Thu, 8 June 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Andrew Mangano, Director of Product Management for Mobile at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the new features coming to Salesforce Mobile in the Summer ‘23 release. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Andrew Mangano. Why Salesforce is about interactionsAndrew comes to product management from a background in data science, which is why he was originally brought into Salesforce. This gives him a unique perspective on how to make data-driven decisions to build what customers need the most. Before all of that, Andrew started in retail, which really informs how he thinks about Salesforce. For him, it’s all about interactions. While the rise of mobile is often framed in terms of how it’s caused people to disconnect from each other, Andrew sees an opportunity to reconnect. He wants Salesforce Mobile to help make your interactions with your customers more one-to-one and face-to-face. The power of mobile“The power of mobile is being able to get out there and do things more efficiently that you really couldn’t do before,” Andrew says. You can have all of the information you need, immediately accessible from the field. And you can share that information instantly throughout your organization so everyone is up to date. Andrew’s team been trying to make data easier to navigate so your users can put away the phone and focus on the interaction. They’re releasing Dynamic Forms for Mobile in Summer ‘23 you can help your users spend less time thumbing through lists and more time getting things done. Offline access to your dataA common misconception about Salesforce Mobile is that it’s meant to be somehow replace or stand in for the desktop experience. However, Andrew points out that it’s more about adoption and engagement. It’s about putting Salesforce in the hands of employees that wouldn’t otherwise be on the platform and giving them access to new tools and information they haven’t been able to use before. Bringing Salesforce to new places with mobile also introduces new challenges, namely, what if you need access to your information in a place with spotty internet? They’ve engineered an offline solution for that, coming in this release, which will let you still access the data you need even if you’re not connected to the cloud. There’s even more coming soon, so be sure to enable all objects for Dynamic Forms and stay posted. Podcast swag Learn more Social
|
Thu, 1 June 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jenny McNamara, Salesforce Admin at CINC. Join us as we chat about how she became obsessed with Flow Builder, the importance of mastering the basics, and why you need to get yourself to a Salesforce live event. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jenny McNamara. Be the translatorJenny started as a business analyst, serving as the scrum master for multiple teams in her organization. When the Salesforce team needed more help, she jumped at the chance to specialize and become an admin. In both roles, you need to be able to translate what people are saying into the why behind it. “Technical people and client-facing people don’t always speak the same language even though they’re all trying to accomplish the same thing,” Jenny says. A stakeholder may ask for a new data field when what they really want is a way for that information to show up on a dashboard. And tech person may not want to do that because it makes the org a mess. You need someone with an understanding of both sides of the organization to step in and translate. Flow all nightWhen Jenny first started focusing on Salesforce, the thing that got her hooked on the platform was learning Flow Builder. She was still a business analyst at that point, but the Salesforce Admin on her team was having trouble building something and asked her if she could look into Flow a little bit so he could bounce ideas off of her. Jenny sat down for a quick glance at what Flow was all about, just enough to help out. Before she knew it, she had learned enough to solve the problem in a single night. Some people binge Netflix, Jenny binged Flow Builder. The magic of Salesforce live eventsWe met Jenny at TrailheaDX, where she was really excited to dive into the fundamentals. “The better your basics are, the more of the foundational things that you really master, the better you’re going to be at everything,” she says. Getting to live Salesforce events has been so important to Jenny’s career in Salesforce, and she recommends it for people at all experience levels. You never know who you’ll meet, and you already have something in common to talk about. You can learn about something you didn’t know existed, which could take your career in a new direction. You might even find yourself staying up all night to learn more. Podcast swag Learn more Social
Direct download: Jenny_McNamara_on_Growing_Your_Career_From_TDX.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 25 May 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we sit down for coffee with Mike, Gillian, and Josh Birk.
Join us as we chat about the Summer ‘23 Release, Einstein GPT, and what makes a Dreamforce speaker submission stand out.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with the Admin Evangelist Team. Summer ‘23 ReleaseMay is coming to an end, which means the Summer Release is just around the corner. The team has been hard at work on content to help you get up to speed on everything you should know. Be on the lookout for even more content, with on-demand Release Readiness Live videos for Admins and Devs, and the Learn MOAR blog post series both coming out soon.
We talk through some features we’re looking forward to, both large and small, from horizontal alignment on dynamic fields to custom property editors. There’s a lot to look forward to! Einstein GPTThere’s been some buzz about Salesforce and AI lately, specifically the announcement of Einstein GPT. We already have some content out there about what admins can do with it right now, but there’s a whole lot more info coming soon. As more and more AI is incorporated into Salesforce, what we do as admins is naturally going to shift and change. Some things will definitely become easier to accomplish, but the value we bring in understanding business processes and translating them into a solution that works will be even more critical. Submit to present in Dreamforce 2023We’re currently looking for presenters for the Admin track for Dreamforce 2023. As someone who reviews submissions, Mike recommends focusing on a few quality abstracts that you’re really excited about instead of trying to apply with every idea you can possibly think of. “It’s not about the number of cupcakes you show up with, it’s about the quality of the cupcake,” he says. If you’re looking for ideas, a good place to start is in the Trailblazer community. If people are talking a lot about something over there, it’s probably going to be a topic we want to cover. And be sure to listen to the full episode for more about the Build a Blog series, and the theory that the Flintstones actually takes place after the Jetsons.
Podcast swag Learn more
Social
|
Thu, 18 May 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Skip Sauls, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about why data is so important to reporting, what some big-data terms are, and some fun hobbies that Skip enjoys outside of building awesome products for Salesforce admins. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Skip Sauls. The data lakehouseSkip is the product manager in charge of the ecosystem for Data Cloud, which unifies data from Salesforce and other sources to give you a single source of truth for everything your organization knows about your customers. This will make it easier to do everything from generating reports and dashboards to implementing new apps across the organization using the data you have, no matter where it’s coming from. For admins, Data Cloud will remove the need to move data around every time you want to use it somewhere else. This reduces the risk of using old data or accidentally opening up a security vulnerability. Instead, you’ll keep your data in a centralized “Data Lakehouse” (both a data lake and a data warehouse) and pull it from there when you need to use it for something. What you get from centralizing dataCentralizing your data management in one place has a number of other benefits. For one thing, it gives you a framework for making important decisions about which source is the most authoritative so you can resolve any conflicts that may come up when there’s a disagreement. What’s more, it’ll minimize situations where reports and dashboards don’t match up because they were created from different sources or pulled at different times. Today, when new data comes in from somewhere, you can’t necessarily be sure how long it will take to update in your other orgs. With Data Cloud it’s all in one place, which means any changes will be reflected everywhere simultaneously. And if you need to figure out why a report is telling you something different today than it did yesterday, you can go back and look at a snapshot without having to dig through multiple orgs. The future of SalesforceGoing forward, the hope is to build more and more Salesforce features that are used in multiple orgs on top of Data Cloud, separate from individual platforms. This gives every platform you use access to the same powerful tools like advanced analytics. It’ll also make it possible for third party platforms to work directly with Salesforce capabilities, offering more flexibility for your org. This all gets even more exciting when Skip starts talking about the possibility for building apps that can be reused throughout an org, or even users creating things with generative AI. The streamlining provided by Data Cloud will make all of that possible. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more of Skip’s thoughts on the future, and what Evel Knieval’s stunt bike can tell us about where technology is headed. Podcast swag Learn more Social
|
Thu, 11 May 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Elizabeth Bochanski, a newly-certified Salesforce Admin and MidAtlantic Dreamin’ Volunteer Committee Member. Join us as we chat about prepping for your first Salesforce certification and why in-person networking is so important. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Elizabeth Bochanski. Taking the leap and becoming a Salesforce AdminElizabeth was working in sales for a mortgage company when they announced they were switching over to a new platform: Salesforce. While many of her coworkers were grumbling about having to change their routine, Elizabeth was excited about all the ways this new technology could make their lives easier. She started making suggestions and, without knowing it, became a power end user at her organization. During the pandemic, when everyone was stuck at home, Elizabeth happened to be hanging out with her cousin who happened to be an accidental admin. Togther, they sorted out an issue she was having in her org. That’s when Elizabeth realized that maybe she should pursue this admin thing more seriously. How to make studying a hands-on experienceAt TrailblazerDX this year, Elizabeth dove into the Camp Quick Start area. It was exactly what she was looking for because, as she was studying for her certification, she had realized that hands-on learning was key for her. “Going into learning Salesforce, you need to have an idea of what way you learn,” she says. For Elizabeth, one thing that really helped was to get into an org and do things while learning about them. “When I was taking a practice test and got a question wrong, I would go and find the answer within the org,” she says. She also highly recommends finding a study group for the shared motivation and support. The importance of in-person networkingGoing forward, Elizabeth has her sights set on getting better with Flow, understanding security, and diving into Object relationships. She’s also thinking about what comes next, like getting the Platform App Builder and Business Analyst certifications. She already has experience working with admins on business processes from her time as a power end user, so it’s a logical next step. The other thing that Elizabeth emphasizes is the importance of networking. And not just virtual networking, but in-person events. It’s how she met her mentor, and how she ended up being a guest on the pod. You never know who you’re going to run into at a live event, and where a chance meeting might take you, so put yourself out there.
Podcast swag Learn more Social
Direct download: Elizabeth_Bochanski_on_Starting_Learning_on_Trailhead.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 4 May 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Gorav Seth, Salesforce Platform Manager at Ashoka, and Eric Smith, Technical Architect at RafterOne. Join us as we talk about the flow solutions they came up with to improve their processes in their orgs, and how you can get started building your own flows. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Gorav Seth and Eric Smith. 25+ years of Salesforce experience in one episodeWe brought Gorav and Eric on the show to talk about their upcoming appearances on Jennifer Lee’s Automate This! YouTube show. If you don’t already tune in, now’s the time to start. They’ll go over the cool Flow solutions they came up with to improve things at their orgs. But first, a little bit more about our guests. Gorav has a background in plant biology but got involved in the ecosystem when he migrated his nonprofit to Salesforce and fell in love with the technology. Eric’s been in technology for over 45 years, and his path took him through a telecommunications company that was using Salesforce essentially as a Rolodex. He quickly realized that they were barely scratching the surface of what they could do with the platform, and started building things to help his team of product managers do their jobs better. Collectively, they have over 25 years of experience in Salesforce. Why automate?One thing we wanted to ask our guests is how they think about automations and why you should build one. For Gorav, it’s about the massive improvements you can make to usability on both the front end and the back end. For Eric, it’s also about improving data quality and data security. “A well-designed automation will reduce steps for somebody that has to interact with it and improve the quality of the data that comes out of it,” he says. On Automate This!, they’ll each share a pretty nifty Flow solution they found to replace a clunkier process. Gorav consolidated multiple notifications into one rich text email that gave his users all of the information they needed in one place. They ended up replacing something like 10 workflow rules with one streamlined flow. Eric’s users needed to constantly refer to the case number they were working with but were spending a lot of time trying to find it. He created a utility to highlight field data on a Lightning record page using a screen flow and saving a ton of time. Starting with FlowFlow offers a lot of possibilities for simplifying and improving things but it can still be intimidating when you’re starting out. Eric recommends breaking your process down into the smaller steps that need to happen in order to get from point A to point B. And, Gorav adds, it’s an iterative process. You can and should use the debugger to understand what’s happening and why. Take it one step at a time and focus on improvements to your process. “We’re not trying to rebuild this stuff,” Gorav says, “we’re trying to say, ‘How can we do this better?’” There are a lot of great tips in this podcast about the importance of learning in your career, when to use subflows, and more, so be sure to listen to the full episode and don’t miss their appearance on Automate This! Podcast swag Learn more Social
Direct download: Gorav_Seth_and_Eric_Smith_on_Cool_Flow_Solutions.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 20 April 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Brandon Van Galder, Technical Consultant at Arkus, Inc.
Join us as we talk about his tips for getting started with Flow, how omni-channel automation solved a big problem for him, and his tips for breaking into a Salesforce career.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Brandon Van Galder. Tips for your first Salesforce interviewBefore Brandon had ever heard about Salesforce, he was an elementary school PE teacher. When he was feeling burnt out and looking for new opportunities, he happened to hear about Trailhead and the Salesforce Admin role and pretty soon, he was off to the races. He spent about a year as an admin and is now currently a technical consultant with Arkus, Inc.
Going from doing a bunch of online training to sitting in an interview and proving that you have the skills to actually be an admin is a big step, and one that many people struggle with. “I would recommend building a custom app in Salesforce,” Brandon says, “find something in your personal life that you can potentially track in Salesforce and build some automations, and then you can talk about that in your interview.” For example, Brandon built a mileage tracker to help him with training for a 5K race. Mastering the learning curve for flowsBrandon will be appearing on Jennifer Lee’s Automate This! YouTube channel soon to talk about omni-channel automation. “When I first was learning, I was deathly afraid of flows,” he says, “but now I can’t look back, I can barely even use Process Builder after being a Flownatic for the last year or so.”
One important thing to keep in mind as you get into flows is that you’re going to get better at it as you go. When Brandon first started, he was trying to send email notifications with flows and it took him about eight hours to get everything working correctly. These days, he can build the same sort of thing and fully test it in a single hour. Why you should always read the release notesBrandon had chats coming in from three different sources and a lot of them were getting missed, especially around shift changes. They really needed to know who was online and when. And it just so happened that Salesforce had recently added custom components that could get the availability of agents. It just goes to show that it’s worth it to keep up-to-date on the release notes!
You can learn more about how Brandon solved his problem with automation on Automate This!. And make sure to listen to the full episode to hear his tips for getting started with flows, what to look out for when you’re implementing automation, and more.
Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Full Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast. We talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. And this week we are talking to Brandon Van Galder, who is a technical consultant at Arkus, but previously a Salesforce Admin and staying on that theme of automation, little bit of omnichannel, little bit of career switching in this. So it's like a chopped salad. There's a lot of little bit of everything in it. That's what I'm going to call this. With that, let's get Brandon on the podcast. So Brandon, welcome to the podcast. Brandon Van Gal...:Hey Mike. Thanks for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Let's get started. For those that don't know who Brandon is, tell me a little bit about Brandon and how Brandon got into the Salesforce ecosystem. Brandon Van Gal...:Well, that's a good story. I'll start. Before I even knew what Salesforce was, I was a teacher and I actually taught elementary PE for most of my career. And then just got burnt out and I heard a podcast where they talked about becoming a Salesforce Admin and how you can make pretty good money, and the training for that was pretty simple, and they had this thing called Trailhead and just signed up for Trailhead after listening to that and fell in love with it immediately because I love badges and points. Fast forward two years later, still teaching. I landed my first role as a Salesforce Admin at a company called Scale Computing, and I worked there for a little over a year, and now I am currently a technical consultant with Arkus, Inc. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Okay. Was it my podcast? You could say it's my podcast. If not, that's okay. Brandon Van Gal...:It was not. It was the ChooseFI Podcast. Mike Gerholdt: Darn it. Okay, that's fine. I'm going to listen to that now. So that PE, we're going to have to talk about that at the end of the show. You realize that because I think Foursquares should make a comeback because that was a huge PE game for me, but spending that time starting off as a career change before we jump into all the flow stuff, because I know that's what people want too. What was the learning for you moving from being an educator to getting that first Salesforce job? Was this nights and weekends you were just one or two modules or here or there, or was this very deliberate? You set a goal of within two years, I'm going to be out of education. What was that time period for you? Brandon Van Gal...:It was semi deliberate. I did have a two year plan where I did use nights and weekends and more during spring break, fall break, Christmas break, and especially summer break. I would get a lot of my learning done then, and then transitioning into the business world quite different than the education world. I had to learn that at my first role as well. Just the nuances of business and how it differed from education and that first role was a great learning experience. I landed with a great team. Shout outs to Kelly and Rebecca, if you're hearing this, thanks for all the healthy [inaudible]. Mike Gerholdt: Of course they are. Brandon Van Gal...:They really took me under their wings and showed me how to do things. Mike Gerholdt: So I get a lot of questions and I'm spending a lot of time on this. I get a lot of questions like, man, that had to have been a hard interview because you're sitting across the table from somebody and you're like, look, I've just done a whole bunch of stuff online. What was the contributing factor or what was one piece of advice you'd give new admins that are looking to make that career change and going through that path into landing that first job? Brandon Van Gal...:I would recommend building a custom app in Salesforce. I built out a mileage tracker app for running. I did it during COVID and I started training for a 5K, so it aligned with what I was doing in my personal life. So you can just find something in your personal life that you could potentially track in Salesforce and build it. Built out some automations and then you have that you can demonstrate during your interview and talk about and share your experiences of what you did on the platform. Mike Gerholdt: I like that. I've done that quite a bit actually in some of the stuff. So you mentioned automation. Let's get into that because I know on Jennifer's automate this episode, you are going to talk about omnichannel, which is very specific. I will say very specific because we've had a lot of her guests on the podcast, but what got you into automating with omnichannel and doing some of that? Brandon Van Gal...:Yeah. Well, when I first was learning, I was deathly afraid of flows. I was like process builder all the way. I'm going to ride this till it dies, and now Salesforce is basically not supporting it as much anymore. So had to learn pretty quick how to do flows and now I can't look back. I can barely even use Process Builder and look at it and debug it anymore. Trying to figure it out. It just doesn't make sense to me after being flown addict for the past year or so, and then specifically omnichannel at my role in scale computing, we had chats coming in from three different places and a lot of them were getting missed. Hence, the deep dive into omnichannel flows. Mike Gerholdt: What was the hook? What made things click? And I asked this because I know I've done a previous podcast with Eric Smith and Gworth and they said, "Start with screen flows," and screen flows are a great way to get your teeth into flow. Was the screen flows that got you or was it something else? Brandon Van Gal...:For me, it was more sending email notifications using flows just because that's what I was doing in the business and I know you can do it just with email alerts, with workflows and things like that, but we had some unique use cases where we couldn't use flows for that. I mean the first time I built it probably took me eight hours to do one, and then as I got better, I could whip one out in less than an hour, completely tested. And just seeing that learning curve speed up is really helpful and encouraging to myself to use it more. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. What is one area when you're sitting down with a business, and this can be in your previous job as an admin or your current job as a consultant. What are some of the key words that you feel other admins should listen for when determining how much or where to add automation? Brandon Van Gal...:When someone says, 'We do this all the time and manually," that's a good spot to look for. In some cases you can't automate it, but in a lot of cases you can just with the power of Salesforce. So that's what I look out for when asking questions to clients and business units. Mike Gerholdt: So then conversely, because we love to automate all the things, what are red flags that you listen for as well when you're like, I could do this, but it means you're going to get 500 emails Brandon Van Gal...:When they say, I want to email every time, If you hear the word every time or on every status update or something like that, that is definitely a red flag where you can say, "Hey, let's pump the brakes here." Maybe having a report that shows these and then it gets emailed out once a day or once a week would be a little bit better than getting 500 email alerts in one day. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Are there, because I'm always noodling around in an org, creating stuff. As you look at flows and flows that you've created in the past, are you now seeing just having done this for a while, ways to combine flows together or ways to minimize the number of flows that you're creating? Brandon Van Gal...:Yeah, absolutely. Early on, I'd never used the invocable flows, but recently I've been using that more where I create at least one section of that flow and can reuse it in multiple different flows, being triggered by different actions. That's been huge. And then I've also used the save as a new flow where instead of having to rebuild it from scratch, you can save a previous flow as a new one and then make whatever minor changes you need off of that, where maybe the decisions might be a little different or the loops might be a little different. Yeah. So I've used those two things. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I know because I'm just looking through at different flows that I've created and sometimes it's so easy and tempting to click that, create new button and you forget all the other stuff that you've added into an org. A little bit back on omnichannel, I think before we pressed record, you were talking about how that got started. Where was some of the omnichannel work that you did and how did that inspire you for automation? Brandon Van Gal...:At scale computing, we had chat capabilities come in from three different websites, one being like the company's main website, one being the community user portal, and then one being the partner portal. And what was happening is usually during the tier one support agent meeting, they would all log off and then any of the chats that were routed to the tier one agents were being missed. And it just happened to be during that 30 minute window that helped us figure out what to do from there. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It never fails. It's always right during the shift change or something when everybody presses the little chat button on your site. So thinking through just, you are a school teacher, you moved into the ecosystem, what now do you do to just outside of the daily work to keep up to date with skills, with new features of flow? How do you plan that out? Brandon Van Gal...:I read the release notes specifically towards flow automation. That's one of the loves. I skip over some of the other stuff I don't necessarily work with every day, but I like to see that. And that came in handy when we were building out this omnichannel flow. We were manually trying to get the availability of the agents and then all of a sudden in the next release, Salesforce had these custom components where you could get the availability of all the agents in a specific queue. And that was really helpful. And knowing that's coming down the pipeline really helps you sustain on top of those. Looking at Trailhead when they update those or make new trails is a good way to stay on top of it too, because it includes that new functionality and then watching some YouTube videos that come out every once in a while via it, Jen's automate this or how I solved it, you see how other people solve issues instead of being just stuck in your own mind, you can see how other people think about flows and use them to solve problems. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, that's great. As you build and possibly rebuild flows, what advice would you give on some best practices that you do for user adoption or people really understanding, here's the implication of clicking this button or what this means. Brandon Van Gal...:Documentation is huge and screen recordings of the steps that are triggering the flow or what happens when you click the button are huge. In my current work now, we record videos and then share them with the clients at times so they can see, hey, when I update this status, something's happening in the background, but this is what it looks like on the front end so they can see the changes that were made. Mike Gerholdt: No, that makes sense. Especially with stuff when it's going to just trigger because the record was saved. I think behind the scenes maybe sometimes a user doesn't always know everything else that cascades out as a result of that. So that's good to know. What part of flow and automation is a little bit, lack of a better term here be dragons for you. It's a little unknown. You need to learn it, but it's still off in the distance. Brandon Van Gal...:I'd say some of those newer components that I just haven't touched yet because I haven't had the business use case to use. And then when you open your mind to everything on the app exchange, what's available out there, be it from unofficial Salesforce, they have some great flow components that I just haven't used, but I've seen in other people's flows. Just trying to wrap my head around what is possible. I think I'm 25% level right now of knowing what flow can do. I feel there's so much more out there that I just don't even understand or comprehend at this point. Mike Gerholdt: I don't know if anybody's at 100%. Brandon Van Gal...:Yeah. There's a lot of things with outbound messages or platform events, things like that that I just haven't touched that I still need to learn about because those are pretty powerful as well. Mike Gerholdt: So I asked this on previous pod because I know we'd done a blog post that was probably, Jennifer did a blog post on this, but how often do you find yourself using subflows? Brandon Van Gal...:I do it on rare occasions. There's one client I'm currently working with where I did use it where it ranks records based on their score. So if a record is created or updated, I can call it, if a record is deleted, I could call a subflow. That ranks everything. So a couple of different use cases personally that I've done. It's just not something I've had to use that often. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, absolutely. Moving into the world of teaching, did you have a favorite PE activity? Brandon Van Gal...:Absolutely. I was a dodge-ball fan. Mike Gerholdt: You call that dodge-ball in schools? Brandon Van Gal...:You just call it throwing and catching skills and then it's okay. And I'm not big on having the kids sit out for a long time. Mike Gerholdt: They would have to catch your way back in. Brandon Van Gal...:Do some exercise or whatever to come back in the game and keep it like a nonstop because if you keep it nonstop, then they're having fun. Mike Gerholdt: Do you ever do the dodge-ball with... We used to put these boxes in the back of the gym and so in addition to getting all the people out, you also had to knock the boxes down. Brandon Van Gal...:Yeah. We had you use cones or bowling pins on the back. We'd call it pinball bombardment, but same thing, dodge-ball rules, but the real objective for the game was knock down the pins. If you do that type of thing. Mike Gerholdt: You win. You get the whole thing. Yeah. Even if nobody's out, you can knock both pit. We did that. Yeah. Of course, immediately when somebody says dodge-ball, I go right to the movie Dodge Ball. Brandon Van Gal...:It's classic. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, this is great. I feel like we delved into some automation and even touched on little career stuff as well. For people looking to make that switch to go from A to B, whatever A is to either getting into consulting or looking at an admin or consulting job, what was one thing that kept you going? Brandon Van Gal...:I just really fell in love with Salesforce. Once I started digging in. I didn't know what it was when I heard the podcast, I'd listened to the podcast twice, Google what it was, look at what Trailhead was I had, I didn't know what a CRM was when I first started, but I'd say, "Yeah, just give it a try." Jump on Trailhead, do a couple of modules, and then if you feel that itch and you like it, just keep going because there's a position out there for you. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, that's great. And then ball house fails, we can always get a game of dodge-ball together. Brandon Van Gal...:That's right. Mike Gerholdt: Awesome. Brandon, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Brandon Van Gal...:Yeah, thanks for having me, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: So it's fun to have Brandon on the podcast and talk about automation and the way he approaches things. And also it was learning journey. I couldn't help but dive into that. And it wouldn't be the Salesforce admins podcast if we didn't talk about something fun like dodge-ball or Foursquare. Did you have a favorite game while you were in school? I like foursquare. But I'd love to hear it. So send me a tweet, let me know. Also, if you still play that game, good for you because I would love to mark out some chalk on my driveway and get a Foursquare game going. But anyway, I digress.
Direct download: Brandon_Van_Galder_on_Automated_Omni-Channel_Routing.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 13 April 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Melissa Shepard, Salesforce CTA and CEO of Lizztech Consulting.
Join us as we talk about how to approach automations in your org and why asynchronous processes are so powerful.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Melissa Shepard. Simple questions for automationsMelissa started as a Salesforce Developer, working on integrating Salesforce with some of the other systems they were using. “I like to think of integration as a backbone for the bigger, more robust automations that you can build,” she says. And if you think about it, bringing in data to Salesforce and sending it out to other platforms is at the core of what you’re trying to do with automations.
In the first phase of a project, Melissa recommends getting a firm grasp on what you’re trying to accomplish. Those simple questions are so important: what is the process? What is the end goal? “It’s not even thinking about the technology but understanding what’s the problem you’re trying to solve, first,” she says, “and then you decide how you’re going to solve that problem with the technology.” When to rebuildWhen you’re coming into an org that’s been around for a while, Melissa recommends getting a good lay of the land. Understand how everything was built and why it was built that way. If you’re missing documentation, make sure to do that as you go to make things easier later.
You should especially be on the hunt for processes that are similar but with slight variations. Sometimes you can really simplify things by turning that into one flow with multiple paths. And if you come across something that’s being used multiple times, it could be a good candidate to break out into a subflow. Asynchronous automation“You can do so much in Flow nowadays that you could do with Apex,” Melissa says, with looping, updating records, and doing things in batches. And there are some great tools like Orchestrator and MuleSoft Composer that make integrations easier than ever before.
Melissa feels that asynchronous automation is one of the most overlooked features in Flow. You can get a lot of benefits from running a process outside of normal operating hours, including more processing power and better performance for your users. She actually has a presentation coming up on this very topic, so if you’re interested in learning more you should catch her talk.
Melissa will be appearing on Automate This with Jennifer Lee later in April, so be sure to tune in for more about how your automations can be well-architected.
Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Full Transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast. We talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. And this week we're talking with Melissa Shepherd, who is a Salesforce CTA and CEO of Liz Tech Consulting. Well, you know about Well Architected automation. If you haven't picked up, we've got a little bit of a theme going. These last few episodes, we've talked last week with Tom Letty about Well Architected automation, talked about some new Trailhead classes around Flow and hyperflow. And coming up, boy, there is some really good stuff coming later in April and early May around cool Flow solutions and some omnichannel stuff. So I'll just tease that out. But of course, Melissa is also going to be on the Automate this series, which is Jennifer Lee's YouTube series, so be sure to check that out. I'll also post a link to it. We get her on the podcast first, so by the time you get to watch her on the video, you've already seen a podcast star, but enough of me talking, let's talk automation and some really cool stuff with Melissa. So let's get Melissa on the podcast. Melissa:Thank you. Mike: We're talking a lot about automation and I think it's appropriate to have you on. But before we head into that, give us a little bit of a backstory. How did Melissa come to Salesforce and join the Trailblazer ecosystem? Melissa:Well, thank you for asking. That's an interesting story. I actually just wrote a really long blog post about all that because a lot of people don't know my journey or where I came from. It actually started back in 2006. So I was a developer and I was brought into the IT department of a small but kind of startup company to help build some customer and partner portals in .net to interface with Salesforce and also do some other customizations written in .net. And one of the systems I had to work with was Salesforce, so I had to build these portals and also I saw an opportunity to integrate Salesforce with our other systems to help the users not have to do double entry to help alleviate errors with information they were entering into the system. Mike: Wow. I think you're the first person I've had on the podcast that has been doing Salesforce since '06, like me. Melissa:Oh wow. Mike: Yeah, you said '06. I was like, oh, do you remember those days of page builder where you used to have to select and then select where the component went and it wasn't wizzy wick and it took you hours to do the simplest thing? Melissa:Yeah. And I also remember not having sandboxes, and then when we finally did have sandboxes, we had to build things in the sandboxes and then rebuild them all in production. Mike: Yeah, I get a lot of grief for that when I talk to people and tell them. Early days, I would build things two or three times. Why? I mean, I remember chain sets coming out and thinking, oh cool, I'm so used to just building and rebuilding things now that I think I might be faster. Melissa:Yep. Mike: Oh, interesting. So I think you're so spot on that integration is really a form of automation. A lot of the podcast that I've had recently where I've spoken with people, we've always talked about automation just within Salesforce and broadening that even bigger to automation outside of Salesforce, just bringing in data from another system as a way to do that, yeah, I'm on board with that. Melissa:Or pushing it out to another system. So instead of user having to enter something in Salesforce and then going and enter that in the other system, your backend integration's going to push it from Salesforce to that other system. And that's an automation, Mike: Right. A 100%. I mean a lot of it is, how do we get things just done in Salesforce, but it's also what are the other systems that people live in? So yeah. Melissa:Someone that's in an architect role, a CTA role like me, we care about that. We care about the other systems that interact with Salesforce and how all these automations within Salesforce are affecting these other systems or the data that's coming into Salesforce are going out and not just on platform. Mike: So tell me and help everyone think, when you sit down with somebody, where does your mind go for automation in terms of planning, even just your first app or the first phase of a project? Melissa:So I always like to understand what it is they're trying to accomplish. So it always starts with the user. The user usually needs to do something. So having an understanding of what it is they're trying to accomplish, what is the process, what is it that they need to get to? What's that end goal? Or sometimes it isn't user, usually it is, but sometimes it isn't. Like I said, sometimes it could be that backend process that's performing some sort of automation behind the scenes and that could be done with things like Flow or code. So it's not even thinking about the technology, but understanding what's the problem you're trying to solve first and then you then decide how you're going to solve that problem with the technology. Mike: Yeah. So step two, and one of the things that I asked Tom was I think it's very easy once you have apps built and you kind of have things going to jump into Flow and create these little one-off Flows. You mentioned as an architect, I'll dive deeper into that. As an architect, how do you resist that urge to keep adding rooms or keep adding closets to a house and really thinking methodically about how you build that automation solution? Melissa:So understanding what you already have built is a huge part of that and where you need to maybe add on or modify. So instead of just adding something new, you have to understand the house that's already built and maybe there's something you can already use and just modify it a little bit or take advantage of something that's already existing. So sometimes you're not always the architect that built that house, so you have to gain an understanding of how it was built. I actually just went through this before talking to you how I like to sit down and understand current state. So what's the process? What are the processes like now? What do they look like and what supports those processes? And is it in flow, is it in Apex? Are there triggers? What is going on behind the scenes and what was built to understand what's there? And sometimes there's documentation, sometimes there isn't. If there isn't, then it's a good idea to document all that because then you have that to refer back to when you do need to go and add in new functionality or make changes. And that's the best practice. Mike: Oh man, I would love to see documentation everywhere and unfortunately it's kind of like when you go on a road trip, you forget how you got there 'cause you were in such a hurry to get somewhere. Melissa:Exactly. Mike: You mentioned processes and kind of getting an idea of current state. I think a lot of people right now are trying to get an idea of current state because they really want to migrate off of process builder and into Flow. As an admin or developer architect looking at current state, what are places that you look at that maybe are the first stop because they're over automated or they have overly too many things that could really be migrated into a simple Flow? Melissa:Yeah, that's a good question. So it is those areas of process builder and current flows where you want to look at how you can maybe combine things together. So looking at things that are similar processes, but maybe some slight variations. I've actually had to do this exercise before in an org merged scenario. So multiple orgs getting merged into one, lots of automation built in each org that was very similar. So there was an exercise of going through everything and understanding the logic. So this was actually workflow and process builder that I was analyzing, understanding what each one was doing, the processes that were happening and then seeing where everything could be combined, but where there was just some slight variations, then you would have different paths to take within your Flow. Mike: Yeah, I think oftentimes there's so many paths that cover over, I'd be curious. I mean anecdotally, I'm sure you run into this a lot where you find processes that update processes that have other processes that re-update them. Melissa:Yeah. You have to be careful with that too, right? Because you're in an infinite loop of updates. So yeah, definitely. You've got to be careful there and I always like to look at things that are very similar and then where it makes sense to break something out into a subflow, something that's maybe being used over and over multiple times, that is a good candidate to go into a subflow. Mike: I was just about to ask you, how often do you use subflows? Melissa:Yeah, where it makes sense. Mike: Where it makes sense. Melissa:It's actually the same concept as development in Apex. So you have things like functions that get called for different purposes and you put them in maybe helper classes. So they get called by all kinds of different code. So when you see something that is getting reused, you want to push that out into your helper class that can then support your other code. So that's the same idea as a subflow. Mike: Oh, I like that. Subflow is like a helper class. Melissa:Right? Exactly. Mike: I had a lot of fun discussions at TDX and I'm sure you've had a lot of fun discussions maybe even just today. How often should somebody go back and revisit Flows or processes that they built in order to make sure that they actually reflect the way that the business does business? Melissa:That's actually a good question. That's going to depend on how often the processes within the business change. So if a business has processes that stay pretty much the same, I couldn't see that as being something that's really critical. But if it's a business that's growing and changing and their processes are changing or they're acquiring other businesses, you absolutely need to go in and look at those processes. So mergers and acquisitions, that's something that at a more higher level, global level that someone like a CTA is caring about. We care about how these mergers and acquisitions are affecting current business process and how it's affecting the current technology within Salesforce and also in the entire enterprise. So those are the scenarios where you're going to really need to go back and evaluate current processes against newer processes that are coming in. I've had to do that to support organizations that were merging together, their processes were different, had to really go in and look at everything, what can be merged together, what needs to be separate, and just understand how that all can live within the same system. Mike: Yeah, understandably. And hopefully the business keeps you up to date. Melissa:Right. Mike: So I've had that as an admin too where three months later you're looking at something like, we don't do things that way anymore. Since when? Since you have told me? Melissa:Right, exactly. Yeah, and that's interesting. So I think that's where the admin still has to play that role of advisor as well. When the business is not telling you things, you get to be more liaison with the business, have a point of contact that you can go to, maybe sit down or review things with. As companies grow and get bigger, they create these centers of excellence that are overseeing these types of things. But when you're just in a lonely admin at a company, you don't have that kind of structure in place, you kind of get to play that role yourself. Mike: Yeah. You have to be a thorn in their side. That's the way I always looked at it Melissa:Yeah. And play that role of advisor. So maybe instead of waiting for them to come to you, maybe trying to find out what's going on or things changing, how are things going and how are the processes working for you and just check-ins. Mike: Okay, so in looking at Flows and a business process changes, at what point do you think I need to modify and add on and build a more complex Flow or should I build a new Flow? Melissa:I would say if the process is very different. So you look at the current process you're building for and the existing processes that are covered in your existing Flows, and a way that I like to do that is having process diagrams. So there are tools out there that can help you create those process diagrams so that you can understand your current business process that you don't have to go through and understand every single detail of the flow. And really understand what they're all doing so that you can decide if one of them is similar enough to what you're building for. If there's enough, and it's hard to really pinpoint that point where it's enough. So I always like to say if you see at least a few similarities in something, then maybe that's a good candidate to build off of. If there's not enough, it also depends on how big it is too. So that's a hard question. Mike: Well, and a lot of times there's no right answer, right? I mean, for sure I've looked at Flows and thought we could add on to this, but at what point is it going to be so incredibly hard to troubleshoot and to debug? Melissa:Yeah, exactly. And got to look at, am I going to make this one Flow too complicated? Does it make sense to just put this new process into its own Flow? Is it small enough to where it's just a slight variation and it's similar enough that it's not going to overcomplicate. So I'll just add on and modify the current one. So that really does take some analysis. Like you said, there's no right or wrong answer there. Mike: Yeah, because if you've been working in Salesforce since '06, you remember workflows and how little we could do with those, but it still felt like a lot. Melissa:Right. Mike: And then we went to Process Builder, which was like an animated process diagram and now we're in the new Flow builder. What about Flow now for you is the most exciting? Melissa:I would say the fact that you can do so much in Flow that you can do with Apex nowadays, that's exciting. Mike: Such as? Melissa:Just some of the logic that you can build in and then you can even call invocable actions in Apex. So if there is something that some complex logic that you need to run that you just can't build and flow, you can then just call your Apex there. But just a lot of the things you can do like looping and getting records and updating records and doing stuff in batch. And there's just so much power in the Flow now as opposed to what you could do with Workflow or Process Builder that you don't need to just go to Apex to do some of these more complex business processes and error handling and things like that. You can even build tests for your flows, which is great. So it's a little bit more like building tests for your code. Mike: Because we started talking about integration and then we got off that a little bit. What is some of the biggest stuff that you are excited about looking at? We now have Orchestrator as an option. Melissa:So yeah, there are some great tools like Orchestrator, MuleSoft Composer that are helping to build an integration. So a couple of the things that are exciting with Flow is there's HTTP callouts, so you can make direct callouts to endpoints from within Flow. There's external services, that's another way you can integrate. There's also platform events. So you can create platform events with Flow or not create them, but write records into your platform event, which can then be subscribed to you by something like MuleSoft. There's so much integration capability out of the box now within Salesforce. And because there is a lot, you want to understand which one you would want to use for each of the different types of use cases. What's a fire and forget versus what's a request and reply? And those are patterns that architects really care about. So you have certain use cases for certain patterns and then you have the technology that you want to use that's the best solution for each of those patterns. Mike: Two questions as we wrap up both ends of the spectrum. I think the first one, it's very fortunate for people, the longer they're around the technology, the more they see it evolve, the easier it is to kind of grasp the concept. But for you in understanding Flow, what was the one hook that made everything click? Melissa:So I really got into it when I had to build a custom process off of opportunities to interface with Field Service Lightning. And I can say really got hooked because I had to build this custom process and it just made it so easy to build it and get it done, didn't have to go to code. It made it so fast to get it done and delivered the functionality that was expected and needed. Mike: So conversely, thing that got you hooked, what do you find or what do you think is the most overlooked feature in Flow? Melissa:Now? You can do things synchronously and asynchronously within the same flow and maybe the asynchronous stuff is probably the stuff that's most overlooked. And I actually speak on asynchronous automation specifically, and I actually have a presentation that I'm going to do specifically on all the ways you can automate asynchronously with Flow. Because that's even something that's not well understood and there's different ways to do it. And being able to understand when you'd want to use one versus the other I think is very powerful. So that probably is an area that is overlooked and not well understood as to when and why you would want to use it. Mike: Yeah, I mean, without seeing your presentation completely understand, I mean I think with Flow we think of how do we make something happen right now? When this either record happens or field changes or something, how does it happen right now as opposed to not right now? I guess is the easiest way to put it. Melissa:That doesn't have to always be instant gratification in something that you learn as you grow as an architect is you really like to take advantage of asynchronous processing. There's reasons for it. You get more power out of the platform, you can allow more for your users so you're not tying up resources for them to get their jobs done. So where I was going with this is now we're talking about Salesforce Well Architected and Well Architected is telling you that you really want to try to use asynchronous processing as much as possible. Mike: And we talked a lot last week with Tom Letty about Well Architected. So I'll be sure to put a link to the previous week's podcast, keep people listening in the show notes so they can listen to that. Melissa:I think admins should get to know Well Architected as much as they can because it's just going to help them become better admins and grow into architect level if they so wish. Mike: Absolutely. In fact, we've had calls with that team because the goal is to build the best possible application, right? And fun fact, in May I have Gorav, Seth and Eric Smith on about their Flow solutions. And Gorav has a very similar one where it was actually a reporting thing that we talk about because we don't need that constant... I'm sure you've heard or been across the table from some sales manager that had to get an email every time an opportunity closes. And it's like you don't want 600 emails. That doesn't help. You really want one email that's summarized of the hundred top opportunities and you don't get that by firing off an email every single day or every single time. Exactly. Melissa:Yeah, that becomes more noise. And then you can even take advantage of things like notifications as well within the platform if you don't want to get too many emails. Mike: Right, yes, exactly. Melissa:Which can then have your records. Mike: So I'll end on this question for you, Melissa. If an admin or anybody listening is ready to get into automation, and this is similar to a question I ask Gorav and Eric, what should be the first thing they should look at? Melissa:As far as to how to automate? Mike: I leave that very open for a reason because I think it's important to understand businesses definitely need to automate processes and there's automation in Salesforce and as we've talked, integration is also automation. But it's one thing to build an app, I think it's the next thing and take that app to the next level and start adding automation to it. Where did you start? Melissa:Usually you look at where pain points are for your users, where maybe they're doing things multiple times or there's repetitive tasks. If you can bring value to your users and your business, that's where you want to look and that's where you want to start trying to build an automation. So you really want to understand those processes, look at where you can alleviate some issues in the process and then figure out the right technology to bring in, whether it's Flow or something else that's going to be developed like Batch Apex or something because you can automate with Apex as well. It's not always just Flow. Sometimes there's better use cases for going to something like that, but Flow is such a powerful tool like we've talked about that you just really need to understand the process to know which tool to use, if that makes sense. Mike: It absolutely makes sense. And thank you so much Melissa for spending time with us today. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Melissa:Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me. Really enjoyed our discussion. Mike: And of course we appreciate Melissa taking time out of her day to talk through Well Architected Automation. Only took me an entire episode to get that out verbatim, but boy, it has been a trip. Talk and flow these last few episodes and automation. I hope you enjoy it. It's more to come. And of course, if you want to learn more about all things Salesforce admin, go to admin.salesforce.com to find more resources, including any of the links that we mentioned in this episode, as well as a full transcript. Now you can stay up to date with us on social, we are at Salesforceadmins no I on Twitter, my co-host Gillian is on Twitter. She is at GillianKBruce. And of course I'm on Twitter as well. I am at MikeGerholdt. So with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode. We'll see you in the cloud.
Direct download: Melissa_Shepard_on_Well_Architected_Automation.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 6 April 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Tom Leddy, Principal Evangelist, Architect Relations at Salesforce.
Join us as we talk about how admins can build well-architected automation solutions.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Tom Leddy. Salesforce Well-ArchitectedTom is here to tell us about a new program the Architect team created, Salesforce Well-Architected. It’s a framework organized around the principles you need to understand what healthy solutions look like in Salesforce. “There’s a lot of great information there regardless of what your role is,” Tom says, “I think the lines between what admins do and what architects do are blurred these days.”
The Well-Architected Framework will help you get a handle on how to think about the big picture when it comes to making decisions in your Salesforce org. For example, how to put together a security model that is strong, scalable, and meets everyone’s needs over the long haul. What makes something well-architected?One of the things they cover in-depth is how to create well-architected automations. How do you make something that will scale and will actually add value to your business? Because, as powerful as automations are, if you’re automating a process that doesn’t make sense in the first place then you might be hurting your business more than you realize.
What needs to happen first is business process optimization, asking questions like: Why do we need to do things this way? What other business processes does this affect? Is this process repeated elsewhere in your org? Only when you’ve gotten all that straightened out do you start to build. Why you need to remediate technical debtThis is especially important as everything is moving over to flows. We have the opportunity to look at things that might’ve been over-built in Process Builder and rethink them moving forward. There’s an architecting term for that: technical debt.
Every org will accrue technical debt over time. Maybe you’ve acquired new skills and that you didn’t have 6 months ago. Maybe Salesforce has added a new feature that makes everything easier. Whatever the reason, you need to make business stakeholders aware of the long-term benefits of remediating technical debt—building a foundation for better solutions in the future. And, like any debt, you need to pay it off little by little or it’ll just grow even bigger in the future.
Tom will be appearing on Automate This with Jennifer Lee later in April, so be sure to tune in for more how your automations can be well-architected.
Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Full Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. And this week we're talking with Tom Leddy, principal evangelist, architect relations at Salesforce about how admins can build well architected automation solutions. And we did get into a few other things like documentation best practices, and really some tips that architects can give admins. It's a super fun conversation. Tom and I had a chance to catch up after TrailblazerDX, and of course Tom will also be on the Automate this series with Jennifer Lee later in April. So if you're listening to this early in April, hang on for later in April because he's also going to be on Automate this. And if you're listening later, obviously go check our YouTube page. But fun conversation. There is a question I asked Tom at the end about some fun stuff that he does, and I promise you you don't know the answer. So with that, let's get Tom on the podcast. So Tom, welcome to the podcast. Tom Leddy:Thank you. It's great to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, we had a chance to catch up at TrailblazerDX, which feels like not that long ago, but for anybody listening that doesn't know you or ran into at a big event, tell me what you do at Salesforce and how you came here. Tom Leddy:Sure. So I am an architect evangelist. I'm part of the architect relations team. And what I do at Salesforce is my team is responsible for creating tools and resources to help architects be successful at their jobs. And I help to make sure that our ecosystem is aware of those tools and knows how to use them and where to find them. Mike Gerholdt: Very succinct. So what'd you do before Salesforce? Tom Leddy:Before Salesforce, I worked at a variety of different customers and partners and I've been working in the ecosystem for a little over 10 years and used to lead digital transformations. I had big Fortune 500 companies and worked for a partner for a little while and then got the call from Salesforce. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. That's how it works. Boy, I think back to the last, I don't know, 10 years. You said 10 years. And digital transformations to me feel like we were going from steam powered engines to electric cars overnight to some degree. Tom Leddy:When I think about tech as a whole, but specifically the Salesforce platform and what it looks like now compared to what it looked like when I first started working with it, it's night and day for sure. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I remember page builder having to double click because it wasn't even wizzywig. You just double clicked and move stuff. Yeah. Anyway. So we chatted at TrailblazerDX and stuff. I saw a lot of people at TrailblazerDX and probably in the community have heard about this, but I want to get up to speed. Tell me about what well architected is. Tom Leddy:Sure. So Salesforce, well architected is a framework that we created. Then it's available on the Salesforce architect's website, which we can share the link in the show notes. And it is a framework that is organized around the principles that you need to see what healthy solutions look like in Salesforce and where to spend your time and what to focus on as an architect. Mike Gerholdt: What if I'm an admin? Tom Leddy:You know what? Actually, there's a lot of great information there, regardless of what your role is. And I think there's honestly the lines between what admins do and what architects do are blurred a lot really now compared to, again, when we go back to what it was like to work on the platform 10 years ago compared to today. It's hard to put people into specific roles I think now compared to maybe early on. So there's a lot of great information for everybody on the site. Mike Gerholdt: So help me understand that because I feel like I can't speak for everybody, but I've lived in the admin world my whole life and I've always seen what architect's done, and I feel like, wow, that's super way more detailed than where my brain is at. But you said there's a blur there. What do you see in that blur? Tom Leddy:Well, I'll take security for an example. So that's one of the topics we cover in, well architected, how do I physically configure a sharing rule, which is obviously good to know, but then how should I even be thinking about putting together a security model so that it's going to be stronger long term for my organization? It's going to scale, it's going to meet everybody's needs. And that's the guidance that we really put in well architected, which is how should I even be approaching this and what should I look for to know if something is set up the right way or if it's bad and there's something maybe I need to refactor. We have some of that prescriptive guidance and then some tables that have what we call patterns and anti-patterns where a pattern is something you can physically see in an org of if you see your security model set up like this and it has these characteristics, good job, keep going, you're doing great. Mike Gerholdt: Then you're not building something on a house of cards? Tom Leddy:Exactly. Mike Gerholdt: So let's take that one step further because I know later in April you are going to be on Jennifer's Automate this YouTube series. So plug there. Tom Leddy:Looking forward to it. Mike Gerholdt: Which would be fun. But let's talk about what is well architected automation. Tom Leddy:Sure. So automation, that's one of the other topics we cover and we talk about how to design good automations that, number one, will scale and we'll also, we'll actually create value for a business because I'm sure everybody has seen this at one time or another where somebody will come and maybe they'll ask you to build a flow or whatever it is. And they'll describe a process and you'll be thinking in your head, "Okay. Why are you even doing this way in the first place?" And then you push back and maybe ask a few questions, and really it comes out, well, nobody really knows why we're doing it this way, but we always have and now we want to build it in Salesforce. And then you want to be thinking, "Well, do you really want to automate something that you're not even really clear on why you're doing it in the first place?" Mike Gerholdt: I hear you, because the crazy thing is, I'm thinking about some of the conversations I had at TrailblazerDX with customers that are looking at their automations, and of course, we're moving everything to flow now, which right fits really well with this well architected thing because I feel like we're architecting things even better now. We being the royal we of admins. But in terms of this is a good opportunity for us to look at, hey, what is some of the stuff that we might have overbuilt and process builder and move it over into flow? Tom Leddy:Yeah. All the time. And I can say I work people with people that would say something like that, but I would also say something like that myself. Because if I think about some of the automations I built maybe early on in my career, I'm even looking at myself going, "Did I really build that? What was I thinking?" And you're right. And we call that, we have a term for that actually. We call it technical debt, which is something that could be created for a variety of different reasons. One is I built something that now that I know a little bit more, I maybe I could have done it better and there was a more efficient way to do this. Another reason it can be created is because Salesforce comes out with a feature that maybe you don't need that automation anymore because it's available in as the standard part of the platform now. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I feel like that's the hard conversation to have is why aren't you building new as opposed to how come all you're doing is maintenance stuff? That was always a discussion that I had to have with my stakeholders was, here's the three features I can deliver because I also need to maintain the other stuff. What is your advice on conversations like that? How from an architect standpoint would you advise an admin to balance that? Tom Leddy:Would be working to make sure that you've got a governance structure or is use the term COE, that includes both business and IT stakeholders. And when anybody is estimating how much is a project going to cost, how much is this implementation going to cost? Like you said, everybody wants to build new, but if you factor in the, okay, we're going to build this and here's how much it's going to cost to build it. Also, we're going to be maintaining it for the next X number of years realistically, how much is it going to cost per year to maintain and how much time are we going to need? And making sure that, that information is gathered and communicated upfront so that it's not a surprise down the road is probably the best way to handle that. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, that makes sense. I feel like the best intentions, whatever that saying is slips my mind, but I feel like when you sit down, one thing that I've always admired about architects is I feel like they have this very holistic view. And sometimes as we operate in a world that doesn't give us everything, I sat down with a couple admins at TrailblazerDX, and they didn't have the full business view yet, but they wanted to build for that scale. How do you work through that? What is an architect's mindset knowing... I always envision a house... knowing I have to build a house, but possibly five more additions to it. Tom Leddy:That involves a lot of communications. Usually at the executive level too. And I think one of the unfortunate things that happens a lot to admins is you get put into a position where people expect to just give you a set of specs and say, "Okay. Go ahead and build this." And by the time that gets to you, the discussions about what are we going to be building in the future have maybe already been had. And then you don't have the opportunity to come back in and say, "Okay. This looks like it's going to meet maybe a short term need, but are you sure this is really what you want to do?" And I think the biggest thing to do there is don't be afraid to push back when you see scenarios like that where you're curious about it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And unfortunately, that can be the hard part to do. What can happen often is admins come into a role and previous admins vacated it. And I want to talk a little bit about documentation here because as an architect, I always feel like you're in this room of blueprints and every wire and diagram and everything's methodically planned out and the admin's in a little bit of a messy cave, but maybe that's just the world I live in. What are some of the things that you would advise, especially around automation? And I bring this up because not too long ago it was process builder, all the things. Now it's flow, and we have Orchestrator. Plus we also have MuleSoft. We have a lot of other ways to integrate. What are some of the best practices that you feel architects could give to admins around documentation, especially around automation? Tom Leddy:Actually, I'm glad you asked. So we have in our various well architected chapters, there are some links at the bottom to additional resources. And one of the chapters is called Simple and Simple, the way that we tell it, the overarching pillar is easy. And then Simple, talks about not over-engineering, and I like to tell people, easy doesn't mean that it's easy for you as an architect. It means that as an architect, you've made all of the hard decisions to make it easy for your business to get value out of your solutions. But underneath the easy/simple chapter, we've got a list of tools and resources, and there are some templates for documentation. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Or you're somewhere else. Tom Leddy:Yeah. Or you've physically gone to a different company and they can't call you. Mike Gerholdt: I've seen that actually a few times at user groups where they'll walk up and, "Hey, used to work at... Can you tell me what this thing meant?" I didn't explicitly write that down enough. Sorry about that. Tom, outside of drawing diagrams and writing incredible documentation and building templates for admins, what are some of the things that you enjoy maybe outside of Salesforce, hobbies, VTO, stuff like that? Tom Leddy:So let's see. So I have run at least a half-marathon in all 50 US states and on all seven continents. Mike Gerholdt: What? Tom Leddy:Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: First of all, I didn't even know that all 50 states had a half-marathon. I feel like first the Rhode Island ones basically just run across the state. Tom Leddy:Yeah, it's pretty close. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Okay. All 50. I haven't even been to all 50 states. Tom Leddy:Actually worked out nicely. It was a good way to see the country and then the rest of the world as well. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. That's really cool. And is those number things that come from it, or, I'm sure you have pictures too? Tom Leddy:Yeah. I've got a bunch of pictures and yeah, I've saved my race numbers and medals and everything that I've gotten over the years. Mike Gerholdt: Wow, okay. That's a trivia question answer, I would've got wrong. For sure. And all seven continents too. Tom Leddy:Yeah. Actually, it was about a year ago now, but went to Antarctica and did continent number seven. Mike Gerholdt: What? Tom Leddy:Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Very cool. Tom Leddy:Thanks. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. You might win of all the answers for the rest of the year now. Tom Leddy:Thank you. Mike Gerholdt: I don't know how to top that. Yeah, okay. Tom Leddy:It was a really cool experience too. And Antarctica in particular was number one because it's Antarctica, but number two, because I was actually supposed to go back in 2020 and the trip got delayed and then delayed again and delayed multiple times because of COVID. It ended up, when I finally got to go, it was the grand finale for this big long-running journey that I had started. It took me about 15 years total to do. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, maybe there was nothing but it was there something that kicked off this like, "Hey, I'm going to do this in all 50 states and all seven continents?" Tom Leddy:It was funny. So I had done some local races and then I had some friends that lived in other states, and I would go to visit them and just look to see if there was an interesting race to do during the weekend that I was going to be there. And after a while I got to a point where I realized, "Wow. I've run in 10 different states. That would be cool to do all 50." And then from there, I started actually making plans specifically to go to states around the races that I wanted to do in those states. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. So do you have a favorite that stood out? Tom Leddy:In the States, it would be Alaska, I think. Mike Gerholdt: And why is that? Tom Leddy:So it's during summer solstice. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. So the sun never sets. Tom Leddy:Exactly. And the way that it works is you do the race at around 8:00 AM, which is around the same time most races are, and the race is awesome too because it goes through downtown Anchorage and then out into the wilderness for the second half. So I got to see a moose standing alongside the course and it was pretty cool. But then when you come back, the idea is because it's light out all night, you go back to your hotel, take a shower, get something to eat, sleep for a few hours, and then starting in the evening, there is an all night festival in downtown Anchorage where they close off pretty much all of the streets in the city, and there's dancing and food and everything. And it's summer solstice fest that goes all night. And you don't even realize it's like two o'clock in the morning because the sun is still out. And it was a fun weekend. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. I was going to ask, I mean, I wonder if you're sleep equilibrium or whatever they call that, it was way wacky? Tom Leddy:It when I got home. I definitely noticed it because then I had to go back to my normal schedule of sleeping in the evenings. But when you're there, surprisingly, I don't know what the specific word is for the effect that it has on your brain, but because it's sunny out and it looks like it's two o'clock in the afternoon when it's really two o'clock in the morning, for some reason, your brain doesn't think that you're supposed to be tired right now. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It's I think back to some of the shows when they're in space for so long. Can I just see gravity? Yeah. You get back home, you're like, "Darkness." Tom Leddy:Yes. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. That's really cool. Well, Tom, thanks for being on the pod and enlightening us on being well architected. I think some of this is so cool. I can't wait to see what you're going to talk to Jennifer about. Tom Leddy:Thanks. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that for sure. And we'll actually some of the topics we talked about earlier with automated, and then we'll do a little bit of a deeper dive into actually building some automations too, so it's- Mike Gerholdt: Because, I mean visual. Tom Leddy:Yeah, exactly. Mike Gerholdt: Great. Well, thanks so much, Tom. This is fun. Tom Leddy:Thank you. This has been great. Mike Gerholdt: So Tom wins half-marathon in all 50 states and seven continents. That's pretty cool. I mean, that's one of the fun takeaways I had from our conversation. There was so much in there, and it was really interesting to get that architect's perspective around thinking through business process and how we automate solutions and how we architect solutions and really that planning process. Some of that can be super exciting to get into. At least I find it exciting.
Direct download: Well-Architected_Automation_with_Tom_Leddy.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 23 March 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Stuart Werner, Principle Instructor at Salesforce, and Feroz Abdul Rehman, Senior Manager of Technical Curriculum Development at MuleSoft. Join us as we talk about two new Trailhead Academy courses that can help you harness the power of automation and transform your business. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Stuart Werner and Feroz Abdul Rehman. Enroll in Trailhead AcademyTrailhead Academy is a collection of certified instructors who offer specific trainings you can take, as an individual or as a member of a company, to come up to speed on various Salesforce products. We brought Stuart and Feroz on the pod to share details about their new classes, both of which are focused on automation. ADX301: Automate No-Code Solutions Using FlowAdmins are getting more and more interested in Flow, and there have been a lot of folks who cross-register for the class aimed at developers. However, one piece of feedback Stuart has heard a lot as an instructor is, “I know how to click but I just don’t understand why to click.” And so he got together with some other instructors to come up with a class to help admins learn how to think like a developer and use Flow. The class starts with the basics of development: variables, control statements, algorithms, “all the fun stuff that might not be in a Salesforce Admin’s toolbox,” Stuart says. From there, they move on to look at specific use cases and learn how to analyze requirements and whiteboard a solution. By the end, you’ll be making powerful, automated solutions in a snap with Flow. ADX350: Build Salesforce Hyperautomation Solutions with MuleSoft“Hyperautomation is the new frontier,” Feroz says, “[it’s] all about the maximum amount of automation you can build into your daily processes that helps people focus on what’s really important.” It’s not just about saving 5 minutes here or there, it’s about finding all of the places where there’s potential for automation across your organization. In the class, you’ll learn how to use all the automation tools Salesforce has to offer, from Flow to MuleSoft to Einstein Bots, and how to connect them together. The goal is to give you the skills you need to deliver business transformation through end-to-end automation solutions that improve the employee experience, deliver value, and drive innovation. If you’re already familiar with some automation tools but you’re trying to figure out what’s next, this class is perfect for you. Be sure to listen to the full episode to learn about how Feroz and Stuart approach teaching and why classes are a great opportunity to put yourself out there. And head on over to Trailhead Academy to get started. Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Direct download: New_Admin_Classes_from_Trailhead_Academy_with_Stuart_and_Feroz.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 16 March 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to LeeAnne Rimel, Senior Director of Admin Evangelism at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about the biggest mistakes admins make and what to do to avoid them. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel. What’s the biggest mistake new admins make?About once a year, LeeAnne gets asked the same question: what are the biggest mistakes she sees new admins make? And LeeAnne is a great person to answer this question. She’s worked at Salesforce for a long time, including a spell as a tier-three support engineer. She’s seen literally thousands of implementations and, you’ll be glad to know, she has an answer. “The biggest mistake that I see Salesforce Admins make is not asking why,” LeeAnne says. That means putting on your business analyst hat and understanding what’s behind what you’re trying to build. Not just how you’re going to implement it, but why you’re being asked for it in the first place. Measure twice and cut onceLet’s take a common request: you’re asked to add a new field. LeeAnne points out that the bulk of your work is actually going to be done in the discovery process, where you’re interviewing stakeholders, talking with users, and understanding how it fits into the business process already in place in your organization. Is this something other business units will use? What will be the reporting requirements for this field? That’s why business analyst skills are such a point of emphasis in the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit. When you ask why you’re building something, you’re trying to understand how it affects the user, how it affects the business units, how it affects the organization, and how it affects other dependencies. Only after you’ve got a firm grasp on all that and written your plan down on paper do you start to actually build something. In short, LeeAnne is a big proponent of “measure twice and cut once.” Your time to shineYou might feel hesitant to push back on requests because it makes you feel like you’re saying no. But just building whatever’s been requested and not taking the extra time to understand the context means you’re missing out on opportunities to shine. It could be that several business units need to track something similar, and you can actually make a solution that works for everyone across your organization, or give them reporting they didn’t know they needed. If you need help brushing up on your business analyst skills and getting a comprehensive understanding of what makes a solid discovery process, we’ve got you covered. Check out the links below and remember: always ask why. Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Full Transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today, Gillian Bruce, and we are going to be joined by podcast frequenter, LeeAnne Rimel, my amazing teammate who had a really interesting thought for an episode, and I agreed that it was an important topic. So, I said, "Come on on the podcast, LeeAnne, let's talk about it." It's all about the biggest mistakes that admins make. So, without further ado, let's get LeeAnne on the podcast. LeeAnne, welcome to the podcast. LeeAnne Rimel: Hey, Gillian, thanks for having me. Gillian Bruce: Good to have you back. Now, I wanted to dig into something that you and I had a quick chat about the other day and I thought, "Hey, we should probably bring this to our listeners." This came up for you because you had just done a presentation to a group of students learning about technology in Salesforce, and it's all about the biggest mistakes that admins make. Now, I'm sure everyone's wondering what are the biggest mistakes. So, LeeAnne, can you give us a little more context about this conversation and this idea in general? LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah. It's one of my favorite questions to get asked. I feel like at least once a year, usually more, someone asks me this question, whether it's on a panel, it's often when working with students who might be entering the Salesforce ecosystem in the next year or so. The question is always what's the biggest mistake you see Salesforce admins make, or what's the worst thing you can do as a new Salesforce admin. Understandable question, right? People want to avoid possible missteps, and totally makes sense. Gillian Bruce: What's the biggest mistake, LeeAnne? I want to know. This is buildup. LeeAnne Rimel: We've got the buildup. Well, okay. The great thing is that it's something that you can do or you can avoid this mistake whether you're a brand new admin or you're a really tenured admin. The biggest mistake that I see Salesforce admins make is not asking why, is not diving into their business analyst skills, is not evaluating why a solution needs to be built before they build it. And so, the great news is that no matter where you are in your Salesforce admin journey, you can ask why. As we grow our business analyst skills, as we grow our admin skills, we grow our language and our methodology and our toolkit of how we ask why and how we build out those solutions. But on your first day as an admin, if someone asks you to add a checkbox, you can ask why, and I really strongly recommend you all do that. Gillian Bruce: Yes. So, I a hundred thousand percent agree with this and I think it's really interesting because a lot of times when you think about, "Oh, I'm scared about making a mistake when I build something or I'm scared about making a mistake in this implementation," that is actually, that's fine. Those are good mistakes to make because you learn something. It's like this idea of experimenting and continuing to iterate. But before you even get there, before you build anything, really understanding what it is you're trying to accomplish and what's the problem you're trying to solve. LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if anyone else's parents ever used to tell them the rule about measure twice, cut once, right? It's a good attitude to bring to building solutions as well. A huge amount of your work, let's say you're going to build an automation, business automation for one of your business units. The bulk of your work is not going to be the clicking around in Salesforce. The most meaningful and valuable part of your work is going to be conducting those stakeholder interviews, creating your process map, asking good questions about what needs is this serving, creating your user stories, really understanding the solution that you want to build and asking good questions about often as admins were approached by maybe heads of business units, "Hey, we need to track this. We need to add a field for this." That's a very common request. We need to add a field for this. Gillian Bruce: So, actually on that, LeeAnne, so let's say I have been in an organization in a Salesforce admin role and I've been just kind of taking orders and just adding fields when people ask me to add fields or building the thing because they tell me that's what they want to have built, and I haven't done a lot of asking why. How would you go about trying to change that and shift that in my current role? Because it's a little weird to all of a sudden just change and be like, "Well, why do you need that?" And then people be like, "Well, why are you asking me why I need it? You just do what I tell you to do." How do you combat that? LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah, I think that's a really great question, right? I think we approach this with a lot of empathy for our end users. I think that's always a great way. Writing user stories is kind of an act of empathy because you are imagining that you are that user working through a system and trying to accomplish a task, right? And so, I think approaching it in that way, it's not about, "Hey, you have to give me the right answer or else I'm not going to build you this thing you're asking for." It's, "Hey, I want to better understand. I'm interested in better understanding how you need this to perform. What's the problem that this is solving?" because there might be other groups you can interview as well. There might be a chance if you've got one sales group is requesting a field, is that a field that has a similar need in other business units and other sales processes, and maybe it should be a different... Instead of having multiple fields for each sales unit, maybe it's one field or maybe it's a custom object. Gillian Bruce: It's why on all of the levels, all of the whys. LeeAnne Rimel: But it's like if I'm going to ask you why, it's fair to provide some additional background on why, what I'm going to do with that information to make you my partner in it because that makes you my partner. If I'm like, "Hey, can we collaborate on this for a minute? Can we have a little interview?" We talk about stakeholder interviews. A stakeholder interview doesn't have to be like, "Oh, we scheduled an hour on the calendar that's titled stakeholder interview, and we're following this template." A stakeholder interview can be, "Hey, sales user that I work with, can I sit down with you for 15 minutes and ask you some key questions about what's difficult for you?" Or, it can be putting a user story together and then gut checking in with one of your stakeholders. Those are all business analysis. A lot of the interpersonal skills that many admins are so strong in, those are all business analysis skills. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, and it's all before you start solutioning at all. I think one of the things that I heard you say, especially focusing on the empathy, like you said, it establishes the relationship with your users, but it also establishes with your leadership, it shows that you're thinking more big picture about where the business is going and how Salesforce can fit within the context of that. I think we've talked about this a fair amount on our team to various groups of admins, but really as a Salesforce admin, especially given the current environment that we're all in, we're asked to do more with less. This is a moment and this is an opportunity to really demonstrate that you do understand the business goals, you can connect the business goals with the skills you have and the technology skills that you have to deliver really impactful results pretty quickly. And so, I think especially tapping into this idea of don't make the mistake of not asking why you go into this, this is a really important thing to think about right now. LeeAnne Rimel: Absolutely. I think it's an opportunity to uncover some gold mines really as an admin for where you can add value to your organization. Earlier I mentioned thinking about the user, thinking about the business unit, thinking about the enterprise, when you ask why and when you dive in and when you conduct stakeholder interviews and when you understand the context of these requests, it helps you understand the business and the things that are pains for the business and how you can potentially create solutions for those. That's an incredibly valuable place for a Salesforce admin to be, and it's a really smart place, career-wise, to be, to be positioning yourself to understand, okay, I see that we're wanting to dive into analytics more across these parts of the business, because not only does asking why help you build a better solution, you're the Salesforce expert, probably not your leadership structure, probably not your business unit leaders. Gillian Bruce: Well, and I mean understanding what different parts of the businesses need and understanding what Salesforce can do or what you can do with Salesforce as an admin. I've heard stories before where an admin says, "Oh, well this business unit was using this specific app for this process. They didn't realize we could do that in Salesforce which we already pay for. So, I'm going to just save us a bunch of money and say, 'You don't have to use that anymore and it's all going to be in Salesforce.'" You talk about a business understanding the value you can bring as an admin, that is huge. LeeAnne Rimel: Absolutely. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah, I think what you're talking about is kind of doing an audit of systems, right?, And so if you're looking for projects as an admin or trying to understand where you can add value, that is an incredible place to look for value ads, because if you are on, say, Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, you can create custom objects. You have platform access, right? I remember working with a customer and they were using I think Sales Cloud, and it was when they realized we were working together and they were showing me the different systems they used and the different places that they tracked things, and they were using, I think Evernote or something to track customer stories and it was how they were tracking, and they had this whole kind of complex template and they were adding Salesforce record IDs and it was a whole thing. Gillian Bruce: Mm-hmm. I love that. That's a fantastic story, and yeah, again, it really demonstrates, hey, you use those business analysis skills as an admin. You never know what kind of things you're going to discover. I mean, talk about a leader who would not appreciate that, right? Oh, I'm already paying for a thing so I don't have to pay for this extra thing. We can get rid of that and just continue to pay for what we're already paying for. Yeah, especially given the world as it is now, that's the huge kind of impact that we can have as admins using those business analysis skills. LeeAnne Rimel: Discovery is such an important, when I say ask why, really if you're Googling for and looking on Trailhead for content, asking why is really all about discovery. It's a huge part of it is discovery, and we'll share in the show notes some great Trailhead resources and admin resources to dive into that further. But doing that customer discovery, because your users and your business unit leaders are your customers, it's so illuminating because we assume that we know what people... Sorry, there's my dog. We assume that we know what people are doing as they're working with Salesforce all day, but we don't. That's why Mike Gerholdt, our colleague, coined the term SABWA, Salesforce administration by walking around, and that's another form of discovery. It's doing those interviews and research into how are people using Salesforce and how can we make their life a little better. Gillian Bruce: Well, I know Riley's very passionate about this. I can hear that she cares a lot about asking why it's good. So, I just, I love everything you shared, LeeAnne. I think that this is a really valuable aspect for all of us to think about no matter where we are in our careers, especially as Salesforce admins. If you're brand new, your first day on your job as a Salesforce admin, what are the top few questions that you would ask? LeeAnne Rimel: Well, if you're brand new as a Salesforce admin and you're dealing with an existing implementation, I think some of the most important questions you can ask is help me understand why was this built, help me understand why you're using this, or who's using this, and making sure you're asking the right people, right? That's a huge part of identifying your stakeholders and identifying who would ask. Make sure you're asking the right people. Make sure you're interviewing your power users as well as people who have admin rights and things like that. Sometimes power users are using things in a way that wasn't originally architected, but it's providing value for them, so you want to make sure you figure out how they're using a text field or something like that. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, it's your job as the admin to connect the business goals and the overall goals of your leadership with what you and Salesforce can do together. I think that's a really important point. Well, LeeAnne, it's been so fun to have this excuse to talk about this very important topic with you on the podcast. Any final thoughts you want to leave with us before we end, we wrap up today? LeeAnne Rimel: Every admin is a business analyst and has the power to be a strong business analyst and to continue to build those business analyst skills. One of the most important elements of being a business analyst is curiosity with that customer discovery. I think admins, it was curiosity that likely led you to learning this new skillset and learning how to be a Salesforce admin and exploring all these different tools and features. So, lean into that curiosity. You already have everything it takes to be a business analyst. Lean into that curiosity. Gillian Bruce: I love that. Great note to end on. Thanks again so much for joining us today, LeeAnne. I appreciate it. LeeAnne Rimel: Thank you, Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Huge thanks to LeeAnne for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. Now, if you want to learn anything that we mentioned on the podcast, including resources about how to do discovery and how to ask why, please check out the show notes. We've got some great Trailhead content there, some great content in general to help you understand how to kind of hone those business analysis skills. We've also got links to our Salesforce admin skills kit, which has a whole section on business analysis. As always, if you want to learn anything more about being an awesome admin, you can go to my favorite website, admin.salesforce.com, where you'll find the skills kit and all kinds of great blogs and videos and more podcasts actually very closely related to some of the topics we talked about today. So, check it out.
Direct download: Biggest_Mistakes_Admins_Make_with_LeeAnne_Rimel.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 9 March 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rakesh Gupta Senior Solution Solution Architect at IBM, a six-time Salesforce MVP, evangelist, Salesforce coach, and the creator of Automation Champion. Join us as we talk about how to fit blogging into a busy schedule and what to think about when you’re writing about a solution. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rakesh Gupta. The birth of Automation ChampionWe’re big fans of Rakesh’s blog, Automation Champion, so we brought him on the pod to find out more about the man, the myth, the legend. When he first got started, he would answer questions from the community to see if he could find solutions with automations that didn’t require code. Rakesh started saving these answers in a gigantic Google Doc which he would share over and over again, but he started thinking that maybe there was a better way. The same questions would come up, time after time, and it would be really handy to put all the answers in one place. That’s when he took his first steps into the blogosphere. Why you should start bloggingMike is doing a little blogging of his own about, well…blogging and why admins should start doing it. So we wanted to get some tips from Rakesh about how he fits writing into his busy schedule. The first thing Rakesh does is block out a couple of hours each weekend to plan his content schedule and research new topics. “I try to write [a post] four or five times before I publish it,” he says, “if I understand it well then anyone can, too.” He goes to the Trailblazer Community to look for new questions and, believe it or not, he still has material he has gotten to in that Google Doc. It’s important to have confidence in the fact that your perspective matters. No matter where you are on your Salesforce journey, you’re going to have a unique perspective and a unique way of solving problems. As Rakesh says, you need to realize that there’s an audience out there that will resonate with the way you, specifically, explain things. How Rakesh writes a new postWhen Rakesh is writing a new blog post, the first thing he does is jump into his Developer Sandbox to see if he can get a solution working. He especially wants to make sure that he’s testing with enough records to tell if it will be useable at scale. Most importantly, Rakesh tries to frame his solutions in terms of tangible business problems that anyone can understand. He’s always thinking about the perspective of someone who is new to Salesforce: will they be able to understand and implement this solution? If not, he’ll go back and make some edits. Finally, Rakesh does a regular session on Saturdays called Salesforce Flow Office Hours. “Trying to build a Flow is the last step,” he says, “the first step is to spend time thinking it through, you have to create a Process Flow Diagram or write something down on paper so you understand how it works in real life.” If you want help with your Flows, hop in a session on Saturdays at 10 am (US Central Time). Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Full Transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product community and career to help you become an awesome admin. Rakesh Gupta: Thank you for inviting me, Mike. Mike: It's been a long time coming. I feel like I've read a lot of your stuff. But for those people, the less than 1%, I would say, of the community that may not know everything that you do, can you just give us a brief history of how you got into the Salesforce ecosystem? Rakesh Gupta: Sure. My name is Rakesh and I'm a Senior Solution Architect working at IBM. I started my career as soon as I got out of college in India as a [inaudible] developer. Then I was fortunate enough to join couple of Salesforce community events that happened around that time, lead by Kalender Patel and other Salesforce evangelist in India, and I learned about Salesforce. Right after that, I found the recruiting application work and I started learning Salesforce and working on Salesforce platform and I involved in community. That's how I learn and get most of the knowledge and use cases that I put on my blog on automationchampion.com and how then later I started user group in Navi Mumbai, which called as Navi Mumbai Developer User Group. And in 2016, I started Automation Hour with Jennifer Lee and David Litton to help community to learn Salesforce automation process builder/Salesforce flow by using Salesforce use case that everyone implement in their org. Mike: So you do a few things. I feel like you hit on some really good parts. According to your site, you're six times Salesforce MVP. Holy cow. That's nothing to shake a stick at. Rakesh Gupta:I started this blog post when I was in India and I was posting page three Bollywood parties' picture initially. It was started as [inaudible] and then as soon I just started my Salesforce career, I come to know about, there are lots of community people, they are looking for solutions like for example, initially we have success.com, success.salesforce.com or developer.salesforce.com and I hunt those website to find use case, help people to solve their problem using automations without writing code. Some of them, you can able to do the code, but there are lots of possibilities and Salesforce introduce workload. Then ability to launch a flow from workflow and then later process builder. Now Salesforce flows. So there are possibilities that the solution and use cases one has can we solve without writing code. So what I initially did is I started writing those into a Word document 10 or 20 pages what document step by steps and posting into the Trailblazer community. Mike: No, it's cool. I love it. And some of these are rhetorical, but I would love to know some of the questions that I get asked. Because I feel like as a fellow blogger, these are things that we know but you talked about you also did automation hour with Jennifer Lee and Jennifer Lee's on our admin relations team. And she writes a ton of automation stuff too. What was the unique value that you were like, you know what, I got to put this out in the world even though there's other people doing stuff like it? Rakesh Gupta:Well that's a very hard question. Mike: I know. Rakesh Gupta:So initially, see I'm from the background that coming from, I don't have lots of technical background in my family. My father is a retired teacher and my mom is housewife. So I see that people is struggling to getting into ecosystems and getting the use case that they are trying to solve by going through some articles. Because one thing that I believe is there is a user for every use cases, there are person that require the same intensity that you solve a challenge. For example, there are products, there are laptop, there are different kind of laptops and there are audience for each of them, there are movies then audience for each of them, those categories. So likewise, that's what I believe. If there are different people, how I can make myself unique in that front is when I get a requirement or use case from the community. Mike: I think you nailed it. There's so many use cases out there and there's so many reasons to share what you do that I'm surprised your Google Drive last as long as it did before you started the blog. Rakesh Gupta:I still have lots of scenarios in my Google Drive that I have in my Twitter list to put into the blog post in a blog post format and there are lots of community people who is helping me to put this into the block right now. Mike: Well so let's talk about that because I think one of the things that if you're creating content for the community and running, you go to automation champion, you look at it and you're like, man, that must take him millions of hours a week to do. What does that look like? How do you categorize that time in your life to get that content out the door? Because you're busy, you're doing stuff, you're flying around the world, you've got a day job. Rakesh Gupta:I spend my weekends to plan for at least next two weekends so that I am ahead in the content planning. So usually on every Sunday, four to five or four to six central, I spend two hours just to going through my content knowledge base that I have in my to-do list. So what else I can take this week or next week and try to implement for the community. And there are lots of other things like I write the blog post on Salesforce Flow, Salesforce religious and mainly part of related things. So I categorize them and there are some architect things as well. I started writing, so I categorize them and see what is most valuable thing that one can learn from me and my experience and I take one and start researching it, breaking it down, writing it, and trying to read four or five times before I publish so that if I understand then anyone can understand this, Mike: That's real similar to what I used to do too. I remember I used to do it on Saturday mornings because Sunday evenings usually my brain is mush. So I took advantage of that Saturday morning wake up brain, let's plan some content stuff. That was always fun. Rakesh Gupta:Saturday morning I run Salesforce office hours for community 10 to 10:30. So I spend. Mike: So you just do more because you're not busy enough? Rakesh Gupta:So every Saturday, 10 to 10:30 central, I spend 30 minutes to people if they have any questions come and try to solve online at the same time. And sometime I teach them how to think through this scenarios use case and how they can utilize their knowledge and they can learn something new. Some of the people when I talk to them, the problem, the major challenges that I see is they don't understand the data model and then there is something that I help them to learn. You can go to the Salesforce is schema builder that you can use to understand how the objects are connected, how this wheels are connected so that when you go and do the query it is very easy for anyone. Mike: You know this as well as I do for every problem or every challenge that you're trying to solve for in a business, there's probably three or 400 different ways to solve it in Salesforce. Are you ever concerned that you're not putting out a piece of content that's right? Rakesh Gupta:Yes. If I agree, yes. Sometime when I saw some scenario that Jen or David or someone else put on this website, I feel like, this is good. And I think that is the opportunity for everyone to learn because no one is perfect. So that's where I see community and my friends like, this is the other way that you can think to solve some problem that I never think and this is good for me to learn and think about. There are different approaches as well that can solve and maybe that is more efficient way. And it did happen many times. So I make a note of it and next time I try to see if I can do solution differently or this is the best solution. Mike: I found myself at least, and there's different years depending on the iteration of the Salesforce release where depending on what the product or feature is that you're writing about, it could really change and it could really dramatically impact the solution that you wrote about maybe two years ago or even a year ago. And I think you're probably running into that a lot with flow and orchestrator and especially with some process builder. What part of working in automation do you find the part that you really want to write about the most? Rakesh Gupta:You nailed it and you said very right. So Salesforce now move into the process builder to Salesforce flows. And last year Francis and Monira, we wrote at least 150 blocks, convert 150 blocks a process builder to Salesforce flows. And nowadays, I try to update all those blocks whenever you see there are new UI here and there in Salesforce, new variables. So I try to update those every day. Mike: Not because anything's changing or different, I say that tongue in cheek. Rakesh Gupta:It is part lots of people following it and I feel like if I provide an hour a day to update those so it'll help for at least one people that would be I think sufficient. Mike: Absolutely. I noticed you mentioned your bio, you've been working on the Salesforce platform for over 10 years. In looking back, so let's see, it's 2023 that put you back to 2013, can you remember a point in time where maybe it was a feature or something that you learned that really felt like it was a turning point for you where you looked at that and was like, wow, this is a thing and it just changed my career? Rakesh Gupta:It is. In 2013 when I was initial involved in community and I found lots of use cases that can automate, but again everyone providing the solutions using APEX code and that time I started learning about Salesforce Visual flow is what's calling us cloud flow designer/visual flow. So I started investing my time and you cannot imagine, some time I spend eight to nine hour a day or maybe whole night just to thinking about the solution that how one can solve because there was very less blocks and information available in the market and that was one of the game changing point for me in my career that helped me to think through what can be possible without writing code and that give me lots of knowledge, even information about the platform, knowledge about the platforms and help me to grow in my career. And that's how I started writing my blocks as well as books in Salesforce Process Builder and Salesforce flows. Mike: So you mentioned you used to write and probably still do maybe, I don't know, we'll find out a lot of what would turn into blogs on Google Docs. What is your process for creating content from the moment that Rakesh has the idea to the moment that Mike sees it as a post on automation champion? Rakesh Gupta:So the first thing is I have lots of ideas. So I write it down and if the idea is I feel like could it be a business use case? And this is a very business use case. So I started first implementing in my Dev Sandbox where I can just try to see if it can be possible and test with at least 10 or 100 record to see if that is working and if that is working, that is again the success for a blog. If not, and it happened many times. So then that's the first thing that I do. And then next step is to start writing a blog post, which is basically now I have a format to think about how I can put in a format, like what business scenario that I convert this use case to, and then create a process flow diagram and think through and person who just joined Salesforce how he can see this use case and if I write in this week and he able to read this and try to implement. Mike: Quite extensive. You mentioned Salesforce flow office hours, so on top of just everything that you're doing and you're super busy writing content, you decided to take, is it 30 minutes? 30 minutes? Rakesh Gupta:30 minutes. Mike: On Saturday and do that. What are some of the things that you're accomplishing in office hours? Rakesh Gupta:One, the couple of things that I accomplished is helping people and there are so many people that reach out, they were not able to build. There was one person from South Africa, he is working for a nonprofit and he just joined Salesforce a week ago and he was trying to build the flows and I built that flow for him on live- Mike: Wow. Rakesh Gupta:... In the same sessions. And he was very happy because he said that it's going to help for his nonprofit tremendously. And then I helped couple of people, lots of people on the call to help them to understand and I feel I got happy when I see that people understand how to implement a flow, it's not writing, just go and try to build the flow. That is the last step. The first step is you have to spend timing in thinking it, you have to create a process flow diagram or you have to write down your thinking into a piece of paper so that you understand how this actually implement in real life and then implementing is the last step. Mike: I think sometimes people jump ahead, I'm sure you see that, right? They want to jump into a solution already and you need to back up and think about everything that you're trying to do. Especially now with some of the capabilities of flow, the amount of what you can achieve in a single flow compared to what Process Builder was and even backing up into the days of Workflow builder is just in incredible. Rakesh Gupta:Yes. For one example a couple of months ago, you cannot able to query the get element by saying that, "Hey, can you give me all opportunity where account ID in the list?" Now Salesforce has that feature in flows where you can say, give me all opportunity where ID in the list. So these are the lots of things that one has to understand and think that this can be also possible with the flows like sorting and there are few other new features. So one has to keep up to date and think how they can implement this while thinking or designing a solution yielding flows. Mike: I think back to the days of when I was excited just to build a workflow and somehow Daisy chain all of them together with a checkbox and now that's very simple flow. So as we wrap things up, we talked about your blog, you're super busy. And I'm being selfish here because I'm also writing this Build to blog series that I'll plug again, for somebody thinking about starting a blog and not necessarily on automation, maybe they're going to write something on page design. There's so many features, there's so many topics to write on. If you were to give them piece of advice, what would that be? Rakesh Gupta:First, remember there is a audience for each content, even though that content has written 200 times or 2000 times does not matter. There is a audience for everything and there is a person who match with your frequency. It is possible that if I explain to you something you can able to understand, but not every people, maybe it is possible that the way that you explain he can or she can able to understand. So that is very first thing one has to understand before writing content. And then second is write the genuine content. Don't copy paste from here and there. Mike: Nailed it. I have nothing more to say. There is a piece of content for everybody and I could not agree more. I think that's great. Rakesh, we love reading your site and I'm so appreciative that you have the passion behind doing what you do on the site and hosting office hours and writing books and creating trainings like it. It's really fun to find that level of passion in what you do and then be able to translate that into fun bit of work to do outside of your day job, which I know probably doesn't feel like work. So thank you so much for coming on the pod, sharing your information. I appreciate that and I will be sure to link to your site in the show notes. Rakesh Gupta:No, thank you so much Mike. Thanks for inviting me. This is my dream comes true. I listen your podcast from when you started as a button click admin. And from that day, I am a big fan of you, so thank you so much for inviting me and it is a pleasure. Mike: That was a fun conversation with Rakesh. It was good to catch up with him. Awfully busy person running a blog and doing office hours and I even saw an sight the written a few books, so holy cow, that's a lot of contributions. But if you'd like to learn more about all things Salesforce admin, go to admin.salesforce.com to find more resources, including all the links, which I will include the special link to that build a blog series that I've got going, which I will definitely pull some snippets for this. And that goes all summer long that we mentioned. Be in the show notes. And of course there's also a full transcript for you to read in case you missed part of it. You can stay up to date with us on social. We are at Salesforce. Admins, no I on Twitter, my co-host Gillian is on Twitter. She is at Gillian K Bruce and I am at Mike Gert. So with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode. We'll see you in the cloud.
Direct download: Automation_Champion_with_Rakesh_Gupta.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 2 March 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Muralidhar Krishnaprasad, EVP of Engineering, Next Gen Customer 360 Data Services at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about Data Cloud and all of the exciting innovations coming to help admins own all the data in their org. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Muralidhar Krishnaprasad. What is Data Cloud?Muralidhar is in charge of Data, AI, and analytics platforms at Salesforce, and we wanted to bring him on the pod to share the awesomeness that is Data Cloud.
Right now, we tend to keep our data in many different pools. Between Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and outside sources, we don’t necessarily have one single source of truth for what’s going on between a customer and your organization. Currently, getting something even close to that requires a bunch of legwork to migrate data back and forth. It’s expensive, complicated, and presents extra layers of security challenges for your business. Data Cloud looks to make all of this a lot easier. You can bring all your data to the same place, with Salesforce at the center of it all. It’s simply a game-changer for everything from analytics to building applications to decisions and everything in between. How Data Cloud empowers adminsWhile all of this sounds amazing, what does this mean for admins? With everything in one place in Salesforce, you’re finally able to manage all your org’s data and not just what’s already on the platform. However, that means you get up to speed on the Data Cloud concepts:
“As an admin, knowing that lifecycle of the data and how you can control and administer it will be the big work to be done,” Muralidhar says. But getting a handle on that will make it easier to protect your data and help your org use it in new ways. How to get ready for Data CloudIf this conversation has gotten you excited about Data Cloud, there are a few things you can do to get your org ready. Muralidhar outlines three steps you can take:
Muralidhar recommends starting small and limiting the scope at first, and then expanding as you make things that work for you. He goes over some use cases, including how one bank saw a 35x (!) ROI on their marketing and the insights Mike’s favorite pizza chain, Casey’s, were able to uncover by looking at their data in new ways. If you’re as psyched about Data Cloud as we are, there’s already a Trailmix to help you get started and even more resources on the way. Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today, Gillian Bruce, and we have a very special guest, I'm sure all of you have been hearing about Data Cloud and all of the exciting innovations coming in that space from Salesforce. Guess what? We have the leader at Salesforce, our EVP of Engineering, NextGen Customer 360 data services at Salesforce. MK: Thank you, Gillian. How are you? Gillian Bruce: Oh, I'm wonderful. I am very, very happy to have you on the podcast today, and Mike is with us today as well. Mike: Yes, hello. It's going to be an awesome podcast. Can't wait. Gillian Bruce: We're going to have a data party on the podcast today. Mike: It's always a data party. Gillian Bruce: Okay, so MK, let's, before we get into it, can you just introduce yourself to our listeners and a little bit about what you do at Salesforce? MK: Absolutely. Hi, my full name is Muralidhar Krishnaprasad. I also go by Murali or MK for short. I'm the executive vice President for engineering. My team, we deliver the data cloud that we are going to be talking about. Einstein that you guys might already know, the whole AI platform and then the analytics efforts with regard to Datorama and many others in Tableau and many others as well. So overall, think of it as data AI and analytics platforms being delivered here, and I've been here in Salesforce about four plus years. Prior to that, I worked at Microsoft building most of the Azure infrastructure dynamics and many others. And then I started my career before that at Oracle, building databases. Gillian Bruce: Okay, so you're a busy person these days because all those products you just mentioned that you're working on at Salesforce, there's a lot going on there. MK: Absolutely. Really, yes. There's a lot of news you would've heard as well as we are also doing a lot of integrations across Salesforce and across the industry as well. Gillian Bruce: That's great. Okay, so let's dig into it. MK, can you explain to us what is Data Cloud? MK: Yeah, in simple terms. So think of it as an admin. You're going to have various clouds today, sales cloud, marketing, commerce and so on. Problem that we often run into is businesses want to be able to really know what their customer is doing because a customer is not dealing with sales, cloud service, cloud marketing, they're dealing with your business. And so that means you really need to know what they have done. Have they ever opened an email you have sent them? Do they have service cases? Did salesperson make a call and try to sell them something or have they been on your website trying to browse something and purchase something? And this is common across all industries. It's not related to just finance or health. It's literally like every industry that you can think of goes through this motion. Mike: Wow. Coming back from vacation, I find it funny that we can sit and have a data conversation and talk about lakes and lake houses, and you could totally do a podcast that people would think we're talking about vacation homes, don't you?Help my vacation brain boil this down for admins, what should admins know about cloud besides the Lakehouse? MK: Great point. So I think as an admin, you need to be thrilled that data is not leaving your ambit because before, if you think about it as a Salesforce admin, you are only administering your cloud, but most of the businesses ended up taking all the data outside. And so your security layer was gone right there, and all the business semantics you created is also gone because they're going to get recreated somewhere else on some other platform. Gillian Bruce: Okay. So get a little bit of work to do to get our arms around what data Cloud means for admins, but I like how you set it up there about how understanding, hey, it does give you... you're in control. I mean, all admins are control freaks, so that's a really good way of putting it. But in some ways, the idea of Data Cloud, MK kind of shifts the idea of what Salesforce can do. MK: Yeah, great point. I think what you're looking at is certainly today your sales and service is in the same place. If you install in the same org, that is your sales and service can see all that data and you can put the right security, et cetera. But more often than not in any enterprise setting, there's a lot more data out there. We cannot bring that into Salesforce today because either it's a scale problem or it could be other issues related to their backend systems. Mike: I was kind of excited when you said that because one of my vehicles, I get a monthly email on it's health, it's not electric, but I think it's from Salesforce. So I'm going to go with that because that would be really cool. So it sounds like, it's not like lightning flip a switch and here we are, but I think there's some stuff that admins need to do to help their organizations and just organizations in general, prepare. Could you MK could kind of touch on some of that? MK: Yeah, I think it's a great point. I think what as an admin you need to do first, like I said, understand what Data Cloud is, but second is really understand what sources you want to bring data from into this data cloud, which org you want to obviously install the data cloud in first and then you may have business unit considerations, geo considerations and so on. And so we are introducing new concepts that you should be aware of. There's a new concept called Data Space, which allows you to have a data cloud and then still split the data within that via business units. It's a security concept and also you need to understand what are the layers that Data Cloud needs to go interface with. For example, it could be I have a marketing cloud here, I have a commerce here, I have these two sales cloud or two service Cloud. Gillian Bruce: So I mean what I'm hearing here in terms of preparing is thinking about the flows of data, which data, I mean, would you go into setting up Data Cloud already with knowing the questions you want to answer, like say, Hey, I want to be able to get more people to buy this product by implementing Data Cloud, I'm going to be able to know when to target them. Or I mean, can you give us a little bit more of an example of what use cases might spur someone to want to implement and set up data MK: Cloud? Yeah, great question. I think what we have seen success come is what you mentioned, Gillian, which is steel threads. If you have a clear steel thread the business wants to make happen and starting there, starting small and then building on it is better than a gigantic project where I'm going to bring in 50 different sources and not know how to use them. So I think what we have seen, great success. Obviously last year, data Cloud started off building our sort of go to business market in the marketing area, and now we are expanding beyond marketing. And so a lot of success we have seen is threads where people say, I have all this data. I want to bring in my marketing data, my sales service or external data. By the way, data Cloud today we have hundreds and hundreds of customers live on it. Gillian Bruce: Wow. MK: Instead of their scattershot, like send email to everybody thing, they sent much less emails to targeted people, and they saw huge returns on investment. And so they allow this now. And so that's a great example of one steel thread end-to-end that people have done. And we have seen similar things in various other customers as well. Mike: I just have to pause for a second because everybody probably knows I live in the Midwest and the fact that Casey's uses this is now just above and beyond for me. Also, Casey's pizza is phenomenal. So MK, I don't know where you're based, but you need to come visit me in Iowa and we need to have some Casey's pizza because it's probably the best pizza you're ever going to have, and it's from a gas station. And it's a topic of conversation in the Midwest when people pass through. But yeah, I've also used the Casey's app and gotten very specific coupon things that I was like interesting. I have no idea how they would guess this, but if they're looking at my purchase history and every time I buy their breakfast pizza or so, holy cow, you just changed my life knowing that Casey's uses this. MK: Yeah, and that's coming from Data Cloud, all the processing, all the things you buy, everything is going through Data Cloud. Mike: That's so cool. That's so cool. I mean, I'm a huge Casey's fan anyway. MK: That's awesome. Yes. See if I'm coming to the Midwest- Mike: Gillian also knows that just about every podcast food gets mentioned on it. I wasn't even the first one to mention it, Gillian. Gillian Bruce: I know. Well, I could hear your wheels turning as soon as MK talked about Casey's Pizza. I feel like you've even talked about it on the podcast before. Mike: You have no idea how good their pizza is. MK: And there is a press release also that we did late last year that you can reference to your customers to go look at it. Gillian Bruce: We'll put it in the show notes. Mike: Speaking of things to put in the show notes, MK, could you provide some admins with tips or resources on where they can get started learning about Data Cloud perhaps maybe while they eat Casey's Pizza? MK: Yes. I think if you go to salesforce.com data cloud, we have a lot of materials there. We are also preparing New Trailheads as well. There's already a Trailhead that you can take and there are more coming along the way. And of course we have the standard documentation that can help them as well for them to use Data Cloud. The main thing to realize in Data Cloud is it is a Salesforce cloud that can really change your business. And so learn how to bring data, how to harmonize, and then how to create the insights of it and then push it back into all your systems. Gillian Bruce: Oh, that's great. MK, I so appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today and demystify Data Cloud for admins, and I have a feeling there's going to be a lot more in this space. Mike: Seriously, and I'm going to use Data Cloud today when I order pizza or maybe tomorrow. MK: Right. Whenever you eat Casey's Pizza, think of- Mike: Oh my God, I am going to start racking up some data in Data Cloud for guys. Gillian Bruce: You got to show us what insights you're getting or is that like too going to expose your habits too much? I don't know. Mike: I will willingly give anybody that wants to visit me a demo of the Casey's app in my backyard if we can order pizza. Gillian Bruce: I love it. MK, thank you so much for joining us and I really appreciate all the work that you're doing in this really important space. And we didn't even talk about anything AI or Einstein related, so we'll have to do that on another podcast. But thank you to you and your team for all the great work that you do, and we look forward to hearing from you again very soon. MK: Sounds great. Thank you both. This was a great conversation. Again, we you'll see more of Data Cloud and more of Einstein Automation, Tableau and all of that coming through the next few months and years. Gillian Bruce: Huge thanks to MK for taking time out of his very, very busy schedule to chat with Mike and I. It was also fun to do a podcast with Mike. It's been a while since we've done one of those. I hope that you got some good ideas and thoughts and questions from some of the things that MK shared with us about Data Cloud. I mean, it is one of the most exciting areas right now in Salesforce ecosystem of innovation, and it really opens up some exciting possibilities of what we can do as admins with our declarative capabilities to really bring in the power of data and have those truly connected customer experiences.
Direct download: Data_Cloud_for_Admins_with_Muralidhar_Krishnaprasad.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 16 February 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lynn Guyer, Manager, Salesforce Practice at Forefront Telecare. Join us as we talk about how she was able to build a no code, out-of-the-box solution for one of her organization’s biggest operational challenges. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lynn Guyer. Scheduling on-call hours for a telehealth organizationLynn started out as a Salesforce user before she ever found herself sitting in the admin’s chair. That gives her a lot of insight into what things are like on the other side of the screen. So whenever she’s building a solution, she’s really concerned with how it’ll impact other users and what the experience is like for everyone involved in a business process. As a telehealth organization, they have staff across many different time zones who have to be on-call at certain times. They needed to know who was covering which shift, that those people knew their schedule, and that every shift was covered. She tried a couple of the industry standard solutions to see what they were like, but they each had some significant shortcomings. Ultimately, Lynn decided the best course of action was to build something of her own in Salesforce. Why research should always be the first stepWhile Lynn was in her research phase, she looked at each of the existing on-call management solutions to understand their workflows. How many clicks it takes to do certain tasks, whether you can reuse different elements of the schedule week-to-week, and what it looks like from different users’ perspectives. This research really helped her to spec out exactly what she needed and how it should work. Lynn and her team took their requirements to their Salesforce Account Executive and Solutions Engineer, who suggested they look at Scheduler. It seemed like a perfect fit—it could store and manage all the data they needed but, in order to implement it, Lynn needed to learn Flows. How Lynn skilled up quickly in FlowThere are a lot of great self-guided resources out there for learning new skills in Salesforce, but Lynn’s a working mom so she wanted something with a lot of focus tailored to her specific needs. A small group live class proved to be the perfect solution, allowing her to pick up the skills she needed in just a few weeks. In the full Flow, the request comes into Salesforce from Experience Cloud as a record, which kicks off a series of Flows that check who’s on call, text the people who need to know, assigns the correct user to be the owner, and puts the information correctly into a schedule that everyone can see. In the end, Lynn was able to build a solution to her organization’s problem entirely in Salesforce, without code, made entirely with out-of-the-box features and add-ons. Lynn is a big fan of keeping things out of the box.“Salesforce does all of the testing for you—that’s what you’re paying them for,” she says, “you’re paying them to test their code for you to use so you don’t have to test your code every release.” Building solutions like this makes them much more reliable, easier to maintain, and you get to benefit from the improvements Salesforce makes with each new release. Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Direct download: Solve_Problems_by_Experimenting_with_Lynn_Guyer.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 9 February 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Erick Mahle, Senior Director of CRM at First Advantage. Join us as we talk about what 2023 looks like for admins and why we have an opportunity to stand out as efficiency experts. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Erick Mahle. Doing more with lessErick has seen the ecosystem from a number of roles over the years, starting out as an admin, later working as a consultant, and now on the client side of things as Senior Director of CRM at First Advantage. His wife just landed a role as a junior admin, so he even has the perspective of someone breaking into Salesforce for the first time and starting their career. It’s a challenging time for a lot of folks, with layoffs and more pressure on everyone in the tech space to do more with less. And we brought Erick on the pod because he recently wrote an insightful article about just that and we wanted to get his thoughts on why admins are optimizers. The formula Erick uses to measure efficiencyErick and his team recently implemented Einstein bots in an unusual way. While they were looking into using this technology for customer service, they realized that they could also use it for their sales department, too, to help qualify and assign leads. They also created a screen flow that shows key things in the opportunity that are missing, which helps with the data cleanup needed to do predictive analytics in the future. The tricky thing about improving efficiency is that there’s not necessarily a clear moment where everyone realizes how much work you’ve done. Erick and his team came up with a formula to track how much efficiency is gained from their projects: they count the number of full-time employees involved in the task they’re improving, the number of times per week that it occurs, and the number of minutes it takes to perform it. This gives them a quick way to evaluate the efficiency gains they could make with automation, which helps them prioritize projects and demonstrate their value to leadership. How to build trustTo get the ball rolling, Erick recommends the group exercise “Start, Stop, Continue.” You give everyone three colors of Post-it Notes and ask them to write on one color what we should start doing, on another what we should stop doing, and on the third what we should continue doing. You put them up on the wall and talk about them as a group, which opens the door to specific, actionable projects where Salesforce can make a difference. The most important thing, Erick recommends, is to identify the low-hanging fruit from these suggestions and deliver on them quickly. Once you’ve built that trust, you’ve opened the doors to more feedback, more suggestions, and more wins for Salesforce at your organization. And if you want to show off your Flow skills, Erick invites you to FlowFest on February 22nd. It’s a 50-minute, hack-a-thon style competition to find the “One Flow to Rule Them All.” It’s free to compete and free to spectate, so join in the fun! Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today, Gillian Bruce, and we are talking about 2023 today. It's been an interesting time, challenges, opportunities, all kinds of wildness happening within the tech space. Erick Mahle: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Gillian Bruce: Erick, I want to introduce you to our listeners a little bit to give some context to the conversation we're going to have today. Can you share a little bit about your Salesforce ecosystem journey and where you're at today? Erick Mahle: Yeah, of course. Back in 2010-2011, I was the accidental admin. My background was actually in marketing and sales. Working for small software companies, you naturally get the hat of becoming the Salesforce admin. Always liked it. Equated it to the grownup version of Legos and building things and putting things together. After a couple of years, an opportunity presented itself for me to become an independent consultant in 2013. I pursued the consulting side for several years. I've ran a consulting firm for several years. I've done independent consulting for a couple of years, up until last year, where another interesting sequence of events outside of my professional life kind of lined themselves up. Gillian Bruce: Thank you for sharing that. You've got such different perspectives from each chapter of your career so far. Congratulations to getting your wife in the ecosystem. I know that's what we do as Salesforce professionals, right? We just want to get everybody in there with us. Erick Mahle:Exactly right. Gillian Bruce: I wanted to talk to you today because you posted something really interesting on LinkedIn, and I wanted to get you on the podcast because I think especially as we kick off this year, it's a challenging time for a lot of folks. We've all seen the headlines. We've all heard about layoffs. We've maybe felt the strings getting tightened a little bit in the tech space, maybe put on some pressure from our leadership about trying to do more with less. Really I wanted to talk to you about this idea of really delivering success now in this environment. Erick Mahle:I think there are the positive marks in it. There's a lot to look forward to, especially as a Salesforce professional. Because in this environment, in this economy that we're currently in, we hear a lot about companies tightening their spend. Unfortunately, a lot of the big companies are doing layoffs, all of them within their own reason. But where our rise to glory as a Salesforce professional comes in optimizations and being able to use the systems that we have today better. It's certainly something that I can talk about from my experience at First Advantage. Over the last six months or so, the overarching theme is how do we get more of what we currently have? Gillian Bruce: I think you hit on a lot of really interesting things there, I mean, especially when you think of the role of being a Salesforce admin, right? I mean, the idea is to help the business become more efficient by using Salesforce solutions and getting creative in terms of how to figure out how to streamline certain processes, how to deliver data better so that people can work more efficiently and get more deals done faster or help serve more customers quicker. Can you expound upon a little bit some of the things that you've seen specifically Salesforce admins or any Salesforce professional do tactically that have really, really helped deliver that efficiency, deliver that success? Erick Mahle:Automation is one of the biggest things. For us, one of the key things that we've done that made a significant impact was a pretty significant undertaking for our company in the short timeframe was to implement Einstein Bots. We use Einstein Bots. We're going to start using it for customer service, but we actually initially started using it for sales to filter out leads and qualified leads accordingly and using that to be able to assign to folks. That level of deflection helped save a lot of times. It saved a lot of meetings that our BDR team had to go and qualify them and see if they were a real lead, if it was a genuine prospect, and who it needs to be assigned to. Gillian Bruce: I love that. I mean, those two things you described, personally I love that because those are things that admins can do and deliver completely by digging into the technology and being able to build that out. Einstein Bots have been around for... I remember, I think we did podcasts about it when they first came out. It was three years ago, four years ago maybe. Such a great way to provide a very simple solution that just takes a little bit of thought and build out from an admin. I think the other thing too that you talked about, about basically delivering data and getting those insights that are surfaced. Erick Mahle:One of the interesting things that we started doing internally is that we came up with a basic formula to track how much efficiency we'll gain out of different projects. We actually put that on the other departments when they're asking us for efficiencies in Salesforce and to calculate that for us or put a rough guess. It's three components to the formula. It's the number of full-time employees involved on whatever task we're doing, the number of times per week that this task in particular occurs, and how much time per task per each individual task. We multiply that out and we calculate how much time we could technically save if we were to automate. Gillian Bruce: I love how it's gamified almost. It's like a competition like, "Oh, you want me to work on your idea? Well, then you need to help me fill out the rest of this formula so that I can prove that this is going to deliver real value." I mean, gosh, it's such a clear combination of factors that then... I mean, it doesn't take a lot of explanation to really understand how that works, right? Pretty clear. I'm just imagining happy leaders who are like, "Oh, you saved us 300 minutes a week. Oh, you saved us multiple hours every week." You guys give internal awards of like, yes, I delivered the most impactful solution this week. Erick Mahle:We haven't gotten to the point of handing out awards yet, but certainly it's useful in our company. Because while I'm not going to say it's rare, but I would say it's uncommon, our Salesforce team actually reports under sales operations where I think the majority, not a vast majority, but the majority would be under IT. Sales operations is actually measured under efficiencies. Our KPIs are to drive X number, X percentage of efficiency across the board, across the different teams. It was a perfect fit in terms of how we wanted to track this, because it immediately just helps put on the dashboard, hey, here's how we're doing as a department on one of our main KPIs. It was a big game changer for us, to be honest. Gillian Bruce: Well, I think that's interesting you talking about the org structure a little bit and having the Salesforce admins and the Salesforce team sit within sales operations or revenue operations versus just a traditional IT. I actually don't know. I've talked to many admins who actually sit more in the sales or RevOps land versus IT, and I think to your point and the way you just described it, I think there's a lot that if you're sitting in a traditional IT space, learning a little bit from that sales culture, from that competitive culture, from that very drive efficiencies, KPIs, I think that might be a really good methodology to think about, especially if you're not currently in that space. Erick Mahle:I'll add one thing, because I've seen in my consulting days companies that they want to get ambitious and do things with Salesforce, but there's just not enough buy-in. If everything that we talked about right now seems like far-fetched like, our sales team or is not going to get behind this or whatever, one thing that usually gets the ball rolling, it's an exercise, I can't take credit for it, but it's called Start, Stop, Continue. It's out there. It is a super simple exercise that will get people talking. You get everyone in the room. Everyone writes their own things they need to start doing, need to stop doing, and things that we're doing today that we want to make sure we don't lose. Gillian Bruce: I love that. It's a great tip. I have been through many a Post-it note feedback sessions in my time. And it is. It's an amazing way to just get the brains working and get the wheels turning about, oh, what's possible? Again, like you said, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Oh, there's some themes here. I think especially given the environment that we're all in, asking to do more with less, it's such a great way to really enable that prioritization that's so important when we're trying to really focus, be efficient, and really find ways to deliver those impactful results very quickly. Erick Mahle:Of course. This will be our fourth time doing this. It started as a bit of a wonder if it was going to catch on. But at the end of February now, we'll be hosting our fourth FlowFest. This is a global live competition hackathon style where we're going to put I think over 200 competitors from across the world for a chance to be the FlowFest champion. We're going to put them through a series of challenges, and we'll get to do a final head-to-head battle, which is going to be new for this FlowFest. Typically, we get over 2,000 people that have signed up. It's really exciting. For us, we treat it as an educational event. Gillian Bruce: Oh, that sounds like so much fun. I cannot wait to join. I will for sure be there. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, and thank you for organizing such a fun event. Erick Mahle:Yeah, yeah. It's funny, because the person who I've started with, the founder of Salesforce, Ben, Ben came to me, I remember, and he sends me the screenshot of the text message. Every now and then he's like... He asked me, he's like, "How many people do you think will show up on the first one?" I said, I don't know, maybe 10, maybe 100 people. I think we had something like 1,600 people register on the first one alone. It kind of was a little bit of an overnight sensation. We had to re-engineer that competition. Gillian Bruce: Oh, that's so cool. I love that you're running it on Salesforce. That's even better. That's the best. Erick Mahle:That's how you got to do it. It's got to all be powered by Salesforce. Gillian Bruce: I love it. I love it. Well, FlowFest coming up, what'd you say, February 22nd? Erick Mahle:February 22nd is the next one. Gillian Bruce: Another thing I know in your role, Erick, you have helped build Salesforce teams. You have a Salesforce team. For folks out there who maybe are transitioning, maybe they are looking for a new job, or they are thinking about it in this space, what tips do you have for them as they're moving to their next Salesforce role? Erick Mahle:For me, one of the big things that I'd recommend is that as you're going through the interview process, make sure you understand the team that you're working with. Make sure that you're taking on a challenge that unless you have double digits years worth of experience and you're going into a leadership position, make sure that there's someone more senior than you in that organization, because you really want to make sure that you're continuing to learn. That's on the client side, in particular. If you're on the consulting side, you're going to have tons of peers that you're going to be able to learn from. Gillian Bruce: I think those are some really interesting tips, being able to demonstrate selecting from a few different options and why you would select that option as a solution. And then I love the tip from the employer too. I think we do often have questions of especially people who are new to the ecosystem or trying to get their first role, we know it's challenging because you don't have the experience and everybody wants the experience. On the flip side, especially if you're trying to get your first role, you don't want to be the only Salesforce person at that organization. Because if that's your first role, you're going to be overwhelmed and you're not going to have anybody to learn from. Erick Mahle:Equally, just another way to phrase it as well, is that you were mentioning, just like it may be your first job or your first venture in the Salesforce ecosystem, you have to imagine this could also be the company's first venture into hiring a Salesforce expert. They might not necessarily know what to expect, and they might be trying to figure out as they go. That is something that you also got to keep into consideration. Maybe cut them some slack, but also be aware of the position that they're in to see if that fits into what you're looking for. Gillian Bruce: Well, and then you're also charged with explaining and consistently advocating for Salesforce, right? Because oftentimes if it is the case that the company is brand new about Salesforce and you are a brand new admin and this is your first job, you have a lot on your plate because you also have to explain consistently the value of Salesforce and why they should continue to invest in it, which is a lot to do. I think that's some of the themes that we've been talking about right now, Erick, is talking about how you deliver those efficiencies and prove those efficiencies and what you've been able to deliver value-wise. Erick Mahle:I've been in this ecosystem for 13 years, and I've used the same quote across all 13. The best way to summarize this is Uncle Ben's old quote from Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. It rings true every single time. With a tool as flexible and as powerful as Salesforce, again, as you're coming up, you do want to make sure that you're working in an environment where you can assess everything that the tool can deliver and be able to identify which is the best path forward. Yeah, totally. Gillian Bruce: I love it. It's great when we can have a quote from Marvel. Is it Marvel or DC? It's DC, right? Erick Mahle:I think it's Marvel, but someone might correct me terribly fast once they get to hear this. Gillian Bruce: My husband will be very angry at me if I got that wrong, which I probably did anyway. I mean, it's a great quote. It is. It's true. The power of the platform is immense, and it's more than just the platform, right? It's the power of the role, and then the role that you have within your organization to help your users and to help the organization as a whole. Erick, before I wrap, if you were to have one message to share with any Salesforce professional, Salesforce admins, Salesforce developers, anybody working in the Salesforce ecosystem for 2023, what is the one message that you want to deliver to them? Erick Mahle:This is the year of optimization. This is the year of learning tools that will help you optimize, help companies consolidate. We're talking about automation like Flow. Flow Is just blowing up right now. You have integrations with systems. If you want to get a connector, there's a lot of great no-code connectors out there that allow you to start connecting your database with others. We talked about the example that we use at First Advantage of using Einstein Bots to be able to deflect and spare employees from having meetings and save that by running qualification process ahead of time. This is the time to increase your skillset and things that can help optimize an organization. Gillian Bruce: I think that's great. I think it's actually a pretty empowering message to share with anybody working in the Salesforce ecosystem, especially Salesforce admins, because we can do this. We got the tools. We got the skills to do it. I really appreciate you, Erick, you coming on the podcast and sharing your outlook, sharing your expertise with us today. Hey, let's look forward to a really strong 2023 for the Salesforce ecosystem. Erick Mahle:Yeah, it's a pleasure being here. We can talk Salesforce all day. Big pleasure. I'm happy to help share my message and hopefully this gets to help a couple of folks. If one person gets something out of this, I'm more than happy already. Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Erick. Appreciate it. Erick Mahle:Likewise. Gillian Bruce: Huge thanks to Erick for taking the time to chat. I loved some of his ideas about what the outlook for 2023 is for Salesforce administrators I thought were pretty inspiring, pretty optimistic, gave me some interesting ideas about how to think about the role of a Salesforce admin in this current climate of everyone trying to do more with less and trying to really drive efficiency and deliver success, prove the value that you're bringing to the organization. The formula he shared about how he calculates the efficiencies delivered by what he and his team have built I thought were really interesting, focusing on prioritization.
Direct download: 2023_Outlook_for_Salesforce_Admins_with_Erick_Mahle.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 2 February 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Shirlene Chow, Senior Director of Workforce Development Programs at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about the programs she and her team offer to help people get started in the Salesforce ecosystem, connect with mentors, and develop their careers. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Shirlene Chow. Turn new knowledge into a new jobA common piece of feedback we hear is that while Trailhead is great at helping people skill up in the Salesforce ecosystem, it’s hard to figure out the next steps. How do you turn your new knowledge into a job opportunity? That’s why we wanted to hear from Shirlene Chow. Her Workforce Development team is all about helping people with those next steps, connecting them with mentorship, interviews, free vouchers for certification tests, and more. The jobs market has been a little tough recently but that makes it a perfect time to skill up into something new. Why mentorship is so importantShirlene’s team offers a Salesforce Fundamentals program with classes happening all over the world and, while most admins don’t need to brush up on the basics, maybe you know someone who’d like to learn. For those more experienced in the ecosystem, the Trailblazer Mentorship program matches you with a Salesforce veteran who can help you 1-on-1 with your job search strategy, your resume, your interview skills, and more. There’s also a new program called Mentor Circles program that puts you in a group setting with several peers and mentors for a longer period of time. Think of it as group coaching. In almost every #AwesomeAdmin story we hear, Mentorship is one of the key ingredients for success, so we really want to put the word out there so you can take your career in a new direction. Other programs to help you grow your careerShirlene and her team also run the Trailblazer Career Fairs, which are now virtual events happening on a global scale. We put you together with engaged recruiters from some our closest strategic partners so you can learn about their organizations and what they’re looking for in a candidate. From there, there are group networking and one-on-one breakouts with individual recruiters. New Career Fairs are happening all the time, so check the Trailblazer Connect Hub for details. Finally, we wanted to highlight the Salesforce Pathfinder program. It’s a 4-month intensive program to give you the practical skills you need to launch your career. “The goal is to help you be well-rounded,” Shirlene says, “not just with Salesforce technical skills but also business skills, how to work in a team, how to do things in an Agile format, and how to practice your active listening and speaking and presentation skills.” If all this sounds good to you, take a look at the resources we’re linking to below. And if you want to get involved, you can get listed in the directory and start mentoring other Trailblazers.
Podcast swagLearn more:
Social
Direct download: Workforce_Development_with_Shirlene_Chow.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 26 January 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for January. Join us as we review the top product, community, and careers content for January, and talk about New Year’s resolutions. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro. Blog highlights from JanuaryThe march toward Spring ‘23 continues, and we’ve got your back with content covering everything in the GA, Beta, and Pilot. Mike wants you to pay close attention, especially, to some enhancements for reports and dashboards. And a reminder that MFA auto-enablement is coming with this release! Video highlights from JanuaryStaying on the theme of Spring ‘23, we wanted to point you toward Release Readiness Live. There are so many notes with any new release, but we highlight the important information that admins need to know, all in one place. Podcast highlights from JanuaryCheck out Mike’s episode with Janet Elliott from this month. We talked about her first public speaking gig, which happened at a little event you might have heard of called Dreamforce. Since then, she’s given many talks at many events, so we brought her on to find out how you too can get started as a Salesforce speaker. Gillian interviewed Kat Aquino, who gave us a fascinating look into what it’s like building a Salesforce org from the ground up to support a multinational event—the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in LA. Just for funMike and Gillian reflect on their less-than-successful past New Year’s Resolutions.
Podcast swagSocial
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Direct download: January_Monthly_Retro_with_Mike_and_Gillian.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 19 January 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Janet Elliott, Manager of Solution Architecture at Kicksaw and 2022 Salesforce MVP. Join us as we talk about finding your voice and why you should become a Salesforce speaker. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Janet Elliott. Why you should speak at a Salesforce eventJanet got started in the ecosystem as a project manager and admin for Salesforce in 3 BT (Before Trailhead) a.k.a. 2011. Eventually, she moved into becoming a Solution Architect. Along the way, she’s been a speaker at multiple TrailblazerDX conferences, Dreamforce, and more, which is why we wanted to bring her on the pod. “Speaking about Salesforce is something I’ve really found a passion for,” Janet says. You might wondering, with so many great speakers at Salesforce events, why anyone would want to hear from you. The truth is that there are relatively few people compared to the number of slots at all the different Salesforce events. We’re looking for new voices, and Janet has a lot to say about how you can get started as a new speaker. Overcoming imposter syndrome“I got a huge confidence boost from the first time I spoke,” Janet says, “because I realized that people were interested in what I had to say and I didn’t need to be an absolute expert on the topic beforehand.” It just so happens that her first time was at Salesforce, in front of hundreds of people—quite the way to rip off the band-aid. One big piece of advice Janet has is to attend as many events as you can, something that’s a lot easier to do with more events offering virtual options. As you’re sitting in the audience, think about how you’re listening to the speakers. Do you want them to succeed or fail? Are you judging them harshly or are you rooting for them? That’s how you manage imposter syndrome (which is totally normal!): realize that the audience wants you to succeed. Tips for talksYou don’t need to be an expert to speak about a topic. Give yourself permission to say “I don’t know the answer to that but here’s where I would start looking.” People don’t want to hear from you because they don’t know how to use Google—they’re there to hear your story and learn from your experiences. Finally, as Shakespeare said, “the readiness is all.” You need to put time and thought into how you prepare for your talk. Janet recommends rehearsing a few times and recording yourself, so you can sit in the audience’s chair and see how you’re coming across. Janet has a lot more great tips about picking topics, finding your story, and where to get started so be sure to listen to the full episode.
Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Direct download: Finding_Your_Voice_with_Janet_Elliott.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 12 January 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lynn Simons, Senior Director of Security Awareness and Engagement, and Laura Pelkey, Senior Manager of Security Customer Engagement, both at Salesforce.
Join us as we talk about security and security awareness for admins.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lynn Simons and Laura Pelkey. Build good security habitsWe wanted to start 2023 off right with a focus on security. Because there’s always a new threat on the horizon, Lynn reminds us that good security is really about understanding the broader concepts and building good habits. That means having a handle on ideas like the Principle of Least Privilege, and then putting them into practice as you set permissions and access in your org.
When it comes to getting started with security, Lynn has three main tips:
Lynn and Laura have some specific tips for each of these, but the big idea is that security is really a state of mind. Understanding the broader concept of limiting access will help with the little things, like defaulting to the most restrictive data access when you’re building permissions, or making sure you periodically deactivate unused accounts. Engage with other teams in your organizationLaura recommends that you look for ways to actively engage with security and IT beyond the Salesforce platform. Not only will it make it easier to get help when you need it down the road, but it also helps you understand how the pieces of the security puzzle fit together in your organization. “Salesforce user credentials are probably one of the more targeted things that attackers might be after,” Laura says, so looking at threats outside of Salesforce, like phishing, is crucial to the security of your org. Educate your users and help them understand these threats and why they’re so important. Interface with other departments to get the information you need—for example, so you know someone’s leaving your organization and you need to remove their Salesforce access. Planning for the worst-case scenarioDespite all your planning, things can go wrong and you need to decide ahead of time what you’ll do in the event of a breach. “Every company that has a good security posture has instant response plans already in place, and remediation plans already in place for many different scenarios,” Laura says. Talk through what you should do in any likely scenario with stakeholders and your IT team. For example, if one of your user’s credentials get stolen, who should you tell first? Being proactive about security will only reflect well on you—don’t worry about coming across as a Chicken Little. “If one of our Salesforce Admins came to us with a breach remediation plan,” Laura says, “I would be so excited.” Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Mike : Welcome to Salesforce Admins podcast where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. And hey, we're kicking off 2023 by talking about security and security awareness for admins. We want you to be security minded this year as you always are. And to do this, we're bringing back a couple of my favorite guests. Everybody's my favorite guest, but Lynn Simons, who is Senior Director of Security Awareness and Engagement at Salesforce. And Laura Pelkey, I bet you have ran into Laura and Lynn, Laura Pelkey, who is Senior Manager, Security Customer Engagement. Laura Pelkey: Hey Mike. Lynn Simons: Hi Mike. So good to be on the podcast again. Mike : It's been a while. We've had each of you on individually because we know that security is top of mind for admins, which is why we're starting off 2023 with a security minded episode. So Lynn, I'm going to start with you. What's it mean as an admin to be security minded? Lynn Simons: Love that question. It's really about how you are thinking over time as you're doing your other work as an administrator. And I think it's really smart to think about the broader principles because the thing is with security, it's always changing and the risks are always new. So really understanding key security principles like least privilege and using that as your guide, as you set permissions and access is really going to be a great start to being security minded. Also knowing what resources are out there for you as a Salesforce admin on the admin's website through other Salesforce resources that then by talking to fellow admins, that's another great way to find resources. Mike : Laura, it's been a while and a few people have been out a couple days ago celebrating the new year, had too much bubbly and forgot what the principle of least privilege is. Can you help me understand that? Laura Pelkey: Well, I don't know how anyone could forget about the principle of least privilege- Mike : You don't know how strong the champagne was on New Year's Eve. Laura Pelkey: ... I certainly think about it all the time. That's a good point. Yes. So the principle of least privilege, that is one of the fundamental tenants of cybersecurity. And really what it is making sure that your users don't have access to anything that they don't absolutely need access to. So it's really about restricting permissions and ability to act within your Salesforce org in your implementation to just what's absolutely necessary. And that helps to reduce risk across the organization. Mike : I think of Dwight in the office letting me know that I'm security level three, but that's out of 300. Laura Pelkey: Yeah, exactly. Mike : Got you. Laura Pelkey: And Beets Battlestar Galactica and Bears. Mike : Beets. Beets Battlestar Galactica. Lynn, you mentioned reviewing security related changes with every release. What are some of the things that admins should look for in terms of changes in a release? Lynn Simons: That's a super important thing to do. I would really look for things that have to do with permissions and access first. Looking for words that have to do with how profiles are set around allow lists and block lists. Jump in Laura if you can think of anything. But really those profile and permission related things are the lowest hanging fruit, I think in releases. Laura Pelkey: And I know there've been some updates around guest user access and configuring that. And it's also something that is important for admins to pay attention to, that particular release update. Mike : So we can obviously spend a whole lot of time talking about things they should be doing in the app, but we're thinking ahead, we're out there, we're maybe back in the office walking around seeing our users. What are some of the things that admins can pay attention to in terms of security habits outside of Salesforce that they could help bring a best practice for their users? And Laura, if you want to kick us off, you're usually out talking at user groups. Laura Pelkey: I love this question. So this is something, actually, Lynn and I talk about this a lot. Lynn actually runs our Security Awareness Program at Salesforce, and her and our team have to partner really closely with our IT team on something called phishing tests. And Lynn, obviously you can talk about this in more detail, but that's actually something that's really an interesting way for admins to create inroads with their IT teams or their IT leadership and partner outside of the whole world of Salesforce, but really in a way that uplifts the security of their company or their organization as a whole. Lynn, I don't know if you have any thoughts on how an admin might go about partnering with an IT director or someone on the IT team to do phishing tests. Lynn Simons: Sure. One of the things that security teams are always thinking about is what is the threat landscape look like? And they'll even do things called threat models to design how particular systems can be infiltrated by an actor. And it's really welcomed by a security team to be finding out from people in the company what kind of risks they're seeing. So as a person who runs a security awareness team, if I heard from our Salesforce administrator, of course we use Salesforce too, and I heard that they were thinking of some behaviors or risks that could be creating some type of potential attack, then I would really want to keep, I'd be all ears. So reaching out to that team and I think you can reach out to a security awareness professional or somebody who does user management and say, hey, the people I'm working with as a Salesforce administrator are using Salesforce. Laura Pelkey: And if you think about it, Salesforce user credentials are probably one of the more often targeted things that attackers might be after. And so you're not only helping to bolster the security of all of the employees at your company by educating around this passively, using phishing tests, but you're also bolstering the security of your Salesforce implementation by educating your user base on this. So it's a win-win really for everyone. Mike : Yeah, I could see that. And I think I've seen a few come through that, I don't know Lynn, if you've been the mastermind behind, but they've been awfully legit. They look really good. Lynn Simons: Definitely my wonderful team is doing that. And we really work with the various departments in the company to identify what's going to be germane to our audiences so that we can understand the difficulty level that they're able to respond to. And also part of that is that reporting behavior. As a security awareness person on a podcast, I have to say that it's really not just all about clicking on these emails, it's really about what happens after that when people like Laura said, might enter their credentials. And then also that activity of seeing something weird, seeing something suspicious and reporting it to your security team. And you can be a great friend of the security team by helping your user population understand that there's a way to report suspicious activity, not just ignore it, not sweep it under the rug, but let the security team know as soon as possible. Mike : I'd love to know when you sit down with new clients or even existing customers, what are some of the questions that I think genuinely they ask? Not knowing it could be a security risk. I think of, we all know the sharing credentials stuff is not something that people should do, but are there questions out there that people perceive as well, this isn't creating a security risk, but it actually is? Laura Pelkey: I'll jump in if you don't mind to answer this. So just when I'm on the floor at Dreamforce or on the floor at a world tour or TDX, actually one of the most common topics that come up that people don't naturally associate with security is actually how permissions are configured. How user permissions are configured. So the whole concept of access within a Salesforce org is often not thought of as security, but really this all ties in back to that principle of least privilege that you asked about earlier, Mike. And just because someone is a registered user or is in your org is supposed to be in your org, that doesn't mean that there's no risk associated with them having access to certain objects or fields that they shouldn't have access to. Lynn Simons: That's really interesting Laura, because it's related to the example I was going to give with customers I've talked to at Dreamforce. In particular with non-profit customers where they have a volunteer base that might have access to Salesforce, that can be a very transient group of people. And there's also this feeling of goodwill in that industry that assumes the best intent. Of course, we want to assume best intent of people in general, but in terms of protecting data, we generally think more in terms of, okay, let's start with no access and then let's build on that. And particularly with nonprofits, there's this risk because of the donor data and credit card data that's really at the heart of how nonprofits are operating. Mike : Yeah. Removing unused, especially when an employee leaves. I think that's always something that I know as an admin I had to work diligently with my HR team to try and get on lists. And it's not me being nosy, I don't need to know who's leaving the company. I need to know so that I can ensure the day after they leave, can't still log into Salesforce. Lynn Simons: Exactly. Mike : So let me tangent off that. What are some departments that you commonly tell admins to go reach out and have best practice discussions with or build relationships with? I know you mentioned IT, I'm guessing HR is another one. Lynn Simons: Absolutely. And I think it's important to understand who is the business owner and purchaser of Salesforce at your company, because there can be a scenario where IT isn't deeply involved and there are business people who own the implementation. And particularly in that case, you're going to want to know who those individuals are because the buyer may have received information that's valuable to you. So let's say it's the head of sales, they might be getting emails from Salesforce that are really, really valuable to you as administrator around changes that are upcoming around big announcements and that kind of thing. So I think being in lockstep with that team would be really critical. Laura Pelkey: And it actually all really goes back to thinking like a security advocate. And so when you have that mindset of, okay, my priority is to really advocate for cybersecurity, not just in terms of to my user base, but to the company and to the leaders in my company, that's a great mindset to have. And the first thing you want to do when you're doing that kind of work is identifying who the stakeholders are, who cares about security. And so that can be IT. If you have a cybersecurity team that's often larger companies may have a cybersecurity team and smaller companies may not, but that's not always a given. Lynn Simons: And just one other one that can actually be part of HR depending on the company, is your employee communications team. Because those are the individuals who you could influence in terms of company newsletters or other types of all hands where reminders around security best practices in Salesforce if you have a really broad audience of employees using the tool, I think knowing those comms people is going to give you a voice that's perhaps a more powerful and louder voice than your own at a large company. Mike : Yeah, that makes sense. One thing I thought of, and it's because I watched way too much Weather Channel, which I forgot to get a tour of their offices when I was down in Atlanta, but it's all my to-do list. So anybody that works at the Weather Channel listens to this podcast, because I'm sure there's all of you, I want a tour. One thing they talk about, because it's storm season, we're in the Midwest, you guys are out West, you don't get anything. But in the Midwest and especially the East Coast, it's like prepare for snow and bad weather. And even in the South they're starting to get some tornadoes. One thing I think we often talk about a lot in security is how do we keep the doors locked? Laura Pelkey: That's such a good question. Lynn Simons: It's such a great question. And I always go back to the first step to that and actually learned it from an MVP, which is cool, which is that documentation is incredibly important when it comes to dealing with security issues. So if you have a documented plan for how to deal with those things, you're going to be setting yourself up to not panic and be able to have some of your own guide for what to do. And secondly, those relationships that we just talked about really come to the forefront. Because investing in those relationships, you can make the plans that you need. Number one, reporting. Number two, being able to communicate as we were talking about. And then Laura, if you want to take over from the orgs themselves what to do there, I'd love for your take on that. Laura Pelkey: Well I think so, not to use the B word, but what we're really talking about is a breach remediation plan. Mike : Thank you for telling me what the B word was. Laura Pelkey: [inaudible]. Mike : I had no idea. Lynn Simons: I don't even say the word. Laura Pelkey: But it's okay. We should be prepared as admins. I say I was an admin a long time ago, but- Mike : You're still an admin. Laura Pelkey: Think once an admin, always an admin. We do need to be prepared in the event of a breach. And every company that has a good security posture has instant response plans already in place and remediation plans already in place for many different scenarios. And so it really depends on your implementation and your company and the resources you have at your disposal. So I don't want to give one blanket answer because it just depends on a lot of different factors. But proactively sitting down with those security stakeholders like we were talking about, this would actually be an amazing first step at connecting with these people once you've identified the stakeholders and saying, hey, I would like to create some breach remediation plans for the following scenarios. Lynn Simons: Those incident response teams really live and die by their operating procedures. So I think by working together to create that documentation, they can actually integrate that plan into their own plan. So they know, okay, they hear from Jane admin that that means that this particular procedure kicks into play in that moment. Mike : I think one of the key things I thought you said there, Laura was and who owns the step. I think a lot of documents are always drawn up with here's the steps and then everybody looks at themselves as to okay, who does number one? Laura Pelkey: Yeah, that's super important. And I think Lynn can probably feel the same way, if one of our Salesforce admins came to us and said, hi, I'm proposing this breach remediation plan, here are the scenarios. I'd love for you to be an owner of this, will you agree to do this? I would be like, oh my gosh, this person is so amazingly security conscious. I would be so excited. Lynn Simons: We'd be thrilled. Laura Pelkey: But we're just security dorks. But still it would be really great. And if you want to just purely from a career perspective as an admin, if you want to make a name for yourself and you start doing things like that at your company or organization, people are going to start knowing who you are and thinking, wow, this person is bringing a lot to the table. Mike : I think for our next event that you are both at, you should have fancy buttons made or stickers, people like stickers, maybe put a Twitter pull out, see what people like more because I don't know, Mike doesn't always know and have them bring you their security plan for some sort of fancy hot rod sticker or plushy that's like, I've got a security plan. Lynn Simons: Ooh, I love that. Mike : You could rock that badge. Because that's a badge you want people to have. Lynn Simons: And I also- Laura Pelkey: I know I'm getting ideas for content that while we're talking about this. Mike : Yes, and you can write that content on admin.salesforce.com Lynn Simons: I just also want to just mention one thing, I'm sorry Mike, is that you also, in these kind of big B scenarios, you want to avoid communication paralysis, which is what happens. So keeping your list of users really clean is important, and knowing what your primary mechanism is for reaching them during these situations is really critical. So if you're using Slack, that's can be really easy to reach people on a special channel dedicated to, I don't know what you call the channel, but emergency Salesforce things or something like that. But- Mike : The channel you don't want to get a notification from. Lynn Simons: I think that having a mechanism planned in advance for reaching people, because really in these kind of scenarios people just want updates. And even if the update is there is no update, I think that that can be enough. Mike : So as we wrap a bow on our first episode of 2023, I'd love to know if you have one best practice or something you do that you think is unique to you that is a security thing that admin should be doing. And I ask that because I continue to go back to the example of how Lynn at a Salesforce office when I very, very, I was just a wee little Salesforce employee, I was only a few months old, showed me how to use Last Pass and it has forever changed my life. And I feel like I have been a Last Pass advocate to all of my friends ever since then. But it's kind of peering over the shoulder of a mechanic. You're like, oh wow, that's how you do that. Or watching a chef cut something, you're like, that's so much cooler than the way that I would love to do. Is there something from your security minds that you do that you feel could be passed on to other admins? Laura Pelkey: Oh, I love the Last Pass example. Lynn Simons: Yeah, that was- Laura Pelkey: I love Last Pass also. Lynn Simons: I was just going to say eight years later. It was the one I was going to say. So that tells you how powerful of a security tool it is. It's just incredibly critical. Laura Pelkey: For me, just my friends, my family, I get made fun of constantly for how security minded I am. And I don't feel bad about it. I think it's great to be security minded, just the amount of information that I will share on social media, on the internet in any way. I'm very restrictive of the information that I'll put out there. Even my phone number, when you're online shopping and you have to enter your phone number. I really don't even like to do that. I like to do the 555-555-555, million fives, if I can. But just being really, really, really conscious when somebody's asking you for information. So if you get a call from your bank or if you get an email from your bank or someone pretending to be your bank asking you for any personal information or data, I'm the first person that will be like, no, I'm not going to give you that. Mike : I like that. That's one thing that I think I've definitely picked up from you and the security team and a lot of the stuff that I've read too is if somebody calls you and how come you don't know this? You should know this, so let me just call you back because then I'm not giving that information out. But that's good to know. Because especially the phone number thing, I think we're so innocuous and Lynn, you can probably tell me what that is, but it's like when somebody tries to win over your confidence, because I feel like what Laura described was at our heart in nature, we want to be helpful, we want to help this person on the other line and just get back to our work. But that's actually a certain type of attack and I forget what it's called. Lynn Simons: Social engineering. Mike : Social engineering. Darn it. I'll get that question wrong on our quiz. Lynn Simons: And I'll tell you one of the more recent ones that I think is particularly interesting and something that parents or just friends of friends or people who have parents, something to be thinking about is how much we use video and photos now in our online personas. And we even work with our own marketing and social teams at Salesforce as they use photography and videos, that whatever is in the background of your photo are all clues for some nefarious personal organization to learn more about you. I always try to remind our employees that attackers have all the time in the world and they will be very patient until they get all of the information they need in order to do that attack. Mike : Both good tips. Leave on a positive note as a to-do item for our listeners, what would be an article or a piece of content you would suggest they read on admin.salesforce.com? Laura Pelkey: Well, we have one of our amazing colleagues, Tammy Ron has written a blog series covering MFA and really how to prepare your end users. Lots of amazing tips. I think it's a three-part series and I know they're all up on admin.salesforce.com, so I would definitely urge people to check those out. Mike : Cool. And of course, Trailblazer DX is just around the corner, so. Laura Pelkey: Yes. Mike : I'm sure we can see both of you there. Laura Pelkey: [inaudible]. Mike : And they can show up with your security plans and get a fancy security shield. Laura Pelkey: Where Lynn and I are hesitant to agree because we're like, are we going to get in trouble for advising our customers on cybersecurity? Mike : I know we could just wear a button. Laura Pelkey: No, I love that idea though. Lynn Simons: Yeah. And I'll admit it, I still love the stickers. Still love the stickers. Mike : People like stickers. Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Mike : They're good. They're always good. And plushies, we learned that on a previous podcast. People- Lynn Simons: I like stickers more than Plushies, but that's me. Mike : Stickers have mobility. It's hard to- Laura Pelkey: And variety. Mike : ... A few hundred plushies with you and not look creepy. Lynn Simons: It's been done, I'm sure. Mike : Sure it has. Laura Pelkey: The day after Dreamforce, all the people on all the airplanes. Mike : Planes. Laura Pelkey: And with all their plushies. Mike : [inaudible] Luggage just... Laura Pelkey: Must be a site. Mike : Well, it was great having both of you on and I'll be sure to include the link to the piece of content that you mentioned. So thank you both for hopping on the podcast and kicking off this year, keeping us safe and secure. Laura Pelkey: Thank you, Mike. Lynn Simons: Thanks so much, Mike. Mike : So it was fun to have Lynn and Laura back on the podcast. What a great way to kick off 2023. Let's be security minded. I go back to all of the tips that they've shared with me and a lot of stuff that we've thought about too. The one takeaway that I really happen to think of as we were recording this podcast was I never really sat down and thought about what I would do if a user showed as logging in two different locations. What are the steps and how do I follow that? And who are the people I need to reach out to in my security? But that's why we do the podcast because then we're thinking about this stuff in advance, right? It's like the weather channel. We're making a plan before the storm comes so that if the storm comes, we're already set and we're prepared and we know who needs to do what.
Direct download: Kick_Off_2023_as_a_Security-Minded_Admin_with_Lynn_Simons_and_Laura_Pelkey.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 5 January 2023
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kat Aquino, the Salesforce Admin for LA28, otherwise known as the organizing committee for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic & Paralympic Games.
Join us as we talk about how she’s setting up LA28’s Salesforce infrastructure to power a massive, international event and what she’s learned so far.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kat Aquino. Work together better.The Olympic (and Paralympic) Games are coming to LA in 2028, and Kat is the Salesforce Admin for the organizing committee, LA28. Obviously, they’re in the planning stages right now, but that’s the perfect time to build a foundation in Salesforce.
Kat spends a lot of time talking with users to figure out what tools to build, but she’s also keeping an eye on the bigger picture. “As we onboard all of these different departments which all have different processes,” she says, “we need to think about how we can work together better.” That means a thorough understanding of how things are done and, more importantly, how they could fit together. Prioritization when you’re starting from the ground upSo Kat has this massive list of things that need to be built in Salesforce, but how does she make decisions about what to prioritize? There’s a triage element of who needs what and when, but she also factors in how much time a task will take to accomplish. If she has the chance to score a quick win she’ll take it in a heartbeat.
Rolling out new tools lets Kat show the organization how Salesforce can enable them to collaborate like never before. Dashboards have been a game-changer for Sales, for example, because everyone can see what’s going on and collaborate on new approaches. Automations are mind-blowing if you’ve been stuck with the same repetitive process for years. This helps with adoption and generates momentum for the future. Athlete Data: custom objects or contact records?One thing Kat has to solve for that might not be a problem in your Salesforce org is how to deal with data for athletes—it is, after all, the Olympics and Paralympics. “Athletes are quite different from the regular business contacts you’d normally associate with an account,” she says. They need more specific fields (like sport, discipline, or what year they participated), but it’s really important to control who has access to that information with tight security and access.
Kat initially built a custom object and related lists solution, which worked great for reports but not for users. She went back to the drawing board and created a new record type for the contact of an athlete. They can still use the related lists and custom objects they previously created and the user experience is much improved. It requires a lot more management of page layouts and deciding who can see what, but it’s well worth it.
There’s so much more about how Kat is weening a department off of spreadsheets and what she’s looking forward to in the future, so be sure to listen to the full episode for more. We’ll be sure to check back in with Kat as we get closer to LA28.
Podcast swag Learn more
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I am your host today, Gillian Bruce, and we got a fun one for you. We are going to be talking with Kat Aquino, who is working as a Salesforce administrator for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. She is actually building Salesforce to help support this huge event that's happening in just a few short years, and they're starting at ground zero, so I wanted to get Kat on to talk about some of the amazing processes, unique processes, that are special to running an Olympic and Paralympic games using Salesforce, which kind of processes she's bringing in, how she's thinking about the strategy. She's going to be growing the use of Salesforce massively over the next few years, leading right up to the LA28 games, and so I think it's really fascinating to hear from her. And we are going to check back in with her in a few years to follow along her story, but I wanted to get her on to talk about some of these unique use cases and really explore some of the ways that maybe will help you expand your ideas of how you can use Salesforce to help support your business, as well. All right, without further ado, let's please welcome Kat to the podcast. Kat, welcome to the podcast.
Kat Aquino: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Gillian Bruce: Oh, well, I am very happy to have you here. It's so fun. Now, I have had the opportunity to chat with you a little bit, but we got to share all of your goodness with everybody else who's out there listening, because Kat, you are doing something pretty special. Can you just give us a little overview of what your role is at the organization that you're at?
Kat Aquino: Yeah, so I work at LA28, and we are the organizing committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which are coming to Los Angeles in 2028. And my role is the Salesforce admin, essentially, of our organization.
Gillian Bruce: Okay, so kind of a big deal.
Kat Aquino: No pressure or anything.
Gillian Bruce: I know. The Olympics are kind of a big deal, and they're coming back to LA. I think they've got, they haven't been in LA since forever, I feel like, maybe even in my lifetime. Maybe they're in LA in the eighties or something. Do you know when the last time they were there?
Kat Aquino: Yeah, I believe it was '84.
Gillian Bruce:
Kat Aquino: Oh, yeah. So at our organization right now, we are kind of just setting up foundations for how we can plan the games. And we are currently planning the games. We have multiple departments that support that mission. And with being in the technology department, we're tied in with working with other departments to help them succeed and give them the tools that they need to be able to do their jobs. And so right now, as the admin, I've been going through talking with different departments and understanding what their needs are and how we can better collaborate with each other. And I think I'm in a really unique position to be able to help do that through the use of Salesforce. And the different departments, they really do need to work together. Right now, there's a lot of silos. And when they collaborate, they're not really leveraging technology in the best way that they can to be able to do that.
Gillian Bruce: I mean, you're at the center of a really, really big effort. So, I mean, you talked about different departments and different silos and talking to all of your stakeholders. What are some of the questions that you go in with? Because a lot of admins, maybe they're not working to support the Olympic games, but they might be coming into an organization where, again, there's a lot of different stakeholders, a lot of different departments. How do you go about engaging with them and understanding their needs and identifying how Salesforce might be able to play a role in their business processes?
Kat Aquino: Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say that one of the most important questions to ask is processes. What are they currently doing? And really understanding, not just from a broad perspective of how that ties in with the organization as a whole, but really getting down into the nitty gritty details of understanding what exactly it is that they are doing on a day to day basis, because that's where we can really take a look and examine that process and understand how we can take it apart and tinker it together and put that process into Salesforce.
Gillian Bruce: Okay. So, let's talk about that, because, I mean, the LA28 organization does a lot of different things. What are some of the first things that you've been able to set up in Salesforce to help manage their processes a little bit better?
Kat Aquino: Yeah, so earlier I mentioned that I had interviewed a number of departments to really understand what they needed and what they were trying to do. I came up with a huge list. And in order to understand and prioritize what needed to be done, put together the urgency, a list of departments requests that needed a solution quicker. And then I also divided that up into figuring out which of those solutions don't require that big of a lift, so which of those solutions could be set up a little bit more easily than others. So, after doing that, the first department that we set up was our commercial sales department. And that was of simple solutions, seeing that the bread and butter of Salesforce was to help the sales teams do their jobs. And so we set up opportunities, we set up accounts, we set up contacts and allowed them to be able to track their conversations using the activity timeline. And we added the Outlook integration so that they can add their emails into the opportunities. And being able to see all of that in one space for them has really changed the game.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah, I would love to hear... What was the reaction once you were able to set that up? Were the sales people happy with you and super excited to now have this all into one place, or how did that go?
Kat Aquino: I would say, yeah, there was excitement, absolutely. And they loved seeing it because I would show examples of how they can do the work that they've previously done in this new platform. And I would say that there were some challenges that came along with it as well. It was adoption, just making sure that some of the users knew how to use the system, because a lot of them never used Salesforce before. So, that was a challenge that we took on and helped them to increase their confidence and knowledge about how they can leverage this platform to sell, essentially. And I would say the other side of that is... Their leadership was super excited about the dashboard that we were able to set up for them and the reports that were available on that dashboard. It really gave them that one stop shop to be able to see what the progress was looking like on a daily basis, weekly, monthly, how are we tracking towards our goals, things like that. It helps them to just really level set with each other because they were all looking at the same data.
Gillian Bruce: Well, yeah. And then it's automated. Once you put it in Salesforce, right? It just pops up right there, and nobody has to compile different spreadsheets and talk to different sales groups and understand who's done what.
Kat Aquino: Exactly. And it allowed them to work together better. Previously, their leadership and the people who were actually having the conversations and keeping tabs on what was going on, they were very much separate. But now that they have them all available on these dashboards, they're working together much more closely.
Gillian Bruce: Well, that's good. Congratulations. Okay, so you set up sales and Salesforce, but I know you had a few other things on your list. So, what other things have you been able to set up in? And let's also be clear, how long have you been in this role?
Kat Aquino: It has been a little over a year now.
Gillian Bruce: So, forever, such a long time. So in just a little over a year, so you set up a sales process. What other things have you been able to build out in Salesforce?
Kat Aquino: Yeah. Well, specific to the Olympics, we, of course, have to work with athletes. And one of the other projects we are working on was how do we actually set up athletes in our system, because athletes are quite different from the regular business contacts that you'd normally associate with an account. And so thinking about that was a little bit challenging. We initially landed on looking at creating a custom object to hold athlete information. And the reason for that is so that we could create as many fields as we needed to that were really specific to athletes and attributes about an athlete. And being able to control the security and access to that information was also important.
Gillian Bruce: Oh, no, I bet. I mean, it's such a unique set of data to track because you've got all these different things that the athletes do with you and the community and whatnot. So, I could imagine that that took quite a high level of customization.
Kat Aquino: Yeah, there was a lot of customization. And we thought about, okay, we needed to create additional related lists/custom objects to be able to associate them with games that they had participated in and the sport that they participate in, and the discipline that they participate in. So, a lot of that was designed so that we could be able to easily report off of that information to be able to create reports and search for athletes in a more aggregated way. But we realized that the setup of that athlete record, separate from a contact and separate from an account, was not providing the greatest user experience for our athlete department. And so we've had to come back to the drawing board and kind of rework what that should look like and how we should store athlete information in the system.
Gillian Bruce: Interesting. I love that you rolled out something, and then we're like, "Hmm, it's not quite right. We need to come back to the drawing board." Can you talk a little bit more about that process? Because I know, even the limited admin work that I have done, it's not always great the first time around, and so sometimes you have to come back and revisit it.
Kat Aquino: Yeah.
Gillian Bruce: Tell me a little bit about that process and how you approach it, because it can be a little humbling, it can be a little difficult. What have you learned that might be able to help some other admins in the similar position?
Kat Aquino: Yeah, totally. I would say that this process was... It was tough. We're early in our stage of using Salesforce. So in that sense, I'm kind of lucky that we're going to establish a better foundation, but it was difficult to look at it and say, "Oh, we didn't do that the best way that we could have." And having to go back to the drawing board and re-architecting the data that currently existed was important to determine what connections can we make that don't disrupt the requirements that we initially had heard of from that department. So, pulled up a lucid chart, looked at how everything was connected there, and decided, okay, maybe we could keep all of these requirements just by using a new record type on contact records. So, we decided to try that out and create a different kind of record type for the contact of an athlete to be able to hold all of their athletes specific details and still be able to use the previous related lists, custom objects that we had created that were initially tied to the athlete and tie them into the contact object. So, that serves the purpose of eliminating the matrioshka and clicks that the athlete department would have to go through to get to the athlete's information. It was really just opening up their account, and then opening up that contact record, rather than going to account, contact, then athlete.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah.
Kat Aquino: Does that make sense?
Gillian Bruce: Totally. Yeah. Well, and I think it kind of goes to this classic debate of custom object versus using a record type, right? I know that's something that-
Kat Aquino: Yeah.
Gillian Bruce: It's kind of hard to figure out sometimes what the right answer is there, so I really appreciate you breaking down kind of decision points that you used to evaluate, okay, we went in with the custom object, but we learned that there were some things that weren't ideal for the end user. So, then you use the record type. I think that's always a good thing for our admins especially to remember, because record types could be really, really useful, especially if there's enough similarities there to where you can add some more customizations and plug into the existing relationships and schema that are already built in Salesforce.
Kat Aquino: Yeah, exactly. And I think early on, I was scared of record types just due to some stories that I had heard, and also the amount of care that it required, considering you're having to adjust page layouts now and making certain things visible depending on a profile, things like that. It was just a lot more management. But with the user experience, that greatly improves. And I think that in itself makes it worth it.
Gillian Bruce: I love that. That's great. Okay, so you built a sales process, you built a process to manage athlete, athlete data. What else are you working on? I mean, I know you've been busy so far, so I would imagine-
Kat Aquino: Yeah.
Gillian Bruce: ... there's not that much time for you to do a whole bunch else, but what else are you working on in terms of bringing different processes into Salesforce for LA28?
Kat Aquino: Yeah, so we are also bringing on more and more departments. Right now, we have about four departments that are presently using the platform, and we're coming up on bringing on two more. And one of these new departments, this is our communications department, it is probably our biggest build yet. We've had to create a number of new custom objects to be able to support the processes and workflows that they have. And it's been really interesting to see how we can take their work and translate it into Salesforce processes. So, example is that the communications team handles all of the internal requests to participate in certain events within the local organization. Maybe there's an award ceremony or maybe there's an interview that a media outlet would like to have. All of that is managed through our communications department. And they do have a lot of spreadsheets, presently,
Gillian Bruce: Boo.
Kat Aquino: ... how they have run their systems. And all of these spreadsheets are kind of... They have multiple tabs within them. And so it's been very interesting to see how they've worked through switching through different spreadsheets, different tabs within a spreadsheet to be able to do their work. We had to take a lot of time understanding what they were doing so that we could translate it into Salesforce. And at the end of the day, what we've been able to do is organize their sheets, so that in Salesforce, you're looking at one object. And that one object, we've created additional record types so they can adjust the kind of media engagement, per se, that they are looking at. So, different fields might show up, different values might show up, depending on a status or a stage for that particular engagement. And that is a much more organized way of viewing things than their three different Excel sheets where only a couple of tabs really related to that whole piece. So, having that tied back to accounts, so accounts being their media outlets, and then the contacts in which there are journalists and reporters, having all of that tie back together and being able to see that bigger picture of, okay, these are the engagements that we've got going on under this particular category, these are the people that are involved in it, this is the reporter, this is our LA28 representative that's going to be in it, this is the comms team person who's going to be staffing this and supporting this project. These are the topics that are involved, we've been able to create a number of custom objects to be able to support all of their needs.
Gillian Bruce: That's awesome. I mean, I can very easily envision that nasty spreadsheet with all the tabs, because I feel like we've all encountered those.
Kat Aquino: It was rough, and I think they would agree.
Gillian Bruce: Well, that's awesome. I mean, that's a very complex and unique process to bring into Salesforce, so I think that's really interesting that you were able to do that. I mean, I would imagine there's probably some other processes that you may be working on in the future. What else are you working on? What is in the vision for the next steps of Salesforce with LA28?
Kat Aquino: Yeah. And right now, I think we're heavily focused on foundations and making sure that we are doing what we need to do without too much fuss and too much frill. But as we onboard all of these different departments, which all have different processes, and some processes really overlap with other departments, we start to think about how we can work together better. Maybe, is there a way that we could optimize certain processes? Can we use flows to automate certain things? And can we adjust a field so that it serves a greater purpose? Can we serve a greater purpose by adjusting a custom object? And all of that, I think, is something that has been coming out of what I'm calling as... We have a steering committee and the steering committee that we have meets on a monthly basis, and it has representatives from each department so that it provides a space for our users to have a voice and really be involved in the planning and what features that we're going to be prioritizing, what features are needed, and really help shape what our Salesforce instance is going to look like. So, I'm really excited to continue meeting with our steering committee to be able to shape how we can create a better collaborative environment.
Gillian Bruce: What I love about that, Kat, is that, I mean, knowing that basically you've got a very collaborative building environment kind of across the whole organization, because I think, I mean, you're all gearing up for this huge event in a few years, and it's a massive undertaking, and it's really unique to hear your perspective as the admin who's building all of the Salesforce infrastructure to help run this whole organization. I mean, it's really, really fascinating, and especially at this stage where everything is kind of... You are, you're laying the groundwork, you're setting up the infrastructure that is going to run this massive, massive event. It's really fascinating to hear how you think about what to set up and the steerco with all of the different departments, making sure stakeholders are involved from the get-go. This makes me really excited.
Kat Aquino: It makes me excited too.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah. And I think it's a really great example too, for maybe even admins who are maybe at some more established Salesforce instances and companies and organizations. But the idea of having that fresh look and really looking at how people are getting their work done and doing those evaluations that you've done, and not being afraid to come back to the drawing table and reevaluate stuff, I think those are some really, really great learnings that you've been able to share with us, and I so appreciate that.
Kat Aquino: Yeah, of course.
Gillian Bruce: I mean, what has it been... I mean, I can imagine being an admin for the LA28 games is probably... It might seem a little daunting at times, but where do you see a couple years from now, or even maybe as you head into the last year or two before the games, what's your vision for maybe what you have built out by then or what it's going to be like to be the Salesforce admin or running the Salesforce instance for such a huge undertaking?
Kat Aquino: Yeah, that's such an interesting point that you brought up about what the vision should look like, because I think earlier when I was interviewing all these different departments and understanding their functions and what they do, that started to help formulate the vision of what Salesforce could be for our organization. And I think what it really could be is this glue that brings together these different departments to be able to provide transparency across all of the different work streams that we have. Because as an organization that's developing and planning the Olympics, there's a lot of entities and organizations that we need to communicate with, and ensuring that everyone uses the platform so that they can understand, this is what I talked about with this department in this company. Another department at LA28 might see that and say, "Okay, I know that that happened. Let me readjust the way that I'm going to speak to that company about this topic." And I think the real vision for Salesforce is just being able to bring all of those departments together to better collaborate with each other.
Gillian Bruce: I love that. That makes me... I'm really looking forward to, hopefully, Kat, if you'll let me, continue to talk to you over the next few years because I'm so fascinated to hear what else you build and all your different learnings and experiences. This is kind of like a startup in some senses, right? You're starting from ground zero.
Kat Aquino: Absolutely. We absolutely are. And I think one of the key that we're excited about is Salesforce is going to help us create a more holistic understanding of the different stakeholders and accounts and companies and organizations that we work with. We'll be able to open up an account and see all the different facets that involve that account, like whether or not that account has a stake in venues. Are they a manager of a venue? Do they operate a venue? Are they a concession provider for that venue? Have they been engaged with our communications team before? What have they been involved in? What are they involved in as far as our sales department? Have they been in touch with them at all in any capacity? So, it's really going to allow all of us to be able to look at what we're working with and share that information across our organization.
Gillian Bruce: You are building the customer 360 for LA28. Good job, Kat.
Kat Aquino: It totally is.
Gillian Bruce: Well, Kat, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me and share some of the things that you've already built and what you're going to look at building next. And I do also really appreciate that grander vision. because I think every Salesforce admin, no matter what organization you're in, you should have a vision of what you want Salesforce to do in the long run. And I think your very clear vision about it being the glue. I literally just wrote that down because I'm like, that is great. It's very clear and concise, and so it's helpful to have that as a direction that you're going, that vision. So, any little tips or advice do you want to leave the listeners before we wrap up today?
Kat Aquino: I would say keep things open-minded. Stay open-minded about what is possible and what's available. I know that at a certain point, when you've encountered numerous problems and understand, "Oh, I've encountered that before, this is how we do it," there might be alternative solutions that maybe work better nowadays relative to the previous ways that you've been implementing a solution. So, staying open-minded.
Gillian Bruce: That's a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Kat, for spending time with us today. I look forward to seeing what else you're going to build. And get ready. Now, all Salesforce admins are going to hit you up for advice and interesting stories about working for LA28.
Kat Aquino: Happy to hear, and happy to learn from them as well.
Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Thank you so much.
Kat Aquino: Thank you so much.
Gillian Bruce: Well, thank you. Thank you, Kat, so much for taking the time to join us on the podcast. I hope that all of you listeners got some great insight from Kat about how you can build the infrastructure and the foundation for a very successful Salesforce implementation to run a huge, huge amounts of project or program. And hey, especially if you're an admin at a small business or a startup, there are some great learnings here and here from Kat to help you set up for success. I love how Kat said she's got a vision for Salesforce. It is clear. It is going to be the glue that brings all of these very separate departments all together. And having that vision for what you want Salesforce to be in the overall, it's just so important. At Salesforce, we talk about our V2mom all the time, which is how we set our vision and values and metrics and methods for the year. Kat does the same thing. So, really having a clear vision for how you want Salesforce to function within your organization is so, so helpful. If you want to learn more about being an awesome admin, you can find all kinds of great content on admin.salesforce.com, blogs, videos, podcasts, all kinds of great things, even the Salesforce admin skill kit. Check it out if you haven't already. You can follow all of the awesome admin fun on Twitter using hashtag #AwesomeAdmin or @SalesforceAdmns, no I. You can find our guest today, Kat Aquino on LinkedIn. I'll put her LinkedIn link in the show notes. Please give her some love. Follow her. She's going to be building some very cool things in the next few years. And you can find my co-host, Mike Gerholdt, @mikegerholdt on Twitter, and you can find myself @gilliankbruce on Twitter. You can also find us on LinkedIn. We exist there too. We're on all the platforms. With that, I hope you had a great day or having a great day, will have a great day, and I'll catch you next time in the cloud.
Direct download: Supporting_the_LA28_Games_with_Salesforce_with_Kat_Aquino.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 29 December 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for December. Join us as we review the top product, community, and careers content for December, and hear about Gillian’s visit to French Touch Dreamin. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro. Go to an event!Gillian just got back from delivering the keynote address at French Touch Dreamin. If you’ve never been to a Dreamin event, there’s probably one near you or even remote options available. They’re organized by the community and have a very different feel from the official Salesforce events like World Tour, though you should also give those a try. Blog highlights from DecemberThe weather outside is frightful, the fire’s so delightful, and you know what that means: it’s time to get ready for the Spring ‘23 Release. Ella Marks put together a great blog post laying out the major milestones you need to have on your calendar to get ready. Video highlights from DecemberIf you haven’t checked out the official Salesforce Admins YouTube channel, you’re missing out. Jennifer Lee is rocking some great live streams—Automate This! is must-see TV. You get to watch Jennifer and some amazing Trailblazers solve problems, live, right in front of your eyes, and if you miss anything you can always go back and watch the replay. Podcast highlights from DecemberWe really think you should take a listen to Brenda Glasser’s episode if you missed it the first time. She’s currently a Salesforce Architect, but the story of her career goes hand-in-hand with how she was able to champion the Salesforce platform at her organization, and she has a lot to say about how to do that effectively. Just for funMike and Gillian check in on their feelings about candy canes and ask the hard questions, like why are there fruit-flavored candy canes and who actually enjoys them? Podcast swag Social
Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast in the December Monthly Retro. Oh, the last one for 2022. I'm your host and in this episode, we will review the top product community careers for December plus anything else we can think of that's top of mind. I don't know. You never know what's going to come to our minds, but also joining me is Gillian Bruce. Hey, Gillian. Gillian: Hi, Mike Gerholdt. How you doing? Mike: Good so far. Gillian: Happy December. Mike: I know. Can you believe it's already? It happened just like boop. Oh, 2022 is over. Gillian: Yeah. It felt like this year went a lot quicker than the two years prior. Mike: Right. Yes. Well, maybe we're catching back up. Gillian: It's a good thing. Mike: You fast forward the VHS tape. Because everything is digital now, you don't fast forward. We did some things. You did a thing. You went over to France and did French Touch Dreamin. Gillian: I did. Mike: Let's kick off there because that was fun. Gillian: I got on an airplane. I got to go to Paris. I got to hang out with our amazing EMEA Trailblazer community. Let me tell you, this event, so French Touch Dreamin, it's got to be the biggest, or if not, along with maybe London's Calling, one of the biggest community events outside of the US. Jean Michelle has been running this for a while. It is such a cool event. They had an overwhelming response this year, so they had a lot more people attend than they had planned. But it was wonderful. It was just really a great opportunity again to see folks I have not seen in many years, to meet a bunch of new trailblazers in the EMEA community. It was also pretty sweet because the Salesforce office, for those of you don't know, is literally right next to the Eiffel Tower. Mike: Well, it is the holidays. Or I would add, Gillian, really any community event, because there's a lot of community events across the US. You don't have to fly all the way to France. Gillian: Yeah, there's community events everywhere. There was a community event in Morocco, North Africa Dreamin just a month ago. No matter where you are, really, hey, if you have not attended a Dreamin event, I guarantee you there's one within a reasonable distance of where you live, so check it out. There's also a lot of virtual ones, too, which is pretty fun. Definitely a lot more of a program than a typical user group meeting. It's very different from going to a Salesforce sponsored event because these are all put on by the community. Salesforce has nothing to do with the programming and sometimes they invite people who work at Salesforce like myself to participate, which is really cool. Mike: Speaking of Salesforce sponsored. Gillian: Good segue. Mike: We also did World Tour New York early part of December, it was December 8th. I want to say. For some reason that sticks in my head. Gillian: I think you're right. Yeah. Mike: That looked like a packed event. We had Lisa there and Jennifer and Ella from our team. That was a really cool event and a ton of community people. Holy cow. Gillian: The Twitter thread was unending of all of the selfies and the photos. Michelle Hansen, our golden hoodie winner from our keynote at Dreamforce was there giving a session. Michael [inaudible] won the golden hoodie in the main keynote. It was very, very cool. Just from what I heard, what Lisa and Ella and Jen said is it was packed. There was so many people. Mike: It looked packed. Did you see that? The pictures, it looked packed. It reminded me of London World Tour that one year that was just like... Gillian: That's right. It was like 10,000 people. Mike: Let me just wiggle through people. Gillian: Yeah. Javits Center was going off with a lot of Salesforce content and some fun. If you missed it, you could actually, I think watch the broadcast that happened during the event. Check that out. I know they definitely got a version of Mark's keynote on there, which is interesting to always check out and see what's top of mind for him. Definitely had even a new framework that he's playing with about playing on the seven habits of highly effective people, the seven habits of highly effective companies. Check it out. An interesting approach. Mike: Yeah. Wonder if we've done that. Anyway, let's talk about the cool content we had for December, at least the three things we think you should pay attention to. I'll kick off. Wouldn't be December if it wasn't talking about spring, because the second, a little flurry flies, we immediately start thinking about the next season. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the spring '23 release dates countdown blog that we put up, because you probably already have those dates on your calendar as an admin. If not, you will. Gillian: Yeah. Get them, because guess what? It's right around the corner. It's a season of giving gifts and we're giving you the gift of another release coming very soon. Mike: Yeah, it feels like. Okay, you do the holiday stuff. Yay. New Year's. Okay, now it's the release time. Gillian: Yeah, it's release time this year. Trailblazer DX time, too. Mike: Oh yeah, we have that coming up. We'll save that for our next Retro. Gillian: Okay. I thought it'd be more of a January topic anyway. Mike: Right. One thing at a time. Gillian: I know, I know. I think [inaudible], what are we working on all the time every day right now? Oh, right. That's not actually for everyone else for a few months. Mike: Right. Yeah. It's 90 days out. That's a long time in the real world. Gillian: Yeah. In the real world. Well, in Salesforce timeline, that's was yesterday. Mike: Right. Gillian, you did a great podcast with Brenda on propelling your career. Gillian: Yeah. Brenda Glasser, she's actually an architect, but she came in as an awesome admin and has really worked in her career to build her skillset and grow into now, she manages a team of Salesforce professionals. She's working at a really cool innovative startup company, but she has been around on the ecosystem almost as long as I have. I think we've both been in around like 12, 13 years, which sounds crazy to say that, but she has really found that the way that she's been able to propel her career is by being an internal advocate for Salesforce. By being the person who keeps pushing the idea that, hey, could do this with Salesforce, we can build this out with Salesforce has really enabled her to grow her career and help her make the moves that she's been able to make to now be a really seasoned professional leading a team. Mike: I enjoyed it. And then of course, we always point out video and I'm wanting to point out something a little different in not a specific video, but kind of a specific video, in that we do what I think is super cool, the royal we, Jennifer does live streams on our YouTube channel. I'll include the link in the show notes, but Automate This, it's just this really cool live thing that she does that I feel is, man, it's up there in terms of fun stuff to watch that you can just chime into and if you miss it, you can go back and watch it, but you also know when the next one is coming. I don't know, I find stuff like that really neat. Gillian: Well, it's really innovative. Really, nobody else is doing what Jennifer is doing. It's highlighting trailblazers who are doing really interesting things and really going through it live. You are a part of it. This is not pre-recorded. It's a really fun way to really get involved, to feel connected, to learn. If you missed anything, you can then go back and watch the replay. But she does these quite often, so if you've never tuned into one, please go investigate. Mike: Seriously. I feel like I'm constantly looking over at my Twitter feed and being like, oh, Jennifer is live on YouTube again. Gillian: Yeah. And then everyone is like, oh my gosh, did you see this? Did you see this? I didn't know you could do this. Yeah. Very fun. Check it out. Mike: Cool. Well, last Retro of 2022. I'll pull from an internal question that we asked the team. Gillian, do you have a preference on candy canes? Do you like the peppermint or do you like the fruit? Gillian: Fruit candy canes are what? Why? Mike: I know, right? Gillian: I like the pretty colors, the rainbow colors are... Mike: I think they're sweet. Gillian: I see what you did there. Mike: I try. Gillian: I like a good peppermint candy cane in my hot cocoa. Mm-hmm. Just a little minty. Mike: Oh, yeah. This is that time of year when everything becomes candy cane flavored. Gillian: I will say my three-year-old son Jack just had his first candy cane the other day and it blew his mind. He also didn't understand the thing that you're just supposed to leave it in your mouth. He kept taking it out and touching it and getting all sticky and getting everything else all sticky. At some point, I just made it disappear. Candy canes. Mike, what about you? Fruit candy cane? Mike: No, I'm team peppermint. There's one reason it should be striped like that. I also would buy candy canes if they were peppermint flavored, but had the beauty of the fruit candy cane. If I want a piece of fruit, I'm going to get a Jolly Rancher or something. That to me doesn't say holidays. This is the one time a year you can walk around with a candy cane in your mouth and not look like a weirdo. Gillian: I guess that's a good point. Mike: Why waste it on a fruit candy cane? Gillian: You know what else I really like to do with candy canes? I like to make peppermint bark. Mike: Oh, I just like the regular bark, the almond bark. Do you like chocolate bark or almond bark? I like almond. Gillian: I don't really discriminate, but a good peppermint bark is really hard to beat. The William Sonoma Peppermint bark, that's the bar to meet. But making your own peppermint bark, I like milk chocolate with the candy canes. Mike: Oh. I think I pepperminted myself out too much one year. They had a peppermint coffee and I drank too much of it and now I'm just a little, it's like pumpkin spice. Gillian: Well, I wonder if we're going to start another feud here because we're both big peppermint proponents, but what are the other holiday flavors? There's eggnog, hot cocoa. Mike: In a candy cane? Here's an eggnog candy cane. Oh, that sounds horrible. Gillian: Eggnog is just not my thing anyway. Mike: No, no. Gillian: Well, mulled wine is a thing that people get into at the holidays, which is quite delicious and so boozy. It's so dangerous. Mike: I thought we were talking about candy canes. Gillian: Yeah, sorry. I just took it another direction. I apologize. I don't know of candy cane things. Mike: Would you like a mulled wine candy cane, an eggnog candy cane, or a no thank you, we're good candy cane? Gillian: Yeah. Other than the fruit version. I don't know of any other non-peppermint candy cane. Mike: Right, because it's a waste of time. Gillian: Yeah. Well, now everyone is going to want to eat a candy cane. Mike: I know. Well, 'tis the season. All right, well, if you want to learn more about all things admin and anything that we just talked about in this episode, minus fruit flavored candy canes, please go to admin.salesforce.com to find those links and resources. You can stay up to date with us for all things social. We are @SalesforceAdmns, no I, on Twitter. I'm of course @MikeGerholdt on Twitter and Gillian is @gilliankbruce. With that, stay safe, stay awesome, have a great holiday season, and we will see you in the cloud.
Direct download: December_Monthly_Retro_with_Mike_and_Gillian.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 22 December 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rohit Mehta, Senior Product Manager for Sandboxes and Scratch Orgs at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about how to think about sandboxes and scratch orgs and some tips for how to use them better. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rohit Mehta. Diving into sandboxesWe’ve talked a lot about why sandboxes are so important for admins over the years, but we’ve never really gotten into the nitty-gritty of it. That’s why for this episode, we thought we’d bring on the sandbox PM, Rohit, to talk through everything. Rohit has been at Salesforce for a long time, first as a computer engineer and then later on the product side of things. In fact, he says, “a lot of the product that I manage nowadays I actually built, years ago.” Since he took over the team, there have been a lot of improvements to what sandboxes have to offer, including upgrades to speed and reliability, data masking, and partial sandboxes, and the future is looking even more exciting. Hyperforce and the need for speedOne big thing coming up is sandboxes for Hyperforce. If you’re not familiar, Hyperforce is a Salesforce deployment on public cloud infrastructure (like AWS). “One of the most common complaints that we get from customers is that their sandbox takes too long to create,” Rohit says, “but now with Hyperforce, we can produce sandboxes much much faster due to a newly-rearchitected design.” They’re starting with Quick Clone for Dev and Dev Pro sandboxes coming up in Winter ‘23, with an eye towards a GA release in Spring ‘23 (forward-looking statement!). The Create operation will be coming along shortly after, so lots to look forward to. “People don’t often think about speed as a feature,” Rohit says, “but we make speed improvements on every release.” And the goal with Hyperforce is to be able to create sandboxes an order of magnitude faster than before. That’s 10x, for those of you playing along from home. Check out scratch orgsRohit is also the product manager for scratch orgs, so we figured he’s perhaps the best person in the world to ask this question: what’s the difference between sandboxes and scratch orgs? scratch org is a source-driven and disposable deployment of Salesforce code and metadata. A scratch org is fully configurable, allowing developers to emulate different Salesforce editions with different features and preferences, and they only last 30 days. Sandboxes are copies of your Salesforce org that you can use for development, testing, and training, without compromising the data and applications in your production org. Source-based development can really improve the speed that you’re able to deliver complex projects, so Rohit encourages every admin to give scratch orgs a closer look. While creating one through the CLI may seem complicated, there are a lot resources out there to help you make it happen, and new declarative options are on the way. Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Direct download: Sandboxes_and_Scratch_Orgs_with_Rohit_Mehta.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 15 December 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Eddie Cliff, Senior Director of Product Management for Salesforce Easy.
Join us as we talk about what Salesforce Easy is and what it means for Admins.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Eddie Cliff. What is Salesforce Easy?Eddie has had a varied career that has taken him all over the world. He’s lived and worked everywhere form NYC to Singapore to Sydney. Nowadays, he’s based in New Orleans, which means he can say he’s from the Big Easy and works on Salesforce Easy. Eddie leads the team of product managers working on it and that’s exactly why we brought him on the pod.
If you haven’t heard of it yet, Salesforce Easy aims to help companies of all sizes get started on Salesforce faster and, yes, easier than ever before. As Eddie says, they’ve adopted a mantra of “Easy by default, and advanced by choice.” In practice, it means you can get set up on the critical aspects of a deployment first, and then expand your functionality as you go. You can think of it as a new front door for Salesforce. An Innovation Center for everyoneOn the top floor of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, there’s something called the SIC: the Salesforce Innovation Center. Here, we bring together Salesforce customers with leaders from the Salesforce team to share best practices, case studies, and more, with a focus on digital transformation.
“The unfortunate thing about the SIC is there’s only one top floor of the Salesforce Tower,” Eddie says, “so they don’t scale very well.” Salesforce Easy aims to bring all of those learnings and best practices to everyone, with an onboarding process that helps every company implement them right away, without the commute to San Francisco.
Salesforce Easy asks you questions as you’re setting up in order to recommend out-of-the-box sales processes that are tried and true, and start closing more deals — fast. This includes declarative defaults across Sales and Service processes, reports and dashboards that work from jump, consistent record page layouts with best-practice information architecture, a simplified import experience, and so much more. Elevating the adminSo what does this all mean for admins? The benefit of a streamlined setup that implements so many best practices is that the more technical, repetitive, and support tasks are already taken care of for you. That frees up admins to be more strategic and focus on integrating Salesforce with their organization to improve business processes and support business objectives.
Most importantly, Salesforce Easy expands on existing platform capabilities and solutions that admins can leverage to help their users. You can take advantage of features like in-app guidance and in-app learning that make it, well, easy to onboard users who are new to Salesforce or changing roles.
Eddie also shares some exciting ideas they’re working on rolling out soon, including smart guidance and spotlighting to help users do their jobs better every time they log in. Go ahead and sign up now—it’s free and takes three clicks—and Eddie would love to hear your feedback.
Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! |
Thu, 8 December 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Brenda Glasser, Salesforce Architect at Ripple and co-leader of the Atlanta Salesforce Architect Community Group. Join us as we talk about how evangelizing Salesforce and being an advocate for expanding the use of Salesforce within your company can help propel your career. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Brenda Glasser. Why Salesforce can do moreBrenda has built out Salesforce implementations at several different organizations over her long career in the ecosystem so we brought her on the pod to share some lessons she’s learned along the way. “Salesforce, as a platform, can do so much within an organization,” she says, but it can be hard to think big when you’re only using one or two clouds and you’re a solo admin. If your data is in a bunch of different places, or if you are seeing people lose time to tedious manual processes in email or spreadsheets, it can be really powerful to step forward and point out how Salesforce can make things work more smoothly. But how do you take the first steps? Show your workAdvocating for big changes takes time: you need to build trust and credibility. Brenda recommends trying to find some low-hanging fruit where you can make a big impact quickly. It’s also important to realize that the people in your organization who are struggling the most with Salesforce can be your biggest opportunities. “If they don’t like it, find out why,” she says. After all, it’s your job to help them do their job better, and if you do that you can turn your worst critics into your biggest fans. The other thing that works really well with stakeholders is building a proof of concept. Gathering some quick requirements and making something can show them that what you’re suggesting is really possible. As the saying goes: you have to see it to believe it. Your Salesforce account team and the Trailblazer community can help you figure things out—you don’t have to go it alone. How your career can grow with your orgFor Brenda, being an effective champion for Salesforce starts with listening. Always be on the lookout for problems you can solve. Being eager to jump in and start building can put a lot of work on your plate, but it also makes you visible to leadership as somebody they can count on. “If you work for a company that is supportive and committed,” Brenda says, “then that will mean you’ll get additional resources.” You can soon find yourself leading a team, or learning more about the platform and moving into a different role as your org grows. But it’s all about stepping forward and saying, “Hey, Salesforce can do this and I can show you how.” Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today, Gillian Bruce, and we are going to talk about how you can be a Salesforce evangelist within your own organization. Today we are going to be speaking with Brenda Glasser, who is a community leader. She has been in the Salesforce ecosystem for, I mean, longer than I've been in, maybe around the same time, about 12, 13 years. So a while. Brenda Glasser: Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Gillian Bruce: Well, I am very glad to have you on. We've got a really fun discussion in store. But before we get into that, why don't you take a moment and just kind of introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, how long you've been in the ecosystem? Brenda Glasser: Sure. So I'm Brenda Glasser. I live in the Atlanta area. I am currently a Salesforce Architect for a company called Ripple, which is in the cryptocurrency space, which has been an interesting journey for me. Yeah, I've been in the ecosystem, I think about 13 or 14 years. I don't actually know, but I've been around for a while. I got started sort of pre-Trailhead and all that good stuff. And I also help co-lead the brand new Salesforce architect Trailblazer Community Group here in Atlanta. Gillian Bruce: That's awesome. So just a few years in Salesforce, still learning the ropes, right? Brenda Glasser: I am though. That's the thing, is you never stop learning. So I am still learning the ropes. Gillian Bruce: I love that. I love that. Well, congrats on leading the new architect group there in Atlanta. Very exciting. Brenda, I wanted to get you on the podcast because with all of the experience that you've had in Salesforce over the years, you had a lot of experience kind of working with organizations and getting them on board with Salesforce and kind of making a case for why they should use more Salesforce. I wanted to get a talk about how admins can really think about setting a vision for Salesforce. And so can you talk to us a little bit about how setting a vision for Salesforce has helped you in your career? Brenda Glasser: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the first thing is just to know that Salesforce as a platform can do so much within an organization. But I know I have, especially when I was first starting out, where you're in roles, your company is using it maybe for only certain use cases, or maybe they just have Sales Cloud or they just have one or two Clouds, especially if you are a solo admin or working in a smaller org with a very small team, it can be easy to sort of think of Salesforce as smaller than it really is. But as a platform and with everything, all the different Clouds and different offerings, there is really just so much that Salesforce can do for any organization. And so I think as I have been on my Salesforce journey, I've had the opportunity to get experience and learn about a lot of the different Clouds. Gillian Bruce: So I mean, I think, you hit the nail on the head a lot of ways about understanding, hey, Salesforce can do so much, right, even if you're only working on Sales Cloud. It's really good to know, oh, it can do all of these other things as well, especially now with Tableau and Slack and MuleSoft in the house. Brenda Glasser: Mm-hmm. Gillian Bruce: In order to kind of get buy-in from stakeholders to maybe expand the business a bit and expand the use of Salesforce across the business. What are some things that have helped you in the past? Maybe pushed for that? Because I can imagine especially, I mean, a lot of times Salesforce admins we're the only ones in the company who even knows anything about Salesforce, right? Brenda Glasser: Mm-hmm. Yep. Gillian Bruce: So what are some things that have helped you in the past kind of sell the business in terms of getting them to expand the use of Salesforce? Maybe think about bringing more processes within the Salesforce platform. Brenda Glasser: Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing really is to kind of build trust and credibility amongst your team and amongst your stakeholders. So if your stakeholders don't know you or they don't trust you, or maybe don't fully buy in to Salesforce, that could definitely make it harder to get their buy-in. So I think trying to proactively find and help support maybe some low hanging fruit and spending the time to understand, hey, if they maybe are not the number one fans of Salesforce within their organization, if they find it clunky or it's not easy to use or they don't like it, I think find out why, right? So really go in with an attitude of, Hey, I'm not here to be defensive. This is a platform and it's my job to help you do your job better. So I think it really does start with building that trust and credibility. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. You got to see it to believe it, right? I mean, that's kind of the idea. And I really like how you broke it down into the two steps, right? First, really establish that trust. Establish yourself as the subject matter expert, as the trusted advisor when it comes to Salesforce, that you can deliver results, you can have an impact. And then when you want to expand, be like, oh look, look what I can do. Look what I can build for you. I think that's a really, really good kind of two step vision setting process there. Brenda Glasser: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I think the first part, I just really love building stuff on Salesforce. So for me, it's fairly natural because I really like solving problems. And that's the reason that I fell in love with Salesforce to begin with was something so simple of I can create a field for you, look at that and receiving that feedback selfishly. I love almost nothing more when I can solve an issue for somebody, even if to me it's something really simple, it can really kind of make somebody's day. So for me, definitely I am just super passionate about the platform and what it can do. And so I am always looking for opportunities to raise my hand or poke my head in to say, actually Salesforce can help with that. Do you want to learn more? Do you want to see how? So I think it really starts with, again, listening, looking for problems, looking for opportunities. Gillian Bruce: I love that. It's an investment in yourself, which also turns out to be an investment in the company and in Salesforce too, because the more people like you that are out there, the better the product gets because you give us feedback. But I think one of the things that I heard in that is, hey, it can be a little scary because you're the eager person and you create all this more work for yourself and you create all these opportunities, which means there's just endless things that you can work on. Brenda Glasser: Yeah. So I think one is, and this is something that you kind of develop a muscle for over time I think is setting expectations. So just because you're saying yes, Salesforce can do this is not the same thing as saying Salesforce can do this and I'll have it done by next week. You are constantly having to evaluate and also prioritize with your leadership, with the company's priorities. Just because you as an individual or you as an admin team have identified a problem that you can go solve doesn't mean it's the top priority. So you have to constantly check in with yourself, check in with your team, check in with your manager, your leadership to make sure that you're focusing on the right things at the right time. But also providing that feedback and expectations to your stakeholders to give them realistic timelines, understanding scope, and having them understand they're going to have to participate in the process. Gillian Bruce: I mean, I think we all struggle with that, all these competing priorities, all these things that want a piece of us in our lives and figuring out how to divvy that up in the right way. So well said, well said. And I think this discussion ties pretty well with another episode that was recently on the podcast kind of dealing with talking about burnout that was on the developer podcast. So I think it's a really good conversation to say, Hey, yes, you can go be an evangelist for Salesforce and you can help grow your abilities and grow the capabilities of Salesforce within your organization, but also you need to make sure that you're taking care of what needs to be taken care of, which is number one yourself, right? Brenda Glasser: Yep. Gillian Bruce: And making sure that by investing both in yourself by growing your expertise within Salesforce and growing your responsibilities at your role at your company, but that you're not doing it at the compromise of something else. Brenda Glasser: Yeah, I mean, I think just sort of getting to know even at a really high level what all is available from Salesforce. So again, when we were first starting out, we focus a lot on really kind of the core platform and getting admins search and kind of starting down our certification journey. But I would really recommend spending time on Trailhead or getting involved within the Trailblazer community on some of the other offerings. So there's wonderful Trailblazer groups and conferences and trails on things like Experience Cloud, on Marketing Cloud, on Tableau, on what else is out there. You certainly don't need to be an expert, but I think just knowing what those offerings are can really make a big difference to help you put on your creative problem-solving hat and looking for where there can be opportunities to expand your utilization of the platform. Gillian Bruce: I love that. Expand your horizons a little bit. I think that's great, especially your note about you don't have to be an expert to go to a Marketing Cloud user group meeting. Brenda Glasser: Nope, nope. Gillian Bruce: Show up, take it in. Learn something. Brenda Glasser: Exactly. Exactly. Gillian Bruce: Oh, that's great. Well, Brenda, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today, and it's wonderful to hear about how you've learned to be an advocate for Salesforce within your organizations and then how it's really helped you propel your career, and then maybe give some insight to some others for some opportunities. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Brenda Glasser: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. I really enjoyed it. Gillian Bruce: Well, huge thanks for Brenda for taking the time to chat with us. I really enjoyed our discussion and I hope you enjoyed it too. I love talking about being an advocate, wanting to do more work, but also being very cautious about the work that you're taking on and trying to balance that with all of the other things you have and prioritizing. It can be hard sometimes, but I mean, I am very naturally an eager, let's go do all the things person, and I struggle with taking on too much myself. So really good discussion with Brenda about that. I wanted to remind you that as you go into your end of year/beginning of year planning and you're trying to figure out what you might want to learn, we have some really great content on admin.salesforce.com and if you haven't spent time there lately, please go check it out.
Direct download: Propel_Your_Career_by_Being_a_Salesforce_Advocate_with_Brenda_Glasser.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 1 December 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we have a guest episode from the Salesforce Developers Podcast. Host Josh Birk talks to Drew Tauber, a Salesforce Engineer at Clear. Join us as we talk about how to identify signs of burnout and the steps you can take to prevent it from happening. You should subscribe for the full episode (and subscribe to the Salesforce Developers Podcast), but here are a few takeaways from Josh’s conversation with Drew Tauber. Proto-ArchitectWhen Drew was trying to change jobs, he went to an interview where the company had mislabeled the job title as “Systems Administrator” instead of Information Systems Specialist. He still got the role and it led him to transition to working entirely in Salesforce and taking on more of a Developer role. Today, he describes his job as somewhere between an Admin, a Developer, and a “proto-Architect.” Signs of burnoutIf you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, stressed, or like the amount of work you have to do is insurmountable, you may be headed toward burnout. Drew gave a presentation about this very topic at World Tour New York, and he’s had many conversations about it in his role as co-leader of the New York City User Group. When the pandemic hit, “everyone’s work-life balance went out the window,” Drew says, and the same goes for traditional structure and support networks. Salesforce professionals were hit especially hard because as everything went remote, there was increased pressure to expand functionality to account for the “new normal.” At Drew’s company, for example, the Salesforce footprint doubled but his team remained the same size. Why it’s OK to ask for helpThe first step Drew recommends to help with burnout is to ask for help. It took a while to add more people to his team, “but even just seeing that there was a light at the end of the tunnel was hugely helpful,” he says. It’s in your company’s best interest for you to not burn out, so don’t be afraid to start a tough but necessary conversation. Asking for help can extend to things beyond just asking for more people or resources. You can ask for help carving out some time away from the job, or help yourself by establishing clear communication boundaries so you don’t feel like you’re “always on.” There’s a lot of value in managing expectations by saying, “I can’t get to that right now but I will when I have a minute.” The research also shows that exercise is also crucial. “Stress is a physical reaction in the body,” Drew says, “and it definitely helps to get the endorphins going.” There’s so much more in this episode so be sure to listen in and, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Developers Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. We talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. Now, this week we're going to try a little something different. So as you know, at Salesforce, we have quite a few podcasts, and one of those we're good friends with the Salesforce Developer Podcast hosted by Josh Burke. You've heard him here on the pod before. He's been on, talk about some developer stuff and Trailhead. And you know what? We wanted to try one do a little something different and we wanted to swap out some episodes. So recently Josh had a guest on who was Drew Talber, who talked about burnout and stress. And you know what? Admins get burned out and stressed too. So do podcasters. So what we're going to do is we're going to rebroadcast that episode so that you have a chance to listen to it. I think it's a really great episode. I've listened to it myself. And then you know what? Give it a listen. And if you love the podcast, go ahead and jump on over the Developer Podcast and give them a subscribe and check out what Josh is doing. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Josh, take it away. Drew Tauber: When I was in college, I went to college for information technology, and I was adamant that the last thing I wanted to do was be a coder. Josh Birk: That is Drew Tauber, a senior Salesforce engineer over at CLEAR. I’m Josh Birk, your host for the Salesforce Developer Podcast. Here on the podcast, you’ll hear stories and insights from developers for developers. Today we sit down and talk with Drew about something people are really starting to talk more about, and I think it’s great. We’re going to talk about stress. We’re going to talk about burnout. Josh Birk: We’re going to talk about anxiety and we’re going to talk about how it can affect you in the workplace and what you can do about it. Before we get into that, we’re going to start right after that cold quote and get into how Drew really did become a coder. Why? Drew Tauber: For me, at the time, coders were just down in the basement, typing it out and I wanted to be upstairs with the people, so I went into desktop support, service support out there, working with end users. I think that’s why Salesforce wound up jibing with me as a developer role because I’m not hidden in the corner. I’m out there with my stakeholders, building stuff for them. Josh Birk: Gotcha. You always had that people skills layer that you wanted to be able to dive into? Drew Tauber: Mm-hmm. Josh Birk: What’s your earliest memory of the computer? Drew Tauber: Fourth grade Apple IIes, we were using some word processor, Magic Writer or something like that. Josh Birk: Yes. The one that taught you by… Was the one that had the letters that would pop up so that you know you were hitting it right? Drew Tauber: I think so. There was some key command you could put in to change the font face from bold to outlined or something like that. Josh Birk: Nice. Drew Tauber: I remember learning that and I remember going around the room in the computer lab with all the other fourth graders showing them this key command you could hit that would change your font. Josh Birk: Nice. Very, very nice. A hacker from way back then. Drew Tauber: Yes. I also remember the same time Logo Writer, which I didn’t even realize until college that that was teaching me coding. Josh Birk: Oh, right, because that’s in the Turtle Graphics family of things, right? Drew Tauber: Yeah. It’s all Turtle Graphics. Step forward, turn right, step back. Then we learned how to make pinwheels. I’m like, “Oh, that’s a forward loop.” Josh Birk: Yep. Exactly. I can’t remember which interview it was that came up. I don’t think it’s been published yet. Logo came up again. Logo was weirdly my first computer science programming class. It was supposed to be just the basics of programming and so they used Logo as the starter kit. I remember I had homework that was converting Arabic numerals to Roman and then back again, and it would work five times and then it would just stop doing anything. Josh Birk: To this date, I have no idea if it was because I was a bad programmer or because Logo sucks. 50/50 chance probably. When did you first get involved with Salesforce itself? Drew Tauber: I first got involved with Salesforce… I actually just recently checked my dev org. I think it’s 12 years old. Josh Birk: Oh, wow. Drew Tauber: I was working at a payroll company in New Jersey. It’s a classic accidental admin story. My CTO, I was basically the IT guy there. Desktop servers, networks, AV equipment. Anything that turned on was my job. I’ve been one of the guys. My boss came to me one day, said, “Hey, our sales team’s been using Salesforce. It’s getting big, we’re taking it over in IT. You’re in charge of it.” Drew Tauber: Then this was pre-Trailhead but we had Premier support so I’m doing the training webinars and everything. As I’m learning, I was like, “This is pretty good. I could do it. There’s a lot of stuff I could do here.” Now, I had been doing web development in my spare time and PHP so I had a idea for like, “Oh, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that could be done here. I want to believe in that job for other reasons.” Drew Tauber: But when I was looking for a new job, I completely… Completely by accident, so one of those sliding doors, serendipity moments. This job I was looking for… or I got called for, had mislabeled their job title as systems administrator. Josh Birk: What was the title supposed to be? Drew Tauber: Information system specialist. This recruiter was like, “Hey, I’ve got this job. It uses Salesforce. It’s a system administrator. I’m looking for system administrator roles. Do you want to go to this interview?” I was like, “Yeah, sure. Let’s do the interview.” I go in there and I quickly find out it’s a all-Salesforce job, which was not something I had been… I hadn’t thought about it yet I had been thinking like, “Oh, CRM would be a cool thing to do.” Drew Tauber: I knew I had to pivot at some point because there wasn’t really going to be much of a use for on-prem server admins for much longer with AWS and everything happening. I was like, “Sure, I’ll go do this Salesforce role.” That was my first full-time Salesforce job and where I actually started developing. Josh Birk: Interesting. Well, and so that was going to be my next question. You got launched into the you have to be the jack-of-all-trades person. How did you find learning development on Salesforce? Drew Tauber: Good. I’m a learn by doer kind of thing. I love Trailhead, but I’m really much better at… The first thing I built on Salesforce was one of the call center agents… Because I worked in the office for my company where our customer support team was located and this was back in Classic. They said, “Hey, it’d be great if there was a way that we could see when someone sends a screenshot, if we could just see it on the page without having to click into the attachment, download the attachment and then open it up on our computer.” Drew Tauber: I was like, “There’s got to be a way to do…” I basically started figuring out in Apex, how do I get the attachments? In Visualforce, how do I display the attachments? How do I make it so when you click on it opens up in a little modal window and shows you the actual screenshot of it?” Josh Birk: Nice. Drew Tauber: How do I make it show an icon if it’s a PDF kind of… And it just went from step one through step N as I just keep going. Josh Birk: Yeah. I think it’s interesting how so many early use cases it’s just attachments were another interesting data point. Once you figure out how Apex can manipulate them, there were actually some kind of cool tricks you could do with it. Drew Tauber: I spent two years at that company. They were really great. I mean, their whole idea is that we hire people who don’t know a ton of Salesforce have them learn on the fly. Then I spent two years there, got all my certifications from admin to dev one. Then after two years there, I moved to my current job. Josh Birk: Gotcha. How would you describe your current role? Drew Tauber: Officially my title is senior Salesforce engineer. I am basically the guy that all of our Salesforce customizations runs through to some degree. I started as the guy, I was the Salesforce guy. Now we have a team and it’s kind of an architect role, but not officially an architect role. Josh Birk: Gotcha. The proto architect, but you’re still sort of the jack of all trades. You’re just the jack of all trades who can also help other people get their job done? Drew Tauber: Mm-hmm. Josh Birk: Nice. Nice. Drew Tauber: We don’t have any admins. We just have four developers so we’re all kind of everything. Josh Birk: Gotcha. I think if there’s an admin listening right now we might have just sent a little shiver down their spine. Drew Tauber: Oh yeah. No. I could definitely use an admin, but we don’t have one. Josh Birk: Gotcha. Before we get into the topic at hand, what’s your current role in Salesforce community?Drew Tauber: I’m a co-leader of the New York City user group and then just fan and everything else. Josh Birk: How long have you been in the developer? Drew Tauber: I’ve been a user group leader since March of 2020 which I don’t know if you remember, a lot of stuff happened in March of 2020. Josh Birk: Oh, the timing. Drew Tauber: It was literally… So there were three co-leaders of the user group. One of them got a job at Salesforce and I had already been doing presentations and helping out, so I always joke around the one thing that we’re great about as a Salesforce ecosystem is identifying people who will say yes to anything. Josh Birk: Gotcha. Nice. Drew Tauber: They asked me, “Do you want to be a co-leader?” This was literally my last day in the office before our one week test quarantine happened. Josh Birk: My God. Drew Tauber: I said, “Yeah, sure. I’ll do it. I’ll talk to you guys in a couple of weeks when this whole COVID thing’s over.” Josh Birk: Wow. Drew Tauber: Fast-forward to two years, I’m now doing in-person meetings again it’s weird for me because I’m like, “I’m just so used to it. I just throw up a Zoom link and people join. Now I got to find food for people? This is weird.” Josh Birk: Weird. They actually need to eat and stuff. Drew Tauber: I need to feed people and find space? Josh Birk: Nice. Nice. Okay. Today we’re going to talk about burnout, which I believe you presented at World Tour New York, correct? Drew Tauber: Yes. Josh Birk: Nice. Let’s start at the beginning. What were some early signs that were making you question just how stressed are you? Drew Tauber: A lot of it is just feeling overwhelmed. You have trouble not necessarily getting up in the morning, although that’s definitely part of it sometimes, but just seeing the list of work you have to do, and just seeing it as being insurmountable to the point where you don’t even know how you can start because you don’t see how you can finish and just gets debilitating in that respect. Josh Birk: Yeah. Were you falling prey… And I am blanking on the term because there’s actually a cognitive term for it, where you look at a task and your instant reaction is that task clearly is going to take three/four hours, which is not true but your brain is convinced that it is true. Drew Tauber: Yeah. That would definitely happen. I think there’s some… I don’t know what the official term of it, but there’s a phobia of an empty notebook and that same kind of situation where in my head I know in intellectually like yeah, once you just get started on a project, it just snowballs and then you finish it eventually. But it’s like seeing how many things have to be done, just the idea of starting it would feel so daunting. Josh Birk: Yeah. I think it was somebody on the ADHD side of things that told me about the fork theory. The fork theory goes that a normal person, if they think about their day, they think about it in terms of five straws. It’s the five straws, those are the big five things that they’re going to have to accomplish through the day. The problem is some people get that detail-oriented way of… that hyper-vigilance way of thinking about it. Josh Birk: It’s like they actually see five forks and of course each fork also has five tips to it. They’re not thinking in terms of five things they got to get done through the day. They’re thinking in terms of 25 things that they got to get done through the day. Drew Tauber: Yeah. I like that analogy. Josh Birk: Were you running into other things like sleeping, eating, that kind of stuff? Drew Tauber: Oh yeah. I mean, a big part of it is… Especially in the last couple of years, everyone’s work-life balance went out the window. All of a sudden, I’m not commuting to work anymore, at the very beginning started off like, “Oh, I can sleep until 15 minutes before I’m supposed to be working and then roll out of bed and walk down the hallway to my home office and start working? Great.” That slowly turned into… I’m a late person normally. Drew Tauber: On weekends, I’m up pretty late and this started turning to be like, “Oh, I’m going to be up to like 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, go to sleep, wake up at 8:30 in the morning, roll out, get my work done.” Sleep, it all… Part of it was stress but part of it was also just my pattern was already off. I was already halfway there. Josh Birk: Yeah. I mean, think there was a collective groan around the world in March of 2020 because people who had very structured lives are suddenly trying to figure out which couch is going to be the most comfortable for them to sit down with their laptop. There’s just nothing healthy about any of that. Drew Tauber: Yeah. All the gyms were closed. Thankfully I have a dog so he forced me to get outside of the house once or twice a day to take him for a walk. Josh Birk: Yeah. That’s one of the things I really miss about having… I always joke cats are great if you want to stay in bed. Dogs are great if you want to get out and take a walk. Drew Tauber: Yeah. Especially because at the beginning we thought, “Okay. Everybody is going to be a recluse for a month and come back, so why not live it up a little bit? I’m not going out and getting the healthy food options. I’m getting DoorDash. I’m getting whatever junk food I want to get sent to my house.” It gave me a head start towards a lot of these issues that turned into burnout. Josh Birk: Well, and it’s like, it gives you a head start. You’re not socializing, you’re not eating, you’re not sleeping right. These are all core things that start the patterns that get worse, and everybody else is in the pandemic so you have this… At least I found it as you blanket it as normal. Like, who am I to complain about these things because the whole world is effectively going through it? Somewhere in my emotional brain, it was like, “Suck it up buttercup.” Which is not a great mental health response to anybody including yourself. Drew Tauber: Yeah. Yeah. Part of it’s… Yeah. It’s definitely like, what right do I have to be more put out than… I’m in relatively good shape. I’ve got space. I’m not in a tiny little closet of an apartment somewhere trying to make it. I’ve got space. I’ve got people. But at the same time, I couldn’t go see my family. I couldn’t go see my friends. I used to go out to the movies most weekends with my friends. That went out the window immediately, still hasn’t quite come back. Drew Tauber: I’ve found… Because I’ve been talking to a lot of people about burnout around my sessions and the commonality I found is a combination of, one, everyone’s support structure went out the window. Everyone’s coping mechanisms went out the window, and also… I think this is not unique to Salesforce, but definitely common among Salesforce people I’ve talked to, is that as every company went remote, everyone had to fall onto their remote collaboration tools a lot more. Drew Tauber: Salesforce is obviously front and center in a lot of people’s workflows. That just put a lot of extra pressure like, “Oh, Salesforce is good for this, but we need to make it do X so we can better support our remote workforce.” Josh Birk: That makes a lot of sense now that everything is a remote workforce. Yeah. Yeah. One of the symptoms you had on one of your slides, which I thought was interesting because it’s one I hit really hard and wasn’t thinking about it, it’s a lack of satisfaction. You’re not getting joy either out of your work and it might even be hard to get joy out of the things that are supposed to relax you. Did that hit you? Drew Tauber: Yeah, definitely. I think that a lot of that goes back to seeing the list as so insurmountable. Achievements that I would normally be like, “Oh, I pulled this off. This is great.” Turns into “Oh, well, okay, I’ve done step one of 27.” It’s hard to be thrilled that you made it to base camp when you need to get to Everest kind of thing. Josh Birk: Right. Exactly. Yeah. I think people get into this where they think it’s like “Well, it’s my job. It’s a pandemic.” Once again, it’s an excuse, right? Like, why… Of course, I’m not happy right now, but the problem is it’s almost the second tier, you’re going to get more anxious and stressed and depressed if you can’t counter that with fun and joy like you’re saying, giving yourself that pat on the back for an achievement. Drew Tauber: Right. Definitely. Josh Birk: Now, what factors do you think led to your burnout that we haven’t… We’ve talked about pandemic, we’ve talked about quick shifts in Salesforce, in your work, lack of a social structure is gone. Anything else that you think was leading you towards this path? Drew Tauber: I think the biggest thing just is like I’ve said before to people I work with, between the pandemic and the unique ways that our business changed in the pandemic, our Salesforce usage essentially doubled. Our Salesforce footprint. We added a new org. We added whole new people who hadn’t been using Salesforce before. Our Salesforce usage footprint at the company had essentially doubled and my team had not. Josh Birk: Which now of course you have proof that you’re right, it’s an insurmountable amount of stuff because everything just doubled, even if there’s a irrational layer to it, there’s still a rational amount of data for you to enforce it. When you first started realizing this is a problem, what did you do? Drew Tauber: Probably when I noticed was a problem I started asking for help. One of the great things about my manager and my company in general is that they were very supportive. It took a little bit for them to get to the point where they were like, “Okay, let’s hire some people.” But they got there. Then obviously the job market being what it was, it took us a while to get somebody who was able to come in and help, but even just seeing that there was a light at the end of the tunnel was hugely helpful. Josh Birk: Nice. Drew Tauber: The thing I always tell people is it’s in your company’s best interest for you to not burn out. Obviously from a people perspective, your manager doesn’t want you as a human being to burn out and be in a bad place. But even just the corporate ones and zeros straight numerical perspective, it is cheaper to keep you happy and productive than it is to hire somebody new because you flamed out and had to leave. Josh Birk: Yeah. I mean, I think if you look at some of the other symptoms we haven’t talked about that are purely cognitive, in the sense of you get more forgetful, you’re more anxious. You’re more likely to snap at a coworker, all of these kind of things, not leading to what one would call an efficient job environment. Drew Tauber: No, definitely not. There’s definitely been times when, and still happens to a degree, where I found myself apologizing for my tone way more than I should. I would be in a meeting and I could tell that I was being real snotty about my answers. I was being really snide. I was being really short. I was sarcastic. I’m like, “This is not the way I want to be sounding, but I just can’t pull myself out of it. I’m too into it right now.” Drew Tauber: Immediately after the meeting would end, I would go on Slack to the person I was talking to, “Hey, I’m sorry. I know that came out the wrong way. I’m sorry that came out…” I wouldn’t necessarily apologize for the points I was making because the points I was making were valid, but there was definitely a better way I could have come out and said it. Josh Birk: Yeah. You heard yourself in your head and you’re like, “I didn’t have to be that sharp about it.” Drew Tauber: Yeah. It’s like an out-of-body experience. Like, “Why are you being such a mean person?” Josh Birk: Well, and that’s an interesting cycle I think, because when you’re being the mean person, it’s because you’re getting that cortisol spike, you’re getting that little fight or flight instinct to it. But part of that situation is you don’t really know you’re in it. The brain’s just poking you and poking you. Then you get out of the room, be relaxed and then it’s like you said, out-of-body experience like, “Oh, wow. Was I the jerk? No, I might have been the jerk.” Josh Birk: Yeah. Outside of getting more help and more resources, did you take time off for yourself? Did you try to counter any of the workload with going out and having more fun or doing more walks with a dog or anything like that? Drew Tauber: Yeah. There’s definitely time, I definitely took some time off. I think my boss at one point insisted. Josh Birk: Good. Good. Drew Tauber: Good boss. Good boss. Josh Birk: Good boss. Good boss. Drew Tauber: Insisted I take some time away, which at the time it was hard. Being such a small team and like okay I can step away, but here’s all the stuff that’s not going to get done while I’m gone and just be like, “Okay, it’ll get done when you get back.” The other things I would do, yeah, people I work with have gotten pretty accustomed to the idea that if it’s between 10:30 and noon, and I have a meeting where I am not going to be needed to be on my keyboard, I’ll take that Zoom from the park when I’m walking my dog. Josh Birk: Awesome point. Drew Tauber: I’ll turn the camera on him and I’ll point the camera at him on my Zoom and people will appreciate that more than seeing my face. Josh Birk: I love that. I love that so much. Now I have to repeat Mike Gerholdt’s… I think he tweets this every three weeks or something like that, just a friendly reminder, not only is it okay to have your kids, your cats and your dogs on your Zoom call, we want to see them. It’s actually a plus because we’re still a little trapped inside. Yes, I love that. I love puppy Zoom. Josh Birk: Also, just really, I think that’s part of the Zoom fatigue, is that feeling like you have to be there in person. As somebody who’s worked remotely for a little over a decade now, I found it weird that I was actually finding every now and then I’ll do the same thing. I’ll take the call outside or I’ll take the call on my couch and I just turned the camera off. It’s like if I’m not necessary, then I can listen and be present without having to necessarily feel like I’m also on camera. Drew Tauber: I think I saw something a while back about how psychologically what Zoom does to people because you can be in a meeting room and obviously people can see you, but you know when people are looking at you. But when you’re on Zoom, you don’t know what square… Even if everyone’s got their camera on, you don’t know what square on the Zoom Brady Bunch panel they’re looking at. Drew Tauber: You have to be like, “All right. I’m being seen by everybody on this meeting simultaneously,” is where your head goes. I think one of the best things I did for Zoom in general is I just have everything set to default off. Josh Birk: Nice. Drew Tauber: I join a meeting, my camera’s off. My microphone is muted and I have to go in and push the buttons like, “I’m ready to talk. I’m ready to be seen.” I’ll turn the camera on. If not, I just won’t. Sometimes I’ll say, “Oh, I’m not turning my camera on. I’m eating lunch and I don’t want you all to watch me eat a sandwich.” Sometimes people just… Thankfully as a company, we generally don’t have the expectation that you have your camera on at all times. Drew Tauber: If it’s a standup meeting, if it’s my morning meeting with my team then I’ll have my camera on because I know these people. But if it’s a group, a lot of times I won’t. Sometimes if I know that I’m not going to be able to keep my eye rolls to myself, I’ll keep my camera off. Josh Birk: I love it. There’s wisdom in that. It’s self-knowledge. I like that. It does occur to me that prior to the pandemic and when everybody going into Zoom calls that this design of 12 huge faces and perfect squares in front of you, that’s the kind of stuff they used to put in supervillain movies. Drew Tauber: Oh, yeah. Josh Birk: It’s like this weird awe of power kind of thing in front of you. Now, I’m trying to figure out, did you manage to… Because socialization is such a huge role in maintaining stress and lowering stress. It’s considered to be one of the great ways of trying to help people through things like drug addiction. Did you manage to find a way to add any of that stuff back to your life? Drew Tauber: Yeah. I mean, I feel like everyone had their friend Zooms at the very beginning before we all realized that this is not a great way to hang out with people. Josh Birk: I know. Drew Tauber: But we’d play video games with each other and if we’re playing a game, we would fire up a Discord chat or something so we could talk to each other while we’re playing. That way we’re not staring at each other, but we’re playing a game. We’re just talking. There’s actually a really cool game that I found called Starship Horizons where it’s a group game where one computer is the host and everyone else logs in on a web browser and everybody is a different station on your Starship. Drew Tauber: It’s like one person logs in and they pick the tactical console and they’ve got the tactical station. One person’s the helmsman and one person’s communications. Then one person’s the captain and all they really do is they just tell other people to do… The captain has nothing. The captain just has… You rely on just like if you’re in Star Trek, let’s say you’re relying on your tactical person telling you information. Drew Tauber: You’re relying on your op station giving information. You’re giving orders and they’re all executing, but it’s just finding ways to hang out without just staring at each other on a Zoom screen and be like, “So what are you guys up to?” “Nothing. I’m all at stuck at home. What are you up to?” “Nothing. I’m stuck at home.” It was all very important. Josh Birk: Nice. I like it. I like it a lot. Now, on the flip side of video games, another thing I’ve had to accept because I was never much of an exercise fan, shall we say? But the science is undeniable as to the effect it can have. Even walking, running, whatever, it reduces your stress, it reduces anxiety, et cetera. Was walking the dog your exercise or did you tack on more stuff? Drew Tauber: For a while it was my exercise. It definitely wasn’t enough exercise as far as staying healthy. I wound up starting to go do a more regular exercise regimen again. That’s the thing I always mention, is stress is a physical reaction in the body and I’m not going to say the best way to deal with your depression is to go out and exercise necessarily, but it definitely helps to get the endorphins going. Josh Birk: Yeah. No. Totally. I’m a big fan of mental health is physical health. It’s all wrapped into one thing. Even if stuff’s just occurring in your brain, your brain’s on a brain stem and brain stem’s controlling the rest of your body. The proof is there that it’s just like this stuff can really hurt you physically over time, which is another reason why if there’s managers listening to this, it’s like at some point… When I was going through some stuff, I had a family member who was just not getting it, not realizing what was happening. Josh Birk: My therapist was like, “Well, if they’re not going to appreciate your mental health, would you tell them that you would prefer not to have a heart attack?” Yeah. I will try that then. What else have you done to make sure you’re not going to get back there? Drew Tauber: Yeah. I mean, a lot of stuff I’ve done from a work perspective is I don’t do quick things anymore if I can avoid it. It’s a trap that I find I used to fall into a lot all the time and I find a lot of people do the same thing where someone comes up to you and say, “Hey, can we add a field that does something?” You’re like, “Yeah, sure.” Click, click and is done. You get the immediate endorphin rush, you get the immediate satisfaction. Drew Tauber: It’s like, “Oh my God. That’s so amazing. Thank you so much. That’s great. I can’t believe you were able do it so fast.” Then you fast-forward to a week later when they need three more fields. They’re like, “Well, you were able to do it in two seconds last time.” It’s like, “Yeah. Well, I’m busy now.” You set the expectation that you can do it quickly. I’m going to keep throwing out the Star Trek analogies. Josh Birk: Please do. Yeah. Drew Tauber: Scotty would always say like, “Oh, yeah, I multiply all my time estimates by four. That way you would believe I’m a miracle worker.” Josh Birk: Right. Exactly. Drew Tauber: I’m not saying lie about how long your timeframe’s going to be, but even if it’s something quick like that, it’s very much like, “Okay. Put it in a Jira ticket so none of us forget. We’ll plan it out. If it’s quick, we’ll do it.” I can’t just be like, “Oh, yeah, sure. I’m going to stop what I’m doing and go do your thing.” I always find people are very understanding of that. You always worry it’s like when you say like, “Oh, I can’t do it right now, but I’ll get to it when I have a minute.” Unless it’s super urgent I’m like, “Oh, well I actually need it right now, and- Josh Birk: Right now. Right. Drew Tauber: … the CEO’s demanding this field in the next five minutes or I’m fired.” Obviously stuff like that doesn’t happen in my company. Yeah, just managing expectations in a lot of ways. I’ve heard a lot of times a saying, if it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist when referring to sales opportunities and leads. I have the same thing with Jira. If it’s not in Jira, it doesn’t exist to me. If you want something done, especially if it’s a change that we need to be able to have good tracking on you need to make a Jira ticket. Drew Tauber: I mean, I’ll do… You can come to me and say, “Hey, can you tell me why this thing happened to this person?” I’ll go and I’ll do some investigation, but if it takes me more than a few minutes, it’s like, “Okay, we need to plan this time out because I’ve got my sprint that I’ve committed to doing and if I don’t get that done, because I spent all my time doing all this troubleshooting stuff that was not on my list of things to do I have to answer to people for that.” Drew Tauber: Also, going back to being able to justify hiring more people. If you’re doing all your work off the books- Josh Birk: You can’t. Right. Drew Tauber: … my boss might know that but when he goes to his boss, say, “Hey, we need to hire more people to help Drew?” Like, why? He’s getting- Josh Birk: Why? Drew Tauber: There’s nothing in his backlog and he’s getting all of his stuff done. Josh Birk: Yeah. Yeah. Back when I was a dev lead, I told our business partners, it’s like everything’s an hour. Just assume it’s an hour. I know you think it’s simple. I know you think it’s straightforward, but assume that the developer has to actually research something to make sure they’re doing it right. They actually have to implement it and they actually have to test it. It’s just nothing is less than an hour. Josh Birk: For a while I had a rule back when I was a people manager for tenure, if it’s not in GUS… And GUS was our internal sprint manager type thing. I’m like, “If it’s not in GUS, it won’t happen and if it’s not on Chatter, it didn’t happen.” Because you should do is go do good work and then brag about it on Chatter. Totally with you there. Josh Birk: A big one that comes up a lot is notifications and having your phone on and stuff like that. Have you reinforced rules to get that stuff out of your cognition from time to time? Drew Tauber: Yeah. I mean, I spend a lot of time on Slack boundaries. Part of it is just the idea of… I think I moved up by an hour, at least, the default times in Slack when they say, “Okay. This is your I’m not working anymore no-notifications time, unless it’s an emergency.” The bedtime rules or whatever. They recently released, I think in the last six months, the ability to set different times for weekends. Drew Tauber: Basically extend your do-not-disturb time to the weekend and even sometimes during the day. If I’m focused on working on something, I’ll just set my notification. I’ll set do not to disturb because I’m really focused right now. That’s definitely important to me. Josh Birk: Yeah. Back when I worked in an office, we would refer to it as heads-down coding because you could see the developer hunch. We trained everybody who wasn’t on the development floor like, “If you see them like that, if you have to talk to them, approach slowly. Make sure you realize you are probably bringing them out of a flow state and that’s not what they need.” Drew Tauber: Well, it’s like yeah, back in the office, everyone would have headphones. If you see someone with their big cans on you don’t bother them. Josh Birk: You don’t bother them. Drew Tauber: But we don’t have that same thing anymore on Slack. The other thing I always say with Slack is Slack is great and I prefer it over email, but Slack has this implied immediacy to it that email doesn’t have. You get a message at like 10 o’clock at night it’s like, “Oh, I just got a Slack message. I need to reply.” I’ve tried to get into a habit of if this Slack message were sent to me via email, would I feel like I need to reply to it right now? Josh Birk: Yeah. Exactly. Drew Tauber: If I don’t feel that way, then I won’t. Josh Birk: Then don’t. Yeah. Another big tip I always tell people, especially on that front is if your work phone is your personal phone, definitely fix that especially in the Slack world, it’s like if you can just walk away from your laptop and your work phone and just have no capacity to see any of these notifications, it’s so much easier than trying to figure out when is it my phone and when is it my work phone? Drew Tauber: Yeah. I haven’t had that luxury since way back when I worked for a small company called Lehman Brothers, when everyone was issued a Blackberry and that was your only work device and people would say, “Oh, why don’t you get your regular stuff on your Blackberry?” I was like, “Because I want to be able to put my Blackberry in a drawer at the end of the day. Josh Birk: Yeah. Exactly. Drew Tauber: Now I do a pretty good job of like say managing notifications for off hours. Going in and if I’m going to be away snoozing my notifications, if I’m going to be really away, just turning off Slack, turning off do not sync my Gmail into my phone. If I’m on vacation, I don’t want to see it. If I’ve got time and I want to go check something or check on work, I’ll go in and I’ll pull the refresh and I’ll make it pull down but do not automatically background refresh this app. Josh Birk: Nice. Nice. Now, when did you say, “I want to do this as a presentation? I want to get up in front of other people I want to talk about this.” Drew Tauber: Probably late last year is when I started really bumping around. It was one of those things like I think I had the slide deck in Google Slides. I was just popping in like, “Oh, this is a good thing. I should say this kind of thing.” I say one of the parts of doing this is being able to go out there and talk about it and destigmatize it. Every time I do this presentation, I’ll do like, “Show of hands, how many people have felt this way?” Then most people put their hands up. Drew Tauber: My favorite is I was doing the presentation in Chicago and I see a whole bunch of people on their laptops and on their phones while I’m presenting. I said, “Show of hands, how many of you are working right now?” Josh Birk: Now. Drew Tauber: They put their hands up. How many of you do you… I’m at a conference. How many of you do your managers know where you are right now and they’re still asking you for stuff? Most of them keep their hands up. Josh Birk: Yeah. Well, yeah, and I thank you because it’s like I completely agree. I think awareness and transparency, that’s the front line that I think the community can embrace. It does help to know if you’re in a room there’s probably… John Oliver just did his episode of mental health and he’s like… It went back in the 2010s. It was one in 10 adults suffered from anxiety and depression. Now it’s up to like four in 10. I guarantee you in the tech industry, it’s more like six in 10 or seven in 10, if we’re lucky. Drew Tauber: I think a lot of that is just, don’t think a lot of it… There’s definitely a part of it where people are getting more anxious but I think a lot of it is people are recognizing it more. Josh Birk: Yeah. Agreed. Drew Tauber: It used to be like, “Oh, I’m just in a funk or I had a bad day.” Josh Birk: Right. Or of course it’s been a long work week. That’s what work weeks look like. Drew Tauber: Then you realize like, “Oh, no, my bad days are outnumbering my good days.” Then you finally realize like, “Oh, no, this is actually something real.” Josh Birk: That’s our show. Now, before we go I did ask after Drew’s favorite non-technical hobby and it’s honestly one that he shares with a lot of people in the community. Drew Tauber: I’m not sure if this is non-technical or not. It’s definitely more analog, but I enjoy woodworking. Josh Birk: Oh, yeah. That’s definitely… If Kevin Portman’s listening right now, he’d be like, “No, Josh, it’s a technical thing.” I get you because it’s- Drew Tauber: Yeah. There’s a lot of math involved. There’s a lot of… Because if you’re off by a little bit and it just cascades through your entire project… So it’s definitely I’m away from my computer. I’m working with my hands, I’m outside, and at the end of the day, I can point to a table that I made, it’s like, “I made that.” Josh Birk: I want to thank Drew for the great conversation and information, and as always, I want to thank you for listening. Now, on a personal front, I just want to say, we’re talking about very serious issues out there. I do want to call out and just say, if you are feeling symptoms of anxiety and depression, you’re making it something that’s hard for you to get through work, please, please seek help. There’s a lot of great telehealth services out there, but first of all, you’re not alone and with help, you can get through it. Josh Birk: Once again, thank you everybody. If you want to learn more about this show, head on over to developer.salesforce.com/podcast, where you can hear old episodes, see the show notes and have links to your favorite podcast service. Once again, thank you and I’ll talk to you next week. Mike Gerholdt: So I really enjoyed that podcast and I will echo where Josh left that podcast off. If you're listening to this episode or any other episode and you're feeling stressed out, you're feeling burned out, reach out to someone. Don't be afraid to talk that that can be incredibly helpful. There's a lot of help lines, there's a lot of people I promise around you that are there to care for you. So I took a lot out of that podcast. I hope you do too. I really identified with how Drew brought up feeling overwhelmed. I thought it was interesting, the empty notebook syndrome that he talked about, which is looking at something and thinking of all the things that need to be done and the Zoom fatigue.
Direct download: Guest_Show__Burnout_and_Stress_with_Drew_Tauber.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 17 November 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for November. Join us as we review the top product, community, and career content for November, and celebrate National French Toast Day. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro. Learn MOARThe Learn MOAR Trailmix is still going. If you complete it before Nov 30, 2022, you’ll unlock a special community badge and be entered to win 1 of 5 Cert Vouchers—see the link and Learn MOAR page for all the details. Get up to speed with the upcoming release! Blog highlights from NovemberMFA auto-enablement is coming on February 1st, 2023. You’ve still got a couple of months to prepare, so read this blog post and learn why it’s not as scary as you thought. Video highlights from NovemberJennifer Lee continues to crush it with the How I Solved It series. This month, she joins forces with CeCe Adams to tackle how admins can design a better user experience. Dynamic forms can do a lot of the heavy lifting—a significant improvement from the days of wading through page layouts just to add a field. Podcast highlights from NovemberGillian hopped on the pod with LeeAnne Rimel to talk about making your “Brag Book.” Having a place to record all your wins can be incredibly helpful, not just to grow your career but also to help those around you. We also had a fascinating conversation with Kathy Baxter and Rob Katz about data and AI ethics that you shouldn’t miss.
Just for funMike and Gillian chat about a few things French to close out this episode. November 25th is National Parfait Day. A parfait, French for “perfect,” is a frozen dessert that has been around since 1894. November 28th is National French Toast day, so we thought we’d include a recipe to celebrate. Finally, in December, Gillian will be keynoting at French Touch Dreamin’. Apple-Cinnamon French ToastApple Topping:
French Toast:
Make the topping by melting the butter and brown sugar in a pan, stirring frequently. Add apples and cinnamon. Stir to coat, then reduce heat and cook until apples are slightly tender, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Allow to cool. Meanwhile, whisk together milk, eggs, flour, cinnamon, and vanilla until smooth. Pour into a casserole dish. Soak bread in mix for 1 minute, turn and soak for 1 minute more. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add battered bread to pan. Add bread and cook until golden brown, 1-2 minutes. Flip over and cook that side until golden brown. To serve, place bread on platter, cover with apples and sauce and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Podcast swag Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast in the November monthly retro for 2022. I'm your host, Mike Gerholdt, and in this episode we're going to review some of the top product, community, and careers content for November, plus anything else we find interesting. To help me do that, I'm joined by the very familiar voice of Gillian Bruce. Hey, Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Hi Mike. Hi Mike. Good to be back with you on the pod. I like our little monthly tradition we've got. Mike Gerholdt: We check in on each other. Gillian Bruce: It's good. Mike Gerholdt: It's a fun time. Gillian Bruce: Good. November was a fun month. Mike Gerholdt: It was. It was hot and it was cold. It was like a Katy Perry song, depending on where you lived in the US. Gillian Bruce: Yes. Chaos. There was 70-degree weather in New York, and I've been quote-unquote "freezing" here in San Francisco at 50. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Literally, today when we're recording, the high at noon is 70. Tonight, 12 hours later at midnight, the low is going to be 31 in Iowa. Gillian Bruce: Ouf! Mike Gerholdt: How do you dress for that? Come on. Gillian Bruce: You just stay inside. Mike Gerholdt: That's my plan, and record podcasts. The other thing you could do, depending on when you're listening to this, if it's before November 30th, is you could go to our Learn More campaign and unlock the community badge for a chance to win one of five cert vouchers. Gillian Bruce: It's so cool. It's cool to be able to win, possibly win a cert voucher, but the community badge is pretty awesome. Those are one-time deals. Mike Gerholdt: Like the Trick or Trailhead badge. Gillian Bruce: Mm-hmm. Mike Gerholdt: Oh shoot, I forgot to get mine. Well, anyway, link is in the show notes. You have until November 30th, so hop on it. Gillian Bruce: Hop on it, and then you'll be totally prepared to make the most out of the winter release. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Gillian Bruce: There you go. We also had a bunch of content. Mike Gerholdt: We did. We did, a little bit of content. You know what? I'll start us off because I helped review this post from Tammy. So, want to put out, Tammy wrote a great post for admins on Get Ready for Multi-Factor Authentication and Plan for Auto-Enablement. Auto-enablement is coming February 1st. Gillian Bruce: Still got a couple of months there to prepare. Mike Gerholdt: Yep, but I think, I come back to this. You should read this post. It's not scary, and I say that, but I've gone through MFA at organizations. I also went through it in my personal life, like during the pandemic, one of my fondest memories was binge-watching all of Tiger King- Gillian Bruce: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: And setting up MFA on all my accounts. I kid you not, I spent a Saturday doing that. Gillian Bruce: That's amazing, Mike. I love that combination. Now, the biggest question is, did you wear any Tiger-King-appropriate apparel while you were setting up all of your MFA, and watching Tiger King? Mike Gerholdt: No. I'll tell you why. I was too busy getting alerts from Instagram that somebody in Russia was trying to log in to my Instagram account. Gillian Bruce: Well, hey, who doesn't want to be Mike Gerholdt? Mike Gerholdt: Seriously, honestly, parody accounts. I need a verified check mark. Gillian Bruce: Well, apparently anyone can buy one now. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Yep. Gillian Bruce: That's great. But yeah, MFA is super-important. That's a good reminder. I've done it a little bit for some of my personal stuff. I need to do it for the rest, so it's a good reminder. But yeah, MFA, it's coming. It's a real thing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: Get ready, everybody. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Yeah, this is a good thing, seriously. You know what, Gillian? You and I both did a podcast- Gillian Bruce: [inaudible]. Mike Gerholdt: So, let's start off with the podcast you did, because that was just most recently released. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I got our amazing teammate, LeeAnne Rimel, on the pod because we've been having a lot of discussions. It's the end of the year, and it's figuring out how to capture the work that you have done, and figuring out what work you're going to do in the next year. We actually talked about a concept that, Mike, you introduced to both of us, the brag book. So, the idea of how do you capture your work and your feedback throughout the year in one place, so that you can really explain and demonstrate the impact and the value that you added to the organization in your role. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Gillian Bruce: So, talking about that mind shift of a) it's not all about you, it's about the impact you have. Then b) understanding that capturing your feedback and sharing your accomplishments is not really the traditional brag. It's not like, "Hey, look how great I am!" No, it's look at the impact you're having and the value that you're adding. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: That's what helped LeeAnne get over the hump. It's been a shift for me too. So, it was a fun discussion. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I will say... so, teaser... we have a cool podcast coming up in December. I'm not sure when it's going to come out. Where we talk about stress and anxiety. When I listened to this episode, it made me think of when you put this together and you accomplish something. I always kept that brag book deck open in a browser tab, because then it felt like I got to cross a finish line and cheer a little bit before I moved on. That was the thing that I always explain to LeeAnne, is, "I know you want to do the work, but like stop and celebrate what you're getting done." Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: I don't think we do that enough. Gillian Bruce: Well, it's hard. I think everyone works in a pretty fast-paced environment, and so it's really hard to take a pause and be like, "Wait, no, that was really cool. Like, that's something special." So, yeah, I think to your point, having this as a way to, "No, no, like stop and think about how cool that was, that you just did that," is important. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Listen to Gillian. The other episode we did, and this sounds very pedantic, but I am going to encourage people to listen to it because I enjoy talking with Kathy Baxter and Rob Katz, Data Ethics and AI for Admins. Sounds like a mouthful, but it really was eye-opening for me when we were recording the podcast, to look at just the shift of where things have come and where things are going. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. God, Kathy, I remember having Kathy on the podcast a while ago, and just my whole mindset being shifted about how to think about data and what it means. What it really means, other than what the data set actually is. Yeah, Mike, it was a great discussion. I really enjoyed listening to the pod too. Yeah, it makes you think about things a little differently. Just because you can get the data doesn't mean you should. Right? Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Well, and what's it mean to be responsible for that data too. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, and it's a good podcast to sit down and take notes on a rainy day. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Probably not one you want to walk the dog with. Gillian Bruce: You can't really multitask very well and pay attention- Mike Gerholdt: No. Gillian Bruce: ...to what's going on. There's a lot of really good diving deep. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, just to be honest. Gillian Bruce: But yeah, it was a great pod, Mike. Good job with that one. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, it was good. Jen, of course, leads the way in video. She is a face and a personality for video. Gillian Bruce: She has got it down. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Another How I Solved It with Designing User Experience, A Better User Experience. I think this is always the thing that it's interesting for me, comes up every now and then, when new automation tools or new things come into the ecosystem. I think immediately as admins, we think, "How can we apply this to a business problem?" We forget that sometimes creating a new user is the most thing-involved task-listy job that we fail to automate. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and Cece, our amazing trailblazer that Jen features, is really good at... You know what? Hey, guess what, Mike? It ties into that Salesforce Admin Skills Kit, believe it or not. It's all about the designer's mindset skill. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Gillian Bruce: So, really thinking about that experience, and Cece really epitomizes that. So, it's a great video. Everyone should definitely check it out. Mike Gerholdt: Yep, and Dynamic Forms, which is- Gillian Bruce: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: ... something I've waited a long time for. Gillian Bruce: I was going to say, Mike, do you remember the days, the before times, when we had no dynamic forms? Mike Gerholdt: I remember the days when I used workflows- Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Record types, and page layouts, to mimic dynamic forms. Gillian Bruce: How many page layouts did you have to create? Mike Gerholdt: Billions. Billions. Billions. It was a full-ti... Oh my. You need to add a field? Hang on. That's a week. Why does it take you a week? I got so many page layouts I got to add it to. Gillian Bruce: Exactly. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Gillian Bruce: Oh, man. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Yeah. Gillian Bruce: Thank you, dynamic forms. Thank you. Thank you. Mike Gerholdt: No kidding. Last month, I hope everybody enjoyed our discussion about apple cider and pumpkin spice. The tweet on that was fun. Gillian Bruce: Oh, I think it was the most viral tweet we've had in a long time. Mike Gerholdt: I know, and I was surprised how people were dialed up about pumpkin spice losing. I'm fine with it. Anyway. Gillian Bruce: You're going to get them all activated again, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: I know. All riled up. Gillian Bruce: The pumpkin spice lovers are going to come after us. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Yeah. Well, I won't reemerge until after fall when pumpkin spice goes away. That'll be my plan. Housekeeping note... and so fun discussion... we're going to take November 24th off, so there's no podcast that's going to come out, because the US holiday of Thanksgiving. We've done episodes on Thanksgiving that have been released, but I'll be honest, just nobody listens to them. So, we're going to give you the week off, but we will return the following week. Which is, I think, December 1st. Gillian Bruce: I love a parfait day that leads into French Touch Dreamin. I think that was parfait, sir. Mike Gerholdt: It was parfait, yeah. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. No, I'm really looking forward to it. I got invited to keynote at French Touch Dreamin, which is happening on December 1st in Paris. It's going to be really amazing to connect with the EMEA community. I haven't had a chance to do that since before the pandemic, honestly. So, it's going to be great to meet some new faces and reconnect with folks I haven't seen in so long. Hey, if you are inclined to go to Paris from December 1st, please come join us. Mike Gerholdt: [inaudible]. Gillian Bruce: The registration is still open, yeah. Yeah, it should be really good times, and it's going to be a really fun keynote. It's going to be a little different than stuff that I've done in the past. So, just teaser, just teaser hanging out there. Come play with us in Paris. Mike Gerholdt: I expect to find out things that you ate while you're there, because I promise they probably don't have French toast. They have something better. Gillian Bruce: No, but they probably have parfaits. I don't know. Mike Gerholdt: Well, parfaits are good. I like parfaits, to be honest. Gillian Bruce: I definitely plan on consuming quite a bit of crepes. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, crepes are really good. Oh, man. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, crepes. Definitely a fair amount of wine, because that's just, you have to. Mike Gerholdt: [inaudible] French. It's in France. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Good pastry. Mike Gerholdt: Savory crepe or sweet crepe? Gillian Bruce: I am a sweet crepe person. I like maybe a little Nutella or just a little powdered sugar. Nothing too complicated. Mike Gerholdt: All right. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. How about you? Mike Gerholdt: Same. Strawberries. Gillian Bruce: Oh yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Strawberries and powdered sugar. That's it. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Go all day. I also like funnel cakes that way. Oh! Gillian Bruce: I was going to say, it sounds very funnel-cake-like. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: It does. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Gillian Bruce: I love Mike on our retro pods. We always talk about food. It's great. Mike Gerholdt: Imagine that, but also French Touch Dreamin and French toast. Gillian Bruce: Yes. Oui, oui. Oui, oui. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Yep. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, if anybody has fun French sayings that I need to know, please tell me, because I clearly do not speak French. Mike Gerholdt: Or not know, Gillian, because I will say I'm really good at figuring out things you shouldn't say in Europe too. Gillian Bruce: Right. Especially when you're up in front of a packed room- Mike Gerholdt: A whole bunch of people. Gillian Bruce: Delivering a presentation. Mike Gerholdt: You learn. Gillian Bruce: And you say something you think is going to play and be really funny, and people look at you like, "What did you just say?" Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Yep. The London admin user group knows that. Gillian Bruce: Mm-hmm. Mike Gerholdt: Anyway. Well, I'll include the apple cinnamon French toast recipe in the show notes, because it sounds amazing. Just flip over and cook that side until golden brown. To serve, place on a platter with apples and sauce. Mmm! Gillian Bruce: I'm going to have to make that over the holidays. Just, it looks too good. Mike Gerholdt: The main ingredients are sugar, butter, cinnamon, vanilla. Gillian Bruce: Come on! Mike Gerholdt: And apples. All of those taste good on apples, so we're good there. Gillian Bruce: See, and this is a theme from the last pod, or was that two pods ago, when we talked about apples? Right? Mike Gerholdt: We did, last one. I tried to stitch together... It's for you that I do this. The time spent creating a through-line, it's all consuming. [inaudible]. Gillian Bruce: I appreciate it, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: And sometimes completely accidental, to be clear. If you want to learn about all things admin that we talked about in this episode, including the links to the blog, and the podcast, and the video, we will include those links in the show notes, and you can find them on admin.salesforce.com. You can also stay up to date with us on all things social for admins, including pumpkin spice or apple cider.
Direct download: November_Monthly_Retro_with_Mike_and_Gillian.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 10 November 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we bring on LeeAnne Rimel, Senior Director of Admin Evangelism at Salesforce, to share how you can build a “Brag Book” to capture your wins and successes. Join us as we talk about why it’s so important to put all your successes in one place, how to get started, and how to feel comfortable talking about your accomplishments. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel. What is a Brag Book?“Imagine you’re getting ready for your end-of-year or end-of-quarter review with your boss,” LeeAnne says. It can be hard to remember what you were doing last month, let alone the last six months or last year. “That’s where the Brag Book comes in,” LeeAnne says, “it’s a place to collect your wins, your accomplishments, your project completions, your accolades, or awards, or feedback, throughout the year.” By putting everything together as it happens to you, you’ll be ready whenever you need to talk about your career. “It’s one of those chances to do future you a favor.” Building your bragging muscleYou need to get in the habit of saving positive feedback whenever you come across it, like building a muscle. When she first started her Brag Book, LeeAnne used a private slide deck with a slide for each project. Then she could simply drop in whatever she came across that was worth keeping, whether qualitative (like an appreciative YouTube comment) or quantitative (like attendance or adoption numbers). These days, LeeAnne uses a private Slack channel with herself, with threads to organize everything into individual projects. “It doesn’t really matter where your bucket is,” she says, “pick your place, make it easy to get to, and then practice building it into your muscle memory.” Shine a light on your collaboratorsIt can be hard to get into the mindset of bragging about your accomplishments. If you’re used to working behind the scenes, it might feel weird to step into the spotlight. “It’s really not about you, it’s about the work and the impact that it’s having,” LeeAnne says, “and it’s helpful for the people around you to know if that work is impactful or not, if that’s something they might be able to learn from for their own work, and if that information might influence decisions that are coming up for them.” Nobody works in a silo. Even if you’re a solo admin, you have partners who help you succeed. Capturing the story of a successful project gives you a chance to not only talk about your work but also to shine a light on other people who deserve credit. Getting the opportunity to give those well-deserved kudos can make anyone feel like bragging. Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today, Gillian Bruce, and I am joined by the wonderful LeeAnne Rimel. Hi LeeAnne. LeeAnne Rimel: Hi Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Thank you for joining me. We are going to be talking about something that you posted on Twitter not too long ago as a thread and just took off and got a bunch of attention. And we're going to talk about this idea of creating a personal brag book. But before we get into all that, I want to set the context for our listeners. So admins, you're listening to this, it's getting towards the end of the year. You did a lot of great things this year, whether it was for your organization or for your personal career, and it's a really good time to think about all those contributions you made, all the work you did. And I know it's really hard sometimes to capture that work and then share that. It's one of the reasons we built the Salesforce admin skills kit to help try and give you some language around that. But I really wanted to get LeeAnne on the podcast today to talk really about how you can build this idea of a brag book to help you capture what you're doing, capture your wins and successes. So LeeAnne, can you give us an overview of what a brag book is? LeeAnne Rimel: I sure can. So imagine you are getting ready for your end of year or end of quarter review with your boss or with your manager, or you are wrapping up a project, maybe a three month or six month project, and you're getting ready for your postmortem report to your team or your leadership. Or imagine your thinking about leveling up your career, whether that's applying for a job internally at your company, looking for jobs elsewhere, looking to go into that next role. Sometimes it can be really hard to sit there and say, "Okay, what did I do the last 12 months? What are all the things I did in the last three months?" A lot of us, especially Salesforce admins, are often moving really fast. We move really quickly through project, through work. People are working a lot. Gillian Bruce: So one of the things that I think you hit on is that you're doing this throughout the year because like you said, I do the same thing. I'm like, "Cool, so what did I just spend the last nine months working on? I don't know, I think I did that." But your concept is capturing that in the moment. And so how do you capture it? What are you saving? Where does it live? Talk to me a little bit about how you approach that. LeeAnne Rimel: So it's definitely a muscle that you build. It's this muscle that you build of constantly being aware of inputs in your environment, whether that's a feedback note, whether that's a great survey result, whether that's user adoption training that you had really high participation on, and all of your sales leaders were so happy about it because everyone used Salesforce after. So whatever it is, creating that muscle of, okay, I'm going to collect this somewhere. So, where you collect it is totally up to. So when Gillian and I both started doing this many years ago because our team leader Mike Gerholdt said, "You guys need to create brag books." And so we created brag books, and at the time we started them in, I think Google Slides, and this was not a beautiful automated solution. This was a place to put things. Gillian Bruce: I think the idea of putting it somewhere that's really easy because I think for me, especially when we use the Google Slides, I've always felt this pressure to make it look pretty when I put it in, but the idea now... The private Slack channel's brilliant. I think now I need to start doing that because I literally just have a Quip doc where I just paste stuff and paste feedback, which has worked fine, but the Slack thing I think makes it even more accessible and easy. I love that. So that's a great tip and I think everybody uses Slack so it's super easy. LeeAnne Rimel: I love private Slack channels. I also have a private Slack channel just for call notes, which I highly recommend as well. But yeah, private Slack channels are great, especially if you get comfortable with Slack Search and how to use Slack Search quickly because then you'll surface stuff just really fast when you're looking for things if you are trying to create a specific preso on here's what we learned with this project or this presentation. Gillian Bruce: And one thing that I also want to address is some people might feel weird about the idea of bragging, right? Because it's not comfortable sometimes to talk about how great you are and all the great things that you do. But here's the thing, if you don't do it, no one is going to do it for you. And I know it might be uncomfortable, I think for some of us, myself included, this is not hard. This is a natural muscle that I have had since I was, I don't even know, able to walk and talk. But often when I talk about this or just in general sharing your accomplishments, I usually get people being like, "I don't know, that feels uncomfortable and weird," but you got to do it. And it's not all about you, you, you, how great you are. I think the biggest thing is focusing on the impact. LeeAnne Rimel: I was really uncomfortable with it. I was super uncomfortable. I was like, "No, I do my work." My background is I've always had pretty technical roles and the mindset I had was very much, I do my work, I did my project, the work speaks for itself. And that's that. It was a mindset shift for me to think about... It's almost remove yourself from the equation like you're saying. Because I was like, "Oh, it feels weird to just sit and talk about a project I worked on, and the information's available. People could have watched the webinar if they were interested. So why do I need to talk about why it was great?" And I suffered from being just incredibly illogical. And there's a few things that helped me overcome that hurdle. Gillian Bruce: 100%. And one thing that you said about helping, getting the feedback and sharing it with your peer groups to help them work better, it's also a way to shine light on others too, right? Because it's empathetic for your manager, it helps them understand all the great work you're doing, the impact you're having, but it's also a way to propel the work that other people you're working with are doing. Nobody works in a silo, so even if you're the only admin in your organization, you guarantee have partners. Maybe you got a super user who's just fantastic at helping you QA stuff. Maybe you've got an IT partner who is just always helping you figure out new ways to take advantage of different technologies or whatever. I mean, you've got partners that you work with, and so when you capture the story of a success, clearly it's work you did, but it's work that you did as a team. LeeAnne Rimel: I want everyone to brag online about what they're doing. No, I think that's such an important part is it's not just about you and it's about amplifying others too. I'll say as someone who wasn't initially comfortable and had to learn to do this, definitely one of the on ramps. And one of, to this day, my very favorite Slack posts are the ones where I get to go through and itemize all the great contributions that happened on a project and all of the people who were involved with it and what their contributions were. And so I think definitely building that bragging habit, it's not just about you, it's also being able to, like you said, shine a light on others and also be good to work with. I think there's a piece too. A lot of people aren't amplified enough at work and maybe don't get as much visibility for projects that they're working on. Gillian Bruce: 100%, that's the other piece of this, is what are the results of building the brag book and sharing it is that people are going to want to work with you. People are going to trust you, people are going to want to be associated with stuff that you're working on because you are projecting that you are successful and that you are collaborative. And I think that's a really, really important element as well. So all in all, create a brag book. LeeAnne Rimel: And I know we're coming off on time, but I want to share one last piece because you mentioned something really important about that confidence and that mindset. And I think it's about how building a brag book and building this habit and this muscle of how do I amplify my work and how do I document and then amplify my work? is so important for our career growth. It's important for how our peers work with us and view us and view working with us, but it's also really important for how we view ourselves. So I'm a big proponent, I very much believe in some of these science based tools for how you can influence your mindset. And one of the ways positive thinking truly does make a difference, I think it does impact how you show up every day. And there's many, many blogs and many, many podcasts and books on this topic. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, you got to be your own hype person sometimes, right? It's a good natural way to get that little boost of confidence and that yes, you can do this, you can do this. And I know we have talked on the podcast and in the admin community for many years about the idea of imposter syndrome and really owning your skills and your abilities and going for things that you typically wouldn't. Building a brag book, to your point, LeeAnne is a great way, it's an asset in that it helps you overcome some of that and deal with those feelings a little bit better. LeeAnne Rimel: It is evidence that you're good at your job. It is documentation and evidence and quantitative and qualitative real feedback that you did a thing that was... Many of us are often doing new things at work. So maybe it was a new thing, maybe it was a thing you've been working on for a while. You did a thing and there was positive outcomes from it and you did a good job. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I love that. Well, I'm sure we could actually probably keep talking about this for hours, I think we have actually talked about this for hours in the past, you and I LeeAnne, but I think we shared some really good stuff today. The idea's a brag book and then what were your three elements that help you overcome, get used to building the brag book muscle? It was what? Pop quiz, end of the podcast. LeeAnne Rimel: I came up with it in the moment. I think one is, it's not about you. So de-center yourself from thinking about what it means to document accomplishments of the work you've been doing, which sounds weird, but it works. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Focus on the impact. LeeAnne Rimel: Focus on the impact, yeah. And then the second is it's very helpful to your leadership team. It's something that your leadership probably needs you to do and wants you to do, whether or not they know to have asked you. Oh, and if there's any people leaders listening, tell your people to make a brag book. And then three is it's a chance to help your peers, your colleagues, because you're sharing things that worked and you're sharing maybe things that you all figured out on a project or things that had a significant positive impact. So it can maybe help people that you work without if they're trying to make a decision. Gillian Bruce: And then people are going to want to play with you. They're going to want to work on stuff with you, so it's all good. Awesome. Well, leeAnne, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. I really appreciate you sharing, you bragging about your brag book skills. LeeAnne Rimel: [inaudible]. Gillian Bruce: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. LeeAnne Rimel: Thanks for having me. Gillian Bruce: All thanks as always to LeeAnne for joining us on the podcast. I could talk to her forever. In fact, I do on a daily basis, if you couldn't tell. Really great discussion about how to create your own brag book. Hopefully you heard some things that help inspire you to capture your successes and the impact that you're having in the work that you do. And if you need any help with that, feel free to reach out to myself or LeeAnne, we will gladly help coach you on how to do that better. But I wanted to take a moment and make a shout out. Thank you to Mark Jones on Twitter who actually commented on LeeAnne's original thread about this saying, "Hey, this sounds like it'd make a good podcast. What do you think?" Well, thank you, Mark. We just made a podcast. I hope you like it.
Direct download: Build_Your_Brag_Book_with_LeeAnne_Rimel.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 3 November 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kathy Baxter, Principal Architect, and Rob Katz, VP of Product Management, both in the Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology at Salesforce.
Join us as we talk about data ethics, AI ethics, what it all means for admins, and why responsible AI and data management protect the bottom line.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rob Katz and Kathy Baxter. With great power comes great responsibilityWe brought Rob and Kathy on the pod because they work in the Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology at Salesforce. They’re there to work on questions around data ethics and AI ethics. In practice, they set up systems and processes that make it as easy as possible to do the right thing and as difficult as possible to do the wrong thing.
While these issues are important to us here at Salesforce in terms of thinking about the platform we create, they’re also fundamental to everything you do as an admin. We become capable of more and more with each new release, but we have to make sure we use that power responsibly in a way that builds trust with customers. Thinking through data ethicsSo, what are data ethics? “They’re guideposts about the gathering, protection, and use of personally identifiable information,” Rob says. Many services these days use your data to deliver personalized experiences. It makes sense, however, that users should have some measure of control over how much information they’re sharing and transparency on how it’s being used. Data ethics is putting those principals into action. As Rob explains, it’s “applied privacy by design.”
This is important because, over the past few years, we’ve moved from a world of data scarcity to a world of data surplus. It’s become less about how we can get more data, and more about how we can get the right data. It’s all about decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio.
For example, if someone signs up for your birthday promotion, you may also end up with their birth year when all you needed was the month and day to send them a “happy birthday” email. And while that might not seem like such a big deal, it could inadvertently lead to some creepy behavior from your organization when you start segmenting your list by age, target them based on that information, and the customer doesn’t know how you know that about them. An understanding of data ethics helps you focus on only collecting the information you need, and make a decision about keeping it, restricting it, or discarding it when you’re finished. How AI ethics enters the pictureYou also have to think through how your automations and algorithms work within that framework, which is where AI ethics comes in. This comes down to asking questions to determine if you’re using data responsibly: Are you collecting data that is representative of everyone your AI system is going to impact? Did you get consent for collecting this information in the first place? If your AI makes money off of other people’s data, how do you pay them back fairly? “All of those things are necessary to create responsible AI that works for everyone,” Kathy says.
Even if regulations like the EU AI Act don’t apply to your industry, there is a good chance that you could lose revenue, customers, and employees if you aren’t thinking about data ethics and how to create AI responsibly. A recent DataRobot survey, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, found that 36% of companies had suffered losses due to AI bias in one or several algorithms. “Good, responsible AI is good business,” Kathy says.
Our guests also pointed us to some great resources you can go through right after listening to the podcast, including a Trailmix. This episode is absolutely jam-packed with smart people talking about important topics, so make sure to listen to the full episode.
Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. And this week we are taking the awesome level up a few notches, let me tell you. So we are at two guests on the pod and I'm excited for both of these. These people are so incredibly intelligent and thoughtful and I'm so glad they're in the world. Kathy Baxter, you may remember, she's a returning guest. She is the principal architect in the office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology here at Salesforce. And also joining us is Rob Katz, who is the VP of Product Management of the Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology. Kathy Baxter: Thank you for having me. Rob Katz: Thanks for having us. Mike Gerholdt: It's great. Kathy, we've had you back. Rob, first time guest, longtime listener. I'll just say because that's like always the first thing people want to get out of the way when they're on a podcast. But that being said, I'm actually going to start off with you, Rob, because we're talking a whole lot about data ethics and data and ethical AI. But let's lay that first foundation and talk about data ethics. So can you start by telling us what you mean by that term data ethics? Rob Katz: Sure. Thanks Mike, and thanks for having me. So I get this question a lot. What is data ethics? They're guideposts about the gathering, protection and use of personally identifiable information. So that's practically speaking about transparency and control over data that consumers that we share with companies and organizations about ourselves in return for personalized experiences. And when it comes to data ethics, more and more the onus is on an organization to handle data that they have about their stakeholders, whether those are consumers or other folks that they need to handle that data ethically, because we as users are overwhelmed with all these opt outs and privacy and preference centers and cookie consents. So data ethics in a nutshell is applied privacy by design. Mike Gerholdt: Got you. Okay. Now before we jump into how that applies to Salesforce, Kathy, can you help us understand this in the context of AI? Kathy Baxter: Absolutely. You can't have AI ethics without data ethics. Data ethics is the foundation. And in terms of AI, that includes making sure that you are collecting data that are representative of everyone that your AI system is going to impact. It also means getting consent. We've seen too many different AI models that are built on data that was simply scraped off the web. And whether it's an artist or a writer, that their content that may be protected under copyright or simply wasn't intended to be scraped and fueling an AI is indeed doing just that. And by scraping the data off the web, you're probably also capturing a whole lot of toxicity and bias. Mike Gerholdt: So I started there because I think this is so fundamental. So for even people like me that have been in the ecosystem, we think of all of those different bots and ways that we used to, as you said, Kathy. I remember thinking and being in sales meetings with the sales managers like, "Well, how do we just scrape LinkedIn for a whole bunch of lead information?" So that leads me a little bit to talking in the context of Salesforce, but before we talk of the context of Salesforce, help me and everyone understand the office of ethical and humane use of technology, because that's where both of you sit. And to me it feels, wow, this is such an important part of what Salesforce is devoting it's time to. So help me understand that office's purpose. And that'll set the tone maybe for where we're headed today. Rob Katz: Kathy, do you want to take that one? It's your Salesforce anniversary after all today. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, it is. Congrats on your Salesforce anniversary or Salesforce anniversary as we call it. Kathy Baxter: Yeah. Today is seven years. It's fantastic. One of the things that really attracted me to Salesforce in the first place was the company's stance on issues of social justice and pay equity and a recognition that we are part of the broader community and society. And what we create in the world isn't just about giving value back to shareholders, but it's what are we putting out in the world and our values of trust and customer success and equality and now sustainability. All of that has created a culture that when Marc announced that we would be an AI first company in 2016, and I started asking questions about ethics and how do we make sure that we are building our chat bots responsibly, that we don't create a chat bot that spews hate and disinformation. How do we make sure that we are giving our customers the tools they need to use our AI responsibly. Mike Gerholdt: That's really good. So Rob, can you help us put that a little bit more into context? I think Kathy set you up there, but Salesforce as a company, we need to pay attention to this. There's also Salesforce as a platform. Rob Katz: Absolutely. So as a platform, how are we building the platform and shipping it? And then how are we helping our ecosystem configure it in a way that it's easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing? And that is what Kathy and I do on a day-to-day basis with our technical teams and our product teams, our design teams, and increasingly with our systems integrators and ISV partners and folks on the app exchange and yes admins and data specialists and users. Because how the product and how the Salesforce platform is used as you know, is highly configurable. So let's work together to ensure that we're using it in line with these best practices and principles. Mike Gerholdt: Totally makes sense. And I think for a lot of us, it's a big platform. Well, it's easy to think marketing and I think you actually use that. These opt out forms gathers a lot of data. So as we continue the fall from 30,000 feet, we know that data ethics is a good foundation. Let's set that tone for, I'm an admin sitting here listening to this, and I want to start good data ethics in my organization. Kathy, I'm going to get to you because then this is going to help me lead to building AI that's being ethical. What are some of the questions or some of the areas that the admin should start thinking about in terms of asking questions or red flags they should as they're building apps? Rob Katz: So when it comes to data ethics, it's important to remember that Salesforce will build a single source of truth to help you connect with your customers. And you were talking about how the world has evolved and now the current state of the world in terms of data, I would argue has shifted. And we see that in statistics as we heard from Bret on the Dreamforce main stage in the keynote, Bret Taylor, the average company has 976 IT systems and their data are going to double again by 2026. So we have moved from a world of data scarcity where every single data point to go and scrape LinkedIn to get sales leads was a good idea in the past, because we were in a data scarcity world. We're now in a data surplus world and in a data surplus world, we as admins need to think a little differently. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, free coffee, can't turn that down. Rob Katz: Never. So I'm opting in, I'm saying, "Yeah. Love my free coffee, here's my email address, here's my birthday." Now the form, admin, we're setting up the form. What do you need there? You need month, you might need day if you want to do it specifically on that person's birthday. And the way you set it up typically would be. Mike Gerholdt: Wait, hang on. Rob Katz: Go ahead. Mike Gerholdt: I'm an aggressive admin, why don't I put month a year? Rob Katz: Well, so there you go. Well, now you know exactly how old I am and I'm not too particular about that. But when you bring in year, you don't need it for that birthday promotion. You just need month and day. When you bring year in, you've now captured data about somebody that can indicate how old they are. And as a result, when those data are later used for other things like segmentation of an ad audience or in a machine learning model, it can lead to potential age discrimination creeping in to the predictions that are made or to the segmentation that's created. And that is an application of data ethics. Take what you need, not what you can. Take what you need and you get a better signal to noise ratio and you can still deliver a great birthday promotion without needing to get their year. Mike Gerholdt: It's just so ingrained that when you say, "Give me a date," it's month, day, year, or was it day, month, year in Europe because it's has how we're trained. Even the little calendar field, when you create a date field in Salesforce, it includes year, I think. So wow. Things to think about. Kathy Baxter: And now the challenge with this, the corollary on AI ethics, if we want to do an analysis to see is there the potential of bias in my model on a protected group. Am I making bias decisions based on age? Because you might not have collected year, but maybe there's another proxy in there. For example, maybe the year you graduated college or the year you first started working, or how many years of industry experience you have. It's difficult to do fairness assessments if you don't have that data. Mike Gerholdt: It's like we were meant to podcast together, Kathy, because I was literally turning to you to think of, so we're collecting this data and we're trying to do right, but now I want to turn some of our AI onto it. Marketing's asking me, "Well, help me understand if targeting these promotions on to maybe to Rob's point the day of their birthday versus just any day in that month is helping me. But one thing maybe I didn't pick up was that I'm picking up on year." So when we're building our ai, what are some things that we need to think about if maybe we're walking in and this data is already being collected? Kathy Baxter: I think there are so many customers or companies that they really don't know, again, going back to Rob's point, there's so much data that they have. They don't even necessarily know all of the data that they have going back years, decades. And if they just are turning the bucket upside down and dumping all of this data into a model and telling AI, "Hey, find something for me." AI will find something for you. It could be spur correlations, it could be very biased patterns in your data. You don't know what you might get from it. So being exceedingly mindful about what are those variables that you are using. Mike Gerholdt: So far, you've done a really good job of giving me examples that I feel aren't inside of a heavily regulated industry because I do feel like the awareness in regulated industries is there for things. But not every executive that an admin works for or takes requirements from is in a regulated industry. So how do we help them understand red flags, especially around building an ethical AI, Kathy? Kathy Baxter: Yeah. I have heard unfortunately more than once from executives or admins at other companies say, "I'm not in a regulated industry or I'm not creating high risk AI that would fall under the definition that the proposed EU AI ACT has said will be regulated or has these additional requirements. So why should I care?" No one wants to make bias decisions but if an exec isn't convinced that they need to invest in responsible AI, especially in these difficult financial times where cutting costs and making sure that you make as much money as possible becomes really, really critical. It's going to be difficult for an admin to try to convince them that they should invest in this. Mike Gerholdt: Well, my ears perked up and I think we've done... I feel bad because sometimes the podcast train runs over marketers a lot because we love to point fingers at the cookies, which by the way, kudos, whoever came up with that idea of calling it a cookie. But Rob, I would love because when we were talking about this podcast, you mentioned something that made me abrupt face and it's around some of our other industries like sales and service. Can you help me understand data ethics that maybe haven't peaked our interest? Because we're not thinking, well, marketers are collecting all this stuff with their forms and AI, but you brought up a few use cases around sales and service that I hadn't thought of. Rob Katz: Well, thanks. So let's talk about field service technicians as an example. So someone's using Salesforce field service to manage their fleet of folks who are out there in the flesh doing field service appointments for customers, maybe servicing cable boxes, HVAC units, handling updates on security systems, installing new dishwashers, you name it. Well, what do you know about how those folks use data in order to do their jobs? Well, one thing they might have in the system is their next appointments gate code or key code for the building or something like that so that they can get in and do the work. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. You're right. I hadn't actually thought of that. That does make me think about all those companies now that... I mean, my garage door has a code to it and there's been a few times I've had service people come by, "Well, just give me your code. Yeah, no, not going to do that because I mostly forget how to change the code and then you forget the code. But also I don't need it lingering around in your system." Rob Katz: Exactly. Mike Gerholdt: Exactly. Good point. Rob and Kathy, as we wrap up, we've literally scratched the surface on this. I think I've talked to both of you for a long time and I find all of this so compelling to understand because it's something that admins work with every single day and it's also expands the level of responsibility that we have. It's one more question to ask, but it's one more question in the right direction. And Kathy, as you pointed out of keeping customers and keeping employees, the one thing that I would ask for each of you, and I always bring this up to a lot of the people that I coach for presentations. So you're done listening to this podcast. Kathy, what is the next thing you would love for a Salesforce admin to do? Kathy Baxter: I think there are a couple of really easy things that they can do. We have a white paper on ethical AI maturity model. This walks through how we actually stood up our ethical AI practice at Salesforce and I validated it with my peers at a number of other companies who have had similar ethical AI, responsible AI responsible innovation, insert your favorite name here practice. And they validated, yes. This also looks similar to how we stood up our practice. So that's something that a Salesforce admin or others at the company could take a look at and see how might we apply this to our company? We have a number of Trailheads and Trailmixes that we can put onto the episode description for them to check out. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Rob, same question. So I'm an admin, I just finished this. I'm excited, I want to go dive in. What would be the first thing you would want me to do tomorrow? Rob Katz: Ask yourself whether you can but whether you should when it comes to that field, when it comes to that new object, when it comes to how you're configuring those requirements that you got. And if you want to learn a little bit more practically and tactically about it from an ethical personalization and trusted marketing perspective, we will link to a Trailmix in the show notes that can give you some very specific do's and don'ts and suggestions. But for anyone, regardless of whether you're working on marketing or not, it's just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And in a world of data surplus, actually now less is more. And that is a new way to think about it that I hope is helpful. Mike Gerholdt: Very helpful and I appreciate that. Kathy, it was great to have you back again as a guest. I hope we make this a little more frequent than every few years. Kathy Baxter: Yes, I would like that very much. Mike Gerholdt: And Rob, it was great to have you on. The virtual podcast door is always open, if you'd like to come back and help admins become better at data ethics, we would appreciate that. Rob Katz: It was great to be here. And as a preview, we have a new feature coming out in the February release and I would love to talk about it with you on the podcast as we're getting closer. Mike Gerholdt: I love that. When a guest puts you on the spot, that I got to book. So I guess we're going to book you now. Look for that episode coming out in February. It's going to be awesome. Don't know what it's going to be called but Rob will be the guest. Rob Katz: Awesome. Thanks Mike. Mike Gerholdt: Thank you both.
Direct download: Data_Ethics_and_AI_for_Admins_with_Rob_Katz_and_Kathy_Baxter.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 27 October 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for October. Join us as we review the top product, community, and careers content for October, take a look back at Dreamforce, and share our favorite things about Fall. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro. Learn MOARThe Learn MOAR Trailmix is live and, if you complete it from now through Nov 30, 2022, you’ll unlock a community badge and be entered to win 1 of 5 Cert Vouchers- see link and Learn MOAR page for all the details. Get up to speed with the upcoming release! Dreamforce highlightsWe did a little thing in September we like to call Dreamforce. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Mike hosted the Admin Keynote and it was amazing. Gillian was working on a lot of the broadcast stuff and interviewed Jennifer Hudson and Kara Swisher. It was a whirlwind of excitement, information, and celebration, with a little bit of Admin Karaoke thrown in for good measure. Blog highlights from OctoberThere was a lot of quality content in October, but we wanted to highlight David Giller’s excellent post about how to make a career change to Salesforce Administration. The biggest thing is to in there and try to do things on platform. “That transitioning of your career can be big and scary,” Gillian says, “but if you just start chipping away at it, it becomes a lot easier.” Video highlights from OctoberLeeAnne Rimel has been hard at work in the Expert Corner, and her video with Adam White about screen flows is chock-full of helpful tips. Adam came from the community: he was such a Flownatic that he was eventually hired to product manage it. There have been so many innovations with screen flows that this video goes over so you really can’t miss it. Podcast highlights from OctoberIf you haven’t listened yet, we had one of our favorite guests on to talk about one of our favorite topics. Domenique Buxton is the creative force behind Cloudy, Astro, SaaSy, and the rest of the cast of Salesforce characters you know and love. In September, we also did a special podcast on the story of the #AwesomeAdmin movement that we think is really special. Just for funMike and Gillian also talk seasonal drinks and some fun facts about Fall. Podcast swag Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! |
Wed, 19 October 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Cole, Manager of the CRM & Analytics Team at 908 Devices. Join us as we talk about business processes, Jennifer’s latest presentation at Dreamforce, and why it’s so important to understand everything about a problem process before you try to implement a solution. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Cole. Admins are problem solversJennifer swapped to a smaller company in order to make bigger decisions about how the Salesforce ecosystem there would be run, and she’s had the opportunity to hire her own team of Awesome Admins to support that vision. “I’m glad I like hats because I wear a lot of them,” she says, “but I think, as an admin, everything we touch is problem-solving.” For her Dreamforce presentation, Jennifer focused on what she did when her company came to her to improve their order entry process. And while she was approached by people who wanted specific things fixed about it, she knew from experience that she needed to broaden her perspective. One technique she uses is to start from the initial request and find out who that person is chasing and asking them the same questions about their process, and then the person they chase, and so on. That way, she captures the entire business process and all of the problems that need solving to make it run more smoothly. When roadblocks aren’t actually roadblocksOne question that Mike raised on the pod is what to do when it seems like a big obstacle to teams working together is that one business unit simply isn’t on Salesforce. “That can be a false roadblock,” Jennifer says, “I know that’s often what admins hear but I don’t see it as a dead end.” Often, those teams are curious about how moving their process into the system can streamline everything and plug into the powerful automation and analytics tools Salesforce has to offer. The key is to convince them that you can do things to make what they’re already doing better, rather than coming from the angle that what they’re doing is wrong. Why understanding the problem makes solving it easyIn Jennifer’s talk, she went over how Flow and MuleSoft Composer helped her make big changes to her organization’s business processes. But how did she get there? The first step was to chart out the problem she was trying to solve in a more detailed way. “Think about the entire workflow and the elements needed for success,” Jennifer says, “and if those elements have a risk of not being there or not being complete they become a section of the problem that I have to also solve to make the whole process work.” While it’s an important first step, understanding the problem is only part of the process of actually solving it. You need to decide what will be your “source of truth” for each record, even if that’s in different systems for different pieces of information. “It’s a slow process but once you have that down, identifying the tools and the way the data moves becomes the easiest part of all of this,” Jennifer says. Podcast swag Learn more: Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Direct download: Solving_Business_Problems_with_Composer_and_Flow_with_Jennifer_Cole.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 13 October 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Domenique Buxton, Executive Creative Director for the Trailblazer Ecosystem and Trailhead Brand at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about the history of the colorful cast of Salesforce characters and where you can find some “Hidden Saasys.” You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Domenique Buxton. A new galaxy of Salesforce charactersDomenique’s title is a bit of a mouthful these days, so she usually prefers to just say she’s Astro’s mom. But if you want to know the real history of Salesforce characters and mascots, you have to start with SaaSy. For those that didn’t get a chance to behold them in all their beauty, they were a “no software” symbol with arms and legs. “If it wasn’t for SaaSy, we wouldn’t have any of the other characters,” Domenique says, and you need to understand that SaaSy could dance. In 2014, Domenique was helping plan Developer Week. They always tried to make these events fun and that year, they decided they were going into space. Salesforce1 had just been released and it felt like new galaxies were out there waiting to be explored. And so, a charismatic astronaut named Astro was born, but as Salesforce changed so did their outfit: a racecar driver for Lightning, a raccoon for Trailhead, and it wasn’t long before Astro had some friends. When a brand is like a hug“The characters are like a big brand hug,” Domenique says, “all the characters want to help and be there for you to light the way. The characters are like beacons where they’re shining lights on ways to move forward.” The characters in many ways are essential because they make Salesforce feel more welcoming like you can do anything, and that there’s a community there to support you and have fun along the way. As Domenique says, creating a character for each role is all about celebrating purpose: why we do what we do and shining a light on all the fantastic makers that comprise the Salesforce community. “The characters’ journey has been towards purpose, and their purpose is to help you unlock yours,” she says. Crouching Astro, hidden SaaSyIf you have sharp eyes, you may have noticed something familiar in Salesforce creative content over the years. Domenique and her team loves putting in some “Hidden SaaSys” whenever they get the chance. The rims on Astro’s moped, for example. “It’s an Easter egg, but it’s also a nod to where we’ve come from,” she says. One thing that might be on the horizon is an in-person Cloudy appearance. The thing is: we need your help. Make some noise on Twitter and let the world know that the people are crying out to meet Cloudy. “Cloudy is the secret sauce,” Domenique says, “she knows everything about the cloud and makes the whole thing work.” Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Direct download: A_Brief_History_of_Salesforce_Characters_with_Domenique_Buxton.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 6 October 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Marti Pirkle, Director of Commercial Systems at Cloudmed, and Lisa King, Marketing Automation Manager at Experity. Join us as we round out our Best of Dreamforce series with a look at their Dreamforce presentation about how to migrate two orgs seamlessly. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marti Pirkle and Lisa King. When two become one.We thought that Marti and Lisa put together an amazing session for Dreamforce ‘22, “No-Code Solution for Day 1 — Share Faster to Migrate Smarter” The talk is based on their experiences sharing data between two orgs and what prep work they did before Day One that enabled get the new org started without a hitch. This all started in the Spring, when Marti found out that Lisa’s company was going to be purchasing her company. “We were tasked with making sure we could see all the information of each Salesforce org on day one of the acquisition,” Marti says, and so they needed to come together and make a plan so they could hit the ground running. Working around NDAsOne of the biggest challenges that Marti and Lisa faced was the fact that, before the merger, there were NDAs in place that limited what information they could share with each other. They only had eight weeks to make a plan and execute on it, but they couldn’t send files or data back and forth. “Luckily, we both knew we were in the same industry, we were both in the healthcare space, and we found out that we shared a commonality, an external database called Definitive Healthcare,” Lisa says. They could also talk about the metadata and structure of their orgs, which enabled them to get a lot done even with the restrictions they were dealing with. No code, no problemObviously, Lisa and Marti had to become fast friends. However, they also developed more than a few tips and tricks to same themselves time and hassle along the way. They created a quick system for sharing small, tweet-sized updates between client success teams on the page for each account. That made them easily reportable, inline editable and show up in list views. “When they saw the information being reciprocated, that’s when the lightbulb went off for people,” Marti says, “now, I don’t have to call someone, I just know.” Their data merger was so successful that it was actually Lisa and Marti’s managers that pushed them to turn their experience into a presentation and pitch it to Dreamforce. And even more amazingly, they did it without code. “I am a developer, I love to write code, but we did this without code,” Lisa says, and no middleware. They used formulas, flows, and all the other tools available to everybody in Salesforce, and didn’t have to issue licenses or do training in each other’s orgs. Instead, everyone could just see the data they needed to see in the org they were trained on and comfortable with. Listen to the full podcast for more tips on the power of Flow and why Marti and Lisa are both major Flownatics, as well as what it’s like to put together a Dreamforce presentation. Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Direct download: Best_of_Dreamforce__Migrate_Smarter_with_Marti_Pirkle_and_Lisa_King.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 29 September 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Louise Lockie, Salesforce Consultant, and Trainer and 6x Salesforce MVP. Join us as we talk about her amazing presentation from Dreamforce about how to embrace a permission-set-led security model in your org. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Louise Lockie. Everything you need to know about Permission SetsWe last heard from Louise back in 2016, after she gave a presentation for Dreamforce ‘16. And sure enough, we’ve brought her back on the pod to give us an overview of her killer presentation this year: “Embracing a Permission Set Led Security Model.” As Louise points out, Salesforce recently made a very important announcement: that they are going to be sunsetting permissions on profiles sometime in the near future. “Whenever a change like that comes out, we know we need to help the community and the community needs to help each other to get through this change,” she says. Louise is a big fan of permissions for heping to manage security in her org, so she put together her talk to share how she’s approaching the upcoming changes. An easier approach to permissionsIn her talk, Louise will cover what at the moment has to stay on a profile, what she thinks will definitely stay on a profile even after the change, and what she recommends for a baseline standard profile in terms of managing security. When you’ve got it properly deployed, permissions will make it so much easier to standardize things like your password policies, login hours, IP ranges, and more. From there, it’s simple to take advantage of permission set groups to build out what you need for each persona at your org. Why it’s worth it to overhaul your permissionsLouise has been a big advocate for permission set groups since 2019 purely to save time and clicks, but it had always been something that was nice to have and not necessarily something that was absolutely essential. This new approach affords you more flexibility than building out one big permission set, allowing you to more easily share capabilities across roles and also adjust things quickly when the need arises. If you have hundreds of profiles on your org, you now have the opportunity to really look at where the commonalities are and simplify things a great deal. “Map it all out, capture what permissions you’re giving out, and then see how you want to break those out,” Louise says, “with permission set groups being where you want to commonly give out those permissions together, knowing you can still give them out separately.” Listen to the whole episode to learn more and, if you lead a User Group and want to bring this content to your people, Louise would be happy to get in touch about sharing her deck of even doing a virtual presentation, so don’t hesitate to reach out! Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Louise Lockie: Gillian Bruce: Gillian Bruce: Gillian Bruce: Gillian Bruce:
Direct download: Best_of_Dreamforce__Embrace_a_Permission_Set_Led_Security_Model_with_Louise_Lockie.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 22 September 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, Mike and Gillian are on to celebrate Admin Day at Dreamforce with a story about the origins of the Awesome Admin movement. Join us as we talk about the teamup of the century, how “good stuff no fluff” and “for admins by admins” became mottos the Admin Relations Team lives by to this day, and why the community has been key from day 1. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mike and Gillian. Getting the team togetherOur story begins with a certain handsome, intrepid Salesforce MVP—our hero, Mike Gerholdt didn’t know it, but he had a date with destiny. The year is 2013 and Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” is number one on the charts. Meanwhile, our other hero, Gillian Bruce, is working Technical Communications and taking meetings with people at Salesforce trying to figure out which direction to take her career. There are rumblings of doing something for “declarative developers” and Gillian is thinking to herself that the term sounds a lot like what the admins she communicates with do. You see, our mild-mannered admin had an alter-ego. By day, a Salesforce MVP, but by night, he was known as the ButtonClick Admin, with a podcast and blog devoted to all the amazing things you could do in Salesforce without code. Back at Salesforce, Gillian was in a fateful meeting where an idea was floated: “What if we hire the ButtonClick Admin?” The Admin team’s first DreamforceThe team’s first Dreamforce together was an important part of the Awesome Admin mythos. With no overarching theme, they decided to go with superheroes for the admin area. There was Super De-Duper, the Mobile Avenger, and Doc Developer. And they had so much help from the community staffing the very first Admin area. They were a small-but-mighty team of three, so they really relied on the community to live up to the phrase, “for admins, by admins.” They even had to do their own advertising for the first Admin Keynote, which wasn’t even supposed to be an official keynote. LeeAnne Rimel was at that time a standout member of the community who created all the demos for this DIY keynote. Today, she’s running the Admin Keynote at Dreamforce ‘22. Listen to whole episode for behind-the-scenes stories on the demo that rocked the world, why they started working more closely with product teams, and why they always show setup. And whether you’re at Dreamforce or tuning in from home, happy Admin Day! Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm Gillian Bruce and I am joined today by Mike Gerholdt. Hi, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: Hey. Gillian Bruce: And Mike, I have you on the podcast today because I wanted to do something a little bit fun given that today is the official Admin Day at Dreamforce. And so if you're at Dreamforce and you're listening to this, wow, nice multitasking. I'm impressed. If you are not physically at Dreamforce, my-oh-my. There's a lot for you to join in with us digitally. And I wanted to use this as a fun excuse to take a little trip down memory lane and tell the real story about the advent of the awesome admin movement, so to speak. So Mike, you really were the inspiration for a lot of this. And so I wanted to go way back. That's the way back machine and take us all the way back to actually 2013, which is when the kernel of this all began at Salesforce. Now, Mike, you were an MVP, not working at Salesforce. And how long had you been an MVP at that point? Mike Gerholdt: I think I got awarded in the winter release. It was the Dreamforce that happened, I want to say in between Thanksgiving and Christmas one year. So, it was a super late Dreamforce. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. That's right. Sometimes, they're in November. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Because MVPs used to be awarded on releases. And so, I think it was the winter release that year. So, 2011 something. Yeah. Gillian Bruce: Okay. Well, 2011. Okay. Mike Gerholdt: Sometime. Gillian Bruce: So 2011. So, you'd been an MVP for a couple of years. 2013 for me, I was doing a little internal career exploration at Salesforce, doing coffees to meet people, understand what their jobs were. And I happened to be connected to this woman named Sarah Franklin at the time who had just left Salesforce and come back to Salesforce. And I remember her talking to me and being excited about doing something for the declarative developers, the way that we do for traditional developers. And I was like, "Those sound like Salesforce admins to me because those are the people I communicate with all the time about technology changes in my role as a tech comms person. When we're notifying everyone about a release or a performance issue, those are the people I email all the time." And from there it was like, "Okay. Here we go. I know how to talk to admins. You want to do something for admins?" And in a few months, Mike, I remember Sarah telling me, "Yeah, I was in a conversation with Alexander Dayon," who at the time I think was I forget what exactly. He was a C-level- Mike Gerholdt: He ran Service Cloud. Didn't he? Gillian Bruce: That's right. Yeah. Service Cloud. And I think in a meeting, Sarah said that Mr. Alexander Dayon was like, "Let's hire the Button Click Admin." And that was you Mike because you, at that time, you would what? You had the blog, you had the podcast. Mike Gerholdt: So, I started all of that. It was a kernel of an idea in 2009 where I started writing something called the Monday... I really meant it to be the Monday Morning Admin, like the Monday Morning Quarterback because of blog titles and Technorati and Google, that I ended up calling it the Monday AM Admin. And I started that on my personal blog and it got a little bit of traction. And then I was talking with a friend and he's like, "I think there's something bigger here. There's a bigger brand I should build." Gillian Bruce: Well, and clearly you were right. Other people were doing the same thing because it took off. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. So, I grew that for a while and then started a podcast because I dabbled in video, but YouTube wasn't YouTube yet. And I realized the biggest thing was going to Dreamforce and hearing stories and hearing people talk about their stories and listening to them and hearing their passion. And I thought, "Oh. Well, that's what a podcast could do," because when you distill it down into black and white, into written words, the blog post just wasn't getting it across as much. And so 2012, with Jared Miller who was also a fellow Salesforce MVP, I launched what was called the Button Click Admin Podcast. And that was every Thursday because I didn't want to take traction away from my Monday morning posts. So, twice a week. And then that gets you through 2013-ish. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. So then Alexander Dayon says, "Let's hire the Button Click Admin, Sarah." And then you got a call, I believe Mike. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: At some point. Mike Gerholdt: So, as part of this was a unique time just in branding and in, I would call it the internet. Because at that time, and I'll preference that time as 2006 to 2015, you could 100% make a brand for yourself. You could have a blog, you could have a podcast, you could monetize those and you could do a lot of public speaking. And so, that's the evolution of where I took the blog to. It was essential hub for me to advertise my knowledge, do the podcast, distribute information and then also sell advertisements and then get speaking gigs. And that was a big thing in that, I would say nine years on the internet. Gillian Bruce: You're about to get punked. Mike Gerholdt: I was literally about to get punked, yes. And so, it was super loud in the blogger lounge. I answer the call and it was in a broom closet across the hallway from the blogger lounge because there's no place to [inaudible]. And it was Sarah Franklin. She introduced herself and I 100% thought she was playing a joke on me because she told me she was starting this admin marketing team and was really interested in talking with me, but didn't know if I was looking for a job and I hung up on her. Gillian Bruce: That's the best. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Gillian Bruce: So, you hung up on Sarah? Mike Gerholdt: That's the first crazy career thing I have done. She called back. Fast-forward to today. Thank God, I didn't hang up the second time. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Thank God you didn't hang up the second time because then you officially became part of the team and I think you were... What, it was Sarah and myself? And I think you were the next person to join because I don't think Leanne was- Mike Gerholdt: Was, I was three. Gillian Bruce: Developer of evangelism. Mike Gerholdt: We were just a scrappy little team for, I mean, all the way through Dreamforce 2014. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Well, and I remember too, it was one of those funny... We did. We felt like a little scrappy startup because I remember Sarah being like, "Hey. Gillian, we should start a newsletter." I'm like, "Yeah, cool. So maybe we could just email the same list that I used to email about tech comms. Let me see if I can make that happen." I was like, "Thank goodness. I got a good relationship with the email team because they're going to let us send a newsletter out." And I remember it was originally going to be the Admin Roundup and we had a whole cowboy motif, I think- Mike Gerholdt: Because why not? Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Well, thank goodness that didn't really hash out. But yeah. It was like, "Oh. Well, let's feature some community posts." And I think what was really special about that and was special about having you really help us create this is, it's always been by admins for admins. It's never been us creating that new content that we're trying to push out to the admin community. What we really started was, "Hey. We recognize that there's an admin community out there. We recognize that there are people doing this work. And as a company at Salesforce, we need to let them know that we see them and that we want to highlight the work that they're doing and elevate it, so the rest of the community can get something from it too." And that's something that I always just feel so fortunate to be a part of because it's really unique when you think about enablement or just marketing in general because it is really good stuff, no fluff. And that's the heart of what we do in the admin relations team, which I think is really special. Mike Gerholdt: Well, I think it also aligns to really the culture of Salesforce admins. We find ways to scale. So, if you're at an organization... And I was at an organization, I was a solo admin for, I don't know how many users. It was in the hundreds, a lot. The way you scale is online, on social, in the trailblazer community, which was called something else at that time. And you asked questions. And so, it was very natural for our team to just follow that mantra. We couldn't scale. There was three of us and there was how many million admins. Obviously, we can't write enough content. Gillian Bruce: No. But we rebranded Button Click Admin and it became admin.salesforce.com. So we had all your content. Mike Gerholdt: Wisely so. Gillian Bruce: And we relaunched the podcast and you invited me to be a co-host, which was terrifying, but it was so fun. And I can't believe it was that many years ago, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: It was a long time ago. I remember that first podcast. Because there was the discussion of, "Okay. So I come over, obviously my cohost isn't a Salesforce employee. Do we do that? Is that a thing? Is that weird?" And then I remember Sarah was like, "Well, have you talked to Gillian about being co-host?" I was like, "No, does she want to co-host?" "I don't know." And I remember, "Well, so what do you do?" "Well, I don't know. You just talk when I don't talk." Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I remember feeling totally out of my element, but totally down and excited to try it. And I remember those first few episodes of recording and hearing my... I was terrified every episode. And you can tell when you hear them because you can hear me going... Mike Gerholdt: Right. Well, I think, not to go down the podcast path. The hardest thing is people don't know how to necessarily carry a conversation. And the one thing that I learned starting the podcast is interesting podcasts are ones where the host has an idea of where things are going, but isn't committed to the outcome and is happy to let the guest guide the journey. And I remember reading about Larry King and CNN and The Art Of The Interview and the art of the interview is that it's not about you, the host. But it's about you asking the questions and being present in the moment to continue that conversation, to bring out the best in what your guest is talking about. I mean, those early episodes of the podcast, we probably didn't talk enough and then you talk too much, but you find that intermedium. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. And one of the things I've also always heard about podcasts or really about anything, it's all about the reps. It's about the practice and doing it. The more you do it, the better you get. And I mean, we've been doing this for a long time now, Mike. So, hopefully people still think it's good. Mike Gerholdt: I know. You would think. But let's talk about the first Dreamforce because that was fun because we threw everything at the wall. Gillian Bruce: And from the wall and hanging from the wall. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. This was pre-Trailhead. So Trailhead was just a glimmer- Mike Gerholdt: Trailhead actually launched at that Dreamforce, I think. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. And I think there was one- Mike Gerholdt: Two. Gillian Bruce: Three trails or something. It was- Mike Gerholdt: I mean, it was huge. Massive back then. Gillian Bruce: So, we had no overarching special Trailhead theme. So we decided, "Hey. Admins are superheroes. Let's make our whole area all about the different types of admin superheroes." Oh, man. We had so much fun coming up with all of those different superheroes, like Super D Duper, because that was the year that they finally introduced the de-duping feature from the IdeaExchange- Mike Gerholdt: Duplicate management, yep. Gillian Bruce: I just always call it de-duper. Mike Gerholdt: I know because it's fun. Gillian Bruce: And we had what? The Mobile Avenger and Doc Developer and- Mike Gerholdt: Just all kinds. Gillian Bruce: And we had them printed on huge banners and we hung them in the little atrium area on the second floor of Mosconea's as you come up the escalators and it was amazing. It was just- Mike Gerholdt: It was so cool. Gillian Bruce: Oh. It was so cool. Mike Gerholdt: We also quickly learned why that atrium area was available for us to use. Gillian Bruce: It was so hot. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. On the first day at 2:00, we're all standing there. "You're hot." "But this is really... I need to go." And you would just walk 10 feet out of that area. And it would be 20 degrees cooler. Gillian Bruce: It was a whole greenhouse effect going on there. Mike Gerholdt: It was. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Well, especially, when I was moving hundreds of boxes of T-shirts and swag around because that's what we did. Mike Gerholdt: That's what we had budget for. Gillian Bruce: And we had the first ever admin theater and we had our first ever admin zone. And again for admin by admin- Mike Gerholdt: We had a little podcast booth. Don't forget we had that little podcast booth. Gillian Bruce: We sure did. And that looked amazing, the whole on-air sign. Which you have in your house, I believe. Mike Gerholdt: No. That's the following year. The big on air sign. I have some of those letters, yes. But thank God I don't have that whole booth because that would be massive. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. But again, back to for admins by admins, the only way that we were able to have an admin zone and provide that first ever home for admins at Dreamforce, is because the three of us could not staff at all. We had the entire community staffing those booths and it was all this ask the expert format. Which is now the heart of what we do and how we do any experience that we have. Whether it's at World Tour or at Dreamforce or a TDox. I mean, that is literally at the heart of how we treat all of these demo stations and experiences is that we have experts actually talking about how you can solve your problems and helping you troubleshoot. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, and people showed up. I think that's the biggest thing. We were all looking at each other like, "People are going to show up, right? And they're going to be excited for this?" And that in addition to the community stepping in, is really what drove success because everybody else at Salesforce looked at this team of three, four people, I think Leanne probably pitched in that year. Gillian Bruce: I think Leanne was our first ever, "keynote." Mike Gerholdt: She helped with the keynote. Oh, we should talk about that. But people showed up and when they showed up, they appreciated what we had and was willing to contribute more. And other areas caught wind of that vibe and they're like, "We need to package this stuff up." You're like, "Nope, it's ours." Gillian Bruce: Yep. Well, we had superhero capes. We had bright blue awesome admin-pow T-shirts. I mean, it was pretty magical. And I remember we had to do a lot of advertising to get everyone to come to what we were calling a keynote, but wasn't officially recognized as a keynote with the first ever admin keynote. It was the basement of the Marriott. Mike Gerholdt: Hilton Union Square. Gillian Bruce: It was the Hilton, that's right. Mike Gerholdt: Hilton Union Square. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. So that keynote is actually really amazing because talk about Leanne. Leanne was instrumental in creating all the demos for that keynote. And she's running the admin keynote today at Dreamforce '22 today as well. So that's an incredible journey, but yeah, we showed... I remember, that keynote was so fun. Sarah had just had a baby and Amelia was brand new and Sarah's like, "Yeah, no, I'm going to get on stage and we're going to rock this keynote." Mike Gerholdt: Uh-huh. Like, two weeks rehearsal she had and just nothing. Just rocked it. Gillian Bruce: And we'd never created a keynote like this before. This was all new to all of us. And then we featured a bunch of customers who we were going to recognize as awesome admins and give them capes. So I remember it was... Oh, god, Nick Lindberg and Dale Zigler- Mike Gerholdt: Cheryl Feldman. Gillian Bruce: Cheryl Feldman. Oh, gosh. There were a handful of them. They were amazing. And Cheryl Feldman won the first ever Awesome Admin Award that was presented to her by her VP at her current job. And it was our way of like, "Hey. This is a recognition of the amazing impact that an admin can have on the organization. And Salesforce is giving you the platform and trying to elevate that." And for those of you who don't know, that eventually evolved into what is now the Golden Hoodie. Mike Gerholdt: And Gillian, I think one part that's always fun to talk about with that keynote is the mistake that actually changed the way a lot of teams demo Salesforce. And so, Dreamforce 2014 Process Builders, the brand new shiny thing. It's built on the Flow engine, but it makes sense. And everything you could do was totally declarative when you build a flow. Except, there was one random checkbox buried in set up that you had to check. And we rehearsed this to the nth degree. Off stage, was going to be one person sitting that would check the box so that everything just worked seamlessly in our demo. And then that didn't happen. Gillian Bruce: Yes. That we weren't showing stuff that was built fake. We wanted show the real deal. This is something you can do today. Mike Gerholdt: So we went off-script. We showed setup and thunderous applause. There were executives in the back of the room that were like, "Oh, man. What are they doing?" And everybody reacted. And from there on, our mantra was we show set up. We show you the real-real. We'll show you how to set this thing up because there should be no mystery to how you configure some of this stuff. And that moment in time, had that not happened, that was a huge cultural moment for our team. And I think for the whole admin community. Gillian Bruce: 100%, I mean, that sets the tone. It's the good stuff, no fluff. We're really going to show you how you can do this. Not just the theory of, "Look at what's possible." It's like, "Cool. We know what's possible. We're going to show you how you can actually make that happen." And that moment was amazing. That did, that really set the tone for a lot of how we presented technical content until today. So, hopefully we keep true to that. Mike Gerholdt: We do. Gillian Bruce: We do. And then from there, Mike, I mean, we were launched, I mean, Awesome Admin became a thing. Trailhead started developing... The first Trailhead content was developer and admin. We were in the core DNA of what Trailhead ended up becoming. And it went from just recognizing admins to then really celebrating and elevating what admins are and what they do. And as a team, we got to dig a little deeper into really getting in with the product teams and being advocates for admin and connecting product with the admin community. And true to the core has been a really important element of the admin community from the start. And that messaging continues to go through everything that we have done as well. IdeaExchange, really making sure that the product is thinking about the admin use case. And honestly, if you look today at Dreamforce, a lot of the new product innovations, they're mostly adminy. Mike Gerholdt: Well, it's that, and I think that the really unique thing that this team and admins in the community and everyone listening gets to do is, you get to participate in the growth of this identity within the technology ecosystem. So, a developer in the early '70s, you could argue when Apple came out, is really what started to define that. It was probably, you could argue even earlier, but the stereotype and the persona for the most part had been molded throughout the '80s. And for sure, the '90s, by the time that the internet and technology computers and classrooms happened. This is our 1960s, 1970s moment. You go back in time through that 2012 period, we're defining this identity now as in real-time. So it's more than just us showcasing it at Dreamforce. I mean, Gillian, we fast-forward to 2022 now, we're actually saying, "Okay, as part of this identity, here are the core skills that you need to have." Gillian Bruce: Yep. I mean, it's gone way beyond just focusing on the product, but we've learned a lot. We've gotten feedback from the community and the ecosystem at large about, "Hey. It takes more than just being able to know how to do the technology piece of it. It's that magic of... The admin is at the core of the business, connecting the technology and the business and the processes. And so, how do you do that? You can learn a lot of tech. We have Trailhead to help you learn all that, but there's more to it. And that's where the admin skills kit came out of the research that we were doing, and really honing in on, "What are those skills that help you be a super successful admin?" When you pair those with the technology skills, man, the sky's the limit. Mike Gerholdt: I agree. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. What I love about rehashing the story and going back is understanding how core these values of good stuff, no fluff, for admins by admins, are to everything that we do today. Things that were important at the outset, we show set up. We use and tap into the knowledge of the community to help each other. I mean, that really has actually affected the rest of Salesforce too. If you start thinking about how things have shifted between Trailhead and focusing more on the individual trailblazers, a lot of what we've done as a team and what the community has done is now being really reflected in a huge way. And so, admins keep being awesome because you're what makes Salesforce special and it's really an honor to be a part of this community. Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely. Gillian Bruce: So then Mike, what's next? What are we going to do more for admins? What's the future look like? Mike Gerholdt: Well, they should watch the Salesforce Admins Keynote at Dreamforce and find out. Gillian Bruce: It's a great tip. Mike Gerholdt: Which is also available on Salesforce Plus in case you weren't there in-person. Gillian Bruce: Absolutely. And there will be lots available on Salesforce Plus, including our Release Readiness Live session. So if actually you're listening to this in the morning of Thursday, you can actually tune in live to the Release Readiness Live, the admin preview later today, which we are doing at Dreamforce with product managers. So, we're going to have an in-person experience and the regular virtual experience for Release Readiness live. And there's going to be some really amazing Admin sessions that are going to be available on Salesforce Plus on demand after Dreamforce.
|
Thu, 15 September 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re bringing on the Admin Relations Team to talk through the Admin Track at Dreamforce ‘22. Join us as we talk about the Admin Meadow, the Admin Track, and what you can expect at Dreamforce! You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with the Admin Relations Team. The Admin Meadow is your home away from homeFirst up, we have Lisa Dick, Director of Admin Marketing at Salesforce and the newest member on the Admin Relations Team. It’s her first Dreamforce, and she’s excited for everything they’ve planned for you. “The one thing I want everyone to feel when they walk into the space is feel like the Admin Meadow and the Admin Zone is really the home for admins,” she says. Even better, sessions will be mapped to the tools in the Admin Skills Kit so you can focus in on the things you want to learn most. She especially wants to see you at the Admin Theater on Tuesday for Admin Karaoke, so pick out your best power ballad and don’t miss out. Finally, you can sign up on the Admin Meadow for a 1-on-1 consult to talk through the challenges you face with someone who has a ton of expertise. What you can’t miss on the Admin TrackNext up, we brought on Jennifer Lee, this year’s Admin Track Leader, to talk about everything we have planned for you. “We’re going to be able to nerd out on all things Security, User Permissions, Flow Builder, Dev Ops, and even more,” she says. Be sure to take a listen to this part of the pod, as she highlights some of the standout events you won’t want to miss. We also brought on LeeAnne Rimel to give us a sneak peek at the Admin Keynote. It’s a time we can all come together on the biggest stage to just talk about admins and best practices and changes that are coming for tools you use every day: Flow Builder, App Builder, Permissions, Deployment, and more. And, because it’s LeeAnne, you better believe there will be killer demos. Release Readiness Live, IRLFinally, we talked to Ella Marks to find out what she has planned for Release Readiness Live. We pick out the top highlights for the Winter ‘23 Release for Admins, and then open it up to questions from the audience for our product managers. And this year, it’s going to be in-person—the can’t-miss party that ends Dreamforce and sends you off with a ton of new information to take home to your org. Don’t think you’ll have to miss everything if you can’t make it to Dreamforce in person. There’s tons of stuff to see and do on Salesforce+, so block off your schedule and tune in live. After the Admin Keynote, there will be a special after-show hosted by Gillian and a panel of admin experts to recap the highlights and give some post-game analysis. You’ll even be able to ask our product managers questions for Release Readiness Live later in the day. Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today, Gillian Bruce. Listeners, we are less than one week away from Dreamforce 2022. If you can believe it, this is the 20th Dreamforce. I know. It's crazy. I wanted to take today's episode to spend some time hearing from the incredible people on the Admin Relations team about what the admin experience at Dreamforce 2022 is going to be. Lisa Dick: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Gillian Bruce: I was going to say, first time on the podcast, right? Lisa Dick: Very, very first time on the podcast. Gillian Bruce: Oh, well welcome. It's about time we get you on the podcast because we need to introduce you to the listeners. Lisa, can you please introduce yourself and tell a little bit about what you do at Salesforce? Lisa Dick: I would love to. Thank you. I joined Salesforce this year. I'm a little bit newer to the team, but I'm the director of Admin marketing on the Admin Relations team. This is my first Dreamforce ever. I am very excited for what we have planned. Gillian Bruce: Okay. Then let's get into it because people are really pumped to know. I know a lot of people listening are going to be able to physically come to Dreamforce next week, which is really exciting. A lot of people are not, so we're going to cover both, but can you tell those who are coming to Dreamforce, what are they going to be able to expect once they arrive on site as an admin? Lisa Dick: I am so glad you asked. I would describe the admin experience this year in one word, which is magical. I think we have so many fun things planned. We have so many little surprises planned here and there, but the one thing that I want everyone to really feel when they walk into this space is feel like the Admin Meadow and the admin zone is really the home for admin. We're going to have activations and sessions and things for people to keep coming back to, so that over the course of three days, there's going to be so many things that people can interact with and visit, and sign up for, that it really will, I think, feel like a true home and a place that our admins want to keep coming back to. Gillian Bruce: They're going to want to hang out with us all the time in the Meadow and at the theater. Wait, I said theater. Tell us about the theater. Lisa Dick: I would love to tell you about the theater. There's a couple of different pieces of the admin zone. One of them, as you mentioned, is the theater. We will have both 20 minute sessions in the theater and also 40 minute breakout sessions with a ton of different learning tracks. There are so many sessions. I would like to call out that all of our theater sessions have been mapped to the 14 skills from our admin skills kit so that when someone comes to a theater session, they'll have a better understanding of what session maps to all of those different skills to find the right sessions in the theater for the things that matter most to them and the things that they want to learn. Gillian Bruce: Oh, I love that. I am very passionate about the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit. I love that we're pulling that in through all of our, both breakout and theater sessions, but I know that there's some special theater sessions that you've got lined up. Is there anything you're going to share with us? Lisa Dick: I would love to share them with you. We have some really fun sessions. As most of our admins know, we always try to have some fun sessions mixed in with all of the amazing learning sessions. We're having what we are calling, the How I Solved It showdown, which will be at 1:30 every day. It'll feature participants coming up with real actual business challenges that they have come up with an automation to solve. I also want to add that one of our most fun theater sessions will be on Tuesday, which is admin karaoke. I hope that everybody comes out and either sings. If you're not okay singing, that's okay, but cheering on all of your fellow admins. We think it'll be a really great time. Gillian Bruce: I will be in the cheering section, for sure. No one needs to hear me sing anything. Lisa Dick: I do. I need to hear you sing everything. Gillian Bruce: No, no, no, no, no. Okay. But there's more than just the theater. You mentioned that there's also the Admin Meadow. What are folks going to be able to experience in the Meadow? Lisa Dick: That's right. There's a couple of different components to the Meadow. There's a ton of action happening. When I talk about coming back to the Meadow and it feeling like home, there will be enough things happening in the Meadow to bring everybody back over the three days. When you first walk into the Meadow, you'll of course be greeted at a welcome desk. There's a couple of things you can do there. You can obviously get some help, but there will also be folks that are signing admins up for a one-on-one consult. We will have those consult stations in the Meadow. Admins can sign up for a 20 minute consultation with a Salesforce expert to really get their own individual questions answered. Gillian Bruce: I love it. I have gotten some sneak peaks of this activation. I cannot wait to see it in action. It is really amazing way to, like you said, pull together the skills and make your own custom story. I think this is a great takeaway that everyone is going to love. Hey, especially if you're joining virtually, you're going to see people post these. You can create your own when you're at home. This is going to be a really cool thing that I'm sure we're going to carry beyond Dreamforce, as well, in some capacity, but there's a lot going on, Lisa. I love it. Lisa Dick: It's a lot. Gillian Bruce: Do you have any tips, maybe for folks who this is their first Dreamforce? This is your first Dreamforce, so you're in the same boat. What is your strategy when you're coming on site? What are you going to do first? How are you going to try and manage doing all of the things? Lisa Dick: Yeah, it's a great question because there is a lot going on. I also recognize there's a lot happening outside of the Admin Meadow, but one of the cool things that our team creates, it's called the Admin Workbook. We will be sending that out and publishing it on Twitter the week before Dreamforce and really helping attendees plan those things out and figuring out the things that they really have to make sure they do before they leave the Dreamforce grounds. But I haven't planned mine out yet because I've been so deep in figuring out what the Meadow looks like, but I think my big piece of advice that I have heard from everybody on the team and some folks that have been at Salesforce for a while is to just walk around and take it all in. It's a large amount of space. There's a lot of people, but there's also so much to be able to just take it in and just really enjoy the experience of it because it's been so long since we've been together in such a large setting. Just take a moment to just recognize how exciting it is that we're all back. We're all together. We get this really unique space and opportunity to celebrate that. Gillian Bruce: I love that. That's a great tip. Now, for those of people who maybe are not able to join us in person, what do you recommend for them to get a little taste, a little feeling of this admin magic? Lisa Dick: Yeah, a couple of things. One, definitely log on to Salesforce plus and see some of the top hits for admins. The second is to follow us on social. In addition to having magic in the Meadow, we will, obviously, of course, our admin Twitter account is amazing. We'll have a couple of details of some fun things happening during the week, but also there's going to be a sweepstakes for folks on site and who follow our Twitter account. Yeah, I think that'll be a really helpful way to figure out what's happening both onsite and for the folks at home. Gillian Bruce: I love that. I love that. Well, Lisa, I am excited for you to experience your first Dreamforce. I'm really, really looking forward to connecting you with a bunch of admins who are going to be onsite, which is going to be really fun. Everyone, come meet Lisa. She's going to be in the Admin Meadow pretty much the entire time, but we'll let you walk around a little bit, I promise. Lisa Dick: I hope. Thank you. Gillian Bruce: Lisa, thank you for all your hard work. We are so looking forward to seeing everything come to life next week. Yeah. Hey, let's get ready to Dreamforce, huh? Lisa Dick: Let's get ready to Dreamforce. Absolutely. Gillian Bruce: I cannot wait to see your faces as you walk into the Admin Meadow on Moscone West in just a few short days here. Lisa has been working hard. So fun to hear about some of the special surprises and magical moments that you are going to experience. Now we're going to keep it moving because we got a lot of great admin experience to talk about. Admin experienceness, I think that's a thing. Next, we're going to go to Jennifer Lee, who is the mastermind, and organizer, and proud owner of the admin track this year at Dreamforce to talk about all of the great theater and breakout sessions you can expect this year. Jennifer Lee: Thanks for having me Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Well, I needed to get you on because we're getting ready for a little something called Dreamforce in just one week here, actually, if you're listening to this podcast. I wanted to get you on because you are managing the entire admin track at Dreamforce this year. Hands to you. That's an amazing feat. I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk a little bit about some of the amazing things happening in the admin track. Give us an overview as folks get ready to head to Dreamforce. Jennifer Lee: All right. How much time do you have because I can go on and on about how amazing the line up is? Gillian Bruce: Well, I know you can go on and on. Let's keep in sound bite for the podcast. Jennifer Lee: All right. I am really super excited to be this year's track lead for the 20th Dreamforce admin track and to curate such a great lineup of breakout and theater sessions. We have a little bit for every admin out there, whether you're just starting out, you're intermediate, an advanced admin, and a wide variety of topics that can help you build on those 14 skills that you helped us identify in our skills kit. In fact, Brittany Gibson, if you've seen that awesome, great Quip doc that she put out there, the admin sessions by skills that list out all our sessions categorized by the related skills, that is something that you definitely need to get your hands on if you haven't seen it. Gillian, would we be able to include that as a link in the pod notes? Gillian Bruce: Absolutely. It's going to be in the notes. Jennifer Lee: Awesome. All right. In regards to speakers, we have Salesforce MVPs. We have community members. We also have Salesforce PMs, like Shell Feldman, Diana Jaffy, Antoine Kubot, just to name a few. They're going to share their latest and greatest with their respective products. We're going to be able to nerd out on all things, security, user permissions, flow builder, DevOps, and even more. Gillian Bruce: I love nerding out. This is making me excited. Come to Dreamforce to nerd out. Jennifer Lee: All right. I'm going to give you a teaser into some of their sessions. Okay, folks, bookmark these now. True to the core from feedback to features. Also, getting started with low code application building. The feature of user management for admins, and also rating effective and maintainable validation roles. Gillian Bruce: It's quite a line, Jenn. There's a lot going on there. Jennifer Lee: I know when I was a customer and I attended Dreamforce, I like to learn from the practitioners, the people who are out there doing the thing. I'm just going to highlight just a few sessions that, again, you want to bookmark. We're going to go through the fundamentals of formals, approach reporting like never before, deluxe report types. We're going to throw in some Salesforce automation with Slack. Then if you're looking to get into public speaking and speaking at events, we have a session called find your voice, tips for becoming a Salesforce speaker. There's also a session on the art of a Salesforce demo because we, as admins, need to present and share what we've built to our users. Learning that would be great. We also have dynamic forms, driving data, and user experience. Lastly, we have the London user group leaders presenting a theater session on how to become a skilled admin specialist. They'll go through various skills and what's involved in doing that and then tying that back to the skills kit. Gillian Bruce: I love it. I love how you cover really a whole breadth between nerding out on products. You kind of career developmental, great content, and then just best practices as well. That's really awesome. Jennifer Lee: And I'm excited for new faces. While we love our returning Dreamforce presenter veterans, we do have some new faces as well. There's app exchange strategies for Salesforce business analysts with Shira Tyson Griffin. I hope I said their name right. There's also step by step guide for transitioning all processes to flow with Chrissy Andrews and Kristen Blazer, and catch the release, how to manage major releases year round with [inaudible] Burke, who is our awesome release person, but also a former coworker of mine. She works at Manual Life Candy Weeks. Gillian Bruce: I love that. That's great. Yeah, actually [inaudible] was on the podcast earlier sharing some of her great presentation that she put together about app exchange strategies for business analysts. Yeah, a whole bunch of first time Dreamforce presenters, which is always fun to get some new voices out there and amazing content. I've been able to jump on a couple of the dry runs for these sessions and wow. It is a rockstar lineup. It is going to be an amazing track. Jennifer Lee: We have the opportunity to record three of our sessions from the admin track. Those will be available on Salesforce plus for a future viewing. They're the automate your business processes with Flow Builder. Ready, Click, Automate, Salesforce to the max with RPA. Lastly, Make the Move From Chain Sets to DevOps Center. Gillian Bruce: Okay, those are three, obviously, very popular and very exciting sessions about really great product and innovations that everybody needs to know about. Again, Salesforce plus on demand after Dreamforce. You can get it all right there, as well as some other great stuff like our Admin Keynote, which we talked about on the podcast already. Of course, release readiness live will be available after Dreamforce, as well. Jennifer Lee: I just say it's been truly your honor to even be given this opportunity. I want to give props to [inaudible], you, and everyone on the team for being so supportive. It truly takes a village to do this. I'm just the conductor, but it truly takes the whole orchestra to get this thing together. It's been great going through and being on the other side, because I was a presenter and now I'm on the other side organizing it and going through the process of selection. That was really hard. We had so many great submissions and I only had so many slots. It was really hard going through that process. But then now, working through and doing the dry runs, I'm really getting excited by seeing the sessions. I really can't wait to get those in front of all our admins. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, absolutely. It's been really fun to see you bring that perspective to this process that Mike and I have done for gosh knows how many years at this point. It's great. You've done an amazing job. It's really fun to see it all come to life. Hey, I'm looking forward to seeing your face next week after the Dreamforce is going on and the sessions are happening and you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is the track that I put together. It's coming off amazing. All these people are getting such great value out of it." Jennifer Lee: Yes. Our breakouts will be 40 minutes in an enclosed room. Our theater sessions will be on the... The breakouts will be on the second floor of Moscone West. The theater sessions will be on the first floor of Moscone in the Admin Meadow. It will seat about 125 people in an open area. We're really excited to get the excitements of the crowd, the people walking around the Admin Meadow. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to all this. Gillian Bruce: It's going to be vibrant. It's going to be fun. It's going to be an awesome admin party all around. Congratulations. Thank you for leading admin track this year. Folks, we're getting ready to see you at Dreamforce. Jennifer Lee: Yay. Gillian Bruce: Wow. So many amazing sessions, lots of brand new presenters, lots of veteran presenters. Thank you, Jennifer Lee, for shepherding this incredible admin track to come to life at Dreamforce. I hope you've bookmarked the sessions she mentioned and you're exploring on your own. Make sure you pop open that Salesforce plus window so that you don't miss out. Leanne Remmel: Hi Gillian. Thanks for having me. Gillian Bruce: Well, I had to have you on, because we need to talk about something really important and really exciting happening at Dreamforce next week, the Admin Keynote. Can you tell us a little bit about what is going on for admins in the Keynote? Leanne Remmel: I sure can. If you haven't been a dream first before, or if this is your first time tuning in, the Admin Keynote is really this time that we gather all together as admins. We share with you the latest and greatest in announcements, in tools for admins. We try to share and reinforce things we've learned from you over the previous year about the role of admins and how it's growing, and things you are all doing in your careers and at your companies. It's really... I'll be honest. It's one of my favorite Dreamforce events. It is really a time for us all to gather together in the big room. We're in the Moscone hall F in the big keynote room. We gather together and we just talk about admins for the entire time. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, and you've been... Leanne, you have also had a hand in helping with product demos for quite a while at Salesforce, and especially for the admin audience, which makes it extra special because these demos are really, as you said, tailored towards the admin experience. Along with what you just listed, what else is going on in the Admin Keynote? Leanne Remmel: I love that question. I do love demos. I just still do. A quick aside, we really do build these demos. Every step of the way we're thinking, what is it that we want admins to see? What are those features, those best practices, those tools that are just, we really want admins to know about. We really want admins to see. You'll notice we really dive a lot deeper often into setup, into the builder experience. That's because these are truly tailored for you, both the products that we're covering and then how we show them in demos. Gillian Bruce: Demo all the things. Leanne Remmel: Demo all of the things. Gillian, you asked what else we're doing in Admin Keynote. There's two other areas I want to share that I'm really, really excited about. I told you how demos are so important and we're doing demos. Something that's really exciting that we're doing in the Admin Keynote this year for the first time is it's not just going to be Salesforce employees up their demoing. We're going to have our customers up on stage leading demos. We're going to have some of our admin trailblazers who have used some of these products, used some of these tools to build solutions for their companies. They're going to be on stage showing their build to you in a demo in the keynote. I am just so excited about that because, of course I love demoing. I love showing things. There is nothing better than seeing someone who has the same role as you, the same job as you, is maybe solving the same business problems as you, up there saying, "Here, let me show you how I solved this." Gillian Bruce: That is really special. That is unique. I think that's the only time that any keynote has really done that. This is going to be a first time innovation that we're bringing to the Admin Keynote this year. Leanne Remmel: I think I would say we're trailblazing. Gillian Bruce: What? Boom! Mic drop. Love it, Leanne. Okay. You said there's three things. We talked about too. What is the third part of the Admin Keynote that you want to share today? Leanne Remmel: Okay. The third thing that I'm really excited to talk about today, that will be so impactful for you, Salesforce admins, who are attending and viewing our Admin Keynote, Gillian and our team worked really hard over the last few years to learn more about the skills that make admin successful. It's called the Admin Skills Kit. It's on our site. It'll be in the show notes. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. It's like our own product roadmap. We're sharing everybody. Leanne Remmel: It is. We get a do a roadmap. Yeah, we get to do a roadmap conversation. We're going to have some exciting roadmap announcements about Admin Skills Kit. Gillian Bruce: I love it. I love it. Leanne, you did mention that the Admin Keynote is going to be in the big room this year, the same room that the mark main keynote is in. We need everybody who's coming to Dreamforce to join us. When is the keynote happening Leanne? Leanne Remmel: Oh, that's a great question. It is in the big room. It's on Thursday at 9:00 AM. It's probably going to be your first session of the day. Maybe you can meet up with your admin buddies, go to Starbucks, go to your coffee shop, make your coffee at your hotel, whatever. Everyone can get their coffee, get their nice little morning walk in, make their way over to Dreamforce and come bright and shiny and early to the Admin Keynote and really start your day with us. I'll be honest. I love being on Thursday morning, because I think then we've had a couple of days to attend sessions, to attend other keynotes, to learn more about different areas that we're interested in. With Admin Keynote, we try to help you put a lot of that into context and set you up for successes. Gillian Bruce: Well, Thursday is, Leanne, it's admin day at Dreamforce because not only do we start the day with the Admin Keynote, but we end the day with admin release readiness live, which is really exciting. The whole day is really focused on admins. It's a great way to end Dreamforce with the bang with a whole day dedicated truly to Salesforce admins. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. Leanne, as you mentioned, if you're in person, come to Hall F, but if you're not in person, people can watch it online, right? Leanne Remmel: Yes. It will be on Salesforce plus at 9:00 AM Pacific on Thursday. Definitely tune in. And there'll be a little something special for people who are tuning in online. There's going to be an after show. There's going to be the Admin Keynote, and then we're going to be diving into our after show as well. Also, really starting this live will be on later in the day, as well, for everyone who's not attending in person. I love that really starting this live is happening later in the day, because I think also, we're going to be talking about some new products and some new features and some new tools in the keynote. At really starting this live, you have Q and A with the product managers. If you come up with questions during keynote or during other sessions the week, you can ask those questions during really starting this live. I'm really excited for admin day and for Dreamforce. I hope to see you all there. Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Well, we'll be there. Ella Marks: Hi Gillian. Thanks for having me. Gillian Bruce: Oh, well I am having you because I want something very specific from you. First of all, before we get into it, can you remind the listeners who you are and what you do? Ella Marks: Yeah, I'd love to. I am a senior marketing manager on the admin relations team. I have my hands in a lot of different things, but I'd say the biggest things that I focus on are admin website and our campaigns. Our release campaigns like Learn More, and some other campaigns that you may see across our social or our website. Gillian Bruce: Yes, you do all of the very fun activating the community things, which is great. Speaking of which, we are giving everyone who's listening a little precursor to what they can expect at Dreamforce next week for both those attending in person and those attending online. Ella, you are owning a very exciting piece of this. Can you talk to us a little bit about release readiness live at Dreamforce? Ella Marks: Yes. I would love to. Nothing gets me more excited for this year's Dreamforce than talking about the first ever, in person release readiness live. That's right. In person release readiness live. Gillian Bruce: And the crowd goes wild! Ella Marks: Insert cheering noises! It is so exciting because if you've seen release readiness live before, you know that every release we go through all those release highlights. There's tons of innovation out there with every single release. We pick out the top highlights for admins. Then we bring them to you in this release readiness live broadcast. We get to go through our demos and show you all these new innovations. Then the product managers take your questions about these new features during that broadcast. We're having all of that, but this time, there's also going to be this live in person component. Don't worry. If you're not joining us live in person, you will still be able to watch release readiness live the same way that you've watched it previously. You'll still be able to ask your questions, but it's just so exciting that we're going to have this new way to engage with the product managers and really be in that room. We're hoping to bring all of the awesome admin fun release energy to the session. I'm just so excited, if you can't tell. Gillian Bruce: Well, it is something to get pretty pumped up about because not only is it the first in person release readiness live. This is kind of almost true to the core, but focused on the release, because we're going to have all those product managers there. Release readiness live is amazing because you get the PMs to join you on the broadcast and answer those questions live, but we're going to have all the PMs there. We're going to have rows of PMs to answer questions. If you've got a specific question that you've never really gotten an answer to feel free to bring it because we are going to be able to ask them... We. You will be able to ask them there in person. It's also the official closing party of all of Dreamforce and admin day. Ella, talk to us about how this party's going to go down. Ella Marks: It's so exciting to be able to be that closing party because what it means is all week, you will have learned all of these new, amazing features. You may learn about Admin Skills. You'll learn about products. You'll have all of this learning. At the very end, you'll be able to keep those questions in the back of your mind that entire time, bring them to this session and go out learning all about the top new features. When you get home, they're right fresh in your mind, so you can immediately go start implementing these new features or playing around with them in a sandbox. This is just so exciting because you have that experience where you can have that closing party with us. We're going to make it fun. Don't worry. More to come on that. Gillian Bruce: There'll be lots of fun. Ella Marks: Lots of fun, but it'll be the last thing that you see at Dreamforce. You can take that, write your notes down, go home, and then immediately take action and start learning about some of these new features. I'm so excited. It's going to be the closing party, the can't miss last thing that you do at Dreamforce. Gillian Bruce: Yes. Release readiness live to take it all home. To your point, what's great is that this is a good forcing function to get everybody ready for the winter 23 release. You'll be able to go right back to your work when you get back home on Monday or Tuesday, or if you're taking the week after Dreamforce off, which I know some people do. Good for you, but you'll be able to immediately go in, play within that pre-lease environment and make sure that you're starting to prepare your org for the new capabilities you want to take advantage of with winter 23. Ella Marks: That is a great question, Gillian. It is something that we know everybody is going to be thinking about during this session. We will provide an opportunity to follow up on those questions that you've asked after Dreamforce. We're still working out some of those details. I will make sure that we share them with you as soon as we have them, but do not worry. Your opportunities to connect with these product managers and get your questions answered are not limited to this session. Do not fear. We will answer as many questions as we can live at Dreamforce from online and in the room. But if we don't get to your question, there will be additional opportunities to ask it. Just stay tuned. Gillian Bruce: Well, and yeah, you'll know exactly which PM to harass on Twitter too. It'll be all good. Ella Marks: We'll share their Twitter handles. You can ask them directly. Gillian Bruce: This is so great, Ella. Now, I would love to just ask you, since this is the first time we're doing release readiness live in real life, IRL, what are some of the differences in putting together release readiness live for an in person and online experience versus just that online experience? Ella Marks: That's a really good question. I think that when it comes to anything, that's going to be onsite, especially at Dreamforce. If you ever participated in a Dreamforce session before, or you have dreams of participating, it is such a different experience to be live in the room with people. You really want to make sure with a session like release readiness live, that we're considering both that in room audience and the experience for those folks, and the experience for folks who are going to be tuning in online. Gillian Bruce: Well, yeah, instead of relying on basically the other attendees in the Brady box bunch, just to show excitement over a feature, we're going to get real actual reactions that are audible from the audience, in addition to the normal online forever that happens, and the great gifts, like Squire I know we always posts the great gifts. But yeah. It's fun to bring both of those together. Amazing job, Ella, of bringing both that in person, that new in person experience together with the live existing experience. It's going to be really fun. It's like the first real deal, hybrid live content. Honestly, cause it's so interactive. I's going to be really fun to see that go down. Any tips for folks who are going to be attending in person or attending online to get the most out of the session? Ella Marks: I think to get the most out of the session, I would just recommend having a way to take notes, whether it's your phone, or you are taking photos of the slides or of a demo, or making a note of a new feature that you might be excited about. You don't want to lose those moments of inspiration that you might get during a session like this that is so jam packed of features. Just make sure that you have an easy way to capture something that you might get excited about because we're going to show a lot. Gillian Bruce: Bring all the questions. All of them. Ella Marks: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: All of them. Well, Ella, thank you for joining us on the podcast. Thank you so much for bringing IRL at DF 22, because I'm just going to list all the acronyms at once. I know we're all looking forward to this amazing closing party at Dreamforce. We cannot wait to see you there. Ella, it's going to be some admin magic. Lisa Dick: I can't wait. See you all there. Gillian Bruce: With that, everyone, I hope you are so pumped for next week. It is happening in just a few days. I cannot even believe it's the 20th Dreamforce. I don't even know what number Dreamforce this is for me. I think my first Dreamforce was 2010. Maybe it's my 12th Dreamforce. Yikes. Wow. Anyway, Dreamforce is a magical time. I hope you're able to join us. If you're not able to join us in person, please, please, please stay tuned to Salesforce plus, and you can stay up to date again with all things happening in the admin community by following #awesomeadmin on Twitter and Salesforce admins, no eye. I hope you all are pumped to have an incredible Dreamforce, whether you're joining us in San Francisco or you're joining us from your comfort of your own home. I cannot wait to see you. I cannot wait to hear from you. I cannot wait to see what you think of your admin experience at this year's 20th Dreamforce.
Direct download: The_Admin_Experience_at_Dreamforce_22.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 8 September 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mary Tagler, Salesforce MVP and Salesforce Applications Manager at Relativity. Join us as we talk about Mary’s upcoming presentation at Dreamforce, “The Fundamentals of Formulas.” You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mary Tagler. Best of DreamforceNot everyone can make it to Dreamforce this year and, even if you can, we know it’s impossible to catch everything. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. This month, we’re bringing the best speakers from the Admin Stage on the pod so you won’t miss a thing. Formulas for the Rest of UsLongtime listeners may remember Mary from way back in 2016. These days, she manages a team of admins for Chicago-based legal software company Relativity. Most importantly, she’s speaking at Dreamforce this year about the fundamentals of formulas. “I wanted to get down to the fundamentals, best practices, and the how-tos for people who just don’t know where to start,” she says. Mary wants to point you towards the resources that are already out there to help set you up for success. There are a lot of ways to get help but the number of options can become overwhelming, so she wants to give you some pointers on how to help yourself. “One of the best resources—the bookmark I have on every machine I own—is the formulas and operators help document,” she says. And even better, it has examples for everything. Why It Helps to Write Things Out on PaperMary also wants to help you understand where formulas are used and why you use them. She’ll talk through the most common types of functions and operators you use, writing out every exercise in plain language so you know how it works. “Even if you feel like walking away not knowing how to build the formula, you’re going to know how to write out that logic in a coherent way that anyone can digest.” Finally, Mary will cover best practices. “Sometimes the way you write your formula sets you up for failure,” she says. She always hand writes her formulas following a specific format, underling ANDs and circling ORs. That helps her identify how she wrote the formula and find any logic gaps, and also gives her a way to run it by stakeholders to see if it’ll solve the business problem. Asking For HelpOne thing Mary did when she was starting to learn formulas was taking a look in the Answers Community. There are always a ton of questions there, and she figured a good way to hone her skills was to see if she could figure them out. Even better, the Answers Community is still there for you no matter where you are in your journey. “Time formulas are my kryptonite,” Mary says, “and you will see me posting for help anytime I have to do something time-related.” And she’s giving a presentation about formulas at Dreamforce, so you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it! Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today, Gillian Bruce, and we are bringing you the best of Dreamforce. Listeners, we have picked some of the top sessions from the admin track at Dreamforce, both breakout sessions and theater, and we're bringing them to you here on the podcast because we know not everyone's going to be able to come to Dreamforce. Mary Tagler: Thanks for having me, Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Well, we were talking, I think it's been a long time since we've had you on the podcast. Mary Tagler: It has. It's been in excess of four years and at least one job ago. Gillian Bruce: So, all right, so before we get into it, why don't you update us? What are you up to now? What are you doing these days? Mary Tagler: Sure. I'm actually a manager these days and I manage a team of admins at Relativity. We're a legal software company based in Chicago. Gillian Bruce: I like it managing a team of admins. All right, so clearly you've got a lot of awesome admin knowledge to share with everyone. Now, I wanted to have you on the podcast, Mary, because we are getting ready for a little something called Dreamforce here just in a few weeks. And I know you are presenting a session and I know several of our listeners are not going to be able to make it to your session, even if they make it to Dreamforce, because there's a zillion things going on. So I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk a little bit about what you are presenting and share some of these amazing takeaways that you're going to give your captive audience on site to some of our listeners here today. Mary Tagler: Sure. So I'm going to be speaking at Dreamforce about the fundamentals of formulas. It's a topic that I hold near and dear. It's something that as an organizer of our Salesforce Saturday group, I really had looked for a way to build on that great presentation that Steve Mo does about formulas, but getting more basic, getting down to really the fundamentals, the best practices, and the how-tos for people who just don't even know where to start. Gillian Bruce: I love that. I think that's so important. It's kind of like instead of just helping you troubleshoot every single issue, let's get some framework and some longer term strategy in place so that when these come up, you have a way to think about them and process them. And as someone who personally has always struggled with math, and then when I was trying to get the grasp on Salesforce formulas, I was like, "Oh no, here we go again." So I very much appreciate your work in this area to try and help people understand. So what are some of the things that you're going to cover in your session that's really kind of help people get that, that fundamental knowledge about how to use a formula and when to use it? Mary Tagler: Sure. So we're going to start out, we're going to talk about some of the resources available to you, because there's a lot of resources out there both within and outside of Salesforce that'll help set you up for success. We're going to talk about where you use formula. So why are formulas even important? Because there are so many places in the system we use them and it's really important to understand like, "Why should I even use this skill?" Gillian Bruce: Right. You're speaking a language they do not understand. Mary Tagler: Exactly. And so I want to make sure that people feel like they have a support system in place to really get help. One of the best resources, the bookmark I have on every single machine I own is the formulas and operators help document. And I love it because it shows examples. And a lot of times people don't even get to that first step of knowing that exists and seeing how it's used in action. Gillian Bruce: As I do remember in my early days of trying to figure out how to write my first formulas, finding that and being like, "Oh." It's like the decoder of trying to decode a secret language of the back of the cereal box for those of us who are older." Remember back in the day when these things existed. Mary Tagler: Oh yeah. Gillian Bruce: All right, so it's super helpful. So then, okay, so you got some resources down and what else are you going to share in trying to help people? Mary Tagler: So then we're really going to jump into it and we're going to do a bunch of exercises. So what I've done is I've really taken a series of common but simple validation rules and formulas and automation examples and really broken them down. I'm going to talk about the most common types of functions and operators you're going to use, because there's a really long list. And frankly, there may be some you never use in your admin career, but there's going to be a number that you're probably going to use quite frequently. Gillian Bruce: Okay. So I want to go to the session, I'm like, [inaudible]. Mary Tagler: I hope you do. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, I will definitely put it on my calendar and do everything I can to make it. But what I really like about this Mary is though your approach is so ... it's very practical, but it's also really relatable. I love what you just said about, "Hey, yes there's some math to it, but it's also creative writing." It's the same like you have to use your creative brain to make these things work, because there's a zillion different ways you could write a formula to accomplish a couple different things. Right? Mary Tagler: Exactly. Gillian Bruce: So Mary, you said you manage a team of admins and I imagine this is probably something that you are helping your team of admins get a better grasp on. Can you talk to us a little bit more about how you've honed this skill with formulas and how you've come up with this content? You mentioned a little bit, but observations in the community, but take us a little deeper and tell us a little bit more about how you've gained this skill? Mary Tagler: Sure. So I originally learned how to use formulas from a consultant that helped us implement Salesforce and really just tried to iterate on what I saw there. But then once I started getting involved in the community, what I did, which is something I recommend for a variety of skill sets, is I really started to look in the answers community and there are tons of formula based questions there. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Because oh, hard coding. Gosh, I remember the first time I learned about hard coding and I was like, "I know this is bad. This just doesn't feel right. Let's not do this because yeah, it'll break all the time." Mary Tagler: It will. And I analogize it to it's be a friend to your future self and your future and current teammates because nothing is more frustrating than getting to a formula somewhere and getting this idea and being like, "Where the heck does that go?" And then having to try and figure out what it is. And a lot of times it'll be something that's maybe obsolete because no one knew what that silly ID did. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, and now it's gone and so, oh well, you got to rebuild it again. Got it. Mary Tagler: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: So Mary, this I would imagine is not your first Dreamforce. Do you know how many Dreamforces you've been to? Mary Tagler: The first Dreamforce I went to was in 2012. So including the years we were virtual, this will be my 10th Dreamforce. Gillian Bruce: There you go. Mary Tagler: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: So yeah, my first Dreamforce I think was 2010. So we're about on the same page there. There you go. Mary Tagler: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: Since you are a veteran of the Dreamforce experience, do you have any top level tips for folks who may be getting ready to come to their first in-person Dreamforce? Mary Tagler: So my tip, I don't know how popular it's going to be, is I would say don't obsess over the agenda. Go with the flow. I know the first couple years I went, I would try and bookmark and register for everything and obsess over my agenda. And after a few years in, I actually found it more impactful where I picked the things as they came. I looked every day and decided, "Hey, this sounds interesting." Or I heard the buzz from someone else that a session was going to be repeated and went there. So I would say, be flexible. Gillian Bruce: That's great advice because yes, there's a lot of content and if you try and go back to back sessions all day, A, you're not going to be successful and B, you're just going to set yourself up to be frustrated. Mary Tagler: Yeah. And to be frustrated to wear yourself out too early in the conference, it's not worth it. And the obvious one, comfortable shoes. Gillian Bruce: Yes, comfortable shoes and comfortable, fun shoes. Yeah. Mary Tagler: Yes. Gillian Bruce: It's comfortable fun shoe game going on at Dreamforce. Awesome. Well Mary, thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for putting together such a great presentation to share and help other people. And for those who aren't able to come in person, at least they got a little bit of your nuggets of wisdom here on the podcast. And hey, who knows, maybe we'll do some more to help further spread your message after Dreamforce, so. Mary Tagler: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me and I hope to see you at my session. Gillian Bruce: I will do everything I can to be there, nothing else. Will for sure see you at Dreamforce. Mary Tagler: Sounds good. Gillian Bruce: Well, thank you, Mary for taking time out of your Dreamforce preparation schedule to join us on the podcast and share so much great wisdom about formulas. To me, formulas is a weak spot and it always has been, but honestly, some of the things that Mary just shared are transformative and now I'm looking forward to putting them into practice so that I can be better with formulas. And if you are not going to be able to make her session at Dreamforce, don't worry, I am sure that we will be doing something with Mary in the future to get that great content to you.
Direct download: Best_of_Dreamforce__Fundamentals_of_Formulas_with_Mary_Tagler.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 1 September 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Keizra Tyson-Griffin, Salesforce Business Analyst at Esor Consulting Group and a soon-to-be Dreamforce presenter. Join us as we talk about her Dreamforce presentation about evaluating AppExchange apps as a Salesforce Business Analyst. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Keizra Tyson-Griffin. Best of DreamforceWith Dreamforce happening this month, we wanted to take a moment to bring some of that content directly to your ears. We know not everyone can make it and, even if you can, you might not be able to catch everything. So we’re bringing on the best speakers from the Admin Track to tell you what they’ve been cooking up. There’s a First Time for EverythingIt’s not only Keizra’s first time presenting at Dreamforce, it’ll be her first time attending as well—talk about jumping straight into the deep end. Her presentation will cover AppExchange strategies for Salesforce Business Analysts, and we wanted to bring her on the pod to give us a sneak preview of what she’s going to cover. “I kept coming across clients who wanted to add an application to their org but there were tons of questions around [it] and they didn’t really understand how best to identify the best app for their org,” Keizra says. Instead of being distracted by bells and whistles, the key is to focus on your goals for your business and how an app can make them possible. Is a new app really aligned with your core business objectives, or does it just make you feel cool? The Questions You Need to Ask About a New AppThe most important thing you can do to start is to talk to your key stakeholders to understand where you are now and where you’re trying to go. You want to find out how each department would use a potential new app in their day-to-day activities. Most importantly, you need to know where each department is now and where they’d like to be in the future. Are there any other technologies that your potential app needs to integrate with? Will this app grow with your business or will you need to do something different in a year or two?
We also pick Keirzra’s brain about how she came to be a business analyst and what skills you need to get started in that career. “One of the excellent things about being a Salesforce Business Analyst is that you can pull from other careers that you’ve had,” she says, “if you’re an inquisitive person and you like understanding how things work and why, these are absolutely skills you can pull into your career.” Podcast swag Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today Gillian Bruce, and I am joined by an amazing brand new Dreamforce presenter, Keizra Tyson-Griffin. Now she has an amazing presentation about evaluating AppExchange apps as a Salesforce business analyst, which is useful for every single Salesforce admin out there. She's the first of a series that we're going to be doing where I'm calling the best of Dreamforce. So we're bringing some of the top presentations from the admin track both in the admin theater and breakout sessions to you listeners on the podcast. Because I fully realized that even if you're going to make it to Dreamforce, you're probably not going to make it to every single admin track session. If you do, I don't know how you're going to do it because that means you got to clone yourself and be in three places at the same time. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Hi, Gillian. Thank you so much for having me. Gillian Bruce: Well, I am very happy that you are here because not only are we getting ready for Dreamforce here, everyone, whether you're joining virtually or in person, but this is also the first time that I've gotten to meet you because this is not only your first Dreamforce, but your first time presenting at Dreamforce, correct? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: It is. Gillian Bruce: Well, so that's really exciting and also a really big deal. Can you tell us a little bit about what you are putting together to share at Dreamforce? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. So at Dreamforce this year, I'll be speaking on AppExchange strategies for Salesforce business analysts. Gillian Bruce: Well, you said a few things that I know all admins care about right there in the title of that. So let's talk a little bit about kind of where you're coming from to talk about this. So can you introduce yourself a little bit to the listeners about who you are, what you do in the ecosystem and why this is a topic that you've chosen to focus on? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So my name again is Keizra Tyson-Griffin. I am a Salesforce business analyst at Esor Consulting Group, which is a bit wise company, and I've been a business analyst for a little over a year now. And the reason I selected this topic is because it absolutely matters. So I kept coming across clients who wanted to add an application to their org, but there were tons of questions they had around that application that they wanted to add and not really understanding how best to identify the right app for their org. Sometimes being distracted by shiny objects or all the bells and whistles and not really taking a good look at these are the goals for my business and these are the goals for my org, not only short term but long term. I mean just really trying to help them navigate that. Gillian Bruce: I think that is such an important topic because as you said, you're getting distracted by shiny objects. I mean, we all do it. And a lot of times when you're looking at AppExchange, there are so many options out there and there are so many things that you're like, I want that because that looks like it's going to give me this and it's going to give me that. But it sounds like you're really kind of helping folks understand more about the why and how these things might fit in and you talked about kind of aligning to business goals. So can you talk to us a little bit more about breaking that down and how you come out, let's say, Hey, I want to find an app that helps me automate a certain part of my business. There's three different options out there. So how would you go about evaluating that and deciding which direction to go? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So one of the things I'll be talking about in my presentation is the discovery aspect of talking to those key stakeholders, and just really getting a sense of how each department will be using that app in their day to day, what their current state is versus their desired state, and then getting an understanding of the business goals, right? Where are we today? Where do we want to be short term? Where do we want to be in the long term? Gillian Bruce: All right. So I'm hearing a lot of probably the wheels turning that a lot of admins go through like, great, so I have this business unit that wants to use this specific AppExchange idea. I have this business unit who uses something that's kind of over here, but maybe similar, but maybe also have a different goal. How do you negotiate kind of working those issues out maybe with some competing interests within the same organization? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: One of the things with a client that I worked with specifically is that they had to go through procurement to really vet that technology because they have a good understanding of what they've already purchased and what the purpose of those purchases were. And so they'll be able to help identify whether or not this application or these applications that you're recommending will actually work with what the organization is doing as a whole. Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Now I know here you are in the business analysis space now being a business analyst is something we've talked a lot about especially when we talk about. It's one of the top skills from our Salesforce admin skills kit is the idea of being able to do business analysis as a Salesforce administrator. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you have kind of developed and honed that skill so that other people might be able to follow your footsteps? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So Tony V Martin has been on this show before. So I've learned a lot from her. Also, Tiffany Spencer, I've learned a lot from her as well. And then just one of the excellent things about being a Salesforce business analyst is that you can actually pull from other careers that you've had. If you are just a very inquisitive person and you like understanding how things work or understanding why people make the decisions that they make, these are absolutely skills that you can pull into your career as a business analyst. I think that you just have to have a natural curiosity about why people do the things that they do, why organizations are structured the way that they're structured and work the way that they work. Gillian Bruce: Well, you touched on a few things there. I mean, the idea of being curious and just asking questions, I think is something I found in every single, truly awesome admin that we've talked to, that I've met, is that it's so important because you actually have to want to know and learn things, right? [inaudible] to fake curiosity. And then the other thing you mentioned was the idea is you can bring this kind of business analysis skillset from previous roles and previous experiences. Can you maybe dive a little deeper on that? What kind of experiences were you maybe able to bring over from other industries or whatever other things that you've done and then transfer that skillset into really kind of this business analysis ability within the Salesforce context? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So my first job out of college actually I was a contracts negotiator for an aerospace and defense company. And so I was very heavily involved in proposal writing and working with different departments to pull that proposal together, get it back to the client for them to then look at it and then actually going through the different clauses and negotiating those clauses. And so I kind of tie that into going to the client and finding out what their needs are and then looking at those requirements and documenting what their needs are, what their future goals are, creating those user stories for them to make sure that we're actually building what it is that they desire to be built. Gillian Bruce: Well, that's awesome. I mean, I love from looking and evaluating clauses of very complex contracts, which also by the way you said aerospace engineering was the... Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Aerospace and defense. Gillian Bruce: Aerospace and defense. That's pretty cool. And also I imagine super complex. And then at face value, you probably are like, how does that relate to Salesforce? But the way you just broke that down was really clear. And I think a lot of people that I talked to that are maybe struggling to figure out how do I transition from this at face value industry that has nothing to do with tech or Salesforce into Salesforce. I think the story you just told, made it really clear of a path to do that. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: No problem. I think a lot of people can get caught up in the technical aspect of it. And what I mean is as a contracts person, this is what I do. Or as a marketing person, I focus specifically on content. Well, a marketing person can focus on the customer journey. They can focus on the analytics and understanding what the analytics say to then inform business decisions. And so it's important to take a look at the whole and then be able to see the different paths that can come out of that whole. Gillian Bruce: A hundred percent. Very well said. And look at you even bringing in some of the Salesforce corporate platform right there. Thank you Keizra. You're making me look good. So before we get towards the latter part of our conversation, I just want to talk about the fact that this is your first time going to Dreamforce and you're presenting at Dreamforce. How are you feeling about that? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So I am excited and nervous at the same time. I'm excited to just be able to go there and meet all the people that I'm going to meet that exist in the ecosystem today and have really built their careers in the ecosystem. And there's something to be said to you about people that have been going for 13, 15, the full 20 years, right? And then nervous because I submitted my topic and I was like, I'll submit, this is my first time, I probably won't get selected. And then I was selected. And so it's exciting but I'm also nervous. Gillian Bruce: Well, you it's totally okay to be nervous, but I promise that we've got you and you're going to do an amazing job. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. Everyone's been wonderful so far. Gillian Bruce: Well, that's good. You'll really get to experience the online Trailblazer community love in person... Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. Gillian Bruce: ... which will be really fine. Hey listeners, if there's anyone listening to this episode that is also going to be going to Dreamforce for your first time, make sure that you meet up with Keizra because Hey, you've got another first timer to connect with. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. Gillian Bruce: So, Keizra, before we totally wrap, I just wanted to give you an opportunity. So I'm sure there's a lot of people who are listening in the pod that aren't going to be able to come to Dreamforce, which is totally normal. It is a big deal to try and come to Dreamforce. What do you want to share with those folks? So maybe top takeaways that the in person people are going to get from your presentation that maybe the listeners can get right now. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So I would say when you are evaluating an app on the AppExchange to make sure that not only it meets the requirements that your end-users have laid out for you, but that also it's an application that is supported in terms of is this email support, chat support. Can you pick up the phone and call someone if you have any issues, when you integrate that you are able to test in a sandbox environment, you obviously don't want to test in production. Gillian Bruce: No. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: And that it's an application that's really going to grow with the business, right?. You don't want to integrate something that just isn't going to work for them in a year, two years down the line and you're back at square one. I would also say that you need to make sure that you review the system requirements of the application. And so for example, you'll want to make sure that your client has the appropriate Salesforce edition. You don't want to recommend an application for them that is not supported by the addition of Salesforce that they currently have. Gillian Bruce: Great takeaways. Keizra, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Thank you so much for having me. Gillian Bruce: It's been great to get to know you a little. And I am very much looking forward to seeing you at Dreamforce. And I'm also very much looking forward to seeing your presentation and I'm sure lots of people are now going to want to connect with you and get more of Keizra. So be prepared. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Thank you so much, Gillian, for having me. I'm really looking forward to hearing the episode and then again, attending Dreamforce and presenting on this topic. Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Well, I'll see you soon and I'm sure we'll have you back on the podcast in the future as well. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. Gillian Bruce: Well, thank you so much, Keizra, for joining us on the podcast and taking time out of your busy Dreamforce prep to share some of your incredible insights and knowledge and your Dreamforce content to us on the podcast. Now, if you want to learn anything more about what we talked about today, especially if you want to learn anything more about being a great business analyst, make sure you check out admin.salesforce.com there's a whole section of the admin skills kit dedicated to business analysis. I'll also put some good links in the show notes for Trailhead content that'll help you with your business analysis skills and then some good AppExchange resources as well. And I hope that you all want to connect with Keizra who first time Dreamforce attendee, first time Dreamforce presenter. Obviously she's got a lot of great knowledge to share with the Trailblazer community. So connect with her. She's on Twitter @keizramakeba that's k-e-i-r-a-m-a-k-e-b-a. Again, we'll put the link in the show notes. You can find myself @gilliankbruce and you can find our other co-host Mike Gerholdt, @MikeGerholdt. And as always you can join all the awesome admin greatness online @SalesforceAdmns. No-i.
Direct download: Best_of_Dreamforce__AppExchange_Strategies_for_Business_Analysts_with_Keizra_Tyson-Griffin.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 1 September 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Keizra Tyson-Griffin, Salesforce Business Analyst at Esor Consulting Group and a soon-to-be Dreamforce presenter. Join us as we talk about her Dreamforce presentation about evaluating AppExchange apps as a Salesforce Business Analyst. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Keizra Tyson-Griffin. Best of DreamforceWith Dreamforce happening this month, we wanted to take a moment to bring some of that content directly to your ears. We know not everyone can make it and, even if you can, you might not be able to catch everything. So we’re bringing on the best speakers from the Admin Track to tell you what they’ve been cooking up. There’s a First Time for EverythingIt’s not only Keizra’s first time presenting at Dreamforce, it’ll be her first time attending as well—talk about jumping straight into the deep end. Her presentation will cover AppExchange strategies for Salesforce Business Analysts, and we wanted to bring her on the pod to give us a sneak preview of what she’s going to cover. “I kept coming across clients who wanted to add an application to their org but there were tons of questions around [it] and they didn’t really understand how best to identify the best app for their org,” Keizra says. Instead of being distracted by bells and whistles, the key is to focus on your goals for your business and how an app can make them possible. Is a new app really aligned with your core business objectives, or does it just make you feel cool? The Questions You Need to Ask About a New AppThe most important thing you can do to start is to talk to your key stakeholders to understand where you are now and where you’re trying to go. You want to find out how each department would use a potential new app in their day-to-day activities. Most importantly, you need to know where each department is now and where they’d like to be in the future. Are there any other technologies that your potential app needs to integrate with? Will this app grow with your business or will you need to do something different in a year or two?
We also pick Keirzra’s brain about how she came to be a business analyst and what skills you need to get started in that career. “One of the excellent things about being a Salesforce Business Analyst is that you can pull from other careers that you’ve had,” she says, “if you’re an inquisitive person and you like understanding how things work and why, these are absolutely skills you can pull into your career.” Podcast swag Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today Gillian Bruce, and I am joined by an amazing brand new Dreamforce presenter, Keizra Tyson-Griffin. Now she has an amazing presentation about evaluating AppExchange apps as a Salesforce business analyst, which is useful for every single Salesforce admin out there. She's the first of a series that we're going to be doing where I'm calling the best of Dreamforce. So we're bringing some of the top presentations from the admin track both in the admin theater and breakout sessions to you listeners on the podcast. Because I fully realized that even if you're going to make it to Dreamforce, you're probably not going to make it to every single admin track session. If you do, I don't know how you're going to do it because that means you got to clone yourself and be in three places at the same time. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Hi, Gillian. Thank you so much for having me. Gillian Bruce: Well, I am very happy that you are here because not only are we getting ready for Dreamforce here, everyone, whether you're joining virtually or in person, but this is also the first time that I've gotten to meet you because this is not only your first Dreamforce, but your first time presenting at Dreamforce, correct? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: It is. Gillian Bruce: Well, so that's really exciting and also a really big deal. Can you tell us a little bit about what you are putting together to share at Dreamforce? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. So at Dreamforce this year, I'll be speaking on AppExchange strategies for Salesforce business analysts. Gillian Bruce: Well, you said a few things that I know all admins care about right there in the title of that. So let's talk a little bit about kind of where you're coming from to talk about this. So can you introduce yourself a little bit to the listeners about who you are, what you do in the ecosystem and why this is a topic that you've chosen to focus on? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So my name again is Keizra Tyson-Griffin. I am a Salesforce business analyst at Esor Consulting Group, which is a bit wise company, and I've been a business analyst for a little over a year now. And the reason I selected this topic is because it absolutely matters. So I kept coming across clients who wanted to add an application to their org, but there were tons of questions they had around that application that they wanted to add and not really understanding how best to identify the right app for their org. Sometimes being distracted by shiny objects or all the bells and whistles and not really taking a good look at these are the goals for my business and these are the goals for my org, not only short term but long term. I mean just really trying to help them navigate that. Gillian Bruce: I think that is such an important topic because as you said, you're getting distracted by shiny objects. I mean, we all do it. And a lot of times when you're looking at AppExchange, there are so many options out there and there are so many things that you're like, I want that because that looks like it's going to give me this and it's going to give me that. But it sounds like you're really kind of helping folks understand more about the why and how these things might fit in and you talked about kind of aligning to business goals. So can you talk to us a little bit more about breaking that down and how you come out, let's say, Hey, I want to find an app that helps me automate a certain part of my business. There's three different options out there. So how would you go about evaluating that and deciding which direction to go? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So one of the things I'll be talking about in my presentation is the discovery aspect of talking to those key stakeholders, and just really getting a sense of how each department will be using that app in their day to day, what their current state is versus their desired state, and then getting an understanding of the business goals, right? Where are we today? Where do we want to be short term? Where do we want to be in the long term? Gillian Bruce: All right. So I'm hearing a lot of probably the wheels turning that a lot of admins go through like, great, so I have this business unit that wants to use this specific AppExchange idea. I have this business unit who uses something that's kind of over here, but maybe similar, but maybe also have a different goal. How do you negotiate kind of working those issues out maybe with some competing interests within the same organization? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: One of the things with a client that I worked with specifically is that they had to go through procurement to really vet that technology because they have a good understanding of what they've already purchased and what the purpose of those purchases were. And so they'll be able to help identify whether or not this application or these applications that you're recommending will actually work with what the organization is doing as a whole. Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Now I know here you are in the business analysis space now being a business analyst is something we've talked a lot about especially when we talk about. It's one of the top skills from our Salesforce admin skills kit is the idea of being able to do business analysis as a Salesforce administrator. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you have kind of developed and honed that skill so that other people might be able to follow your footsteps? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So Tony V Martin has been on this show before. So I've learned a lot from her. Also, Tiffany Spencer, I've learned a lot from her as well. And then just one of the excellent things about being a Salesforce business analyst is that you can actually pull from other careers that you've had. If you are just a very inquisitive person and you like understanding how things work or understanding why people make the decisions that they make, these are absolutely skills that you can pull into your career as a business analyst. I think that you just have to have a natural curiosity about why people do the things that they do, why organizations are structured the way that they're structured and work the way that they work. Gillian Bruce: Well, you touched on a few things there. I mean, the idea of being curious and just asking questions, I think is something I found in every single, truly awesome admin that we've talked to, that I've met, is that it's so important because you actually have to want to know and learn things, right? [inaudible] to fake curiosity. And then the other thing you mentioned was the idea is you can bring this kind of business analysis skillset from previous roles and previous experiences. Can you maybe dive a little deeper on that? What kind of experiences were you maybe able to bring over from other industries or whatever other things that you've done and then transfer that skillset into really kind of this business analysis ability within the Salesforce context? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So my first job out of college actually I was a contracts negotiator for an aerospace and defense company. And so I was very heavily involved in proposal writing and working with different departments to pull that proposal together, get it back to the client for them to then look at it and then actually going through the different clauses and negotiating those clauses. And so I kind of tie that into going to the client and finding out what their needs are and then looking at those requirements and documenting what their needs are, what their future goals are, creating those user stories for them to make sure that we're actually building what it is that they desire to be built. Gillian Bruce: Well, that's awesome. I mean, I love from looking and evaluating clauses of very complex contracts, which also by the way you said aerospace engineering was the... Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Aerospace and defense. Gillian Bruce: Aerospace and defense. That's pretty cool. And also I imagine super complex. And then at face value, you probably are like, how does that relate to Salesforce? But the way you just broke that down was really clear. And I think a lot of people that I talked to that are maybe struggling to figure out how do I transition from this at face value industry that has nothing to do with tech or Salesforce into Salesforce. I think the story you just told, made it really clear of a path to do that. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: No problem. I think a lot of people can get caught up in the technical aspect of it. And what I mean is as a contracts person, this is what I do. Or as a marketing person, I focus specifically on content. Well, a marketing person can focus on the customer journey. They can focus on the analytics and understanding what the analytics say to then inform business decisions. And so it's important to take a look at the whole and then be able to see the different paths that can come out of that whole. Gillian Bruce: A hundred percent. Very well said. And look at you even bringing in some of the Salesforce corporate platform right there. Thank you Keizra. You're making me look good. So before we get towards the latter part of our conversation, I just want to talk about the fact that this is your first time going to Dreamforce and you're presenting at Dreamforce. How are you feeling about that? Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So I am excited and nervous at the same time. I'm excited to just be able to go there and meet all the people that I'm going to meet that exist in the ecosystem today and have really built their careers in the ecosystem. And there's something to be said to you about people that have been going for 13, 15, the full 20 years, right? And then nervous because I submitted my topic and I was like, I'll submit, this is my first time, I probably won't get selected. And then I was selected. And so it's exciting but I'm also nervous. Gillian Bruce: Well, you it's totally okay to be nervous, but I promise that we've got you and you're going to do an amazing job. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. Everyone's been wonderful so far. Gillian Bruce: Well, that's good. You'll really get to experience the online Trailblazer community love in person... Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. Gillian Bruce: ... which will be really fine. Hey listeners, if there's anyone listening to this episode that is also going to be going to Dreamforce for your first time, make sure that you meet up with Keizra because Hey, you've got another first timer to connect with. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Yes. Gillian Bruce: So, Keizra, before we totally wrap, I just wanted to give you an opportunity. So I'm sure there's a lot of people who are listening in the pod that aren't going to be able to come to Dreamforce, which is totally normal. It is a big deal to try and come to Dreamforce. What do you want to share with those folks? So maybe top takeaways that the in person people are going to get from your presentation that maybe the listeners can get right now. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: So I would say when you are evaluating an app on the AppExchange to make sure that not only it meets the requirements that your end-users have laid out for you, but that also it's an application that is supported in terms of is this email support, chat support. Can you pick up the phone and call someone if you have any issues, when you integrate that you are able to test in a sandbox environment, you obviously don't want to test in production. Gillian Bruce: No. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: And that it's an application that's really going to grow with the business, right?. You don't want to integrate something that just isn't going to work for them in a year, two years down the line and you're back at square one. I would also say that you need to make sure that you review the system requirements of the application. And so for example, you'll want to make sure that your client has the appropriate Salesforce edition. You don't want to recommend an application for them that is not supported by the addition of Salesforce that they currently have. Gillian Bruce: Great takeaways. Keizra, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Thank you so much for having me. Gillian Bruce: It's been great to get to know you a little. And I am very much looking forward to seeing you at Dreamforce. And I'm also very much looking forward to seeing your presentation and I'm sure lots of people are now going to want to connect with you and get more of Keizra. So be prepared. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Thank you so much, Gillian, for having me. I'm really looking forward to hearing the episode and then again, attending Dreamforce and presenting on this topic. Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Well, I'll see you soon and I'm sure we'll have you back on the podcast in the future as well. Keizra Tyson-Gr...: Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. Gillian Bruce: Well, thank you so much, Keizra, for joining us on the podcast and taking time out of your busy Dreamforce prep to share some of your incredible insights and knowledge and your Dreamforce content to us on the podcast. Now, if you want to learn anything more about what we talked about today, especially if you want to learn anything more about being a great business analyst, make sure you check out admin.salesforce.com there's a whole section of the admin skills kit dedicated to business analysis. I'll also put some good links in the show notes for Trailhead content that'll help you with your business analysis skills and then some good AppExchange resources as well. And I hope that you all want to connect with Keizra who first time Dreamforce attendee, first time Dreamforce presenter. Obviously she's got a lot of great knowledge to share with the Trailblazer community. So connect with her. She's on Twitter @keizramakeba that's k-e-i-r-a-m-a-k-e-b-a. Again, we'll put the link in the show notes. You can find myself @gilliankbruce and you can find our other co-host Mike Gerholdt, @MikeGerholdt. And as always you can join all the awesome admin greatness online @SalesforceAdmns. No-i.
Direct download: Best_of_Dreamforce__AppExchange_Strategies_for_Business_Analysts_with_Keizra_Tyson-Griffin.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 25 August 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for August. Join us as we talk about all the Salesforce content you shouldn’t miss from August. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro. Winter ‘23Pre-release orgs have been available for Winter ‘23 since August 11th, so make sure to sign up, and release notes have been out since the 17th. If you’re trying to move a sandbox onto the new release, the deadline to get that done is TOMORROW, August 26th. Dreamforce is coming upJoin us for our 20th Dreamforce, coming up September 20-22. Full conference passes are already sold out, but you can jump on a waitlist or tune in via Salesforce+. We also have a full slate of pods to help you get ready coming up in September, so smash that subscribe button! Blog highlights from AugustThere was a flurry of great Automate This! content in August, including an appearance by pod regular Karmel James. Jennifer Lee’s blog posts are thorough, fun, and easy to follow so make sure you’re not missing out.
Video highlights from AugustWe’ve given “How I Solved It” a Salesforce+ glow up and we think it’s worth a watch. A dream team of Trailblazers tackles real problems in their orgs and takes you through the process, every step of the way. Podcast highlights from AugustA couple podcast episodes stand out from August. We spoke to Amit Malik, a longtime instructor for the Global Architect Program about why admins should take architect courses. We also caught up with Stuart Mills, VP Trailhead EMEA to learn how you can grow your career and why you might end up in a role that hasn’t been invented yet. Podcast swag Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast in the August Monthly Retro for 2022. I'm your host, Mike Gerholdt. And in this episode, we'll review the top product, community and careers content, well, for the month of August, just like I said. And you know what? Helping me do that the very familiar and excitingly fun posting voice of Gillian Bruce. Hi, Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Thank you for surviving the heat waves. Gillian Bruce: Well, we didn't get any heat waves out here in San Francisco, at least not yet, but our summer is coming soon, soon. Mike Gerholdt: Summer and state fair for everybody right now. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Things on a stick. Things are fried. People are getting sunburned. Gillian Bruce: I'm going to have to go to a state fair at some point. Mike Gerholdt: Funnel cakes. That's the one thing. Funnel cakes and Ferris wheels. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I remember as a kid getting on some janky, awesome carnival rides at I think it was the County Fair or something. Mike Gerholdt: Well, there is no safe fair. They're all sketchy. They all make you question the safety. And that's why they're fun. Gillian Bruce: I always remember it was like a spaceship one you go into and it's spins really fast and you're on the wall. And then the centrifugal force pushes you up against the wall. Mike Gerholdt: Oh. Gillian Bruce: So you're kind of like, yeah, I remember it was like, God, I was really young, but I think we went on that about 10,000 times in a row. So we just spent all of our tickets on that one. I'm surprised nobody got sick. Mike Gerholdt: Oh yeah. Well, yeah. I usually rode the little thing where the cars went in the circle. Gillian Bruce: Shocker. You liked the car ride. I'm so surprised. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I couldn't do anything. The steering wheel, you just spun. There's pictures of me as a child looking over at my mom turning this steering wheel that does nothing. Gillian Bruce: Aw. You're like, what is this? Come on. Mike Gerholdt: Come on. Seriously, people get it together. And then two minutes later, you're off. Ugh, waited in line forever. Anyway, nobody wants to hear that. What is going on besides state fairs and things on a stick? Gillian Bruce: Well, Mike, we are getting ready for a couple of big things in Salesforce world. The first of which is relevant for every single person, no matter whether you are coming to an in-person event that we will talk about in a moment. Winter '23 is coming. Believe it or not it's August, but it's time to start thinking about the Winter release. So August 11th is when the pre-release orgs have been available. So get your hands on that. Release Notes coming out on the 17th. So they've been out for a little bit now that you've heard this podcast. And then if you've got sandboxes that you want to move to the new release or keep on the existing ones, that deadline is the 26th of August. So start thinking about Winter '23, we've got some really awesome Winter '23 release stuff happening at Dreamforce, which is coming soon. Mike Gerholdt: Ooh. Gillian Bruce: So stay tuned for more on that. I'm not going to give away all the deets yet. It's a little early, but yeah, Winter '23, here we go. Another release. Mike Gerholdt: Another release and another Dreamforce. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Sorry. I buried the lead there. Yes. Another Dreamforce. A really big deal. Dreamforce. This is our 20th Dreamforce believe it or not. Mike Gerholdt: Right. I haven't been to 20. I bet some of our listeners have been to 20. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: That's a lot. And we have some Dreamforce themed pods coming up. In fact next week after this one. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, we've got a couple of really exciting and special Dreamforce pods coming your way. And even if you're not attending Dreamforce, which I totally understand. Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm. Gillian Bruce: It's still not the easiest thing to travel and all of that. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Gillian Bruce: But good news is this Dreamforce is going to be the most digital Dreamforce that's going to be the first real hybrid in person/digital experience. We learned a lot over the last few years about digital and we keep getting better. So there's going to be a lot of content and a lot of great things that we're working on for Dreamforce that everyone will be able to participate in and get a piece of. So we'll cover a lot of that in these upcoming next episodes. So again, we're just full of teasers today. Mike Gerholdt: We are just full. And to continue the teaser theme, we might actually tell you some of the stuff that we've got planned for Dreamforce in those episodes. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Just saying. Gillian Bruce: And ways that you can come be a part of it either virtually or in person, so. Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm. Or just be jealous, be like that sounds cool. Gillian Bruce: Yes. Yes. Green with envy. Mike Gerholdt: So for the month of August we did some really cool content. I'll start off, literally the note that I wrote was to highlight, Automate This on the blog, because when I go to our website, it's really hard to miss all of the Automate This stuff. Gillian Bruce: And it's amazing. Mike Gerholdt: I know that's why I'm calling it out, because I clicked on it, it was like, I seem to find a link for one of my previous podcasts here. Nope, Automate This. Oh, on this and on this and on this. Seriously, maybe you've been at a state fair and you had too many corn dogs and you took a week off and you missed all the Automate This stuff. Well now is the time to catch back up, because we have a ton of really cool Automate This content on the blog. Jennifer did an amazing job with all of that. Gillian Bruce: Well, yeah, and she does live Automate This on YouTube, which is incredible. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Gillian Bruce: And I think Karmel James was just a guest not too long ago. That's a great episode. Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm. Gillian Bruce: It's incredible content. So hey, whether you're a flownatic or new to the idea of automation, you're going to get something out of this really incredible content that spans both the blog and video and all of the things. Mike Gerholdt: Well, speaking of video, it's like you gave yourself your own segue. Gillian Bruce: Oh, it's natural at this point, Mike. We've been doing this long enough. Yeah, so we had an amazing... Well, the first one came out the end of July, but this whole month of August, we've been releasing How I Solved It videos, specifically made for Salesforce Plus. So it's a long, beloved and amazing series that Jennifer Lee hosts on YouTube as is. And what we wanted to do is kind of bring that magic to Salesforce Plus and expand it beyond kind of our typical admin channels. And we did. So we have five incredible episodes that have been coming out over the last five weeks actually, between Trailblazers solving all different kinds of problems, from user management to marketing automation, to security, to project management. There's five total, so you can check out, I'm going to do some Trailblazer callouts. We got Andrew Russo, we got Madeleine Coutanceau from Brisbane and we've got Karmel James. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I was just thinking we should probably spin up an IMDb page for all of them at some point. Gillian Bruce: I love it. Like an IMDb of the Cloud. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, where's all of Karmel James been on? And you just go to IMDb. It's like, oh, well she's been on all these Salesforce Plus, this other little thing called podcast that a couple people listen to. So pretty cool. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Like a Salesforce IMDb. It's an Internet Movie Database is what it stands for. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Gillian Bruce: It could be Internet Salesforce Database. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Oh, this is why we don't name... Actually it'd be called Internet Salesforce Database for a release. Gillian Bruce: Right. Mike Gerholdt: And then it would be called the Lightning Internet Salesforce Database. Gillian Bruce: It'll be Einstein and it'll be [inaudible]. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Gillian Bruce: Then it'll be... I mean, let's just go through all of the things. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Yep. And then we'll scrap all that and we'll go back to our roots, right? We'll stay true to the core. And we'll call it the Internet Salesforce Movie Database 2. Gillian Bruce: Yes. It's always fun poking at our own [inaudible]. Mike Gerholdt: Well, anyway. So other fun stuff. I recorded a couple podcasts in August. Had to think about the month for a second. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, you were busy. Mike Gerholdt: Geez. Wow. Hey, here we go. So the first one was with Amit Malik just, could you bottle his energy? That's all I wanted the whole time. I'm soaking up all the information he's throwing down and I'm just like, wow, I really would love to pick up your energy. But he's so passionate about teaching admins. A lot of the fundamentals that architects know and love. So we covered that in that podcast. And then Stuart Mills, who's the VP of Trailhead for EMEA got on. He was over attending a community conference and had time to chat. Lot of really cool stuff coming from him. A lot of cool perspective on the admin role, on admin careers, trajectory, where things are going, where he sees things going, skills going. I got him talk about admin skills, Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Good job. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. But the one line that stuck with me was, "grit is a transferable skill." Thought that was a really great line. So check out those two. We'll include links. Yeah. Gillian Bruce: So good. That was such a great interview. You did a great job with that, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: It's a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with both those. Sometimes you're kind of, especially heading into Dreamforce, availability's tough and getting stuff scheduled is tough. And then people really just don't want to talk about deep subjects. But I think we did the pod proud. Gillian Bruce: Sure did. Sure did. Good job. Mike Gerholdt: The last thing that I noted, so I know in the July retro, we gave you a link to filling out a letter to convincing your boss to go to Dreamforce. And if you still need that, if Dreamforce is still open for registration, I've included a link to our blog where we kind of help you fill out that form a little bit. Also it works for other events. If you want to go to a community dreaming event, or a world tour event, which we'll have coming up later this year, I think that form would work as well. Gillian Bruce: 100%. I mean, even if you were having a hard time getting support to go to a lunchtime user group meeting or something. If nothing else, even if you don't use it, it helps you frame why participating in Salesforce focused events is valuable to not only your career but to your company, right? To me, sometimes it takes a while for people to understand that jump or really how to frame it and talk about it. And this is a great tool to help you. Mike Gerholdt: Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Well, Gillian, this is our last Retro before Dreamforce. Gillian Bruce: Oh my gosh. You mean the next time we're going to do a Retro it'll be after Dreamforce? Mike Gerholdt: We'll be retroing Dreamforce. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, we will. Hopefully we'll still have voices. How about that? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It might be a few octaves lower. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. We'll make it through. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Gillian Bruce: And yeah, again, so much great Dreamforce related content coming your way over the next few weeks. And again, if you're not able to join us in person, don't worry. A lot of this will still be very relevant for you. So stay tuned. Mike Gerholdt: So if you want to learn more about all of the things we just talked about in today's episode, please go to admin.salesforce.com to find those links and many more resources. You can stay up to date with us for All Things Admin on social. We are @SalesforceAdmns. No I on Twitter. I am on Twitter @MikeGerholdt and Gillian is @gilliankbruce. So with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode. We'll see you in the Cloud.
Direct download: August_Monthly_Retro_with_Mike_and_Gillian.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 18 August 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Trailblazers Karmel James, Senior Associate at Dupont Circle Solutions, and Andrew Russo, Salesforce Architect at BACA Systems. Join us as we talk about their experiences appearing on How I Solved It for Salesforce+ You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Karmel James and Andrew Russo. How I Solved It on Salesforce+We’ve taken some greatest hits from the How I Solved It series on Youtube, hosted by Jennifer Lee, and spruced it up for Salesforce+. We have five episodes featuring real Salesforce admins explaining how they solved some big business problems in innovative ways. Be sure to tune in on Salesforce+ and don’t miss out. Andrew Russo’s super appWe’ve already had Andrew on the pod, and his story was so cool that we thought it would be worth devoting a How I Solved It episode to highlight how his user management super app works. Users can create a case, make a user story to request new features, and communicate with the admin team, all in Salesforce. Even cooler, at the end of the whole process, Andrew can track how much time his team has spent on a case versus how much time the solution they developed has saved the business. All of this is laid out in a way that you can learn from to implement in your org, and there’s a blog post to help document what’s covered. “Now with How I Solved It,” Andrew says, “each one of the episodes has been actual stuff that you can go implement to bring and deliver value to your company.” How Karmel James automated a marketing problem“As a marketing champion, I really wanted to showcase the fact that marketers also have issues in Salesforce,” Karmel says. Her solution shows how you can use Salesforce to automate what happens around someone unsubscribing from a mailing list. You want to know what they’re unsubscribing from, maybe make sure that information gets to someone else on their team, and you may even want to set up a call with the customer to make sure there’s still follow through. In order to go about solving this problem, Karmel uses Flow, cases, task records, and Groups to send out notifications, showing how these Salesforce tools can combine like Voltron. Karmel and company have been having a blast hosting watch parties for each new episodes, so make sure to follow the link below to join in the fun. Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!Full show transcript Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I'm your host today Gillian Bruce and we are going to talk about one of the most fun projects I've had the opportunity to work on this year. The How I Solved It series that we just premiered on Salesforce+ a few weeks ago. Now, I hope that a lot of you are already familiar with How I Solved It. It's an amazing YouTube series that Jennifer Lee has been hosting on YouTube for the last almost year of real-life admins showing how they solve problems in Salesforce. Showing you their demos, diving into the org and what we did is we kind of spruced it up a bit, shined it up and created five episodes specifically for Salesforce+. Which is our streaming service at Salesforce, and created a mini-series basically of the How I Solved It specifically for Salesforce+ and featuring some incredible trailblazers and we solve all kinds of different problems. We also focus on skills from the Salesforce Admins Skills Kit. Andrew Russo: Thanks for having me back. Gillian Bruce: Well, I had you back because we're going to talk about something pretty fun that you and I got to work on together and that is How I Solved It on Salesforce+. Andrew, talk to me a little bit about what we did in your episode. Andrew Russo: Yeah. So in my episode, actually we did it based on what we have in our production environment for the company I work for and we're able to track the time spent on cases. So we actually are able to have the users submit cases through a flow for their internal request. Whether it's adding a field, help with a report, anything like that they can submit it through a case. We get the case, we're able to work on it. When they want a new feature like a field getting added, we're able to send an email or a message right back on the case to them and they can actually then go fill out and create a user story right inside of Salesforce. It gives them the training of, hey what a user story is and all of that kind of stuff right in Salesforce so they don't have to actually leave where they're working. Then once they're able to do that, we can actually go and track the process of the actual case. Gillian Bruce: I love it. Well, yeah clearly I liked it because I was like, "Hey, let's feature it in How I Solved It." So let's talk a little bit, get a little kind of behind the scenes info here to our listeners. Andrew, what was it like being part of filming How I solved It for Salesforce+? Andrew Russo: Honestly, it was kind of a crazy thing. So it was like, "Hey, can you do it?" And I was like, "Yeah. Why not? Let's do it it sounds fun." But overall, it really wasn't a crazy ask do because it's not like I made up some giant process to just go do and I spent hours building it. I took it from production environment, packaged it, put it into a demo org and then I just had to create some test data. Because I can't show our company's data obviously to the world, so put some test data in and that was it. So from the standpoint of building out it really wasn't bad, it's not like it was some crazy made up scenario. The flows were straight out of our production environment and honestly it was a lot of fun to get to share it, and there was a lot of people. I kept seeing the same question come up of, "How do we manage user stuff? Do we use an email?" Gillian Bruce: That's awesome. Well, see I love that. See, that's the thing about How I Solved It Andrew, right? Is we're taking actual things that you and other people have done and then sharing that with everyone to help everybody else figure out, "Hey, maybe there's something in there that I can replicate or I can use or an idea I can apply." So, that's awesome. Now, I know you say it wasn't that bad but I know we asked a lot of you in terms of filming and the process and all that. Were there any moments that surprised you during that whole process? Andrew Russo: Yeah. Originally it was like, "Okay, well there'll be people filming and stuff." And I was like, "Okay, this'll be..." And then when they show up at your door at work, and people are all... I just booked a conference room and I was like, "Okay, we're going to film this. It'll be easy." They show up with multiple carts rolling in with camera equipment, lighting stuff and it's like, "Okay, this is not just someone brings a better camera than a webcam and shows up." It was production quality filming of it which was kind of cool but also not what I exactly expected with it. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. We had a whole film crew coming in and film you, so that was good. I remember also there were some really funny moments while we were filming that didn't make it into the episode, but I think we're going to have a blooper reel coming out at some point. Do you remember what I'm talking about? Andrew Russo: Yeah. For a second I'm like what is she talking... And then yeah, we had window washers, we had the pest control people show up behind us in the window. I don't know if stuff like that happened with anyone else when they were filming this stuff. But it was just one after the next thing that happened in the background, it was just like, "Don't look at it. Just keep looking at the camera." Gillian Bruce: This is what happens when you film something live, you just never know what's going to be happening around you. I also remember that you had a little fun with the spinny chair. Andrew Russo: Oh, we love spinny chairs. Gillian Bruce: Yes. When we're filming things we like you not to spin around in a chair. So anyone who's about to film something don't sit in a spinny chair because you're going to want to spin. Andrew Russo: Yeah. But then at the end the spinny chair made it back for the promo stuff. We brought the spinny chair back. Gillian Bruce: It's good for gifts. Yeah. Andrew Russo: Having a chair that you can't move in, they're very important I've learned. Gillian Bruce: Good for gifts. So Andrew, I also wanted to talk to you because this is a series that we launched a few weeks ago. With this week, we actually had Tony's episode go live and we've got one more episode coming next week. But I would love for you to talk to me a little bit about these amazing watch parties. So your episode was first, talk to me about how you all decided to put together a watch party for the premiere. Andrew Russo: So to be completely honest I wasn't planning on watching mine, I was actually just not going to watch it. Multiple people said like, okay we need to watch part of your stuff up to the day before on the Tuesday. It was like, okay well you need to watch it and I was adamantly not going to watch mine. Because I was like no, and then on Wednesday morning Tony was like, "You need a watch party." So I was like, you know what? Okay we're doing it. So I think this started at 8:00 AM where we're doing a watch party and then from that point to when it went live I think we did the watch party at 3:00 PM in the afternoon. We ended up somehow 30 people I think showed up for the first one, which was kind of crazy to get 30 people in a matter of four hours signed up and going to show up to the watch party. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I mean, it's a lot to take in seeing yourself on the screen and then also, oh right there's all these other things. So yes, you should totally rewatch it. Well, that's awesome. I mean, Andrew seriously thank you for being a part of How I Solved It. Now, if you were to explain How I Solved It to somebody who hasn't seen it yet what would you say? Andrew Russo: It's like the first technical show. So if you go on Salesforce+ there's a lot of kind storytelling, people's pass up. What there isn't right now before this going back two months ago, it wasn't technical stuff. Stuff that you could watch and then go do in your org, bring back value to your company, it wasn't there before. But now with How I Solved It, each one of the episodes we've seen so far including Tony's this week has been actual stuff that you can go implement and bring value and deliver value to the company which is kind of amazing. So it's really the start I think of something and I'm hopeful that there's going to be more How I Solved It on Salesforce+ in the future to really bring that hands on. Okay, I can watch it. Okay, there's a blog that's also there showing kind of still image of hey here's what was in there and you can go build it out and then be creative with it. Because with flows and everything, pretty much all of them have had flows other than Tony's. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, well that's great. Thank you, I love that glowing endorsement for How I Solved It. We'll definitely be doing more and also as a reminder for everyone listening, How I Solved It exists on YouTube already. Jen Lee is doing an amazing job hosting How I Solved It for almost the past year and so this really was an adaptation of that for Salesforce+. So check there's lots more How I Solved It, but yes we're going to be working on getting more kind of technical how to great content on Salesforce+ soon. So thanks again Andrew so much for participating and for being an awesome first guest on the Salesforce+ version of How I Solved It and hey we got one more watch party to go. Right? Andrew Russo: We've got one more to go and then we've got Dreamforce in... I think what is it? Less than 40 days. Gillian Bruce: It's 30 something days. Yeah. Andrew Russo: I'm excited. Gillian Bruce: That's awesome. Andrew Russo: It's going to be a crazy next month. Gillian Bruce: It's Dreamforce season is what they say, right? It's Salesforce all the things right now. Andrew Russo: Salesforce as a lifestyle. Gillian Bruce: There you go. S-A-A-L. Karmel James: Capital S, capital L, lowercase As, SaaL. Gillian Bruce: Well with that, Andrew thank you so much. All right. Well, you just heard from Andrew Russo who is one of the amazing trailblazers we featured in the How I Solved It series, where he showed his amazing user management solution. Definitely check it out. But we've got another trailblazer who was featured in one of the episodes Karmel James, who is going to join us and talk a little bit more about her specific solution she shared and her experience being part of How I Solved It. So without further ado welcome Karmel back to the podcast. Karmel, welcome back to the podcast. Karmel James: Thank you, Gillian. I'm so happy to be here for my now second time. Gillian Bruce: Hey, when we find good amazing guests we like to have them back and Karmel, can you tell us a little bit about your episode and what you showed? What problem did you solve? Karmel James: Yeah. Well of course Gillian, I solved a data management problem. So as a marketing champion I really wanted to showcase the fact that marketers also have issues in Salesforce and say, what happens when someone unsubscribes to a newsletter? I think it's really critical that if you're going to have a Salesforce org that tracks that. You want to know if someone's unsubscribing from something really key that you actually would like them to get that information and be subscribed and know what's happening in your org. So we talked about what happens after someone decides to unsubscribe and then go through a whole process where someone else on another team gets that notification. They get to have a call with that customer and then they get to resolve that case because of it. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I mean it was a whole combination of different features that you kind of used to solve that. Can you just give us a highlight of some of the things you used? Karmel James: Yes. Well, I started with flow because flow is the biggest thing. It's the new transition and if you haven't started thinking about it you should absolutely do that. By all means, go watch some of the Automate This episodes and obviously How I Solved It episodes. We're always talking about flow I think. But I used flow, I used cases to track information, I used task records and I even used groups to send notifications to. Gillian Bruce: I love it. Yeah, it was a really fun demo. A really great problem that you solved and thank you for being a part of it. Now, Karmel this was the first time you've really done a big video thing with us at Salesforce. Let's pull back the curtain a little bit, give some people some backstage insider intel. What was it like to film this project with me? Karmel James: Well, it started out as a shock when I learned that I was going to have to let a camera crew into my life and for those who don't know I'm currently on a nomadic adventure right now. So I don't have a home and at the time I couldn't go to my office, it was going to be too noisy. So I actually had to find and rent an office to allow a camera crew to record this. So it was pretty cool because you're like, okay this is cool, you're like it's just maybe a camera and then you watch them bring in all of these boxes and they set up a light and then there's a teleprompter and you're like, "No we're really doing this. Okay, cool. Yeah, no, I can hear you guys. You can hear me. This is awesome. Here's the mic. Yeah, no, we're good. Okay." So as much as I'd like to say it had action and camera, the whole, it was just truly amazing. There's nothing like it. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I mean, you kind of feel like you're on TV really, right? It's like a whole nother level. It's a little different than just looking into the webcam. Karmel James: Yes, it is a full TV production. Gillian Bruce: Okay. So aside from seeing many, many, many boxes come into this amazing office that you rented. Any part of the process in putting together the content or anything that kind of surprised you? Karmel James: No. It really felt like I was just being an admin and just having to showcase one of the solutions that I built, right? Getting a dev org to go ahead and build something out, that's what I do every single day. So it was super easy to say let me build out this flow, let me test it and if you go back and watch my episode my flow says version nine because that's true. I had to go through multiple versions of testing and making sure that what I was about to show on camera actually worked. So it was super easy to just dive in and be like, cool here you go. Here's my flow. Here are the records that get created. Here's the automation that's going to fire the chatter notification that's going to come up. It was every day. The only difference was there's a teleprompter in front of me. Gillian Bruce: Right. Because we had to fit everything into 10 minutes, so we had to keep it concise and that's great. I mean, Karmel this is exactly why we had you, we had Andrew, we had Tony, we had Madeline and we have Sarah coming next week. Sneak peek to listeners. Because these are problems that you are already solving, you weren't making this up specifically for something we had specifically asked you to do. So I think that's really great and I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with our audience. One other thing I wanted to talk about Karmel and that's pretty fun. So we have one more episode coming out, as I said sneak peek Sarah Pilzer is going to be featured in next week's episode. It's the last of five that we're featuring on Salesforce+. Our team discovered at Salesforce that you all, the amazing guests who were featured in these episodes were hosting watch parties for the premiere of your new episodes. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Karmel James: Yes. So those watch parties were the culmination of a really great meeting at one of the dreaming events. It's just Tony and Andrew and I, and we're having a great time Midwest dreaming and we're just talking about how we're all really excited for these episodes to come out, right? We're jazzed because none of us have seen anything that we've done. All we have is our own individual experiences in front of the camera. So Andrew's like, "Oh my gosh, should we do a watch party?" And we're like, "Yeah, let's do it." So we just were like we can get the community involved in this. We can absolutely just live stream it for ourselves and all watch it together and oh my gosh, having all of these people show up to watch your episode with you is a little scary. Because you're like, "Oh my God that's where I fumbled. Oh man, I had to do that four times. If I have to repeat that's How I Solved It. Oh my God, I'm so afraid. Please don't make me watch this in front of people." Gillian Bruce: But you all did it to yourself. Karmel James: We did, we absolutely did and now we get Tony's watch party and Sarah's watch party it's just rolling. So it's just the best time, I don't even know what to say other than we're just having fun with it. Gillian Bruce: Well, what's so great is I've been able to jump in on the watch parties and just seeing how many people from all different parts of the community have been a part of that. So, I mean the watch party that we did for your episode was last week. There was a woman who jumped on who's like, "Oh, I'm really brand new to the Salesforce ecosystem and this video just totally made sense to me. I don't know the technology, I don't know the terms. But to see a real problem getting solved by someone who is realistic to me and I can relate to and then seeing the payoff and really walking through the process in a fun way that's easy to consume." So that made me feel really good. Because I mean, this is the work that you all have done so we're just highlighting it. So yeah, it's great. So everyone listening if you want to join in on the last watch party, which will be for Sarah Pilzer's episode coming up on Wednesday. Karmel James: Oh yes. Tony right now is telling me I can't believe that that's the picture that you used and I'm like but it's a beautiful picture of you. Yes, we are going to embarrass you as we embarrassed all of ourselves. We did this to ourselves like you said. But I will say those watch parties are absolutely incredible to see the entire community come together and have that exact reaction of I didn't know that this was possible. Can I come ask you questions? Do you mind if I do that? And I can say for myself and probably for Andrew too we absolutely do not mind if you come ask us questions. That's why we agreed to be part of this. We are more than happy to help other people in the community, especially if you're struggling with flow. If you're struggling to understand a Salesforce concept, we want you to feel supported and we want you to know that there are other people out there who have these same struggles, who know what you're going through and we are live people. Gillian Bruce: Steve Mo will be so happy that he's been honored in this podcast. Karmel James: I hope so. Because he has the biggest thread of all of us in the community of just answering every single question. Gillian Bruce: Well #belikestevemo right? Karmel James: Yes. Gillian Bruce: Anyway, Karmel seriously thank you so much. You were fabulous in your episode and I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and expertise. Once we did this with you, I know that you also were just part of Automate This, which is another amazing series that Jen Lee does on YouTube. So I'll put a link in the show notes so people can check out that episode as well and looking forward to all the other great content that you're going to continue to generate. So thank you. Karmel James: Oh, thank you Gillian. This has been the most amazing thing and I'm just so honored to be part of the process and I look forward to seeing who the next trailblazer is on more episodes later. Gillian Bruce: I love it calling out for more trailblazers. All right, thank you so much Karmel. Karmel James: Thanks Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Thank you to both Andrew and Karmel and all of our guests that we featured on How I Solved It, not just for the Salesforce+ series. But for the YouTube series as well and huge shout out to Jen Lee who is the host of our YouTube version. She also hosts Automate This, which is another amazing actual live YouTube session where you see how admins are solving real problems. If you haven't watched this series, seriously go to Salesforce+ check out How I Solved It. I want to know what you think as you heard from Andrew and Karmel. If you've got questions and you want to ask more about what they showed please reach out to them. They're super easy to access and I guarantee that our other guests would also be more than happy to answer questions that you have about anything you saw in their episodes. So check out the show notes I've got links for everything in there and if you want to join the watch party for the final episode of this five part series that we're airing on Salesforce+ stay tuned to @salesforceadmns on Twitter.
|
Thu, 11 August 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Stuart Mills, VP Trailhead EMEA and Ecosystems at Salesforce.
Join us as we talk about why Admins are so important, future roles and career paths, as well as the best way to keep learning.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Stuart Mills. Essential Habits for Admin Success is now on TrailheadThat's right, the webinar/trailhead live/presentation you have all loved and listened to is now a learning module on Trailhead, so head on over and be one of the first admins to get the new Essential Habits Trailhead Badge. Why tech is only as valuable as the people behind itLike a lot of people we talk to on the pod, Stuart got his start as an accidental admin. “We found Salesforce as a colorful version of a CRM technology,” he says, “ever since then it’s been this thing that’s grown with me—I’ve grown with it and it’s grown on its own.” He was actually originally an aeronautical engineer, and Salesforce stuck out as a platform where he could understand what he was looking at and solve his business’s needs.
Stuart sees the Admin role as critical for any organization that wants to succeed with Salesforce. “Understanding how you administer and use a technology like Salesforce is how it has value,” he says, “tech is only as valuable as the human solutions it solves for.” The power skills are transferable skillsA truth in this industry is that many of the most important jobs people will do in the future don’t exist yet. For example, for many of you reading this today, the Salesforce Admin role probably didn’t exist when you graduated from college.
Stuart points out that the growth in technologies like AI is going to necessitate people learning new things and taking on new roles that they can’t even imagine, and so that means you need to focus on the “Power Skills” you bring with you to into that new career path or new function. Transferable skills won’t necessarily show up in your badges and certifications, but they’re just as important to show as anything else on your resume. Different approaches to learningIn his role as leading Trailhead Academy EMEA, Stuart gets to see so many different people go through their learning experiences and he has a few observations. While it’s true that almost everyone at one point or another needs a teacher, you also need a peer. Someone to push you and help you engage with problems and with whom you can grow together.
Of course, the more diverse your peer group the stronger you are for it, and one of the biggest leaps they’ve taken forward in recent years is improving the accessibility of Trailhead. One of the guiding principles they stick to is the idea of “Ethical by Design,” meaning that accessibility is deeply thought about from the ground up. As Stuart puts it, “you can’t be what you can’t see.”
Podcast swag Learn more:
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Direct download: Growing_your_Admin_Role_with_Stuart_Mills.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 4 August 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Amit Malik, Senior Manager, Global Architect Program. Join us as we talk about the Architect courses on Trailhead and why all Admins should think about taking them. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Amit Malik. Why Admins are already ArchitectingWe wanted to bring Amit on the pod because he’s the only Architect Trailhead Instructor, and we wanted to find out more about what’s on offer and if they make sense for Admins. One thing he loves about his current role is that he can see “how Administrators, Developers, and Architects are having a similar thought process in terms of how to see Salesforce from different perspectives and how we can add value by sharing the perspective of different personas with each other and expand our mind horizons,” he says. One message he has for Admins out there is that a lot of the work you’re doing is already giving you the context to upskill into an Architect role, or otherwise expand your knowledge of the Salesforce ecosystem as a whole. If you already know Marketing Cloud, it’s a lot easier to learn Experience Cloud, for example. As Amit puts it, you can look to grow both horizontally (between products) and vertically (in terms of depth of knowledge on a platform) as you advance your career. The three-step learning processWhen you’re looking to learn something new, Amit encourages you to think about it as a three-step process:
Knowledge comes when you read about something, watch a video about it, hear about it at a conference, etc. Experience is applying that knowledge to specific situations in a real-world setting. Finally, exposure comes from conversations with experienced people who may have gained a completely different perspective than they had when they started. It’s that three-dimensional view you get from understanding how something works in conjunction with everything else. Architect courses on TrailheadAmit wants you to know that Architect courses aren’t just for Architects. “We all are Salesforce professionals,” he says, “Administrators, Developers, Solution Architects, Technical Architects: we all are Salesforce professionals.” If you’re discussing integration in your meetings, or large data volume, or single sign-on—anything that involves multiple Salesforce products talking together—you have a lot to gain sitting in on an Architect course or two. The 101 course is there to provide a broad, big-picture overview of what being an Architect is all about. As Amit puts it, the goal is to point you in the direction of what there is to learn about so you can fill in the details in whatever way is most helpful to you. “The challenge of the learner is that they don’t know where to start,” he says, “the moment that they know where to start they can keep on learning faster than I can teach them.” From there, the next level courses are more specialized, after you’ve completed some basic Architect certifications. “Join these courses to discover yourself so you can make the right decision for your career,” he says, “if you don’t know we will help you see the path because we’ve already walked through these journeys.”
Podcast swag Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Direct download: Architect_Courses_for_Admins_with_Amit_Malik.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 28 July 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for July.
Join us as we talk about the latest and the greatest Salesforce content from July and the wide variety of midwest-specific treats we tried at Midwest Dreamin.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro. Live Events
Dreamforce is just around the corner, but we’ve been busy visiting in-person events. We recently stopped by Midwest Dreamin and WITness Sucess, where Mike introduced Gillian to the wonders of puppy chow and scotcheroos. We’re also including a link to a letter that can help you convince your boss to help you get to Dreamforce.
Blog highlights from JulyCheryl Feldman’s comprehensive guide on the User Access and Permissions Assistant was a standout post from July. There’s a lot of cool features to play around with, particularly with reports, so make sure to take a look.
Video highlights from JulyWe’re really excited to relaunch How I Solved It on Salesforce+. Jennifer Lee and Marc Baizman team up to solve real Admins’ real problems. The first episode with Andrew Russo is up now, but keep a close eye as more are on the way soon.
Podcast highlights from JulyWhile we’ve had some really cool people on the pod over the years this month we had our first Olympic medalist, Christine Magnuson. She’s now a Solution Engineering Manager at Salesforce, and
Podcast swag
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast in the July monthly retro for 2022. I'm your host, Mike Gerholdt. And in this episode, we'll review the top product, community and careers content for the month of July. Imagine that. To help me do that is the very familiar and keynoting voice of Gillian Bruce. Hi Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Hello there, Mike. Nice to be here with you. Mike Gerholdt: It's good to be back on a pod with you. It's been a month. Gillian Bruce: It's been a month. It's been a busy month. Mike Gerholdt: Yes. Quite a few things that we have done and it's been hot all over the world. Just hot everywhere. Gillian Bruce: Except for where I am. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Gillian Bruce: I am still wearing a sweatshirt. Mike Gerholdt: Don't tell anybody. Gillian Bruce: Our heat has been on for the last couple weeks. Mike Gerholdt: Oh my God. Gillian Bruce: Because if any of you don't know this, for most of San Francisco, June/July is some of our colder months because we are covered in fog and we don't get to see the sun. So it's about 55 to 60 degrees. It's foggy. So if you want to break from the sun and the heat, come on over to San Francisco. Mike Gerholdt: People are going to be flocking to San Francisco now. Gillian Bruce: But you got to hurry because it's about to change. Our summer starts the end of August and goes through November. Then we get sunshine and gorgeous weather, but it never gets 100 degrees. That's just craziness. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. So it's going to be gorgeous weather for Dreamforce, which we'll talk about later. Teaser. Gillian Bruce: Sure is. Mike Gerholdt: But let's talk about blog content. So we had some really cool, again, ton of blog posts that went out this month. But the one that I want to highlight is the one that Cheryl Feldman wrote on Analyze, Report and Manage Permissions with User Access and Permission Assistant. Not a short title. Gillian Bruce: But you're permitted to use as many words as you'd like in your title. Mike Gerholdt: Yes, at some point. But this is really cool. So user access and permission assistant. She details everything that basically admins have been wanting for, I don't even know how long. She even tells a story of when I first joined Salesforce almost a year ago and it took on permission sets, and how do you work with the permission assistant and what can you do with it? The coolest thing down is the third one, report by user permission sets and permission set groups to understand who has what. If you need a moment to sit down, I completely understand. Gillian Bruce: Game changer. Mike Gerholdt: I got goosebumps just reading that sentence. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, if you're an admin and you don't use this, I don't know what to say. Mike Gerholdt: Well, your days are very long, that's what I would say, while you troubleshoot things. So yeah, this is really cool. There's also a video. And then of course, a link to the app exchange listing. Get all over this because just to sound old, it was a lot different when I was an admin. You had profiles and page layouts and you didn't have to troubleshoot things. We didn't have the tools to be as granular as you can now, and it's just amazing. But with that you need the ability to report on stuff and this is so cool. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. The technology's come far long ways since your old, early admin days. Mike Gerholdt: Since back in the day. I walked uphill both ways in the snow just to do a page layout. Gillian Bruce: Barefoot. Mike Gerholdt: Barefoot. Gillian Bruce: Well, Mike, we also have some pretty incredible video content. You mentioned a video in the last post, but we have some videos that I am very fond of and feel so excited to release out on the wild, that have just been released, or at least the first episode has been released this month. That is How I Solved It on Salesforce. Plus we have taken the incredible show that Marc Baizman and then Jennifer Lee have been doing with admins showing how they've solved real actual problems in their orgs. We gave it a little extra production love and shined it up and put it on Salesforce+, which is our free online streaming platform. It's really exciting. Mike Gerholdt: It shows. You're now a streaming star, Gillian. You could watch stuff on Hulu and Netflix. Gillian Bruce: I got to say, I feel really special that I'm on the same platform as one of my idols, Kara Swisher. So I feel special about that because they do clips from Kara Swisher's podcast that she does with Scott Galloway, Pivot, on the Salesforce+. So the fact that I get to be a part of the same platform that she is, makes me really excited. Mike Gerholdt: Kara Swisher, future guest of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Gillian Bruce: I am working podcast all my angles there to try and make that happen. So we're just going to put that out there. Kara, we want you on the podcast. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Because Kara, listen, so many people do. So you could spend the weekend and watch some Stranger Things or How I Solved It on Salesforce+. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. It's not a huge time commitment. The last few episodes of Stranger things, which I still haven't watched because there's an hour and then a two hour episode. Mike Gerholdt: Seriously? That's like a plane ride. Gillian Bruce: By the time I get the kids to bed, I have about 30 minutes before I fall asleep. So it's really tough. It's tough. Mike Gerholdt: But you could watch your Salesforce+ video in those 30 minutes. Gillian Bruce: Sure could, because I think they're 10 minutes-ish, if that. Mike Gerholdt: They're consumable. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. There are really actual hands-on tips that you can start using yourself that you can play with, with your own Dev org or Sandbox. Every single one of these episodes, you're going to be able to get something very tangible that you can put to use. Mike Gerholdt: Your own non-production org. Gillian Bruce: Yes. Don't do it in production. Mike Gerholdt: No. We did a bunch of podcasts, July was fun for pods. But one that stood out, Gillian, I actually listened to this on the way to a car show, so I'm a listener of our own podcast. But you did this great interview with Christine Magnuson. Can you tell us about it? Gillian Bruce: Okay. Well, it was really exciting because she's not only the first Olympian that I've talked to, but the first two time silver medalist Olympian. She competed in Rio and Beijing and she's a swimmer, and now she is got an amazing career. She's a manager of solution engineers here at Salesforce, which means she manages a very technical team. So I wanted to get Christine on the podcast because as you'll listen to her episode, if you have not, go listen to it as soon as you're done with this episode, because- Mike Gerholdt: It's really good. Gillian Bruce: It's so good. She talks about the idea of transferable skills. How she really evaluated how she could take the skills that she had as an Olympic athlete and transfer those into another career. How she really had a very detailed strategy behind that. She explains the story. Then she also talks about in her role, she works with a lot of admins. So what things she has seen that makes a very successful admin, and how you get your admin team. Because again, she comes at it from a solutions engineer perspective. So she has seen a lot. In fact, her team supports the largest Salesforce implementation that exists. So they have a lot of knowledge. Anyway, listen to Christine's episode. It's awesome. It's an uplifting one. It'll put you in a good mood for the rest of the day. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Oh, for sure. There were so many things like, I was driving, I wanted to take notes. Gillian Bruce: Maybe you can listen to it again. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Absolutely. Then just to round out our discussion of, I feel like it's one of the last few months of summer, but we have Dreamforce coming up. We also have some community events that are happening. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike, you and I and Jennifer Lee actually got to go to a community event, I guess it was a duo community event this month, Midwest Dreamin and WITness Success. I got to go because, well, you were the MC of the whole event. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I popped up on the stage for a few highlights and Midwest-isms Midwest Dreamin. Gillian Bruce: Oh, yeah. Actually, can you share one of those Midwest-isms because they're pretty amazing. Mike Gerholdt: So people in the Midwest use weird terms, one of them is op. Usually we say that as an excuse me or oh, I'm sorry, op. And I op a ton. Man, you go grocery shopping with me because the cart always leaves the aisle before and you're going to run in somebody, op I'm sorry. But so I said, what if we took a whole bunch of Midwest terms and made them into Salesforce features. One of them is op, which I said is clearly a validation rule. Because if Salesforce could be very Midwestern it wouldn't fire the validation rule, it would just say, op. I believe that was one of them. I did put it out there. So for those of you that live in the Midwest or visited the Midwest, you know we like to eat puppy chow, which is actually Chex Mix covered in chocolate with confectioner's sugar all over it. Gillian, you and I kicked around what that feature would be. Gillian Bruce: It's so uniquely a Midwest thing. I remember growing up as a kid, occasionally some kid would bring some to school and I'd be like, what is this magical craziness? Mike Gerholdt: I know. Yeah. You go to our gas stations, everywhere. You walk into a Casey's and there're cups of puppy chow for you to buy right by the register, along with with scotcheroos. I don't feel like scotcheroos are very Midwestern. Gillian Bruce: I have no idea what that is. So it's clearly- Mike Gerholdt: Oh, a scotcheroo is basically like a rice crispy treat, but made with a lot of butter scotch and then covered in chocolate. Gillian Bruce: Oh. So it's like a healthier rice crispy treat. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: I'm kidding. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. But it's so good. Gillian Bruce: It sounds delicious. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It's so good. Gillian Bruce: Okay. All right. Yeah. So those were great and there were lots more. So if you were there, you had lot more. Mike Gerholdt: Or check Twitter for some people tweet them out, hot dish. What do you think that is as a feature? It was fun. Little time filler before Gillian gets up on stage and wows the crowd with admin skills. I think a few people even tweet about the heels you were in. Gillian Bruce: Well you always got to have a good pair of heels to deliver a talk properly, at least for me. Maybe not the same for you, Mike. But yeah, I had the honor of giving a keynote and it was really great to get back up on stage in front of actual people. It was exhilarating to do it, and it felt really fun to share very important content about skills and transferable skills and how to really discover your skills, hone them, and then find ways to use them to help make you shine. So, really amazing experience. Then Jennifer Lee stayed for WITness Success and presented a session about Flow, which I also saw all kinds of Twitter love for. Mike Gerholdt: I agree. To be honest with you, I showed up, I wore a mask for a while. Gillian Bruce: So did I, until I got on stage. Mike Gerholdt: So we're past that now. Yeah. There were times that I actually checked out of some areas because I'm not too comfortable with this many people. That's okay, it's up to you. But it was great. So many people that I hadn't seen in person in forever. Gillian Bruce: It felt good. Mike Gerholdt: You mentioned Dreamforce. I will include a link in the show notes to the convince your boss letter, which is on the homepage. If you haven't registered for this little event that we're doing in September. I have actually used versions of this letter when I was a customer, rewrote it, changed some things around. I will say it's effective. It's super easy to customize. It'll be great. We're going to have session content up, so you can start talking to your boss about the sessions you're going to go to and the keynotes you're going to see. There's that unspoken just ability to connect with people that doesn't happen anywhere else. You're sitting in a session and you're both there to learn Flow or something, next thing you know, you leave with a new best friend that helps you solve that problem. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. It's people that you never would've probably connected with, either virtually or in your own local community. Also, it's just going to be great. We're going to have so much fun at Dreamforce. We talk about it being the ultimate family reunion and gosh, aren't we all ready for that. So it's going to be really magical, really fun. I know our team is planning all kinds of really fun, exciting things for admins. Mike Gerholdt: A few things in the works. Gillian Bruce: Just a few. Mike Gerholdt: Stay tuned. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Can't tell you anything yet. It's top secret. Mike Gerholdt: Nope. Not yet. Gillian, you said it's going to be nice weather because it'll be past the cold. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. San Francisco summer is late August through early November. I grew up here and every year I forget, and then I'm like, all right, we're going to have summer. It's just three months later than everybody else. Mike Gerholdt: It just comes at a different time. Good. Gillian Bruce: Late bloomers out here on the west coast. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. All right. Well, if you want to learn more about all things we talked about in today's episode, please go to admin.salesforce.com to find those links and many more resources. You can stay up to date with us on social for all things admins. We are @Salesforceadmns, no I, on Twitter. Of course, Gillian is on Twitter. She is @GillianKBruce, and I am @MikeGerholdt. Give us a follow. You can read about puppy chow or other Midwest-isms, more so on my Twitter feed. But with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode. We'll see you in the cloud. Gillian Bruce: Roar. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: Is that the first thing that's going to be on the recording, roar? Mike Gerholdt: I don't know if that's a lion or is that a cat? Gillian Bruce: It's like a lion cub.
Direct download: July_Monthly_Retro_with_Mike_and_Gillian_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 28 July 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for July.
Join us as we talk about the latest and the greatest Salesforce content from July and the wide variety of midwest-specific treats we tried at Midwest Dreamin.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro. Live Events
Dreamforce is just around the corner, but we’ve been busy visiting in-person events. We recently stopped by Midwest Dreamin and WITness Sucess, where Mike introduced Gillian to the wonders of puppy chow and scotcheroos. We’re also including a link to a letter that can help you convince your boss to help you get to Dreamforce.
Blog highlights from JulyCheryl Feldman’s comprehensive guide on the User Access and Permissions Assistant was a standout post from July. There’s a lot of cool features to play around with, particularly with reports, so make sure to take a look.
Video highlights from JulyWe’re really excited to relaunch How I Solved It on Salesforce+. Jennifer Lee and Marc Baizman team up to solve real Admins’ real problems. The first episode with Andrew Russo is up now, but keep a close eye as more are on the way soon.
Podcast highlights from JulyWhile we’ve had some really cool people on the pod over the years this month we had our first Olympic medalist, Christine Magnuson. She’s now a Solution Engineering Manager at Salesforce, and
Podcast swag
Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast in the July monthly retro for 2022. I'm your host, Mike Gerholdt. And in this episode, we'll review the top product, community and careers content for the month of July. Imagine that. To help me do that is the very familiar and keynoting voice of Gillian Bruce. Hi Gillian. Gillian Bruce: Hello there, Mike. Nice to be here with you. Mike Gerholdt: It's good to be back on a pod with you. It's been a month. Gillian Bruce: It's been a month. It's been a busy month. Mike Gerholdt: Yes. Quite a few things that we have done and it's been hot all over the world. Just hot everywhere. Gillian Bruce: Except for where I am. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Gillian Bruce: I am still wearing a sweatshirt. Mike Gerholdt: Don't tell anybody. Gillian Bruce: Our heat has been on for the last couple weeks. Mike Gerholdt: Oh my God. Gillian Bruce: Because if any of you don't know this, for most of San Francisco, June/July is some of our colder months because we are covered in fog and we don't get to see the sun. So it's about 55 to 60 degrees. It's foggy. So if you want to break from the sun and the heat, come on over to San Francisco. Mike Gerholdt: People are going to be flocking to San Francisco now. Gillian Bruce: But you got to hurry because it's about to change. Our summer starts the end of August and goes through November. Then we get sunshine and gorgeous weather, but it never gets 100 degrees. That's just craziness. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. So it's going to be gorgeous weather for Dreamforce, which we'll talk about later. Teaser. Gillian Bruce: Sure is. Mike Gerholdt: But let's talk about blog content. So we had some really cool, again, ton of blog posts that went out this month. But the one that I want to highlight is the one that Cheryl Feldman wrote on Analyze, Report and Manage Permissions with User Access and Permission Assistant. Not a short title. Gillian Bruce: But you're permitted to use as many words as you'd like in your title. Mike Gerholdt: Yes, at some point. But this is really cool. So user access and permission assistant. She details everything that basically admins have been wanting for, I don't even know how long. She even tells a story of when I first joined Salesforce almost a year ago and it took on permission sets, and how do you work with the permission assistant and what can you do with it? The coolest thing down is the third one, report by user permission sets and permission set groups to understand who has what. If you need a moment to sit down, I completely understand. Gillian Bruce: Game changer. Mike Gerholdt: I got goosebumps just reading that sentence. Gillian Bruce: Yeah, if you're an admin and you don't use this, I don't know what to say. Mike Gerholdt: Well, your days are very long, that's what I would say, while you troubleshoot things. So yeah, this is really cool. There's also a video. And then of course, a link to the app exchange listing. Get all over this because just to sound old, it was a lot different when I was an admin. You had profiles and page layouts and you didn't have to troubleshoot things. We didn't have the tools to be as granular as you can now, and it's just amazing. But with that you need the ability to report on stuff and this is so cool. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. The technology's come far long ways since your old, early admin days. Mike Gerholdt: Since back in the day. I walked uphill both ways in the snow just to do a page layout. Gillian Bruce: Barefoot. Mike Gerholdt: Barefoot. Gillian Bruce: Well, Mike, we also have some pretty incredible video content. You mentioned a video in the last post, but we have some videos that I am very fond of and feel so excited to release out on the wild, that have just been released, or at least the first episode has been released this month. That is How I Solved It on Salesforce. Plus we have taken the incredible show that Marc Baizman and then Jennifer Lee have been doing with admins showing how they've solved real actual problems in their orgs. We gave it a little extra production love and shined it up and put it on Salesforce+, which is our free online streaming platform. It's really exciting. Mike Gerholdt: It shows. You're now a streaming star, Gillian. You could watch stuff on Hulu and Netflix. Gillian Bruce: I got to say, I feel really special that I'm on the same platform as one of my idols, Kara Swisher. So I feel special about that because they do clips from Kara Swisher's podcast that she does with Scott Galloway, Pivot, on the Salesforce+. So the fact that I get to be a part of the same platform that she is, makes me really excited. Mike Gerholdt: Kara Swisher, future guest of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Gillian Bruce: I am working podcast all my angles there to try and make that happen. So we're just going to put that out there. Kara, we want you on the podcast. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Because Kara, listen, so many people do. So you could spend the weekend and watch some Stranger Things or How I Solved It on Salesforce+. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. It's not a huge time commitment. The last few episodes of Stranger things, which I still haven't watched because there's an hour and then a two hour episode. Mike Gerholdt: Seriously? That's like a plane ride. Gillian Bruce: By the time I get the kids to bed, I have about 30 minutes before I fall asleep. So it's really tough. It's tough. Mike Gerholdt: But you could watch your Salesforce+ video in those 30 minutes. Gillian Bruce: Sure could, because I think they're 10 minutes-ish, if that. Mike Gerholdt: They're consumable. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. There are really actual hands-on tips that you can start using yourself that you can play with, with your own Dev org or Sandbox. Every single one of these episodes, you're going to be able to get something very tangible that you can put to use. Mike Gerholdt: Your own non-production org. Gillian Bruce: Yes. Don't do it in production. Mike Gerholdt: No. We did a bunch of podcasts, July was fun for pods. But one that stood out, Gillian, I actually listened to this on the way to a car show, so I'm a listener of our own podcast. But you did this great interview with Christine Magnuson. Can you tell us about it? Gillian Bruce: Okay. Well, it was really exciting because she's not only the first Olympian that I've talked to, but the first two time silver medalist Olympian. She competed in Rio and Beijing and she's a swimmer, and now she is got an amazing career. She's a manager of solution engineers here at Salesforce, which means she manages a very technical team. So I wanted to get Christine on the podcast because as you'll listen to her episode, if you have not, go listen to it as soon as you're done with this episode, because- Mike Gerholdt: It's really good. Gillian Bruce: It's so good. She talks about the idea of transferable skills. How she really evaluated how she could take the skills that she had as an Olympic athlete and transfer those into another career. How she really had a very detailed strategy behind that. She explains the story. Then she also talks about in her role, she works with a lot of admins. So what things she has seen that makes a very successful admin, and how you get your admin team. Because again, she comes at it from a solutions engineer perspective. So she has seen a lot. In fact, her team supports the largest Salesforce implementation that exists. So they have a lot of knowledge. Anyway, listen to Christine's episode. It's awesome. It's an uplifting one. It'll put you in a good mood for the rest of the day. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Oh, for sure. There were so many things like, I was driving, I wanted to take notes. Gillian Bruce: Maybe you can listen to it again. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Absolutely. Then just to round out our discussion of, I feel like it's one of the last few months of summer, but we have Dreamforce coming up. We also have some community events that are happening. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Mike, you and I and Jennifer Lee actually got to go to a community event, I guess it was a duo community event this month, Midwest Dreamin and WITness Success. I got to go because, well, you were the MC of the whole event. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I popped up on the stage for a few highlights and Midwest-isms Midwest Dreamin. Gillian Bruce: Oh, yeah. Actually, can you share one of those Midwest-isms because they're pretty amazing. Mike Gerholdt: So people in the Midwest use weird terms, one of them is op. Usually we say that as an excuse me or oh, I'm sorry, op. And I op a ton. Man, you go grocery shopping with me because the cart always leaves the aisle before and you're going to run in somebody, op I'm sorry. But so I said, what if we took a whole bunch of Midwest terms and made them into Salesforce features. One of them is op, which I said is clearly a validation rule. Because if Salesforce could be very Midwestern it wouldn't fire the validation rule, it would just say, op. I believe that was one of them. I did put it out there. So for those of you that live in the Midwest or visited the Midwest, you know we like to eat puppy chow, which is actually Chex Mix covered in chocolate with confectioner's sugar all over it. Gillian, you and I kicked around what that feature would be. Gillian Bruce: It's so uniquely a Midwest thing. I remember growing up as a kid, occasionally some kid would bring some to school and I'd be like, what is this magical craziness? Mike Gerholdt: I know. Yeah. You go to our gas stations, everywhere. You walk into a Casey's and there're cups of puppy chow for you to buy right by the register, along with with scotcheroos. I don't feel like scotcheroos are very Midwestern. Gillian Bruce: I have no idea what that is. So it's clearly- Mike Gerholdt: Oh, a scotcheroo is basically like a rice crispy treat, but made with a lot of butter scotch and then covered in chocolate. Gillian Bruce: Oh. So it's like a healthier rice crispy treat. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: I'm kidding. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. But it's so good. Gillian Bruce: It sounds delicious. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It's so good. Gillian Bruce: Okay. All right. Yeah. So those were great and there were lots more. So if you were there, you had lot more. Mike Gerholdt: Or check Twitter for some people tweet them out, hot dish. What do you think that is as a feature? It was fun. Little time filler before Gillian gets up on stage and wows the crowd with admin skills. I think a few people even tweet about the heels you were in. Gillian Bruce: Well you always got to have a good pair of heels to deliver a talk properly, at least for me. Maybe not the same for you, Mike. But yeah, I had the honor of giving a keynote and it was really great to get back up on stage in front of actual people. It was exhilarating to do it, and it felt really fun to share very important content about skills and transferable skills and how to really discover your skills, hone them, and then find ways to use them to help make you shine. So, really amazing experience. Then Jennifer Lee stayed for WITness Success and presented a session about Flow, which I also saw all kinds of Twitter love for. Mike Gerholdt: I agree. To be honest with you, I showed up, I wore a mask for a while. Gillian Bruce: So did I, until I got on stage. Mike Gerholdt: So we're past that now. Yeah. There were times that I actually checked out of some areas because I'm not too comfortable with this many people. That's okay, it's up to you. But it was great. So many people that I hadn't seen in person in forever. Gillian Bruce: It felt good. Mike Gerholdt: You mentioned Dreamforce. I will include a link in the show notes to the convince your boss letter, which is on the homepage. If you haven't registered for this little event that we're doing in September. I have actually used versions of this letter when I was a customer, rewrote it, changed some things around. I will say it's effective. It's super easy to customize. It'll be great. We're going to have session content up, so you can start talking to your boss about the sessions you're going to go to and the keynotes you're going to see. There's that unspoken just ability to connect with people that doesn't happen anywhere else. You're sitting in a session and you're both there to learn Flow or something, next thing you know, you leave with a new best friend that helps you solve that problem. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. It's people that you never would've probably connected with, either virtually or in your own local community. Also, it's just going to be great. We're going to have so much fun at Dreamforce. We talk about it being the ultimate family reunion and gosh, aren't we all ready for that. So it's going to be really magical, really fun. I know our team is planning all kinds of really fun, exciting things for admins. Mike Gerholdt: A few things in the works. Gillian Bruce: Just a few. Mike Gerholdt: Stay tuned. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Can't tell you anything yet. It's top secret. Mike Gerholdt: Nope. Not yet. Gillian, you said it's going to be nice weather because it'll be past the cold. Gillian Bruce: Yeah. San Francisco summer is late August through early November. I grew up here and every year I forget, and then I'm like, all right, we're going to have summer. It's just three months later than everybody else. Mike Gerholdt: It just comes at a different time. Good. Gillian Bruce: Late bloomers out here on the west coast. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. All right. Well, if you want to learn more about all things we talked about in today's episode, please go to admin.salesforce.com to find those links and many more resources. You can stay up to date with us on social for all things admins. We are @Salesforceadmns, no I, on Twitter. Of course, Gillian is on Twitter. She is @GillianKBruce, and I am @MikeGerholdt. Give us a follow. You can read about puppy chow or other Midwest-isms, more so on my Twitter feed. But with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode. We'll see you in the cloud. Gillian Bruce: Roar. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Gillian Bruce: Is that the first thing that's going to be on the recording, roar? Mike Gerholdt: I don't know if that's a lion or is that a cat? Gillian Bruce: It's like a lion cub.
Direct download: July_Monthly_Retro_with_Mike_and_Gillian_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 21 July 2022
Today’s Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re replaying our episode with Lissa Smith, Senior Manager of Business Architecture at Salesforce. In the context of the launch of the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit, we wanted to revisit our conversation about how she hired a team of Salesforce Admins, what she looks for in the interview, and important advice for anyone hiring a Salesforce Administrator. Join us as we talk about how to stand out when you’re applying for a job, and what makes the difference between and junior and senior Admin candidate. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lissa Smith. Why you should listen to Lissa’s adviceLissa started out as a Salesforce Admin. “I’m obsessed with improving processes and solving problems,” she says, “so I’ve been happy in this space for 15 years.” One thing she did a lot of in previous positions was hiring Salesforce Admins. It’s something we know that many of our listeners are curious about, so we thought we would take the time to hear about her process. The first step is to get a new headcount approved, and Lissa was able to hire both junior and senior-level Admins. She’s interviewed candidates with backgrounds only in Trailhead or a program like PepUp Tech, as well as more experienced folks who had been in the space for years. “Overall, what I was always looking for was someone who was motivated and excited,” she says, “regardless of if they were brand new to the ecosystem or had been doing it for a long time, I wanted someone who could identify and look for problems and then come up with ways to solve them.” The difference between Admin rolesWhen looking at someone for those junior-level positions, where a candidate didn’t necessarily have any paid experience on the platform, there were a few things that Lissa looked for. She wanted to see apps that they had built, even if it was simply to track their job applications and interviews or books they had read. Anything that used the platform to show her that they understood what it was capable of doing. Another thing that could make a less experienced candidate stand out was someone who had experience as a user on the platform. Understanding and empathizing with the customer experience as a salesperson or customer sales rep is a really important skill because you’ll know where your users are coming from. For more senior positions, you could get by with less experience building things on the platform if you understood something key about business analysis, whether that was documentation or process analysis. For principal admins, she was looking for a thorough understanding of the platform and advanced certifications. Tell a good storyThe important thing to realize about hiring for these roles and something that comes up time and time again on this podcast is that even though Lissa was hiring Salesforce Admins, the roles she was hiring for were often not called that explicitly. They could be business analysts or system admins, but those roles need those Salesforce Admin skills. No matter what, make sure that you’re telling a story that shows you can identify a problem and build a solution that makes everyone’s lives easier. “It’s the story that sells your skills,” Lissa says, “when you tell a good story it’s showing off your communication skills, it shows that you understand the why.” Podcast swag:Learn more:
Social:
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. This week, we’re talking with Lissa Smith, Senior Manager, Business Architecture here at Salesforce about her strategy for hiring a Salesforce Admin. That’s right. We’re kicking off 2022 by putting our best foot forward and helping you get the information that you have been talking about in the community and on social, around finding and landing that perfect admin career. So let’s not waste any time and let’s get Lissa on the podcast. So, Lissa, welcome to the podcast. Lissa Smith: Awesome. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Well, it’s good to kick off the new year, talking about starting your career, getting hiring on as a Salesforce Admin. And I think you are one of the most perfect guests to have on to talk about that. So let’s dive right in, because I know everybody’s interested. How did you get started in the Salesforce ecosystem? Lissa Smith: Yeah, I’ve been working in the Salesforce ecosystem for about 15 years now. And most of that was as a Salesforce admin. I actually started on a sales team and moved into an admin role shortly after that because I really liked building reports and that just kind of took off from there. I’m obsessed with improving processes and solving problems and I just love the Salesforce platform. So I have been happy in this space for 15 years. Mike Gerholdt: 15 years, that’s a veteran level. Lissa Smith: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Long time. Now, one of the important things that kicked off our conversation internally here at Salesforce was you told me, you were in charge in previous careers prior to joining Salesforce for hiring Salesforce admins. And as I say that, I can feel everybody’s earbuds just tighten up a little bit more, as they listen to the podcast. Because I will tell you as somebody that pays attention to the community and everything that’s on social, that is probably the number one question of I’m doing Trailhead. I’m getting my certification. Now, how do I get hired as a Salesforce admin? So tell me a little bit about what you did to hire admins and kind of what that position was for you? Lissa Smith: Awesome. Sure. So, yep, before working at Salesforce, I actually led a team of 13 Salesforce admins and business analysts. And it was a team of, I mean, they were definitely hashtag awesome admins. They’re a really great team. And eight of them, I hired myself and of the five that I kind of inherited when I got promoted into that role. Three of those five, I was involved in their hiring process as well. So I participated in their interviews. And so of those 13 at 11 of them, I was involved in the hiring of- Mike Gerholdt: So most? Lissa Smith: … most of them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: I was… You lost me on the math. Lissa Smith: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Everybody’s hiring process is going to be a little bit different. Let’s start at the beginning, you had a baker’s dozen admins on your team when a spot opened up, what was kind of those initial first steps that you did as a hiring manager? Lissa Smith: Yep. So I actually had several different levels of positions that I opened up and so I had to get headcount approved to get those positions. I saw a need, developed a business case internally to get that headcount approved. And so I was able to get headcount for some junior admins and some senior and principal level admins as well. So I was kind of hiring all different skill levels, which made it also interesting when I was reviewing resumes and going through the interview process because some of those admins had only the Trailhead background or had gone through Pathfinder, PEP and tech programs like that, which are amazing programs. And that was their background, the Trailhead and those programs. I don’t think everyone has to love their job a 100% of the time, but you don’t have to settle. And so I wanted to look for people who also were motivated and excited and passionate, and really those passionate and proactive problem solvers, regardless of if they were brand new to the ecosystem or if they’d been doing it for a long time. I wanted somebody who could identify problems and look for problems and then come up with solutions and come up with, or just identify those problems and then come up with ways to potentially solve those problems. And I think that’s what every hiring manager is looking for like, how can you help me solve my business problems? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I want to go back. You mentioned junior admin, senior principal. And I know those levels are different at different categories, as somebody that’s hired admins and you’re thinking, “Okay, I need a junior Salesforce admin.” What was a junior Salesforce admin for you? Lissa Smith: To me, it was somebody who really didn’t have experience on the platform, paid experience on the platform. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, that’s important. I’ve never heard that term paid experience. I think that’s a good callout. Lissa Smith: Yeah, it’s a good differentiator because, I mean, I did want somebody who had gone through Trailhead modules, had built out their own apps. As I was talking to candidates, there were candidates who had built apps to track their interview and application process. And they were excited to share that with me. So maybe they hadn’t been paid to do admin work, but they had built cool apps and tracking even, just all sorts of apps that they had built. It could be the books that they’re reading or genres and author. Just something that they had done using the platform to show me that they understood the capabilities because they hadn’t had that paid experience, or maybe they had experience as a user on the platform. So maybe they weren’t ever an actual admin, but I interviewed several candidates who had been Salesforce users. So they understood and could empathize with the customer experience. So as, like a salesperson or as a customer support rep or they had used the platform. And I just think that’s a really important skill to have somebody who has been a user on the platform. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I’ve got friends that start off as users and they make for the best admins. Just plain and simple. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. And then there’s so much out there now on Trailhead and with these different programs that you can take different training and go through these different programs and do all the Trailhead and do the super badges and earn your certifications. That’s all available now to anyone. But the people who were going out there and proactively figuring out, how they can solve a problem. I have a bunch of house plans. I keep thinking, it would be really great if I had some sort of automated app in Salesforce that reminded me when I need to water my plants because some of them are on, in every two-week cycle and some of them are more frequently. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Lissa Smith: And just that could be something that someone could build for themselves. And then it gets them that experience using the platform. Mike Gerholdt: And you could capture pictures so you could see if the [inaudible]- Lissa Smith: It’s so true, right? Mike Gerholdt: … yeah. Don’t get us started. So junior admin, I like your definition paid… really the differentiator is they have a lot of knowledge. They have a lot of curiosity. I inferred that. Lissa Smith: Huge. Mike Gerholdt: Huge. Lissa Smith: Yes. Huge. Mike Gerholdt: Big problem solvers, but really didn’t have that paid experience. So was paid experience the differentiator for you in junior admin versus senior admin? I think that’s the term you used. Lissa Smith: Yeah. I think that would be probably the biggest. So the senior admins that I was hiring for that I interviewed, they had been working as an admin. They were a system admin in their org and understood platform capabilities. They may not be super experts, but they had been doing it for one, three years, just depending on that. Also, there were business analysts that I was hiring too. So all of it, the titles were actually business analysts. So some were even more senior from a business analysis perspective and maybe had less experience building on the Salesforce platform. But they really understood documentation and analysis and process analysis and had been doing that for a long time, so they could still come in. And with that experience and the help of me and other members of the team and Trailhead could build on that experience and be a more senior admin. And then the principal admins are the ones who come in. They already understand flow and when to use flow and they are, and this was a few years ago. So that now flow is everywhere. But a few years ago, it was a little harder to find some of those candidates, or they have several certifications and understand when to use a feature, when not to use a feature, when some of those more advanced topics too, that when you’re thinking about even just admin certification, some of the security and sharing rules and that it’s important for all admins to know, but they’ve been there, done that- Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Lissa Smith: … and really get it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Little more org-wide implications to different things as opposed to the features. Got it. Lissa Smith: Yep. Mike Gerholdt: Got it. No, that’s often. And I think one big thing that I heard was rarely were you hiring Salesforce admin. And we had just done a podcast on this in December with Leanne and Jay and I. Salesforce admin is that strong identity that we have, but rarely is it in our job title. And even your job title, senior manager, business architecture. Sometimes our job titles isn’t what we are. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don’t know that. And I have said, 15 years, I’ve been in this ecosystem, most of those as a Salesforce admin. And I don’t think my title has ever been Salesforce admin, so that’s very true. Mike Gerholdt: And that’s something that we see a lot in, not only our ecosystem, but other ecosystems too. Is rarely does the persona or the identity of the person also be the job title because companies have different naming conventions. So I know in a lot of the programs that we speak at, there, I was on LinkedIn. I couldn’t find Salesforce admin. Well, it may be, as you mentioned, you were hiring a lot for business analyst. Lissa Smith: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mike Gerholdt: So- Lissa Smith: Yep. Mike Gerholdt: … that’s great. Lissa Smith: Yeah. And then what they ended up being were business analysts who were system admins in Salesforce and they were writing requirements, but also doing some of the config and building and, or a lot of the config, all of the config. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Lissa Smith: And actually working with users to solve those problems, so- Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Had that responsibility. Lissa Smith: … Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. That’s key. So junior admin, senior principal, I keep kind of anchoring on those because the next part is, you mentioned, they had showed apps that they had built. I did this great podcast with Gordon Lee, which I’ll link to in the show notes where we talk about as new admins, there’s this trust gap. And I think you talked about it or inferred it actually in the junior admins is, they built apps, they showed me, they did all the learning, they just didn’t have that paid experience. And I think there’s that trust gap of, you haven’t been paid to do this. So you have to span kind of that gap with me, I would love to know, what were some of the questions? I’m a, put on my hat, I’m a Salesforce admin, and maybe one of these roles looking to apply, and I’m getting ready to walk into an interview with Lissa Smith. What are some of the things she’s going to ask me? Lissa Smith: So I really like the, tell me about a time when questions. Tell me about a time when you had to collaborate with people, maybe you disagreed with, or tell me about a time where you had to manage a project. Are you responsible for a project or a program? And this doesn’t have to be even Salesforce related. I think it’s really important for candidates to come to an interview prepared with maybe a repository of stories that their success stories, these don’t have to be on your resume, these don’t have to be anywhere. But if you were writing your success stories in work and just life, I mean, I had, I heard about Eagle Scout Projects. It doesn’t have to be work. But your success stories, problems you identified, ways that you solve those problems, how you collaborated with others while solving those problems, how you prioritized, how you influenced others, how you communicated, how you learned, how you asked questions. Come up with a list of those stories, of those problems that you solved and run through those stories out loud with a friend or family, out loud run through those stories. So that when someone like me comes in and says, “Tell me about a time that you collaborated with multiple stakeholders or when you proactively identified a flawed or inefficient process.” You can come in and say, “Oh, well, which one of my stories can I tell?” Like, come up with… And then tell those stories in a meaningful way too. It shouldn’t just be like I could say, “Well, I built a way for sales people to register their customers and prospects for a training that we offered.” Well, that doesn’t really tell me anything. But if I come in and say, “You know, I got an out-of-office response from someone on the training team that told me how many seats were left in the training.” And I realized, why are they managing that? And this is a true story, in an out-of-office response, why are they telling sales people? There are only six seats left in this training in the San Francisco training for July 15th, if you want to register, write me back. Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Lissa Smith: So I worked with the training team to develop a solution for this in Salesforce, right on the contact record that allowed the salespeople to enroll from the contact and they could see how many people will… How many seats were left in each training. And then the training team could see the actual revenue impact of adding these contacts to their training. I mean, it’s a much better story than just, I made this way for sales people to register people in training and automated it and even getting too much into the details. It’s the story I think that sells your skills and makes it more meaningful to the hiring manager too. Mike Gerholdt: It’s a richer story- Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Mike Gerholdt: … you’re walking through those two. I’m thinking it’s comparable to, it was a sunny day. I went for a walk. Okay. I don’t have much visualization to that. But the second story that you told was, it was a sunny day and my parents ware coming to town and you’re adding context and you’re adding depth. Right. And you’re also, to me, showing something that I feel is very important for [Edmonds], you’re showing your critical thinking skills, you’re showing how you, not only saw an out-of-office, you saw an out-of-office with an opportunity. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. Mike Gerholdt: Love that. I love that. Lissa Smith: Yeah. And I think that everyone, I mean, there, like I said, Eagle Scout Project. I mean, there’s these transferable skills that you have, that all, everyone has. And I think it’s just, you really have to sit down and focus and how can I translate these skills into this job description? And I think it’s also pretty job description specific too, you’ll want to look at the job description and see what is this role asking for? Are they asking for that someone with strong process automation skills? Okay, well, then let me look through my list of stories, my role at expert repository of stories, and see which ones might relate to process automation. And good stories too. Like you said, you can give numbers, you can give the facts, but when you tell a good story, I mean, it’s also showing off your communication skills. It’s showing off that you understand the why, which is really important. And it feeds into a little of that passion too, that you can hear the passion in someone’s story. You don’t really hear a passion in facts. Mike Gerholdt: Right. That’s true. How would you… So I’m listening to this and I’m lack of a better term, playing devil’s advocate. And thinking, “Boy, if I was a new admin and I’m applying for that junior role, and maybe I don’t have the paid experience, maybe I’m fresh out of Pathfinders, or I’m fresh out of college, and I’ve got two Salesforce certifications or 120 Trailhead badges. I don’t have those relatable stories. Were the interview questions for junior admins maybe a little bit different, or were the answers or way that I should be thinking about answering as a junior admin, a little bit different? Lissa Smith: I think a little both. The questions are pretty much the same for me. I mean, in thinking of past skills, if you were a bartender, you could figure out how to translate the skills that you used as a bartender to managing projects, prioritizing, there’s collaborating with others. There’s still a lot of those transferable skills. And being able to tell that story, I think is part of this that’s huge. So it’s a lot of the same questions. Mike Gerholdt: I think you absolutely 100% nailed it because I’m thinking of the college student. And you’re like, “Well, the time that I really had to collaborate, well, I don’t have a time in the workplace. But let me tell you about this project I was on in advanced biochemistry where I had a difficult teammate. You could walk through a scenario there, and it’s showing you the same principles and skills. It’s just a different environment that they were used in. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. I also, personally, I mean, even, I think certification can be a story in itself and it was for some of the candidates that I hired. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, how so? Lissa Smith: I heard stories of, it took me five times to pass my certification exam, is what a candidate told me. And they told me that kind of slumping, shoulders down, disappointed in themselves. I would reframe that story. I was so persistent, I went back and I know that content inside and out, it wasn’t just guessing to pass that exam. I know that content inside and out, it took me five tries and I passed, that’s, it’s, it can all be a story. It can all be something that sells you. And so even certification can be a story. It’s all in how you frame it. Mike Gerholdt: One thing I wanted to touch on in this point was I shared with you prior to the call, kind of that admin skills that we’d rolled out. Rebecca showed us in the admin Keynote at Dreamforce. And I know it was the first time you’d seen it. So I kind of blindsided you with it. But of those 14 skills, was there one that stood out for you? Lissa Smith: Problem solving stands out the most for me. I mean, when I come in, me, personally, into an interview, I am selling myself as a passionate, proactive problem solver. That’s what I am. I’m enthusiastic. I love finding problems. I love helping connect dots to figure out how to solve those problems. I think that’s the heart of an admin, they’re problem solvers and excited to find ways. So for me, personally, I hate saying, “No, that’s not possible on the Salesforce platform.” Because I can pretty much always figure out a way to do it. And so I feel that’s the heart of an admin. But the learner’s mindset, piece, I think that’s another huge one. When you are looking for roles, admins who are looking for roles, I think it’s important to connect with a company that thinks that this is important too, that failing is okay, that trying new things is okay, innovating is okay. And gives you time to learn and to go to the new release readiness training, to do Trailhead to continue to learn. I think that’s really important when looking for a role. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I would agree 100%. You need to interview that company for culture. And the one thing I always tell people is, the person you’re sitting across the table from, are you enjoy sitting across the table from them? Because that’s going to be your job. Do you enjoy? If it’s an in person interview, do you enjoy the atmosphere? Do you enjoy just kind of that culture, that feeling that you have there? Because that’s something that’s really hard to change. Lissa Smith: So important. Before I joined Salesforce, I was a leader of a Salesforce Trailblazer community group here in Indianapolis. And I was very involved in the community, in the Trailblazer community, at the women in tech meetings, at the admin meetings, at the developer meetings, still I am. Although now, everything’s different and virtual. Mike Gerholdt: Yes. Lissa Smith: I can participate in meetings all over the world there. Mike Gerholdt: Everywhere. Lissa Smith: Yeah. But having a hiring manager who participates in those meetings, I think is, or having a manager, not even a hiring manager, a manager who participates in those meetings is huge. Because they, first of all, the hiring managers, if you’re listening here, go to those meetings because you will find all the excited, passionate candidates you’re looking for. A large majority of the admins that I hired were already very active within the community. And I already knew them and they already knew me. And I was somebody that they wanted to work for because they knew I was excited about the community and participated in it. And they knew, I would give them time to go to those meetings during lunch, back when they were always in person at lunchtime. It was- Mike Gerholdt: In the Midwest, those meetings are always over lunch so that we could have meatloaf or lasagna or [inaudible] very ridiculously heavy, Midwestern, a hot dish. Lissa Smith: Right. Yeah. And I know that that’s not something that’s consistent. But not all hiring managers even know that this exists or even managers know that this community exists. So I think it’s really important for managers to get involved in the Trailblazer community. And there’s a lot of… A ton of great talent. I mean, it’s just packed full of amazing talent. People who are motivated and excited and then have this big network of people to connect with if they run into issues or if they need help, especially for those junior admins, that it’s something they haven’t done before. But they have this huge network of people that they can connect with. Now, all over the world. Thanks to… I mean, it was already all over the world, but even more so now that everything’s so virtual, they have this network. Mike Gerholdt: No, I’m with you. And I actually was thinking about that because the number of stories, you go back a few years on the pod, we told the Zac Otero story of how Zac got his certifications and was relentless of going to user groups and introducing himself. There’s a lot of stories where that’s a great place to meet people, if you’re looking to get hired because they share the same interests. And I think it’s something you pointed out early on in our discussions was hiring managers should be at this. It may be called a user group, but hiring managers are users too. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Mike Gerholdt: So- Lissa Smith: Yep. Mike Gerholdt: … I love that point. And it’s also, if I was thinking about it, would I want to interview with a hiring manager that I’ve seen at user groups, or would I want to interview with a hiring major where I have to explain user groups? Lissa Smith: Yes. It’s such a good point. Yes, exactly. Mike Gerholdt: Very different. So one thing, I think it’s, in common talk about because I feel you’ve run the gamut. I hope we’ve given everybody kind of a good insight into hiring admins and being the hiring manager. But I’d love to know a little bit about what you do at Salesforce because your title’s intriguing. Lissa Smith: Yeah. So senior manager of business architecture here at Salesforce. I’m responsible for our internal Salesforce instance for sales people. So processes, tools, governance, user experience, within our internal Salesforce instance and within Slack. And I’ve been working a lot on the Slack for sales project for- Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Lissa Smith: … the past year and the rollout of Slack now. So it’s very fun and very exciting. Mike Gerholdt: I will tell you, it’s always been a personal goal of mine when we started the podcast to have on as many Salesforce admins as possible. And I mean, Salesforce, Salesforce admins. But I say that a little tongue in cheek because I think it’s important. And I just did a talk with Pathfinders recently, the reason I bring that up and I say that is, your title, senior manager, business architecture isn’t something that I might search for on LinkedIn as a job- Lissa Smith: Right. Mike Gerholdt: … as a Salesforce admin. Right. And I think it’s important that we understand the identity and persona is called that, but the job title and the job descriptions may be very different. Lissa Smith: So true. And I was lucky with this role that the word or the phrase, Salesforce admin, was included in the description that they were looking for somebody that had previous Salesforce admin experience. And so it showed up in a… This was a 10-year-old job search that I don’t even know how to turn off. It comes into my- Mike Gerholdt: No. Lissa Smith: … and it’s fine because I can see the landscape, especially when I was hiring admins, I could see who else is hiring here in Indianapolis. And I could see those other job descriptions and… But this one came through. And like you said, it was senior manager, business architecture. What’s that? And why did this even show up in the job search? I’m not even looking for a job and dug into that. And it’s really cool. And it’s Salesforce uses Salesforce to sell Salesforce, SuperMeta. There’s got to be a team that’s responsible for that. And- Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Lissa Smith: … it’s pretty exciting to be on that team. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, I think in The Matrix, it’s taking the red pill, but for some reason taking the blue pill, right? So, I mean, you don’t have to give us details. But what kind of projects do you work on that I think… And the reason I ask that is, I want to be clear, not digging into your work-life, but I’m digging into analogous to what Salesforce admins would be doing. So what are, if somebody’s listening to this and thinking, “Hey, maybe I’ll become a Salesforce admin.” What’s kind of your everyday look like? Lissa Smith: Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, we’re looking at new features. We often get them very early, as customer zero we get them first. So we’re looking at those new features. We also want dynamic forms on standard objects. So we want to be able to have that and make our user experience better. So we’re evaluating new features, we’re looking at how can we make user experience better. We’re collecting feedback from users. We’re governing our objects as well and our processes. We’re making sure that- Mike Gerholdt: That’s a whole podcast in of itself. Lissa Smith: … yeah, absolutely it is. We’re now looking at our digital HQ at Slack and how do we incorporate Slack into our processes. Make it Slack first, make Slack the platform of engagement for our users and ultimately, improve and make their processes more efficient. So it’s a day-to-day talking to users, understanding what users are doing and then making things better for them. Mike Gerholdt: Sounds all the stuff we talk about in the central habits, which just makes me happy. It’s very good. Well, Lissa, this has been a very fun podcast. You are welcome back, anytime. If you have an idea, top of mind that you want to talk about, I will be super excited to see what Twitter has to say about this episode because I know it was one of the very first things that always pops into my inbox. Every time I check the community is, people asking for hiring or interview or questions or just anything around getting a job as being a Salesforce admin. And I thought it was a great way to kick off 2022. So thank you for helping me kick off 2022 on the podcast. Lissa Smith: You’re welcome. Happy new year. I’m very excited to be here. I’m excited for the future of all of the new Salesforce admins and I’m rooting for you. And, yeah, excited. Mike Gerholdt: So as I write, that was an amazing episode with Lissa. We literally probably could have talked for another hour, so I’m going to have to have Lissa back on the podcast. But to do that, you got to tweet me and tell me, what did I forget to ask Lissa on this episode? And then I’ll start compiling and we’ll get her back as soon as possible. What would you love to know about a hiring manager and asking questions to get that perfect admin job? So be sure to tweet at us. And if you’d like to learn more about all things, Salesforce Admin, go to admin.salesforce.com to find more resources, including all of the links that I mentioned in this episode, as well as a full transcript. Now, you can stay up to date with us on social. We are at @SalesforceAdmns, no “I” on Twitter. Gillian is @gilliankbruce and, of course, I am @mikegerholdt. So with that, welcome to 2022 and stay safe, stay awesome and stay tuned for that next episode. We’ll see you in the cloud.
Direct download: Replay__Hiring_an_Admin_with_Lissa_Smith.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 21 July 2022
Today’s Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re replaying our episode with Lissa Smith, Senior Manager of Business Architecture at Salesforce. In the context of the launch of the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit, we wanted to revisit our conversation about how she hired a team of Salesforce Admins, what she looks for in the interview, and important advice for anyone hiring a Salesforce Administrator. Join us as we talk about how to stand out when you’re applying for a job, and what makes the difference between and junior and senior Admin candidate. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lissa Smith. Why you should listen to Lissa’s adviceLissa started out as a Salesforce Admin. “I’m obsessed with improving processes and solving problems,” she says, “so I’ve been happy in this space for 15 years.” One thing she did a lot of in previous positions was hiring Salesforce Admins. It’s something we know that many of our listeners are curious about, so we thought we would take the time to hear about her process. The first step is to get a new headcount approved, and Lissa was able to hire both junior and senior-level Admins. She’s interviewed candidates with backgrounds only in Trailhead or a program like PepUp Tech, as well as more experienced folks who had been in the space for years. “Overall, what I was always looking for was someone who was motivated and excited,” she says, “regardless of if they were brand new to the ecosystem or had been doing it for a long time, I wanted someone who could identify and look for problems and then come up with ways to solve them.” The difference between Admin rolesWhen looking at someone for those junior-level positions, where a candidate didn’t necessarily have any paid experience on the platform, there were a few things that Lissa looked for. She wanted to see apps that they had built, even if it was simply to track their job applications and interviews or books they had read. Anything that used the platform to show her that they understood what it was capable of doing. Another thing that could make a less experienced candidate stand out was someone who had experience as a user on the platform. Understanding and empathizing with the customer experience as a salesperson or customer sales rep is a really important skill because you’ll know where your users are coming from. For more senior positions, you could get by with less experience building things on the platform if you understood something key about business analysis, whether that was documentation or process analysis. For principal admins, she was looking for a thorough understanding of the platform and advanced certifications. Tell a good storyThe important thing to realize about hiring for these roles and something that comes up time and time again on this podcast is that even though Lissa was hiring Salesforce Admins, the roles she was hiring for were often not called that explicitly. They could be business analysts or system admins, but those roles need those Salesforce Admin skills. No matter what, make sure that you’re telling a story that shows you can identify a problem and build a solution that makes everyone’s lives easier. “It’s the story that sells your skills,” Lissa says, “when you tell a good story it’s showing off your communication skills, it shows that you understand the why.” Podcast swag:Learn more:
Social:
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full Show Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. This week, we’re talking with Lissa Smith, Senior Manager, Business Architecture here at Salesforce about her strategy for hiring a Salesforce Admin. That’s right. We’re kicking off 2022 by putting our best foot forward and helping you get the information that you have been talking about in the community and on social, around finding and landing that perfect admin career. So let’s not waste any time and let’s get Lissa on the podcast. So, Lissa, welcome to the podcast. Lissa Smith: Awesome. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Well, it’s good to kick off the new year, talking about starting your career, getting hiring on as a Salesforce Admin. And I think you are one of the most perfect guests to have on to talk about that. So let’s dive right in, because I know everybody’s interested. How did you get started in the Salesforce ecosystem? Lissa Smith: Yeah, I’ve been working in the Salesforce ecosystem for about 15 years now. And most of that was as a Salesforce admin. I actually started on a sales team and moved into an admin role shortly after that because I really liked building reports and that just kind of took off from there. I’m obsessed with improving processes and solving problems and I just love the Salesforce platform. So I have been happy in this space for 15 years. Mike Gerholdt: 15 years, that’s a veteran level. Lissa Smith: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Long time. Now, one of the important things that kicked off our conversation internally here at Salesforce was you told me, you were in charge in previous careers prior to joining Salesforce for hiring Salesforce admins. And as I say that, I can feel everybody’s earbuds just tighten up a little bit more, as they listen to the podcast. Because I will tell you as somebody that pays attention to the community and everything that’s on social, that is probably the number one question of I’m doing Trailhead. I’m getting my certification. Now, how do I get hired as a Salesforce admin? So tell me a little bit about what you did to hire admins and kind of what that position was for you? Lissa Smith: Awesome. Sure. So, yep, before working at Salesforce, I actually led a team of 13 Salesforce admins and business analysts. And it was a team of, I mean, they were definitely hashtag awesome admins. They’re a really great team. And eight of them, I hired myself and of the five that I kind of inherited when I got promoted into that role. Three of those five, I was involved in their hiring process as well. So I participated in their interviews. And so of those 13 at 11 of them, I was involved in the hiring of- Mike Gerholdt: So most? Lissa Smith: … most of them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: I was… You lost me on the math. Lissa Smith: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Everybody’s hiring process is going to be a little bit different. Let’s start at the beginning, you had a baker’s dozen admins on your team when a spot opened up, what was kind of those initial first steps that you did as a hiring manager? Lissa Smith: Yep. So I actually had several different levels of positions that I opened up and so I had to get headcount approved to get those positions. I saw a need, developed a business case internally to get that headcount approved. And so I was able to get headcount for some junior admins and some senior and principal level admins as well. So I was kind of hiring all different skill levels, which made it also interesting when I was reviewing resumes and going through the interview process because some of those admins had only the Trailhead background or had gone through Pathfinder, PEP and tech programs like that, which are amazing programs. And that was their background, the Trailhead and those programs. I don’t think everyone has to love their job a 100% of the time, but you don’t have to settle. And so I wanted to look for people who also were motivated and excited and passionate, and really those passionate and proactive problem solvers, regardless of if they were brand new to the ecosystem or if they’d been doing it for a long time. I wanted somebody who could identify problems and look for problems and then come up with solutions and come up with, or just identify those problems and then come up with ways to potentially solve those problems. And I think that’s what every hiring manager is looking for like, how can you help me solve my business problems? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I want to go back. You mentioned junior admin, senior principal. And I know those levels are different at different categories, as somebody that’s hired admins and you’re thinking, “Okay, I need a junior Salesforce admin.” What was a junior Salesforce admin for you? Lissa Smith: To me, it was somebody who really didn’t have experience on the platform, paid experience on the platform. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, that’s important. I’ve never heard that term paid experience. I think that’s a good callout. Lissa Smith: Yeah, it’s a good differentiator because, I mean, I did want somebody who had gone through Trailhead modules, had built out their own apps. As I was talking to candidates, there were candidates who had built apps to track their interview and application process. And they were excited to share that with me. So maybe they hadn’t been paid to do admin work, but they had built cool apps and tracking even, just all sorts of apps that they had built. It could be the books that they’re reading or genres and author. Just something that they had done using the platform to show me that they understood the capabilities because they hadn’t had that paid experience, or maybe they had experience as a user on the platform. So maybe they weren’t ever an actual admin, but I interviewed several candidates who had been Salesforce users. So they understood and could empathize with the customer experience. So as, like a salesperson or as a customer support rep or they had used the platform. And I just think that’s a really important skill to have somebody who has been a user on the platform. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I’ve got friends that start off as users and they make for the best admins. Just plain and simple. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. And then there’s so much out there now on Trailhead and with these different programs that you can take different training and go through these different programs and do all the Trailhead and do the super badges and earn your certifications. That’s all available now to anyone. But the people who were going out there and proactively figuring out, how they can solve a problem. I have a bunch of house plans. I keep thinking, it would be really great if I had some sort of automated app in Salesforce that reminded me when I need to water my plants because some of them are on, in every two-week cycle and some of them are more frequently. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Lissa Smith: And just that could be something that someone could build for themselves. And then it gets them that experience using the platform. Mike Gerholdt: And you could capture pictures so you could see if the [inaudible]- Lissa Smith: It’s so true, right? Mike Gerholdt: … yeah. Don’t get us started. So junior admin, I like your definition paid… really the differentiator is they have a lot of knowledge. They have a lot of curiosity. I inferred that. Lissa Smith: Huge. Mike Gerholdt: Huge. Lissa Smith: Yes. Huge. Mike Gerholdt: Big problem solvers, but really didn’t have that paid experience. So was paid experience the differentiator for you in junior admin versus senior admin? I think that’s the term you used. Lissa Smith: Yeah. I think that would be probably the biggest. So the senior admins that I was hiring for that I interviewed, they had been working as an admin. They were a system admin in their org and understood platform capabilities. They may not be super experts, but they had been doing it for one, three years, just depending on that. Also, there were business analysts that I was hiring too. So all of it, the titles were actually business analysts. So some were even more senior from a business analysis perspective and maybe had less experience building on the Salesforce platform. But they really understood documentation and analysis and process analysis and had been doing that for a long time, so they could still come in. And with that experience and the help of me and other members of the team and Trailhead could build on that experience and be a more senior admin. And then the principal admins are the ones who come in. They already understand flow and when to use flow and they are, and this was a few years ago. So that now flow is everywhere. But a few years ago, it was a little harder to find some of those candidates, or they have several certifications and understand when to use a feature, when not to use a feature, when some of those more advanced topics too, that when you’re thinking about even just admin certification, some of the security and sharing rules and that it’s important for all admins to know, but they’ve been there, done that- Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Lissa Smith: … and really get it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Little more org-wide implications to different things as opposed to the features. Got it. Lissa Smith: Yep. Mike Gerholdt: Got it. No, that’s often. And I think one big thing that I heard was rarely were you hiring Salesforce admin. And we had just done a podcast on this in December with Leanne and Jay and I. Salesforce admin is that strong identity that we have, but rarely is it in our job title. And even your job title, senior manager, business architecture. Sometimes our job titles isn’t what we are. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don’t know that. And I have said, 15 years, I’ve been in this ecosystem, most of those as a Salesforce admin. And I don’t think my title has ever been Salesforce admin, so that’s very true. Mike Gerholdt: And that’s something that we see a lot in, not only our ecosystem, but other ecosystems too. Is rarely does the persona or the identity of the person also be the job title because companies have different naming conventions. So I know in a lot of the programs that we speak at, there, I was on LinkedIn. I couldn’t find Salesforce admin. Well, it may be, as you mentioned, you were hiring a lot for business analyst. Lissa Smith: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mike Gerholdt: So- Lissa Smith: Yep. Mike Gerholdt: … that’s great. Lissa Smith: Yeah. And then what they ended up being were business analysts who were system admins in Salesforce and they were writing requirements, but also doing some of the config and building and, or a lot of the config, all of the config. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Lissa Smith: And actually working with users to solve those problems, so- Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Had that responsibility. Lissa Smith: … Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. That’s key. So junior admin, senior principal, I keep kind of anchoring on those because the next part is, you mentioned, they had showed apps that they had built. I did this great podcast with Gordon Lee, which I’ll link to in the show notes where we talk about as new admins, there’s this trust gap. And I think you talked about it or inferred it actually in the junior admins is, they built apps, they showed me, they did all the learning, they just didn’t have that paid experience. And I think there’s that trust gap of, you haven’t been paid to do this. So you have to span kind of that gap with me, I would love to know, what were some of the questions? I’m a, put on my hat, I’m a Salesforce admin, and maybe one of these roles looking to apply, and I’m getting ready to walk into an interview with Lissa Smith. What are some of the things she’s going to ask me? Lissa Smith: So I really like the, tell me about a time when questions. Tell me about a time when you had to collaborate with people, maybe you disagreed with, or tell me about a time where you had to manage a project. Are you responsible for a project or a program? And this doesn’t have to be even Salesforce related. I think it’s really important for candidates to come to an interview prepared with maybe a repository of stories that their success stories, these don’t have to be on your resume, these don’t have to be anywhere. But if you were writing your success stories in work and just life, I mean, I had, I heard about Eagle Scout Projects. It doesn’t have to be work. But your success stories, problems you identified, ways that you solve those problems, how you collaborated with others while solving those problems, how you prioritized, how you influenced others, how you communicated, how you learned, how you asked questions. Come up with a list of those stories, of those problems that you solved and run through those stories out loud with a friend or family, out loud run through those stories. So that when someone like me comes in and says, “Tell me about a time that you collaborated with multiple stakeholders or when you proactively identified a flawed or inefficient process.” You can come in and say, “Oh, well, which one of my stories can I tell?” Like, come up with… And then tell those stories in a meaningful way too. It shouldn’t just be like I could say, “Well, I built a way for sales people to register their customers and prospects for a training that we offered.” Well, that doesn’t really tell me anything. But if I come in and say, “You know, I got an out-of-office response from someone on the training team that told me how many seats were left in the training.” And I realized, why are they managing that? And this is a true story, in an out-of-office response, why are they telling sales people? There are only six seats left in this training in the San Francisco training for July 15th, if you want to register, write me back. Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Lissa Smith: So I worked with the training team to develop a solution for this in Salesforce, right on the contact record that allowed the salespeople to enroll from the contact and they could see how many people will… How many seats were left in each training. And then the training team could see the actual revenue impact of adding these contacts to their training. I mean, it’s a much better story than just, I made this way for sales people to register people in training and automated it and even getting too much into the details. It’s the story I think that sells your skills and makes it more meaningful to the hiring manager too. Mike Gerholdt: It’s a richer story- Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Mike Gerholdt: … you’re walking through those two. I’m thinking it’s comparable to, it was a sunny day. I went for a walk. Okay. I don’t have much visualization to that. But the second story that you told was, it was a sunny day and my parents ware coming to town and you’re adding context and you’re adding depth. Right. And you’re also, to me, showing something that I feel is very important for [Edmonds], you’re showing your critical thinking skills, you’re showing how you, not only saw an out-of-office, you saw an out-of-office with an opportunity. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. Mike Gerholdt: Love that. I love that. Lissa Smith: Yeah. And I think that everyone, I mean, there, like I said, Eagle Scout Project. I mean, there’s these transferable skills that you have, that all, everyone has. And I think it’s just, you really have to sit down and focus and how can I translate these skills into this job description? And I think it’s also pretty job description specific too, you’ll want to look at the job description and see what is this role asking for? Are they asking for that someone with strong process automation skills? Okay, well, then let me look through my list of stories, my role at expert repository of stories, and see which ones might relate to process automation. And good stories too. Like you said, you can give numbers, you can give the facts, but when you tell a good story, I mean, it’s also showing off your communication skills. It’s showing off that you understand the why, which is really important. And it feeds into a little of that passion too, that you can hear the passion in someone’s story. You don’t really hear a passion in facts. Mike Gerholdt: Right. That’s true. How would you… So I’m listening to this and I’m lack of a better term, playing devil’s advocate. And thinking, “Boy, if I was a new admin and I’m applying for that junior role, and maybe I don’t have the paid experience, maybe I’m fresh out of Pathfinders, or I’m fresh out of college, and I’ve got two Salesforce certifications or 120 Trailhead badges. I don’t have those relatable stories. Were the interview questions for junior admins maybe a little bit different, or were the answers or way that I should be thinking about answering as a junior admin, a little bit different? Lissa Smith: I think a little both. The questions are pretty much the same for me. I mean, in thinking of past skills, if you were a bartender, you could figure out how to translate the skills that you used as a bartender to managing projects, prioritizing, there’s collaborating with others. There’s still a lot of those transferable skills. And being able to tell that story, I think is part of this that’s huge. So it’s a lot of the same questions. Mike Gerholdt: I think you absolutely 100% nailed it because I’m thinking of the college student. And you’re like, “Well, the time that I really had to collaborate, well, I don’t have a time in the workplace. But let me tell you about this project I was on in advanced biochemistry where I had a difficult teammate. You could walk through a scenario there, and it’s showing you the same principles and skills. It’s just a different environment that they were used in. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. I also, personally, I mean, even, I think certification can be a story in itself and it was for some of the candidates that I hired. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, how so? Lissa Smith: I heard stories of, it took me five times to pass my certification exam, is what a candidate told me. And they told me that kind of slumping, shoulders down, disappointed in themselves. I would reframe that story. I was so persistent, I went back and I know that content inside and out, it wasn’t just guessing to pass that exam. I know that content inside and out, it took me five tries and I passed, that’s, it’s, it can all be a story. It can all be something that sells you. And so even certification can be a story. It’s all in how you frame it. Mike Gerholdt: One thing I wanted to touch on in this point was I shared with you prior to the call, kind of that admin skills that we’d rolled out. Rebecca showed us in the admin Keynote at Dreamforce. And I know it was the first time you’d seen it. So I kind of blindsided you with it. But of those 14 skills, was there one that stood out for you? Lissa Smith: Problem solving stands out the most for me. I mean, when I come in, me, personally, into an interview, I am selling myself as a passionate, proactive problem solver. That’s what I am. I’m enthusiastic. I love finding problems. I love helping connect dots to figure out how to solve those problems. I think that’s the heart of an admin, they’re problem solvers and excited to find ways. So for me, personally, I hate saying, “No, that’s not possible on the Salesforce platform.” Because I can pretty much always figure out a way to do it. And so I feel that’s the heart of an admin. But the learner’s mindset, piece, I think that’s another huge one. When you are looking for roles, admins who are looking for roles, I think it’s important to connect with a company that thinks that this is important too, that failing is okay, that trying new things is okay, innovating is okay. And gives you time to learn and to go to the new release readiness training, to do Trailhead to continue to learn. I think that’s really important when looking for a role. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I would agree 100%. You need to interview that company for culture. And the one thing I always tell people is, the person you’re sitting across the table from, are you enjoy sitting across the table from them? Because that’s going to be your job. Do you enjoy? If it’s an in person interview, do you enjoy the atmosphere? Do you enjoy just kind of that culture, that feeling that you have there? Because that’s something that’s really hard to change. Lissa Smith: So important. Before I joined Salesforce, I was a leader of a Salesforce Trailblazer community group here in Indianapolis. And I was very involved in the community, in the Trailblazer community, at the women in tech meetings, at the admin meetings, at the developer meetings, still I am. Although now, everything’s different and virtual. Mike Gerholdt: Yes. Lissa Smith: I can participate in meetings all over the world there. Mike Gerholdt: Everywhere. Lissa Smith: Yeah. But having a hiring manager who participates in those meetings, I think is, or having a manager, not even a hiring manager, a manager who participates in those meetings is huge. Because they, first of all, the hiring managers, if you’re listening here, go to those meetings because you will find all the excited, passionate candidates you’re looking for. A large majority of the admins that I hired were already very active within the community. And I already knew them and they already knew me. And I was somebody that they wanted to work for because they knew I was excited about the community and participated in it. And they knew, I would give them time to go to those meetings during lunch, back when they were always in person at lunchtime. It was- Mike Gerholdt: In the Midwest, those meetings are always over lunch so that we could have meatloaf or lasagna or [inaudible] very ridiculously heavy, Midwestern, a hot dish. Lissa Smith: Right. Yeah. And I know that that’s not something that’s consistent. But not all hiring managers even know that this exists or even managers know that this community exists. So I think it’s really important for managers to get involved in the Trailblazer community. And there’s a lot of… A ton of great talent. I mean, it’s just packed full of amazing talent. People who are motivated and excited and then have this big network of people to connect with if they run into issues or if they need help, especially for those junior admins, that it’s something they haven’t done before. But they have this huge network of people that they can connect with. Now, all over the world. Thanks to… I mean, it was already all over the world, but even more so now that everything’s so virtual, they have this network. Mike Gerholdt: No, I’m with you. And I actually was thinking about that because the number of stories, you go back a few years on the pod, we told the Zac Otero story of how Zac got his certifications and was relentless of going to user groups and introducing himself. There’s a lot of stories where that’s a great place to meet people, if you’re looking to get hired because they share the same interests. And I think it’s something you pointed out early on in our discussions was hiring managers should be at this. It may be called a user group, but hiring managers are users too. Lissa Smith: Absolutely. Mike Gerholdt: So- Lissa Smith: Yep. Mike Gerholdt: … I love that point. And it’s also, if I was thinking about it, would I want to interview with a hiring manager that I’ve seen at user groups, or would I want to interview with a hiring major where I have to explain user groups? Lissa Smith: Yes. It’s such a good point. Yes, exactly. Mike Gerholdt: Very different. So one thing, I think it’s, in common talk about because I feel you’ve run the gamut. I hope we’ve given everybody kind of a good insight into hiring admins and being the hiring manager. But I’d love to know a little bit about what you do at Salesforce because your title’s intriguing. Lissa Smith: Yeah. So senior manager of business architecture here at Salesforce. I’m responsible for our internal Salesforce instance for sales people. So processes, tools, governance, user experience, within our internal Salesforce instance and within Slack. And I’ve been working a lot on the Slack for sales project for- Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Lissa Smith: … the past year and the rollout of Slack now. So it’s very fun and very exciting. Mike Gerholdt: I will tell you, it’s always been a personal goal of mine when we started the podcast to have on as many Salesforce admins as possible. And I mean, Salesforce, Salesforce admins. But I say that a little tongue in cheek because I think it’s important. And I just did a talk with Pathfinders recently, the reason I bring that up and I say that is, your title, senior manager, business architecture isn’t something that I might search for on LinkedIn as a job- Lissa Smith: Right. Mike Gerholdt: … as a Salesforce admin. Right. And I think it’s important that we understand the identity and persona is called that, but the job title and the job descriptions may be very different. Lissa Smith: So true. And I was lucky with this role that the word or the phrase, Salesforce admin, was included in the description that they were looking for somebody that had previous Salesforce admin experience. And so it showed up in a… This was a 10-year-old job search that I don’t even know how to turn off. It comes into my- Mike Gerholdt: No. Lissa Smith: … and it’s fine because I can see the landscape, especially when I was hiring admins, I could see who else is hiring here in Indianapolis. And I could see those other job descriptions and… But this one came through. And like you said, it was senior manager, business architecture. What’s that? And why did this even show up in the job search? I’m not even looking for a job and dug into that. And it’s really cool. And it’s Salesforce uses Salesforce to sell Salesforce, SuperMeta. There’s got to be a team that’s responsible for that. And- Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Lissa Smith: … it’s pretty exciting to be on that team. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, I think in The Matrix, it’s taking the red pill, but for some reason taking the blue pill, right? So, I mean, you don’t have to give us details. But what kind of projects do you work on that I think… And the reason I ask that is, I want to be clear, not digging into your work-life, but I’m digging into analogous to what Salesforce admins would be doing. So what are, if somebody’s listening to this and thinking, “Hey, maybe I’ll become a Salesforce admin.” What’s kind of your everyday look like? Lissa Smith: Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, we’re looking at new features. We often get them very early, as customer zero we get them first. So we’re looking at those new features. We also want dynamic forms on standard objects. So we want to be able to have that and make our user experience better. So we’re evaluating new features, we’re looking at how can we make user experience better. We’re collecting feedback from users. We’re governing our objects as well and our processes. We’re making sure that- Mike Gerholdt: That’s a whole podcast in of itself. Lissa Smith: … yeah, absolutely it is. We’re now looking at our digital HQ at Slack and how do we incorporate Slack into our processes. Make it Slack first, make Slack the platform of engagement for our users and ultimately, improve and make their processes more efficient. So it’s a day-to-day talking to users, understanding what users are doing and then making things better for them. Mike Gerholdt: Sounds all the stuff we talk about in the central habits, which just makes me happy. It’s very good. Well, Lissa, this has been a very fun podcast. You are welcome back, anytime. If you have an idea, top of mind that you want to talk about, I will be super excited to see what Twitter has to say about this episode because I know it was one of the very first things that always pops into my inbox. Every time I check the community is, people asking for hiring or interview or questions or just anything around getting a job as being a Salesforce admin. And I thought it was a great way to kick off 2022. So thank you for helping me kick off 2022 on the podcast. Lissa Smith: You’re welcome. Happy new year. I’m very excited to be here. I’m excited for the future of all of the new Salesforce admins and I’m rooting for you. And, yeah, excited. Mike Gerholdt: So as I write, that was an amazing episode with Lissa. We literally probably could have talked for another hour, so I’m going to have to have Lissa back on the podcast. But to do that, you got to tweet me and tell me, what did I forget to ask Lissa on this episode? And then I’ll start compiling and we’ll get her back as soon as possible. What would you love to know about a hiring manager and asking questions to get that perfect admin job? So be sure to tweet at us. And if you’d like to learn more about all things, Salesforce Admin, go to admin.salesforce.com to find more resources, including all of the links that I mentioned in this episode, as well as a full transcript. Now, you can stay up to date with us on social. We are at @SalesforceAdmns, no “I” on Twitter. Gillian is @gilliankbruce and, of course, I am @mikegerholdt. So with that, welcome to 2022 and stay safe, stay awesome and stay tuned for that next episode. We’ll see you in the cloud.
Direct download: Replay__Hiring_an_Admin_with_Lissa_Smith.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am PDT |
Thu, 14 July 2022
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Belinda Wong, VP, Product Platform Management at Salesforce. Join us as we talk about why sometimes Admins who are doing the best job go unnoticed and everything user access policy. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Belinda Wong. Thank you, AdminsBelinda is a Salesforce veteran in the midst of her 16th year with the organization. She actually got her start as an Admin way back when. She knows what it’s like to be asked over and over again to “just make it work” when so much more goes into understanding the problem and coming up with a solution that makes sense. She feels like often all you’ll get is a thanks for sorting things out without a deeper appreciation of what you’ve actually pulled off, so to everyone out there who’s been in that situation: she says thanks. “Some of the best Admins I’ve talked to know how to anticipate,” Belinda says, they’re doing the research before a new Release drops to ensure everything goes smoothly. It can often feel like you get recognition only when you put out a big fire when things going smoothly on the other 364 days of the year is actually the bigger achievement. What the Login Access Policy will mean for youOne thing Belinda and her team are working on to improve productivity for Admins is adding the ability to better group together Permissions and find ways for Salesforce to help with that out of the box. “We’ve had standard profiles for 20 years—they haven’t really come along,” she says, which is why they’ve been moving into creating standard permission sets and permission set groups to help. Belinda and her team are working on Login Access Policy to really tackle those problems and help you manage everything. It’ll not only include permissions sets but also things that are currently a little more peripheral, like record level access controls, public groups, and more. Look out for an early pilot of that later this year (safe harbor) and hopefully, try it out and give Belinda your feedback. Be sure to listen to the whole episode for what Belinda’s up to with video games and knitting, and what you should wear to Dreamforce. Podcast swag Social
Love our podcasts?Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!
Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. This week I'm talking with Belinda Wong, who's the VP of product management at Salesforce. Now, before we get into the conversation with Belinda, she has been at Salesforce for 16 years. That's a long time. And she is actually heading up... I'm sure you're familiar with the name Cheryl Feldman. If not, Cheryl's working on all of the user access and permission policy things. So Belinda heads up that area. She has a really interesting take on some of the things that we do as admins I look at it as kind of celebrating zero. And so that's going to make more sense when you listen to the podcast, but really doing those things where we're being preventative and working ahead. Belinda even gives some advice on how to coach that up to your manager and make a big deal of being proactive. So with that, let's get Belinda on the podcast. Belinda Wong: Thank you, Mike. I am so excited. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, it's your first podcast, which is hard to believe because I feel like I have spoken to Belinda Wong quite a bit in my career, but maybe just not on the podcast. So welcome to your first podcast. Belinda Wong: Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited. Mike Gerholdt: Now, you have a really cool title, VP product management at Salesforce. So hey, you've done some things. I would love to start off by you kind of introducing yourself to what are some of the products that perhaps you've managed that admins have used? Belinda Wong: So I am nearly at my 16th year. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, congrats. Belinda Wong: Finishing my 16th year at Salesforce. So I have done a lot of different things here. But from a product perspective, I moved into product management probably about halfway through that stint. I started off with owning our licensing and provisioning framework basically. I call it our digital delivery. This is how we play the role of the FedEx and UPS for all the products that Salesforce sells. So that was my first product. Then I expanded into some of our authorization space. And it was originally called admin, but it's really authorization, meaning how do you entitle your users. And think profiles, permission sets and all the goodness around that. So those are my two main areas. I started off doing the direct management. And then now I have a team of PMs. You guys will know that I recently brought Cheryl Feldman to take over that authorization space and she's been amazing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, rockstar. Rockstar. Belinda Wong: Yeah, absolutely rockstar. So that's my space. I affectionately call it entitlement services. So it's basically all the capabilities and services to entitle your system as well entitling your end users. Is that helpful? Mike Gerholdt: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, you are part of the delivery and now you're the person that keeps the doors locked or unlocked and gives admins the ability to hand out permissions. I like it. Belinda Wong: That's great. I'm going to steal that. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Use it. So it feels like last year, but it was actually just April, if you can believe, that we did TrailblazerDX in San Francisco and we were crossing paths in the setup area. And I will joke, we found the most splinterable picnic table, I think, available on the planet to sit down and have a chat. One of the topics that you brought up, which was really keen and why I wanted to have you on the podcast, was you said sometimes tasks that admins do are undervalued. And I'd really love for you to elaborate more on that. Belinda Wong: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, my personal history with Salesforce started as an admin. I mean, before I joined Salesforce as an employee, my first introduction to Salesforce was administering an org for a startup. So one of the things that I figured out that, I mean, it was a great learning and it was also the reason why I fell in love with Salesforce as a product to start with is all the flexibility, all the things that you can figure out, but at the same time, people don't necessarily appreciate it, right? I remember being on the receiving end of, "Just make it work," you know? Mike Gerholdt: Right. Belinda Wong: "Just give me the... Look, he could do something that I can't. Just make it so that it works." Since then, I've talked to a lot of administrators that's come up to me either in conference shows or I've reached out and talked to that that said the same thing. It's like, my users just want it to work, so they don't necessarily appreciate how much time the administrator has to go and understand what happened, have to go figure out what is or isn't set up right. And at the end of the day, all they get appreciated for is, "Okay, you fix the problem. Great!" Not that you spent 20 hours figuring out how to do it. And that's the part that I think we need to really highlight and just give that thanks. And I want to thank every administrator, everybody out there that's had that experience, even if it's only once in a while. But it's like, thank you. Thank you for persevering and staying with us. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think there's... And I'll paraphrase. I read a note somewhere that kind of summarizes what you said, which was, a pipe in a house is clogged and person calls the plumber. Plumber comes over and says, "It'll be $400 to fix it." "Well, how, long's it going to take you to fix it?" "Oh, it'll be fixed in five minutes. You're not paying me for my time. You're paying me for the fact that I know how to fix this in five minutes." I think that's what you're saying, right? It's a little bit of the reverse of that, but it's like, "Thank you for doing the thing I asked. However, I lacked to gain the insight into the amount of time that it took for you to get that correct." Belinda Wong: Exactly. Exactly. And that's the other part, is talking about another underappreciate, is that anticipation. Some of the best admins that I've talked to anticipates, right? They're the ones doing all the research on, "Hey, I hear a release is coming. Let's go learn about what's going to change. How's that going to impact me? I'm going to go figure it out before it actually impacts my end users." And again, they're doing it naturally. They just know that's the best way for them to get ahead of what might be problems. But I don't see that as appreciated by all the companies and the managers out there so we should advertise that that is important work. Mike Gerholdt: Right. So let's talk about that because I feel like there's always one part and I listen to other podcasts and like, "Yeah, that's a problem." It's really easy to point out problems, but I think the second part of that is like, "So what's a solution?" I mean think of it from, I'll put it very astutely right into your seat, you're a manager of people and if you have somebody that does anticipate problems and does it very well and somebody that doesn't, what are things that you do to try and coach the other person and reward one of them for doing that and kind of help the other person not? Or conversely, what should that admin think of them out there, learning all the release notes, proactively putting out, "Here's what's coming. Here's things we need to think about," but feeling that undervalue from their manager? What should they do to communicate that to their manager? What would you want communicated to you? Belinda Wong: I'm going to tell you a story. One of the things that I say especially for about my licensing and provisioning area is we are an enormous success when there are no incidents, right? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Belinda Wong: But reporting zero incidents is not normally what people do. Although, I do. Now that I think about it, I don't know if they have them around anymore but I remember days when I would go into the office, this was like my pre Salesforce days, I worked at an environmental engineering firm. You would walk into the office in the kitchen and there would be a poster that says, "Number of days with no OSHA violations." Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yeah. There's a construction site I go past to take my dog to daycare and they have a sign that's similar to that. Belinda Wong: Right. But you notice that the metric they're reporting is a number that goes up, right? Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm. Belinda Wong: And we seem to have a natural tendency towards the bigger the number, the more vanity the better it is to have. But the reality is, what we want to measure is no incident. We actually want a zero. Mike Gerholdt: Right. Belinda Wong: But in that particular story, they had to represent it with a number that goes up so that people recognize the importance, like bigger is better. So maybe that's what we need to do is to say, "Let's figure out how to celebrate that. A no incident is not just, 'Okay nothing happened,' but that there's greatness in that. There's a metric what we should come up with to celebrate that." I don't know if that answers the question. Mike Gerholdt: No, I do think... Yeah, it is funny. I didn't realize that, but I drive past that construction site and you notice the double or triple digit number. And then sometimes you drive by and you're like, "Oh, it's at five. Something must have happened, right? Belinda Wong: Right. Mike Gerholdt: And it's similar to like that auto bill that I have set up on some of my accounts. When they just bill me and my cell phone service works and I don't have issues, it's kind of cool. But man, you can get me flaming mad if I get out in the middle of nowhere and my cell service drops or something happens and it's like, "Wait a minute, I forgot about the 364 other days that boring was not even celebrated, but it totally meant they were doing their job." Belinda Wong: Exactly. Yeah. I think that's what I would... I think your question was about how I would coach the people into, "Okay, you're not anticipating" because they got attention for the incidents that happened, right? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Belinda Wong: We always jump on escalations. So the person's name had recognition because there was an escalation. I mean, you could say there's a small negative connotation to that, but it's still, there was recognition. Whereas the other person who was doing the job, like doing their job well, was not getting recognized, right? So my coaching or my job as a manager would be, okay, let's find a way to celebrate that. And like I said, let's find a way that people understand it's important and that they see that big number or that big recognition. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I think a lot of what we talk about in admin relations and putting together sample dashboards is, "Look at all of the stories or the case tickets that I've burned down over the month." Like, "Look at all the things I've solved." I think the reverse of that is also... And I apologize I can't remember the year, but I know at Dreamforce one year we had a presentation that an individual in the community did. It was like dashboard of zeros is what I remember. Belinda Wong: Right. Mike Gerholdt: It's almost like celebrating that, right? Thinking through, "I know we want to talk about here's all the big stuff that's happened, but let's talk about how this dashboard month over month is still zero." And that could be number of incidences because we've anticipated problems that were coming up and proactively worked on solutions. So thinking that through, I can hear admins in my ear. They want to know like, "So Belinda, you manage Cheryl and you got this whole team of people. What's some of the stuff that you're proactively working on to make admins life easier?" B |
Salesforce Admins Podcast (general)
Categories
generalArchives
JuneMay
April
March
February
January
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January
December
November
September
August
July
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
Syndication
