I don’t plan but I’m open to everything. And I also don’t look back, but at the beginning of the year I tweeted link to Susannah’s article without properly mentioning them and Paul was a bit disappointed, so I decided that I’ll look back this time.
But that just happened, I’m grateful but not sure I can count them between my moments, so here are others.
Moment #1 – CzechDreamin
I covered CzechDreamin in its own article, I immensely enjoyed the date even though I don’t remember much and I’m super grateful that the whole team agreed to repeat it this year (yes, we are looking for speakers and sponsors and we also sell tickets). I think we take it more seriously this year, we already had two calls about it in last a few months and will see whether anyone will want to do it next year as well 🙂
Moment #2 – BBQ
When Paul said to me a long while ago that I need to get a co-leader for user group I didn’t really understood why. But I’m super glad that I persuaded Alča to join me and even though she still feels she doesn’t do much (she has no idea I do close to nothing and feels guilty) she has great idea.
Organise one meeting with no content and just have a BBQ was probably the best meeting of the whole year, we had time to chat to each other (even though I didn’t have time to speak to many people as always), Dan Appleman joined us for the evening as well and probably the whole SF sales team came us well. Definitely on the list for this year as well.
I skipped all dreamin conferences last year and made it just to YeurDreamin. The conference was awesome, meeting people who helped us with CzechDreamin was great but the best part was, that I was able to persuade Adam to join me on stage to deliver a presentation about DX. I feel he liked it and it also somehow change the atmosphere inside the company and it looks like we start to take conferences more seriously and some people try to speak on as many of them as possible (super hard).
I did my first presentation about DX at Dreamforce 2018, when I just forced myself to learn it (I didn’t know anything about it before I submit the abstract). From then on I use it on daily basis even though probably just for some basic stuff, but even that saves a lot of work. Also great to see how the whole company is changing, we start to use it on projects, consultants fight with it (or rather with Git, but as we said during the presentation – we blame DX while we put a lot of new components into the game and DX isn’t necessarily the problem).
Moment #4 – PwC team & mentoring
Finally last year we started to grow our Czech Salesforce team at PwC. We suck at equality and girls (women?) already complained about it so I definitely need to find some man into the mix.
It is great to see the new people, how they are eager to learn everything, how they challenge me (can you do multiple tabs for the same object in Lightning App?) and that I can share my knowledge and experience.
I also mentor people in CRM pro neziskovky and for Supermums and it is great experience, which teach me something new every time they ask.
I became member of the Pledge 1% and decided to donate more than the recommended 1 %. But the important part of this is, that I was able to hit my goal I set myself long time ago. That feels good.
We have three more weeks to submit your session abstract for CzechDreamin, which looks like a plenty of time, but coming with the right topic might be hard. With no particular order in mind I came with a few ideas for you as well.
Just before Christmas, when I thought that there will be no more travel, came a great offer – CTA601 training. I wrote to Santa (read „my boss“) and got an approval. Flights and hotel reservations and I was good to go. Just to learn day before, that thanks to French strikes we move everything to London. Cancel everything and do it one more time.
I spoke shortly about CTA 601 at Dreamforce with Suzanne Ferguson from Salesforce. I never considered it a must, more like nice to have, which will go deep on all topics and will scare me to even think about the exam. And I found out that the workshop is more or less mandatory before you can even think about going in front of the board, kind of qualification criteria. Ok, here is my chance.
Maybe fast forward back even more – when I joined PwC I said I want to have the knowledge but don’t want to have the certificate. Reason? I’m simple too lazy and also don’t think there is a need for so many (200+) CTAs in the world. How many really big projects are out there, which really need one? And then, three years later, I’m on the path, just because the pyramid looks incomplete without it. Yes, I know that even Salesforce says the opposite.
The workshop
Sebastian Wagner was our couch/trainer and my feeling is, that he was pretty soft on us. I hoped to leave scared and not willing to do it and it didn’t happen.
We covered how to approach the board (timing, how to tackle the order, where we can get lost, that we should use colors, etc..)
We had a few rounds of questions and answers, where Seb asked us and we tried to answer. This was actually the best part of those two days and I would love to have just that. It really helped me to find what I don’t know, learn in what details we should go (and also how much fascinating technical details some people know) and experience the different difficulty of questions. Some were super deep and required knowledge, some were just so obvious that I felt I’m missing something (how would you tackle importing data from 6 different regions), some were super easy (sharing on junction objects.
Some had surprising solution – Canvas (glorified iFrames) should be the first way how to think about integration with web-app, you don’t have to do much on your side. I never used them, never even mentioned them to client, but here we go, in two days we mentioned them like 10 times, it felt almost like when the answer is AppExchange it is correct answer. A few more notes on this – peer-to-peer connections are the worst, middleware is ok, mashups might be good idea as well (strange is how hard it is to find something about it on SF web).
oAuth flows – we all failed (and I know this is my weak area and I don’t care much because it is pretty easy to learn it). Everyone says you need to know oAuth flows and I never understood why, especially as you cannot really see how it flows, all you see (as a consultant/architect) are the settings. As an architect you should know what communicate with what and what firewall will do with it. The reason why you need to know it – we’ve been told – is that it demonstrate that you can draw dependencies, processes and some more. Still feel that drawing some process from the example we will get would be better.
Licences and objects and limits – another area I need to refresh, I feel I know it pretty well, but I wasn’t aware of any limits on community users. Who would expect that Salesforce isn’t willing to sell you any number of them 🙂
Integration patterns is another area, where I feel I know what it is about, but some polishing would help. Especially considering all the security consequences (pass session Id might not be great idea).
Git is here, don’t use change sets.
Yeah, the whole deployment live cycle, when to use which sandbox, how many of them, how to solve branching in git. Which surprises me the most, that there isn’t some branching standard you can just copy and paste (ok, I know there are some approaches, but I’ve been using git on several projects and each of them was totally different). Single org/multi org and other things which might change the approach, really like this part and need to have a long and deep debate about it with some developers to learn more.
Practice and practice and practice some more. I didn’t present, but all those drawings, still look easy and knowing myself how I present the best without preparation …
Two days later we finished and … will see what the future brings.
Další ze série článků integrace se Salesforce, které jsem viděl. Respektive které jsem napsal.
MailChimp zná každý, akorát poslední dobou reference na tu jejich aplikaci nejsou nic moc. Z Česka pak můžete znát Email kampaně, pro které vyvinul doplněk Sprinx Consulting a který se ovládá přímo ze Salesforce. Moji zákazníci pro změnu používají SmartEmailing a tak jsem vyvinul rozšíření pro něj, které instaluji po dohodě.
Co to umí
obousměrnou synchronizaci mezi Salesforce a SmartEmailingem kontaktů a leadů;
možnost určit, zda se mají zakládat nové kontakty/leady ze SmartEmailingu s možností omezení na konkrétní seznam, ze kterého se zakládají;
natahování informace o odeslaných emailech ze SmartEmailingu včetně jejich statistik a detailů pro konkrétní kontakt;
nastavení skupin v Salesforce – kampaně, které mají nastavený příznak synchronizují svoje členy do SmartEmailingu do příslušného seznamu;
možnost definice vlastních polí a jejich synchronizace;
možnost reportingu na straně Salesforce;
nedochází k mazání informací ani na jedné straně.
Co víc si přát – svoje kontakty mám v SmartEmailingu v potřebných seznamech, ve SmartEmailingu tvořím a posílám emailové kampaně a detaily o nich se mi přenáší zpět do Salesforce. Markeťák dál používá co je zvyklý, obchodníci zase žijí v Salesforce a přiřazením kontaktů do jednotlivých kampaní mají jistotu, že jim příště přijdou příslušné emaily.
Zní to dobře? Ozvěte se, nainstalujeme a můžete používat.
Since the moment I got back from Dreamforce everyone asks – how was it? And my answer is – super short and I’m not really sure I attended any session at all.
This was my fourth Dreamforce and it is pretty funny how each of them was different. In 2016 I packed my schedule with sessions and I learnt a LOT. 2017 I co-presented about automation in the theatre and got an invite to see the future of flow, which was awesome and I still look forward for some things we saw there. At 2018 I attended very little sessions, had one on my own, helped at Trailhead area and found some „secret“ locations where I could learn more behind the scene. This year I saw maybe two sessions, I remember close to nothing from them (sorry presenters), I helped, I didn’t speak and I enjoyed meeting people I know from online.
My calendar has been packed as always, two to four sessions at every single time, but I use them more as a reference what I want to eventually check (and already know I probably won’t have time).
I really enjoyed the WIT event on Monday, see how those initiatives as Supermums, Ladies be Architect, RAD Women, WIT Devs progress further, how much women they draw, make me really proud about the Salesforce ecosystem, which is more 50:50 than traditional IT.
I remember gate crashing CTA’s session and be quickly kicked out, but having a great conversation about it later that evening, which won’t happen otherwise and which was super beneficial. Looks like Salesforce recognise that when you finish both architect certificates you are still far away from CTA and it is expensive for every one when people fail the exam. So they prepare some steps on the way, maybe some online/web screening to prioritise people who might be more ready. Make sense.
Eric’s breakfast is a tradition and I enjoy it every time (far enough, I didn’t enjoy it that much last year thanks to different location). Four people at a table, it is either hit or miss, but at Salesforce ecosystem it must be really hard to get the „miss“ part. Always a great debate plus breakfast.
Then they talked me into attending the keynote. Being at 6th row wasn’t bad at all, the waiting wasn’t that bad as well as I had time to catch up with people I know mostly online. The protester and watching body guards looking around really cautiously. Also the first time I watched something in real time and online at the same time (MVP Slack) and it was great to have this „cross“ system conversation.
The AppExchange street team was great experience, but either I did it wrong or people didn’t have that much need to take a picture with us, as we weren’t giving away money as year before. Still hope that some of those who took photo with me won those 50$.
5k run was great morning exercise, watching the Sun going out, having fun with people, running quickest in last 5 years+. And sore legs the rest of the week, but I will do it again.
I also had a few meetings arranged in advanced – which is not typical to me – and looks like both will have successful outcome, watch for CzechDreamin agenda and sponsors.
Small help to Ladies be Architect with their session, hosting Circle of Success (still need to think how to make sure that every table will be a success as it depends on people a lot, tempted to have it at CzechDreamin and unsure about the outcome at the same time), helping with leading workshops at the Customer 360 – showing people how to do thing.
Getting signed books about DevOps and Community Cloud, chatting with both authors and invite them to Czech Republic – you guess why. And, maybe, who knows … And I missed the OrgConfessions book.
Concert, where most of the Czech team by some miracle got together and enjoyed the music together. Such a great idea to copy the UK WhatsApp group to sync all on site together.
Equality party, which wasn’t probably that packed as other and you know what – those people are quite normal. Actually, am I one of them when I attended it? Something we aren’t really used to from CZ, but great to experience it and realise that it is normal.
Secret session for MVPs only, with awesome inside information and great chat why not to surface those information to public, as it cannot really hurt anything but provide a lot of value and remove a bit of disappointment. And then session for Dreamin‘ events organiser, where we found out how many of us there are, awesome demojam and some future plans. Great to see that we are finally on official Salesforce calendar and that they push AEs and other internal people to learn more about such events and push to customers as well.
Community Groups Gathering
I did know in advance that I have no chance to learn much myself, so I asked all the group leaders in Prague to do one meetup together. On December 4th we got 97 people at the Deloitte offices together with nine speakers and we summarised what it was about for the community. We run the event in two rooms at the same time and I wanted to be in both of them, meaning I didn’t see anything. Luckily I do have the presentations, so I can do the summary based on them:
Evergreen – probably the biggest Developer announcement (I also heard that the Developer keynote was really good), which will be paid, but allow us to do things not possible now – use node.js to do all things possible such as FTP connections, PDF generation and much more, while also allow people from outside the SF ecosystem to play part in it. Which might also mean we need to learn something new and also shows that SF developer probably cannot cover everything anymore;
Lightning Web Component isn’t something new, we already know the benefits (speed and ability to use „normal“ front-end developers), they will be unit testable with Jest, which might mean that in the future we have to write the tests as part of the deployment (if for nothing else), don’t forget security (scoping) and effectivity (minimise the DOM re-drawing);
Einstein and rolling out new features – the opportunity scoring will be rolled-out to everyone during next year, Einstein Search should also be available to everyone and of course Voice is still here and more prominent than before;
dynamic forms will be huge game changer, looking forward to it and at the same time scared how we will manage it;
the term „Lightning“ will be used in proper places only (no Lightning Sync for example as it has nothing to do with the UI, which is the „real“ Lightning), at the same time the Customer 360 will be everywhere but basically it just means „the platform“ (and it should be free for any client with 2+ clouds);
dynamic emails in Marketing Cloud with direct interaction from users. Awesome and scary at the same time;
DevOps/CD/CI – plenty of sessions about this, looks like the future even admins has to learn, curious what it will mean in terms of 3rd parties who currently provide the solutions and whether Salesforce will buy some of them to do it on platform;
IdeaExchange – we heard enough about the changes, what I kind of like is the idea of coins, where everyone will get a fix amount of coins to be spend on ideas and those ideas with the highest amount on them WILL be delivered. Which is interesting change compared to now-a-days as we had unlimited amount of likes and weren’t „forced“ to think about what is important.
Next year
This year Dreamforce sold out in about 3 weeks, next year it will happen on November 9 – 12. I plan to be there again, my favourite hostel is already sold out. What about you, did you put it in your budget for training for next year? And what about investing yourself, I’m pretty sure it can be up to 10 % of your income. And that’s the amount we should invest in our self 🙂
You can find all the presentations from our meetup at Google Drive together with some photos. The next Prague Administrator Group will take place probably in March 2020, the topic is still unknown but you can at least join our group to get the email once we know more.
BTW: we finished our biggest meetup so far with raffle and donated all the money we got to Postbellum, who documents the memories of witnesses of the important historical phenomenon of the 20th century, and Zdravotni klaun Red Noses, who heal by laugh at hospitals. You bet, they were surprised.
mini Dreamforces aka Dremin event
Dreamforce is the ultimate dream for many, but maybe the wrong dream. It is the biggest for sure, but you might learn more at TrailheaDX or some community run events, which happen across Europe (and other continents) as well. Put one of these on your schedule for next year:
