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.

An Admin’s Strength FLOWS from the Salesforce

I created my first flow this week (starting from scratch). The details are proprietary, so no screen shots. I can discuss the general operation of the flow. Before I go into detail, I learned how to create the flow by watching a bunch of online tutorials. The one thing they all had in common was starting the flow with a Screen Element. The flow I wanted to create started from Process Builder, without direct user interaction (no Screen Element). This complicated the learning process.

Process Builder has an ‘Immediate Action’ for executing flows and the challenge was to understand how that worked and how it passed variables to the flow. Once I figured that out, it was pretty straight forward. The general flow is shown below and the steps to create it follow. We needed to automatically populate the Account team on a record using information from the Account record and a Custom Object every time a record is created or edited.

General Steps:

1) Open Flow tool.

2) Create a record look up with the required Variables from Standard Object. These are the variables that you need for your final record and anything that you need for subsequent look ups, if applicable.

3) Create a record look up with required variables from the Custom Object. These will pull the variables from the first lookup you created and create, look them up in the Custom Object, and create the fields for the final record.

4) Create the record with the variables from the prior two steps.

5) Save Flow and activate. Activation is critical since the flow won’t show up in Process Builder if it is not active.

6) Open Process Builder.

7) Create a process that passes the data to the variables in the Flow (assigned to the variable names you created).

8) Save and activate the Process.

Note that everytime you edit the flow you have to create a new process to call it.  This can be annoying when you first start to learn. Making a flow chart with the variable names can speed up this process. I expect not that I know how to create flows, there will be less versions of both the flow and the process. Also, it helps to add a note in the description of each iteration related to what change was made and what did not work in the prior iteration.

Something That I Use A lot

Currently I seem to be updating lots of records in Salesforce. Many times, I must do it manually and I have check the data before and after. I usually can get the SF record ID and use that to look at the record. I created this Excel formula to help me; it’s nothing special and I am sure it has been around for ages:

=Hyperlink(Concatenate(“https://orgname.com/”, record id))

The record ID is stored in a column next to the link (or anywhere  in Excel) so for example:

=Hyperlink(Concatenate(“https://orgname.com/”, A2))

It’s not a big deal but it has made my life easier; it’s also something to blog about…lol

22nd Rule of Acquisition: A Wise Man Can Hear Profit in the Wind

The 22nd Rule of Acquisition drives people to innovate and take risks. Transitioning to a career as a Salesforce Administrator continues to be a profitable endeavor both financially and professionally. However, it would be a shame to completely abandon my experience in Engineering, specifically, my process development and materials characterization work. Over the years, I have gained a solid understanding of sensors and how they work.

In the past, the data from the sensors stayed local to the user, but now the trend is to put it in the cloud. This has led to the Internet of Things (IoT) and a number of platforms dedicated to this area. Salesforce has an IoT platform and my background in sensors may be useful again. Since I started using Salesforce, I have been checking in on their progress in this area from time to time. It turns out that there are now several Trailhead modules in this area and a hardware development kit.

I purchased a kit this week and will start working the modules to learn the basics. From my work as an Admin, I know now that a few badges are not enough to claim any expertise, so I will be working on some sort of larger demonstration to both learn and showcase my skills. Here’s the dev kit; I just need to find some batteries to get started.

I expect it to take some time and money to get to a point where I could get a job doing this; but I think it will be worth it in the end. I am reminded of the 62^nd Rule of Acquisition: The riskier the road, the greater the profit.

The Eye of the Tiger

Successful companies are often guided by a board of directors/advisors. As a consultant, it’s hard to justify a board in the traditional sense. However, it’s still important to have objective opinions on the direction of your business. The key it to be open, honest, and above all not hide things or try to manipulate the outcome when working with the board. If you do, the board can’t function properly and you’ll derive little benefit or success.

I have several friends who are small business owners and we meet regularly to review each other’s businesses and offer advice. We create presentations and meet at a local coffee shop to advise each other. We try to do this once a quarter, though there is no set schedule. At the last review, I presented two options to my board. The first option was to keep working several consultant contracts and try to find more and the second option was to accept a six-month contract position.

If I took the contract position, the board felt I would lose the ‘eye of the tiger’. Basically, all my marketing activities, blog entries, certification prep, etc., would taper off. I would become complacent and enjoy my life. It appears that they were correct. While I am learning a lot, I have not focused on the other activities. While some of the activities are not critical, the blog and certification prep are things that will always be of benefit.

I have started to get back into things and will begin sharing the what I am learning as a junior administrator for a 600+ Enterprise Edition Org. I understand now why people ask how many users during the interview process. Being certified, having a bunch of trailhead badges, and working with small orgs did not prepare me for the challenges of a large organization.

Witer '17 Release Exam

I passed the Winter '17 release exam. There's a lot of material out there and a lot of updates. I found this link and the actual release notes to be the most helpful for preparation. I download the .pdf and used the search tool to check my answers (it's open book). Salesforce.study has a lot of material and they are always worth a look (that's how I found the links).

Now it's back to studying for the Certified Platform App Builder exam and my 2016 taxes (business and personal)...

New Year - New Certification

I have started studying for the Platform App Builder Certification exam. I chose this exam for two reasons:

1) Mike Wheeler just released his certification preparation course (link here)
2) Salesforce.study has a course on this as well. (link here)

I took a look back at what I did to pass the Administrator Certification exam and the biggest contributors to my success were Mike Wheeler's course and the materials on Salesforce.study. While I'll likely explore other materials, the effectiveness of these two sources drove my decision to study for the Platform App Builder Certification exam. Also, while I enjoy being an administrator, I think long term being a developer is where it is at.

I am also going to study a little differently. First I am using a time tracker (link here) to track how much time I spend studying. Secondly, while I am going to create a study notes document, I am not going to publish it all at once. I am going to post sections on the blog weekly.

The purpose of the blog is to showcase what I am doing to develop my Salesforce skills. I think multiple entries will be easier to digest for people as compared to a whole document. Plus it gives me content. While I am doing a lot, most of it is proprietary to my clients. I can't take screenshots of their data, so I'd have to recreate things in my developer account. I have some tools on that and I may start doing videos of it; time will tell.

Regarding my study process, the first thing I am going to do is watch the Wheeler videos. Then I am going to re-watch them and create my notes. After that, I'll tackle the Salesforce.study materials and finally take the exam. In between, I'll likely look for more materials to beef up my knowledge and I'll post those as well.

Happy New Year!!!