Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Jacinta Burke, the Senior Manager of Product Readiness at Salesforce. Jacinta is the first person you should go to if you have questions about what’s coming up in the next release that will impact your org and improve what you do.

Join us to hear about how Jacinta and her team help Admins get ready for each new release, and where you can go to learn about all the new features that make Salesforce even better.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jacinta Burke.

Diving into Release Readiness

Jacinta is in charge of Release Readiness, but she’s also an ex-Admin, so she knows what it’s like to run an org. “Usually you’re doing it in addition to whatever your day job is,” and she understands that, as Salesforce has evolved, there are so many features in each release that staying on top of it is a tall task. The job of Release Readiness is to put together tools, content, webinars, and more to help you sort out what’s in each release and what might apply to you.

With so much going on in each release, deciding what to look at can be tough, so Jacinta says, “a lot of what we try to do is help you filter through all that information.” Paradoxically, they do this by producing material that is not curated, because they want everyone to be able to decide for themselves what they need. However, by using a variety of formats, they try to make it easy for people with different learning styles to digest the material. For more visual learners, for example, they produce slideshows and videos.

Making a Release Strategy

Releases just happen in your org. “That’s part of the beauty of Salesforce: there are no upgrades, no being out of date with the software.” However, that means that you need to have an actual strategy around releases because your users are going to come in on Monday morning and see some new features.

To help with this, the Release Readiness team offers webinars with MVPs around how you can manage your release strategy. Releases are so heavily tested by Salesforce that there’s no risk to you and your instance, but being aware of what new features are auto-enabled will help you give your users a heads up.

 How to Keep Up with Releases

Six weeks before each release, Jacinta and her team publish a Milestones Doc on the Success Community. “That’s the really the first step for any Admin because you want to know what’s coming and when.” In it, you can find things like when the release notes are coming, and when the Sandbox preview will be available. As it gets closer, the team will also make pre-release orgs available so you can play around. As Jacinta puts it, “It’s kind of like a little playground for the new release.”

As for where to go to keep up with what’s going on, Jacinta says that “if you’re not already, join the Success Community, and join the Release Readiness and Feature Adoption Group.” The community is very active, and with every release, there’s something called the Treasure Hunt, where people go in and see what great little features they can dig up in the new release. “I was an Admin by myself, with no money, no resourcing,” Jacinta says, “and the community was great for me.”

Staying on Top of Release Notes

When it comes to how you should approach release notes, Jacinta has some advice: “Don’t eat the elephant all in one bite.” The Documentation Team at Salesforce is continually improving, and they’ve made release notes that are filled with screenshots and easily searchable. There are filters by edition, UI, classic features, and even mobile-only features.

A great place to go for more information is the Feature Impact Table, which is where you can see the features that your users are going to see automatically after the release, as well as the features that you need to set up as an Admin. The team also sends out emails to all Admins from Technology Communications, and of course, there’s a lot of communication on the Success Community group, Twitter, and even in-app notifications. If you have an idea for how to make the release more consumable get in touch with Jacinta and her team, “We’re all ears.”

For more insights, make sure to follow Jacinta on Twitter (@jessburkesfdc).

We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. to @SalesforceAdmns to help us get more Awesome Admins on the podcast.

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don't head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It's super easy to do, and it helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it. 

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Michael Drzewiecki, a Salesforce Admin who, as a career changer, has worked hard to advance his knowledge of Salesforce as a platform. Michael has an astounding 14 certifications since Dreamforce 2016, and as of this recording has 92 Trailhead badges.

Join us to hear about how Michael got started with Salesforce, navigated a career change, and what he thinks it takes to build sustained and lasting success.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Michael Drzewiecki.

From Auto Mechanic to Admin

When Michael was growing up, he dreamed of being an auto mechanic. He did it for a year, and even though he’s still into cars, he realized it wasn’t for him. After a stint in retail, Michael began the journey that would put him on the path to becoming a Salesforce Admin in 2015 by breaking into the IT world five years earlier.

As of this show, Michael has 14 Salesforce certifications. The astounding thing is that he started his first certification at Dreamforce 2016, this past October. His first introduction to Salesforce came at Dreamforce 2015: “I went there as a total newbie. I knew nothing about Salesforce other than that my boss said, ‘Go check out this Salesforce thing.’”

Michael took his first Admin certification the day before Dreamforce 2016, but didn’t pass the first time he tried. “I refuse to call it a failure, anytime you sit for an exam that’s success in itself.” When he compared the section-level feedback with his own results, he was able to figure out what he needed to study. At 8 am the next morning, he was back in the exam room and passed.

The Power of Determination

As someone with a lot of certifications, Michael has some great advice about thinking through problems on the platform. When he gets an unusual or difficult requirement or feature, he has developed his own unique approach.

“You have to think like Salesforce,” Michael says. Because he didn’t come from a programming background, he doesn’t try to solve things from Apex first. Instead, Michael tries to solve problems declaratively first and, from there, he moves on to the Success Community and Answers. As Michael puts it, “There’s no secret sauce here, just determination.”

Building a Learning Journey in Trailhead

With 92 Trailhead Badges (and probably more since this podcast was recorded), Michael has forged his own path through Trailhead. His approach was incredibly practical: he’d study for a certification, take the exam, and if he didn’t succeed he would learn what he needed to work on from the feedback provided. Instead of focusing on badges, he would learn everything he could find that was related to those keywords.

This approach took him to all sorts of places, but after Destination Success, he noticed, “I have 48 badges in progress, maybe I should clean this up a bit.” He’s working towards becoming a Ranger, but his practical approach is what has taken him so far so quickly.

How You Can Start Adding Certifications

Michael’s advice for people who want to achieve what he’s achieved is pretty simple: “When it comes to certifications, just do it.” He talks to a lot of people who wait and wait to take the Admin certification, “All you’re doing is building a bunch of negative energy up inside yourself about that exam.”

The entire reason that Michael has been able to make incredible progress in such a short time is that he’s not afraid of failure. He views it as an opportunity to learn, and that’s what has helped him to gain so many certifications so quickly.

For more insights, make sure to follow Michael on Twitter (@drzewiecki).

We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. to @SalesforceAdmns to help us get more Awesome Admins on the podcast.

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don't head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It's super easy to do, and it helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it. 

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Michael Gonzalez, a Director of Product Management at Salesforce working on App Builder. Michael is an expert in how App Builder is changing the way Admins can customize their pages and user experience.

Join us to hear about the Lightning App Builder, the magic of Components, and what improvements are coming up in the Summer ‘17 release. We talk about how the App Builder team continues to make tweaks to give Admins more powerful tools, and more flexibility.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Michael Gonzalez.

The Magic of Components

Michael fell into the tech industry. Out of college, he went into the family retail business. But then he got bit by the tech bug and moved from marketing into building products. This kind of journey is perfect for working on App Builder because he’s also the target audience, which gives him a passion for components.

“Components are magic,” Michael says, “they’re the building blocks of all of our pages that end users are going to see.” You can kick off processes through them, and they give Admins a lot of control: you can rearrange the layout of the page, update the properties, and more.

Michael’s favorite standard component is Path. With the ability to add it to custom objects, “it’s a great way to visualize the life cycle of a particular process,” and it keeps getting better from release to release.

The Future is Lightning

If you’re a longtime Admin who is concerned that all of the time you’ve invested in Record Types and Page Layouts will get thrown out in the move to Lightning, Michael thinks you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Everything will render and look great, but beyond that a new feature in the Spring Release allows you to create custom pages and assign them to specific Record Types and Profiles. As Michael says, “if you’ve pre-created a lot in classic, this gives you another layer to leverage the work that you’ve done to be able to build tailored experiences.”

The Powers of the Lightning App Builder

Right off the bat, the great thing about App Builder in Lightning is that it’s a WYSIWYG tool. “When you open up a page you see real data in there. It takes all the guesswork out of knowing exactly what your end user sees as you go through and you customize it.” This helps you keep focused on what will work best, and not whether it will work at all.

In addition to that, you have a library of Components: Standard Components, Custom Components that a developer would build for your org, and custom managed ones that come directly from the App Exchange. Once you’re familiar with those two things, you can jump right in and start dragging and dropping.

It’s easy to make adjustments through the Component Properties feature. You can edit details, update properties, and see how they change in real time. As Michael puts it, “you know exactly how your page is changing as you’re going through and modifying it.”

 Looking Forward to the Summer ‘17 Release

Coming through the pipeline is a pilot feature in the Summer ‘17 Release, which allows you to control the visibility of a Component on a page. Instead of going through and recreating different custom Lightning pages by Record Type and by Profile, you can just control the visibility of an individual Component.

“Having a dynamic page control is something that our customers and users have been asking for quite awhile,” and something that Michael is excited to deliver. If you’re interested in experimenting, reach out to your account teams to get ahold of it.

For more insights, make sure to follow Michael in the Salesforce Success Community.

We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. to @SalesforceAdmns to help us get more Awesome Admins on the podcast.

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don't head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It's super easy to do, and it helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Geoff Flynn, Salesforce Community MVP. Geoff is a prolific leader of the Salesforce Answers community, with expertise in cross filters and formulas.

Join us to hear about Geoff’s best practices and tips for conquering our fears about presenting — how he tackled it to go up twice (so far) on the Dreamforce stage. We talk about how he solves problems on the Answers community and look at how he’s using his developer’s edition to migrate to Lightning.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Geoff Flynn.

Breaking into Salesforce

Geoff’s first job was guiding his company’s implementation of Cognos from a business perspective, as opposed to an IT perspective, and from there he was quickly put in charge of implementing Salesforce.

As Geoff says, “I was always that bridge between the business users, who get paid to sell stuff, and the IT users. Those two don’t always talk well together, and I was the one who tried to bridge the gap and talk the common language.” Because of Geoff’s broad skillset and because finding the balance between business and IT is key, Salesforce made sense for him.

From Answers to Dreamforce Presenter

“Growing up, I was petrified of speaking,” Geoff says, but when his boss surprised him by putting him up in front of a town hall, he came to an important realization, “you’re a lot more nervous than you come off.” The bottom line is that practice makes perfect.

Another thing that helps is to make sure you’re talking about something you know well. If you go up there and talk about something you’ve just implemented or are really enthusiastic about, that passion and insight will come through.

Formulas in Salesforce

Geoff gravitated to formulas because of a need for more powerful reporting options, even importing data from other sources into the Salesforce dashboards to get the reports he needed. Spending a lot of time trying to get the reports to do what he needed them to do naturally lead Geoff to an expertise in cross filters and other formulas. Geoff explains that a key to getting formulas to add value is to figure out “how to make your data work for you.”

Solving Problems and Finding Answers

“You always want to try and break it down into little pieces, and really understand what the need is, and not what’s been put in front of you.” Geoff keeps focused by continually asking why someone is asking for something, and using those answers to pull the problem apart.

For complicated problems, Geoff looks at the documentation and pulls out his Swiss Army Knife full of developer editions: “I’ve got so many developer editions that I need a password manager just to manage my Salesforce passwords.” Another rich source of answers is the wide variety of blogs that are out there.

Using Developer Editions as a Scratch Pad

Another great use of multiple developer editions is as a scratch pad because it lets you show prototypes as you go. You don’t need to track all the changes that you make, which means that you can iterate faster and show the different ways that things can look, especially in Lightning versus Classic.

Each time Geoff gets started he makes an edition called “The Playground,” and on the homepage of that org he puts in big red text: “Do not expect this org to be right in any way, shape, or form.” Acknowledging that it should never be part of the development stream gives him the freedom to treat it as a whiteboarding session using the client’s own software. Being able to show, rather than tell, makes a big difference in finding the best solution to the problem at hand.

For more insights, make sure to follow Geoff on Twitter (@geoffreyflynn2).

We want to get your suggestions for guests on the podcast, and we need your help! So tweet your guest suggestions, support, etc. to @SalesforceAdmns to help us get more Awesome Admins on the podcast.

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don't head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It's super easy to do, and it helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.