Yesterday and today is/was a two-day session called Fundraising.AI Global Summit 2025: Amplify Impact. While not Salesforce specific, it did connect the dots between AI and nonprofits.
Nonprofits are generally slow to adopt technology. They are usually risk-averse, as they don’t have the deep pockets to be able to easily pivot if things go wrong.… Read the rest
Last month I wrote about how to connect AI directly to Salesforce. Since then, I’ve actually followed the instructions in that email. The results were better than I expected.
Using this approach, your AI understands your entire project. So you can ask it questions and have it perform tasks for you.… Read the rest
While studying Engineering at McGill University, I learned about the law of friction. Loosely defined, this law says it takes a larger force to initially move a stationary object than it does to keep the object moving once in motion.
This is because in order to move a stationary object, you need to apply sufficient force to overcome the static friction of the object.… Read the rest
Research has shown the tone of your voice changes depending on who you are talking with.
When you talk to a child or loved one, it’s usually softer. When you talk with a stranger or enemy, it’s usually harder. Your tone even changes slightly between two people you are equally close to.… Read the rest
As a Salesforce consultant, influencing your teammates and clients is an important soft skill to cultivate. After all, if you have a great idea, you need to be able to successfully communicate it with others. Not everyone will be receptive to your attempts.… Read the rest
While at Northeast Dreamin’ in Boston last week, the keynote speaker, Steve Baines, spoke about being a Salesforce architect.
One of his points was, “if you’re building trust and clarity – you’re an architect”.
The overall theme is, being an architect is more of a mindset than an official title. … Read the rest
I recently read a post on LinkedIn from someone who said, “‘good enough’ isn’t good enough”. This leads me to believe there are multiple definitions of “good enough”.
When he uses these words, I believe he’s using a bottom-up approach. That is, something starts as awful, then bad, then good enough, then decent, then very good, then excellent.… Read the rest
Last week, I was almost able to fully disconnect and unplug. It was a nearly magical experience.
Here’s the week captured in a single photo.
This week, I’m driving down to Boston for Northeast Dreamin’, and my “good vibes” mood continues.… Read the rest
This summer has been full of transitions and milestones. So much so that it’s taken its toll.
As a result, I’m listening to myself and taking some more personal time.
Here’s the plan for the coming 2 weeks:
This Sunday, I will join my parents at a lake-site cottage that they’ve rented.… Read the rest
One of the largest advantages of being an independent Salesforce consultant is working from home. And of course, “home” doesn’t necessarily mean your residence.
It’s been a while since I went full digital nomad, so it’s time to change that! Starting in November, I’ll spend about 2 months in South America.… Read the rest
Let’s dive a little deeper into user adoption, specifically monitoring.
One great way to keep track of whether users are actually using Salesforce is to build a bunch of reports.
Here are some for your consideration
There are two moments when you can improve user adoption: before adoption actually begins, and after.
The best way to solve a problem is to avoid it completely.
This principle definitely applies to user adoption. If you can perform a “good enough” job with change management, then user adoption begins strong.… Read the rest
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