Archive

On this week’s podcast, I interviewed Pat McClellan of Proton7Group.

Pat, a Salesforce MVP, is the creator of a Salesforce-native SMS app. In short, it allows users to send SMS and MMS messages from any object It looks so integrated, it could have been built by Salesforce themselves.… Read the rest

Best practices exist because they are generally approved and recommended. In the Salesforce ecosystem, this usually means Salesforce introduced the best practice and the community agreed. Sometimes it’s the other way around; it’s community initiated and Salesforce rubber stamps it.

Does that mean you should always follow best practices?… Read the rest

There’s a method called “Spaced Repetition” that helps you remember things better and for longer. Basically, you shouldn’t cram all your studying into a single session. Instead, you’ll have better results if you space out your studying over multiple days while repeating key pieces of information each time.… Read the rest

One common scenario you need to solve as a Salesforce consultant is populating data in a new pre-production sandbox. After all, there’s not much use in developing something without testing it with some data.

You can always use a full copy sandbox each time, but prices for those are comically high.… Read the rest

Today was dreamOle in Sevilla, Spain. It was awesome to be around kindred spirits again. It’s been so long since my last Salesforce conference (*cough* COVID *cough*).

There were quite a few interesting sessions to attend. Here are my personal favorites, in no particular order.… Read the rest

Salesforce has come a long way since its debut in 1999, and its four employees.

As of March 14, 2023, Salesforce is the fifth largest SAAS company in the world, ranked by market capitalization. That’s awesome!

1. Microsoft: $1.93 trillion
2. Alphabet: $1.21 trillion
3. Oracle: $229.70 billion
4. Cisco Systems: $201.54 billion
5. Salesforce: $184.01 billion
6. Adobe: $152.93 billion
7. SAP: $140.43 billion
8. IBM: $113.01 billion
9. Intuit: $114.03 billion
10. Schneider Electric: $93.51 billion

Plotted on a chart, this data looks like this:

It’s interesting to note that aside from MS and Google, who are leading the pack by a huge margin, the remaining companies line up nearly perfectly.… Read the rest

Salesforce has numerous conferences around the world. The most famous and largest of which is Dreamforce in San Francisco.

Not everyone has a chance to attend this event, so there are many local events around the world. Depending on your profession, there are also many industry-specific conferences and those tailored for developers, consultants, partners, etc.… Read the rest

When making technology decisions for your client, how should you consider the short-term payoff versus the long-term strategy?

In this week’s podcast, I have a wonderful conversation with Kevin Christopher-George about short vs long-term approaches, the RFP process, and avoiding the “shiny new tech” syndrome.… Read the rest

Let’s pickup from last week’s email about the New Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC).

Here are some of the reasons why Salesforce decided to bring the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) to the core platform:

1. It prevents technology silos, which was already happening.

Complex validation rules in Salesforce can be a real pain in the butt.

When it’s a single IF statement with perhaps one OR or AND statement, there’s usually no issue. But when it’s a nested statement if ORs followed by ANDs, things can escalate quickly.… Read the rest

Salesforce made a huge announcement yesterday regarding the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud.

Until now, if a nonprofit organization used Salesforce, they typically installed a managed package called Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). This is a mature product, evolving for more than a decade.… Read the rest

Yesterday I published a podcast episode with Julia Devine of Devine Parker.

Julia and her colleague Catalina help nonprofits determine a technology strategy. This means assessing a client’s current state and building a plan to get to the target state.

They also help determine which CRM is the best fit for their clientele.… Read the rest

Last Friday, my colleague told me about a head-scratcher moment that he had with his Salesforce client.

The client had an old Salesforce instance, and there were too many “cooks in the kitchen” over the years. Sometimes these were internal people, other times it was external Salesforce agencies.… Read the rest

Let’s pickup from yesterday’s challenge. The conceptual answer is to create a state machine.

What is a state machine?

According to Wikipedia, “A finite-state machine (FSM) … or simply a state machine, is a mathematical model of computation. It is an abstract machine that can be in exactly one of a finite number of states at any given time.… Read the rest

Recently, a client approached me with a more complicated requirement than usual. I love a challenge, so I listened with great enthusiasm. The scenario below is a simplified version of the issue.

In Salesforce, the contact object had a field called “Status”.… Read the rest