Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Cari Aves, the Director of Product Management for Accounts at Salesforce.

Join us to hear about Account Teams, Person Accounts, Account Hierarchies, and Contacts to multiple Accounts.

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

When You Should Use Personal Accounts

Traditionally, Salesforce is setup to track customers as companies, but if you work with individuals, you can use Person Accounts to track the way they interact with individuals across your organization. The first example most think of is retail, but you can also use Person Accounts to understand other relationships with people who work with your company, like accountants or doctors or lawyers, who tend to cross different companies and locations.

If your business does any kind of selling to individuals, it’s worth it to consider Person Accounts. Cari runs across DIY solutions all the time: “We have customers who want to model these relationships and they do backbends to create their own version of a Person Account.” These solutions don’t really let you take advantage of everything that Salesforce has to offer, but Person Accounts let you model this relationship and leverage everything the platform has to offer.

Multiple Accounts and Account Hierarchies

If you think about the standard Salesforce model, you have an account record and you have contacts who are related to that account. “But in the real world,” as Cari puts it, “you are dealing with contacts who often have relationships to multiple accounts.” This could be someone who owns multiple franchises of a restaurant, or a physician who has a private practice, a relationship to a hospital, and a relationship to a clinic. Contacts for Multiple Accounts builds on the Salesforce data model and allows you to create these relationships so you don’t have to duplicate the contact.

Relationships between Accounts are another key area that Cari’s team works on: “I think the challenge with Account Hierarchies in Salesforce is that we have a very basic representation of what that is.” We often think about it as just a parent-child relationship, but from a customer perspective they need to be able to have multiple Hierarchies, so “right now we’ve been very focused on improving the visualization around the Hierarchy,” with new additions like tree view and hovers. “I really want to hear from customers and learn more about what Hierarchies you want to maintain,” Cari says, “I want the Hierarchy to be a place of action and not just visualization.”

Going on the Road with the Lightning Now Tour

Cari was in Austin for this recording as part of the Lightning Now tour— so what is her view on the move to Lightning? “It’s been a great experience from my perspective as a Product Manager to see how people are approaching this project of moving into Lightning,” Cari says, “some are taking it as an opportunity to reimagine their implementation and I think that that’s awesome.” She sees a lot of people taking a moment to step back and rethink what they’ve been doing with their page layouts, customizations, and more.

For Cari, the Lightning Now tour has been valuable for that face-to-face time with customers, getting to share the new features that are coming and see how they’re thinking of applying it to their projects. Things like tabbed layouts, or individual related lists on different parts of the page. People are using these features to drive adoption with their salespeople to get folks using the application more extensively. “Oftentimes we get to interact with customers at Dreamforce on a call or webinar here and there, but it’s nice to be in-person talking through a very specific topic like moving to Lightning.”

For more insights, make sure to follow Cari on Twitter (@CFAves)

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

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

Direct download: All_About_Accounts_with_Cari_Aves.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:16am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Melissa Prcic, a Developer at Stand for Children.

Join us to hear about how she builds the technology behind Stand for Children’s anti-bullying efforts, as well as her work on the steering committee for Rad Women, and her unique path to becoming a Dev.

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

Jumping Into Salesforce

Melissa’s undergrad degrees were in Political Science, International Relations, and Critical Gender Studies, so not exactly the path you picture when you think about someone who makes their living in tech. When she started working at her first nonprofit, however, she was astonished to find that they didn’t have a database. This led her to take a class and eventually build her first database in Access.

Melissa quickly realized that she had a passion for data and tech, which lead her first to a database administrator position and later to Stand for Children, where they were starting to adopt Salesforce. “I dove into the deep end and learned as fast as I could because we did a really quick migration, and I fell in love with the platform.”

They started by treating it like a regular business migration, targeting the core business processes that they needed to get working by January 1st. “I did a lot of jumping in and playing around—the idea of having a sandbox was totally new to me and exciting once I figured out what that meant.” With the help of both a back end and front end developer, they were able to get everything working, and Melissa quickly realized that being a Salesforce Dev was the perfect fit.

Rad Women and Stand for Children

Melissa works with two great organizations to use her tech skills for social good. She’s on the steering committee for Rad Women, an all-volunteer organization that hosts 10-week sessions for women who have at least 2 years of experience on the platform but want to learn how to code. “For me the special sauce there is that you’re with a small group,” which positions the volunteer coaches to act as mentors, Melissa says. Setting up that relationship is key to getting more women involved in tech, because there’s someone you can go to when you have questions.

Professionally, she works with Stand for Children, an education advocacy nonprofit that works to improve the quality of public education. One of the ways they do that is through community organizing. They constantly have staff out in the field working with parents, teachers, and trying to get people involved both in their schools and politically in order to improve education. The problem was that even though these organizers needed a database, they weren’t exactly the ideal users for out-of-the-box Salesforce.

Using Salesforce as an Organizing Platform

Melissa’s team ended up building something called the Organizer App to solve their problem. They created an HTML5 custom front end that sits on top of Salesforce to make it more mobile-friendly. As Melissa put it, “It puts that data in the hands of the people who are actually doing the work.” Salesforce helped give Stand for Children a common definition of success: what the goals were and how well they were doing. They could look at metrics across several states and really get an idea of whether or not they were moving the needle the way they wanted to.

Melissa’s team’s initial success has led the organization to look for new ways to use tech to help them do what they do better. Up until now their tech projects have been inward-facing, but their next project is about branching into communities. It’s called the Kind Schools Project, and it’s about getting research-based curriculum support to teachers who want to foster an environment of kindness. As Melissa says, “Teaching is about empathy, both having empathy towards each other in the classroom and throughout the school.”

Their first major push for this project is to get at least half of all teachers at participating middle schools to sign up, which means that they need a place to go to register, log in, have access to a custom dashboard, be able to select activities, rate those activities, talk to other educators about what’s working, and more. Melissa is building all of that in Lightning with custom components, “I love that get to work some place that marries my passion for mission-based organizations with my passion for technology.”

For more insights, make sure to follow Melissa on Twitter (@MelissaPrcic)

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

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

Direct download: Using_Salesforce_for_Social_Good_with_Melissa_Prcic.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:48am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Matheus Goncalves, a Senior Salesforce Developer at eVestment.

Join us to hear about how Salesforce brought Matheus from Brazil to Atlanta, his philosophy of combining troubleshooting with learning, and how he approaches the Admin side of Salesforce as a Senior Dev.

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

How Matheus Had to Fake It to Make It

Matheus got his start on Salesforce when his manager at a tech company asked him if he could work with it, and then started talking up his great in-house Salesforce Dev. “I had to learn really quick, so Trailhead was my savior.”

Beyond that, the Dev community blew him away with their support: “The sense of community we have is completely different than any other technology I work with.” Moving from Brazil to Atlanta to start a job as a Senior Salesforce Developer, Matheus has many more badges, super badges, and certifications under his belt and his future is looking bright.

Turning Challenges into Opportunities with Trailhead

At Matheus’ office, “Trailhead fever is in the air,” and there’s a healthy competition going to see who can get the most badges and points by the end of the year. It’s a major difference maker compared to other platforms, because “when you get a badge you get a sense of fulfillment that you don’t get with other learning platforms.”

As he’s gone along, Matheus has started collecting several super badges, including Apex, Integration, and Security. He has a unique approach to combining his learning journey with bumps that come up in his everyday work: “Every time I face a challenge related to Salesforce, I search for a Trailhead related to that.”

Growing with the Community

In Atlanta, community members take part in Salesforce Saturdays, which are casual events members can attend to discuss issues related to Salesforce and help each other out with common problems. When it comes to reaching out to other Devs online, Matheus likes to keep active on StackExchange and Twitter.

Matheus is looking forward to Salesforce DX because it will simplify the process of developing new solutions on the platform and reduce the time you need for deployment. “A lot of amazing things that we’ve been waiting for, Salesforce DX is going to provide.” Instead of going out and partying after the event, Matheus spent four hours the night before this interview just talking with others at Trailhead DX about all the changes that are coming down the line.

Why Technology is About Creativity

Matheus got started on a really old computer his dad brought home one day, and one of the ways he learned English was from programming books. For him, programming is “the empirical meaning of creating things,” you are making something new that does what you want it to do. You design it, you implement it, and you need to use your creativity to make it work.

This is why Matheus is so passionate about Salesforce — it enables people without coding skills can get so much done. “I love declarative development because you can provide non-developers a possibility to improve the application, improve the system, and be helpful.” His approach as a Dev is that if he needs to do something, he always checks first to see if it’s possible to go with a declarative solution first.

For more insights, make sure to follow Matheus on Twitter (@toadgeek).

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

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

Direct download: Bringing_Creativity_to_Salesforce_with_Matheus_Goncalves.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:58am PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with John Schaaf, Salesforce Admin at MDLIVE. Join us to hear John’s amazing story about learning a new career after a significant injury and the program that made it all happen.

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

John’s Amazing Story

John had a life-altering motorcycle accident in 2006 in San Francisco. He wasn’t at fault, but his injuries left him on disability until 2013, when he was finally well enough to be able to go back to work. He started driving for Lyft while trying to find a new job in tech, but after seven years his skills were out of date.

John realized he needed help, and after a couple of years of being ignored by employers, he found Jewish Vocational Service (JVS) of the Bay Area. He initially came in to do basic things— update his resume, update his Microsoft Office skills, etc.— but within months he found out about a special Salesforce Admin training program. “When I heard that, the hair on the back of my neck went up,” John says, “because the more I found out about what a Salesforce Administrator did, the more it seemed to be who I could become and what I could become.”

At JVS, John was enrolled in a 3-month program with full time, instructor-led training. All 20 people in his class took the certification test and passed with flying colors. The success of this first class has carried over into the next four classes as well. The program was funded through a Department of Labor job training initiative, which made everything possible.

A Business Analyst for Business Analysts

“Being able to look under the hood of any system is a privilege,” John says. As an Admin, you get to make an impact by bridging the gap between business analysis and technology, and that means you get to make big contributions that have a major impact on how things get done.

John’s experience in Financial Services and the Healthcare Industry have been incredibly helpful when it comes to helping his users refine their specifications. “Part of the job is being a Business Analyst to our Business Analysts,” he says, “one of the questions we have to ask ourselves when we get a request to modify Salesforce is “Why is this request being made?” Admins need to think about the overall architecture of Salesforce, and how a request will affect everything in the long term.

Salesforce as an Equalizer

Looking to the future, John is clear about his vision: “I want to be an advocate for the idea that Salesforce can be an equalizer for people who may have been in a position like mine.” There are so many tools available to help people help themselves by learning Salesforce, and it’s so in-demand that it can really change lives.

John sees Salesforce as a powerful agent for social good, a way to give people who may be marginalized and unable to get hired for any number of reasons the means to lift themselves up. His story is proof that it’s possible, and he’s looking for ways to share it with the world.

For more insights, make sure to follow John on Twitter (@johncschaaf).

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

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

Direct download: How_Salesforce_is_an_Equalizer_with_John_Schaaf.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:06pm PDT

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Kiran Manyala, a Senior Developer Advocate with Salesforce India and Gillian’s co-host for the Trailhead DX Preshow.

Join us to hear about how Kiran’s three-point strategy of running Salesforce workshops with students while they’re still in school, bringing new people into the community to learn more, and working with businesses has helped India face an engineering crisis.

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

Salesforce India

Kiran works for the India Developer Relations Team, a small team of four that supports Trailhead customers all over the world. He joined Salesforce as a support engineer in the CSG block, then moved to Admin, and then Feature Activation. As he put it, “I always had this goal in my mind to do some coding in my career.”

The massive Salesforce Community in India is Kiran’s main responsibility: 40 Developer Groups and around 25,000 Salesforce Engineers. Three of the five largest Dev Groups in the world are in India including Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai; with Pune and Jaipur not far behind. Kiran’s job is to create awareness among them on how powerful the platform is and show them the path to both build their careers and create applications on it. This was one of the major draws that initially drew Kiran to Salesforce: “If you really perform well and if you know what you’re doing, you’re really rewarded and appreciated in this organization.”

India’s Changing Market

“There is a crisis in India,” Kiran says, “customers have changed: they want solutions faster and in a better way.” Once upon a time, when a customer had a use-case, System Integrators would propose solutions based on the resources and technologies they had available, mainly in Java and .NET, which would often take a long time to build.

The problem is that “customers aren’t anything like that right now,” Kiran says, “they want it faster.” They no longer want to wait around for the year it would take to build an implementation in Java. This is where Salesforce comes in because it can shrink that time down to two months. The crisis comes from some folks who are struggling to adopt new technologies and losing jobs because of it: 100,000 engineers have already lost their jobs, and another 600,000 will follow in the next three years. However, as Kiran puts it, “there is opportunity in crisis.” Kiran sees it as his mission to seek out these engineers and give them new skills by helping them learn a new platform.

To tackle his job, Kiran tries to connect three dots: outreach that begins with workshops at colleges and university, meetups and other tactics to strengthen the community, and target job placement to get people with skills in positions where they can make a difference.

Working with Schools

Kiran runs Salesforce workshops at colleges, demonstrating what a CRM is and how you can build these types of applications on Force.com. In the last one and a half years Kiran has taken his workshop to over 8,000 students in India.

The students go on to collect Badges, Super Badges, and Certifications, so they know their stuff but don’t necessarily have the experience of a seasoned Dev. “That’s why we created a platform for them to showcase their skills,” says Kiran, which has led to around 100 students getting placed (and counting). Tightening up that ramp time is “a win situation for the Organizations, it’s a win situation for us (because they’re coming into our community), and it’s a win situation for them because they’re coming into a job.”

The Power of Communities

Kiran has done a lot to make sure that the Salesforce Communities throughout India are active and vibrant. For example, if you’re new to the Community in Hyderabad, you can just go to go to MeetUp.com and you’ll be able to find at least one event happening every month nearby. Getting people involved quickly allows for people to share experiences and makes the community stronger.

A cool idea came up when Mike, Gillian, and Kiran started discussing ways for Communities to connect across the globe— could we pair “sister” Groups together? As Kiran put it, “there’s nothing we cannot do virtually these days.” If they could find a sweet spot that works for both time zones, it could be an amazing way to share knowledge and grow even more connections.

Bringing More Skills into the Workforce

The third dot for Kiran is about connecting with the people who are already working in Salesforce right now. In India, there are around 35,000 System Integrators on the platform right now, and that’s not even taking into account the mid-segment and small-segment companies.

Between working with engineers who have coding ability but might not know the Salesforce platform, and new graduates who have a lot of training but not a lot of experience, there are a lot of ways that Kiran can bring even more talent into his Communities. The future is promising, and this work is a big reason why.

For more insights, make sure to follow Kiran on Twitter (@sfdckiran).

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

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

Direct download: Growing_Community_in_India_with_Kiran_Manyala.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:39am PDT

1