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Understanding the relationships between sandboxes and production systems is another key diagram for Salesforce consultants.

This helps understand which sandboxes are used for what purpose and the general flow of configuration and development.

A diagram for sandbox management needs to include

• All development sandboxes, including those for proof of concepts, app development, data migration development, and 3rd party developments
• All testing sandboxes, including external testng systems for System Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
• The production instance, includes external production systems
• The sandbox name (keep it concise)
• The sandbox type (i.e.

Looking beyond the borders of Salesforce, a system architecture diagram helps understand Salesforce’s place in the project.

Just like user flows, it’s always a good idea to have a current state and desired future state for system architecture. The future state might be a phased approach, with different integrations introduced in later phases.… Read the rest

Knowing and documenting the user’s process is an important step when designing Salesforce. It’s actually one of the first steps in understanding how things currently work.

If your client is moving from a legacy system to Salesforce, the current process should include what the legacy system does.… Read the rest

As a Salesforce consultant, you often need to create a visual representation of Salesforce objects and their relationships.

This representation allows for both you and your client to understand which objects are parents and which are children. It also helps dictate the sequence for data imports.… Read the rest

A Salesforce consultant needs to manage their inbox well. With emails originating from clients, internal team members, and perhaps mixed with some personal emails, having a simple but efficient system can really help keep you organized.

Here are some helpful guidelines

1.… Read the rest

As an independent Salesforce consultant, your sales call should be focused on learning about your prospect’s challenges and their desired future state.

There are also several topics that should be carefully navigated or avoided altogether. Here are a few cautionary topics:

1.… Read the rest

When most people think of a salesperson, an image of a stereotypical used-car salesman usually comes to mind.

Sales is so much more than that. It’s essentially just a conversation between you and a proposal to see if your services are a good fit.… Read the rest

There were many questions from readers about the flow transform element. So I played around with it a little bit further and discovered some unpleasant surprises. It’s still helpful, just less helpful than expected.

The core of the issue is, when you use the transform from source data to target data, it’s not actually getting all the fields of the target object.… Read the rest

Today was the first ever Dreamin conference in Montreal.

Note: There are two kinds of Salesforce events: those organized by Salesforce themselves, and those organized by Salesforce supporters. Dreamin events are the latter. You can find them all over the globe.… Read the rest

Let’s say you need to determine the number of unique accounts across a series of opportunities.

The old school method of doing this in a flow is using nested loops. Nested means you loop within a loop. You do this because you don’t want to have a Get operation instead of a loop.… Read the rest

In yesterday’s email, we discussed how to create custom fields to indicate which records were active this year and last year.

That works great for those two years, but what if you want to go further back? Like more than 10 years back, to the beginning of your organization.… Read the rest

One of my clients has to report on all active projects for this year and last year.

An active project in a year is defined as one that started during that year, or in a previous year and the end date was in that year or beyond.… Read the rest

There was some great feedback from yesterday’s email about Too many SIs, not enough consultants.

Here are some interesting observations I felt would be helpful to share with you:

“I check the number of completed projects against reviews. If they do not match – the partner is not asking for reviews for every project – ask yourself why”.… Read the rest

The barrier of entry into Salesforce has never been lower.

Trailhead learning is free, Salesforce itself is constantly expanding into new markets, and news spread like wildfire that anyone can do Salesforce. As one small example, the new Data Cloud certification is basically a give-away at the moment.… Read the rest

When things go sideways, a common defense mechanism for Salesforce consultants is just not to take responsibility. It’s much easier to lean back and point fingers away from yourself.

A common scenario in which this unfolads is when consultants behave as order takers.… Read the rest

Last week I caught up with an old friend over drinks. Within Salesforce, he started as a Project Manager and recently switched to sales.

At one point, he brought up how much he preferred sales over being a PM. He could not imagine spending another minute managing people within projects.… Read the rest

Montreal Dreamin will be held on Aug 15, 2024. It’s the first Salesforce conference in Canada in a number of years.

As I’m located in Montreal, and want this to be a successful event, I’m doing my part to contribute. This means I’m a speaker and a sponsor.… Read the rest

This week, Watt Hamlett and I hosted a webinar called “7 Factors for Salesforce Implementation Success for Nonprofits”.

It was wildly popular, with over 150 people registered (a new record for both of us). It also shows how important and relevant this topic is to nonprofits using Salesforce.… Read the rest

As a Salesforce consultant, you’re most likely going to work with a team. Lone wolves are few and far between these days.

For example, in the build phase of a project, it’s typical to be paired up with an architect, some devs, some admins, along with an analyst and a project manager.… Read the rest

At a local Salesforce user group meeting today, I was talking to someone that recently entered the Salesforce community.

He made the decision to reposition his career last year, then studied and passed the Administrator certification. Now he’s looking for his first full-time or freelance position.… Read the rest

When you’re starting to plan for your Salesforce implementation, one important step is to define people’s roles and their involvement.

In a decently-sized project, you’ll most likely need an analyst, an architect, developers, admins, testers, a project manager, and people working change management.… Read the rest

It’s amazing to see in action. And until you do, you don’t really believe it can actually happen.

Let’s say you’ve built some awesome new functionality in Salesforce. It performs a whole series of actions in a series of clicks, displays the results in an inline dashboard, and fits all the customer’s requirements.… Read the rest

When nonprofits implement Salesforce projects, both the value and risk are significant. Generally, nonprofits don’t have the same safety net that most for-profit companies have.

This means they generally need to get it right on the first attempt, because there won’t be a second attempt.… Read the rest

Once you’ve started your Salesforce company, and decided on your focus, the next step is to search for projects.

There are several ways to get leads, some of which have a different focus than others. Some are short-term, using a hunter-grather model.… Read the rest

When starting a new Salesforce agency, a key decision early on is deciding your focus of expertise. With Salesforce being as large as it is, no agency can do it all. And even if you could, you shouldn’t.

Why? Because the more focused and specialized you are, the easier your marketing becomes.… Read the rest

Let’s say you’re ready to go out on our own, and start your own independent Salesforce consulting business. This is already a big decision, and it’s the first of many.

One of the first is choosing a name. The question is, should you register a company and website in your name, or in another name?… Read the rest

Montreal’s first Salesforce/Mulesoft conference will be held on August 15, 2024.

In addition to being a sponsor, I am a speaker. The topic is, “How to Become an Independent Salesforce Consultant”.

As I have written quite a few emails about this subject, I’m excited to share my thoughts in person.… Read the rest