Two Left Feet

I worked with Conga Composer this week updating some templates. It was straightforward. I used Word to make the changes to the texts and left the merge fields alone, with one exception. I needed to adjust the date format on a field and that was a little tricky.

I had to toggle the field code and enter the desired format code; in this case it was a date code. The hard part was that it was spacing dependent and it took a few tries to figure the exact format they wanted. We don’t do a lot with modifying Conga so I expect that I will have to figure it out again at some point.

In general, if I do something a number of times I will create a document similar to a Salesforce Knowledge Article. I create it in the form of a problem such as “What to do when a Sales Number is not Generated”.  I use the same template as the knowledge article with the addition of a revision table and a related procedures note. I also add some customer unique information. I take a lot of screenshots and use a lot of detail in the instructions.

It has come in handy since there are some thing that I do a lot of one month and then don’t have to do for a long time. At some point, I hope to compile them into a procedures manual. The challenge is what do I include in the manual. It should not be how to use Salesforce, since the user should know what they are doing. So things like how to log in are not needed. It’s not meant to be a user training manual but a guide for admins to address situations unique to the company’s organization. I will also probably need to include a section on how the business is structured and a lexicon of standard business terms.

9 Days of Freedom

I passed the Spring 17 maintenance exam. It's nine days until the Summer '17 exam is released. While I am focusing on passing the App Builder exam, I have to take a break from my studies every now and then to pass the next relase exam. I try to get the out of the way as quickly as possible; though I took a little longer that I would have liked for the Spring exam.

Working with Mobile Apps

I learned about mobile apps this week. The experience reminded of the 45 Rule of Acquisition: Expand or Die. Working on this feature of Salesforce expanded my skill set and helped me prepare for the Certified App Builder Exam; mobile apps are ~3% of the exam. That might not seem like a lot, but one question can be the difference between pass or fail.

One of the neat things about working with Salesforce1 is that you can emulate it from your desktop with certain limitations (just append ‘one/one.app’ to your Salesforce URL). The org I am working with has not switched over to Lightning Experience so we get this error when we try:

Since we are not ready to switch over, I had to use the chrome desktop emulator. The chrome emulator was pretty easy to use and directions are here.

Figuring out the navigation bar, and in particular, the order of the elements presented the next challenge. If you start with the Today element, it won’t show up unless you activate it on your phone and it does not seem to work in the emulator. So while the emulator is useful, you still need your phone to check certain things.

Once that was done, I tackled the quick start actions. The process for setting these up did not differ from setting up actions on the desktop. Two things to note are:

1) You have to drag and drop on the layouts from the Salesforce1 and Lightning section; even though they are the same quick actions;

2)  There is an order to how they are displayed, so you can’t put them in the exact order you want. Check this link out for details.

I am on my way to customizing my first mobile app; I created my first useful quick action this week. I probably won't be able to post any screen shots but I need to build a few apps to prepare for certification and those I can share.