Should you pick budget, scope or timeline?

For any Salesforce project, there are 3 competing factors

  1. Cost: how much the client needs to invest
  2. Scope: which features are included in the project
  3. Timeline: when the project needs to be completed

The client can only control one of these factors.… Read the rest

Imagine a bird on a branch

Imagine for a moment, a bird perched on a tree branch.

It’s very windy, and the branch is waving around frantically. The bird doesn’t know this particular branch. It just landed on it moments ago.

Despite the chaotic situation, the bird is not afraid.… Read the rest

There’s a David in my marble slab

Michelangelo was regarded as one of the most important artists of all time. His most well-known sculpture is a masterpiece called David, which is made of a single piece of marble. This statue is currently on display in Florence, Italy and I highly recommend you see it in person.… Read the rest

Are you a 7x Salesforce Certified Consultant?

There’s a trend on LinkedIn where people put the number of Salesforce certifications in their headline. It’s usually the leading word, and sometimes it’s the only thing in their headline.

Something like “7x Salesforce Certified”.

Do you realize this headline doesn’t actually say anything?Read the rest

My toolkit of commonly used Salesforce tools

People often ask me what are the most common apps/tools/websites I use while implementing a project.

Here is a list of several free resources I use on a regular basis:

1. Declarative Lookup Rollup Summaries (DLRS)

What it does:
– Allows you to declaratively create rollups using lookup relationships (which is not possible natively)
– You can add filter criteria
– It can perform operations as first, last, min, max, count, and concatenate
-These rollups can be executed in real-time or scheduled
– FYI, I call it “Dolores”

2.… Read the rest

Are state and country picklists good enough?

I’m helping a client using Salesforce integrate with their website.

Most of their customers are from the US or Canada, but we need to support all countries. So enabling State and Country picklists in Salesforce seemed like a no-brainer.

(Note: In case you don’t know Salesforce well, enabling this feature changes the fields “Country” and “State” from a text field to a picklist.… Read the rest

Do you want fries with that?

I just finished a Slack conversation with a nonprofit client.

The conversation started because I recently implemented a nightly batch job that automatically generated tax receipts for their donors. This is what she requested.

Her exact words were, “Do you think we could automate the tax receipts when a donation from an individual (over $20) comes in through the website?”… Read the rest