There are more and more posts on LinkedIn about how the traditional CRM (including Salesforce) is slowly dying.
The posts have similar themes:
Some posts sarcastically suggest you to vibe code your own CRM (BTW, the term “vibe coding” means using AI to develop).… Read the rest
On Sept 3, 2025, Northeast Dreamin will be held.
I went in 2023 and had a blast. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to 2024, but I’m definitely going this year.
Unlike the previous two years, it’s being held in Boston, MA instead of Manchester, NH.… Read the rest
With each passing week, AI gets smarter and smarter.
Apex coding, formula building, general searching, and troubleshooting are currently well positioned to be completely superseded by AI.
However there’s one important thing that hasn’t been replaced just yet; your humanity.
As a Salesforce consultant, your career isn’t completely technical.… Read the rest
The recent examples provided on using AI and Salesforce are disconnected.
That is, you need to do something in Salesforce, so you provide all relevant information to an AI. It gives you an answer, and you implement it. But the AI doesn’t “see” your Salesforce instance and understand the entire context.… Read the rest
Years ago, Google became a household name. It started as a noun and turned into a verb. You “googled” something when you wanted to search for it on the internet.
Fun fact #1: Google’s name comes from the word “googol”, which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros
Fun fact #2: I used AI for this fact, not Google
Today, AI is overtaking, or already has overtaken, google searches.… Read the rest
Aside from writing apex code, AI can be a helpful tool for Salesforce consultants.
Here are a few for your consideration:
Field labels
If you’re ever struggling to come up with a concise name for a field, AI can help.
For example, in a current project in which users complete a form, the answers need to be saved in fields.… Read the rest
As your Salesforce project evolves, you’ll eventually need to make enhancements. When it comes to flows, you have two options:
Option 1 is a good choice if the change can be made in the existing flow without having to add any (or adding just a few) elements.… Read the rest
If you’re a developer, you may be tempted to clean up apex code from time to time. This is because some other developers create what is called “spaghetti code”.
Spaghetti code is basically messy code that may work for a time, but incurs technical debt.… Read the rest
As with all things with labels, it’s a good idea to have a naming convention for your flows.
A proper convention allows you and your clients to find what they are looking for easily. It also makes things easier to support, and to create a sense of structure.… Read the rest
Flows are a pivotal feature in Salesforce, and every good enough consultant needs to know how to use them effectively.
Let’s start with naming conventions. Each element in the flow needs a label. They should be clear, consistent, and concise. If more details are needed, place them in the description field.… Read the rest
When building low-code automations in Salesforce, you have two options: Flow and Omniscript.
Flow was designed by Salesforce. As a result, more people are familiar with it. With nearly each release, it gets better and better, as more features are added.… Read the rest
A few readers were curious to know more about yesterday’s email regarding Building flows: go down or go across
Here are a few additional comments.
I generally start all flows using the vertical style. It feels like flows were designed to be used in this way, and it’s usually easy to follow the logic.… Read the rest
Let’s say you design a subflow that attempts to find a contact. After several attempts, if a contact isn’t found, it creates one.
Each attempt tries to find a matching contact using different criterias. For example, find by
If attempt 1 doesn’t return any results, you move to attempt 2.… Read the rest
Here’s a question for you: When you update a field to its current value, what happens?
For example, let’s say you have a contact with a phone number of “123 456 7890”. Then you execute a flow that updates the phone number to “123 456 7890”.… Read the rest
Thanks again to everyone who responded to yesterday’s email about updating a record collection.
The most popular solution to test for > 0 records is to simply use a decision element with {Get_Contacts} Is Empty. This is simple and clean, and I’ll adopt this approach going forward.… Read the rest
Thanks to everyone who responded to yesterday’s email about the steps used to verify a record.
The consensus is, most people use {Get_Contact.Id} is blank or {Get_Contact} is blank.
Now, that email was about verifying whether a single record exists or not.… Read the rest
This email is more of a question than a comment. So I’m looking forward to your thoughts.
In flows, it’s common to verify whether a record exists before performing an action. For example, let’s say you need to update a contact if it exists, or create it if it doesn’t.… Read the rest
In Salesforce flows, there’s a relatively new feature called “Update Existing Records”.
It’s only available in Create elements, and it allows you to update existing records instead of creating new ones. This effectively turns the create command into an upsert command.… Read the rest
I must admit, I’m using AI more and more these days. It helps me in numerous ways, but the majority of the time, it’s with development.
Gemini Pro is pretty good with apex coding. With a few prompts, it can create or edit code fairly easily and accurately.… Read the rest
When building a Salesforce package, there are two ways to create and maintain them: 1GP and 2GP.
1GP uses a development org as the source of truth. Most consultants are very familiar with this way of working. You typically start in a DEV sandbox for development, then migrate changes to a UAT sandbox for testing, and finally to production.… Read the rest
Given where Salesforce is headed, there are some things we can do.
As the title “Salesforce consultant” states, we depend on Salesforce for our livelihood. But we are also consultants.
This means there are a number of needed skills that are independent of Salesforce.… Read the rest
During my two week hiatus from these emails, I stopped talking and listened more.
One recurring theme in particular caught my attention: Salesforce is not the company it once was.
This theme presented itself in multiple ways:
As I’ve said several times, our careers are based on a single platform.… Read the rest
When designing long flows or apex, it may make sense to break things up.
One approach is to keep things modular. But then the question becomes, where to break up the logic?
Let’s say when A happens, do B, C, and D.… Read the rest
While AI may not be a full replacement of a good developer, it can still help in some instances.
Using the prompt, “Write a Salesforce LWC that allows users to edit a field”, Gemini Pro actually built a working lightning web component (LWC).… Read the rest
You may not have known this, but in a previous life, I was a software developer.
It’s been years since I’ve developed, so I’m not an expert in apex. There are far too many awesome developers out there, and I lean on them for help.… Read the rest
In Salesforce, building a future-looking data model is important. You generally want to anticipate issues before they occur.
One consideration that is overlooked is when a parent record has too many child records. Or when one user owns too many of the same records.… Read the rest
Both Lookup fields and Master-Detail fields create a one-to-many relationship. This means the parent object can have multiple children. However a child cannot have multiple parents.
To allow the parent to have multiple children and the children to have multiple parents, a many-to-many relationship is needed.… Read the rest
When associating objects with each other, there are two main choices: Lookup fields vs Master-Details fields.
Here are some considerations for these two:
Master-Detail fields
These fields create a strong connection between two objects. The field is created on the “detail” object, and points to the “master” object.… Read the rest
One of the services I provide is technical debt assessment. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been called in to help a client who is frustrated with their Salesforce implementation. I cannot tell you because the number is too damn high.… Read the rest
So you’ve rightly decided to have the home page as the 1st tab in your app. But what should be displayed on this page?
The out-of-the-box home page isn’t sexy at all. It’s a bunch of random widgets that are not usually related to your client’s needs.… Read the rest