Thu, 29 February 2024
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ketan Karkhanis, EVP and GM of Sales Cloud at Salesforce. Join us for a replay of this episode about all of the new Sales Cloud features that have gone live recently and how you can use them to transform your organization. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ketan Karkhanis. New features in Sales Cloud Over the last year, Sales Cloud has gotten a lot of new features and updates. That’s why I was so excited to run into Ketan at World Tour London and get him on the pod. Who better than the EVP and GM of Sales Cloud to tell us all about what’s new? One thing that the Sales Cloud team noticed was how often businesses have been turning to third-party tools to get things done. So they’ve overhauled features like forecasting and pipe inspection to give you more customization options and flexibility without having to use a bunch of different point solutions. Drive adoption with Sales Cloud Everywhere Another problem that Ketan and his team have been working on is how to help drive adoption. As much as we’d like it to be the case, most people don’t do 100% of their job on Salesforce. And the added hassle of going into and out of the platform can create a lot of challenges for users trying to fit it into their workflow. But what if Salesforce could follow you into other applications and be there when you need it? Sales Cloud Everywhere aims to do just that, with extensions for Outlook, Gmail, and more that will give your reps access to your full CRM no matter what they’re doing. We need your help If you only take one thing away from Ketan’s episode, it’s that there are so many new out-of-the-box features in Sales Cloud that it’s practically a new product. If you’re paying for third-party tools, you might be able to save your organization a lot of money just by turning something on. Most importantly, Ketan and his team want you to know that they need your feedback to make Sales Cloud even better. Try Sales Planning, or Revenue Intelligence, or Einstein for Sales, or all of the above, and let us know how we can help you transform your organization with Salesforce. Be sure to listen to the full episode to learn more about Sales Cloud, and what’s been added to Unlimited Edition. Podcast swag Resources Social Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be successful. I’m your host today, Gillian Bruce. Missed you. Nice to be back. I’m here with a very special interview that I wanted to be able to share with you from Ketan Karkhanis, who is our EVP and GM of Sales Cloud at Salesforce. Now, he is a senior executive in charge of all things Sales Cloud. And we had a chat, just running into each other at London World Tour of all places. And it really sparked my idea to have him join us on the podcast, because Sales Cloud has gone under a huge reboot over the last year. There’s a ton of new features that I don’t think many people are aware of. So, we wanted to dig into that a little bit. And then also, talk about why Sales Cloud and core are developing the things they are, prioritization, especially in the context of AI and GPT these days. And I promise you, Ketan is going to show you that, hey, core is getting a lot of love despite all of the hype around GPT, which is also very exciting. But we really focus more on that conversation around core development. And he gets into the importance and the role of Salesforce admins. One quick note before we get into Ketan’s interview. At the time we were interviewing, the product we were developing was called SalesGPT. That has since changed. And now our AI products for sales is Einstein for Sales. And so, anytime you hear GPT, just think Einstein. So, without further ado, please welcome Ketan to the podcast. Ketan, welcome to the podcast. Ketan Karkhanis: Hey, thank you for having me, Gillian. So good to be here. Gillian Bruce: Oh, it’s wonderful to have you on. I can’t believe we haven’t had you on before. So, first time guest, long overdue. Ketan, can you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience? Ketan Karkhanis: Oh, I sure can. First, a big hello to all of you. I mean this is exciting to be on this podcast with all of you. My name is Ketan Karkhanis. I’m the executive vice president and GM for Sales Cloud. For some of you, I’m a boomerang. So, I was in Salesforce from 2009 to 2019, then I left, did a startup and supply chain, and then I came back to do sales in my prior stint. I’ve done Einstein Analytics, Lightning Platform, Salesforce Mobile, all the things you probably want to talk to me about also. Gillian Bruce: Some things we’re very familiar with in admin land, yes. Ketan Karkhanis: Yeah, great to be here. Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Well, we’re happy to have you on. And since you are now leading Sales Cloud, we’ve got some good questions for you. So, first of all, I would love to know, and I think a lot of our admins are curious, what are some of the top things in Sales Cloud that maybe you think aren’t being utilized enough? Ketan Karkhanis: Oh, that’s a great question. Look, I’ll tell you, and this answer might be slightly long. So, Gillian, you should keep interrupting me, because a lot has changed in Sales Cloud in the last year. One of the fundamental things we have focused on is there are two things that happened. Number one was we realized that there was this hyper proliferation of point solutions around Sales Cloud. To work on one opportunity, customers were using seven, eight different other point solutions. These are not market categories. They are features of Sales Cloud. So, one of the great examples I’ll give you is forecasting. And amongst all us, our admin friends, we had not innovated much in that space earlier. And it’s okay to be honest and say that. Gillian Bruce: We like transparency on the podcast, Ketan. Appreciate that. Ketan Karkhanis: But we really doubled down on it. And if you now go look at forecasting, you will see that there’s still a long journey. I invite you to join me at Dreamforce. But things like customizability, things like bring your own columns, things like adding manager judgment, things like coverage ratio, things like a better user experience, which does not require a help dock. Things like pipe inspection. I don’t know how many of you have turned on pipe inspection. Maybe it may not have one or two things you don’t need, but it’s the new list view for opportunities. Why would you look at opportunities in a list view? Why wouldn’t you look at pipe inspection? And everything I said, it’s part of core. It’s not something new you need to buy. I have a lot of new things I can sell you to. You know me, I’ll keep building new things. But the idea is, how do we get more intrinsic value out? So, you asked the question, so I’ll say, I invite you all to check out pipe inspection. I invite you all to check out forecasting. I invite all of you to check out… And I’m listing, Gillian, things which are not like, hey, you need to call an AE right now. These are things which are probably already there, you just need to go turn it on or something like that. The next thing I’ll tell you is, look, one of the largest problems I’ve seen a lot of customers espouse is adoption. Gillian, you hear that from admins, and I hear that. How do I drive adoption? What do I do, right? Gillian Bruce: 100%. Ketan Karkhanis: So, one of the capabilities, and it’s a very counterintuitive thought, maybe this will work, maybe this will not work, but is we are like we were saying, okay, why can’t Sales Cloud or CRM follow you wherever you go? So, let’s say you are in Outlook. Yes, I use the O word, Outlook. I can do that on a Salesforce podcast, because hey, a lot of people use Outlook and it’s a great email client. I mean, it’s fantastic. But what if Salesforce side panel was there right with you? What if your entire CRM was accessible to your end user as a sales rep, while they were in Outlook or they were in Gmail? And even coming one more further is, what if you could do that while you are on LinkedIn? So, this is the idea of Sales Cloud everywhere. It’s the Outlook extension, it’s the Gmail extension, it is the anywhere extension that’s coming out. And again, these are what we think core capabilities, and I invite you to try them. One last thing, because we’ve just innovated a lot, so Gillian, please interrupt me, okay? Gillian Bruce: Give us all the goodies. I love it. This is great. Ketan Karkhanis: Now, these were just examples, but you can make a long list of this theme. Now, if you’re on unlimited edition. So, some of you might be on UE, you have a special bonanza for you now, because everything I said before is available everywhere. Now I’m focusing only on unlimited edition. We added a ton of capability to unlimited edition, which was previously add-ons kind of stuff. So, for example, conversational AI. How many of you have heard of conversational AI? It’s a standard capability. ECI, Einstein Conversational Insights. Go turn it on, try it in UE. I’ll tell you, sales engagement, some of you probably remember HVS. And again, transparency, there was some work to be done on that, which we have gotten done last year. I know there was a little bit of a pause on that, but we have rebooted everything in the past 12 months. It’s included in powerful cadence automation. Every inside sales teams needs it. It’s out of the box in Sales Cloud UE. Automated capture, Einstein Automated Capture. Do you know more than 20,000 customers have already used Einstein Automated Capture? Are you one of those 20,000? If you are, thank you very much. If you aren’t, why aren’t you on that list? Because why do you want sales reps to enter data manually? It should be automatically synced. But anyways, I can keep going on, Gillian. There’s just a lot. There’s just a lot. Gillian Bruce: That is a lot. And you know what I really like is all of these features that you’re talking about are, like you said, your team’s been working on this in the last 12 months. But I mean really these are things that are going to help admins make their users happier. And so, especially when you were talking about basically the pipe inspection is a better list view that’s going to give you so much more information. So, why train your users on how to use a list view when you’ve got this? And they can get the insights just from looking at the list of their opportunities. And then in context, I mean when you’re talking about the extension, where you can bring Salesforce and your CRM in the context of which you’re already working. Because the last thing a sales rep wants to do is switch windows or have multiple tabs open, as all of us are guilty of having too many tabs open as it is. But the idea of having that contextual as you’re looking at a LinkedIn, as you’re looking at your email, that’s fantastic. I mean, those are amazing features. And like you said, they’re already part of your core experience. So, I’m going to use a Mike Gerholdt analogy here. “If you paid for the Ferrari, don’t just use it to drive to the grocery store.” You’ve got all these bells and whistles, you should use them. And I think another thing that I hear often when I’m at community events or at user groups, is you hear people that are paying for all of these third party solutions that do a lot of the stuff they don’t realize core already does. Ketan Karkhanis: Yeah, I mean they’re spending a lot of money. You could be a hero by taking all that out and showing your organization, “Hey, guys, I saved you a lot of money.” Gillian Bruce: Exactly. Yeah. I mean it’s one of those maybe not so secret, should be more overt awesome admin skills, is that if you are really truly an awesome admin, you’re probably going to uncover so much money your organization can save when you open the hood and look at all of the third party things that maybe you are paying for, that you already have included in core. It’s akin to declarative first development. Use what’s out of the box before you go building a custom solution. And I think that is one of the things that we don’t talk about enough, having that admin eye to look at all the things that maybe we already have on core, but we don’t realize, or whoever was managing the org before you didn’t realize. Ketan Karkhanis: Or maybe we at Salesforce didn’t talk about it too much. I think, so there’s some responsibility I need to take too, just because I can. And you’re going to see me and my team… As I said, look, it’s a new Sales Cloud. Simple as that. The last 12 months, it’s a new Sales Cloud. And I invite you, I encourage you, I will gently push you and nudge you to take a look. And more importantly, the two motivation I have behind saying these things is, if you take a look, you will give us great feedback. And that’s truly what we want is your feedback. But you can’t give me feedback if you have not tried something. It’s like a virtual cycle. Gillian Bruce: This is taking me back to when we rolled out Lightning back in, what, 2015. And we were doing all those Lightning tours with our product managers. I was doing a ton of them. The feedback we got from people when we were actually getting them hands-on with the new platform and how it worked, I mean every single piece of feedback got incorporated in some way. And I think that’s one of the unique things and special things about Salesforce, is that our product is only what it is because of the feedback that we get from our customers. And we definitely take into account. So, Ketan, as leader of Sales Cloud, how important is it for people to give you feedback? Ketan Karkhanis: I’ll just tell you all my best ideas are not mine. They’re yours. So, if you want me to do something good, give me feedback. I’m half joking. But you understand the spirit of that comment, I think. So, it’s really important we connect with each other in the true sense of the word connection. Look, you all have made Sales Cloud what Sales Cloud is. You are the reason Sales Cloud is here. And I really, really aspire for you to be part of the journey. The last year, we have rebooted it a lot. We have a lot of new capabilities across the board. And I ain’t even talking to you about new things like… Do you know last week, Gillian, we just launched a new product called Sales Planning? Now sales Planning can be done native on your CRM. Do you know we’ve got a brand new product around enablement to run sales programs in context and outcome-based? That’s brand new. We just launch a buyer assistant. That’s cool. And Gillian, I’m not even talking about GPT. We are going to need a whole podcast on SalesGPT. Gillian Bruce: We can do that. That’ll be the follow-up episode, because I know a lot of people are curious about that. But I think speaking of that, we get a lot of feedback, especially now because everyone’s excited about AI. Everyone’s talking about it, GPT, all the things, great. But the majority of admins I talk to are way more concerned with core features, stuff that their organization’s already using. And so, you mentioned that the last 12 months, Sales Cloud has gotten a reboot. Can you give us a little insight into why there was a reboot? What is the priority with Sales Cloud and core features? And give us a little insider lens to why. Ketan Karkhanis: No, no, it’s a very fair question. Look, the way I think about it is adoption fueled growth is a key strategy for me and my business. And I use the word adoption as the first word in that sentence, because it’s really the key word. To me, one of the thoughts I have after talking to countless customers, I went on the road and I met so many customers, and I’ll tell you, it was amazing. You sit down with the customer and one of my favorite questions is, how long have you been using Sales Cloud? That’s my first question I ask them. And you will be amazed. Some of them were saying 10 years. I met a customer who’s been using it for 18 years. Gillian Bruce: That’s almost as long as Salesforce has been around, right? Ketan Karkhanis: Incredible commitment, incredible partnership. And then as I look at their journey and we talk to them, they’re like, okay, here’s where we need help, here’s where we need help, here’s where we need help. And how do you build that bridge for them to create a modern selling environment, to create a data-driven selling environment, to create a selling environment where reps are spending less time doing entry, but more time driving deals. And to do all of this, it’s not just new capabilities or new products like Planning, like GPT, all those things I talked about, but it’s also the foundation capabilities of, okay, let’s ensure forecasting is amazing out of the box. Let’s ensure a lot of our features are turned on out of the box. Let’s ensure we are really funneling our energies into bringing more, I keep saying out of the box, out of the box, out of the box. That’s my way of saying core, core, core, core. But it also implies I want to simplify setup and onboarding. We have some more work to do there. It’s not done. And I will be the first person to say, hey, need your help, but trust me, we are committed to doing it. I’m committed to doing it. So, there’s countless examples I can give you around all these things we are trying to do. But the strategy is adoption driven growth. Element of the strategy is I really don’t want our customers to use seven or 10 different products, because I think… So, our customers are giving me feedback. They’re like, “Ketan, and this is becoming a bit…” I have seven to 10 different tools I have to use, and this happens in the industry, it’s cyclical. There’s a hyper proliferation of point solutions, and then we go into a tech consolidation phase. So, that is a very key part. That’s what we did with Sales Cloud Unlimited. We took all this. We are like, these are not add-on, we just get them. It’s like, okay, Gillian, when you buy a smartphone or you just buy… Nowadays, nobody calls it a smartphone. Gillian Bruce: They’re all smart now, right? Ketan Karkhanis: They’re all smart, right? Yeah, exactly. But there’s a point in that comment. Do you have to choose whether you get the maps functionality or not? Gillian Bruce: No. Ketan Karkhanis: It’s there. It’s a feature, it’s not a category. That’s what we think when we think about things like sales engagement, when we think things like revenue intelligence, when we think about enablement, when we think about planning, when our conversational AI. These are capabilities of the new CRM. Gillian Bruce: I love that. Ketan Karkhanis: These are not categories. So, anyways, it was a great question. Thank you for asking that. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. No. And I appreciate the transparency. And I think what you described about the cyclical cycle, about how tack, the many, many points coming together into being one solution. And I think I feel though we’re in the consolidation moment right now, especially with Sales Cloud, which I think that’s pretty exciting. Now, in the last minute or two here, I would love to hear from you, Ketan. As someone who has been in the Salesforce ecosystem and at Salesforce for I think as long as I have, seems like forever at this point. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you view the role of the Salesforce admin in a successful- Ketan Karkhanis: You’re the quarterback. You’re the quarterback. Or if the people from other regions, I can use a cricket analogy, I can use a soccer analogy, I can use any analogy you want me to use, but you get the spirit of what I’m trying to say is yes, it’s a critical role, it’s a pivotal role, it’s an important role. Because it’s also the role that drives, not just governance and compliance, which is one way to think about it, but also what I call agile innovation. You can show the organization a way to move fast. The person who understands the power of clicks, not core, is connected to the community to bring those best practices from the community into your organization, is connected to product at Salesforce to bring that feedback back to product. You are also now the face of Salesforce in front of your organization, and that’s why we love you so much. It’s a tough job. Look, it can be stressful, because you’re juggling many balls. There’s like every day you’ve got 10 things you’re juggling. You are like, oh, I’ve got these five requests from this business unit, but I need to do this project, which is long-term. And I’ve still not gotten done with my data governance priorities, which I had. But it’s a critical role, and that’s why it’s my commitment to you that I want to be held accountable by you. And I would aspire to be more connected to you. So, I don’t know how we do- Gillian Bruce: Well, this is a first step, Ketan, now everybody knows who you are. So, you’re going to start to get feedback as soon as this episode goes live, I promise you. Ketan Karkhanis: I had to open my mouth. Gillian Bruce: You asked for it. You asked for it. Well, Ketan, I so appreciate you coming on the podcast and giving us some context and insight to what’s going on with Sales Cloud, priorities within Sales Cloud, some of the features that maybe we don’t know about very much and that we should start be using. And then I also just really appreciate your insights and appreciation for Salesforce admins. I think it’s always really helpful to hear from someone who’s in the leadership position about how Salesforce really does view the role of the admin and prioritizes it and thinks it’s so important. So, I appreciate you. Ketan Karkhanis:
Thank you so much. Gillian Bruce: And we’re going to do an episode about SalesGPT coming up soon. Don’t you worry about that. Ketan Karkhanis: Yeah, yeah, 100%. Gillian Bruce: Thanks, Ketan. One quick note and reminder, SalesGPT has changed to Einstein for Sales. So, we’re Salesforce, product names change, especially as we come into Dreamforce. So, just wanted to remind you of that. Anytime you hear SalesGPT think of Einstein. Well, that was amazing to have Ketan on the podcast. Appreciate his time. And yes, we are going to do more with him. So, I am looking forward to getting him back on to talk a little bit more about SalesGPT, which I know everyone is clamoring to learn more about. But I did appreciate his honesty and transparency about how Sales Cloud needed a reboot, how they’re prioritizing reducing all of the different points of use of other products and other solutions, and trying to consolidate everything into one seamless Sales Cloud solution that helps you with adoption as you’re trying to get your users on board. I love the couple of features he mentioned that I didn’t even really know about, was the extensions to bring CRM into your email or into LinkedIn, wherever you’re working. And then, I mean, gosh, who doesn’t love an improved list view, right? So, go ahead and check out the pipeline inspection list view. I mean, I guess it’s technically not called a list view, but what a better way to look at your opportunities. So, we’re going to do more with Ketan. I also thought it was great how critical he thought the admin role is, as we all know it is. But I hope that gave you a little insight into how our executive leadership views the role of Salesforce admin and how we are really prioritizing making the admin job easier and helping you make your users more successful. Enough from me. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. As always, if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. You can also get more information on my favorite website, admin.salesforce.com, for more great content of all kinds. And if you’d like to follow us at all, we are on all the social medias. You can find us on LinkedIn, or Twitter, or X or whatever it’s being called these days, at Salesforce Admns, no I, and all over LinkedIn as well. Thanks to the main host of this podcast, Mike Gerholdt, for giving me the chance to bring this interview to you. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. I’ll catch you next time in the cloud.
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Thu, 22 February 2024
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ella Marks, Senior Marketing Manager at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the keys to creating a great presentation, how to prep, and how to always nail your ending. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ella Marks. Presenting is a core skill for admins Presentations are an important part of every admin’s life. And I’m not just talking about speaking in front of your local user group. Admins present every time they go in for a budgeting conversation, or demo a new process for their users. That’s why I’m so excited to bring Ella Marks on the pod. She’s presented on some of Salesforce’s biggest stages, like Dreamforce and several World Tours. So I wanted to hear her tips for how to put together and prep for a great presentation. The cool thing is that no matter the format or venue, Ella uses the same core principles to prep for every presentation. Know your audience Ella’s first step is to identify the audience that you’re presenting for. Who’s in the room? What do they already know, and what are you going to teach them? Your content is going to be very different if you’re presenting to a room full of admins versus a room full of new users. There are several situations where you might not know exactly who’s going to be in the audience or what their level of expertise is. Ella’s trick for this is to just ask them, for example, “Raise your hand if this topic is new to you.” Experienced presenters will be able to use the information they get about their audience to change things on the fly. If this sounds daunting to you, Ella recommends that you start small. Pick one slide or part of your presentation that you’ll adjust based on the answer to your question. That gives you a manageable way to practice thinking on your feet, and you’ll soon find yourself getting more comfortable with improvising. Make an effective outline The next step is to make an outline. For Ella, that’s listing out everything she could say about the presentation topic in a big list. This gives her the chance to move things around, pick out some themes, decide on a call to action, and then start editing it down. When she’s ready to start creating her slide deck, Ella uses a technique called “blue boxing” to make a rough draft. Essentially, you use blue boxes to map out what you’re going to put on each slide. So a slide might have three blue boxes that say: -
Title about why this is important right now -
Text of the most important point I’m going to say -
Image to illustrate the point This allows you to visually sketch out what each slide looks like and how the presentation flows as a whole. Variation is what keeps your audience engaged, so we want to make sure that we have a balance of slides with more text and slides with more visuals. Blue boxing lets you make these decisions before you spend time hammering out the specifics of which image or which bullet point you’re going to use. The trick to nailing your ending Conclusions are always tricky. Ella recommends asking yourself three questions: -
After my presentation, how do you want them to feel? -
After my presentation, what do you want them to think? -
After my presentation, what do you want them to do? These are your three goals, and the secret to nailing your ending is to work toward them throughout the presentation. Every slide should be aimed at answering one of these questions so that, by the end, you’ve brought the audience with you and it feels inevitable. This episode is chock-full of great tips for creating presentations, including how to prep with a group and the importance of a good pump-up song, so be sure to take a listen and subscribe so you’ll never miss out. Podcast swag Learn more Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt:
This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are talking with Ella Marks about building phenomenal presentations and the art of presenting how she gets ready. Now, if you don't know who Ella is, Ella's on our admin relations team and she's done Dreamforce keynotes. Maybe you've seen her in the Release Readiness Live and at Dreamforce, also on stage at Release Readiness Live. So she's presented to a few thousand people at a time and knows quite a thing or two about getting ready. Now, how is this relevant to you, admins? Well, you are going to be presenting at some point, either maybe to a board of directors or peers, or hopefully you're at a user group and you're getting ready to present a really cool idea.
But presentation is really part of what we do a lot because we're showing all kinds of stuff and always presenting new ideas. Now, before I get into this episode, I want to make sure you're following the Admins Podcast on iTunes or Spotify. That way whenever a new podcast drops, which is Thursday morning, it shows up right on your phone and you don't have to do anything. You can just press play and get on the bus and go to work or take your dog for a walk. So with that, let's get Ella on the podcast.
So Ella, welcome to the podcast. Ella Marks:
Thanks so much, Mike. Thanks for having me. Mike Gerholdt:
Well, it's been a while, but I think people have seen you elsewhere in the ecosystem. I mean, we're on the same team together, but for community members that haven't run into you or seen the plethora of work that you've put out, what are some of the things you do at Salesforce? Ella Marks:
I've been at Salesforce for almost seven years now and I've done a lot of different things and I'm so grateful. A lot of the time that I've spent here has been working with the admin community. You may have seen my face before on Release Readiness Live or on the keynote stage at Dreamforce, but I have the privilege of focusing on creating and distributing content for admins like you on some of our new release features and really exciting new innovations like AI. It's really fun. I get to learn a lot about the platform and I'm always really excited to hear from admins and speak to admins and create presentations for admins. So really excited to be here today and talk to you a little bit more about that. Mike Gerholdt:
Cool. I'm thinking ahead and for some of the admins we're getting ready. There's TDX coming up, but also user groups for those of us in the Midwest that aren't snowed in anymore, we can get to user groups and presentations are important there and there's all kinds of stuff that we present. Not to mention that it's probably almost budget season. I got to do some presentations for budget. I got to do a whole bunch of presentations if I'm an admin. Ella Marks:
There's no limit I think to the type of presentations and the amount of presentations that you can do as an admin. Like you mentioned, there's events where you're speaking to your fellow admins and developers, there's internal presentations. And I think the most exciting thing or interesting thing to me about presentations is no matter what presentation you're giving or who you're giving it to, you can go about planning for it and preparing that presentation in kind of the same way. There's some fundamentals that go across every type of presentation that you may have or create in your role as an admin. Mike Gerholdt:
And you've done quite a few because I remember seeing you on the Dreamforce keynote stage and Release Readiness. I feel like you've done a lot of different style presentations too. Ella Marks:
I've honestly had the privilege to be on a bunch of different stages at Salesforce, whether it's a virtual presentation or a webinar on the Dreamforce stage or even at an event. This year, I got to present and connect with a lot of people at world tour events, and like I said, they're all very different. The people in the audience are very different, and so the way that I create content for them, while I might be covering the same things is always going to have a different output because I am trying to tailor it to the audience that I have, but I kind of use the same fundamental principles when approaching any presentation I give, whether it's online, in person, a hybrid. There's a few key things that I really go back to. Mike Gerholdt:
Well, let's dive into those principles. Where do you start? Ella Marks:
The first thing that I do when I'm putting together any presentation is identify the audience that I'm presenting for. Now, this can be super straightforward. Sometimes you're going to know exactly who's going to be in the room. You might be doing an internal presentation at work, the stakeholders, the names on a meeting invite, and you can take the guidance from there. In other times, you may not have the list of everybody exactly who's going to be in the room, but you have a sense of who they are. So a user group presentation, for example, you may know there's a mix of admins and developers and maybe architects in that room.
And you need to know who those people are in order to build a presentation that is really going to engage them and teach them or persuade them or whatever your goal is. You need to start with knowing who that audience is to understand where that goal fits in and how can I communicate this information best to them. Mike Gerholdt:
But I'm going to play devil's advocate and say, so what if I'm presenting to a user group and maybe I've only been there once and I don't know all the people that are going to see my presentation. What do you do then? Ella Marks:
One of my favorite things that presenters do, and I use this trick sometimes. And Mike, I've seen presentations where I know you've done this too, is you can ask the room. I think it's important for us to not make any assumptions about the audiences that we're speaking to. I think that can lead sometimes to a lack of clarity and confusion. And so if you're presenting to a user group about a topic that you know a lot about, I think it's a great tool. Sometimes even just engage the audience and bring them with you to say, "Before I get started, raise your hand if you're an admin or raise your hand if you have familiarity with the topic that I'm going to cover."
And that does two things. One, it tells you how you can tailor the rest of your content or your presentation to the people in the room, but it also kind of opens up almost a dialogue between you and the audience. So even if they don't speak for the rest of your presentation, you've created a real human moment of engagement with them that is going to be super important and key to holding their attention for the entire time that you're presenting. Mike Gerholdt:
And much like that, and Ella, I've seen you do this, is if you're going to ask the question, make sure it's data that you're going to actually act upon. Because I feel if you're going to somehow tailor your presentation and make a couple versions, which I've done for user groups because I wasn't sure what the level of interest or the level of knowledge of the topic that I was talking about was, then you can kind of immediately pivot based on that. And I think everybody appreciates when they took the time to raise their hand that you're actually curating the content for that. Ella Marks:
There absolutely needs to be a payoff. If you're someone that's not as comfortable giving presentations, starting with the question at the very beginning and trying to weave that throughout can feel intimidating. And what I would recommend instead is to pick a moment within your content where you can do exactly Mike, what you just said. Which is, you have a slide that hits on, maybe it's a new feature or a different topic. Instead of asking a super broad question that you then need to weave into your story for the rest of your presentation. You can tailor your question to exactly what you're talking about on the slide.
And that can help you build that muscle to incorporate who's in the room and that audience into your talk track without having to start with that big broad question at the beginning. We have to start somewhere. And I think a great place to learn that skill is really starting with something small, a specific slide or a specific product, and learning from there how to incorporate the questions that you're asking to a more broader scale to cover a whole presentation. Mike Gerholdt:
So sticking on the theme of building content, there's a lot of mechanics to a presentation, but building the content. Depending on the topic you're choosing, it can feel like you're boiling the ocean. "I have all this to show, and I'm on slide 68 already. I can't possibly show "What are some of the techniques that you use to really boil down what you're presenting given sometimes the restricted timeline that you have? Ella Marks:
First, before I go into tips, I just want to reiterate that phrase, don't boil the ocean. That is the number one thing that literally... Mike Gerholdt:
Literally don't. If you have a big death ray, please don't boil the ocean. Ella Marks:
Please don't boil the ocean. Global warming, we don't need that. But I think with presentations, it's super important because you usually have limited time to communicate whatever it is in your presentation you're going to communicate. That's not even considering the fact that people's attention spans are short. So you need to do that work to figure out what are your key points. And one of the things that I really like to do is I create a document and I will just start an outline. I'll start typing out what I think the points are in the story that I need to cover.
I'll include any important examples, include a CTA, kind of those key pieces of a presentation, but I'm not actually putting it together yet. I'm just making a huge list of everything I think might be included. And then from there, I go in and I kind of prioritize. So that list is usually way longer than what the presentation ends up being or has way more information, but it is a starting point. And that's the starting point that I kind of use to say, "Okay, I'm identifying that I'm seeing a couple common themes in what I've written out here. How can I communicate those most effectively?"
And what I like about the list is that if you're doing it... Whatever platform that you're using, a Google Doc, a Quip Doc, whatever, it's really easy to copy and paste and move around the order as well to think about not just, "What am I including, but how am I going to start creating this story?" And that gives you kind of a framework to use moving forward. Mike Gerholdt:
I would agree. So you mentioned story, and I think a big part of storytelling is the visual element. How do you balance just not putting paragraphs of text up on the slides and that imagery? Ella Marks:
It's a really good question, and it's something that I ask myself all the time. Because I'm not a designer, I do not consider myself to be good at graphic design. And so when I build a presentation, it can feel really intimidating to think about what are the visuals that I need to create? And there's a technique that I learned at Salesforce that I was taught called blue boxing, and that's really what I use. And the way that it works is once I've gotten to that state, I have my outline, I kind of know what I'm going to put on slides. Instead of jumping right to what is my final slide going to look like, here is the exact paragraphs, here's the exact talk track, here's the exact visual.
I kind of take a step back from that and use blue boxes, literal blue boxes on a slide to map out what I think it could look like and how I think the content on the slide can reinforce what it is that I'm going to say. So if I know that I'm going to put together a slide that has some tips, for example. I might put together a placement of where those tips might go and think, "Oh, there could be a supporting image for this." What I don't do is I don't dive in and find that image right away. I really take that step of thinking through, "Okay, what is a visual that can support what I'm saying?" And I go through the whole deck like that first and then come back to really hone in on what the message is on that particular slide and pull in those core visuals.
But taking that step to do that kind of blue boxing framework really helps you identify how the story is going to flow and how those visuals are going to support you. Because I will say there are times when you're going to want more text on a slide than others, and so you want to have a good balance of that. You don't want folks to also just only be reading the content on your slides while you're speaking to them. And so if you take that kind of step to build it out first, you'll have a better idea of what the mix of your presentation is going to look like, how you might use different slide formats to engage people, because we know people have short attention spans, so you want to make sure that we're kind of switching things up.
We're providing different visuals every few minutes, and I think using design is a very powerful tool to help you do that. Mike Gerholdt:
I would agree. I would agree. Plus pacing, when you're thinking that through, you mentioned people have short attention spans, so keeping the slides moving also helps keep people's attention as well. I think often when I'm reviewing decks or I'm watching presentations at events, and these are outside of Salesforce too, sometimes people have a hard time closing their presentation. I feel like it's either one, they kind of fade off into the distance. It's like an eighties' movie where they just walk off into the beach into the sunset and we never hear from them again. Or it's like a steel door slamming shut where it's like, "Okay, so that's this. And if you have any questions, thanks." Bam.
And the presentation's done. What's your approach for the closure because I feel like the closure is the most important part? Ella Marks:
I'd agree that if you don't have people with you at the end, I think you've really missed a big opportunity when it comes to creating presentations. The way that I would think about it is throughout your entire presentation, as you're putting together that outline. There are three things that you can think about that you want people to take away, how you want them to feel, what you want them to think and how you want them to act. And I would say that's not just your final slide or the thing that you leave the audience with. That should be at the core of why you're putting that presentation together.
I think the final slide in that CTA is incredibly important, but I also think that as someone in the audience who doesn't know anything about your presentation going into it, I think that they should know where you're going throughout the presentation. And that's really how you make whatever it is you share, whatever your CTA is super impactful. So I'll give you an example of that. If you're going to do an amazing presentation, let's say it's on new release features and you're going into great depth about... We have the spring 24 release right now, I know that's top of mind for a lot of admins.
If you go through great content throughout, at the end, to your point, if you don't leave folks with something to do next, they start to question what the purpose was of you sharing all that information. And as a speaker, that is the opposite of what you want. You want to be able to say, "I'm doing this presentation to help you prepare for the release, and I'm going to do that by showing you features and leaving you with either a resource or an approach or tips for you to take and go do this at your own companies or deliver your own presentation."
And I think where sometimes people fall flat is they think, "Great, I'll throw a CTA in my presentation at the end, and then everybody will go read my blog post or they'll all go follow me on various social media networks." And unfortunately, if you're not working in the purpose of what that CTA is throughout, it's not going to have that same impact. So you need it to close strong, but it shouldn't be an afterthought. Everything in your presentation should in essence be pointing towards your end goal, whatever you want to leave the audience with. Mike Gerholdt:
I've many a times seen an entire slide devoted to resources and thought to myself, "I don't know where to start." There's a lot of resources, but a library is a resource too, and it's full of books, but I don't know where to start. [inaudible 00:16:32] Ella Marks:
It's so common. Well, and that's the thing, it's kind of a double-edged sword, right? Because a lot of times there's so many resources because there are so many good resources out there, and that's awesome. But one thing to keep in mind when you're putting together a presentation is you're presenting because you have expertise or you have a message to share. And so really rely on that. Use that to say, "Okay, great. I know there are tons of resources." But actually share your recommendation. What is the number one thing that you would do. That's something that you as a presenter bring that no one else can that's unique to you, what that next step is.
We know that where most presentations, if you put 10 resources, people usually don't look at all 10. I hate to say it, but they probably won't look at more than one anyway, so focus on that one thing. And you really use your credibility that you've built with your audience to drive towards something more specific than a laundry list of things that people can do or read or engage with. Mike Gerholdt:
A lot of this content creation focused around a solo presenter, but I think it carries over if you're presenting with someone else. And I see this a lot at our events, even user groups. It's a lot easier. And myself included, the first time I presented at Dreamforce, I had a co-presenter. It's a lot easier to feel like more people carrying the weight of a presentation. What advice or what best practices do you have when you're pairing up with somebody to present on how you divide up content and how the two of you interact during the presentation? Ella Marks:
The first thing that I would do if I was presenting with someone else is have a meeting, get together with them, chat with them. I'm someone that prefers a meeting. I know some folks like to communicate on Slack or other formats, but I just love to chat with someone about this because you are going to be presenting and speaking. And to me, that's the best way to get a sense of that person's presentation style. And in that conversation, we might divide, if we're building content together, we might talk about our own expertise and where we feel like we can add the most value to the story and divide up the content that we work on and the slides and who's speaking based on what we think our strengths are.
And then making sure that we're having a really open conversation about that. And I think one thing that you can do that when you divide a presentation, a lot of times what you see is, "Okay, Mike and I are presenting together. I'll take one slide, Mike, you take the next one, then we'll go back and forth." And sometimes that doesn't feel super. It feels a little disjointed when you haven't had the chance to actually talk through your content and rehearse. Rehearsing is so important for any presentation, but if you have more than one person, it is absolutely critical because that's how you're going to feel out how that story is going to come together.
And what you may find is, "Yeah, I'm presenting with Mike, and Mike has a ton of expertise in this one area, but I have something to add there too." And actually switching up who's speaking on a particular slide that can reengage the audience. That's another tool that we have in our toolkits to make sure that people are staying with us throughout our presentation. And all that's going to come down to whether or not you've communicated all of these things with your co-presenter. Making sure that you guys are connected every step of the way is I think the best way to make a successful presentation with a partner or with the group, whoever it is. Mike Gerholdt:
I would agree. And I feel to that point of, I've seen decks and presentations where it's every other slide. Change it up where it makes it most relevant because there is a little bit with the audience of context switching going on where they're trying to understand who's speaking and it should be relevant if the person's speaking and not just, "Oh, well, that means if we go every other one, I'm on this slide and I don't know anything about this." It can also help you regroup content that you're putting together. Ella Marks:
Absolutely. And there's a lot of different ways that you can do this, but I really think that having that conversation with your co-presenter or co-presenters is going to be the best way to highlight how can you use your collective energy to get your message across in the best way possible? Mike Gerholdt:
Right. Stage presence or stagecraft, even in small presentations where boardrooms I think are super important. How do you prepare for that? What are some of the things that you've gone through as you've kind of honed your ability as you were getting ready for a Dreamforce keynote to kind of make sure that your presence was there and it was adding to what the content you were presenting? Ella Marks:
There are definitely a few things I do before every presentation, but I think a lot of it for me personally comes down to some important self-talk and pump up for a presentation. When you're chosen to present at an event or you've submitted something to a community conference, sometimes you need to remind yourself the day of, you get a little bit nervous, you might be scared to present. You were chosen for this, and you have knowledge and expertise to share. And going back for me and giving myself that confidence is probably the most important step that I take before I present anything. I always have to remind myself there's a reason I'm here.
I have valuable knowledge to share. I'll reset on whatever the topic or the goal is of the presentation. And then my hidden trick, I would say. I was like, "I don't know where I was going with that sneaky trick." I guess. Sneaky trick, my trick or treat tip, which is not uncommon at all, is I love a pump up song. I just love something to help, I don't know, make me feel energized and excited because I know that if I go into a presentation not pumped up, it's going to be really hard for people to listen. A lot of times we present... Internally, we present in a meeting and there's a lot of other people presenting or we're in a lot of meetings that day, or at Dreamforce, people attend a lot of sessions.
That's a lot of listening. And if you come out there with flat energy and aren't excited to be there and excited to get going, it shows and it makes it a lot harder for people to actually listen and absorb the content. And so going in pumping myself up is actually something that when I don't do it, I feel like I can tell in the presentation that my energy is not there, that I'm not communicating what I could in the best way possible. Mike Gerholdt:
You know I have to ask what your pump up song is, right? Ella Marks:
I know. It changes. A lot of my pump up songs are Lizzo though. I have to say Lizzo. I do love Taylor Swift as well, but I just... Lizzo, the number one song for me last year was Truth Hurts. There's some lyrics in there that I can't repeat on the podcast, but if you listen to the song, I think... Mike Gerholdt:
My pump up song... Ella Marks:
I think you'll know. Mike Gerholdt:
A lot of lyrics I can't repeat on the podcast. Ella Marks:
If you do listen, I think you'll know exactly what part of the song I'm referring to where I walk out and I'm like, "Aha, let's go. Let's get into it." Mike Gerholdt:
So if you see people at community events or at Salesforce events, walk up to the stage with their AirPods in, it's probably a pump up song that they're listening to. I can't blame them. If you were to boil down and think of maybe, I don't know... Let's choose five because five's a good number to remember. What are five things that you always try to include that you really look for in like, "Wow, that presentation knocked it out of the park?" Ella Marks:
That's a good question. As a reviewer of a lot of content, I'm just trying to think the things that have absolutely wowed me. Well definitely first, when it comes to presenting a good title to me, I'm immediately locked in. If there's a description associated with it like it would be for an event or maybe even a calendar invite. That to me is a sign of a good presentation. I know what I'm going to see. I'm excited for that content and I'm kind of hopeful to dive in. The second is probably... This is tough. There's just so many different ways to present, but I think looking for people that engage with the audience.
So either doing what we talked about before, getting that post-check of who's in the room or have some sort of engaging component to their presentation. That for me, because my attention span is very short, tends to be a very effective way to get my attention. And I enjoy presentations that have that. I think when people also set context by sharing their own expertise, we didn't talk about it in this conversation, but I think one important thing that you really need to do when you present is make sure that you highlight who you are. You need to have an introduction that is, "Here's who I am, here's why I'm here." And that builds credibility.
So when I hear something or see a presentation that I know the person is credible, that usually also is an indicator to me that it's a great presentation. Mike, I feel like you wanted five quick tips, and I'm giving you a lot longer than that. Mike Gerholdt:
I don't know. I just picked five out of the air because it sounds good. It doesn't have to be five. Ella Marks:
I also can't count, so I don't know what I'm on, but I'll say... Mike Gerholdt:
Well, as a good host, you'd think I was paying attention and counting. Ella Marks:
This is where I would use a visual to reinforce what I'm saying and remind me. If I was presenting this, I would put together a slide and I would have probably five horizontal bubbles on the slide and a few words about each, and that would help me stay on track. And at the end, I would have a super effective CTA, which I think would be one of the things that I look out for. If I know what... If I'm feeling inspired or motivated, or even just know the next steps I have to take after a presentation. That's how I know that it was good and it was effective.
And then I think my final thing would be, and this may seem counterintuitive, but if I have questions, a lot of times that's a sign to me that the content was really interesting. I think if I want to approach a speaker after their presentation and want to learn more and want to continue the conversation. I have follow-ups or things like that, that's a sign that they did a really good job in engaging me. It could sometimes be a sign that they didn't share the right information. So I think you have to be careful there, but wanting to connect with the presenter, wanting to learn a little bit more and asking a question, I think is engaging in itself. So that to me is a good sign that it was a good presentation as well. Mike Gerholdt:
I go back and forth with questions, but I see your point. I think for me, I mean if I was to boil it to one thing. I don't have a word, but the comfort ability that the presenter has with the content. I really love it when somebody, it doesn't feel like their first time going through the content. And it so bugs me when I see somebody walk through and they click and goes to the slide and it surprises them. You're like, "Really? Okay." I really like it when somebody knows something and the slides are almost happening in the background and they're really paying attention to the audience. That to me, really gets me. And that comes with rehearsals, it comes with knowing the content, everything that you said previously. Ella Marks:
Absolutely. I think a lot of us think, especially people who give presentations all the time, we're like, "Oh, we can win this. It'll be fine. I know the content." But the reality is people can tell when you have not done the preparation necessary for a particular presentation. And so I think it is a great sign of a good presentation and good content when someone isn't overly relying on their visuals or words on the slide to tell the story.
It's actually a story that they're telling where the visuals are supporting. It's not at the center of everything that they're doing. It's really more of a show that you're watching. Mike Gerholdt:
I often compare presenting to athletes. Some of the greatest athletes that we've had in baseball or basketball or whatever sport you watch, they practice and there's a reason for that. They don't just show up and naturally wing it. Derek Jeter didn't naturally winged being good. It's repetition and it's doing and becoming comfortable with the moment. So it's great stuff. Thank you, Ella for coming on the pod and sharing. This is very relevant for where we are right now. Not only heading into TDX, but heading into world tour. And I feel like community group season, not to mention just budget presenting. I want more things in Salesforce season to my executives and all kinds of presentation times. Ella Marks:
This is definitely super timely. So thanks so much, Mike, for having me. Mike Gerholdt:
So it was a great discussion with Ella. I feel like we only scratched the surface. We talked about content creation and also stagecraft. I know there's so much more. I could probably do two or three more episodes with Ella. So if you enjoyed this episode and you've got some content ideas that you'd like to have her speak on, ping us, let us know. I'd love to have her back on to talk more about content and the art of presenting. Now, I need you to do one thing, the art of presenting, which is press share on this episode. So if you're listening to it on iTunes, it's super easy. You just tap the dots and click share episode and you can post it to social.
Maybe you got a friend that's getting ready for a big user group presentation or they're going to do a presentation to their company. This would help them 20, 30 minutes, they'd go out, walk the dog, "Hey, come back. I got a whole bunch of knowledge about how I'm going to get my presentation together." And of course, we have way more resources for admins at admin.salesforce.com, including a transcript of the show. Now, if you got more interesting things, questions, comments, concerns, you can go to the Admin Trailblazer group in the Trailblazer community. Of course, the link is in the show notes. And with that, until next week, I'll see you in the cloud.
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Thu, 15 February 2024
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Christina Nava, Director of Salesforce Strategy at Gaggle. Join us as we chat about making flows more manageable with subflows. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Christina Nava. Creating flows to save time on business processes In the biz, Christina is what we call a long-time listener, first-time caller. She’s been listening to the podcast since 2014, back when I was known as the ButtonClick Admin. And while I’d love to toot my own horn, Christina has come a long way since learning Salesforce from a podcast. She’s an 8x Salesforce Certified Professional, an experienced software consultant, and she recently appeared on Automate This! to talk about how she uses subflows. At Gaggle, Christina uses Salesforce to help her users match patients with mental healthcare providers. It’s a tricky process because both groups have different characteristics, like gender, specialty, and availability, that need to match up. She uses screen flows to make this process much quicker, but it’s her subflows that make all of this possible. How to simplify flows with subflows When she’s building a flow, Christina is always on the hunt for how she can simplify things for herself with subflows. One major tell is if she finds herself rebuilding a process she’s already written. That’s when she knows she might need to write a subflow. That gives her to option to call it in multiple flows, and simplifies things if she needs to make changes. Christina gives the example of how she needs to update the same records in three different scenarios: if they get new information, at certain regular intervals, and if some other piece of information changes. To do this, she calls one subflow in three different ways. If it needs to happen immediately, there’s a screen flow. But there’s also a record trigger flow and a scheduled trigger flow to handle the other scenarios. All three are super simple, they just each call the same subflow a different way. Using more subflows doesn’t make a difference to your users in terms of what they see, but it’s cleaner and easier for you. Think of it as a gift to yourself. Christina’s process for gathering requirements The key to structuring flows and subflows well is to be thorough when you’re gathering requirements. Christina’s process begins by sitting down with a user and asking them to show her what they do. Any time they do something, she asks them why they did it. Why did they set that filter? Why did that provider not work? Why did they pull up that provider instead? The next step is to see if she can do the process herself. If she can’t do what they did, she wants to figure out why that is. The goal is to be able to write instructions for how to do the process as if they’re for someone who has never worked at her company before. That’s when you know you’ll be able to write a good flow. There’s a bunch more that Christina shares in this episode about why she uses one master flow per object, how she debugs, and her tips for naming conventions, so be sure to take a listen. And if you haven’t caught up yet, check out her episode with Jennifer Lee on Automate This! Podcast swag Learn more Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt:
This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we are talking with Christina Nava, who is an 8 time Salesforce certified professional, a ton of experience in software consulting, and hey, she started listening to the podcast back when I began the podcast in 2014. So talk about full circle from learning Salesforce by listening to the podcast to being on the podcast to teach us more about flows and sub flows. She was recently on an Automate This live with Jennifer Lee.
So if you're listening to this, be sure to check out the call notes and notice below the link to watch that on YouTube because that's super cool. Now, before we get into the episode, I just want you to do one thing and that's make sure you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, whether it's Spotify or iTunes or iHeartRadio. That way when a new episode drops like this one, which is amazing, it's downloaded right to your phone. So when you hop in your car or you jump in the transportation to get to work or you walk your dog, all you got to do is press play. So really cool there, but let's talk about flows and sub flows with Christina on the podcast.
So Christina, welcome to the podcast. Christina Nava:
Thank you. I'm really happy to be on here. Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah, well, if everybody is diligently following all of the awesome admin stuff that we're putting out, they would've watched Automate This yesterday and saw some of the amazing flow stuff that you were doing there. But before we get into that, let's learn a little bit about you. So how did you get started with Salesforce? Christina Nava:
So I'll say that I'm probably within the vast majority of people and I got started because I was an also admin or an accidental admin. Back in 2014, I became the director of tech support for a SaaS company and it's like, "Hey, what's this thing called Salesforce that we've been using for our support team?" And so I started looking into it and I'm like, "This is great." Of course, this was before Trailhead, so trying to learn was fun. And fun little tidbit is one way I started learning is I listened to all the different podcasts I could and one of them was the ButtonClick Admin. And so thank you for helping me learn Salesforce in the beginning. So I started listening and started learning the terminology, Googling and just playing. And so that's how I got into it. Then I did that on and off for about five years, and then in 2019 I made the leap and I made Salesforce my full-time career. And so I've been doing it full-time since then. Mike Gerholdt:
Wow. Well you're more than welcome and I'm glad to have somebody full circle come on the podcast from listening all the way to now you're teaching. Christina Nava:
It's exciting. Mike Gerholdt:
Eventually in the next 20 minutes or so, no pressure. Christina Nava:
No pressure. Mike Gerholdt:
So I teased out with Automate This, which is really cool YouTube series that Jennifer Lee does and she live-streamed it yesterday. You can probably watch it on our YouTube channel. And you were on there and you were talking about flows and specifically the thing that I kind of want to dive into a little bit of sub flows. But if people haven't watched it, I don't want them to feel left out about what we're going to talk about. Can you summarize a little bit of what you talked about on Automate This yesterday? Christina Nava:
Yeah, of course. So I built this flow for Gaggle. Here at Gaggle, one of the things we do is we help provide therapy and coaching for students. So the way we do that is when a student comes to us needing services, we match them with a provider. Well, the client has a lot of requirements including why they're being referred, what times of day they can meet, if they want to, male or female providers, lots of different criteria. And then on the other side of it, we have providers who have their own criteria. When they can provide services, their areas of specialty, obviously if they're male or female, what languages they speak, all of it.
So when we first started and we had a client come in, a student come in, we needed to match them. It could take five to 10 minutes to find the best match for them. And you can imagine we're getting 5, 10, 15 students a day. That was taking a lot of time. So I decided to create a screen flow that we can run from the student record that would give our internal team a list of providers that were the best match and then they can just click on the button, automatically assigns them, good to go. Ended up saving our internal team 5 to 10 hours a week. Mike Gerholdt:
Wow. And the match was done based on criteria that you put in, right? Christina Nava:
Yes, exactly. Mike Gerholdt:
Okay. I mean, I asked because everything's AI now. Christina Nava:
That's actually funny you asked because I was on Automate This previously and the flow I did for that one was how their providers actually add their criteria in. Mike Gerholdt:
Oh, okay. Christina Nava:
So had a flow for that as well. Mike Gerholdt:
This flow is rockstar flow. But God, man, I'm thinking back to the days I was on the platform and I wish I so could have used this for about a million other things. One part that you talked about is creating a sub flow, and I'm not good at creating flows like Jennifer Lee is, which is hard to be on team with her because it's like being on, I don't know, the Olympic team and you're like, "Oh, well I just have to go against this gold world-class Olympian every time I build a flow."
But one thing that I am really trying to wrap my head around more is I don't have to create the entire flow every single time. I can reuse components of that and that being sub flows, and then when I do so then it's one place to update things as opposed to, "Oh, we changed this email template, now I got to go into these 20 different flows and update it with this new email template." Christina Nava:
Exactly. Mike Gerholdt:
Help me understand how you come about creating some of your sub flows. Christina Nava:
So I would like to say that I'm the kind of person who listens to my users, sits down, draws it all out and knows exactly what they're going to build when they sit down a flow builder. Mike Gerholdt:
You're not perfect? Come on. Christina Nava:
I'm not, don't tell the people I work with. Mike Gerholdt:
Don't listen. We'll cut that part out. Christina Nava:
Exactly. So a lot of times I'm getting in and I'm building a flow and I'll find myself building the exact same loop and I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait. Why am I duplicating my effort here?" So for me, I build a sub flow in a couple of different instances. One is when again, as I just said, I'm in the same flow and I just rebuilt the same code. That's a waste. Let's take that out and make it a sub flow.
There are other times when I do sit down and I'm doing my design, I'm thinking in my head and I'm realizing, "I need to actually call this multiple ways." And so as you all know, we have screen flows, we have record triggered flows, we have scheduled triggered flows. I actually have one sub flow that I call three different ways. So for this one, what I'm doing is I'm populating the opportunity team members and I need to do it at specific times.
So I will have, well, if I need to do it immediately on the fly, obviously I have a screen flow, we click a button, good to go. There are other times when I need to do it on a record triggered flow when certain criteria happens. So because I don't want to have to reduplicate my effort, what I'm doing for both of those is with my record trigger flow, my entry criteria, I just start it, I immediately call a sub flow. That is all I'm doing in this flow is I'm calling a sub flow. With screen flow, exact same thing. I am, just click a button, call my sub flow. And then I'm doing the same thing with my scheduled triggered flow as well. So I have three different flows that all they do is call one sub flow and I loved that. Mike Gerholdt:
So how much of that sub flow, I guess are you setting criteria way before that so that sub flow kind of knows what it's adding those team members to? How complex is that sub flow? Is it very simple, I'm guessing? Christina Nava:
So on a scale of say one to five, it's probably at a one, maybe 1.5. It's a fairly simple flow. All I'm doing is I'm sending it the record ID of the opportunity and then it's doing all of the different decisions inside of it. Mike Gerholdt:
No, I like that. I always feel like use cases that are easy to identify looking back. You probably were on what your third or fourth flow and you're like, "I need to rebuild this." Right? Christina Nava:
About that. I think I was in probably my third or fourth iteration of the first one. And realized, "Wait, wait a minute. I need to give them the ability to actually do this manually as well. Hold on. I don't want to recreate this whole thing. I'll do it in the sub flow." It's kind of had that light bulb moment popped up. Mike Gerholdt:
So then kind of walking people through this, I'm assuming at this point I would be thinking, "Oh, I could really go through and kind of do a flow audit and look at some of the stuff that I've built and see if there aren't parts that are replaceable." Have you done something like that? And what would be your process for looking at all of your flows and then finding sub flows that you could build? Christina Nava:
Honestly, that's on my to-do list. Mike Gerholdt:
Oh, is it? 2024, here we come. Christina Nava:
With the new flow stuff that's come out, a couple of things with the whole new validation that's coming out, well tonight for me and some stuff that came out last year, which was when you send an email actually being able to attach it to a record. That's on my list of going through and updating all my flows, just haven't gotten down to it. So as of right now, the way I handle it is if I'm going into a flow and modifying it anyway, I'm making those updates at the same time. Mike Gerholdt:
So it's kind of an as needed, but not house cleaning, shut everything down and redo all our flows kind of thing. Christina Nava:
Exactly. Because your end users don't see these changes for the most part, especially with the sub flows. What you're doing is you're making things a little bit faster, but you're mainly making things cleaner and easier for you. So because we all live in the admin world and our users come first, what's easier for us gets pushed down on the bottom of the list. Mike Gerholdt:
Get cobbler's shoes. Right. Christina Nava:
Exactly. Mike Gerholdt:
I hear you. Okay, so this was a thing that Jennifer has taught me, and I'm horrible at this, but do you have a naming convention or do you have a way that you always name your sub flows? Christina Nava:
I do have a naming convention. Mike Gerholdt:
Please share. Please share. Christina Nava:
So it goes with the object name first. And by the way, I stole this from... See if I knew you were going to ask this question, I would have the name. Mike Gerholdt:
I mean everybody steals stuff. So you copied it. Christina Nava:
I'm sorry, I copied this because it was amazing. So the first word is the object name. Then it's dash and then either SF for screen flow, RTF for record trigger flow or STF for schedule triggered flow. Then dash. And then if it's for a record triggered flow, you'll have new or new and update and then after or before. And then if it is a master flow, because I am a big believer in having one flow for one object, if you can, I'll have the word master. If not, it'll be dash what it's for, for example, account RTF new and update after master. I can immediately look and know just from the name what this is going to be for and how it's called. Mike Gerholdt:
I love all of that. That needs to be on T-shirt. Christina Nava:
So when I have someone new I'm training, I'm like, "Can you rename your flow for me?" Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah, because it doesn't work. Christina Nava:
Exactly. Mike Gerholdt:
I'm going to only slightly deviate. We're going to take a quick exit off the highway. Because you brought up a subject that I have been asked a lot and you said, "I like to have one master flow per object." Can you explain that? Because I've been asked many times, "Should I have one that does everything? Should I have 20, should I have five, should I have three?" And I say yes to all of those answers because yes is correct, but I would love for you to take me into your world of how you manage that one master flow and if there's times that you've ever had to deviate from it. Christina Nava:
Okay, so that is a really good question. I still personally Google that about once every two to three months. "Am I doing this the right way?" Because everybody does have their own opinion. So for me personally, I have a lot of flows. I'm a flow addict. I love flows. If I could sit and do flows eight hours a day, I think I'd be the happiest camper imaginable.
So that being said, I have a lot of flows in my orgs. And once you get up to 50, 100, 150 flows, it's hard to find what you're looking for. So that almost is, I don't know, maybe a third of the reason why I have one flow where I can just because one place to go to. And of course the old way when I started with process builder and people are thinking, "The old way? I did workflows." Mike Gerholdt:
I know. Christina Nava:
I can hear that. Mike Gerholdt:
I did workflows. Christina Nava:
I know. But with process builder, it was definitely one per object because that was the only way you could control the order of things. Well with flows, now you can actually control the order and how they're called, but I got in the habit of that one master, but it's so much easier for me to pull up this one flow and even if it's fairly large, which by the way another reason to use sub flows is to actually pull code out and make your master flow cleaner. So you're looking at less. So side note there, we took a deviation to the deviation. Mike Gerholdt:
It's okay. Christina Nava:
Thank you. Mike Gerholdt:
Sometimes you have to pull around back of the truck stop. Christina Nava:
Exactly. So I like being able to pull up this master flow and it's like reminding me, "Oh yeah, this is everything that happens when an account is updated." So that's another reason I like to use one master flow, but there are plenty of times when I have more than one flow, even more than one record trigger flow. So for example, for my cases, I have one that has to do with sending pending emails. So when a case is put in pending, I send an email after one day, three days, seven days and fourteen days. Well I'm obviously not going to have that in my master flow. So I have one flow that just handles kind of those scheduled things after a while just to kind of keep my flows cleaner and it's easier to look at and I have to change that flow a little more often than I have to change others. That was a long answer. Mike Gerholdt:
No, it's okay. I was listening and digesting. I'm still just feeling the like here we go, one master flow per object situation. So I'm not saying it's wrong, because you can totally do it and you do. It's just a lot of testing, I feel. Christina Nava:
It is. It's a lot of testing. Mike Gerholdt:
One thing to get us back on the highway. Christina Nava:
Darn it. Mike Gerholdt:
Well, we stopped, we had some beef jerky, we looked at the map, we know where we're at and you're like, "Oh look, there's a campground off to the side." Christina Nava:
I got some Doritos, I needed my Doritos. Mike Gerholdt:
There's always a campground by rest stops. And you're like, "Whoever camps there, why would you want to?" I don't know. I would love to know. So taking requirements for screen flows and sitting and walking through and I'm looking at yours, which was the decision loop of helping pair those students up faster, right? That's the goal, right? Because 15 minutes to pair somebody up, you can obviously do the math and like, "Well here's how many people we need staffed 24 hours a day in order to handle this, right?"
What was the level of requirements gathering and how detailed did you have to be when you were building that flow? Because I've worked through decisioning elements before with people and there's in their head they expect how it should work and then there's actually how it works and actually what they told you. I'm curious, what was your requirements gathering like? Christina Nava:
I do want to say another really quick side note on this flow. What I showed in the demo and what you see in the blog post is maybe about a quarter of the size of my real flow. If I had the whole thing, it would've been way too big. And so just keeping that in mind, there were a lot of, not necessarily requirements I needed to get for my end user, but a lot of fields that we needed to match up. So going back to the requirements gathering, obviously you have this business process review, you sit down with your end users and you're like, "First thing is show me what you do." And so you watch them pull up this student and pull up all their providers and you start watching them match.
And that's when it's like, "Okay, why did you set that filter? Why did you set that filter? Why did that provider not work? Why did you pull this one in?" It's a whole lot of why questions. And so once you get to that, what I kind of like to do afterwards, it's like, "All right, let me reproduce what you did." And so I am now pulling up the student and using what they showed me trying to find a matching provider and I can't find one. Well, how come I couldn't find one? "Oh, we forgot to tell you this." Or I pulled up five instead of, and these four wouldn't match. Well, how come they wouldn't work? "Oh, we forgot."
So one of the things I love to tell people is if you can write instructions for someone who has never worked at your company before and it is step one, go here and pull up this record. Step two, click this, and if you can literally give me step-by-step instructions, and if step five is not use your gut, then I can create a flow for you. But you have to be able to give me those steps. Either you give them to me or I develop them working with you, but we have to be able to know exactly what to do at every step in the flow. Mike Gerholdt:
That makes sense. I also think it's funny just, "I just go with my gut." Christina Nava:
You'd be surprised at how many times I hear that from people. Mike Gerholdt:
No, I know. I had a contract routing process that I had to do once that was just kind of like, and then I get it down to four or five and I go with this one and why? Well, it was Wednesday? And that one looked good. Awesome. Let me work that into criteria.
So I guess thinking through this with screen flows and with this kind of decisioning element, did you ever create, for lack of a better term, like a backdoor of a, "I can't find anything" and run so that if somebody, because I mean you deployed this to, I don't know how many users and if they run into an issue, they can't just raise their hand and you come running and then that way it would also give you a chance to look at the decisioning criteria that led there to be, "Oh, well it looks like we need to append this flow." Do you have something like that? Christina Nava:
No, actually I don't. That'd be a good idea. I'm going to steal that. What it is just if it finds no matches, it pops up a screen saying we couldn't find any. And it's usually because they're just truly isn't a provider that matches those exact requirements and that is when they go use their gut. But what do you mean I can't just come running when they snap their fingers? Is that actually something I cannot do? Mike Gerholdt:
Well, just saying there's probably an occasion where maybe you're sitting recording a podcast and then a user can't- Christina Nava:
Good point. Mike Gerholdt:
Get your attention right away. No, I just happened to think through it as I was looking at what you were building and also thinking through some of the processes I had built where it's, "No, we actually, it's not that I didn't gather all of the requirements, it's that we actually just found a new outlier to a process." And you try to hit the 98 percentile of stuff. But I happen to think because then you'd want to capture stuff like that, especially in a screen flow. Christina Nava:
Yeah, that's a good point. I probably do need to make more of a process as to why could we not find a match with this? Maybe these providers got to 98%, but there was that one that we couldn't find a match on. Mike Gerholdt:
You mentioned emails in a few of the flows that you've created, and I'm sure there's quite a few emails your flows send out. How do you manage that? I bring this up because I feel like it's always a requirement that admins take and then the four days after you deploy something, you immediately get, ironically an email or a knock at your door and be like, "My inbox is full." Well, criteria that you said for emailing you. Are there red flags or questions you bring up or alternatives to email that you offer? Christina Nava:
Absolutely. So we use four different kinds of notifications here. Obviously email is one of them. Another one is the bell notification, just popping that up. The third one would be Chatter, do a Chatter post, which also kind of does the bell notification and email at the same time, but that gives us a record on the record. You know what I'm trying to say. Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah, a receipt. Christina Nava:
Yeah, there we go. We can actually say that, "Hey, we did notify you." We can look back a year later and actually see all of that happening. So that's one I use quite a bit. And then the fourth one that we don't use a lot of, but we do somewhat is Slack notifications because we are a Slack shop as well. Mike Gerholdt:
Oh. How do you decide between those? Christina Nava:
I let the user decide. I basically say, "Hey, here are the fourth things we can do." There have been times I've pushed back on, "You're getting a lot of emails, are you sure this is what you want?" And I get told, "Yep, absolutely." Like, okay. Mike Gerholdt:
Me too. And I've been told that before. I just like, sometimes you sit down and you do that worst case scenario with people and you're like, "You know, there's 50 contracts that could come through and times two steps. That's a hundred emails I might send you in a day." Christina Nava:
And half the time I'll get, "Yep, because my inbox is my to-do list." I'm like, "Really"? Mike Gerholdt:
I know. Yeah. But to your point, when you or they get promoted, then that inbox now becomes a grave because now there's no to-do list and we got to pull that from somewhere. So I like the posting to Chatter or something as kind of a receipt for what needs to get done. I'll end on this one question, which is fairly simple. If a user is feeling intimidated with flow, where would you suggest they get started? Christina Nava:
So if they've never ever seen flows before, first place is obviously going to be Trailhead. Go through the trails, build your own. But if you have a little bit of experience, you've done that and you're in your own org and you need to build something, the first thing I'm going to say is write out the steps I talked about. Actually write down, "Go to the account record, then click on this field, edit" step by step exactly what you need to do and then go to flow and try to build it that way, and then build the bare minimum first. Pull up, do your GI account, do your debug, did it work? Then do your next step. Update your account. Do your debug, did it work?
Do step-by-step, debug it because if you try to build out 20 steps and then you debug it and then it fails, you're going to get very confused and you're going to get very frustrated and you might want to quit. If you do it piece by piece, not only can you debug smaller bits, but you're going to feel the satisfaction of the win each time it works and it's going to build your confidence. Mike Gerholdt:
No, I like that. That completely makes sense. I've certainly gotten not too deep into flows, but far enough that I wish I would've done the little bites at a time kind of situation and just testing to make sure it works. It also feels good. I mean, you don't have to sit for weeks building a flow and then pressing the button and being like, "huh." It feels good if you spend 10, 15 minutes and then you click something, it populates the field. You're like, "Yes." Christina Nava:
Exactly. Never forget the power of debugging. If this is a record triggered flow and you can't figure out what's going on because you can't put up a debug screen, write a debug to your description field. Create a temporary text field that you can write information to. Don't forget those little tricks when you're debugging. Mike Gerholdt:
Right? Oh, there's always a ton. Christina, thanks for coming by the podcast to help me understand sub flows and flows and decisioning. Christina Nava:
Absolutely. Very happy to be here. Mike Gerholdt:
I appreciate that. And we will link to the Automate This in the blog post below. Christina Nava:
Sounds great. Mike Gerholdt:
It was a great conversation with Christina. I had a lot of questions because I've been building some flows like you and I've been wanting to reuse things, and I really just need to know how people's heads work sometime, and she's really dialed in with some of the stuff that she's doing with flows and decisioning stuff. I think it's really cool.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you did, could you do me a favor? Real simple, could you share it with somebody? Now, if you're listening on iTunes, all you have to do is click on the three dots and click share episode. Then you can post it social, or you can text it to a friend. Maybe you've got a friend that's building a flow and you'd be like, "Hey, listen to Christina. She's got it going on. She can help you build things."
And of course, if you're looking for more great resources, your one stop for everything admin is admin.salesforce.com, including a transcript of the show. And be sure to join the Conversation Admin Trailblazer Group that is in the Trailblazer community. Link is over in the show notes. I know there's some flow questions in there. So until next week, we'll see you in the cloud.
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Thu, 8 February 2024
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Marissa Scalercio, VP of Sales Operations at Carnegie Learning. Join us as we chat about Prompt Builder, why it will be a game changer, and how her Salesforce Admin skills help her be a better sales leader. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marissa Scalercio. A Sales VP and a Salesforce Admin Marissa is the VP of Sales Operations at Carnegie Learning, an ed-tech company that was founded 26 years ago with a product created on AI. “That’s why I’m really excited to start including AI in our sales processes,” she says. Marissa is also a Salesforce Admin, which is why I was so excited to bring her on the pod. She’s not afraid to crack open her org and help build things for her team so she knows how it will actually work. She’s also involved in a pilot program for the new Prompt Builder feature and, of course, I wanted to hear all about it. What’s coming with Prompt Builder The pilot only gave access to a couple of features, but they demonstrated the power and potential of Prompt Builder in a big way. The first was the ability to create sales emails. It can instantly generate a sales email to your specifications, incorporating web pages for products and events, and personalizing it with CRM information. Even better, anyone else on your team can use that prompt to scale your work and generate as many emails as needed. The other thing Marissa and her team got to play with were field summaries. This feature can take all of the information on an object and summarize it. This is great for getting a new hire up to speed with their accounts, or to prep before a meeting with a client and check up on past action items or key bullet points. “Once I really got to learn and understand how to create a prompt, I just started thinking about how I’m going to implement this everywhere,” Marissa says. Prompting AI is a skill that everyone needs to practice, so take advantage of the free tools out there to learn the ins and outs. Prompt Builder is coming soon™, but you want to be ready to hit the ground running. How to talk to executives about new tools As a VP herself, Marissa has some practical advice for any admin who needs to persuade executives to add new tools. She urges you to make your case in terms of ROI. Have numbers ready for how much time you’ll save, for how many people, and how that translates into total dollars saved. There’s so much more in this episode about Marissa’s career path, what the future holds for AI in Salesforce, and what you can do to get ready, so be sure to take a listen. Podcast swag Learn more Admin Trailblazers Group Social Mike:
Prompt Builder is the first low-code, prompt management tool that allows you, Salesforce admins, to build, test, and fine tune trusted AI prompts within the Einstein Trust Layer, ground AI prompts with dynamic CRM data via merge fields and flow, and enable prompted actions across the Salesforce customer 360.
And today on The Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are talking with Marissa Scalercio, VP Sales Operations at Carnegie Learning, and she was part of the Prompt Builder pilot for customers, and she's a VP admin. She was in configuring prompts, testing out the pilot in her sandbox, doing all kinds of stuff that us Salesforce admins can't wait to get our hands on.
So we're going to talk to her about her experience in the Prompt Builder pilot, some of the stuff that she worked on. And I'm also going to dig into how she went from being in sales, sales operations, to VP to having an admin license like the admins at Carnegie Learning let her in, set up menu. She's configuring shoulder to shoulder with them, which I think is awesome.
Now before we get into that episode, I want to make sure you're following The Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. That way when an awesome new episode like this one drops on a Thursday, it's immediately on your phone. So all you got to do is press play when you wake up to go walk the dog or hit the gym or get on the bus to go to work. So with that, let's get to our fun conversation with Marissa. So Marissa, welcome to the podcast. Marissa Scalercio:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Mike:
Well, I'm excited to talk about our newest Coming Soon product that you've actually got your hands on, which is Prompt Builder. So before we get into that, because the tease to get everybody to listen, tell me a little bit about what you do and where you're at. Marissa Scalercio:
Of course. So I am the Vice President of Sales Operations at Carnegie Learning, and we are an EdTech company that actually was founded about 26 years ago with a product created on AI. So I'm really excited to be including AI in our sales processes and was really excited to be able to pilot Prompt Builder. Mike:
Yeah, and you are a VP that does admin work. Marissa Scalercio:
I am an accidental admin. As my colleagues will call me. I am very involved in how the sales team specifically, but really how everybody in our company works, how we can make things more efficient, and I really like to test things out and build them so I can see how it's actually going to work. So yeah, I'm an accidental admin. Mike:
Yeah, we need more of you, but we'll get into that in the second part because Prompt Builder... So Carnegie Learning built on AI, now you're excited to use some AI. What was some of the things that you were trying out with Prompt Builder? What were you doing? Marissa Scalercio:
Yeah, so the best part of Prompt Builder was that once I really got to learn and understand how to create a prompt, I just started thinking about how I'm going to implement this everywhere. But the two pieces of Prompt Builder that you could do in the pilot, the first one was create emails, sales emails specifically. You could tell it to include a webpage or include an event page, and it would include an email that is specific and grabs CRM information along with whatever information you provide it and builds this great email that would take me 10, 15 minutes at least to create and it probably wouldn't be as good. And it is that easy just to create that, have it ready to go, and it already takes in the information about the account and the person that you're delivering it to. Mike:
Now you created that prompt and then anybody could use it. So it was 10 or 15 minutes for you to write it. Marissa Scalercio:
Yes. Mike:
But if you have a hundred salespeople, that's 1,500 minutes of email writing time. Marissa Scalercio:
It's lot of time savings. Yes. Mike:
And that's if you're good at writing emails, which I'm not. Marissa Scalercio:
Exactly, and I mean these emails that came out were better than I can write them. Absolutely. And I started as a salesperson and just being able to click a button and it create an email that was better than I used to create was amazing. It is so exciting to actually come out... what comes out next month or a couple days. Mike:
A while. A forward-looking statement. Soon-ish or now. Maybe. That's what I always say. But so help me walk through this because what level of approval and kind of demos did you do? Because as an admin, I love to sit down, I configure stuff all day long and then I'm like boom, click, boom, it works, and then I run the flow twice. But then you unleash it on the users and they find, how did you make it do that? How would you turn your screen pink? I've had users do all kinds of stuff. What kind of process did you go through when you were starting to create some of these to be like, "No, no, no, people, this will generate stuff consistently and it's something we need to use." What was that rollout like? Marissa Scalercio:
So we haven't rolled it out to the teams yet. We had Prompt Builder in our sandbox, but I did experiment with several of our account executives where I would ask them for emails that they're typically writing. I would create a prompt for it and send them back what came out and they were thrilled. So they are really excited to implement this. Mike:
Okay. How do you feel... So I think prompt building, you go back five years ago for the rest of us, maybe not you guys. Prompt building's a new word, right? Marissa Scalercio:
Yeah. Mike:
Something we're just getting. I remember, this is a funny story. When we rolled out Chatter, I rolled it out internally at an organization and I had to explain hashtags as like it's the pound sign and my user base was super... It was up there in years and they go, "Well, it's the pound sign from the phone." And I was like, "Right." So if you were selling something to a sand and gravel company, you could put hashtag sand, which is like pound sand, and I thought it was really funny. Marissa Scalercio:
I remember having to use that. Mike:
Yeah. But Prompt Builder, this is a new term for us, too. How do you feel configuring working in Prompt Builder has made you a better prompt builder? Do you feel you use AI better now? Marissa Scalercio:
Yes. I think it made me a prompt builder. I did not know what I was doing prior to this pilot. I kind of just played around with several of the ChatGPT, but I really feel like you can add tone and you can kind of ask it to change the email. So if it's too long, it's too short. If you want to add something specific, I mean, it really helped me understand what... Well, start to understand what all it can do and the power behind it, which is just phenomenal. I mean, everything around being able to edit and change on the fly, it did take me a while to create my first prompt to get it right because I was testing all of those things. But then once you have it, you really can build the prompts themselves fast. Mike:
So knowing what you know now, when Prompt Builder rolls out for other admins, if you were to have a time machine, which I'm sure is just in the near future to be created at this point and go back and tell yourself, what would be some things that you're like, "Oh, I wish I'd gone back and done these three things first." Marissa Scalercio:
So how far are we going back? Are we going back to just the sandbox? Mike:
Yeah. I mean pre Prompt Builder days. Like, "I wish I would've got ready for Prompt Builder by..." Marissa Scalercio:
Yeah, honestly, I wish in general, I had used AI more to feel more comfortable with using it in a daily basis. I started using it last year, which already was behind the bandwagon, and I am already behind, and I can see how other people, even in my organization and other people outside of the organization are using it on a daily basis. I would tell myself to start learning and using AI every single day years ago. It is just so much of an efficiency boosting tool that is going to change the way we all work. Mike:
Yeah, I mean, there are times when I watch a TikTok from somebody and it's like, wow, they have three paragraphs of a prompt that they're putting in the ChatGPT, and I'm like, "Draw an apple with a kitten next to it." Marissa Scalercio:
Exactly. So building the prompting out was hard. Mike:
I feel like I'm in kindergarten sometimes. Yeah. How did that... So in your pilot, I think it was pilot, right, of Prompt Builder, how much did you experiment with different templates or different prompts? You said you used it for sales emails, right? Marissa Scalercio:
Yep. So we did sales emails and we also did field summaries, which also was really exciting. Mike:
Oh, tell me about those. Marissa Scalercio:
The field summaries allow you to take all of the information on an object, an account, a case, a opportunity, and summarize it, which I'm just seeing a world of possibilities with that as an efficiency piece to our new hires, especially, whenever they come on and have to inherit territory and understand accounts. Whenever you're going into a meeting and understanding meeting notes that have taken place, any action items that were supposed to be accomplished, and even after a meeting or a phone call, understanding what can be grabbed out of there. So those field summaries are really going to be important along with all of the other AI tools that are coming out from Salesforce to really help with every salesperson and it's really going to be a true assistant to them. Mike:
Yeah. You think about it, how many times, I don't know if you reassigned territories, but that seemed to be like a quarterly thing for me. As an admin I get new sales territories that I got to put into Salesforce, and how much do you have to spend for those salespeople getting those different accounts up to speed? Marissa Scalercio:
Exactly. I mean, it is really hard to take over a territory or even just one customer and understand what has happened prior to you coming on board. Mike:
Yeah, a hundred percent. When you were building the prompts, you said you were pulling in data, which I think is what we expect from when we look at other AIs, but Prompt Builder in specific, when you're building those sales templates where actually you tell it what data to look for, is that correct? Or help give a sneak peek to some admins? Marissa Scalercio:
Yeah, you can add some grounding data into all of your prompts, which really I was experimenting with of course names, accounts, titles, states, and then adding in, of course outside information into that as well. But I imagine whenever it comes out, and I wasn't able to pilot this part of it, but I imagine that you can grab pretty much anything in Salesforce. You can throw it into a flow, so it can actually ask different questions based on what type of customer it is, and you really can get down to a specific email based on everything that's in your CRM plus any outside information you push into it. So is the world of possibilities are endless with it. Mike:
Yeah, no, that's good. That also speaks to data cleanliness because- Marissa Scalercio:
It does. Mike:
If the contact's first name spelled wrong and it's grabbing that field, it probably spelled it wrong because doing what it's told. Marissa Scalercio:
Exactly. So definitely data cleanliness is going to be a big issue. If it isn't clean, but hopefully we will figure it out as we go and hopefully our data's clean enough that it'll work. Mike:
Right. Well, if not, it will be. You start off by saying VP of sales operations. You're also an admin and you called yourself an accidental admin. So I would love, first of all, to have more VP admins on, but how did you kind of get into that role, but yet still stay so connected with the setup menu? Marissa Scalercio:
Oh, that's a good question. So we started with Salesforce, I want to say 2016 I believe. And honestly, I really like to learn new things and build new things. So I was asked... actually, I might have volunteered myself to be part of the sales side of implementing Salesforce. So for two years I just kind of embedded myself into those meetings and made sure that I was part of the conversation, part of the implementation. We then rolled out CPQ was the next one, and I was really part of that piece, but at the same time, I was still a salesperson actually at Carnegie Learning. So really trying to do my full-time job, which was a salesperson and this side job, which was really helping with the flow of how sales was going to be more efficient. So I started doing it kind of half-and-half until I really had to make the decision in 2018 and no questions asked. I was all on board with sales operations. So you can kind of say that Salesforce has kind of crafted where my career path went. Mike:
It's done that for a lot of people. Marissa Scalercio:
Mm-hmm. And since then, I mean, it's just been so exciting to learn, and I wasn't an admin at that point, but as I kept trying to learn new pieces of Salesforce and how it could be more efficient, they gave me an admin sandbox license so that I was able to really start building and using Trailhead to learn everything I could learn, and now they gave me a production license so I can now build within our production instance. So accidental admin. Mike:
Yeah, but also good because I mean, to be honest with you, I was an admin for eight years. I've been at Salesforce for a long time. There seems to be a point at which a lot of executives, rightfully so, there's just so much on their plate that they can't get into that backend part of it, and sometimes adoption and usage really hurts because of it, because they're connected to the process, but they're not connected to the technology or vice versa. When it's both. Marissa Scalercio:
Yes, it can absolutely be a struggle when I want to build something, but I also have those responsibilities of strategy or just sales operations as a whole. So I do still struggle with that, but building in Salesforce and understanding what it can do helps me be a VP of sales operations. So it really does impact everything that we are doing as a sales team, and my entire goal in sales operations is to improve the efficiency and productivity of them. How can you do that if you don't know the tool that they're using 80% of the time? Mike:
Couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. If you don't know how to run the report on the tool that you're holding people accountable for, then that's kind of also on you.
So being in both roles, as advice for other admins maybe looking to grow their career and get more into a C-suite role like that, but also as somebody that's pitching ideas, like admins are going to have to go out and talk about Prompt Builder and they're going to have to do it to other VPs or probably Ps or maybe a whole board. There was a time when I had a governance board. What would your advice be? Because I feel like you're in such a unique position to help admins both craft that executive message, but also understand the backend part. As Prompt Builder goes GA, and as some of these AI tools go GA, how are you pushing that messaging through that isn't overwhelming to other executives? Marissa Scalercio:
I think the first thing to understand about a new tool is how will this help the business? What are the use cases? What is the ROI? What's the business value? If you can start answering those questions as you are an admin or as you are a builder, those are the questions that you're going to be asked by the board, the CEO. They're going to want to know why and what impact this is going to have. So really being able to understand the product, really understanding what values it brings and what... Especially ROI, and being able to show and prove that, that is the number one way to talk to an executive board. I mean, bringing them where they can save money is what they're looking for. Either save money or really innovate and improve the lives of their employees. Mike:
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree. Was there anything, and this is kind of specific to Prompt Builder, in your case with emails, how did you get some of that data on? Was it just like a simple poll of your salespeople like, "Hey, how long do you on average spend writing emails?" And did you collect a handful of emails to get a before and after example? Because I guess in my head, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to gather that case for the ROI specific around your Prompt Builder. Marissa Scalercio:
So we didn't grab that information then. But being a salesperson and knowing this has been kind of our job since 2018, our team's job, is knowing how long things take to do in the sales department. Writing an email, scouring the account to understand what's going on with the account. So we already kind of had a baseline of how long that takes. And then being able to write that prompt and have it come out with a similar or better outcome in seconds is really a huge value add. Being able to increase the amount of time that a salesperson actually is selling and decrease that administrative burden, that's where I am seeing the best ROI. If I can prove that I can give time back to the sales team because of these processes, you can then extrapolate that into what their salaries are and add in all of the costs that you have for that sales team into, well, 10% more selling time would equal X amount. Mike:
Right. Yeah, no, I mean it's always how much time can you save a salesperson so they can sell more? Marissa Scalercio:
Exactly. Mike:
I used to sell things and I used to be like, "Great, Matt, thank you for the 10% more quota. I appreciate that." Marissa Scalercio:
Also that. Mike:
Because you also modulate your time as a salesperson, too. None of us do that. None of them. They all, foot on the gas all the time, I promise you. So as you look forward to this year, I also think rate of change. There are... and I went through this where I had to merge a couple orgs together and bring two companies together, and there was also a lot of organizational change going on. We're at the beginning of the year. I know you've got your plans. There's new products and features and services from Salesforce coming. As a VP, as an admin, how do you think through the amount of change that you push on your users throughout the year? What does your planning cycle feel like? Marissa Scalercio:
We are usually very thoughtful about large changes within the organization and making sure we're rolling them out slowly where we get some of our best or worst people to really get on board with what we're doing first and then roll it out in that process where we have a smaller group rollout and then a larger group.
So we really are thoughtful about having those people that have already tested and like the tools that we're rolling out. This year is going to be a lot of change, though. I am really excited by it, but the tools that are coming out are game changers for our organization. I'm really lucky that we are embracing change and the AI era. We even have a department that is called CL Next that their sole mission is innovation, and they have developed a project drive where they are asking every single department to bring artificial intelligence into their area and show that it can be used on a daily basis.
So I'm very lucky that I am in an organization that really is embracing it, so it is easier for me to implement these AI products and tools, but rolling them out, the best thing you can do is get people on board with it that will talk to their peers about how useful it's been or how useful it's going to be. Mike:
Yeah. That made me think of something. I don't know if you did this, and maybe you can answer, but when you were piloting this, did you set up a Chatter group or anything to kind of gather that information? Or when it goes GA, do you plan to do something like that or do you do that for other features? Marissa Scalercio:
I plan to do it for pretty much any feature that we roll out. We always bring in somebody. It is so much easier to have a better adoption if you have people, their peers that they look up to, on board with it. So I always try to roll it out or at least show what's coming, have them test it, really play around with new tools, because that is the best way to get adoption throughout the entire sales org. Mike:
Yeah, nothing like a group of people asking questions to see what everyone else is asking. I'm telling you. Marissa Scalercio:
Exactly. Mike:
It sounds scary, but that's the best part of rolling out a new feature because to some degree kind of helps everybody feel like, "Oh, I had that question too. I'm not alone." And like, yep, we're all in this together kind of situation.
As you're using AI and different tools for admins, you mentioned you wish you would've gotten up to speed. Are there things that you are doing or trying, trying to incorporate more? For instance, I am trying to use different AI tools and just write different prompts to try to almost... We did this in third grade. It was really weird. My teacher who apparently was kind of ahead of the game, she's like, "I need you to pretend that you're an alien and you have to tell another human how to pick up the phone." And we played this game called telephone. And it sounds crazy because you're like in third grade, you're like, "Well, I know how to pick up the phone." And you pick up the phone. She goes, "No, that's wrong because you're picking up the receiver." And she's like, "Pick up the phone."
And I find there's a huge correlation between that and what you tell AI because when you tell AI, "Pick up the phone," it doesn't understand a receiver or just the headset part of a phone. It would pick up the entire phone. That's just a funny story, only to make this question longer, but are there things that you are doing personally in using AI that you feel are making you understand it or build better prompts? Marissa Scalercio:
Yeah. I mean, I'm using it in my personal life. I'm using it with my personal email. I'm trying my best to use it every single day, whether that is new products that I'm seeing that are coming out, the new tools that Salesforce is rolling out, the new tools that... Outlook's rolling out some stuff. Google's rolling out a lot of different AI tools. So really being able to test those throughout your personal and professional life. That's really what I've been trying to do. I also am asking a lot of questions of my peers as to how they're using it, and even my friends, just to make sure that if they have something really cool that they are using on a daily basis and it's making them more efficient, I want it. So I want to make sure that I am trying to find what is going to help me personally be more efficient and then help what is going to help our entire organization or sales organization. Mike:
That's smart. I mean, much like the last few podcasts that I've done, it's practice, practice, practice and use, use, use. Right? Marissa Scalercio:
Yes. Mike:
I have a friend that told me, he's like, "Writer's write." Yep. They sure do. That's how you get better at it. So we'll end on a fun note. Is there anything funny you could share that you've asked AI to do that you just kind of thought was an interesting response? Marissa Scalercio:
I mean, funny pictures. Putting me in some interesting pictures, like basketball photos, which I don't play basketball. I'm very short. So I mean, there are some really fun things that you can do with AI as well. So those are some of the fun things I've been doing. Mike:
Yeah. I asked AI to make a Pixar version of myself, and that was a hilarious outcome. Marissa Scalercio:
Yeah, exactly. It's just fun to play around with it. Mike:
Yeah. Well, and it's fun for me, I think, to try and repeat different things and see what the different, especially with images, response was. I did have a coworker. I thought this was really interesting. She's like, "I didn't know what to make for dinner. So I plugged some of the stuff that I had in the fridge, in the cupboard, into AI and asked it for a recipe." I was like, oh, it's like Iron Chef Kitchen AI. Marissa Scalercio:
How smart. Mike:
I know, right? Marissa Scalercio:
I love that. Oh, I'm absolutely going to use that. Mike:
Yeah, you're going to end up with a tuna noodle, taco shell, Dorito, rice and beans. I don't know. Kind of... Marissa Scalercio:
Sounds delicious. Mike:
Yeah, well, AI said it was good. Yeah, well, AI is not eating it.
Marissa, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I can't wait to see everything else that you guys are working on. I'm sure we'll see you elsewhere. You're going to be at TrailblazerDx and Dreamforce and all those fun events. Marissa Scalercio:
Absolutely. Mike:
Yeah. Marissa Scalercio:
Thank you so much for having me. It was so nice to meet you and I'm honored to be here. Mike:
So it was a great conversation with Marissa. I learned a lot. I feel like I can't wait to see all of the stuff that we can configure with Prompt Builder. I know she was very specific in emails, but it's one thing that we're improving constantly over user's time and building better emails for salespeople. They always need a better email. And I also loved her insight into being a Salesforce admin as a VP, helping us understand going across to other VPs, communication and also up and down within organizations. It's very important that we pay attention to that, especially as some of these new features come out and we plan our roadmaps for this year.
Now, if you enjoyed this episode, which I bet you did because I did, and you're listening on iTunes, I want you to share it. All you got to do is tap the three dots and click Share Episode. Then you can post it socially, you can text it to a friend. And of course, if you're looking for more great resources, Everything Admin is at admin.salesforce.com, including links to learn about AI and Trailhead and a full transcript of the show.
And of course, you can join our conversation, The Admin Trailblazer Group in the Trailblazer community. The link is also in the show notes. So with that, until next week, I'll see you in the cloud.
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Thu, 1 February 2024
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about what you need to do to be ready for the upcoming Spring ‘24 Release. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee. Video Content for the Spring ‘24 Release If you’ve come across any admin Release Readiness content, then you’re probably familiar with Jennifer Lee and her army of GIFs. That’s why I was excited to sit down with her and talk about what’s coming in the Spring ‘24 Release and what content is coming out to help you get ready. Jennifer’s comprehensive blog post about her top Spring ‘24 Release features is a good place to start, but she’s also putting together a truckload of video content that is not to be missed. There will be new episodes of “Automate This!” and “How I Solved It” on YouTube. Meanwhile, on Salesforce+, mark your calendar for a special Admin Preview Live on Thursday, February 8th at 9 a.m. (PST). Join Jennifer and all the PMs for presentations, demos, and everything admins need to know for the Spring ‘24 Release. It’s all a part of Release Readiness Live, which will be on Salesforce+ next week on February 6th, 7th, and 8th. Spring ‘24 Release highlights For Jennifer, the release notes are like an onion—you always seem to find something new each time you go through them. Some features she’s particularly excited about include: -
Enhanced security management, like error messages that appear if you try to delete a permission set that is still assigned to users or permission set groups. -
Flow enhancements like text templates, repeaters (no more placeholders!), and debugging data cloud-triggered flows. -
An email alert page in setup to see which flows are sending things to your users. -
Better report ownership management. Sandbox best practices for release management Jennifer also fills us in on some best practices for sandboxes to get your production org ready for a new release. You want to have two sandboxes: one that matches your production release that you use for deployment, and one that’s on the upcoming release to try out new features. That way you have somewhere to prep for the future without accidentally breaking your current deployment. Finally, Jennifer recommends that every admin should pull up “release updates” in the quickfind. That’s the easiest way to see what changes coming up and how long you have to get ready. Armed with your pre-release sandbox, you’ll be ready for all the new features before they’re auto-enabled. This episode was a great supplement to all the other Spring ‘24 Release content we’re putting out there, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t miss Admin Preview Live next Thursday, February 8th at 9 a.m. (PST). Podcast swag Learn more Admin Trailblazers Group Social Love our podcasts? Full show transcript Mike:
Salesforce does three releases a year, and I don't know about you, but I could use some warm weather thinking. So this week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we are going to get release ready with Jennifer Lee, who is lead admin evangelist here at Salesforce, she was an MVP. You know her for all of the flow stuff that she does. By the way, she's got a really cool thing she's going to talk about on this podcast that's not release ready, but I bet you're going to want to hear that. Then of course, we talk about some of the release features that she's not going to feature on Release Readiness Live, which is next week if you're listening to this. So this is a fun episode. We're going to help you get release ready. Let's get Jennifer on the podcast.
So, Jennifer, welcome to the podcast. Jennifer Lee:
Hey, Mike, thanks for having me. Mike:
Yeah, well, it is springtime, despite the fact that I think you and I have been indoors for the last, I don't know how many days, and it's freezing cold, but spring '24 release features are right around the corner. You had an awesome blog post about it and we were looking through the release notes and heck, it's about to drop for everybody, so why not do a podcast to talk about it, right? Jennifer Lee:
Super excited. Mike:
Before we get into that, what else you got going on? You've got some video series and stuff coming out this year. I want to make sure that people up front know about that before we start talking about all the fun release stuff. Jennifer Lee:
All right, so if you haven't heard about Automate This, it's a livestream series that I do monthly on the Salesforce Admins YouTube channel, so check that out. We also do deep dive blogs on it as well from our trailblazers. We're going to be bringing back How I Solved It back to the YouTube channel, so very excited to continue to feature awesome admins doing amazing things on the Salesforce platform. So, that will start next, actually this month. Mike:
This month, yeah. It's February already. Jennifer Lee:
This month on the 21st. Mike:
Clock's ticking down. Here we go. Yeah, I mean to sit and watch Jen Lee build flows live, we should charge tickets for that, but you can just watch it for free on YouTube.
Okay, so we've got some pilot, some beta, some GA features coming in the spring release. What are you excited for? Jennifer Lee:
A few things. So when we're talking about security management, I'm going to geek out on security, of all things. Mike:
Hey, it's the security stuff's cool. It keeps us doing our jobs. People overlook that. Jennifer Lee:
Yeah, so when you go and try and delete a permission set, previously if it had people assigned to it or it's assigned to a permission set group, it allowed you to delete it, it didn't even tell you. Now we're going to throw up an error and let you know someone's assigned to it, so get rid of them first before you go ahead and delete it or just check first that you really want to delete that permission set. So thanks to Cheryl and team for putting that in. But a lot of the things that are going into this release, surprise surprise, are flow enhancements, being the Flownatic that I love, so. Mike:
I'm just shocked you didn't start there. I'm going to throw a curve and talk about one security thing, talk about fly. That's like being a hamburger reviewer and being like, so they have chocolate shakes at this burger restaurant, but let's talk about burgers. Jennifer Lee:
So threw you guys for a loop, huh? Mike:
A little bit, yep. Jennifer Lee:
So I love the reactivity that's been going on in screen flows and Adam White and team, Sam Raynard, have been doing amazing things. So continuing on with reactivity, being able to have one component behave a certain way and then another component react to that. So, they're adding text templates, display texts going GA. They're also adding as a beta feature, repeaters. Now when you think of a repeater component, think of like you're filling out an application and let's say you're adding beneficiaries. Instead of thinking ahead and thinking like, oh, this person's going to add five and I'm going to put five placeholders, what about just adding the one? Then you let the user decide, hey, I want to add another and add another. So you don't have to build out this UI that has 10 placeholders or something. It's letting the user take charge and they're adding and removing accordingly. So I think that's got to be super cool for screen flows as well. Mike:
I'm watching your GIF on that right now on this blog. I'm thinking, how many times haven't we built flow, really cool flow components on a page? Then they had to go through it and like, okay, now I've got to do this again, because you've got to add somebody else. Now they can just bang, bang, bang, bang, add them all. Jennifer Lee:
Or you thought they're going to add five and they needed 10. Mike:
[inaudible 00:05:29]. Jennifer Lee:
Then they complain about your form. Mike:
Well, I mean, this is always the question I would ask in doing requirements gathering. So what's the maximum insane crazy number you would think we could add? They'd be like, oh four, I don't ever see us adding more than four. You're like, the third use case they give you is like seven. You're like, awesome. We're just going to add 10. Jennifer Lee:
Then a couple of other enhancements. So that data table component. So now when you search for other records, it doesn't clear out your previously selected records, which is good. Then when you have flows that use email alerts, you can go to the email alert page and setup and see what flows are using it. Mike:
Oh, that's so cool. Jennifer Lee:
No more guessing where it is. Mike:
Or no more just guessing how many emails I'm sending with all of my flows. Jennifer Lee:
Then the last piece on the data cloud front is now you could debug your data cloud triggered flows, rather than build them and fingers crossed, hope they work. Mike:
Right? Oh wow, yeah. You start off with, I'm going to geek out on security stuff. I think it's the debug stuff that we need to see more of. Everybody always talks about all the building of flows and stuff, but nobody ever gets into the debug and everything that you read or you go to events is always how you troubleshoot stuff. I feel like it's not that people just don't love the debug, it's that people just don't spend time in the debug. That'd also be a really cool place. Just call your, have a tech bar that serves coffee and scones and has free internet, and you call it the debug. Nope, not with me? All right, let's talk about more release features because Mike's not got a good coffee shop name yet. Jennifer Lee:
Don't make me laugh because I might go into a coffee thing. Mike:
Yeah, the winter has been hard on us East Midwesterners, I got the Barry White going, so. Jennifer Lee:
Jen Lee has a bronchitis going, so that's great. We don't talk for a living. Mike:
No, no. I have a friend of mine that has a podcast and he texted me a couple days after Christmas, he's like, dude, I broke my ankle, I got to go into surgery. And I said, good thing you talk for a living. He didn't find that funny. I did, because I said, you could be a marathoner. Nope, all right, zero for two. What else you got, Jen? There's some cool stuff in here. I mean, I'm busy watching all the GIFs in your posts. Jennifer Lee:
I love creating those GIFs because it brings the feature to life. It's not just a description of what the thing is, but you actually get to see it. Mike:
Yep, and it also doesn't feel like a commitment like watching a video, like click here to watch this video. It's like, no, it just plays. But yeah, I mean the release notes should have more GIFs in it, add that to the idea exchange. I can feel somebody crying already over that. Jennifer Lee:
So some of the other changes on the analytics side, the reports and dashboard side. Now when you have changes in report ownership, I guess before you needed to do a clone of it and start from the beginning, now you could just change owners, so that's big. Then they had widgets that were only available to, I think it was enterprise and unlimited. So now it's available across the board for all editions, which is like, you have a widget and you have a widget, doing the Oprah thing. Mike:
Wow. No, that's good. I just saw your GIF on the email thing. I'm still stuck on that. Jennifer Lee:
You're just distracted by my GIFs. Mike:
No, just the fact, I mean, I think I remember still old school, building a workflow and thinking, how cool is this? But you never had the ability, you always had email templates and you're like, I have no idea how many workflows are using this, but to see this as a related list, like, oh, okay, so these two flows are using this workflow or using this email. I love it. It's the simple things sometimes. There's the data table one. Jennifer Lee:
Yeah, or if you needed to make a change to it, now you know which things are impacted by that change that you're making. Mike:
Yeah, yeah, because the number of times I've messed up emails before, that's always a constant. I think we're a little late in this coming out because by now a lot of admins have read the release notes. They probably have their idea, but thinking ahead for the summer release, because I'll be honest with you. The summer release was always super hard for me because vacation and I wanted to be on vacation and then there was stuff coming out and then you had users on vacation. But thinking ahead to the summer release, what are some sandbox strategies that Evan should think about? Jennifer Lee:
So when we're in this pre-release cycle, that's when some of the sandboxes are in pre-lease, some aren't. So if you haven't heard the term pre-release, that means you get to have your sandbox be in the upcoming release as opposed to your current release, which is what your production org is in. So the strategy that I've used when I was an admin is, when you're in the cycle and you have a path to production. Let's say you have multiple sandboxes that you build in, and then you push it from a dev sandbox to a UAT sandbox to some other sandbox to production, that's your deployment path. You want to make sure that it's on the current release.
So sometimes your sandbox, we're going to say, CS15, let's say that that was slated for preview and that's a sandbox that you use in your production deployment. Well, you don't want it to be in preview, you actually want it to be in the current release because your production is in the current release. What you want to do is build things and test things before it goes into production, as in being in that same release. You don't want to deploy something going from a higher API version because the newer release goes up an API version. You want to deploy like to like, not from higher to lower. The reason is because that new release might have enhancements to the thing that you're building, and now you're building on this newer thing, production doesn't even know about it. You try to deploy it, chances are you're going to run into a deployment error and you can't contact Salesforce support to help you because you went from preview to a non-preview. So definitely keep that in mind.
There is a timeframe, a window, and I believe, well, we provide resources that tell you if you want to stay on that current release or you want to move off of preview and go back to your current release, here are the actions you need to take, and that requires a sandbox refresh, for example. But we have blog articles that talk about that, so go to our release ready page and you'll find blog posts on that, but make sure that your deployment path is on the current release.
But at the same time, you also want a sandbox that's on preview because you want to test your current features and things like that, the things that you've currently built, and make sure they continue to work as expected and that you don't get some weird behavior as a result of something new that's coming out. So you definitely want to refresh and test the things that you have. Mike:
Yeah, and I mean, even for example, we were in something like this, this time last year when reactive components came out. I was working with you to build the demo for our world tour. I couldn't figure out why in one of my environments I couldn't make the reactive component work, and here we need to check a box and go to a different API version. Similar, but yes, I mean you just want, yeah, pressure test against everything. Make sure it works current, make sure it's going to work when the upgrade happens because you'll nine times out of 10 be asleep, not sitting around pining for new- Jennifer Lee:
Yeah, you don't want to get that call. Mike:
Right? Hey, I don't know why this component doesn't work, because it's always a component. It's never anything in the background. It's always like an email didn't fire or a component is just saying insufficient privileges. Well, did you unplug Salesforce and plug it back in? Jennifer Lee:
Reboot. Mike:
Reboot. Jennifer Lee:
Control, alt, delete. Mike:
Control, alt, delete, yeah. Is there anything else that we should think about during release time, either before or after? Jennifer Lee:
Oh, yes. So release updates. So you can get to release updates in setup, just go into the quick find, go to release updates, and then you'll see a list of upcoming release updates or you see things that you're behind on. Hopefully you don't, but Salesforce gives you ample time and they announce, okay, we're going to put this release update out there. You have until X date before Salesforce enforces it, and they auto enable it. So when you go into release updates, it tells you all the information you need to know about whatever that update is, how to go about testing it. So definitely go in a sandbox, test it out. Sometimes there are things that might require you to make changes to something that you have in your org so that it doesn't break when we auto enable it in a future release. So definitely go through it periodically to see if there's anything upcoming, and then spend a time to allocate to actually testing it, making sure it doesn't break anything there. In some cases, you can enable it in your after you've tested it so everything's cool, but you definitely don't want to miss the deadline, we auto enable it and then it breaks something in your production org. Mike:
Breaking things is bad. You didn't mention this, but I was scrolling along. Access fields from related objects on dynamic forums, forums enabled record pages. This feels like, oh wow, air. I bring this up because there's literally a question in the Trailblazer community, and I'm going to respond to her after we get done with this podcast, where she was trying to pull in, she's trying to write just a simple formula field to return a phone number. This would totally solve it, because why not just pull the field in? You can do that. Just wait for the release. Jennifer Lee:
I just realized I forgot to mention all the features that I'm going to highlight on Admin Preview Live. Mike:
Well, but that's why you do the podcast because see, now they got to listen to all the features that didn't make it on Admin Preview Live, but when is Admin Preview Live? Jennifer Lee:
So you're going to go on Salesforce Plus on Thursday, February 8th at 9:00 A.M. Pacific Time. We're going to live stream the broadcast. So we're going to go in the studio, all of the PMs, I'm going to be there as well. We're going to be in-studio doing live presentations and live demos. So I'm going to be covering admin highlights. I'm going to cover four things, and cross object fields is one of the things that I will be covering. Mike:
Oh, darn. Yay, teaser. Jennifer Lee:
Then other things. The other things that you'll just have to wait to find out. Mike:
No, but look at all you get to find out on listening to podcasts ahead of time. Are you doing anything special for release live? Like we do shoes, I guess there's no really footwear attire for release live- Jennifer Lee:
No. Mike:
... anymore. We used to do shirts for a while. Jennifer Lee:
I'll have to figure out what my outfit is. Mike:
Yeah, maybe sparkly. Sparkly seems to be a thing. Maybe that's out in 2024. Maybe it's got to be something else, I don't know. Cross out [inaudible 00:19:04]. Jennifer Lee:
Well, we'll have to figure it out. Mike:
I'm excited for this, little stuff. Jen, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and giving us all the cool stuff that you also included in your blog. But I feel like with the releases, you got to hear this stuff two, three times. It's like peeling back an onion. Every time you look at the release notes, you find something else that you didn't see before. Jennifer Lee:
Oh, when I was a customer, I would love... So I would read through the release notes. Plus, I would always watch Release Readiness Live because I always find things that I didn't catch while I was reading through the release notes. The release notes are pretty dry, so. Mike:
I mean, they're not a novel. But also, I felt like sometimes even reading your blog posts and seeing the GIFs, like the GIFs and that stuff, you read the feature and you're like, meh, okay, but then you see a GIF or then you watch the Release Readiness Live of it and you're like, oh, that's so much cooler than it read in the release note. Well, I will be sure to include the links to all of these. As always, if you've got this far in the podcast and you have a suggestion for themed wear that Jennifer should bring to release. You should have an Easter egg, that something only somebody on the podcast would know about. Then we'll put that on the thing and then see if anybody comments on it. Probably not, but it's fun to think about. Jennifer Lee:
Well, Diana Jaffe brought her lamp. Mike:
I know, right? Who would've thought that a lamp would- Jennifer Lee:
That was on the craze on X or Twitter or whatever. Mike:
I know. Yeah, well, that's okay. We have a goat as a mascot, so I'll par for it. I'll put the link in the show notes and then we will, we've got a week to prepare to watch you live on Release Readiness, so thanks for coming by and sharing some of that. Jennifer Lee:
Thanks for having me. Mike:
You bet.
Of course, that was another great discussion with Jennifer. Hey, How I solved It's coming back, which is amazing. I love watching that video series. I also just, the fact that we can watch Jennifer do live flow solutions on YouTube is just the funnest part because that's what I enjoy doing. Also, learning about flow because there's still so much that I need to learn about flow, but there's some pretty cool stuff in the release. I would love to know what is one of your favorite features. Go ahead and shout out on Twitter or any of the social platforms. Let us know.
Now, of course, if you enjoyed this episode, I need you to do me a favor. Can you share it with somebody? I mean, you've probably got friends that are getting release ready, right? Do they know about this episode? Do they know about some of the cool features like the reporting and the email stuff that Jen was talking about? If they don't, all you got to do is tap the three dots, choose share episode, and then you can post it on social, you can text it to a friend. You take them to a coffee shop and say, let's listen to the podcast together. I don't know, throwing out ideas there.
Full of resources if you're looking for them, admin.salesforce.com. That is where you're going to find transcript of the show, the link to watch Jennifer do Release Readiness Live, which I'll be tuning in for, and a link to the blog post where she has all those fun GIFs. Of course, don't miss out on the conversation we have going on in the admin Trailblazer group that is in the Trailblazer community. The link is in the show notes. Hey, until next week, I'll see you in the cloud.
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