Do you know why it feels like time quickens as you age?

When asked why it feels like time speeds up when you age, the common response is something like:

When you’re young, you’ve only lived a short amount of time compared to how long you will actually live. When you’re older, you’re close to the end of your life and the “used percentage” of your life is higher.… Read the rest

Positively connecting with clients virtually

One of my most outspoken clients constantly boasted about his accomplishments. He was a very talented businessman, and he made sure everyone knew it.

I worked with him and his team virtually for a couple of months, without turning on our cameras during our Zoom meetings.… 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

What is a digital nomad visa?

One of the many things I love about being a Salesforce architect is the ability to work remotely. Although it wasn’t so common a few years ago, it’s pretty much the default today.

Of course, being remote doesn’t mean you need to stay in your home office.… 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

How to deal with new requirements during a sprint

A student of mine recently asked me how to manage a particular situation. She is the tech lead on a Salesforce project and the client is notorious for scope creep.

The discovery phase of the project was quite extensive, and included both the client’s IT team and business users.… Read the rest

Three, and only three, solutions

Whenever a challenge arises – usually in a business context, but it could be personal – try to think of at least three solutions.

Why at least three?

To start, it’s really important to think of more than just one option.… Read the rest

Capturing all the client’s requirements

How do you know whether you’ve captured all the client’s requirements?

Let’s say they’ve asked for a new feature, and wrote it in their own words. They are probably not as technical as you, so it’ll be in business-speak. Note: Be cautious if they try to solution it (we’ll save that conversation for another day).… 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