We had a Field Service Lightning workshop (by Pawel Dobrzynski), MuleSoft workshop (by Patryk Bandurski) and now we plan Einstein Analytics Academy led by Rikke Hovgaard. The difference between „workshop“ and „academy“ also means this will be more official and longer.
Key facts:
dates: August 19 – 20 (attend both days is mandatory and yes it is the week after CzechDreamin)
price: free of charge, you are responsible for your expenses
I attended the campfire a year ago at London and I expect this will be very similar.
Also passed the Einstein Analytics and Discovery Consultant certification and these two things had something in common – I got tons of tips how to visualise data and plenty of ideas what might work better and how to achieve it. If nothing else, this is the reason #1 why to attend. When you check Rikke’s blog you will get a lot more ideas, so do it now.
As EA now also include Discovery (for free) the whole product just got 100 % better and more feature rich. You won’t learn only how to analyse data, but the whole „team of data scientist“ you get as part of Discovery will be ready to your service as well. Once you understand how to use them – at have enough data – they might be really powerful and helpful.
Agenda
Day 1
Chap1:Basic Terms 9-9:30
Chap2:Dataset Builder 9:30-10:00
Chap3:DataPrep/Recipes 10:00-11:30
Break
Chap4:Lens & Explorations 11:30-12:00
Lunch
Chap5:Dashboard Basics 1:00-2:00
Chap6:Collaboration 2:00-2:30
Chap7:Compare Tables 2:30-3:00
Chap8:Configure Actions 3:00-3:15
Break
Chap9:Layouts & Mobile App 3:15-3:45
Chap10:Embedding 3:45-4:15
Chap11:Connect Data Sources 4:15-5:00
Day 2
Chap12:Pages 9:00-9:30
Chap13:Custom Maps (GeoJson) 9:30-10:00
Class Exercise: Business Jargon to Designer 10:00-11:00
I have a confession to make – I’m Salesforce certified application architect (and certified system architect as well), but in this area I fell misserable.
Process Builder or Workflow, the never ending question. According to Trailhead it is solved, Process Builder wons. It is the future with all those benefits and it is what we should use. Yes, it is missing Outbound Messages, but besides that it has all benefits – order of execution, related records up and down, automate more things.
When I run over a Quip document (for MVPs only) titled „Examples of why you used a Workflow Rule because Process Builder caused issues“ I was surprised with so many reasons why workflow is superior.
First of all – when you want to update a field without triggering validation rule (check order of execution to try to make sense of it).
Time-based workflows – the interviews are visible on flows page (not that big deal to me), but you need to remind yourself that the flow will be processed by the version of Process Builder which created it (so it might do something completely different to what you want now).
Cross-object fields are finally solved in Summer ’19 – at least it looks like you don’t have to check whether the lookup field is filled in to check the value of the target record as step 2.
Bulkifications issues are something people are still scared of, even though Salesforce claimed it is solved. And I feel I tested it a while ago and was happy with the results as well.
Complex formulas – obviously what people like is the fact, that in workflow you have one Field Update which you use in multiple workflows, while in process builder you need to define it again and again, if you use it at multiple places.
What else is good to know?
Process Builder runs in system context (e.g. has access everywhere), while Flow runs in user context (can do only what user is allowed to do) – unless you start the Flow from Process Builder, then it runs in system context.
When you want to send email alert to email field on related object, I always create something, which copied the value to field on the object which will trigger it. The reason was, that in email alert you can select only email field as a recipient and not a formula field. But Alena sent me this great (and awful) tip, how to overcome it without copying the value.
A while ago Salesforce add the check (or rather recommendation) whether you use just one Process Builder per object and this article from Alex Peattie builds on top of it with some recommendation how to split processes so they can call each other. Easy read for developers, probably way harder for admins.
With this you should also be aware of the critical update in Summer ’19, which changes the behavior of record value you access – you can access either the latest value or the value it had at the beginning of the process.
Think twice
Yeah, those might be edge cases, but transfer workflow to process builder might be challenge at some places, with consequences you didn’t think about first. Be careful!
Another release ahead of us (actually it is already here as I didn’t have time to check the release notes before it landed to my organisations and then it had to wait for more interesting blog post to be published first). At first it looked like feature heavy release, when I checked better I don’t think there are so many of them, but still some are pretty cool.
Lightning, Lightning, Lightning
The very first part in Release Notes is dedicated to move to Lightning. We already know that from Winter ’20 the Lightning will be enabled for everyone (well, you can actively kind of opt-out by enabling the right permission); the Transition Asistant has been improved (probably never really saw it) and it can check for Visualforce pages which might make problems after switch (I’m still surprised how much energy Salesforce invest into improving VF pages, for example there is a new tag which can make them auto update in the same way as Lightning Component do).
The most important point – In-App Guidenance, which enables you to add prompts almost everywhere to show users what is new and changed, you can also set how often it should pop-up. Now you just need to find the time to write all those text and set it up.
Changes in UI
Enhanced Related Lists are in beta, but they promise great things – you can show up to 10 columns (as was standard in Classic), can choose how many records you can see. Related to this is also the ability to filter related lists, sadly the filter is temporary and you have to set it up every time.
Utility Items are not aligned to the right, small but probably nice feature. Plus the Notes can pop-out, so you can – for example – put them on second screen.
See which objects have been searched and how many results each of them have is awesome. I hated clicking through them just to find nothing was found.
The whole UI is more colorful now, has more shades. Clicking on the navigation menu will show you 5 recent items (instead of 3 till now), you can define the color of hyperlink, header is hidden when you print the page, you can switch Lightning to mimic Classic when showing record details (why would you do it?) and you and your users can choose whether to show activities in the Lightning way or switch back to related lists (just go to settings and search for Record Page Settings). Rich Text Editor has been change, which – besides everything else you won’t notice – will allow you to insert pictures. Yeah!
And the most important feature? You can link specific step in Path with confetti!
Sales Cadence
Really looking forward when they will include this feature in standard and not as paid add-on. Works now for Person Accounts as well (seriously, it didn’t before?), you can link more of them together, choose how to sort your queue, preview emails which will be send and you can call it from flow.
CPQ
Einstein everywhere, here it can suggest the ideal price based on historical data. Curious how much sales people will trust it.
But the logic updated in price action formulas when calculating with percents is serious one – YOU NEED TO UPDATE SUCH FORMULAS, otherwise it’ll return nonsense.
Reporting
This is huge! Row level formulas (no need for simple formula field to calculate something, in beta, needs to be enabled), conditional formating in Lightning, search for records in report (understand, it is cool, but why don’t we rely on browser search and invest energy into this?), conditional notification definition in Lightning (I still don’t understand why and how it is done, but you can subscribe to 5 reports in Classic and to another 5 in Lightning).
Two level sorting on dashboard components, ability to change width of columns (which will be reset every time you open the dashboard).
Einstein Analytics support connection to Oracle Eloqua, can sync more data with Amazon Redshift and has better performance with Google BigQuery. Plus new templates, which are awesome as always, but somehow I wonder when they will develop applications for core Salesforce as well.
Debug steps is awesome, ability to sort by dimensions is pretty cool as well. Pilot of versioning of your dashboard, lenses and dataflows sounds awesome, now you had to save it manually (or probably use DX to help you with that). But you have to use Workbench to handle it anyway during the pilot, there is no UI for that.
Communities
Ability to create reports is nice, global quick actions plus mass quick actions, choose what users can do in list views (change table to kanban, inline edit, list search, list pinning and list actions) sounds promising, I wanted to hide a lot of those actions from users the other day.
Survey
What was paid add-on once upon a time is kind of free. You can send unlimited number of them, first 300 responses are for free. And that’s probably all worth saying about it.
Mobile
The mobile app now supports Path and confetti, iOS 12 and above is supported (as well as Android 6+)
Developers
ExperienceBundle to download information about community (instead of the SiteDotCom binary file).
Continuation class in APEX to make long-running requests from Aura/LWC looks interesting, they aren’t allowed to do any DML operation.
Insert LWC into VF page – well, why not. Just, why exactly? The same goes for <apex:liveController/> which will make your WF page re-render dynamically the same way Aura/LWC does. Just … didn’t we want to leave all this behind?
Disable access to non-global APEX controller methods in managed packages is absolutly obvious, just wonder whether it will make my hack to DocuSign Gen not working. Hopefully not.
supportedFormFactors so you can define for which device it will be rendered.
force:source:deploy and force:source:retrieve will work the same way as their respective mdapi commands, so you don’t have to worry whether you pull/push to scratch org or standard org.
Ability to define more features in scratch org definition file, still not all of them, but way more.
Larger Debug Logs – from 5MB to 20MB, you can generate 1GB max of them in 15 minutes.
A tons of new parameters for Aura and Lightning Web Components.
Others
Patient Timeline is super cool, would be great to be able to use it elsewhere as well. Or maybe Amnon Kruvi’s app will be able to do that.
I love the Automation Home screen, really looking forward to find whether it will actually help me to improve things. And the notification builder looks promising as well, I migrated from email to Chatter, so now will probably even migrate some thing to these notifications only.
Evaluate Criteria Based on Original Values in Process Builder critical updates is really serious, it might change the result of your whole process, so go and re-check them.
That’s all?
Live chat, dialer, Pardot, Knowledge, FSL, merge cases (beta), conditional macros, muted permissions (in Pilot) or improved partner search and even showing where they delivered their work (not sure they might want to show it sometimes). Yeah, there are much more in the full release notes, so feel free to go and check it, but frankly, those features didn’t really ring the bell.
Frankly, this really is great, but not as full of new features as I would hope for. The most important to me are finally being able to have more than 4 columns on related lists, which shouldn’t be the highlight of new release. Or is this the new standard?
I planned this post for a while and at the end didn’t write it, as I felt nobody would be interested in. But then Salesforce celebrated 1000 community groups and asked people to share „why“. Here is my why.
I’m an introvert
Might be hard to see this, but it is true. Put me in a room full of people where I don’t know anyone and I’ll leave soon, not really that guy who start the talk.
When I learnt a while ago that the best cure is to approach speakers or organiser I solved my problem at some events. But what about the others? Let’s be on that „other“ side and people will come, we will have a great chat and I’ll be comfortable.
Guess what – it works! It works that good that I usually don’t even have time to speak with everyone I want to speak with. That’s why I really enjoyed our latest meeting with BBQ, because I had plenty of time (still didn’t have time to speak with everyone I wanted :-))
I want to learn
Eric Dreshfield said it really nicely on the video I saw at last Dreamforce (and which sadly isn’t publicly available) – I have fun, I meet people, I learn a lot and it doesn’t look like a work.
I also heard it either from Padak or Filemon – when I want to learn something, I’ll make meetup and invite people, who will explain it to me.
It also has some rules, which Padak nicely listed (in Czech) and there are companies who take meetups as a way to draw new people, which (sorry PwC) is something I try to skip as much as possible (we even don’t use PwC offices just to be sure that there is no link).
I want to show others what it is
My first community event was probably Surf Force and it was super awesome. The main reason – there were like 50 people, I was able to have a quick chat with most of them and then I met them on any other conference. I immediately had someone who I can chat with and who can introduce me further.
Dreamforce, TrailheaDX, World Tours are awesome, but all those smaller conferences are even better to me, because I’m able to absorb all those new faces.
And that’s the reason why I decided to organise CzechDreamin – to show people here, what an awesome community exist outside Czech Republic and that it is worth to travel abroad. You might start with a conference and then – before you know it – you will mix your holidays with community groups meetings in the final destination, to learn new things and meet new people. People, who will tell you even more about the country, people you’ll be able to contact in case you have a question in an area they are expert in.
Giving back is the most selfish thing you can do for your career
David Liu
He spoke about things like forced learning, sense of responsibility, meeting people who will inspire you, exposure to new opportunities, became MVP, your brand and karma. And you know what? He was right, but at the same time I don’t feel that any of those things is the reason why you should do it.
Get involved
We have 4 groups in Prague, I heard that 5th is just being established. Get involved is as easy as attend one of them, ask the organiser to introduce you to a few people and before you know it you have a few new friends, which can help you on you way in Salesforce ecosystem.
We not used to high-five others or hug people, but I’m really happy that Zdenek gave me a few years ago the latest impuls and Alena joined me as co-leader, with whom I can share my bad ideas.
The thanks also goes to Aleš, Kristýna, Lukáš, Michal, Petr who help me with CzechDreamin and I hope they won’t regret at the end.
If there would be competition about the most awaiting conference of the year, YeurDreamin would win. They started the planning a year and half ago, team grow and grow bigger to around 10 people, who regularly met and planned together, did fantastic job in drawing attention and at one point it even looked like they will draw the famous Steve Molis to present. Which didn’t happen at the end, but there were so many other great speakers, that it wasn’t problem.
At the end 350 people met at Amsterdam for a day full of learning in 5 parallel tracks, each session lasting between 20 – 50 minutes. And I (with my colleague Adam) were lucky enough to present as well.
Before the conference
I just found out that I bought my tickets in November last year, that’s how in advance they built momentum.
Several Slack channels appeared along the way, I was lucky enough to be invited even to the one where they planned the whol event. Awesome insights. Then another for speakers and one more for attendees. Plus community created WhatsApp group, so there was so many channels to monitor, that at the day of the conference I gave up and just enjoyed myself.
Dinner for speakers was great, I met a lot of new people and had time to chat with those, I didn’t see for a while. Just not enough time, I forgot to ask so many questions I wanted to.
The conference
Badge, shirt and printed agenda plus warm welcome was the first we got when entering the venue. Backdrop for selfies en route to the main hall, with something for breakfast and plenty of sponsors to talk with. Surprised how many of them they got at the end, I just wish to have at least half of them for CzechDreamin.
And then kick off the day. Crazy video call with Rene and Zayne, which just a minority enjoyed – those who follow the cats‘ story on Twitter. And shortly after we went for all those great sessions.
I enjoyed how to build meaningful connections with David Liu and Stephanie Herrera. It is all about sharing, giving back and then other will consider you an expert and want to meet with you. Plus a lot of other benefits from simple sharing knowledge.
Sadly I missed Christine’s tips for solo admins, luckily every single session has been recorded and presentations will be provided as well, so I need to find some time to check it out. Because she is awesome every single time.
Just a quick look into Ines’ session about Social Studio and off to the discussion about war for talent, which continued on David’s note – year of experience doesn’t matter, it is about involvement, ethic and everyone needs to look beyond the CV.
I feel I know workbench so I skipped Louise’s session, I completely missed Melissa’s session about recipe for impact first NGO and went to Keisha’s talk why Pardot is the next big things for your career. It is easy – as an Salesforce admin you know all the automation and power of platform and just need to learn a bit of marketing mumbo jumbo. This mix of technical and marketing people is hard to get (which I can confirm as I’m one of them) and you will be wanted.
And somewhen during the morning we delivered with Adam our session about Salesforce DX and practical experience with it. We spoke about the good and bad and got a bunch of questions later on during the day. Crossing my fingers for all of you to switch to it and see the benefits.
Lunch in Dutch style – bread with cheese plus salad on side. I loved the simplicity, for CzechDreamin we will probably serve bread and salt 🙂
During every single break I tried to see sponsors – to learn what they offer or get some for CzechDreamin. QualityClouds do awesome things to monitor code quality and other things, Copado support DevOps, Elements.Cloud is not about documenting your SF org but about teaching users how to use it as well, PDF Buttler looks like great competitor to S-Docs and DocuSign Gen, introhive we use at PwC and it is great how it can find the relations between people, SharinPix doesn’t have to be introduced – they do awesome things with pictures – and Duplicate Check is here if the standard one doesn’t work well enough for you.
Afternoon is here, I’m skipping the musical and am off to David’s presentation how admins can code too and how he prepared 15 weeks long training plan to anyone willing to learn.
I also enjoyed playing a „bingo“ at Elements.Cloud presentation – have you seen any of these at your clients? I feel I saw at least half of them, definitely need to find time (finally) to play with this app.
Going probono is a big topic at Salesforce world and its 1:1:1 philosophy. I agree with Trisha, that free probably isn’t the right approach, because what is free isn’t good enough, I like when NGO pays for your work, doesn’t matter how much and in which form. Trisha travels world to help NGOs and I cannot wait to have her at Prague and have another great chat with her.
Dan Appleman stopped by at Prague shortly at the beginning of June for our BBQ user group and now we met again. He spoke about tests, why they are important even though you do the click-not-code approach and much more.
And with that it was over. Actually not yet, as the next was awesome key note by Ladies be Architects. 4 ladies, 4 stories, all connected together, that it made sense. This key note also made YeurDreamin the first dreamin conference, which had key note speaker from the community.
Over. Over? Not at all, price drawing, time for dinner and chat with others. I learnt that The Customer Link sent everyone who did a certification from the beginning of the year to YeurDreamin (anyone plan to do the same for CzechDreamin? We might give you some discount!), I spoke with Don Robins, catch up with Barry Hughes again, Ines and Helen Garcia, Jessica Langston made it to Amsterdam as well. For some reason I missed Meighan Brodkey and I forgot to mention plenty other, who I spoke with that day. Yeah, still call myself introvert.
Salesforce Saturday
I had no plan for Saturday morning, maybe some sightseeing. But the weather was really bad, so when I learnt about Salesforce Saturday, I went there. Cafe, plenty of people from the community, who either have a chat or do some trailheads. I didn’t bring computer, so I had a chat with a few and finally had time to say hello to David Liu.
YeurLeadin
Saturday afternoon was dedicated to conference for community group leaders. We started with a small survey, which showed that every group is different, on average we are getting anything between 1 – 60 attendees on our meetings.
Then we learnt how to engage with local Salesforce offices and other partners, that success managers might be the right contacts and how awesome cooperation they have in Netherland.
Sadly I missed Aaron’s presentation how to grow the group, but with 270+ members in Prague Administrator Group we just need to make sure more people attend our meetings. Actually we still need to persuade partners and Salesforce to spread the words to other customers, as I still wish to see more of them, as I really think there is value in it for them.
Debate with Jessica about everything around community group, about the advisory board, all the good and bad. That half an hour went by super quickly, as everything these days.
Ankit had a great talk about giving event a theme, because then it is easier for you to find speaker and because people know why they should come. And you can also have several different views on the same topics. Exactly the way I prefer it as well, so our next meeting will be about … will see, but it might happen at the beginning of September.
Piers spoke about working with volunteers, about V2me, which is alternative of V2MOM and is really about „what is in for me“. Amanda spoke about effective event manager and the important part Excel plays in it 🙂
And final word from Jessica again about the future of community group and much more. Sadly no recording here, so what I don’t remember is forgotten.
Party, chat, food, cake, drinks. Luckily the nights are warm in Amsterdam and light till late, so I made it to the bed just before midnight to get some rest and fly back home on Sunday.
What is in for me?
I was really happy that Adam made the presentation with me and that he saw what these events are about. Now he should spread the word inside PwC, I’ll do my best to organise CzechDreamin and I really hope that I’ll see more and more people from Czech Republic on these conferences. Because there are a lot to learn and share.
