation. Innovation is a core admin superpower, both for our companies and our careers and communities. We’ll talk to Nana Gregg, VP Senior Salesforce Administrator at JLL Technology Solutions and Salesforce MVP, Molly Mahar, Product Designer of User Interface and User Experience at Salesforce, and Jimmy Hua, a Lead Member of Technical Staff in Software Engineering at Salesforce and founder of Asiapacforce. Join us as we talk about how Nana, Molly, and Jimmy have leveraged Salesforce to help makes things easier for their coworkers and customers alike. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nana Gregg, Molly Mahar, and Jimmy Hua. How Nana uses new releases to deliver innovation. Nana Gregg doesn’t have a college degree, but her unique path to Salesforce has ended up with her being the VP Senior Salesforce Administrator at JLL Technology Solutions. Nana pegs her success to a hunger for learning more: “I never knew that when I became a Salesforce Admin I would need to learn finance, but I did,” she says. “I learned finance concepts and accounting concepts because I had to implement this AppExchange package, and that has made me a better administrator because I can talk to those teams and understand what they’re asking me to do.” “If you ask my boss, he would tell you I’m a release geek,” Nana says. The first thing she does when she’s prepping a new release is to focus on the highlights: she looks at the major areas of focus that they use in their org. Within the first week, she sends an email to her boss breaking down the changes by how easy they are to implement. What are no-brainer wins, and what is simple but need a little bit of a process? “By Monday morning, I want to come in and send out an email with all the cool new functionality to get people excited and stay excited about the system and see that we’re continuing to innovate.” Why data is key for Einstein bots. Molly Mahar works on Einstein bots, and she shares a lot of tips about how you can use this new and exciting technology in your own org. So how do you get started with your own data? “There’s a number of sources: chat transcripts from Live Agent, case records that have ways that people are asking for these things,” Molly says. However, “people tend to talk differently when chatting with a human than with a bot,” she says, so you need to keep that in mind. “We’ve built the ability to have packages of data for intents that map to your use cases, which you can find on AppExchange,” she says, and there will be more on the way. One key, however, is that you trust the data going into it in order to train your bot the way that you want. While other natural language bots use public domain data and other sources, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a bot that speaks the same language your customers are speaking. “We want Admins and companies to maintain control over exactly what the bot is learning from,” Molly says, “it’s important that you trust the data going into it.” That’s how you can really deliver that magical experience to your customers that make bots feel like a seamless part of your brand. How innovation with Salesforce helps deliver equality. Last but certainly not least, we revisit our talk with Jimmy Hua, who is innovating within the platform to deliver equality. He created a Salesforce app to help manage and promote the Ohana group that do so much amazing work. He got interested through his work as the founder of Asiapacforce. For Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month in May they threw 8 events in San Francisco, and over 20 internationally across the 14 hubs they have for Asiapacforce spread throughout the globe. “It was actually really hard...

Top Innovation Episodes

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we have the last episode in our review of great episodes of the past year, focused on connections. As admins, we need to connect a lot of things: our company with our customers; our business units across the company; and our community to grow the Salesforce Ohana. We revisit interviews with Katherine Clark, Vetforce Product Manager at Salesforce; Misty Fierro, Senior Salesforce Analyst in Sales Operations and Commercial Analytics at SolarWinds; and Emily Tam, Director of Application Development at Borrego Solar Systems. Join us as we talk about how Katherine, Misty, and Emily create connections: connecting customers with what they need, connecting community members with each other, and connecting business units. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Katherine, Misty, and Emily. How automation helps Katherine be a solo admin at Salesforce. Katherine Clark is the Vetforce Product Manager at Salesforce, and that community of veterans is understandably focused on a goal-oriented approach to learning the platform. A key to serving that audience is setting up the community to help them achieve those goals. “What really helps our community thrive is harnessing the automation that Salesforce provides,” Katherine says, “because of our integrations we’re able to pull in information and other places to automate the delivery of our benefits.” So if they see that someone earns a specific number of badges, they can use automation to place them in the Ranger group in Vetforce. Vetforce is a big community, there’s only one Katherine to manage the whole thing. “I like to tell people I’m a solo admin at Salesforce and it blows people’s minds,” she says, “there’s nobody at the desk next to me to turn to and ask a Salesforce admin question, so I use Cases, I use Knowledge, anything that helps me connect with our members and automate and streamline as much as possible. I just try to pull in as many innovative solutions as I can so that our members can get connected to those Salesforce skills and careers as quickly as possible.” Pulling in a component is such a powerful tool to give members exactly what they need at exactly the right time. Helping a nonprofit and connecting veterans. Misty Fiero is the only person to get Gillian up before a community event to work out in the morning. In other words, she’s an amazing connector, not only with other people but in the way she connects others with Salesforce skills and opportunities. The first person she needed to connect to start her Salesforce journey, however, was herself. On the weekends, Misty helps run two dog rescues: Justice4Mutts, and Texas Trailblazers. “We get a lot of stuff done with a little bit of resources,” she says. Around the time Misty was attending the first Dreamforce, she had identified a problem with communication in her nonprofit. At the event, she learned that Salesforce will provide a nonprofit instance to 501(c)3’s. Building out that instance helped Misty get the experience she was looking for, but she also needed some help. Through Vetforce and Merivis she was able to work with other veterans to get everything accomplished, and she continues to partner with those groups to both maintain the instance and get people experience. Using Salesforce to connect every part of the business. Emily Tam has been in the Salesforce ecosystem for a long time. She needs to worry about connections every day because her team is distributed. While she’s based in the Oakland, a large part of her team is based in Massachusetts and people work remotely all the time. They’ve swapped to an Agile methodology, and the Agile Accelerator app has been a big help. “With the Agile Accelerator we’re able to have that close-knit feeling of a team that’s colocated without being in the same location,” Emily says. Emily also uses Salesforce to connect every part...

Top Connections Episodes

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re joined by podcast veteran LeeAnne Rimel, Principal Admin Evangelist at Salesforce, to talk about the 10-day Be an Innovator Challenge. The event brings admins together to learn how to use Einstein Prediction Builder and Einstein Discovery to help build more innovative apps. If you want to get involved, you can access video content right now to get started. Join us as we talk about the Be an Innovator campaign and how you can still get involved. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel. Uncovering what you have that’s valuable. Be an Innovator is a new, exciting campaign focused on innovation, but what does that actually mean? “It means for us, as admins, thinking about different ways to build apps to make them smart,” LeeAnne says, “while also expanding how we’re thinking about what tools are available to us.” It’s easy to get comfortable with certain tools and features, but it’s always useful to look at every resource available to you before you start solutioning a problem. The program is focused on everyone in our admin and developer community who is starting to think about Einstein. The main starting place is building out an Einstein use case to start thinking practically about how you can use this tool in your own org. While rules-based predictions have been around for a little while, but that’s not the same thing as the intelligence system that Einstein brings to the table. We’ll also get into requirements, and finally, build a prediction to see what these tools are like in action. Also, there’s swag. Einstein Prediction Builder and Einstein Discovery were both built for admins, and so they can be really powerful tools to help you get things done. Einstein Prediction Builder is an admin tool that allows you to create a predictive model, “it makes every admin a data scientist,” LeeAnne says. You can then use those predictions in everything from your reports and dashboards to your user experience to automated processes, and that’s only scratching the surface. For Einstein Discovery, you can really dive into the analytics to look at correlations that help you get a sense of the bigger picture. Instead of looking at one factor in a customer’s decision, you can look at several overlapping data points to understand what segments you’re dealing with. You get a more complete story from your data to connect the dots, “you can look at it and come away with very actionable line items to implement in your business to achieve your goal,” LeeAnne says. The great thing about Be an Innovator is that it’s fairly easy to get involved. The core is a series of six short videos that take you through the process step by step. More importantly, joining the campaign means that you get hands-on time with an org that has Prediction Builder and a whole bunch of data in it. That means that you can get started playing with all the different possibilities and really understand how these tools functions. “To build a prediction you have to have a lot of data,” LeeAnne says, “so we have a lot of customer data that we’ve built into this environment so you can build real predictions.” These tools put the power of data science directly into your hands without the need for coding, “so it’s democratizing AI.” When Salesforce first started, one revolutionary concept was the idea that the path to being someone who could manage technology was democratized, and the way that Einstein brings analytics and AI to admins is a reflection of that ethos. “If you can expand the people who are working with a technology, the technology is going to be better,” LeeAnne says, “it’s the diversity of thought and access to these tools that will make us all smarter, more innovative, and better.” Resources  Be an Innovator: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/offers/beaninnovator Be an Innovator...

Be an Innovator with LeeAnne Rimel

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got Sunday Parker, Accessibility Evangelist at Salesforce, to kick off a two-part series focused on building accessible apps. What is it like to use Salesforce if you can’t see what’s on the screen? What if you can’t use a mouse or keyboard? We look at what you can do to help, and how that can improve the experience for all users. Join us as we talk about how to start thinking about accessibility in your org and how you can get the conversation started. This podcast is accessible! The full show transcript is below the show notes. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sunday Parker. Abilityforce and joining the Salesforce Accessibility team. Sunday started at Salesforce about two and a half years ago in technical support for Pardot. She had originally studied interior architecture and design, but she started working in tech after she graduated. “I always feel like I hit the lottery when I joined Pardot because they were such an amazing team,” she says, “it was part of this great organization of Salesforce but we had our own little family.” “Very quickly after I started with Salesforce, I became part of our first ever resource group for employees with disabilities,” Sunday says, which meant working very closely with the internal accessibility team. From there it was a simple transition to start working with them full time. The Ohana group for accessibility is called Abilityforce. “Ohana groups are what we call employee resource groups at Salesforce,” Sunday says, “which are different intersections within different groups in our organization.” We’ve previously covered AsiaPacforce and BOLDforce on pod if you’re interested in learning about other Ohana groups. Simple ways to get started with accessibility. “Accessibility is about ensuring that people with disability have full and equal access,” Sunday says, “so if we’re talking about a physical environment that may mean ample space for a wheelchair user like myself to get around, but if we’re talking about the web or a mobile application that may mean something different.” A user who is blind and uses a screen reader is going to interact with the web differently, and we need to be sure that we’re building products that will allow them to still use the platform in a way that works for them. There are a lot of different levels of accessibility, so for admins getting to know the landscape, how do you start thinking about looking for accessibility needs? “The best thing that you can do is start speaking to people,” Sunday says, which means starting conversations with anyone who needs that kind of support within your company. “Aside from that, getting involved with the HR side and seeing if they have any processes in place for employee accommodations or how your organization is welcoming of employees with disabilities.” One of the first things you can do is test with a keyboard. “Oftentimes, if your application is accessible to a keyboard, it means that a screen reader is also able to digest and interact with the content,” Sunday says. Another basic consideration is color contrast. “Millions of people around the world are low vision or color blind, and keeping an eye out for that high contrast can really help in making the user experience great for everyone,” she says. How accessibility benefits all users. On the Salesforce platform, there are a lot of things to think about in terms of levels of accessibility. At Salesforce, we follow a set of web standards called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and specifically WCAG AA 2.0. “This is a global collaboration of folks that have set these standards,” Sunday says, “and it’s really the best way to follow a clear set of guidelines to build accessible web or mobile applications.” “One of the great benefits of building with accessibility in...

What is an Accessible App? with Sunday Parker

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

How to Build Accessible Apps with Adam Rodenbeck

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Megan Himan, CEO and Founder of BrightStep Partners, to find out how her work with nonprofits have helped them transform what they do and what they’re capable of. Join us as we talk about how to connect more effectively with leadership around their goals, why we should think of ourselves as managers, and how to own your role as an Awesome Admin. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Megan Himan. Learning Salesforce when there were only 4 objects. About 15 years ago, Megan was managing a nonprofit in Oakland. “I said I have this crazy idea, someone told me about Salesforce and I want to implement it for this organization,” Megan says, “which was revolutionary for our organization and also for my career.” Megan originally heard about Salesforce through her husband because he was working Software as a Service, and had heard that the platform was free for nonprofits. After she got the green light to implement it, there was a lot to do in the days before Community Groups and Trailhead. “I’m a tinkerer,” Megan says, “so I really kind of built the platform and then I started teaching other organizations how to do it.” You learn by teaching, and so getting the opportunity to share skills helped her solidify her knowledge. The conversations that engage leaders. These days, Megan is a Salesforce consultant for nonprofits, “we come in talking about Salesforce and we leave talking about organizational transformation,” she says. “I could be the best technologist in the world but if I couldn’t learn how to have these conversations it didn’t mean anything.” So the focus of Megan’s work as a consultant is going beyond the technical skills to have those important conversations. “My twelve-year-old son loves this game called Fortnite,” Megan says, “and he tells me about it in excruciating detail, to the point where my eyes glaze over and I don’t care and want to move on. I think sometimes when we’re passionate about something like Salesforce or the technology we can do that too, to our leaders and other executives and coworkers.” Maybe the details of her son’s Fortnite game aren’t that interesting, but if he were to tell her about how he’s learning collaboration and problem-solving skills she’d get interested because those are skills she wants him to acquire. The same thing is true of conversations with executive leaders: you need to understand what they care about, and if you don’t then ask them. “OK, I’m getting all these Salesforce requests for the next quarter. I want to make sure that whatever I’m working on aligns with what’s most important for you in this coming quarter. It doesn’t have to be inside of Salesforce, but can you tell me more about what are the things you’re thinking about this quarter?” You can always then come back and talk about the technical pieces in the context of what they care about. Thinking about yourself as a manager. “One of the things that’s been transformative for me is to think about myself as a Salesforce admin as a manager, because even though we don’t manage anyone directly,” Megan says, “we need to have influence over others.” We manage a product, which is Salesforce, but we actually manage all sorts of business processes. In order to do that, first, we need to stem the chaos by setting up some system to tame the tide of requests. That could be Salesforce Cases or a Google sheet, but you need to have some way of tracking and prioritizing requests. The other shift that needs to be happy is to “think of ourselves as technologists who don’t necessarily have all the answers but can know where to find them,” Megan says. Finally, you need to look forward at what it is you’re trying to accomplish and asking those key Why questions of yourself. Put on your Awesome Admin cape. The best leaders aren’t...

Transform Your Org Through Conversation with Megan Himan

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re joined by Emma B-F (Bloksberg-Fireovid), a project manager at KELL, to continue our theme from last week. We discuss the power of conversation to transform your org and your position as a Salesforce admin within your company. Join us as we talk about how to remove fillers from your language, sticking the landing, and why removing personal pronouns can make a problem clearer. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Emma B-F. Why it’s OK to admit that being an admin is hard. “We have this honeymoon phase because all the great content out there,” Emma says, “when you’re first new to this admin group it’s all glitz and glam.” You get a cool Twitter handle and go to Dreamforce, where you encounter big ideas and everything that’s possible as an admin. “But then I came home and I had so many ideas swirling around in my head it was entirely overwhelming, so for many of us in this community, we have to figure out what is the right next step.” Most of us are normal humans with fears and anxieties, and we need to take some time to realize where we can fit into the Ohana. When Emma got back she was super amped for all of the certifications she could get, “but I had kind of forgotten that I hate test taking and I’m not that good at it,” she says, “it was this comedown of ‘I thought it was going to be easier.’” It’s hard, and sometimes we don’t spend enough time acknowledging that. Learning from failure. “My tips are mainly stories about my failures,” Emma says, but those are especially helpful considering her background. She majored in sociology in college and had a lot of experience working in social justice. “We’re never really taught how to be an assertive and clear communicator,” she says, “I got some feedback from a mentor of mine who was a white male who used to be a lawyer and had this training in communication, and he gave me feedback that I was beating around the bush too much in the way I talked about things.” One of the things that Emma identified that she needed to work on was assertive communication. That means cutting out all of the beating-around-the-bush clauses that are typically in our sentences. That’s things like “I don’t know if this is helpful but,” or “I just want to throw this out there as an idea.” Instead, you “stick your landing” and say exactly what you mean. “The hardest part about sticking your landing is being comfortable with the silence at the end of the sentence,” she says. Lessons from another language. The other language suggestion that Emma has is rooted in her time spent in Latin America and becoming fluent in Spanish. “If something goes wrong,” she says, “in Spanish grammar, you put the blame on the object, so you say ‘the keys lost me,’ or ‘the salmon caught itself on fire.’” As you’re describing problems in your job as an admin or even in life, removing personal pronouns and talking about the actual object of the issue itself can make a big difference. “When I was first getting into my admin role I was having a really hard time running reports on different objects,” Emma says. She’d say things to her team like, “I can’t figure out how to pull a report on these two objects.” Instead, when you say, “These two objects are not appearing in the report that we’re looking at,” it flips the script and changes the conversation. It moves the burden off of you and to the object, which is important because it asks people to look at the problem itself rather than you to figure out how to fix it. How to internalize confidence. “The way that you can internalize your own growth potential is to think and act like an executive,” Emma says. “What that usually boils down to is cultivating confidence in yourself that if you see an executive on the other side of the room,” she says, “do I have...

How to Own Your Role with Emma B-F

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Luke Kanter, Senior Developer at Bluewolf, to both find out about the cool work he’s doing with Watson and AI, but also to hear his remarkable career journey. Join us as we talk about the power of sharing your intention and letting people know what you want to do with your career. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Luke Kanter. Sharing your intention and taking control of your career. Luke first encountered Salesforce while working at his first job out of college, which was for a “big four” consulting firm. He didn’t, however, have a degree in tech. “I majored in international studies, and had a minor in financial economics,” Luke says, “before I graduated and started working at that consulting firm, I had only seen code once in my life.” He came in as a business technology analyst, creating Powerpoints from Salesforce reports and doing data entry for their org. “When I arrive, I thought I was very behind, technically,” Luke says, “and I definitely wanted to move in a more technical direction because I didn’t enjoy making Powerpoints. So, everyone I ran into at work, I let them know that I was interested in being technical.” He took a few classes, and just repeated to anyone that would listen that he wanted to learn to code. Eventually, he was pointed towards the Senior Manager in the Salesforce practice, and that started him off on the path to becoming a developer. Rising to the occasion and showing your work. Luke was placed on a small project where he could learn to code as he worked. “Technology consulting is a great opportunity for people because you can get paid while you learn a tech skill that will make you more valuable later on,” he says. Not that he didn’t spend 2 hours each night after work on Trailhead working through the Developer Trails. There were only three members on the team, but when the manager who could code went away for a long weekend and they got a request, Luke had to step in and apply his skills. When the manager came back, he saw the trigger that Luke had written and realized it was actually fairly difficult for a newbie coder. That lead to him getting even more coding projects and sharpening his skills. “I would say that the one skill any developer needs to pick up is the ability to Google,” he says, “because then you can really do anything and it’s just a matter of applying yourself.” The powerful combination of Watson and Salesforce. Recently at Bluewolf and IBM, Luke has been working on building Watson applications within Salesforce. Watson was originally created in 2010 to win Jeopardy, but these days it’s more useful as a collection of APIs and web services that allow businesses to do things with machine learning, natural language processing, and more. Luke has been working more on the natural language processing side of things, doing things like keyword extraction from large chunks of texts or analyzing text for the tone. For Salesforce, Luke has been working on Next Best Action With Watson and Lead Generation With Watson. Next Best Action is meant to help Service Cloud agents be more productive by classifying cases by intent using natural language processing. It then pulls out things like name or date of birth that are relevant to what the agent does. Finally, it even goes so far as to draft an email in the Chatter publisher so when they open up the case they can just click send. Lead Generation With Watson is a global action that is meant to help sellers get a new source of leads from Watson Discovery News. Basically, Watson constantly reads articles and enriches them with metadata. You can search that database with natural language queries and Watson will automatically add them as lead to your org. Both of these applications were presented at Dreamforce this past year. Resources  ibm.com/watson Next Best Action overview...

Claim Your Career with Luke Kanter

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we have Dave Nava, Transitioning Military Officer, 3x Trailhead Ranger, and Salesforce Admin at FourBlock, for a special New Year's motivational episode. Join us as we talk about how Dave makes time to do all of the things, how he’s getting hands-on training with Salesforce, and what makes a great training session. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dave Nava. How Dave’s project management skills landed him in tech. Dave is fourth-generation Navy, starting with his great-grandfather, and he’s served as a Naval Flight Officer for the past 20 years. He’s been working on his military transition for the past five years, “I knew that I’d be retiring about this time and that I’d be trying to something a little different,” Dave says. He looked at what he’d done over the course of his career and realized it amounted to project management, but when he talked to recruiters he realized that he needed to get more specific in terms of industry. “I’d only been in the Navy, so I had no frame of reference for what was out there,” Dave says, but as he was searching he was lucky enough to run across Vetforce. “I love free stuff, so I took a look at it, did a couple badges and fell in love,” he says. Over the next five months, he did about 300 badges and has really felt like he’s found his niche as a Salesforce admin. Making time for Salesforce. So how has Dave made so much progress in Trailhead in so little time? “I get up at four every morning, and that’s my personal time to do Salesforce,” he says. Sometimes that’s taking a course for the next certification exam, sometimes that’s doing stuff in the org he works with to improve it, and sometimes that’s time for badges. “I jumped into Trailhead and found that having a certification is nice,” Dave says, “but from a newbie perspective that wasn’t enough to guarantee me a job—what I really needed was experience.” Some quick research showed that many people were getting experience by volunteering for nonprofits. After reaching out to the community, he found a veteran-focused organization called FourBlock and has helped them add Chatter and go through their Lightning transition. Training from making training sessions. “I was the only one on the team that had Lightning experience because they were in classic,” Dave says, and that was mainly from Trailhead experience because it’s mostly in Lightning. “I was able to set up weekly training sessions which, to be honest with you, trained me as much as it trained them,” he says. His boss would give him a topic and in putting together the presentation he would broaden his knowledge. For the most effective training presentations, Dave has found that it’s useful to focus on video of him actually doing the thing. Mixing up the visual style between that, images, and slides helps keep his audience engaged. Finally, it’s important to make sure that you leave time for questions at the end. If he doesn’t know the answer to something, that represents a great learning opportunity. Throughout all of it, a big highlight has been the power of the Trailblazer community to help answer questions and learn together. They use a lot of third-party applications in his org to populate forms and do other key things, and he was able to get an answer to a problem in under 10 minutes (at 9 pm at night) from the Answers community. Resources  Vetforce Trailhead Trail:  Strengthen &amp; Diversify Your Workforce with Military Veterans  Vetforce Salesforce Admins Podcast playlist  Social  Dave: @AwesomeAdminDN Gillian: @gilliankbruce Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  review us on iTunes! Full Show Transcript &nbsp; Gillian Bruce:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. It's 2019. Let's...

New Year's Motivation with Dave Nava

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re joined by Bill Appleton, CTO at Metazoa, and one of the first people to write an app for AppExchange. We’ll find out what we can do to kick off the year with a clean org. Join us as we talk about how to look at the complexity that’s already in your org and then do something about it, and why he’s excited about Salesforce DX. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Bill Appleton. A love affair with coding that turned into a career. When the first Apple Macintosh came out in 1984, “I just started grad school but I quit school, spent every penny I had to buy one, and started writing software,” Bill says. “It just really spoke to me how visual it was,” he says. In the late 90s, he started talking with a friend about API services, and the idea of a client that can use APIs from anywhere or a server that can provide them to anyone was revolutionary. So, what’s an API? “I give you a message,” Bill says, “and you look at it, decide what to do, and give me a response. That’s really all it is, but you can build so many incredible things with that model.” Salesforce has some great APIs: metadata, data, tooling, and more, which is what brought Bill to Salesforce and lead him to write some of the first apps for the AppExchange. Using APIs to give Salesforce superpowers. “We asked Salesforce, ‘What do your users need that you’re not going to build?’ They said project management, and so we built DreamTeam,” Bill says. Back then there were no packages, which meant that they needed to implement it by hand which made it error prone. “I wrote this other app called Snapshot, which would compare any source and destination org and see what the differences were,” he says. Snapshot uses the metadata API to compare all of the customizations in an org over time or between org. “One of the great things about Salesforce is the ecosystem of customers—they’re a really bright and interesting bunch,” Bill says. For API-powered apps, it’s really important to get feedback because it’s all about how it interacts with others. Luckily, Salesforce is a feedback-focused culture. Two steps to a cleaner org. Salesforce is amazing because of all the complex customizations and capabilities you can make for your org, “but a byproduct of that is that your org can complex,” Bill says. Bigger orgs can end up with thousands and thousands of objects and profiles. “We have a lot of tools and technologies to visualize the complexity,” he says, which helps you see how things are interrelated and what’s not being used. If you want to clean up your org, that’s step one. Step two is to do something about it—that’s cleanup. “Remove those from profiles or deactivate them first, see if anybody complains, and then, later on, delete them and move them out of there,” Bill says. There might be some corner use case that someone’s been doing for five years that you don’t know about, which can start a conversation about how to accommodate that in a simpler way. If you’re an admin who has inherited a big, messy org, Bill says the best thing to do is focus on change and release management. Establish a regular release cycle, take on cleanup jobs, and bring on new apps and customizations that your users need. “Work on that big, institutional machine of change and release management,” he says, “get all of those people on the same page and knowing what their job is to really make your org more effective for the company.” Resources  Blog:  6 Essential Reports for Compliance, Governance, and Security for your Salesforce on Salesforce Ben Metazoa white papers on best practices for change and release management, org cleanup &amp; optimization, and more Trailhead:  Module:  Data Quality Module:  Application Lifecycle and Development Models    Social  Bill: @bill_appleton Gillian: @gilliankbruce Salesforce...

Keep It Clean with Bill Appleton

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we talk to Shakil Kamran, a consultant at Now It Matters and winner of the NYC World Tour 2018 Golden Hoodie. We’ll hear his incredible story and the work he’s done to help the next generation of tech innovators. Join us as we talk about how coming to Dreamforce with a learning mindset helped Shakil start his career in tech, and how he’s giving back. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Shakil Kamran. Going all in on Salesforce. “As I was growing up I had various jobs in many different industries,” Shakil says, “but I knew that at the end of the day technology ran everything.” While he felt like he was expected to become a doctor or a lawyer, he knew that he wanted to work his way into the tech industry. Starting out, Shakil had skipped college and went straight to work. He was in retail management for three years, “but I knew it was more of a job than a career.” He decided to pick up his education where he left off, and happened to attend a boot camp during his first year at Monroe College. The boot camp was hosted by none other than Selina Suarez, who created an organization called PepUp Tech (People Empowering People Up Through Technology). “My entire life changed after I met Selina,” Shakil says. After the four day session, he was able to transition into an internship, which took him to Dreamforce and Midwest Dreamin’. At the time Shakil was still working his retail job, 50-60 hours a week, on top of being a full-time student, husband, and father. He would come home around 11 or 12 o’clock and hop on Trailhead to get more experience. “Before I left for Dreamforce last year, my company gave me an ultimatum,” he says, “if you leave you can’t come back.” Ultimately, he decided that he had to take a leap of faith and trust that eventually it would work out. How Dreamforce changed everything for Shakil. At Dreamforce, Shakil met Tim Lockie, the founder of Now It Matters. “He believed in me,” Shakil says. He told his story of what it took for him to make it to San Francisco, and Tim decided to take a chance. But that’s simplifying a lot of hard work, and a lot of uncertainty. “It hit me more when I landed: I’m in San Francisco and I don’t know what I’m doing here.” “I just basically spoke to as many people as I could,” Shakil says, and he decided to focus on learning more about Salesforce. He was at a Women in Tech event at Dreamforce when he met Tim and was able to focus on the value he brought with his background in sales and marketing. In other words, it’s not just about what you can get from the community but what you can give back as well. The importance of giving back. “I want to inspire the next generation of change leaders and thought leaders that are coming behind me,” Shakil says, and so he set to work creating a partnership between PepUp Tech and the City University of New York, the third-largest university system in the country. For him, it was a moral obligation. Because a Salesforce career isn’t like a traditional one (like a doctor or a lawyer), it’s important to help folks from all backgrounds understand what’s out there. “When you’re on the other side of the door, you’re like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know this role even existed,’” he says, and taking that type of knowledge back to the community can change people’s lives. “Where I come from, we were taught that nothing is free,” Shakil says, so sharing the incredible resources that are Trailhead, PepUp Tech, and the Salesforce Ohana is key to helping people see themselves in tech. “Everyone wants to see you succeed here, everyone wants to see you move up and do great things in life,” he says. “If you do have an opportunity in front of you,” he says, “just do it and figure out the rest later.” Resources  PepUp Tech: https://www.pepuptech.org/ Trailhead: Build Your Career...

Shakil Kamran Says Just Do It

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’ve got Marciana Davis, a Project Analyst at Yurgosky. She came to Salesforce through PepUp Tech and has done a lot of work to give back to the community and help others get into the ecosystem. Join us as we talk about Marciana’s job breaking things as a QA analyst, how giving back can help you grow, and the key qualities of an Awesome Admin. You should  subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marciana Davis. How PepUp Tech got Marciana hooked on Salesforce. Marciana started out studying development at school. When she got to Monroe College, she was still set on that path, but it didn’t quite seem right. She approached her professor and said, “Listen, I love computers but I’ve really found a niche for databases,” which led the professor to recommend an upcoming Salesforce bootcamp put on by PepUp Tech. What attracted Marciana to databases in the first place was “the way that you can easily manipulate them to get information that you need.” As Marciana says, “I’ve been a scatterbrain since birth,” so the ability to organize and sort information in so many different ways while still working on one thing was amazing to her. The amazing community that made Marciana feel welcome. At the boot camp, there’s a lot of information to take in over the four days, “but as you gain more experience on the platform and go into user group meetings—that definitely solidified my career path into Salesforce,” Marciana says. When she finally got a chance to free up her calendar and go to one, the people that she met and the passion they had for the platform was life-changing. “The meeting I went to was about inclusion,” Marciana says, “and I felt that for a long time in my past I haven’t been included as much as everyone else.” It struck a chord with her that the Salesforce Ohana makes it a priority and holds it as a core value. Breaking things, professionally. In Marciana’s job as a Project Analyst in the QA department at Yurgosky Consulting, “I basically break things and make sure that the engineers are fixing it.” That involves a lot of creativity, trying to do the same thing as many ways as she can think of to make sure that everything’s working. “All of this is clicking, folks, there’s no coding involved,” she says. For Marciana, the key to being an Awesome Admin is attention to detail: “You have to make sure you know what the client wants and how they want it.” At the same time, you need to cultivate patience, “because clients tend to change their minds,” she says. Finally, being a problem solver is key because of all the troubleshooting and learning you need to do as part of the job. How giving back can help you grow. Looking forward, Marciana is focused on giving back to the community by volunteering for PepUp Tech. She’s worked for the virtual boot camp course and is looking to volunteer in person. “Like my mom said, you didn’t get here alone and giving back is a way of saying thank you,” she says. She’s been helping students for the past couple weeks, and when they tell her what a blessing she’s been in their lives she says, “No, you’re a blessing because you’re helping me study for the certification.” Resources  Trailmix by Alex Slack:  BA &amp; QA Training  Social  Marciana: @traveling_dev Gillian: @gilliankbruce Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or  review us on iTunes! Full Show Transcript Gillian Bruce:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you become a more awesome Salesforce Admin. I'm Gillian Bruce. This week, we've got another great pep up tech story coming for you. We're talking to Marciana Davis. She's a project analyst at Yugorski, and she also learned about Salesforce...

I Do QA (I Break Things) with Marciana Davis

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

Lightning Web Components for Admins with Zayne Turner

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

Shannon Hale on the New Flow Builder

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

Discover Your Admin Voice with Sasha Manford

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

Salesforce Admins

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