A number of readers commented after yesterday’s email about guidelines for helptext. They felt the only thing missing were some examples.
Not wanting to disappoint, here are a few.
Acknowledgement Date
Original: Date of acknowledgement
Better: Date the donation was acknowledged.… Read the rest
When creating fields, it’s best practice to always add a description. Sometimes it’s also a good idea to add helptext. The question becomes, when should you add helptext and what should you write?
To start, here are some samples of what not to write.… Read the rest
Continuing yesterday’s email about keeping the client in mind during implementation…
4. Consistency
There are multiple ways of building something with consistency.
– If you’re taking over an existing platform, use the client’s existing approach. My philosophy is, if you’ve built it wrong, it’s better to be consistently wrong (with some caveats).… Read the rest
When you’re implementing a project or feature for a client, there are some important considerations.
Here are a few to keep in mind.
1. Ease of understanding
As a consultant, you spend countless hours looking at Salesforce. You understand how it works, how to find things, and what to do when things go wrong.… Read the rest
This is a quick reminder that when you’re implementing Salesforce, you’re not actually implementing it for yourself.
At some point in time, your client will inherit what you’ve and your team have built.
This raises the question, will your client understand how to maintain what you’ve built?… Read the rest
I recently obtained my first American nonprofit client for my tax receipting application. Very exciting, as all my previous clients were Canadian.
The app allows you to create multiple receipt templates and you can use automation to assign a template to a specific opportunity.… Read the rest
As a Salesforce consultant, you’re probably quite comfortable with debugging flows. The Debug button is highly visible, and it’s easy to follow the flow’s path and see variable values.
Of course, there are several other ways to debug functionality. Here are three for your consideration.… Read the rest
When building automation, whether that’s flows or apex, you’ll eventually find yourself building business logic.
Business logic is basically a module that performs a certain function in response to a business need. For example, a screen flow that creates contacts may want to first verify whether an existing matching contact exists before creating a new one.… Read the rest
One of the many things I love about this email list is sharing my knowledge with you. But it’s not always a one-way street. Some days I learn from you.
In regards to yesterday’s email, a long-time reader mentioned there’s a more abstract way of knowing an object’s prefix.… Read the rest
It’s very common to write one flow for one specific object. This applies whether it’s a screen flow or an autolaunched flow (This obviously doesn’t apply for record-triggered flows).
For either scenario, you typically pass at least one input text variable (e.g.… Read the rest
As you may know, I’ve been working on Dryad Receipting for Salesforce for a couple of years now. The app saves nonprofits time and reduces stress when generating tax receipts for their donors.
When it first launched, the focus was on the Canadian nonprofit market.… Read the rest
As a followup from yesterday, here’s how I would have written this post.
Availability opening for Salesforce projects in manufacturing
Hi, LinkedIn network — My principal mandate is coming to an end soon. So I’ll be available for new opportunities starting May 15th, 2025.… Read the rest
Talking about specialization or lack thereof, here’s a real world use case about how NOT to advertise you’re available for work.
Below is a post from LinkedIn that appeared in my feed today. I removed the person’s name to keep them anonymous.… Read the rest
Given how Salesforce certifications have lost most of their value, another question logically follows. How do you convey knowledge without them?
Here are three steps to get you going.
1. Specialize
If you’re a generalist, it’s difficult to distinguish yourself from your competition.… Read the rest
There’s a lot of recent chatter on social media about Salesforce certifications. Some consultants are asking whether certs still have any value or not.
Back in the day, certs were a great way to distinguish yourself from competition. And partners shared the total number of certs from their employees as a vanity metric.… Read the rest
It is with great pleasure to announce that I’ll be attending Montréal Dreamin’ this year.
The event takes place on June 5 and 6, 2025 at the Double Tree Hilton. Once again, I’ll be a speaker and a sponsor.
The speech is the same one I did at True North Dreamin (TND), called “Free yourself from hourly billing and unlock your full value”.… Read the rest
Another key point with an advisory retainer is making yourself available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
To be clear, “being available” doesn’t mean “being responsive”. It simply means the client can contact you anytime. You can make a best effort to respond ASAP, and even answer after 5pm.… Read the rest
Regarding advisory retainers, here is the exact template I use for quotes.
Feel free to copy+paste and adjust as needed.
This is an advisory role, assisting with strategy and best practices without hands-on involvement. I will meet regularly with the team to review progress, answer any questions, and generally advise the team as needed.… Read the rest
Before we begin, this is not an email about bragging.
This is about showing you the art of the possible. If I can do it, so can you. I don’t have any magical powers that you don’t have. I simply don’t limit myself to common perceptions.… Read the rest
As a solo Salesforce consultant, the market dictates your maximum hourly rate.
The hourly rate for an experienced consultant is usually between $150 to $200 an hour, which results in approximately $200k to $250k a year.
FYI, I know a Certified Technical Architect (CTA) that charges $300 an hour, which is the highest I’ve seen for a solo consultant.… Read the rest
True North Dreamin (TND) wrapped up today, after two days of keynotes, sessions, and workshops. It was quite a fun event, and especially meeting people in real life that I’ve only spoken to on Zoom or chatted with on LinkedIn.
Here are some thoughts.… Read the rest
Let’s review yesterday’s scenario, in which my role was Solution Architect, and my responsibilities were:
For this work, I billed by the hour, up to an agreed upon maximum of 20 hours per week.… Read the rest
About 6 months ago, I chose to work with a Salesforce agency that billed by the hour. At the time, I needed the opportunity and it was a fun project, so I accepted a reasonable hourly rate.
Fast forward to today, and it turns out I’m not compatible with hourly billing anymore, and the agency let me go.… Read the rest
As a reminder, I’ll be attending True North Dreamin 2025 in Vancouver. The event takes place on April 24-25, 2025 at The Nest at UBC.
I’m attending as a sponsor and a speaker.
As a sponsor, I’ll be demoing two editions of Dryad Receipting for Salesforce, one for NPSP and one for Industries.… Read the rest
While at DreamOle last week, a term was used that I’ve never heard before. To paraphrase, the person said, “Product owners want AI-first products”.
There are several prominent “first” terms.
For example, the term “mobile-first products” is familiar to most. If not, at a certain moment in the past, there was a big shift to ensure all new websites and applications were responsive.… Read the rest
Formulas in Salesforce flows are really cool. They are a unique type of variable, one that has multiple purposes.
Here’s one of my favorite methods to show just how cool they are: formulas are only evaluated at the moment they are used.… Read the rest
Here are my takeaways from this year’s Dream Ole in Zaragoza, Spain.
It’s all about Agentforce
Apparently you cannot escape it. It’s not just prevalent in North America, but in Europe too. The opening keynote speaker was a product manager of Agentforce and we had a chance to chat after her presentation.… Read the rest
It’s a little late to mention, but I’m attending DreamOle in Zaragoza, Spain tomorrow.
If you’re also attending, look out for me and I’ll be happy to meet you.
Here are the sessions in my agenda:
They are offering an Agentforce Certification Bootcamp, in which you can obtain an Agentforce cert, but that hasn’t piqued my interest.… Read the rest
When creating custom fields, there are two settings most people ignore: External Id and Unique. When used properly, these boolean settings can be useful.
By setting a field as an External Id, you’re telling Salesforce that this field represents an Id field from a system outside of Salesforce.… Read the rest
As a Salesforce consultant, sometimes you play the role of architect. That is to say, not only are you implementing the project, you’re also designing it.
The moment you shift into this role, your role increases dramatically.
The main one being, whatever you design, you are responsible for.… Read the rest