Salesforce Admins Podcast

The Salesforce Admins podcast features real-life Salesforce Admins, product managers, and community leaders who transform businesses, careers, and community with clicks, not code. This 20min (sometimes a bit more) weekly podcast hosted by Mike Gerholdt feature episodes to empower Salesforce Admins who are implementing Enterprise CRM solutions. There may be some (digital) confetti. For more than our most recent episodes, go to https://admin.salesforce.com/salesforce-admin-podcast.

How Salesforce Is Transforming Certification for New and Experienced Users 05/15/2025

How Salesforce Is Transforming Certification for New and Experienced Users Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Dana Walton, Senior Manager of Credential Programs and Operations at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how the certification experience is evolving with smarter personalization, easier access, and a learning journey built just for you. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dana Walton. Certifications are moving to Trailhead Academy Dana has been working on the certification team since 2015. When she started, Salesforce had nine certifications. Today, they offer 83. I sat down with her for this episode because her team is finishing a two-year project to overhaul the certification experience. The biggest change coming is that certifications are moving to Trailhead Academy. While you can still go completely self-guided with your learning, Dana and her team are making it easier to find the help you need—whether that’s an instructor-led course or curated Trailmixes and modules. Why skills are the most important factor in choosing new certifications One thing that Dana wanted to know during testing was how her team could help people figure out which certifications they should work on next. She asked Salesforce MVPs how they choose new certifications to target: are they looking for things that fit a specific role? A particular product? The answer was none of the above. The Salesforce MVPs in Dana’s testing group look for certifications based on what new skills they can learn. Armed with that knowledge, her team added a skills breakdown for each cert to make things easier to browse. They’re also adding more personalization to your Salesforce learning journey, with AI recommendations to help you plan your roadmap. Dana emphasizes that these are recommendations, not requirements. Your certification experience can still be completely self-guided; they’ve just added a helping hand. Why certification is the final step on your learning journey If she could give one piece of advice to admins looking for the next steps in their Salesforce learning journey, it’s that you need to look at every possible pathway. “Certification is not how you learn,” she says, “it’s how you prove the skills and knowledge that you’ve already learned.” Go to Trailhead, reach out to the community, or find a mentor who can help you understand what you’re getting into and create achievable goals for yourself. And then, when you’re ready, certification will be a breeze. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from my conversation with Dana about what’s coming next for the certification experience. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today we're sitting down with Dana Walton from the Salesforce certification team. Dana is here to share how the certification experience is evolving. I want you to think smarter personalization, easier access, and a learning journey built just for you. We'll talk about the exciting move to Trailhead Academy and how it's making certifications more accessible than ever. Be sure to stick around. I promise you're going to walk away and be ready to take your next step in that Salesforce ecosystem. And hey, if you enjoy this episode, go ahead and give us a follow wherever you listen to podcasts. So with that, let's get Dana on the podcast. So, Dana, welcome to the podcast. Dana Walton: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Mike: I'm excited to talk about certification. I've been talking about it ever since 2008 when I first got certified, which is a super long time ago. But let's get started with you. Tell us a little bit about how you got to Salesforce and what you do at Salesforce. Dana Walton: Happy to. You predate me just a little. Yes, but I mean, I think in terms of longevity, I hit Koa this year, so I'm very excited. Mike: Congrats. Thank you. And for those of you that don't know, Koa is 10 years. Dana Walton: Yes. So my 10-year anniversary will be in June, and I have been a part of the certification team for almost all of my tenure. I joined in October 2015 because I started as a contractor and then got hired on through the certification team, and I have been a part of the growth of this program since then, and it's been really excited to see when we first were in a very... When I joined, we only had nine certifications. Mike: Only. Only nine. Dana Walton: Only nine. Now we have 83. It's been quite a journey. Mike: Wow. I didn't know that. I'm having a moment. 83. Holy cow. Dana Walton: Through natural growth and then through mergers and acquisitions, we are now up to 83. Mike: Yeah, I didn't really think about that. I always think of the homegrown. Somebody reminded me the other day that my Salesforce experience would be graduating from high school. I'm like, "Oh." Dana Walton: It hurts when people talk like that. That's not fair. Mike: Oh, well, okay. Maybe we'll get into a good college, grow up. But honestly, I do remember that first time I took the certification. This was '08. It was a long time ago. I had to drive 90 miles one way to a testing center. I also live in Iowa, so look, it's fair. Salesforce was like, "Look- Dana Walton: It's still extreme. Mike: I don't know. We're used to it in the Midwest. They only need one spot. I could see somebody saying, "How many people besides Mike are really going to get a certification in Iowa anyway?" But I remember taking the test. I was the only one in the room. I got done. And then there's that moment where you're like, "Okay, I think I've answered all the questions." I click Submit, and then you're expecting a result, and at the time, I think it asked you a followup question, "How was your certification experience or something?" I was like, "I don't know. Just tell me if I passed or not." I was like, "It's great." And then I clicked and it was pass, and I remember I stood up and shout. Really loud. I was like, "Woo-hoo," really loud, and I kicked the chair over and the proctor ran in. I was like, "I passed." And she's like, "Be quiet." I was like, "There's nobody in here." I was so excited. Dana Walton: If you did 2008, you must have been one of our beta testers because the program didn't officially launch until 2009. Mike: Yeah, I was one of the first 500 for admin and for advanced admin Dana Walton: My goodness. Congratulations. Mike: Yeah. So very exciting. So this is what we're talking about, the new certification experience. Dana Walton: Yes. This is- Mike: Go ahead. Go ahead. Dana Walton: Sorry. I'm really excited about this product because I've been working on it for two years. Mike: Wow Dana Walton: And so we're at the finish line. We're so close. We're about to start user acceptance testing, so I'm really anxious to see how people are responding to what we've built. And the whole experience that we are building is really with the end user in mind. We rethought the entire journey of what a user would experience when it comes to how they would get started with Salesforce certifications. Where would they go to find information? And we realized that it's a really disparate journey that we offer to our users. We assume a lot on their behalf, and we wanted to roll that back and really come at it from both an expert and a beginner mindset. So first things first. It's moving to Trailhead Academy, which is the learning platform of Salesforce, and we're really excited because it brings a combined experience of both instructor-led training and certification onto the same platform. So when you go to Trailhead Academy, you are first introduced to both instructor-led courses, instructor-led training, and then you can also look up certifications, and you can start your journey wherever you choose. If you feel confident in your certification goal, you don't have to take any classes. You can go ahead and get started and register right away, but if you want to brush up on some skills or if you're net new, we also provide the learning resources on the exam pages that will help you out. And it's not just instructor-led training. We still link out to Trailhead modules and Trailmixes, and those are curated by the certification team and aligned directly to the exam objectives. So we don't forget the learner in all of this experience, but we bring it together in a new platform that then uses single sign-on through TBID so we can continue building that journey out for you as you grow in experience through Salesforce. Mike: Nice. I like that. I mean, the goal is the certification, but the journey is learning and understanding everything so that you not only have the certification, but you have the knowledge behind that certification. Dana Walton: And we're building in personalization too, so it's not just you have this certification, but it helps you figure out what's the next one on your roadmap. So if you already have started building some skills, we're going to use algorithms and AI to suggest new skills or new certifications for you to focus on next, because a lot of questions that we get from our users is, "I've done this. Where do I go to after that?" Mike: Yeah. I mean, I think that's always the discussion around certification. It's always the question I get is, "Where do I start?" Even with Trailhead modules, where do I start? Dana Walton: It's a lot. There's so much that's offered these days that figuring out that entry point can be really challenging. We have a new format for our catalog where we also highlight exams without prerequisites, so that way we're not sending you to focus on something that you're not ready to take. If you haven't earned that prerequisite, you can start at the entry level and then work your way up or stay wherever you're most comfortable. Mike: So in your initial introduction, we talked about 83 different certs through acquisitions and just growth, which still amazes me. I thought it was 18 or 20. I was like, "Oh, 18 or 20." No, 83. I'd love to know, when you looked at that whole family of how everything had grown organically and through acquisitions, what were some of the challenges or opportunities that you were looking to solve in this new experience? Dana Walton: I think the biggest opportunity or challenge that we were focused on is the fact that our audiences are so different. When you just look at it purely from an M&A perspective, you have Slack. You have Tableau. You have MuleSoft. You have accredited professional. All of those users come from a different experience for how they get certified, for how they maintain their credential, and then we have to bring them onto the Salesforce way of doing things, which is jarring in a lot of ways, because as you know with Salesforce, we like to do our own thing. We don't necessarily like to follow prescribed paths, and so trying to bridge the Salesforce method versus the history that those programs have can be really challenging for the audience. And so we're trying to be mindful in how we roll that out with the, again, challenge of the fact that we're still going to do it this way. We're going to try and bring you on slowly. Mike: You also mentioned that learning journey, the personalization, and I think that's one thing where you always have to think of... And I was a learner. I still am a learner. You're never not a learner. Where you're trying to go and the questions you're trying to ask. How does that personalization work for an individual who may only know the next year or two? Dana Walton: Well, with all the personalization, it is recommendations, not requirements. Mike: Got you. Dana Walton: And so we will look at the skills or the product areas that overlap between credentials and really say, "Okay, based on where you are, here's where we think you may be going." But it is not a requirement. It is not a checkbox that you have to complete. If you decide that, "I want to pivot and do something else," you are absolutely more than welcome to do that, and we will still support you through that journey as well. Mike: Got you. Yeah, it's always trying to understand where you want to go, because the platform is so big and so vast at some points that I don't know if there's any one person even on your team that knows everything. Dana Walton: I would not assume that at all, and I think that that's where the community is still going to be a great resource for users because we can only tell you from our experience of what we think aligns, but somebody else may out there may say, "Oh, actually, because of this really interesting job path that I took, I had these different certifications that you wouldn't think would overlap, but they serve me really well." Mike: Absolutely. I believe you said at the very beginning you're in user feedback beta testing. Dana Walton: We are about to start. Mike: About to start. Dana Walton: We haven't officially started yet, but that is our next goal. Mike: Okay. Okay. I was going to ask you what kind of feedback you were getting. Dana Walton: Well, actually, when we first introduced this project, we brought it to our MVP audience first, because before we built anything, we wanted to make sure that what we were building made sense for them. Mike: Okay. Dana Walton: Now, they are the experts, so we had to caveat that a little bit because they know Salesforce so incredibly well, and we still had to think about the people who don't know Salesforce that well. For instance, something that I thought was really interesting from MVPs, when we were trying to segment our certifications and show different filters in the catalog, one of the things we asked them was, "What do you focus on when you're filtering? Is it skill? Is it level? Is it role?" And I thought it would be role or product. And they completely flipped the script on that and they said, no, they want to build skills. So whenever they're looking at a certification, they want to know what skills that aligns to and then they'll fit it where it needs to fit. But that's where they are in their journey. And so we added a skills option. We put it on each certification page that this aligns to these skills to help bridge that gap of knowledge area that we hadn't highlighted previously. We still have the ability to segment by role or segment by product, but we added this new feature as well because it was missing from the previous experience. Mike: Yeah. Funny story: when I did get back after taking the certification, I ran into my boss's office, and at the time, as the admin, I reported to the president of the division. That's a long story, but I ran in and I was like, "Is So-and-so in?" And his assistant was like, "Yep, just go ahead. Go inside." And I ran inside. I was like, "I passed. I'm certified." He was like, "Great, what does that mean?" And if it had been a sitcom at that point, the sound of all of the air rushing out of a balloon would have been made. Because it's like, ah. But the reason I get at that is a lot of career building, a lot of what you do and skill shows through the certification. So I'd love to know how this new experience helps admins, developers, members of the ecosystem track their career and grow their career. Dana Walton: I think that is definitely something that we will focus on for the next iteration. We have not really focused on the career side of the house yet. Well, I will say that everything that we're doing will still integrate and update your Trailblazer profile, so we're not taking that away from you. When you have your certifications on your Trailblazer profile, that is still the source of truth or your certification history. But when it comes to how this experience directly impacts how that reflects on your career, we're not quite there yet. I think it is a great question and a great lens to look at, but in phase one, we're just building the brand new platform and make sure that it functions. Phase two is really about, okay, now that this is live, what else can it do? Mike: Yeah, and I love pivoting off of the skills thing, because then you can also look at adjacent skills and maybe a certification will stand out to you that you weren't previously aware. I think I did a podcast a couple episodes ago and there's a strategic design certification. Dana Walton: Strategy designer, yes. Mike: Strategy designer, thank you, that Melissa Hill Dees brought up, and I had no idea that certification existed. Dana Walton: Yes. And for instance, somebody may look at strategy designer and say, "I don't think that really applies to me," but maybe you're business analyst, and why wouldn't that apply to you? Just because you're not actually the UX designer doesn't mean that you're not involved in the strategy of whatever project or company or direction you're working on. Mike: So let me ask, because there's 83 and I can't possibly know them all. Maybe you don't. I am hearing from you that there are certifications that also include non-technical skills. Dana Walton: Not a ton. Mike: Not a ton. Dana Walton: But there are a few. Mike: Okay. Dana Walton: Yes. So for instance... Well, I will say our certification names are going to be changing as a part of this experience. Mike: Well, of course it's Salesforce. Dana Walton: Of course. Mike: We change the name all the time. Dana Walton: So I'm going to reference the old name right now, but if people are listening once the experience is live, those names may have changed. Quick caveat. But for instance, sales representative. That is not a technical focus. That is an end-user focus. It is about what key skills, core concepts, do you have as an end user in Salesforce that you need to be able to apply to your job? Mike: I like it. Dana Walton: Then, similar... Well actually, I would say business analyst does have some technical overlap. Even though we did take away the admin prerequisite, you still need to know some admin skills as a business analyst. Strategy designer would be another good example. It's more knowledge-based, and not knowledge in skills, but knowledge and capabilities that you need to be able to be successful in that certification. I feel like I'm just now going through all of the different things that we offer, and I'm trying to think. You put me on the spot. Mike: Right. Dana Walton: The majority of our exams are technical-focused. The vast majority are. Mike: But I think it's also good to know that there's non-technical ones out there to really grow that skill. Dana Walton: I mean, this is definitely something that most of your admins, I don't know if it applies to them, but for folks who are not admins but are aspiring to be, getting started with our associate certification, so we have Salesforce certified associate, that really is not technical at all. It's just understanding, how does Salesforce work? How does Trailhead work? And then if that's something you want to keep growing in, admin may be the next logical path for you. Mike: Yeah. No, I've seen that one. I think it's great. It also helps explain things when you have a friend that's like, "I hear you do Salesforce. What's that?" and they look at you. Because Salesforce is a platform, if you introduce it to most admins, they fundamentally see it as a B2B CRM platform, and, "That's just alphabet soup you threw at me." "No, here's how this works." And then once they conceptualize it, "Okay, great. A lot of people buy this?" You're like, "Yes, a lot of people do buy this." So it's an actual conversation I've had with a friend, I suppose. Dana Walton: You're right, because it's overwhelming, so it's nice to be able to break it down into digestible portions. Mike: Well, yeah. I mean, most people already assume they're going to go in overwhelmed when you start talking about technology... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/36570380

Building with Agentforce and Flow: A Developer’s Hackathon Experience 05/08/2025

Building with Agentforce and Flow: A Developer’s Hackathon Experience Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Melissa Hansen, Co-Founder and Principal Architect at HiFi Consulting Group, RAD Women Curriculum Lead, and Salesforce MVP. Join us as we chat about her journey from fixing printers to developing an agent-powered scheduling tool in the TDX Agentforce Hackathon on Team MH4. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Melissa Hansen. How Melissa started her career as a Salesforce Developer Melissa started her career at a nonprofit, where she was the go-to person for troubleshooting tech issues. “You just become the person who’s best at fixing the printer, and then fixing the database, and then, before you know it, you’re a database administrator,” she says. These days, Melissa is a developer, a consultant, and a Salesforce MVP for her work with RAD Women. She’s also a member of Team MH4, and I brought her on the pod to hear what building a conference scheduling agent in 16 hours was like from the dev side of things. Building an agent-powered scheduling tool at the TDX Agentforce Hackathon Melissa is not someone who wants to be up until midnight coding, but she was so excited about the solution they were building that it was worth the sacrifice. Like most people on the team, it was her first time making something with Agentforce, and this was a great use case to learn more about it. One of the biggest challenges for Melissa in going from building with code to grounding an agent is that the output is nondeterministic. In other words, if you run an automation, you expect to get the same results every time you give it the same data. Agents don’t work that way, they’ll give you something slightly different every time, and so you need to account for that in how you build and test your solution. To code or not to code, that is the question We don’t always have a chance to talk to devs on the pod, so I wanted to hear what Melissa thinks about admin and developer collaboration. For her, the most important conversation to have is around automations. Flow is a powerful tool for automations, but it’s not the only game in town. Melissa’s seen her share of scary flows for things that would be fairly straightforward in Apex. For her, the biggest determining factor is who will maintain the automation after it’s up and running. As no-code tools like Flow and Agentforce continue to improve, it’s especially important for admins and devs to help each other out. There are so many more great insights from Melissa on where Agentforce is headed and how to work with developers, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or Full Transcript Mike: Ever gone from changing printer ink to writing Apex code? Melissa Hansen has and she's here to tell us all about it. So, today's episode, I am chatting with Melissa Hansen, Salesforce MVP, RAD Women Curriculum lead and longtime champion of nonprofit tech. We talk about her journey from, well, fixing printers to architecting agent-powered scheduling tools and what she learned working on the team of MH to the Power of Four at the TDX Hackathon. Now, she shares her thoughts on building ai, designing for users, and what every admin should ask their developers. So, you don't want to miss this one. Now, be sure to follow this podcast on whatever platform you listen to so that you never miss an episode. And with that, let's get Melissa on the podcast. So, Melissa, welcome to the podcast. Melissa Hansen: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Mike: I'm excited. This whole series of talking to the MH to the Power of Four team has been such a thrill because I know we've done hackathons... by the time this episode comes out, we've done a hackathon at TDX in India. I know there's a virtual hackathon we've done. I feel like we've done hackathons everywhere, but it's such an interesting perspective because I was at TDX in San Francisco. I saw some of the teams working, but to sit down with each of you, and hear the perspective and what happened through your eyes is such a neat way of hearing the story and getting the full vibe of what's going on. So, before we get into that though, Melissa, tell us a little bit about yourself, and what you do in the Salesforce ecosystem and how you got on this Power of Four team. Melissa Hansen: Oh, sure. Yeah, I've been in the ecosystem for quite a while now. I think just over 15 years, which blows my mind. I was on a path that I think a lot of nonprofit listeners would be familiar with, which is I was in-house at nonprofits starting at the very beginning of my career and slowly moved into the technology side of things. You just become the person who's best at fixing the printer, and then fixing the database and finding the data. And before it, you're a database administrator. And I was at an organization that was adopting Salesforce in 2010. Yep, 2010. And that's how I got started. I began as an admin and I was at an organization who had some really incredible developers who were really encouraging and mentored me as I started to pick up Apex and the developer side of things. And I just loved it so much. I loved the platform and that has really been my whole career from then becoming a developer. All the way to, in 2020, after being a developer at a nonprofit for about almost 10 years, a coworker and I split off and started our own consulting group to work with other nonprofits and build out Salesforce solutions. So, that's been my overall arc. Also, I'm a Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame, and a big part of that is because of my work with RAD Women Code. Mike: Ah, a connecting Factor. I've talked to a lot of RAD Women coders. Melissa Hansen: Yes, it's such a cool organization. I was a coach in the very first round of RAD Women. Angela Mahoney, who Is an incredible connector in our ecosystem, and a lot of your listeners may know of her, invited me to coach. And I had some feedback on the curriculum and ended up taking over the curriculum as this wanted to happen. Yeah, so I've been with RAD since the very beginning. I work on the curriculum. And it's one of my very favorite things that I've done, just working with so many women and non-binary folks who are on that same developer journey I was, and who want to learn more about coding. I know this is an admin podcast, but this is our target audience for Rad, too. Mike: So, let me talk about that for a second because I feel like that's an unnecessary division that people have sown. There's admins that know how to code. Just because you code doesn't mean you have to identify as a developer. Melissa Hansen: Yeah, no, and that's a great point. And I think in Salesforce in particular, there's a ton of overlap because the declarative automation tools have become so sophisticated. If you're building some of these more complex, complicated flows, I mean you're a developer. Mike: And vice versa, too. So, how did you get connected to the other MHers? Melissa Hansen: Yes, I do all of them from for quite some time, mostly through the community. I think they're all MVPs as well. Marisa is a developer. I think she does more on the consulting side now outside of development. But Michelle and Melissa are both people who are at a lot of conferences. And we've just been really good friends and colleagues, but we've never actually worked directly together prior to the hackathon. So, that was a really cool opportunity. Mike: Yeah, it brought a lot of people together. Melissa Hansen: It really did. And I'll admit that I had initial reluctance because I am not a person who wants to be up until midnight coding. Not really my happy space. And so, I was a little, I don't know, and I've got a lot of other stuff to do. But boy, Melissa Hill Dees is very good at convincing you. And I was happy to be convinced because once we started talking about what we might build if we were to do this, we've found some really great use cases. And that's what I got really excited about actually, building something. Mike: Yeah, I mean, I talked with Melissa on previous episodes and Marissa about the conference scheduling app, which I've worked a lot in scheduling environments with Dreamforce and TDX, and it sounds like such a cool thing. And so, obviously we don't need to get into the app, but it's an agent that helps you schedule. I would love to know, because you mentioned developer. And that's the cool thing is I love that each of you had different roles in this team. And yes, some were overlapping, but because Melissa did call you out, she's like, Melissa, it sounds like I don't know who I'm talking about. Melissa Hansen: I know we didn't use last names- Mike: Melissa called Melissa the developer, like what? Melissa Hill Dees specifically was like, "Are you going to talk to Melissa Hansen?" I was like, "Yes." She goes, "Well, you got to talk to her about the developer perspective." And so, I want to start there. From your developer's perspective, what was the most technically challenging or exciting part of the agent that you built? Melissa Hansen: Well, it was the first time I really got hands-on building an agent outside of things like trailheads or quick little workshops. Which was a big draw for me because of our clients, we don't have anybody who's actively using it yet. But we want to be a little bit ahead of them and able to guide and lead when the time comes. So, I was super interested in that part. And I much more motivated when I have a real use case. I wander off if things are too theoretical or sort of like, oh, just learn it for the sake of learning it. I really need something I'm trying to get done. And I loved this use case because we have a similar one for RAD Women about matching up all of our schedules for our coaches, and our learners and our Zoom rooms. So, I could see on the other side of this some really cool applications. I think the most challenging thing conceptually is getting used to non-deterministic results. Mike: Tell me. So, before you get into that, because that's awesome. Please tell me what non-deterministic results mean. Melissa Hansen: Yes, definitely. So, typically when you're writing code or configuring a flow, a lot of times you have inputs and you have outputs, and you have the automation in the middle. And so, if I am taking in a set of inputs, let's say a few contacts, and maybe some opportunities, and I have some logic in the middle, and then I want something to come out the other end, maybe some contact roles, or who knows? And if I've configured everything, and I give it a set of data and I get a result, I expect that if I give it that same set of data again, I will get the same result every time. I could run it a hundred times, I'll always get the same result. Whereas with these agents and large language models, it's not giving you the same response every time. It's trying to come up with the right... if you could see me, right in quotes, the "right" answer for you, but that answer might change, ordering might change, the way it presents, it might change. And that is a very different paradigm than what I'm used to. Mike: Yeah, I think one of the things early on when we were talking Agentforce with customers and admins was it's not a bot. You're not plugging in if A then C, if B then D. You build upon it as opposed to having exactly follow the same path. So, now I get what you mean. Melissa Hansen: And learning how to give it instructions and natural language. When you're building out these topics, I'm starting to tell it things like, your job is to match these speakers with these time slots. And then you'd start to fill things in of you have to pay attention to the dates of the conference, and leave an hour for lunch, and make sure there's a passing period and just the series of instructions. And it almost feels weird to just be like, I'm just going to put it in a sentence. That's no syntax. Okay. Mike: Because math class, when you got to the story problems never felt like math class. Melissa Hansen: Well, maybe to me it did. Mike: I know. Math class always felt like math class to me. Don't kid me. So, I would like to know in the hackathon, I mean it's a finite time. And part of that is just you can't run a hackathon forever because you could run out of people and there's only so much that we want to see built. I'd love to know in that time, how did you prioritize what to do, what to configure, what to simplify, what to include, what to exclude. Melissa Hansen: Yeah. I mean, I think the goal that I have personally and I think that we shared as a team is we wanted to get to something at the end that was... we knew it wouldn't be perfect in a final product, but something that was really, really working. And it's fine if it's messy. It's fine if we have things we want to go and fix later, but we wanted something that was working. We obviously wanted to learn the tool set and we wanted to work together. So, those were the defining goals that told us where we wanted to go. We had discussed what our use cases were and we had a loose data model in mind, and then we divided and conquered. We had Michelle and Melissa Hill Dees were working on loading data from their respective conferences. And Marisa was participating in that so that they could be getting the data model and the data loaded together. Well, I was working a little bit with Melissa on actually building the agent. What does this thing even look like? The time crunch is real. One of our first questions was like, okay, how do we get the data once we've got it in the org accessible to this agent so that we can ask it to do all this stuff? And I think I started to build a flow. I don't build nearly as many flows as I write Apex. Mike: I mean, that's what I think every time I go to build a flow, oh, I feel like I've not built a flow in, I don't know, 16 minutes now. Melissa Hansen: It's different. So, I tried for a little bit and then I was like, given the time crunch, you go to the tools you already know and that you're fastest with. So, at a certain point I was like, I think what's going to work best is if I just build some Apex methods that pull the data query for the data, filter down to what we want, and then conserve that up to our agent. And one of the things I'm curious about as, because we're going to continue to develop this thing and hopefully get it to the point where it's a useful product for lots of conference organizers. Mike: Oh, that would be cool. Melissa Hansen: Yeah, I'm super excited. So, we have a little bit of a roadmap here, but I've got a couple of parts of it that I'm most interested in or that I have the most to do. And one is how much of the work I did was unnecessary, because you go to your comfort zone. I was like, let me write Apex that does this, gets this data, feeds it back. I was like, did I even need that? Can I configure the agent to get the data on its own? Or can I do it in a more lightweight way so that it's more flexible? Because I definitely went in with my own biases and tool set, and as I was building the agent, I was like, okay, I would think about this differently next time. Mike: Well, that leads me to the one question I was thinking about, which is... and I always do this with everything I build. There's always one part of it that I'm still thinking on, that I'm still like, if I had time, I would do X. One part of that are you still thinking about? Melissa Hansen: I'm thinking about the user interaction piece. So, our final product was a conversation that you were having within that sort of agent panel. And you say, "Okay, figure the schedule out for me." And it would output a table, but right in the chat that would show you who's scheduled for which room. And you don't have enough space really in that chat window. You could ask it to make modifications, but it's not always clear what's happening. So, it's just not the right visual paradigm. And so, the thing that I'm thinking about is getting it into a flow, into a screen flow so that the user- Mike: [inaudible 00:15:55]. Melissa Hansen: Oh, sorry. Mike: No, I was just thinking this through. Melissa Hansen: Yeah. So, that the user could launch their screen flow, maybe answer a couple of questions up front, and then we invoke the agent to do the really cool automated scheduling template for us, feed it back to the flow, and then the user has a table that they can actually work with and make modifications to make adjustments here and there. I'd really be able to see the whole thing in a way that makes sense before they sort of agree and commit, and then save that scheduling. Mike: Yeah, I think one thing for us to consider is you go and listen to this podcast when I was talking to Marissa of five years from now or 10 years from now, we're going to say, "Oh, wow. So, that's like back when Agentforce, they just had a prompt window." Back when we talk about Salesforce. Do you remember when the interface was WYSIWYG, and we could finally drag and drop fields onto a page and see them? Melissa Hansen: Oh, yeah. Mike: [inaudible 00:17:00] years ago. Melissa Hansen: It has changed so much. Yeah. I was at a presentation recently and somebody had a screenshot of not just classic but classic from a long time ago. Mike: With tabs. Melissa Hansen: Yes. And you're just like, "Oh, yeah, that used to be my every day." Mike: Yeah, yeah. Yep. And that used to be new. Melissa Hansen: Yes, it was [inaudible 00:17:23] new. Mike: Wow, that's the future. I was going to joke, you mentioned your gateway to becoming a developer was learning how to change printer ink, perhaps don't do that or do. I think it's interesting, I have a friend. I asked him, "How did you get into..." he was a consultant and he's now a CIO for a company. I said, "How'd you get into all this?" He goes, "Well, when my company got Salesforce, I was really good at Facebook." And I think even another 10 years from now, it's going to sound really interesting for a bunch of people when they ask us, "How did you get into Salesforce?" I was good at Facebook. I knew how to change the printer ink. Melissa Hansen: How are these things related? Mike: Help me out. But I do think, so I came from a non-technical background. I came from a sales background. I don't want to say a lot of admins, but a fair share of admins who really embrace the non-technical side of Salesforce that use the standard platform tools, understand it at its base level and look at things differently than perhaps a would who's been trained in code or looks at the platform first. I'd love to know, what's one thing you wish admins asked when working with developers? Melissa Hansen: We'll see if this answers your question. I think the conversation, especially since flow has become so robust, so the conversation between admins and developers is often, not exclusively, but a lot of times about what is the best place for this automation to live? Because there's way more things now that really could go either way. You could do it in a flow, you could do it in Apex. And I think there's sometimes a bias on the admin side to if you can build it in flow, build it in flow. And I have definitely seen some Flows that are a little bit scary. And not scary because the person who built them didn't know what they were doing, or did it poorly or anything like that. It's just the sheer complexity and management of a flow to do something that in some cases would be very straightforward if done in code. And so, I think especially in an organization that has code already, that has the ability to support programmatic automation, having good... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/36474695

Transforming Conference Scheduling with Agentforce 05/01/2025

Transforming Conference Scheduling with Agentforce Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Marisa Hambleton, Chief Delivery Officer and Founder of MH2X, and a member of the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame. Join us as we chat about her experience in the TDX Agentforce Hackathon as a member of team MH4 and why clean data is essential for AI. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marisa Hambleton. The intense Tetris of conference scheduling Marisa is a co-leader of the Phoenix Developer Group and the lead organizer for Cactusforce, a community conference for Salesforce Developers and Architects. In other words, she knows how much work goes into scheduling speaker tracks and getting everything organized. Juggling speaker availability and placing them in the correct conference rooms without double-booking anyone takes up hours of time behind the scenes. “It’s an intense game of Tetris,” Marisa says, “and that’s a gross understatement.” So she was thrilled when Melissa Hill Dees asked her to join team MH4 and build a conference scheduling agent for the TDX Agentforce Hackathon. Why data hygiene is foundational for Agentforce With only 16 hours to build a working agent, the team had to split up responsibilities so they could hit the ground running. Marisa’s focus was on the data, which they brought in from Cactusforce and Midwest Dreamin’. Marisa’s biggest takeaway from her first time building an agent is that data quality is foundational for any work you do with AI. That needs to be the starting point. Even though they were working with a relatively small data set, they had a lot of cleanup work to do if they wanted their agent to work right. How to get your org ready for advancements in AI If you’re looking to implement Agentforce in your org, Marisa recommends starting with the Salesforce Well-Architected Framework. We’re only scratching the surface of what will be possible with AI, but you need to do everything you can right now to make your data easy to work with. There’s a lot more great stuff from Marisa Hambleton about data hygiene and what’s next for Agentforce, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Trailhead: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admin's podcast. Today, we're chatting with Marisa Hambleton, Chief Delivery Officer at MH2X, and a longtime leader in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, this is part two of the MH to the Power of Four episodes where we talked to the team that participated in the TDX Hackathon about the agent that they built. Boy, I got to tell you, if you ever organized a community conference or just wrestled with a gnarly spreadsheet, Marisa's insights into scheduling and automation using Agentforce technology we're really going to hit home. I love that she's going to walk us through how she and the Hackathon team built the agent from her perspective and what she did. Plus, she shares why clean data and a well-architected mindset are must haves for any admin looking to build for the future. Make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss out on more great conversations like this one. With that, let's get Marisa on the podcast. Marisa, welcome to the podcast. Marisa Hambleton: I'm glad to be here. Mike Gerholdt: You are the second MH of the MH, I believe it's MH quad, right? Isn't that what Melissa Hill Dees told me? It is MH to the Power of Four. Marisa Hambleton: MH to the Power of Four. Mike Gerholdt: Power of Four. Marisa Hambleton: Yes, or MH four. You can just read it MH Four, but MH to the Power of Four, to the Fourth ... Mike Gerholdt: I know, but I like the Power of Four. It sounds a little more strong. Marisa Hambleton: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: We talked with Melissa Hill Dees on the last episode about the TDX Hackathon and the agent that you built, but just per chance, if somebody didn't listen to that episode, can you tell us a little bit about, well, first, who you are and what you do, and then a brief overview of that project that you built at the Hackathon. Marisa Hambleton: Sure. Marisa Hambleton, I am the Chief Delivery Officer of MH2X. That is my consulting firm. I've been in the ecosystem over 15 years. I'm a Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame, and I am also the Phoenix developer, one of the leaders. I am the lead organizer of Cactus Force, a community conference for Salesforce developers and architects. My role in Cactus force is one of the things that led me and Melissa to connect around this agent that we built for the Hackathon. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, so tell me a little bit about that agent. Marisa Hambleton: Yes, so one of the difficulties in organizing a conference is scheduling, and most of our conferences we have different volunteers and we're part of a team of organizers who come together to put these conferences on for the community, the trailblazer community. Once we get all our submissions, we go through our speaker selection, we've got all these speakers, and we have all of the space, the conference space, and we've got to put the two together. It's calling it a intense game of Tetris would be a gross understatement because there's always somebody that maybe if they're flying in from across the country or if they have some other commitment, or for whatever reason, they cannot go into the slot that you put them in. We plan out our agendas and the program. It is very time-consuming. I can't remember exactly the number we came up with, but we had written out on our submission at the Hackathon how many hours, because we all got together as organizers of conferences and ask, okay, us individually, the time we spend on the scheduling is quite extensive and we hadn't even really accounted for then our co-organizers, who then also spend time and we go through as a team for each of the conferences, how much time we spend on scheduling. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, I hear you, schedule. Oh, man. The intense game of Tetris because you think you have everything put together and then a speaker comes back and says, "Oh, by the way, I'm flying in on such and such date," and you're like, "Ah, I just had everything figured out." Marisa Hambleton: Yes, yes. You have room size limitations or all of a sudden you're coming into the event and you need a bigger room or just all the different things of scheduling a session. We thought that this was a fantastic idea for the agent. The other, my partners in this effort, this Hackathon, Melissa Hanson, she's one of the RAD Women founders, and the scheduling that she does for RAD Women is at a whole other level because we are Michelle Hanson, Melissa Hill Dees and myself. We're scheduling speakers and rooms. Melissa Hanson is scheduling coaches with the cohort members and time zones and time slots across many weeks. That's a whole other, it's just highly complex. Our solution, our agent that we wanted to build really was able to handle all, at least at a minimum, let's try to get one set in because that is very time-consuming for the RAD Women team. That was how we came up with the idea. Melissa Hill Dees has a wonderful heart for nonprofits and the community and helping organizations, and we all agreed that this was a well-worth effort to spend our Hackathon time on. Mike Gerholdt: No, I can. Tell me about that process of creating all of the things that you needed to get done to build that agent. I'd love to know, was there any happy accidents you'd repeat again? Marisa Hambleton: Gosh, I can't think of happy accidents. There was this fast and furious effort on all our parts. There was little things that I feel like they were very Hackathon specific. The org setup, right, where everybody had a job. Melissa Hansen was our Apex Rock star. Melissa Hill Dees, the visionary. She built the agent before and then Michelle Hansen and I were primarily the data part of it. There were some of the org settings that we were like, "Oh, wait a minute. We're trying to use this object and it's not turned on in the org." I had gone in and was doing some of the initial configuration. I spun up the org and was just doing that initial setup, adding the rest of the team as users and making sure everybody had all the correct permissions, doing some of the admin admin things for the project. We'd be chugging along, getting things taken care of and all of a sudden, you hit a roadblock or Melissa's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm getting this error." Okay, let's all get it, jump in and troubleshoot. I feel like I didn't have time to really think of, I guess the reflection for me was more of the experience and not the technical part. I feel like the technical part, especially with something like Agentforce is, it's still new and I'm very much in the exploring like, oh, what else can it do, versus like, oh, okay, I'll know better not to do this next time. I was more on the support side. I would ask Melissa Hansen those questions because she definitely had things that she's like, "Okay, now I know." Mike Gerholdt: You talk about the experience. I'd love to know, what did you learn about agent design based on that Hackathon experience? Marisa Hambleton: The data modeling, the data and the data modeling really are, you have to have that first. That has to be foundational. One of the things that comes to mind is the well-architected, the Salesforce well-architected. Cactus Force is very much, we work really hard as an organization. Our organizers work really hard to always be at the forefront of what Salesforce is doing so that we can prepare content to share with our attendees and with a Salesforce well-architected, that's really become foundational to our conference, but those principles for Agentforce, for this Hackathon and really having that mindset of an architect of like, "Okay, you're starting from the ground up and you're building that theoretically you're modeling out what do we want the data to do? What kind of results are we looking for," before we ever start building anything. That would be the thing that played a biggest part of the design for me outside of the mechanics of it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, it's good. You mentioned you were in the admin role on this team and support. Let's talk about just giving Salesforce admins some general wisdom and your thoughts on innovation. What do you see as an admin best practice that you think gets overlooked but has a really big impact on an organization? Marisa Hambleton: I would stick with data. I think that data really having, again, thinking in a well-architected mindset, but as an admin, really thinking about your data. Before we started recording, we were chatting about Michelle Hansen and I being organizers with her, with Midwest Dreamin and myself with Cactus Force. We needed a data set to work through this project and make sure that we had some, we could make up fake data, but we decided we're going to go and use the real data because it's already public, it's our speakers and our sessions and we did a lot of data work. It is looking through our data and really asking ourselves, "How clean is this data? How reliable is this data?" It really forced us to see something that we as organizers probably wouldn't have looked at just a regular scenario, but building an agent that relies on this data, well, we have to make sure that that data is, it's clean, it's correct. Even though, again, we were working with a very small data set, which was our speakers and sessions and rooms that are available for the conferences and we did. We made up some fake rooms to mirror that, okay, your conference and my conference, we have different spaces. Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Sure. Marisa Hambleton: It did. It came down to the quality of the data that we were feeding it that the agent could then work with and give us back something that was usable of, here's our space, here's our list of speakers, and feed it all that information. I think as an admin, I think an admin really has the ability to be at the forefront of that conversation in the business. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of it, people get hung up on what the tool can do, but you forget data is what powers everything, all of the responses and how good those responses are. You kicked off, when we started the podcast, you talked about the years that you've been in the ecosystem and how you're in consulting. I would love for you to give admin some advice on how you help balance innovation with maintainability when you're building on the Salesforce platform. Marisa Hambleton: I love that question. I am a big look to the far future person. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Marisa Hambleton: I always think, is this something, if my team is working on a solution, is this solution going to be part of this organization for the next 10 years, 15, 20 years? I think really far out there to challenge. It's fun to be innovative and it's fun to use all the new, coolest, latest technology, all the newest features, but what is it going to look like in 10 years? Is it still going to look the same? Is it still going to be needed? Is the company still going to be around? I think it challenges me. It challenges my team to really think ahead that far so that you're not just looking at an immediate, oh, I need this field. It's like, okay, why? I think that is typical, I think, with admins, especially their experience they've been in the ecosystem is to question and maybe put a BA hat on and question that and then be innovative within that vision. I think with Agentforce, it is revolutionary and I believe that it will revolutionize a lot of business. I believe Salesforce believes that as well, but it's also allowing people to do more of the work that matters. Back to our community solution for scheduling, as organizers, these are passion projects. We're volunteers. If we used to spend 10 to 20 hours on scheduling and now we can spend 10 minutes on it, it'll give us more time to spend on our conference, on more valuable activities, giving our sponsors more attention, giving our attendees more attention, and just being able to be present with the people that are there and letting the agent take care of the busy work that we would prefer not to do. I think that that also comes back to the innovation and for myself, I guess a principle of innovation is create a solution that's again, not only innovative, but lasts a long time and is maintainable and flexible and well-architected, using those buzzwords. Mike Gerholdt: No, I mean, that's exactly the whole ... I love what you said, think about the solution being there for the next five or 10 or even 15 years out. I think we've seen in tech a lot of features and innovations come and go. I don't know that what we're seeing with AI is a short-lived thing. I really think we're on the early days of it and it's only going to continue to grow, mostly because it's only got everywhere to go in terms of what it can use and how it can help us. I would love for you, thinking big picture, can you give an elevator pitch that you would provide to a business leader on why every admin needs to understand Agentforce? Marisa Hambleton: Build for the future. Yeah. Building for the future. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Marisa Hambleton: I know. Mike Gerholdt: Your elevators are really fast, by the way. Marisa Hambleton: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: Built for future, and we're there already. Marisa Hambleton: Build for the ... Yes. Build for the future. Mike Gerholdt: Holy cow. We don't have to worry about Keanu Reeves coming to save you or anything. Nope, we're done. Marisa Hambleton: Yes. Well, I love tech. I always have loved tech, and I think that working in technology is always a forward-looking, always looking to the future. A lot of change and AI, Agentforce, that's part of it. Sometimes it is scary. Skynet, is it possible? Okay, maybe because anything's possible. Likely, I don't know. Again, coming back to the data conversation, if you don't have the data for something and there's still a lot of humans involved. I think people forget that there's still a lot of ... I mean, it took four of us, four humans to build the solution. There's still a lot of humans involved. It's a helper. It's a helper. It's like a workmate, a little digital workmate. Yes, build for the future. Mike Gerholdt: I like it Marisa Hambleton: As a company, if I was in front of my customer, I'm like, "Build for the future." Mike Gerholdt: One of the things that I asked Melissa Hill Dees about, and I stumbled upon the question, and I think now, I have to ask all of you. If you could build an agent to help every admin do one thing, just one thing better, what would it be? Marisa Hambleton: Oh, gosh. Well, I'm going to keep coming back to the data thing. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Marisa Hambleton: I was having a data hygiene conversation earlier today, and I feel like users in any system, but in Salesforce, you want your sales forecast to be correct. You've got to have that data and that hygiene, so a little agent that's always running in the background, that goes the step beyond your validation rules and any other automation that you might have running. Let's say you have a very large organization and you have people that are just doing a lot of different things. I think that data hygiene would really go a long way. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I'm thinking of, did you ever watch The Jetsons as a child growing up? Marisa Hambleton: I did. I did. Mike Gerholdt: Remember Rosey, the maid that would go around. I'm envisioning every org needs a little Rosey. Marisa Hambleton: Yes, yes. Mike Gerholdt: It's got to make those little sounds. Remember, she would just go around and dust. By the way, it was crazy. I don't even know what year it was, like 2450 or something, but apparently, robots still use feather dusters. Marisa Hambleton: Yes, yes. Yeah. I think that's probably more general. I would say the next thing is building the flow with voice commands and just talking through. This is, again, I'm thinking far into the future. Mike Gerholdt: That's okay. We're in the future. Marisa Hambleton: Yeah. It's like my plane and I know there's some AIs that can, it's like mid-journey. You're giving it this. You're like, I have this. I'm looking at data from the last 10 years and I need to build an automation that pulls in quarter by quarter the delta of some of my projections or something big and just talking through the use cases and the scenarios, and here's what I want to automate. Then, okay, here's your automation. Here's the flow. You wanted to write it in flow, and here's the apex. Mike Gerholdt: I like that. I think that would be ... I've often thought of if I could just click on a record and write a path that I need it to go, that would be really cool. We talk about that now, it's 2025, and who knows? Somebody's going to resurrect an old recording of this podcast maybe in five or 10 years and be like, "Wow, that was the future for them." Marisa Hambleton: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: Yes. It's going to be like us talking about pencil sharpeners. Marisa Hambleton: Oh my gosh. I still have an old manual pencil sharpener in my garage that I've had forever. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, they were commonplace in my school. Marisa Hambleton: Yes. Now, I don't have as many pencils that need sharpening anymore. Mike Gerholdt: I was going to say, I couldn't name a pencil in my house right now. Let's end on a fun... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/36378585

When Collaboration Meets Agentforce: The MH4 Hackathon Story 04/24/2025

When Collaboration Meets Agentforce: The MH4 Hackathon Story Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Melissa Hill Dees, nonprofit Salesforce consultant and Salesforce MVP. Join us as we chat about how her TDX Hackathon team built a conference scheduling agent from scratch in 16 hours. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Melissa Hill Dees. How to help nonprofits define goals for Salesforce Melissa majored in computer science back when you still programmed with punched cards. However, she didn’t really start her career in tech until 2008, when the nonprofit she was working for started using Salesforce. She was hooked on how she could help these organizations use technology to do more with less, and quickly pursued an MBA in digital entrepreneurship. One thing that came up in our conversation was the difference between how nonprofits and businesses approach Salesforce. In particular, Melissa emphasizes the importance of defining measurable goals for any tech project so you have common ground when prioritizing requests. As the capabilities of Salesforce continue to grow with Agentforce, admins need to help their organizations maintain focus. Building an agent in 16 hours at the TDX Hackathon Melissa is fresh from the TDX Hackathon, where she put together an all-women team of Salesforce MVPs called MH4. Why the name? Because everyone on the team has the same initials: Melissa Hill Dees, Michelle Hansen, Marisa Hambleton, and Melissa Hansen. Together, they had 16 hours to make a working agent, but Melissa was the only person on the team who had built one before. However, from their experience as Dreamin’ event volunteers, they had a pretty good idea for a problem they could solve: scheduling a conference. Finding the right-sized room for each talk when there are several concurrent speaker tracks gets complicated, especially when people are presenting more than once. It’s a problem that everyone on the team could rally around. As Melissa explains, building the agent wasn’t the hard part. It was setting up the backend to make sure it had the right information and permissions to accomplish its goal. Why admins should get the Strategy Designer Certification If you’re looking to learn more, Melissa highly recommends getting the Strategy Designer Certification. You can learn tons of valuable tactics, like consequence scanning, that help you align a group of people around an idea and allow everybody to feel like they have input. Finally, Melissa emphasizes how crucial it is for admins to start learning Agentforce now, even if your organization is hesitant. “Admins have to see the big picture,” she says, “so start learning it now so you don’t have to play catch-up when everybody comes around and wants to use AI.” Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from my conversation with Melissa, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Certification: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: You've got a dream team when everyone's name starts with MH, and you're building a functioning AI agent in 16 hours while laughing and having fun at it. This week we've got Melissa Hill Dees on the pod, and the vibe is totally Agentforce, nonprofit tech, and I even talk about the future of Salesforce admins in the era of AI. And we also talk about the little thing that she built at the hackathon. It's just a scheduling tool that is really cool for all the dream and events. But let me tell you this, if you've ever said, "I'm not a developer, but ...", you're going to feel right at home. So with that, let's get Melissa Hill Dees on the podcast. So Melissa, welcome to the podcast. Melissa Hill Dees: Thank you, Mike. I'm so glad to be here. Mike: Well, I'm glad to have you on, and we're going to kick off ... I'm going to call it a few weeks of MH4s. Melissa Hill Dees: I love that Mike: All of the MH4s because you guys were such a cool little group that got together for the hackathon at TDX, which we're going to talk about. But before we get into that, Melissa, which spells out some of the MH4, tell us a little bit about yourself. Melissa Hill Dees: Oh goodness. So a little bit about myself. I found Salesforce in 2008 after becoming a stay-at-home mom for a little while and not knowing what to do with myself and trying to help small businesses improve what they were doing from a customer relationship management side. I didn't really get very deep into Salesforce then but a couple of years later, I went to work for a nonprofit and they had Salesforce and I became the classic accidental admin. Which was ironic considering that back in the dark ages when dinosaurs still roamed the earth I had majored in computer science. Mike: That's back when they were inventing dirt, because I was also back in that era too. Melissa Hill Dees: They were literally inventing the internet. When I went to university, we still had punch cards. You remember punch cards? Mike: Uh-huh. Melissa Hill Dees: So I felt like I had come full circle. But I really loved what Salesforce was doing with nonprofits and giving them the opportunity to use the best technology that was out there to make a more impact, to improve their mission. And so the more I worked in nonprofits, the more I saw that they thought differently. They didn't think like a business, they thought like a nonprofit, and they didn't always use Salesforce like a business, they used it like they thought a nonprofit would. So it was really interesting. I studied. I did a lot of research and went back and got my master's in digital entrepreneurship because I really wanted to understand the best ways to help nonprofits leverage technology because they have to. That's the only way they can do more with less. So that's really become my passion. How do we make it simple, easy, welcome even. Everybody fusses about technology, but it can do so much that we don't have to do, so we have time to do the things that we really want to do. Mike: Well, that's a great intro. Holy cow. Could you ever have imagined back in 2008 that you would be at a hackathon building an agent? Melissa Hill Dees: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Again, once upon a time, I could write a little Cobol or a little Fortran, but I'm sure I can't even do that anymore. And certainly not a developer by any stretch of the imagination. And you say hackathon, I immediately think developers. Mike: I know. Melissa Hill Dees: That who goes to hackathons, right. But I had learned early on from attending the nonprofit community sprints that you didn't have to be a developer. You didn't have to even be a hardline admin. If you wanted to help in a sprint, you had input and you could help in so many different ways. So it made the hackathon a little less intimidating. Mike: Absolutely. So let's get into that. First of all, I need you to explain the MH4s. What's the MH4s? Am I saying it correctly? Melissa Hill Dees: Well, I say MH to the fourth. Mike: Oh, okay. Sorry. MH to the fourth. Melissa Hill Dees: Yeah. Because we're exponentially awesome. And ironically, a couple of things were going on with that. One thing, ever since I've been involved in the ecosystem, I've been involved with the women in tech groups and WITness Success and all the different groups working with women in minorities. And especially when it comes to AI, I am just adamant, everywhere I speak, I tell everybody they need to get in there and help train the AI. And so I wanted almost as a social experiment to have an all female team for the hackathon. And I started thinking about what we would need on that team. And I knew we'd need a good developer. And so Michelle Hansen is who immediately came to mind. I knew we would need somebody who could write flows at the drop of a hat, do the adminning, and of course Michelle ... Michelle Hansen. I'm going to get confused here. Michelle Hansen is obviously that person. She's so good at those sorts of things. We also needed someone that was more of an architect view. And Marisa Hambleton runs Cactusforce and does that work and so I invited her. And then I was the only one of the group that had actually built an agent before we got to hackathon. Mike: Oh, wow. Melissa Hill Dees: So it was a really exciting opportunity. And it was funny that I didn't consciously think we need everybody named MH, initials MH. But it worked out that way. And in fact, I was going to ask Maham Hassan to be on our team as well, and she couldn't because of the rules and regulations about folks out of the country. Mike: Okay. Melissa Hill Dees: We would've been MH to the fifth power. And five was all you could have. But I'm so glad I did that. It was everything I dreamed it would be. The collaboration between us. None of us have ever worked together. We've never been even employed by the same company, let alone in the same room to sit down together and have 16 hours to go from zero to a working agent. And I loved it. We talked and we talked and we talked. We got all the consequence scanning done and the road mapping done and everything done because we just talked and talked and talked and talked. And we didn't have to go back and do that after we built the product. That was built into the way we thought and building the product and building the agent. So both Melissa and Marisa and even Michelle did a little bit. We're all like, "Oh, I don't know if I want to go to a hackathon. I'll have to take two days out of my work." And I really twisted their arm a little bit and I said, "We could do something really awesome." All of us are involved in community driven events, and we talked about could we do scheduling? What could we do? And then when we got there, of course actually, that's what we built, was a scheduler for presentations based on the rooms that they would be in based on what we had available. And literally took what ... Marisa said took her and Steve about 40 hours combined to do, and the agent does it in seconds. Mike: Oh, wow. So tell me ... You've teased it out. Tell me a little bit about what you built at the hackathon. Melissa Hill Dees: Yeah. It was great. So we started thinking about what ... All of our driven events we're all volunteers. Nobody gets paid to do those. And so it was a situation of what can an agent do for us that will save us time? And that's one of the huge tasks. After you actually go through all the submissions for presentations and you decide which ones you want, then how in the world do you schedule them in these different rooms? The tracks are running at the same time. You've probably got four or five different tracks running at the same time. Somebody may be presenting more than once. You don't want them to overlap. The rooms, depending on how big they are and what else they're being used for. So it just seemed like a really great idea for an agent. And we decided to build it. After we were done we thought we probably could have done this with a flow, but because we had that 16 hour time constraint, Melissa Hanson whipped out a ... She said, "I can do this with code." We're like, "Okay. Do it. Because we want a product when we leave here and we can update it later." So literally ... And the demo that we had to make to submit for the hackathon is on my LinkedIn page and shows you how quickly it goes to, you've already got all that data in your Salesforce instance, you've got the speaker, the session, the titles the rooms, and you hit that agent and it creates a schedule for you. Mike: Yeah. No. I believe me more can relate to what you're asking that agent to do as somebody that's involved with a lot of the events and stuff that Salesforce does. Melissa Hill Dees: And the best thing, I think for us about the hackathon, and it was ironic because the very next day I was invited to an executive listening session. And I said, "I would've come to TDX just for the hackathon." I learned so much. And I'm a very kinetic learner. I need to do it. I don't need you just to show it to me or tell me about it. I need to do it myself. And because I had already built some, that's why I knew that the hard part was not building the agent, the hard part was writing the code if you needed something invocable there or getting the permissions correct on the back end for the agent itself and applying all of that. So deep dive into that agent. We were learning from each other and with all of our different skill sets, we're all MVPs, but each of us has such different skill sets. And then we could really actually create something that would work in the real world, say in less than 16 hours. To me that's amazing. Mike: Oh, absolutely. You've done so much to encapsulate that weekend, and I'll point people to that video on your LinkedIn page. I'm wondering if you could bottle up one moment from that weekend and share it with the world, what would it be? Melissa Hill Dees: Oh, goodness. The word that comes to my mind again and again and again is the collaboration with those women. And there was not arguments. And there could have been, and that would've been fine because it's okay to disagree. But we didn't. We really aligned on what we were trying to accomplish and we knew what we wanted to do. And that level of collaboration was just like I say, everything I ever imagined something like that would be, Mike: Yeah. Let's transition out of that because you've been in the community since we've invented the cloud. I say that because I've been around since 06 so we've been there a while. And I started, the first question was, could you imagine an AI agent now? How do you see the Salesforce admin role evolving in an AI forward world? Melissa Hill Dees: Ooh, that's very interesting. I am fascinated by AI and how we can leverage it to do things. I think I really believe even now, admins need to at least learn how to use the agent and how to build an agent. Because right now it's relatively simple to do, but I think about 2008, Mike, what was there of Salesforce? It was one product. It was one thing. I could learn it then. There were times when I could tell you that I felt like I knew everything you need to know about Salesforce. Now, no way. With all the product acquisitions and the different clouds and the different architectures and the different information, there's just no way possible that I can be an expert at Field Service and at Marketing Cloud and at Slack and at all those things. So I always think of admins like architects. They have to see the big picture. And with the AI I think that's important. Start learning it now. Don't wait. Even if your company says, "Absolutely not. We're not going to use AI. We don't trust it, we don't like it, but start learning it now so you're not trying to play catch up when everybody comes around and is using AI." Mike: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And to your point, I remember as an admin trying to pass my certifications and thinking, oh, but my company doesn't use Service Cloud. I don't know Service Cloud. And the certifications ... Forced is a bad word to say, but required that I learn it. And I remember thinking to myself, but it's good that I know it now so that when the company's thinking about it, I'll be ready. Or at least I'll have a base foundation. And a lot of that is realizing where you sit between technology and strategy within an organization. So my question to you is, what's something you wish more people understood about the intersection of being a Salesforce admin and strategy? Melissa Hill Dees: I think that Salesforce admins probably have the best view of what the strategy might be like. I think it's important. I love the strategy designer certification. Mike: Tell me about that. Melissa Hill Dees: Yeah. If you're an admin and you haven't looked at that, you should because it's less technical and more people management. And one of the things that I learned studying for that and from the design team from Adam Doti's team was consequent scanning. I'd never done that before. And it was so fantastic to do that and be able to align a group of people around an idea. It wasn't a threatening way. It wasn't, I'm the boss and we have to do this. It wasn't that I'm the admin and we have to do this. It was an opportunity for everybody to have that input. And I think that's so important for admins. They have so many jobs and they're not just the technical side of things. They're the ones that get the complaints because the button didn't work or it's not where it would be easy to use or whatever, the report's not pulling correctly. And it's just so much responsibility when you do Salesforce admin and do it really well. That's why I recommend that to everybody. I don't even think you have to have your admin cert. I don't think that's a prerequisite. But it's definitely worth doing and learning. At least do the trailhead on it. Mike: Yeah. No. I didn't even know about now it's on my list. Thank you. Melissa Hill Dees: Yeah. Mike: So you brought that up because the admins are responsible for a lot and they do often have that first line of reaction or giving some sort of an answer to a user and looking up an issue, whether that was something they found in discovery or not. But I'd love to know, when you think about best practices, is there something underrated that has maybe made a huge impact in one of the organizations that you've managed or worked on? Melissa Hill Dees: That's a great question. There are a lot of things that are underrated. And right now what I'm encouraging ... Especially if you're a sales organization, encouraging folks to do is to use the agent summary function in sales. Working in a implementation partner, you don't always talk to the customer when they're in the sales process. You may not even talk to them when they're in the delivery process, so you really don't know them that well, but you're going to write a customer success story. Well, how do you go back and capture three years worth of work or three years worth of interactions? And I've seen it done with the agent summary. And to me, that is the most impactful thing from an ROI. Do you want to pay me to spend five or six hours trying to track down information for something or do you want to pay me for writing a customer success story? So if I can get that summary at the click of a button, then I can write the success story, then I can write five success stories, six success stories, whereas I'd only be able to write one in the same timeframe if I were having to do it all manually. That's just a huge thing, I think. Mike: And you always bring it up. There's so many underrated things because there's very powerful things in setup that sometimes get overlooked. Melissa Hill Dees: The design. The user design. There are a lot of ways to improve it significantly, and most people don't take the time to do that. And you talk about user adoption, we all know that that's the easy route to user adoption. It doesn't matter how complicated it is on the backside, I just want to click a button. And we don't think that way always as an admins, and we are the ones that would do that. Mike: No. Absolutely. You think about keeping up on technology, and you often talk about technology as a tool for social good. I'd love to know how do you keep that front and center when building in Salesforce? Melissa Hill Dees: Well, personally, I love the V2MOM. And you're probably going to think this is crazy, but I use it with customers to suss out what the important aspects of any project we're working on are. Something that we can set up a goal, make it a measurable goal, and that makes it so much easier to start fleshing out requirements and user stories and you turn it over to delivery and they've got metrics to build against. So thinking about with nonprofits, if you want to double your online donations this year,... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/36287090

Level Up: The Admin’s Action Plan for Thriving in the Agentforce Era 04/17/2025

Level Up: The Admin’s Action Plan for Thriving in the Agentforce Era Level Up: The Admin’s Action Plan for Thriving in the Agentforce Era Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Dorian Earl, Salesforce Admin and Founder of Development Consulting Partners, LLC. Join us as we chat about the 5 steps admins can take today to lead the charge in the Agentforce era. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dorian Earl. Admins are at the center of the Agentforce era I always love having Dorian on the pod because he has an amazing origin story. He started out as a traveling sales rep for medical and dental equipment. He had to keep track of over 100,000 products and 300 clients, all in paper notebooks, until one day he left his Franklin planner on the roof of his car and realized he had to find a better way. That’s when he started looking into a new digital CRM platform called Salesforce. These days, Dorian helps organizations with digital transformation through Salesforce, and he sees admins as the linchpin for driving organizational change in the Agentforce era. In fact, he flagged me down at a recent event because he was so excited to share his 5-step action plan for how Salesforce Admins can lead the charge on AI. 1. Build awareness beyond the buzz While most people have talked to an LLM by now, Dorian has noticed that most of his clients don’t quite grasp what it could mean for their organization. Admins are in a unique position to translate the buzz into action. Start by educating your teams, surfacing practical use cases, and bringing the conversation into team meetings. This isn't about replacing people—it's about making everyone 10–20% smarter, faster, and more capable. 2. Prep your data for Agentforce AI is only as good as the data you give it. And we’re not just talking about client data, though that needs to be in a healthy place. As Dorian points out, consumer-facing agents need to know things like your operating hours, company values, and brand voice. Prepping your data for Agentforce makes it easier to try new features and build something that works. 3. Identify the quick wins Admins don’t need to wait for long-term projects to start making an impact with AI. Agentforce comes with ready-to-use features that drive value today. Dorian points to two in particular: Record Summaries: AI-generated account overviews save time and provide instant context, especially for reps managing hundreds of accounts or taking over a book of business. Quick Reporting: Need to know how many leads are in New York with a certain status? You can just ask. No more report-building marathons—admins and users alike can get insights on demand. These tools aren’t just time-savers—they’re credibility builders. They show stakeholders the value of AI quickly and easily without much heavy lifting. 4. Find internal processes to improve The biggest thing that should be on your radar is how Agentforce can overhaul internal business processes. There are so many places where an internal-facing agent can save clicks and smooth out a workflow. Dorian brings up the example of processing a return. An agent can take care of all the little steps, like creating a case, logging information, and authorizing a refund, instead of that being a multi-person business process. 5. Lead the AI transformation Admins are no longer just behind-the-scenes builders—they’re transformation leaders. You understand the org’s data, its pain points, and its goals. That makes you the ideal person to customize and scale AI across departments. As Dorian puts it, success with Agentforce isn’t just about features—it’s about alignment. Help your teams adopt AI by showing them how it can support their goals, simplify their day-to-day, and elevate their performance. There were so many great tips in my conversation with Dorian for how admins can thrive in the Agentforce era, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday morning. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Salesforce Admins on YouTube: Trailhead: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome back Dorian Earle, founder and CEO of a thriving consultancy that has over 450 clients and just a massive wealth of Salesforce experience and knowledge. Dorian has been the Salesforce ecosystem for nearly two decades. He started as a sales rep who needed a better way to track his deals and opportunities and really turn that into a career empowering companies to embrace better CRMs and smarter systems. Now in today's episode, we dive into Dorian's five steps to prepare for Agentforce and AI. Now, from understanding the buzz around AI to implementing quick wins and long-term strategies, Dorian shares invaluable insights to help you, the Salesforce admin, and/or organizations you work for stay ahead of the curve this year in 2025. Now, of course, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following or subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so that you never miss a great episode like this. New episodes drop every Thursday morning. That way you've got them, boom, right on your phone before you head off for your dog walk or your commute to work. So with that, let's get Dorian on the podcast. Dorian, welcome back to the podcast Dorian Earl: Though this is an absolute pleasure more than you know and good to see you again at all of the events. So good to see you and good to chat with you again. Mike Gerholdt: You're one of the people that I'm happiest out in the world and we get to run into each other at different events, and you and I are such easy people to miss out in a crowd. Dorian Earl: Well, I don't know if that's the case. I'm the tallest person. You have the best beard and the most charismatic smile. Everybody who sees you go, literally. Mike Gerholdt: I don't know about that. Dorian Earl: Yeah, well, yeah. When you walk past, and for the listeners who don't hear this, Mike had walked past us at the World Tour and two people at the table said, "I don't know who he is, but he has to be somebody." I said, "You don't know who Mike Gerholdt is?" And so you have a reputation. I'm surprised there's not three people following you carrying your briefcase and just kind of handling all of it. Mike Gerholdt: There used to be. I say I'm kind of in my late '80s John Travolta stage of Salesforce celebrityism where I'm doing the really bad B movies and nobody knows who I am. Dorian Earl: But that's not true. Mike Gerholdt: I'm hoping for the next Pulp Fiction level role to come up and then I'll be dancing around like a Santa Claus selling Citibank cards and stuff. Dorian Earl: I was going to say, if you just come out with a good costume, which at every event there are people with a really good... And dance moves, I guarantee you, you'll be more relevant. Mike Gerholdt: And don't forget, I got to shave my head. Travolta had that whole time where he shaved his head too. Dorian Earl: Ah, that's true. I would just tell you, you should keep yours. You got good hair. Mike Gerholdt: I think so. Dorian Earl: You got a lot happening. You got a lot happening. Mike Gerholdt: You know what everybody who subscribes to the podcast didn't want to listen to? Dorian Earl: What's that? Mike Gerholdt: Was all of that conversation. So let's talk about something that'll provide business value to our customers again, and that is getting ready for Agentforce and AI. And when you and I ran into each other, well, to be fair, when you beelined through a hotel restaurant to find me horsing down my chicken fingers at the bar, you had this wonderful thing, you were like, "Mike, we got to talk about this on the podcast. I have these five things that I'm helping companies do to get ready for AI." And I said, "You're right." So Dorian, let's get into that. But let's start off just because sometimes people don't listen to all of the episodes of the podcast. What do you do? How did you come to be in the Salesforce world? Dorian Earl: Yeah, so I started almost 20 years ago as a sales guy. I needed a way to track my deals and opportunities, and if anybody's around in the mid, I'm not going to give my age, in the mid 40s, we all used Franklin portfolio, Franklin Company Planners, and I would leave them at my client's office and set them on top of my car and drive off and there goes my pipeline and all of my stuff and I couldn't do that. So kind of being a forward-thinking salesperson, I said I need to have a way that I wouldn't lose my notes, my deals, my opportunities, everything I had worked hard to build. Then I went to purchase programs and databases and lo and behold, I found a web-based CRM called Salesforce. That was 20 years ago. That was really became my secret sauce, Mike. I was an average salesperson and getting good, but really my secret sauce was organization and to be able to stay on top of deals. And in my line of work as a salesperson at that time, we had over 100,000 products to keep track of. So what kind of promotion was going on? Who needed what? What was going on? I was a sales rep in the medical dental supply space. So we had a lot of manufacturers and four or five different manufacturers for each line. Like gloves, we had five or six brands of gloves and masks. So who had the promotion? Which one did my customer like? Oh, my doctor liked the left-handed glove from Crosstechs or from MedTech or from all those kind of companies. And I had to keep all those things straight because I had 300 plus clients. The doctor would like one and their front desk would like another and the assistant, that kind of... And so all those things became really difficult for me to keep track of and I needed a better way to do that. And so lo and behold, I purchased Salesforce for myself, started to get some success. The down economy hit and I was of the few people that I could actually forecast my sales to my boss. I can go in and say, "This client mentioned this to me earlier on in the year. I think we can close them if we do these things." I was one of the few people at our branch that could do that. Long and short of it, that grew to me going independent, started my own firm and then working with other companies, help bring in their sales or their product in the market. It was always, "Hey, I can help you lead your sales team, but you need to have a database or CRM." Again, 15 years ago, it was, "I have this in some spreadsheet or somebody in our office has this in a spreadsheet." And I said, "You need to have one, a better way to track your sales and deals." And I would tell them, "You need to go out and buy the Salesforce thing." And so I worked in tech startup helping companies take the product in the market. One of those products was acquired by Google. And so I became a contract sales manager for Google for a while and Apple for a little bit, and that's part of my story. And six years ago, a company actually just reached out and said, "Can you help us with the CRM and sales thing?" And then my career helping companies from the inside out versus the outside in kind of worked. And so now, I'm the founder and CEO of a company with 450 plus clients and about 20 plus team members and things are really fun. So that's the long story short, right? Mike Gerholdt: Right, right. It's interesting because we've known each other for a while and we've both been the ecosystem for a while and we've CRM and Salesforce change and add new features to the time. I think what we're seeing now with AI everywhere, what is your level of, let's start off with your five things, what is your level of awareness that you're seeing with your clients on being AI ready or even having thoughts of how they would use that? Dorian Earl: Everybody knows about it. As I said, I see articles at my desk. My team is using this. There are everyday products that they are seeing now that are becoming more intelligent or adding AI. You can't turn on a TV today every... If you're watching football and there's a break, one commercial will say, "This is the product with AI now." So there's a lot of buzz and really awareness, and now it's starting to really be embedded into other products. What I'm finding out with our clients is they don't understand the real impact of what this means for their business yet. They know it's out there, but they just don't know how to leverage that, how LMMs work, which ones to use, use cases, but they are seeing AI being embedded into their everyday tools. They are seeing email plugins, they are seeing these things and they're starting to encounter it. So our role is really just to say, "Look, let 2025 be the year of intelligence at your company. Let's make everybody 10% smarter. Let's make everybody roll in your work, let's make everybody 10, 15, 20% smarter this quarter, this six months this year." And they're really getting excited with that. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It's kind of like the early 1900s with cars. I mean, there's how many people making an AI product right now? And I guess we'll find out how many survive and don't because the early 1900s, there was over 300 car manufacturers and now there's what? 5, 10 arguably? Dorian Earl: Right. Maybe. Right, yeah, maybe. Right. Mike Gerholdt: I'm sure more, but you know. So in the five things admins can do to get ready for Agentforce and AI, you list number one is awareness. So I feel like maybe last year that was like, "Oh, we kind of need to wake up." And most people, I don't want to say most people, most people I know became AI aware at the consumer grade level. I think it's another to think of AI at the enterprise level, which is where Salesforce operates because we're an enterprise CRM. We're operating immediately with millions of rows of records and sometimes even data lakes or multiple organizations. So I'm sure that you probably run into a few that are aware. Let's go on to number two, which is the preparedness. Where do people fall there? Dorian Earl: They are not because one, if they are aware, and I think you hit it on the head, and I don't want to bury what you just said. Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Dorian Earl: Really, most technology comes out as a consumer facing application to catch what's called a user adoption, right? And I remember when I was in college and Google first launched and literally people going out and say, "You can ask Google anything and it would just come back with an answer." Or as Amazon, you can go put in any book you want. Well, it took a few years for people to understand the business implication of having all the data on the internet to ask a question. It even took Google really by storm or Amazon if you would've asked them when they started what their business would look like. They didn't know. So we are in early days, but the people that are understanding, okay, there is an entity or there is a program out there that can ingest data and then come back to you with patterns, use cases, ideas, analysis, and that could have some ramification for us as a company. So how do we get prepared to use this? And so when we start telling our clients about this, they said, "Wow, this could be really exciting. What do we do then to prepare to really turn these features on?" And so I'm going to mention this. I'm going to kind of go backward and start to go forward. This analogy I start to tell is I think it's maybe going to ring true. So I was a previous athlete, and if I was going to ask you, Mike, "Hey Mike, my knee is swollen and it's a little sore." You would probably tell me rest it, elevate it, ice it. These are common things that... this is generalized intelligence, right? If my three-year-old son falls and scrapes his hand and it's bleeding, you're going to go wash it, you're going to go let it air, obviously you're going to put some things on it, you're going to wrap it up in a Band-Aid. That's generalized intelligence. Now, if I told you as a 40-year-old male that's 50 pounds overweight, that played basketball at a very high level for many years, that over exercises in my yard and my knee swells probably once a month. And you would say, "Given that relative information about you, you should probably go see a doctor. You may have a micro tear, you may have tendonitis, you may have some other things. All I did was I just gave you further background and relevant information versus general. And that's exactly how AI works. Most people are just going asking it generalized questions and getting generalized answers. But the more relevant information you can give AI, just in general, through prompting, then it can come back and say, "Based on information you told me and the background and the person and this issue, I'm going to recommend these things." And really AI in general is as good as the data you give it. And so one of the things we are telling our clients is to prepare to use lists. In order for this to work at an enterprise level, where are all of your company data? Are you giving AI all the background you can on your company? Where would it find it? Do you have it in PDF? The origin story on your company, the history, the industry, how you service, the founders. So all of those things, the company data, the user. Tell us about the sales reps, their roles, their unique skills, the images on them. Products and services, where does that data set and how do we adequately get it into a place where AI can read it? One, if it's not, obviously of course, on the internet, then we should put it there. But two, it should be in a place that's up-to-date so AI can go in and read those things and answer questions. And so we just want to give it as much relative information as you can. That way, it doesn't give general answers or general information, which of course could be issues. So we want to prepare our clients and say, "If you don't have this, let's start to gather it. If you need help gathering it, we're going to help you put it in a way that AI can read it. Your company data, the user data, your products and services, your customers, and any systems you would like AI to have access to." The good part of it is a lot of this should be in their CRM. It should already be in Salesforce. What most people don't know is you can go into the user records and pretty much put in these custom fields about roles and background and info. And obviously, you can fill out information on the company. This is actually the good part, what a lot of people don't really know. Your company data is stored in Salesforce, your NAP, your name, address, phone, number of the business, the website, the social. We can start enriching Salesforce with your company data. Images, logos, all of those things. And so if we do that, we are really preparing AI, we're really just teaching it. So what can we teach it and how much can we get AI to know about your company? And then this is what I call that preparedness stage, Mike. It may take people weeks to do this. They may say, "Wow, how much data should we give AI?" As much as you want given the relevant tasks. So sometimes it takes our clients weeks to do this. Sometimes we're putting together an entire process on what do we want AI to have access to and learn on. So that's kind of step two. Mike Gerholdt: No, I like that. I'm thinking of all of the use cases my team puts together. When we put out the Agentforce Decoded series, a lot of it is thinking from the sales or service perspective of, hey, how do you summarize this account or summarize this case. One part that you brought up that's very salient that I think is, not to look ahead, but is like a good quick win is also what is your company about? What is your brand voice? Dorian Earl: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: What are your,... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/36188065

How Data Cloud Enhances Contextual AI for Salesforce Admins 04/10/2025

How Data Cloud Enhances Contextual AI for Salesforce Admins Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mehmet Orun, SVP, GM, and Data Strategist at PeerNova. Join us as we chat about how to use Data Cloud to create trustworthy AI experiences. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mehmet Orun. How Data Cloud powers trustworthy AI experiences The last time we had Mehmet on the pod, the big concern with AI was hallucinations. How can we be sure that the agents we create don’t start making stuff up? What’s more, how do we know that they won’t share data they shouldn’t? In short, how do we create trustworthy AI experiences? As we’ve learned time and again, AI is only as good as the data you give it. But, as Mehmet explains, Data Cloud has changed the game for admins in terms of control over who sees what and in what context. Admins can create personalized experiences with Agentforce, constrained by the permission model and capabilities of Flow to ensure that everything is working as intended. How data management best practices have changed with AI One thing Mehmet reflects on is the way that data management techniques have changed over time. Several best practices no longer make sense in today’s context of AI. For example, duplicate records that used to be a mortal sin make more sense when you’re trying to constrain what a customer can see vs. your employees vs. your vendors. However, the personalized engagement that is possible with Agentforce requires a complete understanding of what’s happening with someone. At the same time, you want your agents to only act on information they’re “allowed” to see, or generate insights that are relevant to the outcomes you want to achieve. As Mehmet explains, “good” data and “bad” data is really about making sure your data is structured in a way that makes it easy to use. Data unification made easy with Data Cloud The good news is that it’s never been easier to take care of your data with Data Cloud. Mehmet’s seen this with the nonprofits he works with. Data unification projects that used to take months or even years are now relatively simple affairs. You can identify bad data, filter out irrelevant data, and put the right data standardizations in place all in setup. Mehmet’s biggest piece of advice is to measure your data quality in terms of the business outcomes you are trying to achieve. As he points out, the amount of data you need to open an opportunity is different than what you need to close an opportunity. The same principle applies to AI agents. If you make sure they get everything they need and nothing extraneous, you’ll get good results. There are a ton of great insights about data management best practices for AI in our conversation with Mehmet, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And make sure you’re subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome back to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today we're catching up with Mehmet Orun, longtime friend of the pod and true expert in data and AI. I'm going to tell you, a lot has changed in the world of artificial intelligence since our last chat. And Mehmet's here to break it down from hallucination risks to the role of data cloud in creating trustworthy AI experiences. If you've ever been wondering how to make your data more meaningful and your AI outputs more reliable, well, you are in for a treat. So, make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss a single episode. And with that, let's get Mehmet back on the podcast. Mehmet, welcome back to the podcast. Mehmet Orun: It is wonderful to be back, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: I know. You just come by with all these wisdoms and knowledge that you have in the world. Last time we were on, and I'll link to that show, we were talking about hallucination risks. And it's been a year. And boy, I tell you, a year in AI time, everything's changed. So, what's new in your world? What are you paying attention to in terms of AI and Agentforce? Mehmet Orun: To be honest, one of the interesting things about having been around a while is while the technologies are new, our overall objective haven't really changed. And one of the things I've been really trying to look back to is what were past challenges we overcame, what were the parallels, and what were some of the best practices that people newer to the field around data integration, artificial intelligence, may not know about, so we can share this knowledge while absolutely picking up new ways of doing things? Also, because we definitely have new tools under our belt. And having a organized way to assess what may cause hallucination risk and mitigating it has been a truly hot topic. I have been visiting old friends, making new friends as I've been traveling across different Salesforce events as well. And the good news is people are excited about the potential. People are also excited about having tangible methods they can take back to their organization. I'm looking forward to sharing some of these with you today. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It's interesting, you look at some of the stuff that's out in the world and the spectrum for people looking at what's going on with AI goes all the way from everything that it says is right to nothing that it says it's right, and somebody falls somewhere in between there. But I feel like I did podcasts in 2024, early '24, I think in '23, even talking about hallucination. The one thing that it came back to, it seems to have gone away, because I think more of the conversation is around the quality of the data and what we're feeding Agentforce and getting your data ready. Am I right? Mehmet Orun: So, given you mentioned '23, '24, a lot of the hallucination- Mike Gerholdt: This was a long time ago. Mehmet Orun: Yeah, in the AI world, right? Mike Gerholdt: Uh-huh. Mehmet Orun: A lot of the hallucination risk conversations that were happening, and this was mostly around ChatGPT, was because the information that was available was up to a particular date. It was predominantly unstructured data available on the internet. So, if something was published past a certain date, it was not going to show up in answers. One of the big changes I think in the ecosystem is in the past we talked about IT solutions, data warehouses, analytics, which was separate than marketing segmentation and engagement. And then we had these really interesting LLMs and generative AI for the past several months, it feels like years. The focus is the idea of a truly enterprise scale data platform that can power automation, that can power analytics. That can look at structured and unstructured data in order to provide complete, compliant, and contextual information that can also power AI. I know we both like storytelling. I had a really interesting experience with my father a couple of weeks ago. Do you mind if I tell that story? Mike Gerholdt: Oh, please, tell me. I love a good story. Mehmet Orun: She's a 90-year-old retired brigadier general. He's a military engineer. Mike Gerholdt: 90 years young, you mean? Mehmet Orun: Oh, man. I still barely keep up with him. Mike Gerholdt: See, that's what I'm saying. Mehmet Orun: And as a military engineer, you are always given a mission and you have what you have. That is the typical mindset. And in every country, in every place, people are talking about artificial intelligence, what it may mean. And he said, "Okay, look, I think this is your field. Help me understand what is new versus what he was working with in older computing days, and why are people worried? Why are people excited?" So, I sat next to him. We brought up ChatGPT, and I asked a series of three questions. The first question was, I said, "Tell me what you know about my dad's name, Sunday Orun, a retired engineer, a retired soldier, not even rank." And it gave what rank he retired at, what branch of the military, where he went to school. Simple question, limited context. I said, what else do you know about him? I said, him without the name. And I got information about article field-working for magazines in a couple of his books. Post-retirement, he did poetry, which is a wonderful way to retire. And he's like, "Oh, it's interesting. How does it know that?" I'm like, "Well, can people find your books in online storage?" He's like, "Yes." So, it's available information. It can leverage all of these as it searches. He's like, "Okay, it makes sense." Then I asked the question, "What do you know about his son?" And ChatGPT says, "I do not know who his son is." And he's like, "So, why doesn't it know we are related?" And I said, "Because the fact that you and I are related would be in a government database. It would not be in public records. It's not something that's on the internet." And for him, this was an obvious separation. So, you asked a question, this is a long-winded way of getting there, perhaps, so what has changed? A year ago, I could dump a bunch of knowledge articles or perhaps a meeting transcript and say summarize, or I could use knowledge articles to power chatbots. Now I can look at what do I know about a person in their transactional context based on their order history, based on their case history, based on their knowledge of the product. And I can give much more personalized recommendations, because the AI platform idea, as opposed to an LLM technology idea, is bringing together matching technology where we used to think about as duplicate management and CRM. That mindset has evolved, and it is there to provide contextual interactions. Data cloud is not just powering the generative AI capabilities for Agentforce. It's also providing the unified insights that can even be constrained to only what a person is supposed to know about, where admins and architects can control this, given the permission model and capabilities of flow. Which for me is incredibly exciting, because that means we can deliver more value. We can use the technology we are already deeply familiar with, and we can show the true potential of AI while minimizing risk to our organizations and minimizing confusion for our end users. Mike Gerholdt: That's a fabulous story. I feel you're spot on. Just the level of understanding why and what we have available to us is huge. In the email you sent me, I want to pull out a sentence, because we're talking about data and we're talking about a lot of things. But I feel this is a good foundation. You said, "Part of this helped them realize why historical CRM data management techniques do not scale versus benefits of data cloud." To the uninitiated, and I'm one of them, so I'm asking this question for me, can you give me what you mean by historical CRM data management techniques and help me understand that versus the benefits of data cloud? Mehmet Orun: So, if I think about what is in the Salesforce admin data management toolkit, we talk about a distinct set of areas we expect admins to do. They configure objects, object fields with validation rules and some data management rules, such as, do you want a default value or not, if it's required or not? We talk to them about duplicate management rules, which led the impression that all duplicates are bad. And we talk about storage optimization more around performance, because every org had a storage limit, you wanted to think about when you may want to offload storage either for cost savings or build skinny tables for large data volume handling. Those were the domains of data management we got to, which was fairly technical, focused on mostly data entry operations. Let's fast-forward to even two years ago. If you have a Salesforce CRM org with Experience Cloud, you need to have intentional duplicate records because the records and end user maintains their information should be separated, then how that customer's information is maintained by employees. You may also have records maintained by partners using Experience Cloud that's still about the same customer. So, already thinking that for a customer that should have one record is no longer sufficient and acceptable, because partners need to have their view of the information. Customers want to maintain their own perspective of what they're called, what's their best contact information. And companies want to be able to have their internal view as well, such as customer segment, customer risks, so on and so forth. But personalized engagement requires a complete understanding of what's happening with an organization, where you only act on information you're allowed to see and you act on insights that is relevant to the outcomes you want to achieve. So, three things I really, really like that data cloud brought in to our solution kits is, first, I can provide a holistic understanding of the individual or a business contact, even though I have multiple contact or lead records in my CRM, even in the simplest of architectures. Let's talk about a nonprofit example. Let's say that we're talking to Sam Smith, and Sam is a donor. Sam was a board member. Sam worked for an organization that gave us grants. That is us interacting with Sam, the human, into a business context and in a donor relationship. We are going to want to track these through different departments, probably through different records. But when we want to know what do we know about the people we engage with, how do we send them a personalized thank you, this is where data cloud powers that unification perspective. Does that example make sense before I tie to the AI specific examples that extends this? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, it does. I'm following along. Mehmet Orun: So, let's say that we are now in a data model that we have accepted, we should maintain contextual transactions in our business applications, whether we have one or multiple CRM orgs, and of course, other systems. We first unify it around individuals' business contacts and accounts. So, now, related transactions, related emails, donation history from external systems or cases, regardless of your industry, can come together in one umbrella. Now, if I want to create a personalized thank you message, we can look at overall interaction history and not just think that we have seen someone for the first time, because they're using their new email address in their new corporate role, but they've been a lifetime member. So, generative AI solutions work better when interactions across a person's contact points can be made accessible within compliance rules, of course. And agentic solutions work better when it can understand what are all of the different type of transactions that may be associated to an individual or an account, even when they're distributed across multiple account records, multiple contact records, even multiple CRM orgs. You can see me, I'm pointing to things on the whiteboard in front of me, but this is something that used to take organizations months, if not years to put in place. And having done this now for real with a few nonprofits as part of my pro bono work, I know we can do assessment and planning in a few days. We can then onboard the data and configure data clouds, data unification capabilities in less than a month. And that includes identifying bad data that is in the system. [email protected], they're still present, whether your org is three years old or 20 years old, by filtering out irrelevant data, by putting the right data standardizations in place. These are all part of a single umbrella of capability. Whereas an admin, you just worked with the admin tools in the past. And now many of these transformation capabilities, configurable rules are accessible still under the setup tree, still under the Salesforce tabs. That allows us to be more productive Salesforce professionals and allows us to decrease the total cost of ownership as we support our organizations. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, I've always thought when I've asked people a rhetorical question, what is the most important thing that your company owns? And 99% of the time when I ask people that question, they get it wrong, because they mention a patent or a brand, or a product that they produce. And I say, "No, it's your data." The data that you have is the most important thing for you to take care of. And ironically, it's also the most least paid attention to, because we just throw things in, and we'll sort it and figure it out later. Hurry up, move on to the next thing. And now, as you bring up the unification of all these systems, where we've put all this data and the management or mismanagement of it, now is the vital importance, because now we can truly link all of this information, and have AI sort through it and give us the relevant information that we need by just thinking through a few more processes. Mehmet Orun: I think what's important in what you said is AI is additive to what we have had, because I agree data is the most important asset. And the fact that no organization I've ever been a part of or helped had perfect data. It's something we just need to accept, but not live with. Mike Gerholdt: Right. I have a friend that has a small marketing agency. He probably has 200 people in his little CRM. I promise you, his data isn't good. Even in that, I mean, nobody's got perfect data. Mehmet Orun: So, what matters, and this is what we talked about last year, is we can't assess data quality as a technical concept. We can't just look at what is in my object. Is it good? Is it not good? We always need to look at data in context of a business outcome. I think an example I give often is how much data you need to start an opportunity is different than the amount of data you need to close an opportunity. What you want to gather if you lost a big opportunity is different than what you probably would ask people to capture if you lost a small opportunity. So, these are all proportionate to the business benefit, where I don't think historically we did a great job explaining as professionals, whether we are admins, architects, business analysts. But when it comes to AI, because agentic AI puts so much focus and emphasis on use cases and the persona we are empowering. If it's a sales agent, we want to find out what is the job a sales agent is supposed to do. What is the information they need? What are the rules they should follow? And whether you have 100 fields or 800 fields in your constant opportunities objects, we still need to look at what data is reliable today, if that's sufficient. If it is not sufficient, we need to go through some type of a data improvement process or when to look at a different use case. If we have sufficiently reliable data, we need to look at how do we ensure our prompts both use data from those fields that have reliable data and sufficient metadata, and also know when a subset of records don't have sufficient data quality in those very same fields. And then third, just because it works today, we shouldn't assume things are going to be the same tomorrow because processes are changing, configurations are changing, people habits are changing. So, by monitoring what's happening in our business applications and catching deviations, we can avoid unexpected batch surprises, also in the flows. Honestly, these are things with a time machine we should have thought of and incorporated into our automation flow, into our reports, but the attention wasn't there as much as it is today. So, people being excited about AI, but worried about hallucination risk is one of the best things that happened to ensure we can provide reliable data for all types of decision making through Salesforce. ... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/36071875

Building Secure AI Agents with Salesforce Agentforce 04/03/2025

Building Secure AI Agents with Salesforce Agentforce Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Sri Srinivasan, Senior Director of Information Security at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about his recent presentation at TDX and how to build secure, reliable AI experiences with Agentforce. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sri Srinivasan. Quick heads up before we dive in: This episode may include forward-looking statements—aka things we're excited about that may not be here just yet. So, as always, make your purchasing decisions based only on what's currently available. For the full legal scoop, check out . Five questions to ask when you’re building with Agentforce I caught up with Sri fresh off his TDX presentation about secure Agentforce implementation to pick his brain on how admins should think about security and AI. For Sri, there are five things to think about in order to build secure AI agents: What is the agent’s role and scope? What data will the agent have access to? Which actions should be public and which should be private? Do you need to build any extra guardrails? Which channels will the agent use? As always with security, the key concept here is the principle of least privilege. Running through Sri’s questions helps you build an agent that can’t do something you don’t want it to do. What’s coming next for security in Agentforce Sri also gives us a sneak peek at the new tools his team is piloting to help admins build secure AI agents. You’ll be able to look at metrics like instruction adherence, coherence, how factual the responses are, and how grounded the agent is. They’re also trying to simplify how user permissions work with AI agents in order to make it easier to keep things limited and secure. It’s easy to turn things on and off when you’re trying to get something to work, but you need to revisit your permissions from time to time and apply the principle of least privilege. The role of admins in the future of Agentforce Finally, I asked Sri about how admins fit into the future of AI on Salesforce. “Admins are key to everything that we do,” he says, “they understand everything that's happening within their environment. They know which actions, what permissions, what they do, and agents are just another avenue to expose and interact with this crux of it.” How fast would you drive a car with no brakes? Sure, Agentforce is a sports car in terms of everything it can do. But it’s up to admins to build the brakes and make sure that AI agents are only doing the things you want them to do. And that starts by understanding the systems and data behind them and then asking the right questions. There’s a lot more great stuff in my conversation with Sri, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Sri at TDX: More from TDX: Trailhead: Blog: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Sri Srinivasan about secure, reliable AI experiences with Agentforce. Now, Sri is a leader on the security compliance customer trust team at Salesforce, where he helps customers understand and implement security best practices. Of course, before we get into this episode, be sure to follow the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That way you get a new episode every Thursday delivered right to your phone or your mobile device. So with that, let's get into our conversation with Sri. So Sri, welcome to the podcast. Sri Srinivasan: Thanks for having me here, Mike. Super excited for it. Mike Gerholdt: Well, I love the presentation that you gave at TDX, and I'm sure more people would love to hear about it too, which is why I wanted to have you come back on, because everything now is Agentforce and security is always top of mind. I've always preached security ever since I started at Salesforce. I've had, I think, Laura Pelkey on quite a few times. But that was the compass of what you talked about at TDX. But I'm jumping ahead. Let's talk about you a little bit. Tell me kind of where you got started and how you got to Salesforce. Sri Srinivasan: Let me try to make it very sweet and sharp. So I have always been in security. I have a master's in information management specializing in security. I worked for big four accounting firms, but not doing accounting. I did security for them, data security and data privacy. Then I ended up working for a little gaming company where I really got involved in security, due diligence. Was a small company based out of Reno, but they were not really small. They did almost all gaming systems, all gaming interactions, lottery, all across the world. So that got me exposed to different systems and more specifically around fraud and how systems can be hacked to do things that they shouldn't be doing. That's where I got more interested in understanding the lay of the land of security. I spent about five, six years there. Then I got an opportunity to work for one of the biggest tax preparers in the United States. I ran their cyber fraud operations group for two years down there, and then my business teams, product teams came over to me and said, "Sri, you've been on the other side yelling at us to do a better job. Why don't you come on this side and do that?" So I spent a couple of years on the product side as well. Then during COVID, I was looking back at my life when we had lots of time at home, and I realized I've done a lot of the security functions in total audit, GRC, red teaming, blue teaming, security operations center, fraud operations. One thing that I thought I did not have was that customer-facing experience, and this great opportunity came about at Salesforce, and my role currently in Salesforce is to interact with customers. My team, security compliance customer trust, is the front-facing team for all customer-facing security inquiries around security, compliance, and trust. So that's how I got here, and I've been here for about five years or so, almost five. It feels like I just started yesterday, and it's amazing. Every time I meet a customer, I just feel excited. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, if I had to go back in time and pick a career in tech, I feel like security is one that you're always going to have a job because if there's a lock out there, I promise you there's probably somebody trying to break it. Sri Srinivasan: Yep. I hear you. And the frustrating part about is that it's oftentime not people trying to break the lock. It's just people forgetting to lock their locks, and then figuring out like, "Hey, how did somebody get in?" Well, you didn't lock it at the first place. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Oh, man. Speaking the truth. So it feels like there's kind of two eras. Well, I mean, we talk about different waves at Salesforce, but to me there's the pre-AI era and then there's the post-AI era. And for a long time, up until I saw your presentation, I kind of didn't think about security with AI, because most of everything that we do on the platform is just so secure, but let's talk about what your presentation at TDX was. So kind of in a nutshell, bring us into that presentation and what you talked about. Sri Srinivasan: Sure. I think what the intent was, AI is the hype word right now. So everybody's talking about LLMs, everyone's talking about how to protect those LLMs, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more when it comes to implementing AI right. Salesforce provides you with a very secure platform, but is only as secure as you implement it. So that was kind of the crux of the presentation where we actually articulated the shared responsibility model in terms of what is expected is you as a customer, you as an admins, what are the few five or 10 things that you want to question anybody in your organization that is wanting to come up with an AI solution? And we wanted to break it down from a business case perspective, in a sense, if you look at all of our top tracks around Agentforce, we break it down into role, data, actions, guardrails, and channels. Those are the things that your business users are very familiar with. If we can build security into those aspects, by nature of it, we're building security into the product itself, rather than coming at the end and saying, "Now I'm going to do a security review and I'm going to add security on top of it." So that's what we were focusing on during the presentation. Things around being very cognizant on what is the role of the agent, what is the scope of the agent, what will it do? What will it not do? What data it will have access to, and where is that data coming from? Do we need to bring that data into the Salesforce system? Do we need the agent to have access to that? Other critical things, such as least privilege, access controls, designing your actions securely. Those are the things that we spoke about during our presentation, most of which, if you just took it out of context and put it in a paper, none of this should be new words. All of this is standard security practices, but the way it's applied, the lens through which you look at it, is a little different when it comes to Agentforce. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think it's always interesting as we delve into new tech when you think of security as really telling the agent what it should and shouldn't do. Wow. Because most people, I think, probably encapsulate security into permissions and profiles and data access, but also what it should and shouldn't do is also security, right? One of the things you mentioned in your answers was guardrails. And I'm wondering, can you give us some examples of what could go wrong if guardrails aren't set properly? Sri Srinivasan: Yeah. So I'm trying to give a better example here because I don't want it to be something that is future-looking, but rather what's in the product today. So when you give your agent guardrails, a simple one could be your agent instructions. Under no circumstances should I ask for your email address or customer name or your order number because I have all that information. If I can validate Mike, I have all that information. I shouldn't be asking you to give me that information and assume that is right. So that's a very simple guardrail that you can throw into your system, right? Another set of guardrails could be you shall not perform these actions without having the user verified. You need to know who the user is before you can go and reset his password, or you need to have their second factor. You need to do a step-up authentication before you can trigger these actions, things of that sort. And what agent does with our Agent Builder, you can start providing these as natural language instructions. And the system would know. Mike Gerholdt: One thing I was thinking of, so I'm going to ask a silly question, because when we talk security, I feel like I'm the person that has to ask the silly questions. So I'm going to do that. You mentioned one thing of, well, I'm going to set the guardrail if it shouldn't have access, or it shouldn't ask for the order number because the person looking at the screen has the order number. Why is that important if we're not passing an order number to an agent? Why would we withhold data to an agent? Sri Srinivasan: So we're not actually withholding the data to an agent. The reason why we don't want to explicitly ask the user for certain information is not just to ask, but we can ask, but we shouldn't trust that information. It's the innate concept of trust but verify. I can ask you for this information, but that's not a great user experience because I already know your account number, your order number. I have all that information. But rather, what I don't have is I don't know who's on the other side of the system. So that's more important for me when I say that you shall not ask for it. The reason why I explicitly state that is because I don't need this information from you. I already have it. What I need from you is to validate who you are. Once I know you're Mike and this is the associated user ID, I have all the other information. Are you able to connect those dots? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, I totally get it now. I mean, guardrails, I guess I was envisioning guardrails as like those bumpers that you put up when you go bowling and you're not very good at it so you roll a strike every time. And it's kind of that, but it's also kind of that to make sure that the conversation and the agent is flowing in a natural manner so that you're actually being productive is the way I hear it. So that totally makes sense. Sri Srinivasan: 100%. And what we have, it's currently in pilot, is we have instruction adherence. So this is basically our systems, our Atlas Reasoning Engine has supervisory elements that are constantly looking at those conversations and getting metrics around key aspects such as instruction adherence, coherence, how factual it is, how grounded it is. These are then used to decide how the user experience should be. For example, if there is an instruction that says you shall not ask for the password through the portal, and if the system has to ask for the password, then the instruction adherence will be low and it will be ungrounded because it's going to do something that is not grounded in its instructions. So then we can set the system to say, "Block those transactions, don't do it." So the agent would say, "Hey, sorry, I cannot help you here." Whereas on the other cases, maybe we can say, "We don't have enough information," so then we can build the system in a way that it starts asking for more information so it has all the information that it needs to help you. So these are some things that are coming out. These are our guardrails that are happening when the system's executing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, it makes sense. I mean, you wouldn't have to teach somebody the history of math, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry if all you were going to ask them is what is two plus two? And that totally makes sense to me now. Like I'm rethinking guardrails in a completely different way now. I just learned something on my own podcast. Light bulb moment. Let's talk about that. You mentioned you're talking with a lot of customers. Tell me about, you don't have to be specific, but what were some of the aha moments that stood out when you were working with admins or customers and they finally, I don't want to say finally, but there's always that moment where you finally make a really good egg and you're like, "Oh my God, I know how to fry eggs now," using that as an example because I'm cooking eggs, but can you kind of give me that, because I feel like I get to see it a lot with some of the workshops, but it's probably a little bit different for everybody. Sri Srinivasan: So off-lead, one of the biggest aha moments that I have experienced with admins is I do run these AI workshops at these world tours, and it is really eye-opening for them to look at the Agent Builder in the middle section. When they start looking at the reasoning, they now know why an agent does something that it did. So what are the biggest reasons why this whole agents are a little complicated and different is under the hood, agents use LLMs, right? And we all know what LLM is famous for, right? They're non-deterministic. What do I mean by being non-deterministic? By non-deterministic, I mean that the same input can give you different outputs at different times. And earlier, like I think about a year and a half ago, one of the bigger problems with LLMs were they hallucinate. It's still a problem, but we have figured out how to solve it. We provide it with more data, we ground it with more truth, so that it is then working within this construct. We have RAG, we have a lot of other things that we have actually provided to solve that problem. But the other problem of being non-deterministic is still there, right? And that is why when you start looking at the Agent Builder and you can start looking at the reasoning sections, our Atlas Reasoning Engine is basically telling you there which topic did I choose, what was the utterance that was provided. By utterance, I mean what the user typed. What topic did I choose based on the utterance. And once I chose the topic, what action I chose and I executed the action. But before I execute the action, I did a plan of executing the action. If I did execute the actions, here are the guardrails, here are the runtime guardrails that I would have triggered or I would've violated. And hence, I chose not to provide this answer, or hence I chose to go on to the next step. So when admins look at it, it instantly clicks in their mind. "Okay, this is how the agent worked." And that also allows them to understand, "Oh, if I were to tweak this one word, maybe the agent would react a different way." And then they go in and they try that and they're like, "Whoa, wow. Now I've actually cracked the code of agents." That has personally been one of the biggest aha moments for me. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I mean, for me, it was always, I love when I help admins and myself build a prompt, and especially when we do grounding, and then we'll bind it to a field on a page, that's always very simple, and they press this, I call it the sparkle button, and they get a response back and it's like, "Wow." And it's consistent enough, but it's not like a chatbot, right? It's not like an email template. It's a little bit different every time. But that feeling of AI isn't scary and it's not hard to do, you can see it sort of start to melt away. Sri Srinivasan: Right. 100%. And in those same scenarios, I've seen admins go really crazy when they do the dropdown in the prompt builder and they say, "Oh, so Sri, I can actually bring in data from an Apex class?" I'm like, "Yeah, you can." And now they're able to relate AI to the things that it's dear and near to them, actions, flows, and Apex classes. Admins, that's their bread and butter, they know that in and out. So now when they're able to look at that and they're like, "Oh, it's as simple as using this in the AI world," I feel they get very empowered and they're like, "Okay, let me go play with it more now." Mike Gerholdt: Yep. Let's touch on permissions for a little bit because I know you covered that in your presentation... Words. What are some common pitfalls? Because I know that I've gotten questions at the Agentforce NOW Tour about setting up permissions and giving people access to Agentforce, but what are some things that are just real easy things that most people trip over? Sri Srinivasan: So one thing to understand when it comes to permissions is every time you create a service agent, those agents are running as their own designated user. We are going to be releasing employee agents pretty soon. Again, forward-looking statement supply. Employee agents actually run as the underlying user that are executing it. So if you are in your CRM panel, the right-hand side, Einstein Copilot panel we used to call it, that, now you can start interacting with it, those are kind of like the employee agents where it runs as Mike. Whereas if I create a service agent and you're interacting it through any of the different channels through WhatsApp or through an Experience Cloud, you have to designate a running user. And oftentimes, folks will create a brand new user. And good thing is that this user comes with no permissions, which is good, but the downside of it is it will not be able to do anything. So similar to your standard profiles, licenses, permissions, object and record level, all of those needs to be assigned to this user. And sometimes what folks forget, admins forget, is you have organization-wide defaults and role hierarchy that could... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35979600

Real Talk for Admins on Content, Conferences, and Agentforce 03/27/2025

Real Talk for Admins on Content, Conferences, and Agentforce Real Talk for Admins on Content, Conferences, and Agentforce Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joy Shutters-Helbing, Senior Manager of Salesforce Practice at Captech and Salesforce MVP Hall-of-Famer, and Mike Reynolds, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Slack. Join us as we chat about creating community content, navigating conference submissions, and their new podcast, the Jam Pod. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joy Shutters-Helbing and Mike Reynolds. Catch Mike and Joy (and me) on The Jam Pod Mike and Joy are movers and shakers in the Salesforce community. Joy’s in the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame, hosts MVP office hours on the first and third Friday of every month, and has spoken at Dreamforce, TDX, and tons of community conferences. Mike has helped create 13 different Salesforce certifications as a Credential Ambassador, and he’s a regular speaker at conferences big and small. Together, Joy and Mike are the dynamic duo behind the Jam Pod, where they talk to folks in the Salesforce ecosystem about everything from hiring to technical talks to highlights from the release notes. In fact, they just had me on the pod to talk about the Salesforce community, so be sure to check that out at the link below. How to come up with ideas for Salesforce presentations and content As veteran speakers and content creators, Joy and Mike want to know that you have what it takes to give a Salesforce presentation. In their experience, most people fall into one of two camps: I don’t feel like anything I have is important enough to share with anyone. I have something to share, but I don’t know where to start. If you’re in camp number one, it’s important to remember that you’re an expert on your own business’s problems, and how you solved them can help someone else facing a similar issue. “When you’ve toiled over a solution and, all of a sudden, it works and you stand up and do some sort of victory dance, that is the thing you should be sharing,” Joy says. If you’re ready to give a Salesforce talk but don’t know where to start If you’re in camp number two, where you think you could share something but you don’t know how to get started, Mike recommends following Salesforce Evangelists & Advocates and event organizers on social media to hear about calls for speakers. I’ve included a few links below for Midwest and Florida Dreamin’, and Mid-Atlantic Dreamin’ is right around the corner. Smaller events like community groups and conferences are a great place to polish your presentation and practice your public speaking skills. And while you might not feel ready for the Dreamforce stage just yet, you can submit topics you’d like to hear more about or even nominate someone to give a talk. There’s a lot more great stuff from Mike and Joy about giving presentations and creating great Salesforce content, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Listen to Mike on Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How I Solved It: Squire Kerschner on the Admin Trailblazers Group Social Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're jamming, literally, with Joy Shutters-Helbing and Mike Reynolds about creating community content, navigating conference submissions, and yes, even launching a podcast of their own. It's called The JAM Pod. I listen to it, do you? Joy is a longtime Salesforce MVP Hall of Famer, community group leader, and admin extraordinaire with over 21 years of experience. Mike is a Salesforce credential ambassador, known for his deep knowledge on permission sets, permissions, and profiles, and now, he works with Slack. Before we get into this episode, be sure to follow the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. That way, you get a fresh episode every Thursday, right on your phone. With that, let's jump into the conversation with Joy and Mike. Joy and Mike, welcome to the podcast. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Hi. Mike Reynolds: Thank you. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Thank you. Mike Gerholdt: Joy, let's start with you. You've been in the community, you've actually been on the Salesforce Admins Podcast before, but for listeners, just finding out who you are and probably missed your wonderful TDX presentation, can you tell us a little bit about what you do in the community and how long you've been working with Salesforce? Joy Shutters-Helbing: I have been working with Salesforce for 21 years, and for those of you who haven't heard me talk about it before, it does run in parallel with the age of my son. I've been a Salesforce Admin for the duration. I'm a Chicago Admin Community Group leader, along with Denise and Chris. I am a Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame. I am podcast host with Mike Reynolds, and he will talk about that a little bit more in a second. I also host MVP Office Hours on the first and third Friday of every month, and I've spoken at Dreamforce, and TDX, and a host of other community conferences. I think that's it. Mike Gerholdt: Well, if not, then we'll definitely be able to find you online. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: Mike, how about you? Mike Reynolds: Well, I have been Salesforcing for about 10 years, and I've been able to do a lot over that time. It's been a wild ride. I'm a credential ambassador, so I've helped create, I want to say, 13 different certifications or updates to them, some Superbadges and Trailhead modules, stuff like that, maintenance modules. I've spoken at a lot of conferences, all sorts of different topics. Things that range from DevOps to, I think most people have heard me talk about permissions. It's been a real big deal for the last couple of years. Spoken at a lot of conferences, it's super fun. I love connecting, and getting out, and doing all that. Now, I work at Slack. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yes. That's right. Very communicative of you to work at Slack. Mike Reynolds: Yeah, because I like the collaboration. Mike Gerholdt: You almost threw me a perfect segue there, which is that you've been out and done a lot of presenting. One thing that I've seen when I was doing user groups when we were in Chicago, you guys also both host a podcast called The JAM Pod, and depending on when you choose to air my episode, I was on it. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yay. Mike Gerholdt: [inaudible 00:03:52] I'll link to that. I might have to go back and link to it depending on when it happens. But one of the things that we see ebb and flow in the community is the amount of contributions that community members, of their own free will, put out, and I know, on your podcast, we talked about speaking at user group events. Where did the idea of, "Hey, let's sit down and create something that's not the easiest thing in the world to create, but we want to put it out and the world," come from? Mike Reynolds: I think that's Joy's fault. Joy Shutters-Helbing: It's always my fault. Everything's always my fault. It was probably me asking a lot of questions and Mike being like, "Well, we should talk to people that have the answers to that." I think that's really where it started. But also, there was a challenge that happened on MVP Office Hours once upon a time from Squire. Squire, I'm sorry. Here we are, just keep talking about you. But it's really in a good way about how he had opinions about Mike's presentation on permissions, and I was like, "I can arrange this phone call." There was some excitement around this throwdown-at-the-flagpole-on-the-playground situation. Mike Gerholdt: Oh my. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yes. People thought that, well, I'm not going to give it away, but people were very excited to see the fisticuffs that were going to happen around permissions and profiles between Mike Reynolds and Squire Kershner. If you haven't heard our first episode, you should go back and listen to it, and you can find out how that turns out. But since then, we have spoken with a number of different people in the Salesforce ecosystem about, wow, a host of different things. Everything from hiring, to technical talks, to... The topics are very wide-ranging, including the podcast we recorded with you. Did you have something else to add, Mike Reynolds? I have two mics on this call. This is crazy. Mike Gerholdt: I know. I forgot to mention that Joy's in not a good situation where she says, "Mike," and then there are two people go up. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yeah. I say, "Mike," and then I roll my eyes. Mike Reynolds: I can tell from the tone who you're talking to though. We were working together at the [inaudible 00:06:16] group. Joy Shutters-Helbing: A customer? A customer. Mike Reynolds: Yeah. We were at a customer, but Joy and I were working together. This idea came up and I looked into it. It didn't cost that much to get a really basic, "Here's what we can do to record a podcast, doesn't take a ton." It's not super sophisticated or anything, but it works, and we have a developer edition of Salesforce that we built out over... Yeah, it was on a Saturday. I think four hours to put together a very basic community site that we host the episodes on, and then that was kind of it. We just didn't give up, I guess. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Joy Shutters-Helbing: I'm still adding fields in production. Mike Reynolds: That's true. That's true. Mike Gerholdt: Joy following all of the best practices that we speak about. Joy Shutters-Helbing: It's a dev org. Mike Reynolds: All the work has been done in prep. I think that's the key. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yeah, all the work. Yeah, yeah. Mike Reynolds: It's the main takeaway. Mike Gerholdt: Gotcha. Mike Reynolds: But really, it's funny because the podcast is... It's been a lot of fun, but when I look back at how we got here, it's basically the exact same as how we got with all these things, the conversation about permissions. I mean, I've given that talk so many times, people reach out, user groups reach out, and they're like, "Hey, we would love to have you come and get this presentation." I'm happy to do so, but the presentation came from a work meeting where we were trying to solve the problem. Yeah. I called Joy and I called another colleague, and I was like, "Hey, this is messed up. We have to find a way around this." We worked on it for about an hour and a half and then iterated over it for maybe a week. There's our real life business problem and our real life solution, and then we just decided to talk about it, because it's applicable. It happens to everybody. Everybody's got permissions, everybody's got the same challenges. Mike Gerholdt: What do you feel is the biggest barrier from people going from, not necessarily starting, let's say, a podcast, but creating and contributing community content in the Salesforce ecosystem? Joy Shutters-Helbing: What's the biggest hurdle, the biggest obstacle of folks creating and sharing their content with the rest of us? I think there's a lot of things. There's, where to start? You have two different people. You've got people that have stuff and they're ready to share, they just don't know where to start, and then there's the folks that are like, "I don't know if what I have is important enough to share with anyone." I think the first hurdle is getting folks to a place where they understand that they are experts in the business problem that they have, that they can share with the community, and they are the experts on how they've applied a solution to this problem. Giving these folks the confidence to say, "There is someone out here who is dealing with this similar problem, who will learn, and engage, and benefit from what you're sharing." Once we get folks to build that confidence and that what their experience is worth sharing, I think then we can start getting more content from them. Mike Gerholdt: Mike, how about you? Mike Reynolds: I think one of the challenges that a lot of people have is knowing that they can and then knowing when. Maybe you've been to a community conference. Do you think, "Oh, I could contribute to this," but you didn't think of that three months ago when the call for speakers was open, and so right now is a brilliant time. I mean, I know Midwest Dreamin's call for speakers is open. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Through the 31st, I think. Mike Reynolds: Yeah. Right after that, Florida Dreamin, their call for speakers will be open. Mid-Atlantic has got to be soon. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Dreamforce is coming up. Mike Reynolds: Yeah, it will. Here before you know it, which is crazy to think about that it sets in, but it will. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Community groups and conferences are the best place to run those through for the big ones. Mike Reynolds: Because I think most people have something that would benefit from someone else. Most of us have done something. If you're sitting at home going, "Oh, well, I haven't done anything that's that cool," you have. You have, because there's somebody else who wasn't able to do it that tried. Anytime you make a flow, somebody else tried that and didn't get it right. We've all got things, and I think it's that realization that you actually do have something of value to share, because you do. Mike Gerholdt: I think we talk a lot like, "Oh, you got to participate, got to do this." Whenever I've done end user training or just technology training, you always got to think about the what's-in-it-for-me perspective when you are talking with an end user, because you're generally going from one system to another when you're switching to Salesforce. I'm going to ask you the same question. For your podcast, The JAM Pod, what's in it for you? What do you get out of it? Joy Shutters-Helbing: Nothing. Mike Gerholdt: I disagree. I disagree. I think you get something out of it, because there's a reason people create that content in the community. Joy Shutters-Helbing: What does Joy get out of The JAM Pod podcast? I get to create a connection with folks that I might not have been able to unless I had done this. Being a community group leader, I don't necessarily get a lot of time to speak with the group of people about content, or I go to a conference and I only get to speak about the content and there's less time engaging with folks on a different level. One of our listeners said to me recently, they're like, "Joy, when I listen to The JAM Pod, I just feel like I'm in a room having a conversation with you and Mike." That was actually the best compliment we could have gotten, I think. You learned a lot, you just felt comfortable with us. What I forget though is that there's a lot of people that are at these conferences that introduce themselves to me, and they know me better than I know them. It's interesting for my brain to be like, "Oh, they have been listening to you and they're watching what's happening, but Joy, you don't know these folks yet, so it's okay." Mike Gerholdt: Mike, how about you? Mike Reynolds: I mean, I know what I get out of it. I mean, I get to meet with people, and talk about them, and learn about them, and learn how they've contributed. For me, very selfishly, The JAM is an excellent way to just get to know some people a little bit better than I already do. I have to suffer through time with Joy, which I actually do like, and I enjoy spending time with Joy. But I think just broadly speaking, this idea of, "Well, why would I want to go stand up on stage and contribute? Why do I want to do anything?" There have been a handful of moments where somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, you talked about this, and I was able to do it." Those moments, that feeling is so damn good, to know that you have been able to make somebody a little bit more successful or speed somebody's path to success, anything, you just helped. Being helpful is such a good feeling. I mean, for me, that's my why. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, I don't think you can undersell that enough, because you forget how often in life and in your career being helpful feels good, and it can almost get a little bit addictive in terms of wanting to put content out there and getting any kind of that feedback of, "Wow, that was so helpful. I'm so appreciative of your content." Joy Shutters-Helbing: I was going to say, one of the catalysts for sharing content, to be helpful so that you can get this experience that we're talking about that can be addictive, when you have toiled over a formula, or you have toiled over the flow, or you have toiled over a solution, and, all of a sudden, it works, and you stand up and you do some sort of victory dance, that is the thing that you should be sharing, the thing that you toiled over, because we know that you did the Google search, we know that you did... You reached out for help and you cobbled together all of these things that helped you with the solution. That victory dance is why you should share your experience so that you can help folks not have to toil over the hours of cobbling together the thing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I usually run around the neighborhood with an air horn. Joy Shutters-Helbing: That is a different victory dance than mine, but I like it. I like it. Mike Gerholdt: Letting people know what I've accomplished feels good, keeps the neighbors awake, keeps them on their toes. All right. Last question for both of you, and you weren't expecting any of this, but if you were on... Mike, this is kind of interesting for you because you're on the Salesforce side, but if you were on the Salesforce side of things, how could Salesforce enable more community content creation? Joy Shutters-Helbing: Go ahead, Mike. Mike Reynolds: Wow, okay. Yeah, sure. Joy Shutters-Helbing: I'll jump in later. Mike Reynolds: I think that the first thing is just awareness. We shout, and we really do. If you are following the evangelists and the people that are the mouthpieces for Salesforce, if you're following those people on the socials, you will see that they start posting things like, "Hey, it's time to submit your ideas." That is, I think, we can do more of that. I feel like we do a lot, but we could do more. I think the other thing is to encourage people to just submit ideas. I think what a lot of people don't realize is... Let's take Dreamforce, that's the next mega event that we have. When you submit to Dreamforce, you don't have to submit the idea for yourself. You can submit an idea and say, "I really want to hear about this, but I'm not going to be the speaker for it." Joy Shutters-Helbing: You can nominate other people. Mike Reynolds: Yeah. You could say, "I think this person should talk about it." I want to hear Mike Gerholdt talk about community. I can submit that as an idea." That doesn't mean that you're going to have to go do it, but it gets the idea in front of the people. I think we could do a better job of making sure that we have the megaphone at the right moments and that we are helping and getting the word out right. Mike Gerholdt: Joy, how about you? Joy Shutters-Helbing: I think that is a solid way to encourage more folks to submit to these sorts of things, whether it's a community conference, a community group, or our Salesforce conferences. I think something that Salesforce can do, it would be maybe to, wow, this is really off... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35873870

AI-Powered Dynamic Layouts for Salesforce Admins 03/20/2025

AI-Powered Dynamic Layouts for Salesforce Admins Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Brinkal Janani, Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the future of AI-powered customization that’s coming with Generative Canvas. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Brinkal Janani. Build dynamic experiences for users with no code Brinkal has always been fascinated by how admins can build dynamic user experiences without code. He was on the original team of engineers that built Dynamic Forms, and as a product manager, he’s been leading the charge on Lightning App Builder and AI-generated apps. Today on the pod, we’re going to take a sneak peek at what Brinkal’s working on right now. Think of all of this as one big Forward looking Statement™ but right now, they’re calling it Generative Canvas. How admins can create AI-powered dynamic layouts with Generative Canvas I’ve been in the ecosystem long enough to remember how much of a game-changer things like Lightning Forms, Lightning Page Builder, and Dynamic Forms were for admins. These tools put admins in the driver’s seat to guide users to the insights they need. However, as Brinkal points out, it’s difficult to anticipate what users will need in terms of data and workflows. The concept of Generative Canvas is to leverage AI agents to go beyond static user interfaces to something more dynamic and responsive. The user prompts an agent that responds with Lightning Components that can be slotted directly into the UI. As an admin, you build the agents, connect the relevant data, and Generative Canvas takes care of the rest. Suddenly, without any coding, you’ve built AI-powered dynamic layouts for your users. Generative Canvas in action You really have to see a video of Generative Canvas in action to get how big this is going to be. But imagine a team is collaborating for a sales meeting. You can drop the pitch deck into the UI and ask for an outline to work from. Another person can pull up data about the customer from Data Cloud, and maybe a chart built from public data showing growth in the market. And this is just scratching the surface of what Salesforce Admins will be able to build with no code. If all of this is exciting to you, make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Brinkal. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Help Article: Release Notes: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're diving into the future of AI-powered customization with Brinkal Janani. Now Brinkal is a product manager here at Salesforce and he's leading the charge on Lightning App Builder and AI-generated apps. Today, specifically we're talking about Generative Canvas, forward-looking statement. I bet it's going to get renamed. So we're going to call it Generative Canvas for now, but literally watch the video that's in the show notes. This thing is so cool because it's going to reimagine how admins, how our users can interact with data and build dynamic experiences. And my two most favorite words, without code. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. That way when a new episode like this drops, boom, you can listen to it. I don't want you to miss out, so be sure to pay attention in whatever app you are using to either press that follow or subscribe button. So with that, let's get Brinkal on the podcast. So Brinkal, welcome to the podcast. Brinkal Janani: Thanks, Mike, for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Well, we're fresh off the heels of TDX and with AI and everything going on, I feel like the metaphor I've used of how fast technology changing is jumping out of a plane, it's moving very fast. I feel like it's jumping out of a plane and skydiving superfast towards the earth because with AI, everything's changing. And we're going to talk about some of the really cool stuff that you're working on on the platform, but let's get started with just learning a little bit more about Brinkal and what you do at Salesforce. So why don't you tell us what you do and some of the stuff that you work on? Brinkal Janani: Sure. Mike, as you guys know, I'm Brinkal Janani and I've been at Salesforce for a little over than nine years now, and throughout my career at Salesforce. I've played various roles. I started my career as a software engineer in test, eventually transitioned to full stack software engineer, and now I'm a product manager overseeing a couple of product portfolios, namely Lighting App Builder and generating apps using AI. And that's where my focus is right now. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I feel like everybody at Salesforce working on AI stuff, right? Brinkal Janani: Yeah. And I'm glad to see whatever we're building at Salesforce is for the better. So I'm glad that to give the analogy, but that also means we are doing something that's fast-paced and would provide incremental value to our customers. Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely. So you want to talk about, and this is where I will insert forward-looking statement because I feel like this is probably going to change names. So as of this recording, it's currently known as what, Generative Canvas? Is that right? Brinkal Janani: That is correct, yes. Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Let's talk about as known as Generative Canvas right now. Brinkal Janani: Yeah, so I'm glad to talk about this project in particular because there's a history to it. I don't know if most of you know this or not, but I'm familiar that admins love concepts such as Dynamic Forms, Lightning Pages and Lightning App Builder. I mean, those are some of the popular features that admins love to play and use. And one of the fun fact that I wanted to also share was I was one of the original engineers in the team who built Dynamic Forms when it went tiered. So I have quite a bit of understanding on the expectations that admins have from the no-code tools like Lightning App Builder and the experiences they ship to our end users. And for years I've seen Salesforce admin utilize technologies such as Lightning App Builder, Dynamic Forms, even Page Layouts to control how the UI appears, period. And these no-code tools are the best and have been the best in what they do, but it's also nearly impossible to anticipate the full spectrum that the end users would need in terms of data and workflows, which is where Generative Canvas as a technology becomes really important. It unlocks a whole new way of interacting with data and workflow. So the general concept of Generative Canvas is, it goes beyond static user interfaces to more interactive and dynamic ones where you're talking to an agent and having those responses stored as Lightning components on the layout. That's the crux of it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, this is one of those where the audio podcast has limitations, but I was watching the video and I'm thinking what you're working on is so far into the future because where we're at now with agents and admin, building agents is we add the agent, enable them, and they can be anywhere in Salesforce and we just ask them a text question. But this is actually really building a visual, well you call it a Canvas, a visual Canvas of chats plus also text and documents, right, meeting notes? Brinkal Janani: Yeah, that is correct. I think what would really help understand what the concept is, it's a good example. A good example that we are starting off from is tackling meeting preparation use cases. We all have been in situations where we have back-to-back schedules where we don't even get enough time to see who we are meeting next. And I think that's true for most of us who will be listening in into this podcast, or have been in this situation. So imagine a sales executive who is handling multiple accounts and is literally in back-to-back situations with meetings when it comes to talking to these accounts and customers. And what it really is, and it's what you've seen with our customers, is like a very personalized approach, a personalized pitch. And executives not having enough time to prep that pitch, or even prepare for that meeting, has been the biggest disadvantage. And even if they do get time, they usually go to multiple UIs or even leverage multiple tools to be able to create that insight, which is why this was the first use case we felt is the best fit to tackle with Generative Canvas. Because Generative Canvas will make it super easy for any executive starting with sales executives to focus on the job to be done, and not a tool. And the reason I say this is because it's a single-page application where they are interacting with the agents on the backend. And as I said, agents are responding via text, via components that you put and organize on the UI. And not just that, you can personalize this layout or UI by moving these responses/components around on the Canvas and even resizing them so it exactly fits the way you would have imagined the UI could look like and carry this UI into the meeting so you have something to talk about, you have talking points to break the ice, or even you have insights if you want to cross-sell or upsell any of our products. So I think that example really nails the value of what we are trying to achieve with Generative Canvas. And obviously it's a start and we are going to grow from this use case to multiple other use cases, but hopefully this shows a value. Mike Gerholdt: So I think the really cool part is you're thinking of quantitative and qualitative data because a lot of that, there's quantitative data, there's stuff that we can actually see in Salesforce. You brought up the sales example like number of opportunities or sum total of opportunities on this account. But the second part where your Canvas brings it together is all the qualitative data, which is all of that information, the chats, the extra documents, the insight that people need when they walk into a room to have that deeper level conversation as opposed to just the data that's in front of them. Brinkal Janani: That is correct, and which is why I also feel like the future experiences is going to be both like a static experience and a dynamic one. I foresee living us in a very hybrid world where technology such as Generative Canvas will exist and coexist with technology such as Lighting Pages. To your point on Canvas, it's beyond static data. You get these insights and summaries that AI is able to generate and piece from the vast pool of data that we have in Data Cloud and at Salesforce. And that's the essence of it. Not just that, but once we start building in and start pulling data from public domain, you should be able to also get that data on the Canvas along with this data that's stored in CRM in your org. Mike Gerholdt: Just help me elaborate on that. What would be data pulling from the public domain? What would be example of that? Brinkal Janani: Example would be I'd like to learn more about the competitors of my current account. What is people, what is accounts, and what are they doing? So using that data, just having that competitive analysis and the most present one, which can only be learned by pulling the data from the public domain, the sales executive can use this information and potentially create a cross-sell pitch or upsell pitch for the existing customer. Just like having that lens, having that view inside can really help them create a personalized pitch for the customers. Mike Gerholdt: Do you envision, and this is all me just thinking like, oh, this is kind of cool. So once somebody creates a Canvas, let's say for an account, would you envision that they would go back to that and then of course it would live update? Because obviously if you're pulling in news articles, it could do that. Like say six months comes down the line and the customer's up for a renewal, you'd want to go back to that same Canvas that you used to close the deal. Right? Brinkal Janani: That's a great point, Mike. And I think one thing that I also want you to touch about Generative Canvas is that this Canvas is, as you said, are persistent, which means once you create this Canvas, they are there, they're part of your org and you can obviously revisit them. And obviously since Canvas is based on data, both static, and data coming from public domain, you would want to make sure they're still relevant, right? Because even the record details might have changed, a number of little records might have changed, a whole lot of data. The data that existed when the Canvas was created might be completely different from what exists right now. So having an ability to refresh the Canvas entirely would be essential to keeping Canvas not just persistent, but also relevant. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Just on a non-Generative Canvas note, you mentioned in your intro that you'd also worked on Dynamic Forms, which I love to demo because I'm from that period of time when you couldn't have Dynamic Forms. Well, you could. My Dynamic Form was two different page layouts and a workflow rule to flip the page layout. That was my faking Dynamic Forms. What got you into the visual part of working in technology? I mean, it's obviously something you're really good at and something you're really passionate about. Brinkal Janani: So I think I need to share this. When I was interviewing with Salesforce, I was actually interviewing the day right before my wedding. Mike Gerholdt: Whoa. Brinkal Janani: And the only reason I did this, and I'll never do this obviously again- Mike Gerholdt: Well, I hope you don't have to get married again, in case your wife's listening. Brinkal Janani: ... is because I knew what Salesforce was doing and what it continues doing, it's like creating these products which also create this community and just uplevels a whole lot of folks with the career insights and the career paths. And that is huge and that really resonated with me. And ever since my career at Salesforce, I've played multiple roles. My focus has always been delivering value for admins through no-code tools and specifically in my case, it's Lighting App Builder. So being an engineer or being a product manager, my focus has been how do I help admins unlock value for the end users through UI using no-code tools? And that has been my problem statement from day one at Salesforce, and which is why I'm super exciting to see how the feature's set, how the technology's evolving from beyond the static layouts in terms of Lighting Pages to a more dynamic world where everything is personalized, everything's AI driven. But as I said earlier, I also feel like the reality, the future is mostly hybrid with both technologies coexisting seamlessly. Mike Gerholdt: When you say hybrid, do you mean humans and technology or what do you mean by hybrid? Brinkal Janani: When I say hybrid, I think I see a world where it's not completely one-sided where you only have static experiences or you only have dynamic experiences. When I say hybrid, I mean I see a world where you have both kind of experiences, probably start from a static experience to a Lighting Page, and eventually transition to a more dynamic experience through technology such as a new Canvas where you're conversing with a tool, where you're conversing with an agent, and updating the layout on the fly. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, okay. And everything turned out okay at the wedding, I'm assuming? Brinkal Janani: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: Okay, good. Brinkal Janani: Safe to say that. Mike Gerholdt: Well, we know the job thing worked out because you're on the podcast. So I don't know I've ever had anybody on that interviewed before their wedding day. But good for you. When you sit down and think of all of the stuff that AI has to interact with now, and what you're working on for this Generative Canvas, I'm not an engineer, but it's very easy to get caught up in the here and now. How are you trying to plan for two to three year out technology that you might not even know exists and pull that in for the next generation of Generative Canvas? I mean, you have to know you're building something out of Minority Report, right? Brinkal Janani: And I think that's a great question again, Mike. To be honest with you, in this period of time, it's extremely difficult to even look out two years out in advance just because the pace of technology is changing so drastically. But one thing that remains constant, regardless of what period we are in, are the problems that you want to solve for your customer base. Those are not going away. Eventually technology needs to be able to solve customer problems. So my focus always has been less on the technology itself, but figuring out the right problem set to solve in the right period of time using the right technology, and that's what I want to achieve. And that's what I've always been trying to achieve. Two different sets of technologies. So eventually in time technologies might change, but you still have the same problem set to deal with. And solving some problem sets might become just easier as in when technologies evolve. And I think we just need to keep on revisiting that list of problems that you have that you want to solve for your customers. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Last question, because I threw some hard ones at you, but you also came with the wedding thing. That's pretty unexpected. When your... I mean, man, this is so, "In the future we're going to have flying cars, but we don't know." When you're planning through and looking for inspiration, this is the one thing that I think I learned it from a long time ago, I had a guest on the podcast that talked about board games and how they found inspiration in board games when they were creating a product in Salesforce. Because you work in very visual products, where do you go to find inspiration for ideas like for Generative Canvas that you're working on? Brinkal Janani: That's a tough question again, Mike, Mike Gerholdt: I don't ask easy ones. Nobody comes on for easy questions. Brinkal Janani: All right. Point taken. I think the answer is two-folded, one is very personal and one is more cooperative. I'll start with the personal one. I'm also father to a three-year-old daughter. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, boy. Brinkal Janani: And it's been quite a journey, and mostly good. The reason she is an inspiration is because it's so amazing to see how a creature of such small size can learn and absorb from visual experiences, from sensory experiences, so quick. And depending on what the experience is, the message that they learn is drastically different. And I know it seems like a very far-fetched connection, but if you tie the dots, it's actually not that far. That is my daughter has been an inspiration just to keep my mindset more agile and rapidly adopt with changing environment and learn from it and keep on delivering value. So that has been something that I'm really grateful for. The other thing is a lot of people, we have an amazing set of people in the world right now and everybody's doing something very amazing. So this thing connected, and in the know on what's happening around you, also serves a good idea for inspiration. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, I mean think a lot of us are still wrapping our heads around... I have a good friend of mine has a young child too, and he told me the other day, "He just ran up to the TV and started touching it, expecting it to do things," much like his phone. And that to me is like, whoa, because that's the world they live in. As a parting gift, if admins are definitely thinking about Agentforce, and AI, and everything that they can do in Salesforce, what would your best advice be for admins around getting ready for just AI and Agentforce and learning this new world that we live in? Brinkal Janani: I've always felt for Salesforce, the local... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35778595

What Role Does AI Play in Consulting and Salesforce Admin Work? 03/13/2025

What Role Does AI Play in Consulting and Salesforce Admin Work? Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Megan Tuano, Sr. Business Analyst at Accenture Federal Services and an amazing YouTube content creator. Join us as we chat about how she uses AI in her consulting and Salesforce Admin work, and how she’s built a career in tech without a traditional tech background. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Megan Tuano. The misconception about tech careers Megan started her career at UC Berkeley as an admissions and career counselor for a data science program. Watching her students break into the tech industry without a traditional tech background inspired her to make a career shift of her own. She didn’t have to look far for inspiration—she was already using Salesforce every day to move students through the admissions process. Many people believe a career in tech requires a background in engineering, but Megan shares a different perspective. You don’t need to know how to code to be a business analyst, a product manager, or a Salesforce Admin. And AI is transforming the landscape even further. AI’s impact on consulting and problem-solving One thing that stands out to me about Megan’s story is how well she prioritized her learning. She started with her career goals, and then worked backwards to figure out which Salesforce certifications she needed to achieve those goals. And the biggest difference-maker in her career has been learning how to use AI in her consulting and Salesforce Admin work. When she’s solutioning, Megan uses AI to help her brainstorm. For example, if she’s building something to solve a specific business problem, she might ask ChatGPT to suggest other use cases she hasn’t thought of. AI helps her generate ideas beyond her personal experience, making her consulting work more effective. The importance of soft skills in tech We also touched on soft skills and why they’re so important for Salesforce Admins. Getting your users to buy in to what you’re trying to do and how it can help them is all about showing that you care and that you’re here to help them. One way you can do that is by asking questions. Don’t be afraid to ask about a business process that you don’t understand—it shows that you care and want to get it right. In tech, your soft skills will make you stand out. If you want to hear more from Megan, be sure to check out her YouTube channel. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Learn more Megan’s article on Salesforce Ben: Trailhead: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admin's Podcast, we're talking to Megan Tuano about navigating career transitions in tech, the power of AI, and making your mark in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, Megan is a senior business analyst team leader, and let me tell you, a prolific YouTube content creator with a knack for turning really complex concepts into engaging lessons. But before we dive into this insightful conversation, make sure you're following the Salesforce Admin's podcast on your favorite platform. I don't know which one that is, but I bet you have yours. And if you do that, you're never going to miss an episode because it's just going to show up every Thursday morning. All right, enough of the promo. Let's get to our conversation with Megan. So Megan, welcome to the podcast. Megan Tuano: Hey, I'm happy to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Well, I came across your YouTube channel. We did a military... What was the official name of that? Was it a happy hour that we did? Megan Tuano: It was the military trailblazer office hours. Mike Gerholdt: Office hours. I keep calling everything happy hour, maybe it's wishful thinking. Megan Tuano: It was happy. Mike Gerholdt: It was happy hours, office hours, but it was fun doing that with you. Jennifer Lee was on, there was quite a few people on. Warren Walters, former podcast host. It was like a roundup, and I was like, "Wait a minute. Megan hasn't been on the podcast, so it's not a true family reunion, vet force, happy hour unless I had Megan on the podcast." So I had to have you on the podcast to talk about career and life, your YouTube channel and all of AI and Agent Force that's coming in everywhere in the Salesforce ecosystem. So let's get started there. How did you get started in the Salesforce world? Megan Tuano: Yeah, so taking me back. So basically I was actually working for UC, Berkeley at the time. I was an admission's counselor slash career counselor. I was helping a lot of students at the time really figure out if they wanted to start the data science program that I was a part of. And this is when data science was really hot. This was the time where a lot of students that were trying to figure out, "I love data, I love storytelling, but how do I take my non-technical background and actually apply it into the tech world?" Because a lot of the times I would speak to students and they were kind of scared about breaking into the tech because they didn't come from that "traditional tech background." But when data science emerged, it was a challenge for me, but also them to figure out where can we put this person who may have been an architect I worked with that designed the 9/11 memorial, or I was working with the 60-year-old that developed a police camera. So these really cool people with non-technical backgrounds, I was figuring out how to get them to the data science space. So with working with UC, Berkeley at that time, with the admission's counselor title that I had, we were actually using Salesforce at the time, and it was totally new to me. I was like, "This is a great way to be able to track my students." Once they submit that they're interested in the program, they would come to me, we would funnel them, get them through the essentially, I say sales process, because that's kind of what it was. We're kind of getting them to enroll in the program. But that was my first real introduction to Salesforce and I loved it. I was kind of like that admission's counselor that was making all these data charts like, "Hey, wait, my students said that this could be better on the page. Let's take this to the marketing team, or they said that this course could be beneficial for their career. Let's take it to the professors." And I would get all these reports together and I was kind of like, "Okay, well what else can I do?" And I was very fortunate because at the time my uncle actually worked at Capgemini, and he was probably in the ecosystem for about 15 years at that time. But he was like, "Look, you're working with Salesforce, did you know you could get certified?" I was like, "No way. Stop." I said, "Stop. I did not know that." I was just trying to figure out a way to break into tech myself because of working with my students. I was like, "This is super inspirational." They're doing things that I never imagined. So the same fear that they had about breaking into tech, I had that too. And I didn't come from a background that was computer science or technical. My background was international affairs. I wanted to travel the world and figure out something. But yeah, no, I got certified. Took about a year and a half between early mornings, late nights, and finally broke in. It was a challenge, but it was very, very worth it now looking back. Mike Gerholdt: It's crazy, I was literally just looking at the Trailblazer community today, and I saw a few people asking questions like they were a new developer, they were a new admin, and they really wanted to get in Salesforce and what should they learn? And then I hear you say, "Well, I don't have this tech background." I wonder why tech has this kind of, I don't know, ominous sort of theory or aura around it of, "Well, if you're not in tech, you're not getting in tech." But yet you look around and I mean before we started recording, we're talking about YouTube and some of the easy click to configure... ChatGPT and some of the AI stuff, it couldn't be any easier. You literally just ask it a question. But the perception... That's the word I was looking for, the perception of getting into tech is still this mountain that you have to climb. Megan Tuano: I think it really is. And I think kind of going back to UC, Berkeley, I was just invited to speak with some of the students and I would probably say they're about 19, 18, 20 years old. And a lot of them are coming from their undergrads where it's sociology or again, mirroring business. And I think a lot of them, especially being in the Silicon Valley area, they oftentimes look at companies that are the fan companies. You have Google, Meta, all these companies, and usually what they're being fed is YouTube videos. What do you work for? What are your job titles? And you'll hear a lot of engineers, developers, coding, and I think that gets ingrained in a lot of people's mind when they're not surrounded by the different positions that you can have. And that was one of the goals that I had when speaking to the students. It's like, "Look, I do not code. I can dabble but not code." And it was just about opening their eyes to, you can be a business analyst, you can be a product manager, you can be product owner, project manager. There's so many cool things that you can do in the ecosystem within the Salesforce world and really expand yourself out there. I think it's just about knowing the differences in roles and the possibilities, and it's listening to podcasts like this where you can really discover things and put your foot into finding maybe I want to do a PM job or BA role and just trying it out. I've done probably three different roles in the five years of Salesforce that I've been in here. And without dabbling, I couldn't have found that. But without podcasts like this, I don't even know if I would've been able to go into the BA role. So I've definitely seen what you're talking about. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, what... I'm looking at your site and it's launching my small business and a week in life Salesforce consultant. I'm curious... Well, one of the videos was two years ago. Two years ago, we really didn't have much AI in our world. We thought we did, let's be honest, even Salesforce had Einstein, but it wasn't a conversational UI, it wasn't a learning model, it was a predictive model. And just to be nerdy, there's differences between the two of those. To say in my nerdy voice, and I've had people that have had to tell me the difference. "I don't understand the difference." Well, one kind of predicts the future based on the data you've given it and the other is learning and giving you an outcome. How has your day-to-day as a consultant and with some of the businesses you've worked with changed now that you have AI in it? Megan Tuano: Well, it's fantastic. Well, I actually used to be an expert offer for Salesforce Ben for about two years, and a lot of it was helping new consultants and new people in the tech space on how to use AI. One of the first articles I did was based off a scenario where I was given a task as a consultant. And I have found that while using AI, I can kind of bounce ideas or conversations that I've had with my clients. Let's say they give us a survey and they want to have a rating system through there and they want to have automations if the survey comes out as not so well, and maybe the agent could have improved. Well that's great, but I think that AI and using things like ChatGPT and giving them the prompts and the scenarios and continuing to build off that has really elevated my thinking skills, but also helped me prompt to ask better questions, but also take all of the stuff that I applied on ChatGPT and take that back to the client. So now, not only do I look more creative, but I have more suggestions and solutions. You can see them really get excited. Sometimes I'm limited to my experiences and my consulting jobs and stuff that I've had, but ChatGPT just kind of opens up an AI, opens up a different world where it's taken prompts from every other consultant, let's say, that's asked the same thing, and now it's spitting back different scenarios where I can take my client through. Maybe I didn't think about, well, what happens to the ratings and the survey that are conducted as well surveys, what do you want to do? How do you want to reward the agent? Because I think that's really important. And you can tell that the customer gets so happy, they're like, "Oh, I didn't think about that." "Well, no problem, ChatGPT got you." So it's been a huge, huge, huge, huge game changer, not just within my job, but content all over. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, same. Also, I feel like somebody the other day said, "Well, you need to treat it kind of like if you had an intern." I was like, "No, don't say that because I'll ask it too many questions that are like, 'I don't know where you're going with this, Mike.' Well, I'm just asking just to see if you knew." But thinking through as an admin, looking at getting started as a career, I know I was always asked, what's the most important thing that I could learn as a Salesforce admin or what's the first thing I should learn? And you think of the large ecosystem of what's available to learn, and there's a lot of different ways that you can learn the platform. But to put your hat on, if you were getting started as a Salesforce admin today, where would you get started in terms of not where to learn, but in terms of what to learn? Megan Tuano: That's a really great question, and I think I had an advantage because I was working with the platform as an end user, so I understood where to start and I had help, especially with my family member at the time. And especially being a part of Salesforce military, they have a very set-up structured path for you to learn. But being a content creator, I oftentimes hear like, "Hey, I saw your video. I really want to start Salesforce. Where do I start?" And I think there's so much out there, whether it just be Salesforce material, if you're a developer, what coding material do I need to use? There's so much. This ecosystem of tech in general is so, so big. But if I was to start right now, I would start with the basic functionality because you need to understand how do use Salesforce. You need to understand where's this, what's this do, where's that? And then once you understand, I would combine it. Be very structured about your journey. I know it's very tempting sometimes to kind of grab onto this or that because everything's being pushed out at such a fast pace. But really AI, I think whether you want to be a consultant, a BA, a developer, being able to keep up with the trends of today, and you don't need to overwhelm yourself of course, but just know what's going on. How do you use AI? And I think Salesforce has the associate Salesforce AI cert, which doesn't dive too deep, but it really covers the basics of what is AI, what can I do? And then it navigates you to ChatGPT. And then there's fantastic articles where you can go on and kind of... The article that I mentioned earlier from Salesforce spend, how to be able to use chat to prompt it better and you kind of elevate yourself through that way. So I would definitely start with the functionality, make sure you've got that. And then compliment it with AI because these are skills that you're going to need to have when you go for that first job, when you're in that first job because you need to be able to talk with your stakeholders, talk with your team, and then on top of it, just set that cherry on top. If you have great ideas, you can also kind of use AI to say, "Hey, I thought about this for my team. What do you think about X, Y, Z?" And then it can prompt you with better ideas for you to be a great team player. So I definitely think the basics, AI, and then kind of follow with Sales and Service Cloud, because those are going to compliment many of the other clouds that you have. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, it's interesting you said start with the platform first because for some of us, we don't even see a platform. It's just Salesforce. And I know I have members on my team that are the exact opposite. They don't even see Salesforce, they just see a platform and to walk through different scenarios of problem solving. Some of us hit limitations faster than others, and that can be kind of interesting just based on your perspective and your lens. And then you add in that layer of agent force and AI and it's like, okay, well what questions are we going to ask it? Well, what are the answers and where are they to begin with? You have to think of if I don't know the platform and Sales Cloud, if I start asking questions and build an agent, I better know where it's going to grab those answers from. Oh, it's ever-changing world. Speaking of content creator, I'm sure you do a lot of presentations and crafting stuff together, so do admins. When you're getting ready or you're putting together a demo or a presentation, what is some advice that you have that maybe as somebody that's done it for a while or even a beginning Salesforce admin at a company, some best practices to kind of help them demo their new app or talk about something in front of a large group of people? Megan Tuano: And I think for a lot of people, if you're new to tech, it can be kind of scary or exciting, like a mix of emotions really, because you really... Just to go off the example of showing off an app, you really put a lot of effort into this and you really want the users to be able to like it, but it's going to be a little daunting sometimes. You're talking to heads of departments, and I would say I've totally been there, kind of still do get a little nervous because you put all this time into something and you really want the people to like it and the users to benefit from it. So I think the number one suggestion that I would have is think about the user at the end of the day, because no matter if you sit with the business executives, they do know their client, but at the end of it, you have the same end game. It's for your user. And if you go in there confidently focusing on, "Hey, I thought about this business process, which could expedite the agents and how they're working, overall customer satisfaction and increase efficiency with the agents." These things that are helping at the end game. I think if you go in with that thought first, then your heart's in the right spot and everything else can follow. Now in terms of presentation, I would definitely say this is your time to work with a peer. It's time to bounce ideas off of with your coworkers. "Does this sound good? Am I making my point clear?" Because sometimes if we read our own article... I'm guilty of this, I'll read my article, I'm like, "Oh, this is fantastic." I'll pass it off to somebody else. And they're like, "What did you mean here?" So just passing it to somebody for peer review is definitely always helpful. And then I would say maybe the last thing is a lot of visuals. One thing as a content creator and as a business analyst now is we all sit through meetings. We all have that Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00 things can get overwhelming. There's a lot of text. And one thing that's helped me as a content creator is just making learning fun, making it understandable, making sure that you're still getting the text side across, but also making the user excited and engaged and want to actively be on the platform. So that would be my little suggestion right there is just making it fun and going into it with excitement because your energy feeds off to the user and who you're talking to. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I definitely have seen people present and/or train when they were excited and knew the content versus, I won't say not excited, but a little less than enthused and new to the content... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35641935

The Power of Agentforce and Slack for Building Custom AI Agents 03/06/2025

The Power of Agentforce and Slack for Building Custom AI Agents Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Gillian Bruce, Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Join us as we chat about how to combine Agentforce with Slack and all the cool new things you can do with custom AI agents. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Gillian Bruce. If you can build on Salesforce, you can build on Slack Peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, cookies and milk—some things just go together. That’s why I’ve brought Gillian Bruce back on the pod to talk about her new role as Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Gillian’s still a Salesforce Admin at heart, and she’s constantly seeing new ways that Slack can help admins with low and no-code solutions. If you can build in Salesforce, you can build in Slack. And with powerful features like Slack Canvas, Slack Lists, and Workflow Builder, you have a ton of flexibility to communicate information effectively and save time for your users. She also has another great combo to add to our list: Agentforce and Slack. How to combine Agentforce with Slack Slack has over 2600 integrations, allowing you to bring in data from Jira, Workday, Salesforce, and more. This lets you build workflows for users and share information with them without needing to set them up on every platform you’re using. But how can you help them interface with all of that data? That’s where Agentforce comes in. With Agent Builder, you can create custom employee-facing AI agents for Slack to cut through the noise. These agents can update information in Salesforce, pull data your users need to know, give them a summary of service interactions with a customer, and it all happens in Slack. Get started with employee-facing AI agent templates If you need some help getting started, we’ve got you covered. Slack has built a plethora of templates for employee-facing AI agents that you can adapt as needed. For example, there’s a product specialist agent that can ingest documentation and answer questions from your users so they don’t have to pull up a bunch of PDFs. If there’s one thing Gillian wants you to know, it’s that every Salesforce Admin should be building in Slack. “It's going to not only set yourself up to be super valuable to your organization in this era of agents,” she says, “but it also is going to open up so much more possibility for you career-wise.” Be sure to listen to the full episode about more cool things you can do with Salesforce and Slack, and why you might see Gillian at your next Dreamin’ event. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Workshop: Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're thrilled to have Gillian Bruce back with us. Gillian, who now leads the Slack ecosystem marketing team and is on a mission to show why every Salesforce admin should be jumping into Slack and using it to not only build custom agents, but also amazing workflows and incredible integrations that Slack can do. Gillian explains why learning and leveraging Slack is simply a must for an admin. I mean, it's so easy to use. I love it. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That way, you can catch every new episode immediately when it comes out on Thursdays. So be sure to hit the follow button on whatever podcast platform you're listening for. So now, let's welcome Gillian back and talk about Slack and Agentforce. So Gillian, welcome back to the podcast. Gillian: Mike, thanks for having me. Mike: I know, you've been over overly communicating with people. Gillian: It's been a while since I've been on the pod with you, it feels like I just rewound the clock quite a while. Mike: I know, in the Wayback Machine. Don't forget, we have the Wayback Machine. I don't have the fancy noisemaker, you just got to put it in your head and envision that. What have you been up to since we've last talked on ye olde podcast? Gillian: Oh, just a few things, you know? A few changes. Mike: Okay. Still all about admins, obviously. Gillian: Admins are always in my heart, and it's actually been quite fun, because about, what, eight months ago at this point, I have transitioned over to Slack to lead up their ecosystem marketing team, which includes developers, community, and partners. And one of the big things I'm focused on is, as I've gotten to know the Slack community over here, is helping all Salesforce admins understand how awesome Slack is, and how important it is that you learn how to build and use Slack. Mike: Yeah, I mean, you know me, I use Slack for a ton of things, and I love building out forms and workflows in Slack. It's so admin friendly. Gillian: It is very admin friendly, and the thing that I think is so interesting to me, as I've been getting to know the Slack community, and people who are Slack developers, and Slack builders, is there are so many commonalities and opportunities between the Salesforce, admin, and Builder audience and the Slack Builder audience. And when you're building something with Workflow Builder. It's very similar to building a flow. In fact, building something with Workflow Builder in Slack is, to me, honestly a lot easier than building an automation with Flow and Salesforce. Mike: Kind of is, a little bit. Gillian: A lot more straightforward, and part of that is because the platform is built to do a different thing than Salesforce is. But there's so much you can do with being able to point and click, and do these low-code builds and low-code solutions in Slack. And it doesn't even mean building a lot of customizations. We've got things like Slack canvas, and now we have Slack Lists, which are amazing for your to-do lists, if you haven't tried those out yet. And just generally using channels and building automation between channels to help manage your notifications and work processes, there's a lot there. But of course, there's something on the top of everyone's mind these days. Mike: I mean, I would love to talk all of the workflow stuff, but we're Agentforce, Gillian, we have to cover agents. Gillian: Well, and agents are a big deal, and I think especially agents... So let's put my developer hat on for a second. So in the Slack developer community, people have been building agents for quite a while, and they've been building their own agents and deploying them into Slack. There's also agents that are already on the Slack marketplace built by our third-party vendor, so like Adobe Express, and Writer, and Cohere. They already have agents that you can interact with in Slack, but the amazing thing with Agentforce is that it's bringing that Salesforce builder experience to being able to enable you to build your own custom agents. And Mike, I just want to take a second here. Admins, agents, I know it might feel a little overwhelming, but let's back it up. What is an admin's number one customer? Mike: Our users, always our users. Gillian: Our users, and so- Mike: Yes, I didn't know there was a quiz. You didn't tell me there was a quiz. Gillian: Sorry, I can't just come on the pod and just be a normal guest. You know that. Mike: Ugh, I'm going to build an agent in Slack for the quiz now. That's what it should be. Gillian: There you go. Okay, so an admin's number one customer is the end user, which we also call an employee. Let's say that, right? If you're a part of an organization, you're an employee, what is the best operating system to enable employees to collaborate with each other and with other systems? Mike: I feel like I have to say Slack, because you're on- Gillian: Yeah, you do. It is the best one. I mean, we can debate that, but... Mike: I wasn't going to. It's like being on Family Feud. Gillian: Okay, so then, the third question is, so if an admin's number one customer are the employees, and the best way to bring employees together to collaborate and to interact with other systems is Slack, then where is the best place to bring those custom agents that you're building in Agent Builder? Mike: I mean, you should build them in Slack, right? Gillian: Ding, ding, ding. Mike, you pass. Mike: I tried. I was fighting really hard, I was going to say Chatter. Gillian: Oh, well, you know what? We can actually talk about Chatter for a second, too. Mike: We should. Gillian: We should. So real quick on the Chatter of it all, so I love Chatter. A lot of us love Chatter. Remember the highlight? What do they call it, a Chatter brag. It was a Chag. Mike: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, a Chag. Yeah, we had templates. Gillian: We sure did, yeah. Mike: Yeah, formatting. Gillian: So Parker very publicly announced that, while he helped build Chatter, he is now going to help kill Chatter. And I know this might give us some heart palpitations, but let me just be really clear. Chatter is getting a major glow-up if you think about it, because we have something called Salesforce channels that are in Slack. And what this is is one of the best things about Chatter is it had a feed on every record, right? So everyone could talk about what's going on. Well, we already have Salesforce channels live in Slack, as of Dreamforce. This means that you can have a dedicated record channel that automatically gets spin-up for that record in Slack. So you have a channel there where you can collaborate, you can talk about it, you can interact with folks, you can bring other systems data in right there. Coming in February, that same UI, that channel experience is going to be visible in Salesforce for those records. Mike: Well, that's going to be incredibly useful, because I think that was always the disconnect. You know, I'm over here for one thing, and then I'm over there for another thing. And I mean, Slack is already such a conversational UI. It makes sense that I should think about not only building agents in the Salesforce UI, but in Slack as well, because that's where people are already talking. Gillian: So, yeah, and two things on that, Mike, right? So one, it's a place where people are already talking. It's the place where they're being able to interact with systems beyond Salesforce as well, right? So maybe they have Workday in there, maybe they're pulling in JIRA tickets. There's a lot of other systems that integrate with Slack, so that people don't have to leave and swivel chair out of that interface into something else. So by putting your agent in there, bringing that Salesforce experience into Slack, you're again making it much more efficient for people to get their work done. But then, that second piece of it, Mike, is that Slack is going to be the way that you're going to be able to not just bring that systems and all of that data together, all those people together, but those agents are going to be able to interact there in Slack with you, and you're going to be able to tell that agent to do things that are pulling from Salesforce, from all of your data cloud sources, and take action right there in Slack. And you're going to be able to, come March, actually have that in a threaded conversation. So you're going to be able to interact multiplayer style. So you'll have a conversation with an agent and other people can join in in that conversation. Mike: And they can converse with the agent? Gillian: Correct. Mike: Oh, boy, we're going to keep agents busy. Do you think of agents like interns? Somebody said that the other day. It's like, if you're trying to think of what to build an agent for, think of what if you had an intern? Gillian: Well, I mean, yes and no. I'd like to think that when you have an intern, you're spending a lot more time training them, and mentoring them, and... Mike: Not us, we get smart interns Gillian: Giving them unique opportunities. Mike: More than just getting coffee. Gillian: Well, yeah. Can you find me an agent that can get you coffee? I guess you could probably- Mike: That would be awesome. Gillian: ... build an agent that could order you coffee and get it delivered. Mike: That would 100% win every hackathon, an Agentforce that just all of a sudden, out of your screen comes a cup of coffee. Gillian: Well, so- Mike: You're like, "Mike, this isn't what I wanted to talk about." Gillian: No, it's good. Actually, you know what? But having your agent take an action... So one of the things I did want to highlight is when we're talking about Agentforce and Slack, so there are kind of three main elements when you're talking about Agentforce and Slack that are important to think about. Number one, deploying your agents in Slack, right. Taking that agent you've built with Agent Builder and bringing it into Slack. That second thing is having your agent take Slack actions. So in Agent Builder, you're going to be able to tell your agent to do things with Slack, like search Slack data, so that unstructured data in Slack. These are going to be actions available in Agent Builder. You're also going to be able to tell your agent to create or update a Slack canvas, which is pretty great. Again, you're a fan of canvas. Mike: Oh, yeah. We use it a lot. Gillian: Great way to aggregate and share information. The other Slack action that's going to be available is be able to send a DM. So that's that simple kind of direct, one-on-one, agentic experience of being able to talk to an agent. So those are going to be actions that are available natively in Agent Builder that anyone can use. Additionally, the team is going to be working on a lot more, including... I just heard about this the other day. So they're actually going to build some template agents, some template employee-facing agents. So things like imagine a product specialist. So you're in Slack, and you have a question about how a product works, because you are in a conversation with a customer or you're trying to answer a question, instead of having to go search all of the documentation and figure out, "Oh, who's the right product manager to reach out about this?" You can just ask the agent right there in Slack your question and get served up an answer, as well as, "Hey, how do you want me to format this answer? Is this for a sales customer? Is this for a sales engineer?" And that is just one use case that I get excited about, because I'm always knee deep in product, and I can never keep up on everything. So that's one good example, and that's a template that's going to be available, so that people can take that, put that in Agent Builder, and then customize it to sort from their own knowledge base. Mike: So when you're thinking of agents, I mean, you probably know this, like with Salesforce, we can control the agent on the profile, and well, not profile, permission set and perm set group. If you're deploying agents in Slack, is it to all the users, or can you do the same thing? Can you like, "Ah, I really want a test group of users to have access to this agent"? Gillian: Yeah, so the first thing I'll say is that no agent you deploy to Agent Builder or you deploy to Slack will override any of your Salesforce permission structure. So all the security settings you have about visibility and who's able to edit and make updates to different records, all of those permissions are going to carry over into Slack. So there's never going to be a situation where you have an agent in Slack, interacting with someone who doesn't have access to the data that they're requesting, things like that, so it will never override. The next thing to that is you might have a situation where you have part of your company, part of your employee base that actually doesn't even work in Salesforce. They don't even need Salesforce seats, but you want to build an agent experience for them, in Agent Builder that extends an agent functionality to them, so you don't actually have to buy a Salesforce seat for them. Maybe you have a group of, I don't know, marketers who never go into Salesforce, which is probably a bad use case, maybe, but- Mike: We'll say warehouse workers. Warehouse workers. Gillian: Warehouse workers, right? Yeah, who don't have to log in, [inaudible 00:13:01]- Mike: They're driving forklifts all day, they don't have time for the Salesforce. Gillian: Exactly. But what you could do is build an agent in Agent Builder that enables those warehouse workers to be able to be in Slack, maybe ask questions about inventory, when certain products are going to be available, and all of that information that they're going to be able to see is, again, permissions that you control in the Salesforce side of what's publicly available, what are people able to see, what level of permissions are accessed. But that's a way you can extend all that information that's otherwise just held within Salesforce, beyond Salesforce, into Slack, in that agentic experience. Mike: Yeah. I mean, we've talked about before, and Gillian, this was even back before you joined Slack, but I do think you look at the way that conversational AI and even some of the voiceover apps are going, Slack could be the front door for everything Salesforce within your organization, and then you button up data cloud on top of that. Now, they basically could, via Slack, have access to the right data anywhere in the organization, conversationally. Gillian: And not just Salesforce data, but data in Workday, or Asana, or any of the other of the 2,700 integration apps that we have out there in the marketplace that connect all of your systems in one place, and that is Slack. Mike: Yeah, that's crazy. Gillian: I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty happy to be over here. I do feel like Slack is the future, and this is why I am extremely passionate about helping every Salesforce Admin understand that they should be using Slack, they should be learning how to build in Slack, because it is going to be something that opens up the world beyond just Salesforce for folks in a builder capacity. And it just, I mean, imagine the value you can deliver your organization by saying, "Hey, just by using Slack as our work OS, we can bring in these six different systems that people have to log into at some point every week, and I can deploy these agents there that reduce their time of work by hours every week or hours every day." I mean, that level of efficiency and productivity you can deliver, I mean, that is one of the number one goals of every Salesforce admin. Mike: Yeah. Well, and I don't know what Slack battles with in the marketplace, but I have to believe the nice thing I like about Slack is, even if you spin up a channel and then you archive it, you can still go back and search it, and you can still... It's like you never lose that information. And I know we used to have, I don't know, Google had the instant messenger and stuff. The second you closed your window, it was gone, and that information, it was like Snapchat, it was just gone. But at least with Slack, it's retained for a little bit that you can actually make it actionable and be like, "Oh, I did need to pull this thing back up," as opposed to scrolling through a huge Chatter thread or something. Gillian: Oh, yeah, I use command K at least 20 times a day. Mike: Oh, is that what it is? That's a shortcut? Gillian: A shortcut, and command K is not just search, it's like recent history search, so- Mike: Oh. Gillian: Yeah. Mike: Oh, I... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35532425

Roadmap to TDX25 for Admins 02/27/2025

Roadmap to TDX25 for Admins Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Kate Lessard, and Brittney Gibson from the Admin Relations team. Join us as we chat about what they're looking forward to at TDX 2025 and the keynotes, sessions, and how to make the most of your time. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee, Kate Lessard, and Brittney Gibson. Don’t miss Jen and Kate’s sessions at TDX We’re looking forward to seeing you at TDX next week, and we want to extend a personal invitation to friends of the pod to come to our breakout sessions. In Unleash the Power of Modular Flows for Agentforce, Jen will be teaching you how to break down flows into smaller, modular components, so you get the most out of them. She’s also running another session, “Elevate Prompt Template Agent Actions with the Power of Flow,” where she’ll look at how to use flow to enrich your prompt templates with data. Kate will be in Theater 2, presenting Demo to Deployment: Engaging Stakeholders with Agentforce. She’ll go over how to create a demo that shows your stakeholders everything Agentforce can do, enabling you to get better input and transform your organization with AI. Where to learn more about what’s next with Agentforce Kate’s also been working on the demos you’ll see in the keynote. We’ll be looking at how Agentforce has enabled builders with low code, no code, and pro code solutions to create agents and problem-solve for their organizations using AI. You can also stop by the Agentforce Zone, where we’ll have plenty of introductory content to get you started with AI. You can learn about Agent Builder, find out more about Service Agents and Headless Agents, and how to use AI to test what you’ve built. We’ll also cover how you can get data from PDFs with RAG 2.0, and what happens when you combine Agentforce with Data Cloud and screen flows. How to keep up with everything at TDX If you’re not able to attend in person, Brittney’s got your back. You can catch key sessions on Salesforce+ and she’ll cover all the TDX action on our socials. We’re also sharing must-attend sessions and opportunities to get hands-on with Agentforce to help you plan ahead. Listen to the full episode for more on how to get the most out of your time at TDX, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Blog: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, well, I hope you took the over on the over-under of number of admin relations team members that can fit on a pod, because I've got the second most or maybe the most, but we're all here to give you a roadmap to get prepared for TDX. I almost said Trailblazer DX, but then it was Trailhead DX. I'm going to go with TDX, that's probably the most current name right now. But we're going to talk about keynotes. We're going to talk about sessions. We're going to talk about stuff to walk around and look at and put your fingers on the keyboards. And then also, everybody's got a phone in their pocket and you've got to be on social. So Brittany's back from 100 years ago when I first had her on the podcast to help you engage in social and share all the fun pictures and stuff. So Kate, Jennifer, Brittany, welcome to the podcast. Kate: Thanks for having me. Brittany: Thank you. Jennifer: Glad to be here. Mike: Let's get started with sessions because I don't know about you, but every time I sign up for a conference, it's like I got to figure out what sessions I'm going to. So Jen, Kate, I know you're both working diligently on some amazing sessions. Jen, you have the most, and that's no surprise. But let's start with you. What are the two breakout sessions you're working on for TDX? Jennifer: Yeah, very excited for this. So my first breakout is called Unleash the Power of Modular Flows for Agentforce. I know that sounds a lot, but it's your admins, you're building out those flows. Now you could maximize those flows by building them modularly, and what I mean is breaking them down into the smallest components. So I will show you how you can go from a big flow down to a small flow and really optimize it for use with your agents. So that's the first one. And then the second one is called Elevate Prompt Template: Agent Actions with the Power of Flow. So there is a theme that you see flow, flownatics, right? I love flow. I love the ability to leverage that flow magic in our prompt templates to really enrich your prompt templates and ground them in data. So I'm going to step through how to do that, how to use that power of flow in your prompt templates, and then further enrich your AI agents. So those are my two sessions, and they will be available video on demand on Salesforce+ if you're not going to be there in person at TDX. Mike: Oh, that's right, because Salesforce+ is a wealth of information. When we get done with events, holy cow! I wish there was an Apple TV app for that because you could just sit and stream all of those sessions all the time. You should think about getting a Lego agent cloudy, modular flows. Be kind of cool. You could rebuild it in Legos. Nope? Anyway, I think it's a good idea. Jennifer: I might need to outsource that to my nephew. Mike: Yeah, no, we got to find the budget for it. Jennifer: Because he's a big Lego person. Mike: Yeah. Just see if we got budget for that first. Kate, so Jen's going to show us some amazing flows. What session you're working on because I think it's going to tie in? Kate: Absolutely. And I am going to leave the flows to the flow queen herself, but I will be doing a theater session. It's on day two at 12:00 PM Pacific. That's March 6th. And we're going to talk demo to deployment, and this is a session on engaging stakeholders with Agentforce. I'm really excited about this session because I feel like the admins and the builders getting to know Agentforce have been operating almost in a vacuum. And while we're creative and smart and we know our users inside and out, that doesn't mean that we should be creating agents without input from our stakeholders and taking different business considerations into our agents and how we're building them. So in this session, we'll look at how to create an Agentforce demo to present to your stakeholders so that they understand the intents and capabilities of autonomous agents if they don't already. And then we'll work into working with them to brainstorm and prioritize how to put this technology to work in your own organization. And this is really important because it empowers admins to know exactly what to go build, and then stakeholders know what they're getting buy-in and building internal excitement around which is going to ensure smoother adoption for everyone. Another shout out to Salesforce+ here. This will also be video on demand. And I personally missed TDX last year. I had a big family trip that I had to go on. It was terrible. I was in Paris. I know. Mike: You poor thing. However would you survive? Kate: I know. Somehow I made it. All the croissants and baguettes and cheese that I had while I was there helped ease my pain. But when I came back, I was able to just on my lunch breaks watch the sessions that had been recorded and were on Salesforce+ and it really helped me get up to speed and feel like I was there, even though I was not able to attend. Mike: So speaking of which, Brittany, you do a fabulous job of making everybody in the world feel like they're attending our events and engaging on social. For the admins that are like Kate and just have to go to France during TDX, what do you have planned for social or what could admins that aren't attending TDX engage with? Brittany: Yeah, of course. And I don't mean to sound like an infomercial for Salesforce+ again, but really whether you're attending in person or you're going to be tuning in virtually, we have you covered. Leading up to the event, what we have is we'll be sharing must attend sessions and can't miss opportunities to get hands on with Agentforce. We'll be calling out things that are available on demand. So as I'm sharing things on X, LinkedIn, and Facebook, you'll know if it speaks to you, if you are going to join us, or if you'll be watching online. I highly recommend if you don't follow us on social, you go do that because that's where you're going to get a ton of event updates before and after. And if I remember correctly, Mike always links to our social profiles in his show notes, so you should be covered there. And then during TDX, we got a lot of fun stuff planned for you. Really we're your go-to hub for key updates, special moments. We have an Agentforce Hackathon leading up to TDX, so we'll be sharing some moments from that. We also just share plenty of resources. So as we're sharing fun photos, videos, if you're not with us in person, we always try and share something from admin.salesforce.com that you can go and get a little bit more information on that. Like Jen's modular flow session, I think she has a, correct me if I'm wrong, Jen, but has a blog post on that already. So you will not miss out on the action. So really just get ready, stay connected, and it's going to be an epic TDX, whether you're there in person or you're hanging out with me online. Mike: I mean, it could be epic. If you're having French baguettes and watching Salesforce+, I think that would work. Before we leave sessions, I'd love to get an idea of best practices for what admins could do to take notes when they attend sessions. So Kate, I'll start with you. You were most recently an admin. When you would attend events or watch some of the content online, how would you take notes that you could translate back to the organization? Kate: That is a great question, and it was something that I have played around with a couple different ways that I've done this. And what has worked for me because when you're sitting in these sessions, you don't want to miss a thing. You see people there that are taking pictures on their phone of every slide that they see, and that just doesn't work for me to jog my memory and my brain. So I always have just a little notepad or my phone where I'll take notes on just key concepts or things that I want to dive deeper into. That way I can still be really engaged, watch the content, take it all in much as possible, and then know those things that I want to go back and do a deeper dive into. Jen, I don't know if you have a way that worked for you when you were an admin and a customer. It's definitely challenging to balance all of the excitement and just take in all of the information. Jennifer: So Kate, I was that person with my phone taking screenshots. Mike: We found you. Now we know who you are. Jennifer: But now in the events app, afterwards you'll have access to the PDFs of the slides. So you don't have to be that person taking the screenshots. I would go on my phone and have a notepad up, and I would indicate the session, and then here are the things that were worthy of remembering after I go home from TDX to look further into. So those were the things that I did because there's going to be a lot of walking around, standing around at TDX, and you don't want to bring your heavy laptop. So definitely if you could utilize whatever's on your phone for note-taking, I would highly recommend that. Mike: Yeah, big plus on that. I remember a few... Well, before I joined Salesforce, I used to walk around with an iPad. And now I know how silly I looked because it was like holding up a textbook to take a picture, a screen as opposed to a little phone. Let's jump into keynotes because keynotes are always... People have opinions. They love them. They don't like them. There's a lot to take in. They're always afraid, oh, my CEO is there. Now they just showed this and we're going to have to do this. What do we do? Kate, you're working on the keynote. Can you share anything for the keynote? Kate: Absolutely. So this is my first TDX as an employee and first time working on a keynote like this. So I've been learning a lot and just really taking it in. My role has been focused on the demos that you'll see in the main keynote. So working with the team to visualize an Agentforce journey from both a customer's perspective of how autonomous agents have revolutionized their business, but also from the builder perspective, so how admins and developers can leverage low code, no code, pro code solutions as they create agents and problem solve for their organizations using AI. So hopefully it'll be really inspirational, visionary. You'll see some really great new product updates at TDX, so be sure to tune in either in person or again on Salesforce+. Mike: Jen, we'd be remiss to say that everything is Agentforce at TDX this year. And I know you're working on a big Agentforce area, I'll call it that, because activation sounds too insider baseball. But what are you working on that's just huge for admins in Agentforce? Jennifer: Yeah, so I'm part of the team that's working on the Agentforce Zone because it does take a village to put this all together. Mike: It takes a whole zone. Jennifer: So the Agentforce Zone will be on the second floor right by where the staircase is in Moscone West. Walk up the stairs, if you want. Get those steps in. Get those steps in. And it's going to be right there. And we're going to feature really introductionary content for Agentforce to whet your appetite for more information. So we have three sessions that we will be running throughout the two-day event. First one being intro to building AI agents with Agentforce, and this will give you an overview of the core components of Agentforce talking about the Atlas Reasoning Engine and really diving into Agent Builder. We're going to showcase and talk about all the different agent types that are available, but showcase the service agent. And also what is new to Agentforce is Headless Agents. Mike: Oh no! Jennifer: And what I mean by that is agents running around without a head. Mike: Is that like the backup movie, Headless Agents, after Agentforce? Jennifer: So it's really events on a record that trigger an agent to work behind the scenes. So it's not the user interacting them. Let's say it could be someone submitted a comment on a case. And as a result, the agent's going to do these things behind the scenes. So it might be sending an email out or things like that. Mike: Okay. We should call them like Wizard Agents or something like Wizard of Oz. Jennifer: Secret Agents. Mike: Secret. Oh yeah! Then we could play this band. That would be awesome. I'd be a fan of Secret Agents. They're already wearing sunglasses though. Secret Agents wear two pairs of sunglasses. Just be like a dude out golfing, multiple pairs of sunglasses. Jennifer: Oh, and also in that demo, we're going to showcase... Mike: Oh yeah, Jen, sorry, we gave you nowhere to go with that. Just completely veered off course. Thanks for bringing us back. Jennifer: Steering you all back. Mike: Yep. I know. It's what you do. Jennifer: There's some really cool things coming down the pike for creating agents by using AI and also creating test cases to test your agents. So I was playing around with that, really excited to have folks show you that. Our second session is build AI agents using the power of Agentforce and Data Cloud. So you know what Agentforce is. Some of you may or may not know what Data Cloud is, but why is Agentforce and Data Cloud together important to have? So we're going to show you how you can use pieces from Data Cloud like data graphs and the Agentforce data library and pulling in Data Cloud data into your agents to really take it to the next level. And we're also going to show you RAG 2.0. Mike: Wow! The sequel to RAG 1. Jennifer: Yeah, yeah. I was playing around with it and mind blown as to how accurate being able to pull in all that instructor data from PDFs is. It can really search all those PDFs. We're also playing around with pulling in, having it search on audio and video files. So fingers crossed, we hope it works. Mike: Oh man! Jennifer: So we could showcase that. Mike: You can feed it a whole bunch of these podcasts and then you can understand how many times Mike says so. Jennifer: And then lastly is the intro to Prompt Builder. So we're going to showcase how you can use it in your agents, how you can use it in field generation, so the little sparkles on your field to auto-generate content and also things like screen flows. So really a lot of great introductory content. And then we're going to send you off to our demo booth so that you can get a deeper dive of the cool things that you saw in our demos. Mike: Can I just tell you that sparkle fields are my jam? Jennifer: I love sparkles. Mike: I think they're the coolest things. I love them. I need a shirt that says that. Brittany, there is a buzz at TDX, and I will say you do an amazing job of capturing it from video and pictures. What would your advice be for people attending TDX that want to share out some of the fun stuff in as cool a manner as you do? Brittany: Oh, I love that question, Mike, and thank you for the compliment. I guess I'd just say video content is awesome. We love to hear from our trailblazers, agent blazers, admins on social. So just don't be scared to pull out your phone, capture some genuine reactions to some of the things that you're experiencing. And you never know, if you tag us on X or LinkedIn, you might get a repost. But the posts that resonate most with me that I see from our community are just general feedback and response to what you're seeing. And I think admins who are not able to attend the event are also really excited to see what people on the ground are sharing and experiencing. So that's my job is to make sure that I capture that so that if you're not able to attend, you get the magic, the feel of it all. Mike: Yeah, and you have a whole command center set up in the room. Brittany: I try. Mike: It's quite the setup. As long as the cord works, then all your monitors work and it's fabulous. Brittany: You have to have double screens when you're trying to see all of the action going on. Mike: Right. So now, but attendees don't need double screens. You don't have to walk around with two phones capturing everything for Brittany. Brittany: Do not recommend that for attendees. No. Mike: That would be hilarious. Okay, so we'll wrap up here. But last question for everybody, and Brittany, you were the last to talk, so we'll start with you. If you were going to TDX this year or you are planning agents in your org, what is one thing you would start doing today as of this podcast to help get ready and maybe some content you'd look at it for TDX? Brittany: I'm so glad that you asked this question because I was about to ask you if I could plug something else that is very important for admins. So we have a great resource available right now on admin.salesforce.com that our wonderful blog manager, Eliza Riley, wrote. It's A Salesforce Admin's Guide to TDX 2025. It captures everything we chatted about today, but it has links and way more details about everything that you'll get to experience in person and online. So I highly recommend if you haven't already read that blog post, go do that now. It's a great starting point to get ready for the event. Mike: I like it. It's very good. Kate, how about you? Kate: To build on that, I think that getting the foundations before you go is really important. Whenever you go to TDX, there's just so many directions that you can be pulled in and there are so many exciting things you can do. So if you have it prioritized in your mind what you want to do, like if you want to be going to sessions or if you want to make sure that you get in the demos that Jen was talking about, or you want to... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35427410

Unlocking More Value in Salesforce With Foundations for Sales and Service 02/20/2025

Unlocking More Value in Salesforce With Foundations for Sales and Service Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about Salesforce Foundations and why it’s the key to unlocking the power of Agentforce. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Eddie Cliff. Introducing Salesforce Foundations Everyone’s excited about Agentforce and everything you can do when you combine Salesforce with AI. But what about smaller orgs? How will EE or UE orgs be able to keep up without access to all of the bells and whistles? That’s exactly what Eddie and his team have been working on with Salesforce Foundations. It’s a free way to add the basic capabilities of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud, and Agentforce to your org. How Salesforce Foundations supports AI and Agentforce Salesforce Foundations eliminates the need for 3rd-party solutions to do that one little thing, like creating a payment link, or triggering a marketing campaign based on Commerce data. You can get all this cool cross-cloud functionality without having to upgrade your org, allowing you to start building that full Customer 360 in Data Cloud. And this is crucial because Salesforce Foundations also gives you access to a freemium version of Agentforce. “What’s really cool,” he says, “is that as you do more and you use more of these cross-cloud capabilities, your data in Data Cloud gets richer and more powerful and so does Agentforce.” And did I mention it’s free for Sales or Service EE and UE users? How to activate Salesforce Foundations Getting started is as easy as going into Setup and clicking on the Salesforce Foundations node. You’ll go through a checklist of everything you need to get going. From there, you’re in for a whole new world of segmentation, personalization, and automation. Listen to the full episode for more from Eddie on Salesforce Foundations and what’s coming next, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Trailhead: Help docs: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce, about some exciting developments in Salesforce Foundations. It was the subline to Agentforce that you heard at Dreamforce this year. Eddie has been at Salesforce for nearly 14 years, transitioning from roles in go-to-market and solution engineering to now product management. And in this episode, Eddie shares insights into the evolution of Salesforce products like Starter, Pro Suite, and we learn about Salesforce Foundations. Now, before we get started, I just want to make sure that you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins podcast on whatever platform you get your Salesforce podcast on. Go ahead and click that subscribe, or sometimes it's a follow button. And that way, when new episodes come in every Thursday morning, they will be downloaded to your phone. So with that, let's jump into our conversation with Eddie where he explains how Salesforce Foundations is designed to give customers access to even more capabilities within sales, service and beyond, including all of their existing Salesforce implementations at no cost. So Eddie, welcome back to the podcast. Eddie Cliff: Hey, thanks for having me again. Good to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, absolutely. Well, product managers that work on good features that admins love, we love to have on the podcast. So if people aren't avid listeners, let's refresh their memory. Tell me what exactly you do at Salesforce and how you came to be? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, definitely. So my name is Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management, leading product for our Starter, Pro and now Foundation Suite, which I'm really excited to talk about today. I've been at Salesforce for almost 14 years now, and I've done a variety of roles, from go-to-market and sales and solution engineering and customer success prior to moving into product management about eight years ago now. Mike Gerholdt: Wow, I didn't know you were an SC. I don't think you said that in the last podcast. That's awesome. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, SCs are amazing in what they can bring from their technical understanding and how Salesforce works, but also working with our customers to understand their requirements and needs, and ultimately designing the solutions that they can present back to the customer to hopefully prove out the value of Salesforce as they look to explore it. So actually, have a couple of SCs on my team... Well, former SCs that are now PMs. SCs make really great PMs because of that solutions mindset that's really tied to customer outcomes, which is super valuable. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, I hear you. I also steal from the SC pot as well because they make for good evangelists too. Eddie Cliff: Definitely. Mike Gerholdt: And they help us present and run demos at Dreamforce, so it doesn't hurt. Speaking of Dreamforce, maybe not lost in, but the byline under Agentforce was Salesforce Foundations, which we announced, and you’re leading as the PM for it. So let's talk about what Salesforce Foundations is. Eddie Cliff: So it was buried there at the very end of the keynote. So perhaps some people missed it because it was all about Agentforce and it was an amazing keynote. But we're really excited about Foundations because it's going to help customers unlock Agentforce. And so before I talk about Foundations a little bit more, I want to take a step back to talk about AI in general, which I know is top of mind for a lot of businesses today and probably a lot of the admins listening today. And I promise we're going to get to the meat of Foundations, but I think it's important to talk about this first. So first and foremost, great AI starts with great data, and you can only have great data if all of your apps and systems are connected and you have that single source of truth. And that's what Data Cloud really does for a lot of our customers. Now, bringing all that data into one system will lead to happier customers because now you can do targeted marketing, smarter commerce, and more effective sales. And what's really cool is that this also gets all of your data centralized and ready for AI, but it's not easy for a lot of our customers to go from say just Sales Cloud or just Service Cloud on their own to the full Customer 360 that we talk about a lot. You need time and resources, and I know from a lot of customers I talk to, that's not something that they have the luxury of having. And so that's the goal here with Foundations is we're making this easier by bringing all of these capabilities to all of our customers through Salesforce Foundations. So Foundations gives all of these sales and service customers access to more of Salesforce included with their existing Salesforce implementation, and this is free. I want to make sure that's clear. That's not something we're charging for, and you can add this to your existing org and we'll talk a little bit about that. But ultimately, with Foundations, we've made it easier than ever before to get started with that Connected Customer 360 by building our foundational apps into your CRM. And this includes the basic capabilities within Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud, and now Agentforce, which is really exciting because it's now available at no additional cost as part of Foundations. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, free is always good. I also thought for a second that I was like, somebody said, "Well, did you hear about Salesforce Foundations?" And I think they dropped the S and I was like, "Yes, I've heard of the Salesforce Foundation." Eddie Cliff: No, that's right. Yeah, I know there's a lot of words that we use at Salesforce and a lot of them sound familiar. This is Foundations with an S, not our .org and all of the amazing things that we do via the Salesforce Foundation. This is, if you think about it, like the foundations, the platform, the beginning point of your Salesforce journey and all the power you can bring. Mike Gerholdt: So I feel like all of this existed prior, we just brought together... I've seen all this stuff. How did Foundations come to be? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, and I think, Mike, last time I was on, we were talking about the Pro Suite and hopefully everybody had an opportunity to listen to that, but this is a refresher, the journey we've been on over the last few years with Salesforce Starter launching back in 2022. We really built this with this ethos of being easy by default and advanced by choice and creating that 360 out of the box, sales, service, commerce and marketing with a hidden version of Data Cloud that was powering all this behind the scenes. And we were getting a lot of great feedback on Starter. It's really a self-service product. You didn't need any help to get up and running. You didn't need to talk to an account executive. You could sign up online, try it for free and purchase with a credit card. But what we started to hear from our customers is they wanted more, either because they were growing or they just needed more advanced capabilities and more customization options. And so that's why we launched Pro Suite last year to allow for that seamless upgrade from Starter, and to allow our customers to get that enhanced set of capabilities and customization options. And again, we were getting really great feedback, which is awesome. And so what we started to hear from customers is they wanted to go up, they wanted to expand to Enterprise or even to Unlimited Edition, but they didn't want to lose any of that 360. They didn't want to go to Sales EE and lose the marketing and the commerce and the service capabilities that came with Starter and Pro Suites. So that was the beginning of, "Well, let's create this in a way that we can allow customers of Starter and Pro Suites to upgrade and not lose any capabilities." But at the same point, we realized, "Well, we should make this base set of capabilities available for all of our customers so they can get that value, and they don't have to start with Starter or Pro Suite. So they can do this directly in their EE or UE org." And so doing things like allowing sellers to speed up things with payment links, and so they can send people to a digital storefront to take care of transactional deals that might free them up to focus on more strategic opportunities or doing cross-cloud scenarios like driving loyalty with Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud, working together to create onboarding journeys and loyalty campaigns. And then also allowing marketing teams to get into the mix with really targeted Data Cloud segmentation and personalization tools to execute their email marketing campaigns. And ultimately allowing all the teams within an organization to get better cross-functional visibility by working out of that same system, all underpinned by Data Cloud. Mike Gerholdt: I think some of that, I'm thinking through as you were talking through that, a lot of that saw in the keynote with how... I forget the retailer we were talking about, but retailer can go in and the person can shop online and then look at it and then immediately pay in the store, making everything a little bit more seamless as opposed to having to send a link or somebody just call in with a credit card or paying online the modern way. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, that's exactly right. So bringing all of these pieces together and making it easy to consume and connecting all of the dots so you don't have to do that on your side, allows you to do more with Data Cloud, to do more segmentation and personalization because you're capturing that full Customer 360 in that unified profile that you can then use. So if you have say your commerce order data flowing in, that can be used to trigger marketing campaigns or can be used to surface in a service interaction within a case. And as you start to think about all of the Agentforce use cases you saw at Dreamforce, it's predicated on the fact that you have a connected view of your customer. You built that Customer 360, which we know is a challenge for a lot of our customers. And so again, that's the hope here with Foundations is it will help give you a starting point to start building that Customer 360 that you can grow with and scale up with as you need to. Mike Gerholdt: So one thing that struck me as you are walking through your last answer is thinking, I started as an admin and admins start in different orgs that are of different size. I started in enterprise level, so we were EE with days of always becoming a UE org, the big shiny emerald city. But you said in your answer, customers wanted to expand to EE and above. Was a lot of this predicated on our organizations that were below EE that set up very transactional use cases? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, good question. It was primarily with those that had started with Starter or with Pro Suite for one reason or another, maybe that fit their business needs when they were first evaluating Salesforce, and then their needs grew and they needed the EE level of capabilities from a sales standpoint, from a service standpoint or just from a platform standpoint. And so that's where we wanted to create this seamless motion that they could go up to EE without losing any of the functionality as well as the experience. It's something we haven't talked about that we've brought in with the Starter and Pro Suites with things like the Left Nav and our homepage, but ultimately allow them to grow as they need to without losing anything was really important to us. And again, as I was talking about before, we realized that there was a large opportunity here to say, "Hey, there's a lot of EE customers." It's by far and large the most adopted edition for us. There's an opportunity to bring this starter level functionality from Marketing, from Commerce and from Service to let's say, a Sales EE customer to start taking advantage of, to start trying out and using and see if it's a good fit. They can start to bring in more team members across the organization, and then those solutions will scale and grow with them. But again, all can underpin by Data Cloud. So this makes it really easy for them to create that 360 view and sets it up really nicely now for the launch of Agentforce. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, so that begs the question then, who's eligible to get Salesforce Foundations? Eddie Cliff: So right now, customers with sales and/or service, EE or UE, so Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition can get Foundations for free, and that's something that you can do. It just takes a couple of minutes, we'll talk about it. But for those customers that have industries or might have some additional capabilities already in their org, we are working really hard to make Foundations available for you in the near future as well. So stay tuned there. And if you're unsure of what your Salesforce org has, and if it's eligible for Foundations, we have a lot of documentation, but of course, you're also always able to reach out to your account executive and talk with them and learn more, and they can even assist with getting Foundations turned on. Mike Gerholdt: Right, because it normally was available to people EE and below, right? Eddie Cliff: That's right. Yeah. So if you think about what we've done in Starter and Pro Suites, I think probably a simple way to think about what Foundations is, is the Pro Suite level of capabilities that we built, which is based on Professional Edition, Sales, Service, Marketing and Commerce. And in bringing that level of functionality up to EE and UE so that you get those additional capabilities that you didn't have access to before. If you had Sales EE or Sales UE, you didn't have a lot of this service or marketing or commerce capabilities and you didn't have Data Cloud. And so that's really what we're trying to bring when you think about a foundational layer of capabilities and value that we can bring to all editions so everybody can take advantage of it and see the value from it. Mike Gerholdt: It's almost, I think of the the Steve Jobs early Apple mantra of them looking at remotes and seeing 1,000 buttons and saying, "Well, yeah, anybody can make something complicated. It's really hard to make something simple," and bringing that motion forward. Sometimes you can overcomplicate things in set up. In this way, it's just bringing it forward and making it very simple and logical to set up. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, that's certainly the goal and that's the ethos that we took with Starter, that easy by default, advanced by choice, that you don't need to be a Salesforce expert to get started with Salesforce. And we've carried that forward as we launch Pro Suite and now as we're launching Foundations, to try to make this as easy as possible for everyone to set up and use and save everyone time in the implementation or adoption of these key features. And you're right, Mike, it's really hard to take something that's hard and to make it easier, and we have a “better, better, never best” mentality as we approach this. There's always work to be done and sharp edges and rough corners to round off and make the experience better and easier to use and fewer clicks to accomplish key tasks. And so that's near and dear to my heart, my team's heart, on everything that we do in Starter and Pro and Foundations to hopefully make their products experiences as easy to use as possible and as delightful to use as possible as well. Mike Gerholdt: So you mentioned customers with sales and service, EE or UE are eligible. How do they turn it on? Is it light switch? That was the joke we made with Lightning, right? Eddie Cliff: Yeah. And as I transitioned into product management, you gave me some PTSD a little bit for the early days of Lightning back... When was that? 2015, 2016. And yeah, we had to do a lot of work to really make it so Lightning was something that large organizations could adopt. Foundations is a little bit different, which is really exciting and it is really simple to add it to your org. And actually, in setup now, there's a new Salesforce Foundation setup node, which you'll notice at the top left. So if you go into setup and you click on Salesforce Foundations, you'll see all of the steps you need to do in a section called Start Here. And so we've made this super simple to get Foundations added and to get started with in your work. And it does require that you'll need to add some skews as we call them, some licenses that you get added to your order to provision the right level of functionality. And so you'll have to accept some terms and go through that process, it’s all powered via your account, hopefully everybody's seen that really cool self-service capabilities to manage what you have access to in Salesforce. But again, this is free. You're not paying anything. It's just adding these capabilities, accepting the terms because it's some addendums and that's legal terms and the lawyers required it. But once you agree to all that, then we take care of the rest and provisioning and adding everything to your org. And so then all of the necessary pieces will then be present. And so you can go through the rest of the steps once you've added it in. There's some more sections in that set up node. So if you want to go ahead and enable Data Cloud, you can go through that process. If you want to get started with Marketing Cloud, you can enable that, and Commerce Cloud and so forth. And we're going to continue to add on to this page as well to make it simpler, and so that you can take advantage of some of the experience pieces too, like being able to add the Left Nav, to get... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35340200

Boost Your AI Strategy with Salesforce Labs AI Library 02/13/2025

Boost Your AI Strategy with Salesforce Labs AI Library Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Marianna Torres, Associate Salesforce Labs Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the Salesforce Labs AI Library and how it can get you started with implementing AI agents in your org. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marianna Torres. What is Salesforce Labs? Growing up, Marianna was always interested in more creative pursuits and had never considered a career in tech. That all changed during the COVID-19 lockdown when she enrolled in a workforce development program called Year Up United and landed an internship with Salesforce. Today, Marianna works on the Salesforce Labs team, curating the Salesforce employee-built apps, components, and flows that are available for free on AppExchange. Now with the release of Agentforce, the team has put together the Salesforce Labs AI Library as a resource to help you get started with AI. How the Salesforce Labs AI Library helps you get started with Agentforce If you’ve been keeping up with the pod, you know that prompt engineering can be tricky business. But what if you could copy all the best, most useful prompts from Salesforce product experts? That’s what the Salesforce Labs AI Library is all about. It gives you everything you need to get AI agents up and running. When she’s going through submissions, Marianna asks three simple questions: Will this help the customer? Does this simplify something that historically takes a lot of time? Is it easy to use? If the answer is yes, it gets included in the library, ready to help you implement Agentforce AI in your org. More resources for Salesforce Labs If you don’t know where to start, Marianna recommends going through the Salesforce Labs Basics on Trailhead. You can also listen to the full episode, where she walks Josh through the process of looking something up in the Salesforce Labs AI Library. That’s it for this episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast and we’ll catch you next week. Podcast swag Learn more Trailhead: AppExchange: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Josh Birk: Hey, gang, Josh Birk, your guest host here for today. Today we're going to talk to Marianna Torres about a project that I am very, very excited about. It's live now, it's called the Salesforce Labs AI Library. I'm really not sure if I'm getting that name right, but I will ask Mariana here in a second. All right. Today on the show, we welcome Marianna Torres to talk about the Salesforce AI Labs library. Do I have that title right or is there are more official one? Marianna Torres: The Salesforce Labs AI Library is the official title. But yeah, you did a good job. Yeah. Josh Birk: Okay. Welcome to the show. First, I want to talk a little bit about your early years. Was computers and software engineering, software in general something you always wanted to get into? Marianna Torres: Honestly, no. I'm actually surprised about how I ended up here at Salesforce. But yeah, so growing up and stuff, I was always more of a creative person, so I was drawing, singing, doing all that. Basically anything that's creative, I was doing. So as I got older, it kind of got to the point where it's like you kind of realize that, okay, it's like I can go to school, I could pursue this, I could potentially do something. But at the same time, I had graduated and it was shortly before COVID. Josh Birk: Oh. Marianna Torres: Yeah, so instead of going the traditional route, I had just joined a workforce development program. The program was called Year Up. Yeah, so through that I did the six-month corporate training. They had transitioned it to virtual and everything. So yeah, I actually started my internship here at Salesforce in 2020, so peak COVID. And from there one thing led to another, I was a contractor for a couple years, and then I got full time. Josh Birk: Nice, nice. What was the connection to get into the AI labs job itself? Other than the fact that we get paid a nickel every time we say the word AI. Marianna Torres: Yeah. So yeah, the team that I'm with now, it's the exact same team that I had joined five years ago as an intern, and that is the Salesforce Labs team. So primarily, our job is to provide our customers with some free employee-built apps, components, and flows on AppExchange. Then this past whole year, AI became huge, and then we had to pivot and we're like, "Okay, the customers want AI, what can we give them?" Seeing as how AI wasn't packageable yet, so- Josh Birk: Right. Marianna Torres: Yeah, we actually just launched Actions, I believe. So Agent Actions are now packageable, prompt templates are not though, neither are full-on agents. So that's what this library serves as, it's a little resource for our customers to go in and grab some pre-made prompts, just click that copy button and then import it directly into Agent Builder. So too long [inaudible 00:03:17]. Josh Birk: Right. It's a kind of deploying, I guess. Marianna Torres: Yeah. It's a quick little resource just for everyone to get started fast with Agentforce, with Agent Builder, all that. Josh Birk: Gotcha. What's your relationship with AI? Were you getting into it as you were in the intern? Have you picked it up with your job? Do you use it day to day? Et cetera, et cetera? Marianna Torres: Oh, yeah, so that's a great question. Okay, so I know that AI's definitely been something that's... It's been mainly the back burner of my mind until maybe the past year or so. So in 2023, okay, I had went back to school to go and finish my degree, and it was, I think ChatGPT had just exploded, and everyone was using ChatGPT and stuff. So in school, obviously it was very strict. You can't be using ChatGPT to write your essays. But I was using it to review it, so please fix any grammar errors and stuff. So with that, I kind of got a hand on of it, but it was here at work that I got to fine tune it. So at school, I was kind of experimenting with it, but then here I got to, okay, it's like look at this blog post I wrote and just expand on it. So I kind of got the hands-on skills here mainly, so it's like I had more freedom here than what I did at school. So I was using ChatGPT and then fine-tuning everything, all that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, at the time, I was also doing a lot of promotions and stuff for Labs, so YouTube videos, just promotional videos, all that. And AI just kind of opened a whole new door for us. So before all the videos that I would make, they were silent. It's like I wasn't confident to have my voice out there and stuff. But then what's it called? ElevenLabs comes out and it's like, oh, you can have AI generated voices for your videos, and I'm like, "What?" Josh Birk: Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. Marianna Torres: Yeah. So yeah, it's like I've definitely been... It first came out, I was kind of like, "Okay, yeah, whatever. It doesn't impact me directly," until it actually did impact me directly. And just here at Salesforce, I got to actually be able to experiment with it, see more of the capabilities with it and work with it. I think that's the best part. Josh Birk: Gotcha. When you are out talking to people, do you have stories about how people are using the AI library, like how they're implementing it in their own uses? Marianna Torres: Yes. So the AI library was actually just launched at Dreamforce, so that was September of last year. And just our customers were blown away by it. It was okay, it's like you're met with this new technology. Okay, you're kind of prompt engineering, I think it's what they officially call it, but creating those prompts and stuff. Where do you even start if you've never worked with AI before? So the resource itself has gotten a lot of great feedback. It's like everyone's been very excited about it. And I want to say that right now, it's like the Salesforce Labs team is a very small team, so our main goal is to evangelize it. So I want to say that not as many people know about it as we would like to yet. But whenever we've presented it to them, it was always like this just people have had such a great reaction to it and just they're very eager to explore it and engage with it. Josh Birk: Yeah. Well, let me give the AI library some credit here because it's... So first of all, I have a kind of peeve about the term prompt engineering, because I kind of feel like it turns it into... Sounds like a scientific approach or something like that. Marianna Torres: Exactly. Josh Birk: But the point is valid. What is a good prompt? There's some resources out there, but if you've never actually sat down, it's kind of like the blank paper writer problem, like how do you write your first great novel? Your prompts are amazing. They're really, really good. I look at them and I'm like, "Oh gosh, I have to up my game now because they're really good." So it's kind of a two part question. First of all, what's the process of writing and reviewing these? Because they're very, very good examples. And then also just kind of, I guess the flip side of that. What's the process for, if I submit a prompt to you, what's the process for potentially putting that in the library? Marianna Torres: Yeah, so, okay, Salesforce Labs is an internal program. So basically, all the prompts that are on that site were written by experts within Salesforce. So we work with employees from all over the organization, and just some of them have gotten... It's like they gotten a really good understanding and really good experience with Agentforce and with their own respective experience within the company and stuff. So those prompts, they were created some pretty top-notch people, you know? Josh Birk: We're talking like the actual Stanford genius people. Marianna Torres: Yeah, I was looking at them, I was like, "You know what? I don't think I could have craft this myself." But no, yeah. So in short, they were all built and created by Salesforce experts within their own fields and stuff. Josh Birk: Got it. Marianna Torres: So internally, we do have a process within Slack. We basically allow every single employee who is interested in submitting a prompt to just fill out that workflow. Then we look at it, we review it. First, we see if it'll provide value to customers. But then we also check to see is, okay, is there a prompt on here that's already kind of the same thing? And if yes, we're not going to move forward. But so far, yeah, the submissions have been people who've built with us, people who don't just understand the program on a general level, but on a very technical level. So this is the prompts that they're creating, it's like the real world problems that they've heard from customers. And just with their knowledge of the platform, with their knowledge of Agentforce, they're able to kind of craft these templates to just kind of support in that way. Josh Birk: Got it. So if you're a solution engineer out there and you're listening to this and you just saved somebody's bacon because you got a really good prompt template for a very specific use case, then they should go to your workflow, right? Marianna Torres: Exactly, yes. And we are always taking submissions. So this is PSA for any Salesforce employee, any SC, any developer, whatever you are, if you have a prompt that you're proud of, and if you want to share it with customers, come to us at Salesforce Labs and we will add it to the library. Josh Birk: Now, I will say I've actually gotten a little bit of fame for testing out Prompt Builder by showing people how good it is at writing poetry in Haiku. How would that go through your review process? Marianna Torres: I'm sorry, Prompt Builder for a haiku. Yeah. Josh Birk: Yeah. Okay, fair. Fair. I cede the point. I concede the point. Marianna Torres: No, that is awesome. But as of right now, yeah, the library is only to host those prompts that support. Josh Birk: Got it. Got it. Okay, well, walk me through, give... It's a little harder on a podcast, but kind of walk me through the navigation of the library. So not haiku, not poetry, but what are some of your categories and audiences? Marianna Torres: Yeah. Okay, so once you log into the Salesforce Labs AI Library, the main menu basically shows you a sub-menu of the Salesforce products. So you'll have sales, service, marketing, industries. If you click on any of those, you'll basically be redirected to a respective collection of prompts for that product. Josh Birk: Got it. Marianna Torres: So if we go down to, let's say the service icon, you're going to go ahead and click that, and then here, you already have a few prompts that can help you inside of your day-to-day service ops. So we have case classification, complaint attribute generation, that kind of thing. You would basically click into one of those tiles, and then from there you'll get access to the prompt. So on the left side, you'll get a little overview of the prompt. You also get the category, template type, whether it's a flex or not, basically all that general stuff. Then on the righthand side of the page, you'll see the actual prompt highlighted inside of blue. And here, we have you are a highly skilled agent support working at organization name, assign a case reason to the case owner based on their subject and their description. So there's a lot more to this prompt than what I just read, but we have this very handy copy text button that you can just click that and now the entire thing is copied to your clipboard, and it's pretty self-explanatory. You head to Agent Builder and just drop that in there. Josh Birk: Fill in the blanks. Marianna Torres: Exactly. Josh Birk: It's deployment by Mad Libs. I like it. I like it. So the other thing I want to shout out to this is because not only are the prompts very well written, and I kind of want to dig one layer deeper into that in a second here, but it's also like if you're listening to this and maybe you're an admin and you've been struggling with that, why Agentforce? Right? Why would I bring this into my company? These are very solid use cases that are going to apply to a lot of people, and it might help answer that question like, "Oh, Agentforce could do that for me. Why don't I build a prompt to get that done?" So huge kudos for that. So going back to the prompt engineering bit, when you see a prompt, what makes you think this is a good prompt? Marianna Torres: So right off the bat, I want to say it's the first, it kind of goes back to what I said earlier, but is this going to help the customer? And I want to say that my understanding is also very... Comes from a lot of just looking at these Salesforce Labs apps that our employees contribute every year. Another big thing is does this simplify something that historically takes a lot of time to get information from? [inaudible 00:13:30] the actual technical aspects, myself, I'm not super technical, but it's like right away I'm like, "Okay, which objects does this reference?" Is it something that the customer has to build out themselves, or is it just right there that it just grabs and goes? That kind of thing. Josh Birk: Yeah. Marianna Torres: I want to say that those are my top three for reviewing a prompt and seeing which ones would be most valuable to our customers. Josh Birk: Right. Well, what I love about the style of them is that, like I said, I'm looking at these prompts. I'm like, "Oh gosh, I need to get better at this." Because not only do they follow a lot of the good rules, like it's very succinct, but it's also very instructive. When you're reading the prompt, you can kind of say to yourself, "Oh, this is what the AI needs to understand." And it's like if there's something that might be a curveball for it, we'll make sure that that's an instruction on the prompt. So I feel like reading these prompts actually makes it a little bit clearer as to kind of how a prompt is sort of that component between the user and the AI itself. Marianna Torres: Yeah. When you're running a prompt, just one line isn't going to do it. So it's like the more that you give the AI, the better. So as you said, it's like you have to instruct it, you kind of have to guide it. I think that that's another thing too, it's like does this prompt have the necessary guidance it needs in order to provide the information that the user needs? Josh Birk: Right. Right. They're not good at guessing. They just hallucinate when they have to guess. Marianna Torres: Exactly. Josh Birk: I think the phrase I've always gone back to is context is king. You have to tell them something. Sometimes you even have to tell them twice and put it into both or slash slash slash. There's some weird trick about putting in the apostrophes, and apparently that's supposed to be like, "Hey, AI, really pay attention to this kind of thing," so yeah. Okay, so let's look forward. Do you have new material that you want to shout out? And do you want to go into the new deployable actions? Marianna Torres: Okay, so first off, I just want to call out that the Salesforce Labs AI Library is live. So you can go in there, you can grab the prompts, templates, they're all there ready for our customers to use. We also have a new section, for Actions and for Agent Topics. So from my understanding, okay, so Agent Actions are, in fact, packageable now. They were not packageable when we built this out. So if you also want some quick agent actions, we got them in there too. And then some agent topics as well as some pattern templates. So the future of the site is actually, it's like we are moving very, very fast, but it's like this site will live as a resource for AI and Salesforce Labs, whatever that looks like in the future. Josh Birk: Got it. Marianna, one final question. What is your favorite non-technical hobby? Marianna Torres: Does guitar count? I kind of think it- Josh Birk: It does. Marianna Torres: ... kind of counts as technical. Josh Birk: Oh, yes. Marianna Torres: Yeah. Josh Birk: Yes. So I have run into this with this question so many times, and the two topics that people challenge me on, are they really technical? One is gaming, and I'm a video gamer, so I personally think it's a non-technical hobby because my programming brain turns off whenever I'm playing. And then the other one is music, and the reason is because people think music is technical in that terms of understanding the song, right? Marianna Torres: Yeah, it's like you have to understand it, but also just even when you're putting together a song, I don't know, it's like you really have to think and stop and, okay, if I play this chord, is it going to- Josh Birk: Right. Right. You're- Marianna Torres: Does that fit nicely? It's kind of like a puzzle, I want to say, kind of. Yeah, it's very- Josh Birk: Yeah, no. So yes, I considered a non-technical. I also got challenged on that one by one Kevin Portman, when he asked if I would consider woodworking technical, and that was a tough one to call out, but yeah. Marianna Torres: I have no idea how I would've answered. Josh Birk: Love it. Love it. Well, Marianna, thank you so much for the great time and the conversation and the information. That was a lot of fun. Marianna Torres: Of course. Thank you for having me, Joshua. And yes, I also want to do one last call out the Salesforce Labs Basic Trail. Take that to learn more all about Salesforce Labs, who we are, what we do, and the kind of apps that are available to you. Josh Birk: Love it. Marianna Torres: Thank you so much, Joshua. This was awesome. Josh Birk: You're so welcome. Listen to her people, head off to Trailhead. I want to once again thank Marianna for the great conversation and information. And as always, I want to thank you for listening. Head on over to admin.salesforce.com for more on the show. You can see the show notes, you can hear old episodes, and, of course, as... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35255805

Spring '25 Salesforce Features: AI, Flows, and User Management Updates 02/06/2025

Spring '25 Salesforce Features: AI, Flows, and User Management Updates Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce and the host of How I Solved It and Automate This! Join us as we chat about everything coming with the Spring ‘25 release and what’s new for Agentforce and AI on Salesforce. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee. Jen’s highlights from the Spring ‘25 release Every year, Jen’s release readiness blog post is our most popular piece of content. So I thought I’d bring her on the pod to talk about Spring ‘25 so we can hear it straight from the source. She shares [number] areas where there will be big changes: 1. Agentforce for all with Salesforce Foundations With Spring ‘25, more orgs than ever before will get access to Agentforce for free with Salesforce Foundations. This is a game changer for smaller orgs and solo admins, allowing you to use AI to harness the power of the Sales, Service, and Marketing Clouds to transform your business. One thing Jen wants to highlight is the ability to add agent quick actions right on a record page. Prompting is an art, but sometimes your users just need the AI to do the thing. Now you can give them a magic button to give the agent the correct prompt. If you have Einstein Bots, you can easily convert them into templates for agents to save some steps getting started with Agentforce. 2. Einstein AI for flows For the flownatics out there, there are a ton of new ways that AI enhancements in Spring ‘25 can help you build flows. You can describe what you want a formula or flow to do, and Einstein will build it for you. While you’ll need to go in and iron out the details, it can get you 80% of the way there. No more googling to look up how to write a specific formula. If you’re like most admins, your Salesforce org is probably full of flows that you didn’t build yourself. With Spring ‘25, you’ll be able to get Einstein to summarize what they do, which makes documentation and debugging much easier. 3. User management made easy Meanwhile, there are several user management changes coming in Spring ‘25 aimed at minimizing clicks and making permissions easier to manage. The group summary page lets you view all the sharing rules and list views in one place, so it’s much simpler to figure out why someone can see something but someone else can’t. 4. Better screen flows in Spring ‘25 Action buttons let you automatically trigger a flow when your user clicks a button, but what if you could pull up the output without any other user interaction? That’s where screen flows come in. For example, when your user selects a contact you can automatically pull up the associated cases or opportunities. How to get ready for a Salesforce release Jen’s advice for going through release notes is to start with your org. What features do you rely on? Search through the release notes for those things, specifically, and make sure you know what’s new and what’s changing. Two things that will affect every org are security updates and release updates. These security and performance enhancements will improve your org across the board, so be sure you know when they’ll be enforced and how to test them. Remember, a sandbox org is your best friend. There’s a lot more great stuff from Jen to get ready for Spring ‘25, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Blog: Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admin's podcast, we're thrilled to welcome back Jennifer Lee to talk about the Spring '25 release and all of its exciting features. Now, as you know, Jennifer is lead admin evangelist here on the admin relations team at Salesforce and host of the How I Solved It and Automate This video series on YouTube. She's also known for this blog post, which comes out with every release. I know you find it incredibly helpful. I do. Now, before we jump into the conversation with Jennifer, I want to make sure that you are following the Salesforce Admin's podcast on your favorite platform so that you never miss an episode, which could include really cool features like this one. So with that, let's get Jennifer on the podcast. So Jen, welcome back to the podcast. Jennifer Lee: Thanks for having me, Mike. Glad to be back. Mike: Well, it's almost spring. It doesn't feel like it where we're at- Jennifer Lee: No. Mike: ... but isn't that how it always is with all of our releases? Jennifer Lee: I just want it to fast-forward. Mike: Yes. Jennifer Lee: Get me to spring. Mike: Right. But you can fast-forward in your orgs because we're going to talk about Spring '25 release features. And Jen, back on January 16th, you put out an amazing blog post. I think it's the most popular blog post every year. Jennifer Lee: Woo-woo. Mike: So let's start off with going over some spring stuff and familiarizing people with what you do at Salesforce and go from there. Jennifer Lee: Yeah, sure. I guess I could start with what I do at Salesforce and then we'll dive into the Spring '25 fun features. So, Jennifer Lee, lead admin evangelist on the admin relations team with Mike, and I'm also the host of How I Solved It, Automate This on our YouTube channel, and I write our mega blog releases for each of our three releases a year. And I speak at various Salesforce events, so you see me at TDX, Dreamforce and other community events. So let's dive into Spring '25. So I'm really excited about these Agentforce AI features come first because that's what we're talking about these days is Agentforce and AI. So really excited that folks can get their hands on Agentforce for free with Salesforce Foundation. So you can get access to Agentforce for sales and Agentforce for service and start playing around with it and getting your hands dirty. So that's pretty cool. And then also sometime in the spring release, we'll also add in the ability to have agent quick actions placed right on your record pages. So your users don't need to think of, "Oh, what's the correct prompt that I should use with the employee agent to get the thing that I want?" They can just click a button and we're just going to pass over that prompt into the employee agent for them, so they'll get a consistent response every single time so they don't have to figure out how to word your prompts. Mike: This is so cool. When you showed this, because you sent around the GIF that you have in the blog, I was like, "Oh, this, I love buttons." Jennifer Lee: Yes. Mike: I love buttons. Users love buttons. People like to click buttons, and you get a sparkle little button. Like I'm telling you, because I also feel like when we talk AI, people just assume they know how to use it, and it's a little bit of an art. We're kind of early days of getting AI to respond the way you want it to, and the ability for an admin to set up a prompt, because you show this in the GIF, in the blog. The right wording, it kind of helps train your users how to be good prompt writers. I love it. Jennifer Lee: Exactly. Mike: This is the most exciting feature for me, I could talk about all day. Jennifer Lee: And for those who were early adopters and they built Einstein bots in your org, you can now use that as a starting point to create your agent for service agent. How cool is that? That you don't have to start from scratch. You're like, "I have this thing over here. I want to make this into agent." Click a few buttons and then it just creates that draft for you so you have a starting point. So that's pretty cool. And then a couple of the other AI features that we have for those flow-natics out there. Mike: Oh yes. Can't forget the flow-natics. Jennifer Lee: Or even you're new to flow, you now have, we're going GA, so generally available, the ability to use natural language to describe what your automation should be, and then it creates that flow behind the scenes for you, right? That starting point, so that's pretty cool. So that's now GA. There's also, if you need help with formulas in your flows, you can describe it. You don't have to go and know what the right syntax is. You describe what you want and then it generates it for you. Again, that's such an improvement. I remember back in the day, I would have to go Google everything because not a great formula. Mike: Nobody's a good formula. There's three people in world that are good at formulas and they're the ones that answer all our questions, but not kidding. Formulas and validation rules were always top performers in admin track for the longest time. I could probably bring those sessions back and they'd still be top performers. Everybody needs help. I still Google formulas for Google Sheets and stuff. Jennifer Lee: Yeah. And I attended those sessions. Mike: Yeah, I'm sure. Oh, man. Yeah, formulas are, that's stuff that I'm excited for Einstein. Jennifer Lee: Yeah. Mike: That like, "Oh, help me do this," and then it spits it out for me. Jennifer Lee: And then another thing for flow-natics out there is imagine you're in a org. You didn't build the flow that you need to troubleshoot and you have no idea what the flow does. Well, now you can go in and with a click of a button, Einstein will summarize what's going on in that flow for you. Mike: Oh. Jennifer Lee: Yeah. So you don't need to go and open up each thing and try to figure it out. That is super cool. Mike: I mean, to be fair, even if you were in that org and built the flow, but it was like eight months ago- Jennifer Lee: You're not going to remember. Mike: No. Jennifer Lee: No, absolutely not. Mike: Are you kidding? I couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast this weekend. Jennifer Lee: Exactly. Mike: Oh, man. That goes back to the other stuff that was always super popular at Dreamforce and TDX was like documenting your org. And the ability to do that, you think of that, Jen, then that's easily, you could spend a couple hours and get descriptions of all your flows and now you've got some documentation on flows started. There's probably a way to save that in the flow, right? Jennifer Lee: Well, you summarize that and then there's a button that will save it to the flow properties. So as a general description of your overall flow, you can save it right there. Mike: I mean, so there's no reason people shouldn't have this. Jennifer Lee: Exactly, yes. All right. So we're going to move on to user management. And Cheryl Feldman and team continue to deliver and make lives of admins so much easier by minimizing the number of clicks they have to do to go and troubleshoot all things permission. So a couple things. A highlight for this one is at the object level, right, let's say you have users that need view access to all the fields in that object along with view all records, modify all. There's now a new view all fields permission at the object level. So you check that and that automatically sets all the fields on that object to view access. And when you create new fields going forward, it'll automatically check the box for those fields so you don't have to remember and go back. Mike: Oh. That's awesome. Jennifer Lee: Yes. Mike: The number of times I've created the whole areas of fields and forgot. Jennifer Lee: Makes me want to go back and be an admin at companies. Mike: I mean, it's so much easier now. I feel like people in the ecosystem listen to our stories and it sounds like when our grandparents were like, "We used to walk to school both ways uphill." Jennifer Lee: "Back in the day." Mike: No, it really was, it really was hard. Jennifer Lee: And then for permission sets on that summary page, you can now grant access to your permission set groups, and then you can also remove user and custom permissions at the permission set level. So it really minimizes clicks, like you're in the permission set, you can then assign it to permission set groups. You don't have to go navigate out of it elsewhere and set up in order to do that. Mike: Right. That can be awfully tedious. Jennifer Lee: Yes. Minimizing all those clicks. Love it. Mike: I mean, I was wondering when permission sets and all of in permission set groups started coming out, you're from the old days of profiles and the millions of checkboxes, I thought, boy- Jennifer Lee: Yes. Mike: ... once they start rolling this out, there's going to be hidden corners of the universe that admins are going to have to search to try and figure out why somebody can see something and they can't. And I mean just to pile on, but thank goodness that Cheryl came along and was an admin and understood that. Because it was like, "No, I've been there and here's how this needs to work." Jennifer Lee: [inaudible 00:10:40]. Mike: And it was from a usability standpoint as opposed to an engineering standpoint. It makes permission sets, permission set groups, all of that totally consumable. Jennifer Lee: And I love how her group is really receptive to listening to admins like, "Okay, tell me what you're doing today to do this task. What are the steps? Why do you need to manage things in spreadsheets? Tell me why, so I can solve that for you in Salesforce." Mike: Yeah. In fact, in less than a month from when this podcast airs, she'll be at TDX. And I promise you, those sessions are packed. The Q&A afterward, it's like you would think Taylor Swift showed up at TDX and you just turn and you're like, "Nope, that's just Cheryl Feldman." Jennifer Lee: Yeah, so go and attend her Future of User Management session. Those, I've sat in on a couple of those and the number of claps and hollers as she's going through and saying, "This is coming and this is coming," yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. Mike: Yup. Jennifer Lee: So a couple other things that her team is delivering in this release. On the group summary page, you can now view all the sharing rules and list views that you've assigned to groups. So all in one place. You don't have to navigate to each of those things, again, minimizing the clicks. And then also in the Salesforce Cloud Go, you can now view assigned permission sets and then monitor their usage in that tool as well. Mike: Wow, that's a lot. Jennifer Lee: And even more to come. Mike: These are the highlights. Jennifer Lee: [inaudible 00:12:28] not done. Mike: You got to read everything, but you know. Okay, what else you got, Jen? Jennifer Lee: All right, and then lastly, I got to rattle off some flow things, right? I touched on some, but there's so much more. A few releases ago for screen flows, the team delivered action buttons. On a screen, you can click a button and then it does some other things. You don't have to click next to go to the next screen. Well, in this release, they now introduce screen actions. So when you do, let's say you do a lookup on a contact, and as soon as you select that contact, it comes back with the associated cases for example, or opportunities. You don't even have to click the button. It does it for you. So that again, minimizes clicks. And then again, when you're working on screen flows, you want to give your users a sense of where they are in the progression of their flow. How many times have you worked on a survey and you're like, "How many screens is the survey?" Mike: It's never going to end. It's perpetual Jennifer Lee: Or I'm just going to quit because I'm done. Mike: I'm done. You should have everything. Jennifer Lee: Right? So now we can set stages on a progress bar for your screen flow without requiring a custom progress indicator that before you would have to build a custom component for. So now it's- Mike: It's like path, but for- Jennifer Lee: Uh-huh. Mike: Okay, I'll take that. Yeah. I have wondered, because you don't know when you build... Most of the screens I build are simple because I don't have your skill, but I always wondered, you get three or four screens in. Well, I wonder if I could put a little cartoon up of, "Almost there. Keep going." Jennifer Lee: Exactly. All right, a few more things. So when you are in Flow Builder now, and let's say you're managing multiple versions of this flow and you're like, "Well, which one? I don't remember if it was the previous version or this other version," and then you had to navigate out of that flow, a couple of clicks to go into another flow version. Well, now you can access right in that flow. There's a little drop-down and you can see all the different versions and when you click on that, it opens that up. So a lot of saving clicks. Mike: This is cool. And you include a screenshot in your blog post. I had no idea I needed this until I saw the screenshot and I'm like, "Oh yeah, now I need this." Jennifer Lee: I love just doing those GIFs because it really brings the feature to life. You don't just read it, you can actually see it in action. Mike: Right, right. Jennifer Lee: Yeah. Mike: So this may be a silly question. No silly questions. I know what active means. I mean, that's the current flow, but in your screenshot there are some that are inactive and some that are deactivated. What are the differences in the statuses? Jennifer Lee: Deactivated is probably a flow that you had activated at one point and then you deactivated it. Now inactive is a flow that you're probably just working on that you haven't saved, but you haven't done anything else with it. Mike: Okay, got it. Just making sure. I figured somebody might have that question. It's like on deck, inactive is like a version but not ever been activated. Jennifer Lee: All right. So for those who have a need to combine things, so in flow you can have a collection of records. Now in this transform element, you can now join two source collections into a target collection. So for example, let's say you had records that contain information from a third party system and they needed to be combined with data from Salesforce to make a complete record. Well, now in your flow you can take those two sources and combine them together with the transform element. So you don't have to go through that complex logic of looping through and doing all those things. You can take one element and magically combine them together. Mike: Combining is good. Jennifer Lee: And then lastly, for those who need to send emails as part of your automation and you need to attach something to those emails, well, you can now do that using the send email action. You can attach emails. Just know that there is a 35 megabyte max size and that includes the size of the file. Mike: Wow, that's pretty decent. Google has like 25, so you should be okay. Jennifer Lee: Yeah. Let's say you needed to send- Mike: Like a PDF or something. Jennifer Lee: ... a PDF of a coupon or something like that. Yeah, FAQs. Mike: I like that. Boy, people. I thought 2025, we would be done with email by now. I don't think email's ever going to go anywhere. Nope. We're going to be emailing and attaching things forever. And I was just scrolling through your posts and I caught up to the little path thing. I really like that, and I like that it's visually consistent with what path looks like. Jennifer Lee: And just a couple of things outside of those three major categories is you can now multi-column sort on your list views and related records up to five fields. So you don't have to just single sort. And you're like, "Oh, well what if I sorted by this field and I want to sort by this other field?" You can now do that. Mike: Yeah. Oh, man. That's life right there. The ability to do that. That's the number of times that you've had to export list views or reports to- Jennifer Lee: The spreadsheet? Mike: ... something else. Yeah, I couldn't bring myself to say those words. Just multi-column sort. Yeah, descending here and alphabetic over here, makes sense to me. Jennifer... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35162450

How Erick Mahle is Using AI to Transform Mortgage Lending 01/30/2025

How Erick Mahle is Using AI to Transform Mortgage Lending Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Erick Mahle, VP of Revenue Operations & Digital Transformation at Lendz Financial. Join us as we chat about how he’s using AI to drive digital transformation and how he started FlowFest, the largest global Salesforce flow competition. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Erick Mahle. Solving business problems with Salesforce Erick was always interested in technology as a kid, helping his dad build computers. However, he originally started his career in marketing. Everything changed when his manager asked him to take over Salesforce for his organization and he saw what he could do with declarative solutions. “I thought it was the grownup version of Legos,” he says. In his role at Lendz Financial, he’s combining those problem-solving skills with the power of AI to spearhead digital transformation. The mortgage lending industry is full of complicated business processes that need to be checked and re-checked, so it’s the perfect place to put new AI capabilities to the test. How AI can streamline mortgage lending If you’ve ever bought a house, you’ll know that getting a mortgage is incredibly complex. With so many steps and regulatory requirements, Erick and his team are using AI to streamline these business processes and limit costly errors. They call it Project Lexi. Obviously, with mortgages involved, they’re not ready to turn everything over to AI just yet. However, they’ve already found several wins by eliminating handoffs with automation and training the AI to flag potential problems. For Erick, the key to any successful digital transformation initiative is to focus on the humans you’re supposed to be helping. FlowFest, the largest global Salesforce flow competition Erick also runs FlowFest, a competition where Flownatics can strut their stuff. It started with the idea that although Trailhead is great at teaching you how to build things, a big part of your job as a Salesforce Admin is to fix broken flows. Contests are put through several rounds of debug challenges, culminating in a livestreamed event where the finalists race to be the first to find a working solution for the final flow. It’s basically an esport, complete with live commentary and dramatic photo finishes. They just did their first in-person FlowFest at Mile High Dreamin’, and it may be coming soon to an event near you. Erick had a lot more to share about how he’s thinking about AI and some of his favorite FlowFest stories, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Video: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full Transcript Josh Birk: Hello, admins, your guest host Josh Birk here. Today, we welcome Erick Mahle to talk a little bit about AI, digital transformation, and a lot about one of his projects, FlowFest, and how people can learn Flow in a really fun and interactive way. So, without any further ado, let's go welcome Erick. All right. Today on the show, we welcome Erick Mahle to talk about, of course, probably a little bit of AI since that's what we have to do these days and Mile High Dreamin' and FlowFast. Erick, welcome to the show. Erick Mahle: Well, thanks for having me, Josh. Josh Birk: So, let's start with your early years. Did you always want to get into software? Erick Mahle: No, I had no idea I was going to get into software. Although, when I was a very young kid, my father used to build computers and I know I used to do a little bit of the same as well like getting all the video cards, the motherboards, getting all the components, joining them together. But that wasn't something that stuck with me throughout all these years. So, I went to school for marketing, but somehow ended up as the accidental admin and here we are 15 years later. Josh Birk: Got it. Well, that kind of segues to the next question. How did you first get introduced to Salesforce? Erick Mahle: Well, since accidental admin is the default answer for most folks... Josh Birk: Right. Erick Mahle: I will basically say, I joined a company as a marketing analyst. It was a small company. And like most small companies, you get to wear many hats and they basically said, "Hey, we have Salesforce, why don't you manage Salesforce?" And really had a great experience there. We had brought in my boss at that time who was a Silicon Valley-type global sales director, and he really challenged me a lot. He used to say, "Hey, at SuccessFactor, Salesforce used to do this, or at Zuora, Salesforce used to do that. And really, challenged me to kind of reverse engineer Salesforce and I found a lot of joy in that. I thought it was the grown-up version of Legos. I remember when the first time I successfully wrote a formula field, I went to the software developers because we were a software development company, so I went to the software development team and said, "Hey, I'm a developer now." And they were like, "No, you're not." And I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'm not right." Josh Birk: Right. Erick Mahle: But the passion was there to play around with it declaratively, and then just from there went to the consulting side, many years on the consulting side, then back client side and kept playing around with all these new tools and trying to keep up with all of the different features that Salesforce continuously tends to roll out. Josh Birk: Nice, nice. Yeah, very old. I think he was my skip level boss for a while, but Mike Rosenbaum at Salesforce famously, I'm probably getting this wrong because it's been quite a few years, but I think it was something along the lines of, we sell Legos, but people build Millennium Falcons, right? It's like what you can put together with all these components. It's the really cool part of the platform. Erick Mahle: It's true. Josh Birk: And it's also my old boss and friend Dave Carroll used to say, "We have the one true platform because you're allowed to build on top of it." And it's this constant theme when I talk to people, right? Like especially back on the developer side, people who have to create Java servers and put all these connections together and run up a database, like the simplicity of putting a custom object together and then just using it. It's a... Can I say, I'm an evangelist so I can say it's a certain kind of magic. Erick Mahle: It is. It's almost like an operating system of its own. You have so much that Salesforce takes care of for you that a lot of times people can take for granted, especially on the declarative side. It's folks just have to log in, get their login credentials and they can go to setup and start building things right away. Josh Birk: Yeah. How would you describe your current job? Erick Mahle: Exciting for sure. Josh Birk: Nice. Erick Mahle: No, actually it really is quite exciting. So, I'm in mortgage lending now. I was working beforehand as the Senior Director of CRM at First Advantage, which is a global leader in background checks and drug screenings and so forth. So, if you got a job recently, chances are your employer probably went through First Advantage, which I think Salesforce is now a customer of First Advantage. Josh Birk: Got it. Erick Mahle: So, but that was an interesting time. I got to learn a lot of the corporate world. I got to know a lot of working with different departments, really having to get creative to get things done and get things accomplished and budgeting and all of these things that a lot of organizations had to deal with over the past couple of years. And during that time in came the President in Lens Financial that had been kind of courting me for a couple of months and he's like, "Look, we're growing. We're growing really fast." Still, very small organization like when I joined, we were in the mid-30s, now we're 50 employees all within less than a year. But he basically was raising a round of investment to kind of take the company to the next level and he's like, "Help me put a budget together for what a digital transformation would look like to be able to really take Lens to the next level." So, really when he finally got the approval and he got that round of investment cleared, he's like, "When can you start?" And we've been on the run over since, working on really exciting projects including AI and several other things. So, it's been fun to be able to go pedal to the metal and really trying to put something exciting together. Josh Birk: So, first of all, I want to give that person props because in so many corporate environments they say things like, we need to do a digital transformation, but they don't fund it. So, congratulations... Erick Mahle: That's a lot of names. Josh Birk: ... on them doing it right, without saying names or companies or large insurance companies I might've worked for in the past, anyway. Actually, I can't complain about that. They did give me a salary, I guess. Erick Mahle: Yeah. Josh Birk: Technically, that was their form of ending it. Tell me a little bit more about AI and about how you see that as part of this digital transformation. Erick Mahle: Yeah. So, there's a lot that's going on there, right? So, the key thing that we're working on, Lens Financial's, project LEXI. So, Project LEXI on the surface is basically our digital lending ally. It's a character that we've come up with. And what we're trying to do is really build an engine behind the digital transformation that we can put a customer 360 project together and have that database and try to learn from that as much as we can. And from an AI perspective, we have fairly ambitious visions with what we wanted to do and how we've been tackling over at Lens is that we're kind of dipping our toes in the water first, trying to see what we can get away with. I think we're still very much... We've grown in phases. We're still very much in a prompting phase. Everything is a very grounded prompt to get what we want and be able to derive insights that we're looking for. But we're starting to look at more serious things like building our own LLM or like training our LLM models to be able to have more specific things going on, evaluate our data, make sure that we're on, make sure that we can identify trends and make sure that we can identify red flags early on. And really trying to bring all of the process efficiency that we can. Our industry, the industry that has so many steps and so many things that we have to take. And what we're looking for LEXI to do is to be an extra eyes over the shoulder to say, "Hey, is there anything that you potentially missed? Is there anything that you have to be concerned with in order to make this deal go through?" And that's kind of one of the key things that we're looking to use LEXI for at Lens. Josh Birk: Like this is a history of good data. If you see something that looks like it might be moving into bad category, let us know. Erick Mahle: Exactly. And in addition to other things as well, we want to be able to use optical character recognition. So, we're actively looking to be able to build OCR. And when you're... Anyone that's listening here that's bought a house or that's considering buying a house, get ready to send an avalanche of documents. We will want to know about the 20 cents that you have at the bottom of your couch and where has that been for the past five years? Josh Birk: Yup, yes. Erick Mahle: So, there is a lot of documents to go through, a lot of processes to go through. So, really being able to evaluate all of that and trying to make sure that, "Hey, everything's in the norm here," right? Everything looks fine. Or, "Hey, here's something that doesn't add up." Anything that could raise the attention of whether it's the processor, the underwriter, just to make sure that we increase the... Continue to increase the quality of our processes without affecting our efficiency or our pull through ratios. Josh Birk: Yeah, two thoughts come to mind. One is, first of all, I'm glad to hear the concept of getting mortgage getting into the digital age because when we bought our condo here in Chicago, my friends who had just gone through this themselves were like, "Well, you need to do one thing, bring two pens and a sandwich. You're going to be in a room for a really long time. It's going to be a pain if that pen runs out of bank." But also, back to how you're talking about training your own LLM, I think that's an interesting trend because we've had these conversations internally at Salesforce about, "Do we build our own models? What bottles do we use? Do we use the open models?" And the answer I think has been a hodgepodge of these things. But the interesting thing is you need an AI that knows about mortgage and mortgage processing and what a good document looks like. You don't need one that knows how to cook a rotisserie chicken. Erick Mahle: Now, for everyone that's listening to this podcast, please imagine the forward-looking statement slide, strolling through as Josh is going through these items. Josh Birk: Right, right. Although, I suppose back to the sandwich joke mightn't be handy if it can cook a rotisserie chicken for you too. How often do you think you personally use AI for work? Erick Mahle: There's definitely a frequent use of ChatGPT within our organization, within a couple of users. It's actually something that we just started talking about putting in accepted AI use guidelines for all employees because it is something we have to be very mindful of. Josh Birk: Yup. Erick Mahle: I think at an individual like ChatGPT level, we have the ever occasional simplify this or change this JSON into tables for me because I don't have the patience to do it otherwise. There are use cases like that. Now, with regards to LEXI and the built models that we have, several times a day. So, typically, we're introducing LEXI internally right now as a culture building tool as well. So, instead of LEXI, people being worried about this LEXI tool or what it can do where we started a kudos channel. So, basically, LEXI is giving out kudos to the teams who... Josh Birk: Nice. Erick Mahle: ... managed to get loans in the fastest or people who log the most calls by the halfway through the day. So, there's a lot of that which helps us also understand kind of getting our feet wet, kind of how does this work, what can we get away with, what can we rely on? And really set that step-by-step foundation of where we really want to take this. Josh Birk: Yeah. Erick Mahle: So, I think as a small organization and having seen this in the past myself, things can get very expensive very fast if you're loose with perhaps just grabbing vendors right off the shelf saying, "Hey, I can promise you all of these things and just give us all your money," and the next thing you know this is something that we as a customer didn't fully understand what we needed. Maybe the vendor was maybe just too aggressive into getting the business because let's be realistic, if you ask for someone who is 10 years of AI experience, so that's optimistic to say that. Josh Birk: Right. Erick Mahle: Everything's so new that trying to be one of the early adopters without breaking the bank is definitely something that we're cognizant of and we're just trying to make sure that we're taking the right steps, checking everything off and then saying, "Alright, now we're comfortable with making the next move, the next level up." And ultimately, integrate that all together. Josh Birk: Yeah, I don't think of at least three-fourths of anytime I talk about AI to audiences. One of the things I include is, if you do not have an acceptable use policy, like now it's back when social media suddenly took us all by surprise, didn't realize it could do as much good as harm. And your company was like, these are the things you probably should not do on Twitter. It's out of the gate. That's the time to start thinking about what do you think people should or should not do with it. It's funny you say the ten-year AI thing, and this is as I often do, and I get in front of a mic date myself. In my early days, Flash was still a primary motivator for application building, shall we say. And I couldn't get into Flash because I was a JavaScript nerd. And I learned Perl, I was kind of a programmer by default and Flash just didn't make any sense to me. But it was always a red flag when somebody would ask for five years of Flash experience when Flash had only been invented three years ago. Erick Mahle: Yeah. Josh Birk: I just didn't submit that. Erick Mahle: It's a pain that we all have to go through. It's just hysterical. I see it in some of the Slack channels or some folks on LinkedIn feeds calling out some of these posts and it's ridiculous. They're out there. People are just like, "No, no, no. We want the most experienced person in the world to give us 15 years of experience," and something that came out like a year ago. Josh Birk: Right. Unless you've been at Stanford working on this very quietly without telling anybody, you have not been doing this for 15 years. Erick Mahle: Yup. Josh Birk: All right. Well, let's change gears a little bit because we first met, I did an AI talk for you all at Mile High Dreamin'. When did you first start getting involved in Mile High Dreamin' itself? Erick Mahle: So, it was last year, 2023. I had been running FlowFest for two years by that point. Josh Birk: Okay. Erick Mahle: And I guess, we'll go into the insides of FlowFest for anyone that's not familiar. But everything that we've done with FlowFest was an online event thus far. And we had a couple of regional conferences, organizers such as Mile High Dreamin' and a couple of other green events. And they were always reaching out and they were like, "We really like what you're doing. Can we do this in a conference setting conference?" Josh Birk: Yeah. Erick Mahle: And Mile High Dreamin' was the one that worked like the timing, the dates, everything that we needed. So, we decided to give it a shot last year in 2023. And we learned a lot of taking an online format into an in-person format. And this year, when you and I got a chance to meet, it was our second run at it, which we managed to improve a lot. I think we had a great time last year. We had an even better time this year. So, yeah, it was exciting to participate in it. Josh Birk: Before we get into the mechanics of it, what's kind of the origin of it? What was the inspiration for doing that? Erick Mahle: So, it was really interesting. I had the opportunity to participate in, I think this was peak pandemic, and someone organized the Zoom and said, "Hey, I have a couple of flow challenges and I want to see who can finish them first." And I think there was, I don't know, some basic raffle prize or something like that. And I love the idea and I had a conversation with them. I was like, "Look, I think we can do this much bigger and more importantly in a fun educational way." I know we're talking about AI. I know that that's the hot topic right now. I still think that there's so many foundational things... Josh Birk: Yeah. Erick Mahle: ... in order to make AI work, right? Whether it's data modeling or data cleanliness and all of these things. And I think especially for the declarative side of folks, I think knowing how to use automations properly is a crucial thing. Everyone has a flow course, right? Everyone, there's just so much content out there and we wanted to do something that's educational that is also entertaining at the same time. Josh Birk: Okay. Erick Mahle: And I remember I had pitched this to Ben McCarthy over at Salesforce Ben, and he's like, "Hey, I'm on board. What do you think? How many people do you think you're going to get on this?" I was like, "Look, maybe we get 10, maybe we get 100 people." He even sent me the screenshot of the WhatsApp message after we held the first one... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/35058080

5 Steps for Admins to Get Agentforce Ready 01/23/2025

5 Steps for Admins to Get Agentforce Ready Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Dorian Earl, Salesforce Admin and Founder of Development Consulting Partners, LLC. Join us as we chat about the 5 steps you can take to prepare for Agentforce and AI. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dorian Earl. Preparing for big changes with AI Dorian started his career as a medical and dental equipment sales rep. He had over 100,000 products and 300 clients to keep track of, and he was looking for something to replace his paper notebooks. That’s when he came across a new CRM platform called Salesforce and a new career in tech. Today, Dorian runs a consulting firm that helps organizations leverage their tech stack to improve their business processes. The changes that are possible with AI are just as big as switching from paper planners to a CRM, so I wanted to sit down with him to find out how Salesforce Admins can get ready for Agentforce. 1. Awareness Dorian is seeing a lot of enthusiasm and curiosity from his clients about AI, but most organizations are unsure about how best to use it. He compares it to when search engines were first coming out. The idea of being able to search the entire internet with a query was so groundbreaking that it took time for people to understand the business implications, even at Google. 2. Preparedness Since the possibilities of AI applications are so broad, the best thing we can do is to get any data that an AI agent might need into Salesforce. That can be anything from your operating hours to your company values to your brand voice. Essentially, the same sorts of things you’d go over with a new hire. That way you don’t have to start at square one every time you want to build a new agent. 3. Quick wins and usage AI implementation starts with finding quick wins for your organization. Dorian’s found the summarize record action to be particularly useful for just about everyone who works with customers. He also recommends taking advantage of AI’s ability to do quick reporting for users without the admin needing to get involved. 4. Internal process improvement The biggest changes AI will bring are to internal business processes. Essentially, this comes down to saving clicks and smoothing out workflows. Dorian brings up the example of processing a return. An agent can take care of all the little steps, like creating a case, logging information, and authorizing a refund, instead of that being a multi-person business process. 5. External tasks outsourced to AI The final thing to look at is whether or not any external-facing tasks can be outsourced to AI. Something like prospect nurturing can be handled by an agent that summarizes a record, drafts an email based on that summary and your business information, and then sends it. And then a second agent can schedule a phone call with an actual sales rep for anyone who replies. Obviously, you want to be fairly confident in the agent you’ve built before you put it directly in touch with customers. But that’s why you need to get started now. For Dorian, Salesforce Admins are uniquely positioned to transform their businesses with new AI solutions. There’s more great stuff from my conversation with Dorian, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you stay up to date. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Trailhead: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome back Dorian Earl, founder and CEO of a thriving consultancy that has over 450 clients and just a massive wealth of Salesforce experience and knowledge. Dorian has been the Salesforce ecosystem for nearly two decades. He started as a sales rep who needed a better way to track his deals and opportunities and really turn that into a career empowering companies to embrace better CRMs and smarter systems. Now in today's episode, we dive into Dorian's five steps to prepare for Agentforce and AI. Now, from understanding the buzz around AI to implementing quick wins and long-term strategies, Dorian shares invaluable insights to help you, the Salesforce admin, and/or organizations you work for stay ahead of the curve this year in 2025. Now, of course, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following or subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so that you never miss a great episode like this. New episodes drop every Thursday morning. That way you've got them, boom, right on your phone before you head off for your dog walk or your commute to work. So with that, let's get Dorian on the podcast. Dorian, welcome back to the podcast Dorian Earl: Though this is an absolute pleasure more than you know and good to see you again at all of the events and a couple of weeks back at the World Tour. So good to see you and good to chat with you again. Mike Gerholdt: You're one of the people that I'm happiest out in the world and we get to run into each other at different events, and you and I are such easy people to miss out in a crowd. Dorian Earl: Well, I don't know if that's the case. I'm the tallest person. You have the best beard and the most charismatic smile. Everybody who sees you go, literally. Mike Gerholdt: I don't know about that. Dorian Earl: Yeah, well, yeah. When you walk past, and for the listeners who don't hear this, Mike had walked past us at the World Tour and two people at the table said, "I don't know who he is, but he has to be somebody." I said, "You don't know who Mike Gerholdt is?" And so you have a reputation. I'm surprised there's not three people following you carrying your briefcase and just kind of handling all of it. Mike Gerholdt: There used to be. I say I'm kind of in my late '80s John Travolta stage of Salesforce celebrityism where I'm doing the really bad B movies and nobody knows who I am. Dorian Earl: But that's not true. Mike Gerholdt: I'm hoping for the next Pulp Fiction level role to come up and then I'll be dancing around like a Santa Claus selling Citibank cards and stuff. Dorian Earl: I was going to say, if you just come out with a good costume, which at every event there are people with a really good... And dance moves, I guarantee you, you'll be more relevant. Mike Gerholdt: And don't forget, I got to shave my head. Travolta had that whole time where he shaved his head too. Dorian Earl: Ah, that's true. I would just tell you, you should keep yours. You got good hair. Mike Gerholdt: I think so. Dorian Earl: You got a lot happening. You got a lot happening. Mike Gerholdt: You know what everybody who subscribes to the podcast didn't want to listen to? Dorian Earl: What's that? Mike Gerholdt: Was all of that conversation. So let's talk about something that'll provide business value to our customers again, and that is getting ready for Agentforce and AI. And when you and I ran into each other, well, to be fair, when you beelined through a hotel restaurant to find me horsing down my chicken fingers at the bar, you had this wonderful thing, you were like, "Mike, we got to talk about this on the podcast. I have these five things that I'm helping companies do to get ready for AI." And I said, "You're right." So Dorian, let's get into that. But let's start off just because sometimes people don't listen to all of the episodes of the podcast. What do you do? How did you come to be in the Salesforce world? Dorian Earl: Yeah, so I started almost 20 years ago as a sales guy. I needed a way to track my deals and opportunities, and if anybody's around in the mid, I'm not going to give my age, in the mid 40s, we all used Franklin portfolio, Franklin Company Planners, and I would leave them at my client's office and set them on top of my car and drive off and there goes my pipeline and all of my stuff and I couldn't do that. So kind of being a forward-thinking salesperson, I said I need to have a way that I wouldn't lose my notes, my deals, my opportunities, everything I had worked hard to build. Then I went to purchased programs and databases and lo and behold, I found a web-based CRM called Salesforce. That was 20 years ago. That was really became my secret sauce, Mike. I was an average salesperson and getting good, but really my secret sauce was organization and to be able to stay on top of deals. And in my line of work as a salesperson at that time, we had over 100,000 products to keep track of. So what kind of promotion was going on? Who needed what? What was going on? I was a sales rep in the medical dental supply space. So we had a lot of manufacturers and four or five different manufacturers for each line. Like gloves, we had five or six brands of gloves and masks. So who had the promotion? Which one did my customer like? Oh, my doctor liked the left-handed glove from Crosstechs or from MedTech or from all those kind of companies. And I had to keep all those things straight because I had 300 plus clients. The doctor would like one and their front desk would like another and the assistant, that kind of... And so all those things became really difficult for me to keep track of and I needed a better way to do that. And so lo and behold, I purchased Salesforce for myself, started to get some success. The down economy hit and I was of the few people that I could actually forecast my sales to my boss. I can go in and say, "This client mentioned this to me earlier on in the year. I think we can close them if we do these things." I was one of the few people at our branch that could do that. Long and short of it, that grew to me going independent, started my own firm and then working with other companies, help bring in their sales or their product in the market. It was always, "Hey, I can help you lead your sales team, but you need to have a database or CRM." Again, 15 years ago, it was, "I have this in some spreadsheet or somebody in our office has this in a spreadsheet." And I said, "You need to have a one, a better way to track your sales and deals." And I would tell them, "You need to go out and buy the Salesforce thing." And so I worked in tech startup helping companies take the product in the market. One of those products was acquired by Google. And so I became a contract sales manager for Google for a while and Apple for a little bit, and that's part of my story. And six years ago, a company actually just reached out and said, "Can you help us with the CRM and sales thing?" And then my career helping companies from the inside out versus the outside in kind of worked. And so now, I'm the founder and CEO of a company with 450 plus clients and about 20 plus team members and things are really fun. So that's the long story short, right? Mike Gerholdt: Right, right. It's interesting because we've known each other for a while and we've both been the ecosystem for a while and we've CRM and Salesforce change and add new features to the time. I think what we're seeing now with AI everywhere, what is your level of, let's start off with your five things, what is your level of awareness that you're seeing with your clients on being AI ready or even having thoughts of how they would use that? Dorian Earl: Everybody knows about it. As I said, I see articles at my desk. My team is using this. There are everyday products that they are seeing now that are becoming more intelligent or adding AI. You can't turn on a TV today every... If you're watching football and there's a break, one commercial will say, "This is the product with AI now." So there's a lot of buzz and really awareness, and now it's starting to really be embedded into other products. What I'm finding out with our clients is they don't understand the real impact of what this means for their business yet. They know it's out there, but they just don't know how to leverage that, how LMMs work, which ones to use, use cases, but they are seeing AI being embedded into their everyday tools. They are seeing email plugins, they are seeing these things and they're starting to encounter it. So our role is really just to say, "Look, let 2025 be the year of intelligence at your company. Let's make everybody 10% smarter. Let's make everybody roll in your work, let's make everybody 10, 15, 20% smarter this quarter, this six months this year." And they're really getting excited with that. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It's kind of like the early 1900s with cars. I mean, there's how many people making an AI product right now? And I guess we'll find out how many survive and don't because the early 1900s, there was over 300 car manufacturers and now there's what? 5, 10 arguably? Dorian Earl: Right. Maybe. Right, yeah, maybe. Right. Mike Gerholdt: I'm sure more, but you know. So in the five things admins can do to get ready for Agentforce and AI, you list number one is awareness. So I feel like maybe last year that was like, "Oh, we kind of need to wake up." And most people, I don't want to say most people, most people I know became AI aware at the consumer grade level. I think it's another to think of AI at the enterprise level, which is where Salesforce operates because we're an enterprise CRM. We're operating immediately with millions of rows of records and sometimes even data lakes or multiple organizations. So I'm sure that you probably run into a few that are aware. Let's go on to number two, which is the preparedness. Where do people fall there? Dorian Earl: They are not because one, if they are aware, and I think you hit it on the head, and I don't want to bury what you just said. Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Dorian Earl: Really, most technology comes out as a consumer facing application to catch what's called a user adoption, right? And I remember when I was in college and Google first launched and literally people going out and say, "You can ask Google anything and it would just come back with an answer." Or as Amazon, you can go put in any book you want. Well, it took a few years for people to understand the business implication of having all the data on the internet to ask a question. It even took Google really by storm or Amazon if you would've asked them when they started what their business would look like. They didn't know. So we are in early days, but the people that are understanding, okay, there is an entity or there is a program out there that can ingest data and then come back to you with patterns, use cases, ideas, analysis, and that could have some ramification for us as a company. So how do we get prepared to use this? And so when we start telling our clients about this, they said, "Wow, this could be really exciting. What do we do then to prepare to really turn these features on?" And so I'm going to mention this. I'm going to kind of go backward and start to go forward. This analogy I start to tell is I think it's maybe going to ring true. So I was a previous athlete, and if I was going to ask you, Mike, "Hey Mike, my knee is swollen and it's a little sore." You would probably tell me rest it, elevate it, ice it. These are common things that... this is generalized intelligence, right? If my three-year-old son falls and scrapes his hand and it's bleeding, you're going to go wash it, you're going to go let it air, obviously you're going to put some things on it, you're going to wrap it up in a Band-Aid. That's generalized intelligence. Now, if I told you as a 40-year-old male that's 50 pounds overweight, that played basketball at a very high level for many years, that over exercises in my yard and my knee swells probably once a month. And you would say, "Given that relative information about you, you should probably go see a doctor. You may have a micro tail, you may have tinnitus, you may have some other things. All I did was I just gave you further background and relevant information versus general. And that's exactly how AI works. Most people are just going asking it generalized questions and getting generalized answers. But the more relevant information you can give AI, just in general, through prompting, then it can come back and say, "Based on information you told me and the background and the person and this issue, I'm going to recommend these things." And really AI in general is as good as the data you give it. And so one of the things we are telling our clients is to prepare to use lists. In order for this to work at an enterprise level, where are all of your company data? Are you giving AI all the background you can on your company? Where would it find it? Do you have it in PDF? The origin story on your company, the history, the industry, how you service, the founders. So all of those things, the company data, the user. Tell us about the sales reps, their roles, their unique skills, the images on them. Products and services, where does that data set and how do we adequately get it into a place where AI can read it? One, if it's not, obviously of course, on the internet, then we should put it there. But two, it should be in a place that's up-to-date so AI can go in and read those things and answer questions. And so we just want to give it as much relative information as you can. That way, it doesn't give general answers or general information, which of course could be issues. So we want to prepare our clients and say, "If you don't have this, let's start to gather it. If you need help gathering it, we're going to help you put it in a way that AI can read it. Your company data, the user data, your products and services, your customers, and any systems you would like AI to have access to." The good part of it is a lot of this should be in their CRM. It should already be in Salesforce. What most people don't know is you can go into the user records and pretty much put in these custom fields about roles and background and info. And obviously, you can fill out information on the company. This is actually the good part, what a lot of people don't really know. Your company data is stored in Salesforce, your NAP, your name, address, phone, number of the business, the website, the social. We can start enriching Salesforce with your company data. Images, logos, all of those things. And so if we do that, we are really preparing AI, we're really just teaching it. So what can we teach it and how much can we get AI to know about your company? And then this is what I call that preparedness stage, Mike. It may take people weeks to do this. They may say, "Wow, how much data should we give AI?" As much as you want given the relevant tasks. So sometimes it takes our clients weeks to do this. Sometimes we're putting together an entire process on what do we want AI to have access to and learn on. So that's kind of step two. Mike Gerholdt: No, I like that. I'm thinking of all of the use cases my team puts together. When we put out the Agentforce Decoded series, a lot of it is thinking from the sales or service perspective of, hey, how do you summarize this account or summarize this case. One part that you brought up that's very salient that I think is, not to look ahead, but is like a good quick win is also what is your company about? What is your brand voice? Dorian Earl: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: What are your, kind of if you had a front door, what are your window information? What's your address? What's your mailing address? What's your hours? I say that because if you're thinking of creating an agent to help your salespeople write better emails, well, it needs to be grounded in some information that it knows what it is and it knows what company you are and how to sound, right? I think it's always important that brands have a voice, and even the admin relations, we have a brand voice. That they're constructing that so it's sounding cohesive. And that can just be a simple PDF or a knowledge article that an agent could reference. Dorian Earl: Absolutely. Mike Gerholdt: A lot of things, including... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34957475

Agentforce's Best Friend: Clean, Reliable Data 01/16/2025

Agentforce's Best Friend: Clean, Reliable Data Agentforce's Best Friend: Clean, Reliable Data Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lizz Hellinga, a Consultant and Salesforce MVP. Join us as we chat about why clean data is essential for leveraging generative AI and how you can get your organization moving. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lizz Hellinga. Generative AI thrives on clean data Lizz has a clear message: clean data isn’t optional anymore. She stresses, “If your data isn’t ready for generative AI, your business isn’t ready.” As organizations eagerly adopt generative AI tools, Lizz cautions that the insights and outputs from AI are only as reliable as the data feeding into it. Simply put, poor-quality data undermines the potential of these powerful tools. What constitutes “bad data”? Bad data comes in many forms, and Lizz highlights the usual suspects: Duplicates Inaccuracies Incomplete records Outdated information Hoarded data The concept of hoarded data stands out as particularly problematic. Many organizations have accumulated large amounts of data they no longer use but are reluctant to delete. According to Lizz, the solution starts with collaborating with stakeholders to establish a robust data governance policy that defines data quality standards and retention policies. Reporting, she adds, can be a powerful tool to illustrate the value of clean data and spotlight areas of improvement. Steps to prepare data for AI Lizz has four steps you can take to start your journey toward clean data: Document your processes: Map out key workflows to find the key points where data enters the system. How can you make it easier to get high-quality data at these moments? Engage your stakeholders: Explain why clean data is vital for AI initiatives. Use examples to illustrate how high-quality data enables AI to deliver actionable insights that can make their work easier and more efficient. Prioritize key areas: Focus on cleaning data critical to processes where AI will have the most impact, such as sales or customer engagement. Start with essential objects and gradually expand to other areas. Leverage your tools: Use reports, dashboards, and tools like Salesforce’s “Clean Your Room! Dashboard” to gamify data-cleaning efforts. Friendly competitions can motivate teams to tackle bad data without feeling overwhelmed. Proactive data management strategies Preventing bad data is just as important as cleaning up existing records. Lizz suggests: Using paths and dynamic forms to streamline data entry. Highlighting key fields on page layouts to emphasize their importance. Integrating email tools like Einstein Activity Capture to ensure accurate, up-to-date information. Customizing user interfaces to make data entry intuitive and error-free. Why data quality matters Clean data isn’t just about fixing reports; it’s about future-proofing your business. “Data is an asset,” Lizz explains. For organizations looking to adopt AI, ensuring that data is accurate, current, and relevant is a crucial first step. Without it, even the most advanced AI tools won’t deliver meaningful results. Get started today Lizz advises admins to start small but think strategically. Build baseline reports to identify problem areas, engage stakeholders to define what good data looks like, and focus on key processes that need improvement. With these steps, you’ll not only prepare your organization for AI but also elevate your role as a Salesforce Admin by demonstrating leadership in data governance. We get into a lot of specifics with Lizz on the podcast, so be sure to take a listen to learn more. And make sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Resources Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are talking with Lizz Hellinga about why clean data is so important for AI. Lizz is a consultant and Salesforce MVP, and before you think, “I can skip this,” it’s probably going to be boring. Let me tell you, this is a fun conversation because you’re going to learn about different types of bad data. One of them is super fun to understand. Also, Lizz shares with us a lot of tips and tools for cleaning up your bad data, and also making things a little bit more easy for your users, so I really enjoy this conversation. But before we get in the episode, can you just be sure that you’re following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or just wherever you get your podcast. That way, you get a new episode every Thursday right on your phone. So with that, let’s get to the conversation with Lizz. So Lizz, welcome back to the podcast. Lizz Hellinga: Thank you, Mike, for inviting me. I am thrilled to be here. Mike: It’s been a while since you’ve been on and a part of the team, but we had Jennifer Lee down at Florida Dreamin’, and she Slacked me, “Oh my God, Mike, you have to talk to Lizz about her Florida Dreamin’ session and Clean Data, and get her on the podcast.” That’s literally word for word what she said. So I listen to my team members when they have good suggestions and wanted to get back on the podcast and talk about clean data and why it’s important. But before we do that, what have you been up to? Lizz Hellinga: Yeah, it’s been a busy time. I’ve been consulting for a couple of years now, and just building that and enjoying working with customers on their Salesforce challenges. Then, I did move to Michigan, so I am enjoying the Michigander lifestyle, which includes winter, which is coming. Mike: Yeah, you’re north of the cold air line. Lizz Hellinga: Exactly, but it’s beautiful. So we’re in Holland. Mike: Yeah, and you get all the seasons. Lizz Hellinga: We do. Mike: I like the seasons. Lizz Hellinga: Yup. Yes. Mike: Yep. I hinted you had a great presentation at Florida Dreamin’ about Clean Data, and especially now with AI, I guess we need clean data. I don’t know, Lizz. Do we need clean data? I mean, we’ve always needed clean data, right? Like I’m supposed to clean my room. Lizz Hellinga: Yes. I mean, we always needed clean data. We always need clean data, but it is now not optional, right? You need to have clean data because with generative AI, it’s table stakes. So if your data’s not ready for generative AI, your business isn’t ready, and I’ve read that amazing quote from a McKinsey report about data and being ready for AI. But I will say, before we get too far into this, I was inspired to discuss data because of a podcast that you all shared, not once, but twice, with Sarah Flamion on generative AI. And listening to that, and I started to think about, “Well, what can I do to help the orgs that I’m involved in be ready for AI?” And doing my research, I came across this McKinsey article that talks about if your data isn’t ready for generative AI, your business isn’t ready, and I thought, “Well, gosh, not all of this is new, right?” Having your data and your clean data approach isn’t something that’s new to Salesforce Admins. It just is becoming more important now, because of the way that data is consumed to create generative AI outputs. Mike: Yeah. I think it was always, “Okay. Well, this report’s wrong, so I need to fix it,” or kind of as issues play whack-a-mole with data, “If that comes up, then we’ll deal with it,” or, “If there’s imports that are going sour, then we’ll kind of deal with it,” but now that we’re on the precipice of having these discussions, I feel like the second discussion besides, “What are we going to use AI for?,” is exactly what you brought up is, “Is it ready? Have you ran a report? Can we even have AI tell us if we’ve got a good enough phone number list?” Lizz Hellinga: Exactly, and so that leads to my first question in the presentation that I shared with the audience was, “What really is bad data? What is poor quality data?” Some of the common ones, duplicate data, inaccurate data that we see, incomplete data, that’s a huge challenge usually, stale data, and my new favorite, hoarded data. So almost having too much data, not going through, and maybe cleaning up, archiving, removing data from your system. Mike: Oh, I feel like that could be the next show on TLC Data Owners. Lizz Hellinga: I have seen where I’ve been in orgs where people will have 600,000 contacts in there and maybe only use about 30,000 at a given time, so … Mike: So is that what you mean by hoarded data? Lizz Hellinga: Yes. Mike: Okay. Lizz Hellinga: Just maintaining or keeping data in there that may not be relevant. Mike: Just afraid to throw it away. Lizz Hellinga: Yeah, just to … Yeah. Mike: I mean, we got it, right? At some point, you paid for a list, or did a trade show, had a fishbowl out there. Lizz Hellinga: Exactly, and then they just never go through to clean it and remove it, and sometimes there’s resistance to doing that. It just depends on the org and the leadership, and that changes at times. Mike: Yeah, or I could see this, I bet there’s no policy for hoarded data … Lizz Hellinga: True. Mike: … to really sit down and like what … Lizz, you do a lot of consulting. You sit down. Well, what is the last time you’ve contacted them, and then setting that as a timeline, and okay, maybe contacts older than that. Now, this is our policy, much in the same way of data retention, you know? Lizz Hellinga: Exactly. And it’s the same type of conversation, and it’s important that as an admin, that you and your stakeholders agree on how you define that data. “How do you retain it? What do you define as poor quality or bad data?,” and you have to work with your stakeholders to do that, but there’s ways that you can start the conversation, because it can feel daunting, and reporting is the best place to start. Mike: Now, as we did, or as you mentioned, the types of bad data with hoarded data, as you would go through and create different applications, would you include maybe some of those policies or procedures in that documentation? Right? I’m thinking if we’re creating maybe one-off delivery records as they would apply to an opportunity, for example, we probably don’t need to keep that for very long, maybe a year or two as part of a data retention policy, but would you include kind of what the definition of hoarded data in your process documentation? Lizz Hellinga: I would. I would, and you have to have a data governance policy, I mean, at least an outline, and you have to start somewhere with it, or else it could get unruly and out of control. I mean, many orgs do have that, where they’re just not as diligent about maintaining it because they’re only working on the records that they’re focused on at that time. Mike: Right. Lizz Hellinga: And it can become pretty easy, and so that’s why as an admin, it is your role to think through these things and build the reports and have the discussions around what this means, and sort of push that rock forward within your company. Mike: Yeah, and I think as we think through the use of AI and cleaning data, anytime you do data cleanup as a topic, whether it’s a blog post or a podcast, I’m sure, or eight or so minutes in, I’d be surprised half the people are listening because the other half are like, “I don’t want to listen to that. I know I got to do.” It’s like almost weight loss. Yes, you need to do it for all of your data, but I would think with AI, you would really want to prioritize the data that you’re going to expose as part of your use with AI, right? Lizz Hellinga: Yes. And I would start with your key processes that you want to use AI to support. So if you’re thinking about your sales process, that’s a big topic that comes up quite a bit. How can sales reps use AI for contacting clients or knowing when to contact clients, and what to contact them about? I would start with by documenting that process and really highlighting, “What are the essential data points within that journey?,” so whether it’s, “What contact information is essential?,” “What account information?,” “What opportunity data will help drive those generative insights?” You can start there and start even just simply building some reports that examines that information. “Do you have the email addresses? Do you have correct roles, and titles, contact? Are you using last activity date?,” things like that, to help you start to see how healthy that data is. So it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You could start with just a few basic objects to get that going. Mike: Yeah. Then, once you kind of have those reports and you figure out the level of uncleanliness that you have, what’s out there for admins to kind of work on and pick away and get that data cleaned up? Lizz Hellinga: There’s a couple of things that you can do starting today. So reports and dashboards are the springboard for it, but you can have fun with it, kind of gamify it, and use … One Salesforce Labs application that I like is called Clean Your Room! Dashboard. That just is a springboard dashboard with components that help you examine the fields that you find important for AI or for your processes. You can use those to start a competition of like, “Who’s going to have the cleanest data?,” and fun things like that. Obviously, you have to work with your stakeholders, but having people focus on updating some of the key fields makes it a lot easier than having them say like, “Oh my gosh, you got to clean up all 1,000 accounts that are in your territory.” Mike: Right. Lizz Hellinga: Nobody wants to do that. So just highlight the things that are most important, and it could be, even if you’re looking at deals this quarter or deals for the six months, opportunities, they’re set to close in the next six months, getting them to at least update things that are in flight will be hugely beneficial. And then, it’s about helping them build those habits. They’ll start to update other things when they have to update those few. Mike: What do you … Because I want to pause on that for a beat here. Anytime I’ve asked salespeople to update stuff it’s, “Well, it’s this quarter, or it’s almost the end of the quarter, or it’s this,” or I mean, a million excuses, right? And I’m sure you’ve ran into it too. I love the idea of gamifying it, and I think that’s something that an admin could really get an executive to help be behind, and they can push out. What is your advice for kind of rolling that out that also helps with scale when you gamify data cleaning in terms of timing that admins could suggest? Lizz Hellinga: There’s a couple of things that you could do. Obviously, the executive support is huge, really talking about the why. This is a journey, and it is going to become a competitive imperative. They have no choice to really … But if they want to take advantage of AI, they have to have updated data, and it will eventually make their roles easier so that they could potentially target more customers more quickly, right? It’s hard to sell that long game sometimes, but gamifying a little bit, getting a Starbucks gift card or some kind of treat even goes a long way. People like to be rewarded even if it’s not something expensive. People like that recognition. Mike: Right. I think we always talk about cleaning data in the sense of, “Well, there’s bad data in there,” but it’s also a little bit like, “How do we prevent shoveling in a snowstorm?,” to use a Midwest term, because we’re Midwesterners here. Lizz Hellinga: Right. Mike: But once you do have everything shoveled, now, how do you prevent more bad data from accumulating? So there’s the proactive or reactive of running reports and fixing stuff, but what do you see as being on the proactive side so that we can start making sure that it’s cleaner data coming in? Lizz Hellinga: Yes, there’s so many tools that admins can use for this, and one of my favorites is Path, so Sales Path of putting those key fields that you deem necessary at front and center as they’re managing their opportunity lifecycle. The highlights panel is another area that you can use on a page layout to highlight key fields, again, that are essential, or I’ve even done this, where I’ve done like a quality of data rating in the highlights panel using flows and formula fields. Dynamic forms can help support the data entry process, as well as screen flows. Then, another thing that is great too is just the email integration. Either using Einstein Activity Capture, or the Outlook, or Google plugin with Salesforce is huge. It makes it a lot easier for people to get the data in and accurate. So thinking more, I guess, putting on your user experience hat when you’re thinking about the requirements for your teams will help you, to your point, that you always say, Salesforce administration by walking around, so sitting with them, thinking about what their user experience is, and figuring out ways within the tool that you can make it easier for them to enter the data. Sometimes it’s just as simple as moving a field up the screen page layout, so above the fold. It could be that simple. Other times, it could be thinking about dynamic forms and something a little bit more sophisticated. Mike: Yeah. I love the idea of SABWA, I just didn’t contextualize it right, because SABWA is really about personalization as opposed to customization, and the difference being scale. Lizz Hellinga: Right. Mike: And what you’re talking about there is also thinking through when you’re working with users to get better implementation, and maybe it is moving a field. Like I recall for a call center, they 100% wanted all of the fields lined up on the left side of the page, which wasn’t hard, right? Lizz Hellinga: No. Mike: In the edit field, you could edit the page layout, because it just didn’t make sense to them to go left, right, left, right, left, right, right? They just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. What was interesting is then you also have to think through, “Were other teams using that?,” and the sales team, it did not work for the sales team. They were used to seeing left, right, left, right, left, right, and so one of the things that we talk about, which is why I’m hung on this, is you get these ideas for personalization, but you can’t confuse them with customization, because there is ways to make it easier for that one particular user that doesn’t affect the productivity of all of your users. Lizz Hellinga: Right. And that’s where page layouts, dynamic forms, all those things can help with that process, so that in using the tools in your admin toolkit, that can help you think about it from almost like a persona-driven approach. Mike: Yeah. I think this is the interesting conversation that most people don’t have as the follow-up to, “Oh, there’s a whole bunch of AI stuff, and how are we using it?” And the second part is, “But are we ready to use it?” It’s almost like the, “Oh, everybody’s having a house party. Let’s have a house party,” and nobody looks around to be like, “Oh, we better clean the house first.” Lizz Hellinga: Right. Make sure everything’s in its right spot. Make sure we have plenty of napkins and cups. Mike: Yeah. Yeah, and that- Lizz Hellinga: It’s true. Mike: Yeah, because I mean, we’re so interested in just like, “Let’s use AI,” and then it’ll fix everything. Lizz Hellinga: Right. It’s all good until something happens that isn’t good, and then they’re like, “Oh, why is this not working the way we intend?” It’s like, “Well, we’ve got to go back and we’ve got to clean these things up.” It’s interesting because it’s a very hot topic, and it... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34851760

What Are the Top AI Use Cases for Modern Marketers with John Wall 01/09/2025

What Are the Top AI Use Cases for Modern Marketers with John Wall Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to John Wall, co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee Podcast. Join us as we chat about how tools like generative AI are reshaping workflows, strategies, and content creation for marketing. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Wall. AI and the future of marketing Most Salesforce Admins need to work hand in hand with marketing to give them the tools they need to do their jobs. As we continue our conversation about Agentforce and the impact agents can have across an organization, I thought it would be great to hear from John Wall about the future of AI and marketing. He co-hosts the great Marketing Over Coffee Podcast, with guests like Simon Sinek, Seth Godin, and Debbie Millman. Most marketers are already using AI for data analysis and insights, with a little help from their admins. However, the game is changing fast with the proliferation of LLMs and the ability to build custom AI agents. How AI will revolutionize marketing personas Recently, we’ve been hearing a lot about how Agentforce can help you manage your documentation or take the load off your customer service reps. So what can admins build for marketers? John brings up the idea of marketing personas. “Right now, that’s four people in a conference room coming up with cute nicknames like Sally Shopper or Wally the Weekend Warrior,” he says. But with AI, you can use its classification and summarization abilities to pore over your customer data and generate personas based on statistics, not spitballing. Where it gets even more interesting is how you can use that information to create customers on demand. John suggests building an AI agent for each marketing persona, which can answer questions as that type of customer to give you insights or plan a new campaign. The human in the loop Just like with any new technology, some businesses will rush to adopt the new shiny tool and mistakes are bound to happen. John emphasizes the importance of “the human in the loop,” which is a key role for Salesforce Admins going forward. AI advancements are probably not going to put you out of a job, but they’ll definitely make your job easier. “The big thing is you have to be curious,” he says, “go play with something and see what you can make it do and what kind of results you can get from it.” There’s so much more great stuff in our conversation with John Wall, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss out. Podcast swag Learn more John’s Podcast: Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full Transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're joined by John Wall, co-host of the long-running Marketing Over Coffee podcast. That's right, we're starting 2025 off on the right foot, because John shares with us insights into the ever evolving landscape of AI in marketing, including how tools like generative AI are reshaping workflows, strategies, and even content creation. I bet admins, you know about this. Now, before we jump into the fascinating discussion that we have with John, I want you to be sure to jump over and press that subscribe or follow button, depending on what kind of app you're using. It's probably on your favorite platform. And then that way you don't miss a single episode, because new ones come out every Thursday and I would hate for you to miss something like this discussion that I'm going to have with host of the ever-popular Marketing Over Coffee podcast, John Wall. Let's get John on the podcast. So, John, welcome to the podcast. John Wall: Mike, it's great to be on the mic with you again. Mike Gerholdt: I know, it's been a while. I feel the last time we recorded was in Boston, 100 years ago. John Wall: Yeah, downtown Boston. I remember we were live on Newbury Street. That was like the heart of all the action. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. We were recording the old style podcast. We had an Edison, it was putting it on a phonograph and some wax tubes. John Wall: That's right. Sitting there with my ear trumpet listening. Mike Gerholdt: Ear trumpet, I love it. For those people, like the two people in the world that don't listen to Marketing Over Coffee, can you give us a brief overview of what you do and what Marketing Over Coffee is? John Wall: Yeah, sure. So, my whole career I worked in marketing and tech, and God, going on what, 16, 17 years ago when podcasting was just done with steam engine and hammers and nails. We created Marketing Over Coffee, with my co-host Christopher Penn. And we've had this ongoing dialogue of just every week, 25 to 30 minutes talking about what's going on in marketing and tech. And just like CRM, this space is so insane and changing every week, there's no shortage of stuff to talk about. But then, and it's also grown up enough that I've been fortunate enough to get a lot of big marketing brains and authors on, like Simon Sinek and Debbie Millman, Seth Godin, folks like that. So yeah, it's really kind of opened up the world because the family doesn't want to hear what I have to say about marketing over Thanksgiving, so I have somewhere to talk about that. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, that could be another, you should rename the podcast that for the holidays, Marketing over Thanksgiving. John Wall: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Just see if anybody notices. John Wall: That glazed overlook when I'm talking about what I do for a living. Mike Gerholdt: So I make ads, I'm like Jon Hamm on Mad Men. No, and I remember the Boston. So much of what admins do I remember, is interface with marketing. And that's why I love having you on because not only as a personal brand, but also as somebody that does a lot of podcasts and content creation, it just overlaps with what admins do. And marketing is such a big facet of any organization now. I mean, you can't sit down and talk sales without, well, we should have the marketing person in here, and they always want 5,000 more requirements than what you started with, but that's why I love having you on. So, let's dive in. I feel like we woke up from the pandemic and AI just was everywhere now. I'd love to know on what the world of AI looks like for marketers now. John Wall: Yeah, I mean, you totally nailed that, and the world has changed yet again. We were kind of finally, things were finally stabilizing a little bit. Platforms that matured, as far as email and text messaging and advertising and things are fairly solid, and now AI has shown up to destroy everything. It's been a little weird though, because our world didn't change as much. We've been working a lot with machine learning to do data analysis for years. So my co-host on the show and partner at Trust Insights, Christopher Penn, had long been using machine learning to measure PR and advertising results. Doing statistical models to prove like, okay, what's actually working in your branding and your advertising? These things that you can't easily measure with clicks. And so that has been an area where we were able to kind of provide some value and insight that nobody else could get. But then really, I don't know, about a year and a half ago when generative AI became the hottest thing going on all fronts for marketing, the amount of interest in that has just exploded. So yeah, we have a bunch of fronts that we're applying the technology and it's just amazing to see the range of how marketers adapt. There's still plenty of marketers that don't want to look at it and have their head in the sand, and all the way up to, we have clients that are like, "Hey, we want to reimagine our entire business because we think it's going to be something completely different in the next five years." So yeah, we spent a lot of time thinking about where this stuff is going to go, and it's amazing how... And literally we have, Christopher works full time on monitoring this space and seeing what's new and what's coming next, because it's just insane when you look at the fact that we've had six major models this year. There's never been a time in tech history where you have six major products show up at once. So, yeah, everything is changing and it's just a challenge to keep track of what's happening this week. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I remember not that long ago, thinking how long in the tooth we've been working in tech, when I heard some statistic of, today we'll create more content than was ever previously created in human history. So now with AI, are we exponentially creating more? Are we creating better content? Is that the converse... I always dig into like, what's that next layer down? Are we really caring about creating better content with AI or are we just creating more content with AI? John Wall: Right. Well, of course, marketers ruin everything, right? Mike Gerholdt: Right. John Wall: This is nothing new. Yeah, there's a whole army of people that are taking their stuff that was pretty crappy and now we have an exponential amount of pretty crappy stuff out there. So yeah, and it's going to be really weird to see how all this goes because it's the classic antivirus defense too. It's, as soon as people are creating exponentially more junk, all of the search engines or AI powered search engines are adding defenses to pull all that stuff back out. So it's just this never ending battle and yeah, the level of content, I don't know, it's so much so that we're going to burn more electricity in the next year than the power of the sun. I mean, it's just insane how this is all changing. Mike Gerholdt: But we'll have better copy for our websites. John Wall: Right, you'll have a better landing page. It's going to convert for you. But then we do see, as with everything, right? There's people that are using the technology to automate the foolishness of the past, we have electronic yellow pages being created. But at the other end, there's people who are using these tools in totally brand new and novel ways to get some insight that they've never had before, or automate things that used to be just insanely difficult to automate, and yeah, go to new places and create advantage. So there are ways to win and yeah, there's going to be a ton of things that we never even expected that will change everything for us. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, the biggest thing before AI, the wave of AI hit, the biggest thing we were dealing with was data lakes and these massive data volumes. And I think even marketers were dealing with that too, because you have people going to their website and they're unauthenticated and we're assigning a profile to them. How do we dig through when you've got millions of impressions on a page? What was that journey of that person? How did they actually get to the pair of shoes that they bought? Now with AI, are we getting smarter at doing that? Is that kind of the data that we're digging into? John Wall: Yeah, absolutely. And so yeah, when you look back, step back and look at the landscape. Generation, we consider that one of only six different options to use AI for to help get you places. And two of them extraction and summarization, that's just what you're talking about. It's like to finally be able to have all of these different data sources all over the place, load them up into a system and have it do the heavy lifting of, okay, find the commonalities between these things. And yet it's just, we had been promising this for decades, this idea that when people in marketing talk about personas, that's just because four people in a conference room came up with cute nicknames and an idea of who these people should be. They're like, oh yeah, Sally Shopper and George Weekend Warrior, or whatever. But now you can get actual summarizations based on the data itself. And you actually know that, okay, we do see that 40% of the buyers look like this, and they have these things in common, and it's all based on statistics, none of it's based on gut. So yeah, those kinds of insights are really interesting. And we've actually been pushing another level. You can go ahead and create these profiles of who these people are, but then use those profiles to train the large language models. So now that you can actually treat that as a customer on demand that you can survey and ask questions to, instead of emailing everybody with every purchase of $0.35 to ask for feedback on what's going on, you just go to the large language model and say, "Hey, here's the next four marketing campaigns. Tell us what you think about those and does this resonate with you?" And you can get similar insight but not cause as much trouble and not have to wait. Mike Gerholdt: You mentioned six, I think you gave us one or two. What were the other four? John Wall: Yeah, so obviously generative AI, you've got generation, we just talked about extraction and summarization. The other three, rewriting, which is just something that can easily raise your productivity, right? If you're somebody who's having to, okay, I wrote this white paper for the construction industry. I want to write about the same kind of stuff for the food service industry. Rewriting is very easy and instant for generative AI to do. Classification is another use case. We see this a lot where people that have multiple products, they don't know how they fit in together, or even if you just have large amounts of data. A good example is for a call center, you've got 30,000 calls a month. To have AI transcribe those and go through and find the 20 features that you should fix to make 10% of your calls go away. That kind of stuff is a huge benefit, huge lift. And then out of the six, yeah, the last is just question answering. You can really get better insight into topics than search engine results by asking AI to not only give you the answer, but explain how it got there and educate you on, what do you need to know to kind of understand the space a little bit more. Mike Gerholdt: And I think we're seeing, I mean, from the Salesforce side, we're showing a lot of use cases and we have a lot of customers that are standing up agents on public facing sites. Are you seeing that more and more as a trend for marketers to work with? I think one of the things, as I say this, one of the stereotypes that most marketing falls into is, how do we drive more sales? But I think a lot of marketers are also, how do we divert service cases as well and drive sales through service? Are you seeing agents on public-facing websites as something marketers are paying attention to for that? John Wall: Yeah. I mean, everybody wants that, right? And unfortunately, we've all seen this cycle. This happens where there's the board meeting and the board is saying, "Hey, we got to get onto this," and so now somebody's like, okay, I need to get me one of these shiny object things. And unfortunately, it's mostly disaster-ville, right? We were seeing these things of people hooking up a chatbot or whatever, and it's starting to just spout off lies and crazy answers and it just becomes a train wreck. So yeah, that is one thing that's going to be huge over the next couple of years. The idea of, okay, yeah, you've got these bots or these agents, but which ones are enterprise-ready? There's a huge difference between something that's been vetted and tested. For most of our clients we're saying, no, you need to have a human in the loop. A great... The use case that you just talked about would be, yeah, have the AI generate the top 2,000 answers for problems that it sees, but then that goes through the product manager for verification to prove that they're all real. You can't go live with that, but yeah, there's definitely going to be a lot of, unfortunately, we're going to see a lot of scary news as people pull the trigger on something that goes awry. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that's kind of like we saw like the, we're not ready for the self-driving cars. We've seen that in San Francisco, but they still have somebody in the passenger seat or in the driver's seat just in case. The human in the loop. John Wall: Right, and that's always been, even you look back in history and it's like, yeah, escalators and elevators. There used to be people that was their job just to make sure that nothing went wrong. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, and of course not to be predictive, but I don't know the last time I rode an elevator where there was a person there to press the buttons for me. John Wall: Right, exactly. And yeah, there are... Well, yeah, it's just so much of that is the media and the way information gets presented to us as news. It's like, yeah, okay, these three automated cars got in some kind of weird accident, but we're not getting the story of all the ridiculous stuff humans did over the past month in cars. That's just not news for us anymore. Mike Gerholdt: Right, contextual. You mentioned at the beginning, sort of the great spectrum of marketers with their head in the sand, all the way to, we want to revolutionize our business. Where do most marketers fall, in terms of thinking with AI, thinking about AI? And where should that be? John Wall: Yeah, that's a great question because it's really, in a lot of ways this is a retooling for everybody. You have to go back and look at all your processes and figure out which ones apply. And because, and you've talked about this in the past, the fact that it's not about AI showing up and it's just like the marketing department's going to get wiped out. What's going to happen is over time, there's going to be three or four marketers that have added AI to a bunch of their workflows, things that they've hated doing, and so they've figured out how to automate them. And those people are going to be exponentially more productive than the folks that are avoiding AI and trying to stay away from it. So yeah, where people should be. The big thing is you have to be curious. It's just like with every other major tech change. Go start playing around with something and see what you can make it do and what kind of results you can get out of it. Because at this stage of it, you're going to find these really crazy things. You're like, oh man, I never thought that I could use that to come up with an intelligent email address predictor. Every sales and marketing person has this where they're like, oh, I have to get in touch with this person and they haven't put their email up on the social networks that I normally follow. And so getting some suggestions to do that kind of stuff. And the other one is, yeah, so much of marketing is combing through spreadsheets and trying to prove results or manage copy and things like that. So much of that stuff can be automated and give you hours back in your day. So yeah, it's a matter of having... Be bold, play around and kind of see what you can break. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think back to, and I've tried to look this up, but I've heard the story of in the late-1800s, I forget who it was. I want to say Thomas Jefferson but that's probably not right, writing a letter to the US patent office saying, "You can shut down because everything that's been invented has been invented." And correlating that to, we can't let cars happen in the world because they'll put wagon wheel manufacturers out of business. And the labor force of wagon wheel manufacturers, it'll be devastating to the economy that all these wagon wheel manufacturers will go out of business. And I think back to, well, they just didn't understand. If you're a wagon wheel manufacturer, you're just really good at making things with wood. And if cars come around, then make things with wood for the car, as opposed to making wagon wheels. And I feel like we're in that age now where people are, if AI comes out, AI's going to take my job. AI can generate an image,... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34775050

2025 Roadmap for Salesforce Admins: AI, Agentforce, and Emerging Trends 01/02/2025

2025 Roadmap for Salesforce Admins: AI, Agentforce, and Emerging Trends Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Joshua Birk, and Kate Lessard from the Admin Evangelist team at Salesforce. Join us as we ask our guests three questions about what Agentforce means for admins, content they want to highlight from 2024 to help you get started with AI in Salesforce, and what they’re looking forward to in 2025. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee, Joshua Birk, and Kate Lessard. What is your Agentforce content highlight of 2024? If you know anything about Jennifer Lee, it’s that she puts out a lot of great content for admins. Between “Automate This” and “How I Solved It”, she also finds time to write some pretty great blog posts. Her highlight for 2024 is her walkthrough on how you can build modular flows, breaking things down into smaller chunks that make it easier for your organization to take advantage of everything Agentforce has to offer. Kate Lessard is the newest member of our team, and she makes a strong case for why you as a Salesforce Admin might be the best-positioned person in your business to become an AI specialist. She gets into all this and more in her intro to Agentforce blog post. Finally, if you’re a regular listener to the pod, you’ve heard some of what Josh Birk has been up to. He’s been digging into the technical side of AI, including LLMs, RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), and why prompt engineering is easier than it sounds. If you want to learn more about RAG, take a listen to his recent episode with Nochum Klein about how he’s using an AI agent to help with information security documentation at Salesforce. What are you looking forward to in 2025? Moving into 2025, Kate is interested in how emerging AI technologies fit into admins’ core responsibilities. In particular, she anticipates that security and the need for AI governance will become increasingly important. Jen, meanwhile, is expanding her video empire with two new series for 2025. The first is about automation and how to build things with an eye toward what will be possible for your business with Agentforce. She’ll also be doing a series about how she’s learning Agentforce, so you can follow along. And if the idea of RAG is getting you excited, Josh has even more in store for you in 2025. It’s going to be very, very doable to build an AI agent to interface with dense documentation and make everything faster and easier for your users. “It’s the end of 2025, and I can’t believe Salesforce Admins _____!” “It’s the end of 2025, and I can’t believe Salesforce Admins found Agentforce so easy to work with,” according to Josh. He thinks you’ll be surprised how simple it is to build your own AI agents, once you get started. You can download a free version of Agentforce right now and jump in with Trailhead. For Kate, “It’s the end of 2025 and I can’t believe Salesforce Admins are creating dynamic experiences this advanced!” She compares Agentforce to what happened when dynamic forms were released. The possibilities for creating customized, dynamic user experiences are incredible with Agentforce. Finally, for Jen, “It’s the end of 2025 and I can’t believe Salesforce Admins can now do things like troubleshoot user management issues faster than ever before!” Agentforce isn’t just about helping your users—there will also be agents that help you, too. There’s so much more in this conversation with our Admin Evangelists about Agentforce and how to get the most out of Salesforce events, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And make sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss out. Podcast swag Learn more Jen’s 2024 blog post: Kate’s 2024 blog post: Kate’s other 2024 blog post: Josh’s 2024 Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Video series: Video series: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're kicking off 2025 with an amazing lineup of guests. So today I have on the Admin Evangelist Team, Jennifer Lee, Kate Lassard, and Josh Burke. We dive into the year ahead looking at topics such as Agentforce, emerging AI technologies, and best practices for Salesforce admins navigating this transformative time. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you listen to, that way you never miss an episode. So let's dive into our chat with Jen, Kate, and Josh. Welcome, everybody, to the podcast. There's a lot of people to introduce, so I'm going to go in reverse order. Jen, let's start off with you. Can you give us a brief introduction and some of the cool content you've created last year at Salesforce? Jen: Sure, absolutely. I am Jen Lee, Lead Admin Evangelist, and you all probably know me as the host of Automate This or How I Solved It on our Salesforce Admins YouTube channel or for reading my mega blog for each release. Some of the things I'm really excited that I created last year was, again, I love Automate This. I love the How I Solved It, bringing in trailblazers who showcase their skills and what they've built in their orgs, and I really enjoyed writing the blog on building modular flows and thinking about really chunking out and building out smaller flows to get ready for your company in moving over to Agentforce. Mike: Nice and got Agentforce in the first minute of the show. Kate, you're our newest member. Let's go with you next. Kate: Hi, everyone. Kate Lassard, also a Lead Admin Evangelist here at Salesforce, and I have been here since August, so still diving in. This past year, I've been really focused on Agentforce and have put together some content including an intro to Agentforce blog post, talking about why admins make great AI specialists, and then also talking about advancing your admin career with dev fundamentals. So you might've seen me on the road at one of the Agentforce tours talking about core responsibilities, and in the new year, keep your eyes open for some new content about how emerging AI technologies fit into those admin core responsibilities. Mike: New stuff in the new year. I like it. And of course, Josh Burke. Josh: Hi, everybody. I think actually I'm technically the oldest member of the team, but that's only by chronological age. I've been on the admin team for, gosh, I think it's a little over a year now, but I've been at Salesforce for coming on 15 years in 2025. All of them in evangelism in one form or another. And a lot of the things I've been trying to write about and post about and blog and video and some of our podcasts is really trying to explain through some of the more technical side of artificial intelligence. We have all of these terms. We've got things like LLMs, we've got RAGs, we've got vector databases, and honestly, frequently the concepts are far more simple than the tech terms actually seem to suggest. I'm on record for saying I don't like the term prompt engineering, for instance, because it sounds like you need some kind of union guy to come over and rewire your computer in order to, but is basically just talking to a conversational UI in the first place. So definitely see more of that in the near future, especially as our Agentforce features keep expanding into things like RAG and being able to pull in your knowledge libraries and your documentations and actually have a conversation with them. Mike: Awesome. Well, and of course anytime somebody goes to Trailhead, Josh, they're using something you invented. Josh: I get a penny every time. Mike: Oh, a penny. Josh: A whole penny. Mike: A whole penny. That's before taxes. Okay. Well even in 2025. So speaking of which, we would be like, if you're listening to this the day it comes out, you're in the second day of paying for a gym membership that you think you're going to use for the rest of the month, bet you're probably not going to make it to the 15th, most of us anyway. Or eating vegetables. That's usually the two things. At least those were my horribly tried out New Year's resolutions. But I'm going to start off with Jen. So Jen, it's 2025. We've got 363 days ahead of us as Salesforce admins. What are you, as of now, going to start focusing on? Jen: Well, of course, Agentforce. Who isn't? I am very excited for two video series that I'm working on and hoping to put out soon, and this will focus around one will focus around automation and thinking ahead about how that factors into Agentforce and the strategy that you should think about and work through in bringing that along with your company. So that's going to be, I think about 10 to 12 episodes. We're looking to do monthly and then we'll be going through, and just like you all are learning Agentforce, I'm learning Agentforce, so I'm going to take you on my journey of how I'm working through various pieces. So really excited to put that type of video content out. Mike: Yeah, we're excited to see it. Kate, similar question, but a little bit different. You were most recently in the seat as an admin. What are some things you should be thinking of as a Salesforce admin in January that would help set you up for success for the rest of the year? Kate: That is a great question. With all the advancements in AI and with, as I said, admins being the ideal candidates at their organizations to become their internal AI specialists due to their unique understanding of business and user needs combined with their declarative Salesforce skillset, I'm going to be paying attention to new ways of managing admin responsibilities we already have in place. So one that is top of mind for me is security. New technology like Agentforce brings advanced value to admins, but it also brings new security concerns and the need for AI governance, so I have my eyes on the innovative ways that our admin community will continue to evolve in their roles while they're addressing these emerging technologies. Mike: Yeah, that's good. Josh, you probably work on some of the most advanced stuff, and half of the words that you said in your previous answer I didn't understand. Are there things that you're looking ahead at 2025 to understand that you weren't on your roadmap for 2024? Josh: Yeah. Well, not to repeat myself too much, but it's been an interesting journey with our friend RAG, which is a Retrieval Augmented Generation, which is a very fancy way of saying that the AI models can absorb information that was not part of their original training, their original model. And typically this is going to be in the form of things like PDFs and documents and things like that. And the reason why I think it's an interesting journey is when we first started talking about RAG here internally at Salesforce, it was actually more about how our models were going to start getting trained on enterprise data. So we have all of this wonderful custom metadata, and it tells the models of what your custom objects look like, what your custom fields look like, and so they can consume that using RAG in a very nice and flexible way, and you don't have to rebuild an entire LLM for it. We didn't talk about it much back then because that was behind the scenes, under the covers. This is how the engine is running kind of thing. Now it's actually turning into a very common use case where people are putting in 500 page documents. Think about that mega blog that Jen was talking about. Think about having release notes available to you through a conversational UI kind of thing, so it's something that's fastly growing. And when it comes to those like, oh, what's that killer use case that we could get in to have Agentforce really do good things for our company, RAG is turning in one of those big solutions. Mike: And it's another acronym for us to learn. Josh: Right. Mike: Let's pivot. We do a lot of things as events at Salesforce, and I know our admins, I always try to make it to a lot of events, but you can't make it to them all, right? FOMO is a thing. As you're planning your year, and Kate, I'll start off with you just to mix up the questions a little bit. How would you, as a Salesforce admin for 2025, look at events and what you could or could not go to? And Katie, bar the door. There's no restrictions. Kate: Oh my goodness. Well, I would love to go to all of them. FOMO is real, but not a possibility. I think it's really about prioritizing what you want to learn. So at the beginning of every year, I always try to think about what are my learning goals? What do I want to come out of this year? And whether it's a specific certification or something like learning more about Agentforce and AI governance and security, to go back to my last answer. And then finding the events that are in alignment with that. So obviously things like TDX and Dreamforce are going to be great options because there's going to be a huge amount of content, but the community conferences are also fantastic, and figuring out which ones thematically match your learning goals is really the way that I like to approach events and always maybe trying to fit in a fun new destination like Irish Dreaming this year. So if you've never been to Ireland, maybe that's a good one to add to your event bucket list. Mike: Wow, budget. Budget. Katie, bar. Kate: I didn't say my event bucket list. Mike: Yeah. No, that's cool. I mean, I love all of those Dreaming events. And Jen, to pivot to you, you speak at a lot of the Dreaming events. What are some of the things that, as an admin, you looked for and got out of going to some of these community-run conferences? Jen: It's a different vibe from attending Salesforce events like TDX and Dreamforce, it's more low-key, but you're actually learning from the practitioner. So it's beyond the things that Salesforce is focusing on, but getting those really best practices and things like that from the people on the ground who are doing the thing that you're doing. And that's what really excites me about going to community events because you're able to learn from your peers and talk to them and ask questions. There might be something that you're working on that you ran into roadblock, but then you attend a session and then that opened your eyes and gave you ideas and inspired you to go back and try different things, so that's why I love going to community events and just seeing all the people in the community. Mike: And the time in between sessions is usually the most fun because it's when you connect with everybody. Jen: Exactly. Mike: I love that. Josh, I'm not going to ask you to pick between your two favorite children of TDX and Salesforce, but I know you've been a part of both and building activations for both. I think very real in the minds of Salesforce admins is how do I justify going to one or both? What are some of the considerations that you would give admins as advice for planning their travel to one or both of those this year? Josh: Yeah. Well, I think it's important to point out that we've kind of acknowledged TDX's role as more of a builder-centric conference, something that's really about enablement, and it's about knowledge, and it's about learning, and it's really about upscaling your career and your skill set. And so I think that's one justification if you're trying to convince your boss that you really need to go to both is that one's a really good learning experience, and the other one is a really good networking experience. Not that you're not going to learn from Dreamforce, not that you're not going to get the good sessions and the good breakouts and all of that, but it is definitely, we are kind of trying to make TDX a little bit more of its own thing on the map as opposed to just kind of a companion event to Dreamforce itself. And the advice I always give people is prepare, prepare, prepare. It's just like go to agenda builder, make sure you know which sessions ahead of time that you're really going to get the most bang for your buck out of. And always that constant reminder, if breakouts don't have repeats, you might want to show up early because if that's the session that you convinced your boss to send you on the plane for, make sure that you get a seat. So yeah, no, very much looking forward to them this year. Also looking forward to the community events. I'll echo what Jen said. So I used to joke, I'm not really a developer, I just play one on TV. I guess I'm not really a developer, but I just play one on TV. But it's like we need to hear from you. You're the people on the front lines. You're the people who are actually putting these use cases together. You're going to be the people finding the weird little niche things about these features that maybe when we kick the tires of them, we didn't consider it. So it's a great way to get that wonderful feedback loop kind of closed in. Mike: Yeah, no, I hear you. Plus going to TDX means sometimes you can eat at the restaurants around Moscone Center, right? There's some really good ones there. Always food. This podcast always has food, food and time travel, which is what we're going to do. So last question, and this is for everybody, and now everybody's sweating like, "Oh God, don't call on me first." Okay, Mike takes an hour and a half to ask a question. You have plenty of time. You can read War and Peace in the time it takes for me to ask a question, but we often time travel on the podcast. So we're going to fast-forward. It's now the end of December 2025. You go back and listen to this podcast, and Josh, I'm going to start with you because I didn't start with you on any of the questions. You have to complete this sentence. It's the end of 2025, and I can't believe Salesforce admins blank. Josh: Can't believe Salesforce admins found Agentforce so easy to work with. And I can kind of say that safely because it's something I've seen on the road a lot, and it's part of our job is to make it like when you say, "I'm going to go develop an artificial intelligence custom agent." It sounds like something that you better put on your scholarly hat and really dig in deep. What we're finding is it's just really not that hard. So what I'm hoping is that as we do these enablement workshops and as we get the Trailhead Playgrounds, and people can go in and kick the tires, and they just want to give that a shout-out that that's here in the present, not just in the future, that you can go get a free version of this, and you can go to Trailhead, and you can start learning these things now. And I remember back when Lightning One components hit, and everybody's like, "Oh, what do we do?" It's like, "What do we do about LWC?" It's like, well, don't panic, but now is the time to learn it. Now is the time. And one of the things I've said many times in my keynotes is like, now is the time to determine your relationship with AI. It's your time to figure out what's going to make you more efficient, what's going to make you more productive, what's going to make your job happier. Mike: Okay, well, that was a great answer. Kate, you have to follow Frank Sinatra. Kate: Oh my gosh. Mike: So it's the end of 2025, and I can't believe Salesforce admins. Kate: Are creating dynamic user experiences this advanced. I think that a few years ago when Salesforce announced dynamic forms, that was such a game changer for admins allowing us to create more customized dynamic user experiences right on those record pages for our users. And with Agentforce and Prompt Builder, that adds completely new functionality that admins can leverage to really create those dynamic experiences for their users, for their customers. And I think we're going to see not only a resurgence of creating those dynamic user experiences, but now we have even more capability to do so, so I can't wait to see how advanced and how exciting those experiences are. Mike: Yeah, a hackathon... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34680770

How Agentforce Transforms Customer Interactions at Salesforce 12/19/2024

How Agentforce Transforms Customer Interactions at Salesforce Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Nochum Klein, Director of Information Security at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how Agentforce can make customer interactions and interacting with your organization’s documentation much, much easier. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nochum Klein. A rabbi, a mainframe programmer, and a data security expert… Nachum might have one of the most interesting paths to the Salesforce ecosystem of any guest we’ve had on the pod. Before he ended up as Director of Information Security at Salesforce, he originally trained as a rabbi. However, after he graduated, he realized that it wasn’t for him. Instead, Nochum wanted to get into computers. By day, he was a coupon broker, buying and selling frequent flyer miles. By night, he went to school to learn mainframe programming in COBOL. Eventually, he got into mainframe integration and parlayed that into a career at Salesforce. How Agentforce can help you manage your documentation Salesforce is SOC 2 compliant, which means that Nochum’s team gets audited twice a year. As a part of the process, they have to prepare pages and pages of PDF documentation about their security measures. And while this information is also handy for fielding customer questions, it’s not exactly the most user friendly way to keep track of everything. What the Security team used to do is take the information in their PDF documentation and compile a response database. Essentially, it’s a list of questions and their answers. But that means you needed someone to update the answers every time something changes, and things at Salesforce change fast. With Agentforce, they’ve been able to take their documentation PDFs and break them down into a vector database, making it legible for AI. That means they can chat with an agent to get the most complete, up-to-date answer to a customer’s question in moments. For Nochum, it means he can spend less time digging through PDFs to make sure his language is correct and more time making sure his customers have the answers they’re looking for. Building AI agents you can rely on None of this would be possible without the confidence that the agent they’ve built is only pulling from the correct information. That comes from thorough testing, and thinking about edge cases where you might be able to get it to give you the wrong answer. For Nochum, building an agent isn’t just about what you want it to do, it’s about being explicit about what don’t want it to do. There’s so much more great information in our conversation with Nochum about building agents and how to think about security with Agentforce, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss out. Podcast swag Learn more Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full Transcript Josh Birk: Greetings, admins. It's your guest host, Josh Birk here today. Today, I'm gonna bring Nochum Klein to the mic. He's the director of security here at Salesforce and he has found a transformative experience with agents, shall we say. Uh, we're gonna talk about use cases, we're gonna talk about building agents, we're gonna talk about, uh, security around agents and, um, I hope you have a lot of fun listening to that. So let's go to the tape. All right, today on the show, we welcome Nochum Klein. Um, am I saying your name correctly? Nochum Klein: Yes, you are. That's perfect. Josh Birk: Alright. Uh, we are gonna be talking about agents and building agents and maybe even a little bit about security around agents, but first of all, Nochum, welcome to the show. Nochum Klein: Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. Josh Birk: Let's, uh, let's talk a little bit about your early years. Uh, what did you go to college for? Nochum Klein: I became a rabbi. Josh Birk: Ah. (laughs) Nochum Klein: So I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household, and so throughout my years of school, I never went to public school, I went to the Jewish religious school system, which prepares you for one thing and one thing only. Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: (laughs) So I finished and, uh, I did my thing and became a rabbi and I said, "No." Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: "I don't wanna do this." Josh Birk: (laughs) So, so you're saying that, uh, you didn't have access to a lot of computer labs right out of the gate? Nochum Klein: No, uh, i- it's funny you say that, because as a child, we were really poor. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: Uh, so, yeah, I had no access to that. And we had, I remember as a kid, and I'm gonna age myself- Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: For those who can't see me, I've got kind of salt and pepper beard with more salt than pepper at this point. Uh, so as a kid, I would walk past the Radio Shack and Radio Shack had just come out with a PC, uh, and ... Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: ... in those days, there were no hard drives they were using. We also don't have these days, which are tape recorders with cassette tapes. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: Uh, and so I would go and just, and they were very nice to me. They would just let me go in, and that, in those days, the language du jour was basic. Josh Birk: Uh-huh. Nochum Klein: And I would go and just play on the computers and it just really excited me and interested me. Josh Birk: Interesting. Nochum Klein: And so once I determined that being a rabbi wasn't what I wanted to do, computers was, was always something that, that really grabbed me. Josh Birk: Nice. Uh, first of all, I'm with you brother, (laughs) uh, basic was also my first language, which, which almost kept me from being a programmer because, uh, I was, I was pulling it out of the back of P, like computer-led magazines, right? And it's like, if you put all of these lines of random text in, you'll get this cool 3D game and all I wanted was the 3D game, right? And I didn't know what a syntax error was and I didn't care what a syntax error was. I just wanted my game to work. And so I found that my first experience is trying to get code work, just wildly frustrating and, and actually took part of a college education for me to realize, "Oh, actually, the s- stuff's not (laughs) as hard as I thought it was." Nochum Klein: Yeah, yeah. No, I've definitely also had to unlearn a lot of things along the way that I perceived were one way. Yes. Josh Birk: Yes. So, so tell me a little bit more about that transition. How did you, how did you land your first computer job? Nochum Klein: So that's interesting. So I didn't go directly from rabbi to computers because I needed to learn about computers in between while I was doing something that would actually make me money, so I could put food on the table. Josh Birk: Right. Nochum Klein: So I ended up being a coupon broker, which is someone who works with frequent flyers, who fly a lot and they have more mileage than they can possibly ever use. Josh Birk: Right. Nochum Klein: And so I would essentially, and this wasn't my business, I was just working for somebody, but we would essentially buy the miles off somebody, say for example, uh, American Airlines was with British Airways. They, British Airways at that time had the Concorde with three-hour flights from New York to London. Uh, so you could get two of those tickets for, at the time, each ticket would normally cost on the market about $7,000. American Airlines had a, an award for 1,000, 175,000 miles for two tickets. We would turn around and sell the tickets for essentially a penny, uh, or we would buy the tickets for a penny a mile. Uh, so it's essentially 1,750, sell it for say $3,000 a mile, a ticket. Josh Birk: Uh-huh. Nochum Klein: So everybody's making off of it. The airlines weren't particularly happy. Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: Uh, but I got, I actually went to Concorde. I did a lot of traveling. That was really great. Josh Birk: Nice. Nochum Klein: So while I was doing that, I was going to school at night to learn computers, which at that time was the mainframe. Josh Birk: Uh-huh. Nochum Klein: So I learned COBOL. Josh Birk: And hey, once you learn COBOL, you have a job for life. I mean- (laughs) Nochum Klein: Especially yes, 'cause you can't find COBOL programmers these days. Josh Birk: No, nope. And it will, it will be the last language (laughs) that we will probably ever end up using. Uh, so then how did you get involved with Salesforce? Nochum Klein: So, uh, it's, so here's what happened. I felt that being on the mainframe would eventually make me a dinosaur ... Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: ... uh, so, uh, but the challenge is, once you reach a certain level in anything kind of changing gears brings you back to square one in terms of salary. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: So what I did was I decided to work on integration. Mainframes, you know, as I indicated earlier, a bit of an island ... Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: ... uh, but companies need ways to integrate their mainframes with other places. Uh, so I was working with ... I'm in, I'm based in New York, so I was working with broker dealers, uh, you know, the large financial institutions and they had a need to work with their banks, uh, because many of their customers would be wiring money in or out. And many of these broker dealers take overnight loans. So they needed to know earlier in the day how much money they would need to take for overnight loans because the price of an overnight loan and interest is lower the earlier in the day that you need. It's supply and demand. Josh Birk: Right, right. Nochum Klein: So it was a lot of swift conversations in terms of banking messages, uh, between various banks and the treasury department of the financial institution. And that got me into integrating mainframe to other platforms, which then got me to working for an integration company, uh, at the time, uh, which was TIBCO Software, which later as MuleSoft came out, uh, was a, a competitor to MuleSoft. Josh Birk: Okay. Nochum Klein: Uh, so I spent a good amount of time doing integration, and at one point, said, "Okay, I've done enough of that. I, I wanna do something different." Uh, somebody I worked with at TIBCO had moved to Salesforce, introduced me to his manager and that's how I joined. Josh Birk: Got it. What was, what was your first role at Salesforce? Nochum Klein: My first role at Salesforce was platform. Since platform and integration are very kind of fundamental foundation-y ... Josh Birk: Uh-huh. Nochum Klein: ... kind of pieces. So I joined as a platform solution engineer ... Josh Birk: Got it. Nochum Klein: ... pre-sales technology. Josh Birk: Nice, nice. And how would you describe your current job? Nochum Klein: So my current job is very different. Now, I'm in the security team at Salesforce, so I report up to our chief trust officer, Brad Arkin. And in my role, I'm still very customer-facing. Josh Birk: Mm-hmm. Nochum Klein: So that part of me hasn't changed. And now what I do is I work with customers and help them understand the security controls that are inherent in how S- Salesforce delivers our services and capabilities. Josh Birk: Yes, yes. I was, I was briefly in data security, uh, for a, uh, it's on my LinkedIn. I don't, I don't know why I'm always shy about saying State Farm. I think they trained me that way, uh, and I was in data security for long enough for me to realize I probably should not be in data security. (laughs) Then I fled back to the world of HTML and JavaScript. Um, alright, well, today's topic, we're gonna be talking about agents and Agentforce. What was, what was your first interaction ... Actually, I guess l- let me take this one step back because this is kind of like the evolution we're all going through right now where, you know, AI was this thing under a scientist's rug somewhere and now it's like in, in everybody's face. What was your first interaction with AI itself? Nochum Klein: So at some point Salesforce has had acquired, uh, some companies that did AI. It wasn't anything with large language models. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: Uh, it was more the predictive AI. Uh, we had some visual tools as well. For example, uh, one demo that, that actually a colleague of mine, Shane McLaughlin put together was hard hats. Uh, you know, so working with on construction sites ... Josh Birk: Uh-huh. Nochum Klein: ... you have to wear a hard hat. So you have some camera taking pictures of everybody who comes in, "This person's wearing a hard hat, this person is not," and eventually, come to figure out and be able to say with a good degree of, uh, certainty, "This person isn't wearing a, a hard hat. Maybe you should stop them." Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: Uh, so that was my first look at AI and that was ... Uh, we weren't dreaming of being able to talk to AI ... Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: ... and get results back. Josh Birk: You're right, right, because like, because I remember those days, uh, that's a far more better enterprise solution than the, uh, bear or not bear, uh, demo that ... Nochum Klein: (laughs) Josh Birk: ... (laughs) I put together, but try to identify bear as humans and humans in bear suits. Uh, no, no practical (laughs) s- solution for that I think. Uh, but it was, because at that time, we were talking about models, but we were talking about models like how much training data, how many, how many imagery can you throw. Uh, it's, it's formally noticed [inaudible 00:11:18]. And then, and then at kind of off the side, right, there was the birth of Alexa and natural language processing. But even, even that, as we all know, I mean it's the classic joke, right, that this, that the, the processing abilities and the human-like c- capacities of things like Alexa and Siri, they're just not there, right? They're, they're, they sound nice, but they're, but just frequently will just get things wrong and they don't hear you correctly or they don't know very specifically how to have a conversation and, and that's, and then we've talked a lot about like conversational UI, "Why, why is a conversational UI transformative, etcetera, etcetera?" Uh, what was your first interaction using, using today's platform using Agentforce? Nochum Klein: So it's funny 'cause you talked about Siri and my, my family knows if there's a family emergency, I'm the first person not to reach out to because ... Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: ... I'm, I'm totally disconnected from my phone and I'll, I'll check like WhatsApp maybe once a day and, and kind of respond to things. Josh Birk: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Nochum Klein: So with Siri- Josh Birk: Y- you and my wife would get together very easily. Nochum Klein: (laughs) Josh Birk: You could write letters to each other. I, I understand. Sorry, sorry, go on, go on. Nochum Klein: Yeah, except it would be very stilted because it would take a week between ... Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: ... each interaction. So for me, it was actually, when people on my team who know a lot more about AI than I do, started talking about ChatGPT and what it could do. And, you know, initially, you know, I got my day job, so I didn't ... You know, it's interesting and all that, but it wasn't really relevant to me at the time until all of a sudden I started seeing the things that ChatGPT could do and I actually started playing with it. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: And my, my jaw dropped and, and, you know, I've been, I haven't been the same person ever since. Josh Birk: (laughs) Yeah, and I, and I think you, you fell into the rabbit hole that I, I tempt people into all the time. Uh, p- people are like, "Well, how do I get started with it?" and I'm like, "Go find one of the ones that's free. It doesn't matter. And just go, just go talk to it. Like the first thing you need to do is just realize the, get that feeling of how it's different. Like, like ask it to tell you a dad joke, right? Like, like what ... They're so good at dad jokes." And then, uh, the other one I recommend to a lot of people is ask, to play 20 Questions with it because playing 20 Questions with an AI that's trying to guess as a random object that you're thinking of almost reaches creepy, right? Because again ... Nochum Klein: Yeah. Josh Birk: ... they're, they're very good at it, but it also is a really good demonstration of how, what a conversational UI can do versus almost any other kind of UI. Uh, what have, what's been your experience like with, with Agentforce itself? Nochum Klein: For me, Agentforce has been transformative ... Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: ... particularly in my current role. So in my role, you know, as I stated, I'm still customer-facing, so answering customer questions about how we do security inside of Salesforce. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: So we've got so much documentation and I think part of the problem is, in a sense, too much documentation or too much information becomes makes it challenging to essentially find the information you need at the time that you need it. Josh Birk: Mm-hmm. Nochum Klein: And what has been transformative really for me in my job on a day-to-day basis is one of the things that we've done, is we've taken all of these compliance documents. Salesforce gets audited twice a year for various, uh, you know, we call it SOC2 reports ... Josh Birk: Uh-huh. Nochum Klein: ... which are essentially we say, "These are the various security controls we have and this is how we meet them," and the auditor comes in and reviews everything and signs off. So now we've got all these PDF documents that really are rich source of information about how Salesforce does security ... Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: ... and how cool would it be if we could just take these documents and make it available to Agentforce ... Josh Birk: Mm-hmm. Nochum Klein: ... and now be able to ask Agentforce questions and be able to then get answers in a much more reasonable timeframe. And there's some history here. Before we had Agentforce, what we had was database of, of answers, so a response database. So, you know, standard question is, "How do you encrypt data?" Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: So we have an answer for that. So now we've got these thousands of responses, and the problem particularly here at Salesforce is we move at such a rapid velocity ... Josh Birk: Yes. (laughs) Nochum Klein: ... that now our answers, you know, over a very short period of time are no longer applicable. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: And nobody wants to go and review these answers. Now you've got answers which are purely absolutely wrong inside of the database and the challenge is how do we maintain that. It's imp, it's impossible. Josh Birk: Right. Nochum Klein: So what we've done now is we've taken all these compliance documents and put them inside of a data cloud, and using data cloud, you have this concept of retrieval augmented generation, which is a long term, that just simply means I have the ability to take a PDF file, break it up into chunks and now I can take each of those chunks and put it in a place, we call it a vector database, which is just a way of making it available so that an AI model can easily and efficiently access it. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: Because if you think about it, when I ask a question, you know, of that where the answer is in a PDF, PDF is 500 pages, the answer is on page 23, paragraph five, having these chunks now allows the model to efficiently just zap into paragraph five ... Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: ... find the answer and give it to me. And so now I've got all these compliance documents, I don't even need to read them anymore, although I should. Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: And, uh, and now because the agent is really responding in the context of the documents that I fed it, I also have a good degree of comfort that it's not just making up answers... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34503995

How Agentforce Is Changing the Career Landscape 12/12/2024

How Agentforce Is Changing the Career Landscape Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Megan Tuano, Sr. Business Analyst at Accenture Federal Services and an amazing YouTube content creator. Join us as we chat about navigating career transitions in tech, the power of AI, and making your mark in the Salesforce ecosystem. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Megan Tuano. Overcoming barriers to a career in tech Megan got her start working in college admissions for a data science program at UC Berkeley. “A lot of the students I talked to were scared about breaking into tech because they didn’t come from a traditional tech background,” she says. After seeing what her students were able to accomplish in tech, Megan got curious about what she could do with her career. She was already using Salesforce to get people through the admissions process, so she started looking into how to get certified. There’s this idea that you can’t work in tech if you don’t need to know how to code, but there are so many roles out there where that’s not important. You can be a business analyst, a product manager, a project manager, or even a Salesforce Admin. How Megan uses AI in Salesforce consulting One question that I always get is how to prioritize Salesforce certifications. For Megan, that comes down to setting clear goals for your career. What roles are you building towards, and what do you need to stand out? Megan’s found that AI certifications and knowing how to use AI to help you with your work have been a difference-maker for her career. She likes to ask ChatGPT about other scenarios her solution could apply to. The AI has had conversations with many other people about similar problems, so she’s bringing all of that knowledge into her solutioning process. Why soft skills matter for Salesforce Admins Megan highlights how important soft skills are for Salesforce Admins. We’ve all sat in a boring meeting, or a presentation where the speaker didn’t seem to care. She always looks for ways to spice up her presentations with visuals and humor. Most importantly, you need to have passion for what you’re doing with the platform and what it can do for your users. Passion is infectious. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don’t understand a business process. There’s often some fear that creeps up that asking too many questions will you seem incompetent or unqualified. But consider the opposite: asking questions shows that you care, that you’re thorough, and that you’re trying to find the absolute best solution for the business. There’s a lot more great stuff in my conversation with Megan about shaping your career in tech, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Learn more Megan’s article on Salesforce Ben: Trailhead: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admin's Podcast, we're talking to Megan about navigating career transitions in tech, the power of AI, and making your mark in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, Megan is a senior business analyst team leader, and let me tell you, a prolific YouTube content creator with a knack for turning really complex concepts into engaging lessons. But before we dive into this insightful conversation, make sure you're following the Salesforce Admin's podcast on your favorite platform. I don't know which one that is, but I bet you have yours. And if you do that, you're never going to miss an episode because it's just going to show up every Thursday morning. All right, enough of the promo. Let's get to our conversation with Megan. So Megan, welcome to the podcast. Megan: Hey, I'm happy to be here. Mike: Well, I came across your YouTube channel. We did a military... What was the official name of that? Was it a happy hour that we did? Megan: It was the military trailblazer office hours. Mike: Office hours. I keep calling everything happy hour, maybe it's wishful thinking. Megan: It was happy. Mike: It was happy hours, office hours, but it was fun doing that with you. Jennifer Lee was on, there was quite a few people on. Warren Walters, former podcast host. It was like a roundup, and I was like, "Wait a minute. Megan hasn't been on the podcast, so it's not a true family reunion, vet force, happy hour unless I had Megan on the podcast." So I had to have you on the podcast to talk about career and life, your YouTube channel and all of AI and Agent Force that's coming in everywhere in the Salesforce ecosystem. So let's get started there. How did you get started in the Salesforce world? Megan: Yeah, so taking me back. So basically I was actually working for UC, Berkeley at the time. I was an admission's counselor slash career counselor. I was helping a lot of students at the time really figure out if they wanted to start the data science program that I was a part of. And this is when data science was really hot. This was the time where a lot of students that were trying to figure out, "I love data, I love storytelling, but how do I take my non-technical background and actually apply it into the tech world?" Because a lot of the times I would speak to students and they were kind of scared about breaking into the tech because they didn't come from that "traditional tech background." But when data science emerged, it was a challenge for me, but also them to figure out where can we put this person who may have been an architect I worked with that designed the 9/11 memorial, or I was working with the 60-year-old that developed a police camera. So these really cool people with non-technical backgrounds, I was figuring out how to get them to the data science space. So with working with UC, Berkeley at that time, with the admission's counselor title that I had, we were actually using Salesforce at the time, and it was totally new to me. I was like, "This is a great way to be able to track my students." Once they submit that they're interested in the program, they would come to me, we would funnel them, get them through the essentially, I say sales process, because that's kind of what it was. We're kind of getting them to enroll in the program. But that was my first real introduction to Salesforce and I loved it. I was kind of like that admission's counselor that was making all these data charts like, "Hey, wait, my students said that this could be better on the page. Let's take this to the marketing team, or they said that this course could be beneficial for their career. Let's take it to the professors." And I would get all these reports together and I was kind of like, "Okay, well what else can I do?" And I was very fortunate because at the time my uncle actually worked at Capgemini, and he was probably in the ecosystem for about 15 years at that time. But he was like, "Look, you're working with Salesforce, did you know you could get certified?" I was like, "No way. Stop." I said, "Stop. I did not know that." I was just trying to figure out a way to break into tech myself because of working with my students. I was like, "This is super inspirational." They're doing things that I never imagined. So the same fear that they had about breaking into tech, I had that too. And I didn't come from a background that was computer science or technical. My background was international affairs. I wanted to travel the world and figure out something. But yeah, no, I got certified. Took about a year and a half between early mornings, late nights, and finally broke in. It was a challenge, but it was very, very worth it now looking back. Mike: It's crazy, I was literally just looking at the Trailblazer community today, and I saw a few people asking questions like they were a new developer, they were a new admin, and they really wanted to get in Salesforce and what should they learn? And then I hear you say, "Well, I don't have this tech background." I wonder why tech has this kind of, I don't know, ominous sort of theory or aura around it of, "Well, if you're not in tech, you're not getting in tech." But yet you look around and I mean before we started recording, we're talking about YouTube and some of the easy click to configure... ChatGPT and some of the AI stuff, it couldn't be any easier. You literally just ask it a question. But the perception... That's the word I was looking for, the perception of getting into tech is still this mountain that you have to climb. Megan: I think it really is. And I think kind of going back to UC, Berkeley, I was just invited to speak with some of the students and I would probably say they're about 19, 18, 20 years old. And a lot of them are coming from their undergrads where it's sociology or again, mirroring business. And I think a lot of them, especially being in the Silicon Valley area, they oftentimes look at companies that are the fan companies. You have Google, Meta, all these companies, and usually what they're being fed is YouTube videos. What do you work for? What are your job titles? And you'll hear a lot of engineers, developers, coding, and I think that gets ingrained in a lot of people's mind when they're not surrounded by the different positions that you can have. And that was one of the goals that I had when speaking to the students. It's like, "Look, I do not code. I can dabble but not code." And it was just about opening their eyes to, you can be a business analyst, you can be a product manager, you can be product owner, project manager. There's so many cool things that you can do in the ecosystem within the Salesforce world and really expand yourself out there. I think it's just about knowing the differences in roles and the possibilities, and it's listening to podcasts like this where you can really discover things and put your foot into finding maybe I want to do a PM job or BA role and just trying it out. I've done probably three different roles in the five years of Salesforce that I've been in here. And without dabbling, I couldn't have found that. But without podcasts like this, I don't even know if I would've been able to go into the BA role. So I've definitely seen what you're talking about. Mike: Yeah, what... I'm looking at your site and it's launching my small business and a week in life Salesforce consultant. I'm curious... Well, one of the videos was two years ago. Two years ago, we really didn't have much AI in our world. We thought we did, let's be honest, even Salesforce had Einstein, but it wasn't a conversational UI, it wasn't a learning model, it was a predictive model. And just to be nerdy, there's differences between the two of those. To say in my nerdy voice, and I've had people that have had to tell me the difference. "I don't understand the difference." Well, one kind of predicts the future based on the data you've given it and the other is learning and giving you an outcome. How has your day-to-day as a consultant and with some of the businesses you've worked with changed now that you have AI in it? Megan: Well, it's fantastic. Well, I actually used to be an expert offer for Salesforce Ben for about two years, and a lot of it was helping new consultants and new people in the tech space on how to use AI. One of the first articles I did was based off a scenario where I was given a task as a consultant. And I have found that while using AI, I can kind of bounce ideas or conversations that I've had with my clients. Let's say they give us a survey and they want to have a rating system through there and they want to have automations if the survey comes out as not so well, and maybe the agent could have improved. Well that's great, but I think that AI and using things like ChatGPT and giving them the prompts and the scenarios and continuing to build off that has really elevated my thinking skills, but also helped me prompt to ask better questions, but also take all of the stuff that I applied on ChatGPT and take that back to the client. So now, not only do I look more creative, but I have more suggestions and solutions. You can see them really get excited. Sometimes I'm limited to my experiences and my consulting jobs and stuff that I've had, but ChatGPT just kind of opens up an AI, opens up a different world where it's taken prompts from every other consultant, let's say, that's asked the same thing, and now it's spitting back different scenarios where I can take my client through. Maybe I didn't think about, well, what happens to the ratings and the survey that are conducted as well surveys, what do you want to do? How do you want to reward the agent? Because I think that's really important. And you can tell that the customer gets so happy, they're like, "Oh, I didn't think about that." "Well, no problem, ChatGPT got you." So it's been a huge, huge, huge, huge game changer, not just within my job, but content all over. Mike: Yeah, same. Also, I feel like somebody the other day said, "Well, you need to treat it kind of like if you had an intern." I was like, "No, don't say that because I'll ask it too many questions that are like, 'I don't know where you're going with this, Mike.' Well, I'm just asking just to see if you knew." But thinking through as an admin, looking at getting started as a career, I know I was always asked, what's the most important thing that I could learn as a Salesforce admin or what's the first thing I should learn? And you think of the large ecosystem of what's available to learn, and there's a lot of different ways that you can learn the platform. But to put your hat on, if you were getting started as a Salesforce admin today, where would you get started in terms of not where to learn, but in terms of what to learn? Megan: That's a really great question, and I think I had an advantage because I was working with the platform as an end user, so I understood where to start and I had help, especially with my family member at the time. And especially being a part of Salesforce military, they have a very set-up structured path for you to learn. But being a content creator, I oftentimes hear like, "Hey, I saw your video. I really want to start Salesforce. Where do I start?" And I think there's so much out there, whether it just be Salesforce material, if you're a developer, what coding material do I need to use? There's so much. This ecosystem of tech in general is so, so big. But if I was to start right now, I would start with the basic functionality because you need to understand how do use Salesforce. You need to understand where's this, what's this do, where's that? And then once you understand, I would combine it. Be very structured about your journey. I know it's very tempting sometimes to kind of grab onto this or that because everything's being pushed out at such a fast pace. But really AI, I think whether you want to be a consultant, a BA, a developer, being able to keep up with the trends of today, and you don't need to overwhelm yourself of course, but just know what's going on. How do you use AI? And I think Salesforce has the associate Salesforce AI cert, which doesn't dive too deep, but it really covers the basics of what is AI, what can I do? And then it navigates you to ChatGPT. And then there's fantastic articles where you can go on and kind of... The article that I mentioned earlier from Salesforce spend, how to be able to use chat to prompt it better and you kind of elevate yourself through that way. So I would definitely start with the functionality, make sure you've got that. And then compliment it with AI because these are skills that you're going to need to have when you go for that first job, when you're in that first job because you need to be able to talk with your stakeholders, talk with your team, and then on top of it, just set that cherry on top. If you have great ideas, you can also kind of use AI to say, "Hey, I thought about this for my team. What do you think about X, Y, Z?" And then it can prompt you with better ideas for you to be a great team player. So I definitely think the basics, AI, and then kind of follow with Sales and Service Cloud, because those are going to compliment many of the other clouds that you have. Mike: Yeah, it's interesting you said start with the platform first because for some of us, we don't even see a platform. It's just Salesforce. And I know I have members on my team that are the exact opposite. They don't even see Salesforce, they just see a platform and to walk through different scenarios of problem solving. Some of us hit limitations faster than others, and that can be kind of interesting just based on your perspective and your lens. And then you add in that layer of agent force and AI and it's like, okay, well what questions are we going to ask it? Well, what are the answers and where are they to begin with? You have to think of if I don't know the platform and Sales Cloud, if I start asking questions and build an agent, I better know where it's going to grab those answers from. Oh, it's ever-changing world. Speaking of content creator, I'm sure you do a lot of presentations and crafting stuff together, so do admins. When you're getting ready or you're putting together a demo or a presentation, what is some advice that you have that maybe as somebody that's done it for a while or even a beginning Salesforce admin at a company, some best practices to kind of help them demo their new app or talk about something in front of a large group of people? Megan: And I think for a lot of people, if you're new to tech, it can be kind of scary or exciting, like a mix of emotions really, because you really... Just to go off the example of showing off an app, you really put a lot of effort into this and you really want the users to be able to like it, but it's going to be a little daunting sometimes. You're talking to heads of departments, and I would say I've totally been there, kind of still do get a little nervous because you put all this time into something and you really want the people to like it and the users to benefit from it. So I think the number one suggestion that I would have is think about the user at the end of the day, because no matter if you sit with the business executives, they do know their client, but at the end of it, you have the same end game. It's for your user. And if you go in there confidently focusing on, "Hey, I thought about this business process, which could expedite the agents and how they're working, overall customer satisfaction and increase efficiency with the agents." These things that are helping at the end game. I think if you go in with that thought first, then your heart's in the right spot and everything else can follow. Now in terms of presentation, I would definitely say this is your time to work with a peer. It's time to bounce ideas off of with your coworkers. "Does this sound good? Am I making my point clear?" Because sometimes if we read our own article... I'm guilty of this, I'll read my article, I'm like, "Oh, this is fantastic." I'll pass it off to somebody else. And they're like, "What did you mean here?" So just passing it to somebody for peer review is definitely always helpful. And then I would say maybe the last thing is a lot of visuals. One thing as a content creator and as a business analyst now is we all sit through meetings. We all have that Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00 things can get overwhelming. There's a lot of text. And one thing that's helped me as a content creator is just making learning fun, making it understandable, making sure that you're still getting the text side across, but also making the user excited and engaged and want to actively be on the platform. So that would be my little suggestion right there is just making it fun and going into it with excitement because your energy feeds off to the user and who you're talking to. Mike: Yeah, I definitely... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34398205

Gillian Is Back to Talk Agentforce and Slack! 12/05/2024

Gillian Is Back to Talk Agentforce and Slack! Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Gillian Bruce, Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Join us as we chat about how Agentforce allows you to bring Salesforce to Slack, and why every admin should learn how to build Slack solutions. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Gillian Bruce. Why Salesforce Admins should build on Slack If you’re a longtime listener to the pod, you’ve got to be excited about this week’s guest. Gillian was my co-host for years, and I thought we should bring the dynamic duo back together to talk about her new gig as Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Ever since she went over to the Slack team, Gillian’s been struck by how friendly the platform is for admins. There are tons of solutions that you can implement with low or no code, and powerful features like Slack Canvas and Slack Lists that give you a lot of flexibility without the need for customizations. All this is a cinch if you’re used to building things in Salesforce. And when you hear what Gillian has to say about combining Agentforce with Slack, you’ll want to get started today. Bringing Agentforce to Slack In our episode with Jim Ray about Slack integrations, he told us how Slack can be a multi-purpose tool. There are over 2600 integrations currently out there, letting you bring information from Jira, or Workday, or Salesforce, directly into Slack. While that could be a lot of information to sift through, Agentforce is here to lend a helping hand. You can now use Agent Builder to create employee-facing AI agents for Slack. There are special Slack actions, like searching and summarizing data in Slack, creating or updating a Slack Canvas, and sending DMs. This gives admins all sorts of new ways to integrate Salesforce into your business processes with less friction and more wow. The future of Agentforce and Slack Agentforce is new and we know it can be hard to get your head around everything that it can do. That’s why Slack is building some templates for employee-facing AI agents. For example, a product specialist agent that can give you quick answers so you don’t have to comb through pages of documentation. If there’s one thing Gillian wants you to take away from this episode, it’s that Salesforce Admins should start building on Slack. “It's going not only set yourself up to be super valuable to your organization in this era of agents,” she says, “but it also is going to open up so much more possibility for you career-wise.” There’s so much more in this episode about tricks for Slack and why you should look out for Gillian at your next Dreamin’ event, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Learn more Workshop: Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're thrilled to have Gillian Bruce back with us. Gillian, who now leads the Slack ecosystem marketing team and is on a mission to show why every Salesforce admin should be jumping into Slack and using it to not only build custom agents, but also amazing workflows and incredible integrations that Slack can do. Gillian explains why learning and leveraging Slack is simply a must for an admin. I mean, it's so easy to use. I love it. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That way, you can catch every new episode immediately when it comes out on Thursdays. So be sure to hit the follow button on whatever podcast platform you're listening for. So now, let's welcome Gillian back and talk about Slack and Agentforce. So Gillian, welcome back to the podcast. Gillian: Mike, thanks for having me. Mike: I know, you've been over overly communicating with people. Gillian: It's been a while since I've been on the pod with you, it feels like I just rewound the clock quite a while. Mike: I know, in the Wayback Machine. Don't forget, we have the Wayback Machine. I don't have the fancy noisemaker, you just got to put it in your head and envision that. What have you been up to since we've last talked on ye olde podcast? Gillian: Oh, just a few things, you know? A few changes. Mike: Okay. Still all about admins, obviously. Gillian: Admins are always in my heart, and it's actually been quite fun, because about, what, eight months ago at this point, I have transitioned over to Slack to lead up their ecosystem marketing team, which includes developers, community, and partners. And one of the big things I'm focused on is, as I've gotten to know the Slack community over here, is helping all Salesforce admins understand how awesome Slack is, and how important it is that you learn how to build and use Slack. Mike: Yeah, I mean, you know me, I use Slack for a ton of things, and I love building out forms and workflows in Slack. It's so admin friendly. Gillian: It is very admin friendly, and the thing that I think is so interesting to me, as I've been getting to know the Slack community, and people who are Slack developers, and Slack builders, is there are so many commonalities and opportunities between the Salesforce, admin, and Builder audience and the Slack Builder audience. And when you're building something with Workflow Builder. It's very similar to building a flow. In fact, building something with Workflow Builder in Slack is, to me, honestly a lot easier than building an automation with Flow and Salesforce. Mike: Kind of is, a little bit. Gillian: A lot more straightforward, and part of that is because the platform is built to do a different thing than Salesforce is. But there's so much you can do with being able to point and click, and do these low-code builds and low-code solutions in Slack. And it doesn't even mean building a lot of customizations. We've got things like Slack canvas, and now we have Slack Lists, which are amazing for your to-do lists, if you haven't tried those out yet. And just generally using channels and building automation between channels to help manage your notifications and work processes, there's a lot there. But of course, there's something on the top of everyone's mind these days. Mike: I mean, I would love to talk all of the workflow stuff, but we're Agentforce, Gillian, we have to cover agents. Gillian: Well, and agents are a big deal, and I think especially agents... So let's put my developer hat on for a second. So in the Slack developer community, people have been building agents for quite a while, and they've been building their own agents and deploying them into Slack. There's also agents that are already on the Slack marketplace built by our third-party vendor, so like Adobe Express, and Writer, and Cohere. They already have agents that you can interact with in Slack, but the amazing thing with Agentforce is that it's bringing that Salesforce builder experience to being able to enable you to build your own custom agents. And Mike, I just want to take a second here. Admins, agents, I know it might feel a little overwhelming, but let's back it up. What is an admin's number one customer? Mike: Our users, always our users. Gillian: Our users, and so- Mike: Yes, I didn't know there was a quiz. You didn't tell me there was a quiz. Gillian: Sorry, I can't just come on the pod and just be a normal guest. You know that. Mike: Ugh, I'm going to build an agent in Slack for the quiz now. That's what it should be. Gillian: There you go. Okay, so an admin's number one customer is the end user, which we also call an employee. Let's say that, right? If you're a part of an organization, you're an employee, what is the best operating system to enable employees to collaborate with each other and with other systems? Mike: I feel like I have to say Slack, because you're on- Gillian: Yeah, you do. It is the best one. I mean, we can debate that, but... Mike: I wasn't going to. It's like being on Family Feud. Gillian: Okay, so then, the third question is, so if an admin's number one customer are the employees, and the best way to bring employees together to collaborate and to interact with other systems is Slack, then where is the best place to bring those custom agents that you're building in Agent Builder? Mike: I mean, you should build them in Slack, right? Gillian: Ding, ding, ding. Mike, you pass. Mike: I tried. I was fighting really hard, I was going to say Chatter. Gillian: Oh, well, you know what? We can actually talk about Chatter for a second, too. Mike: We should. Gillian: We should. So real quick on the Chatter of it all, so I love Chatter. A lot of us love Chatter. Remember the highlight? What do they call it, a Chatter brag. It was a Chag. Mike: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, a Chag. Yeah, we had templates. Gillian: We sure did, yeah. Mike: Yeah, formatting. Gillian: So Parker very publicly announced that, while he helped build Chatter, he is now going to help kill Chatter. And I know this might give us some heart palpitations, but let me just be really clear. Chatter is getting a major glow-up if you think about it, because we have something called Salesforce channels that are in Slack. And what this is is one of the best things about Chatter is it had a feed on every record, right? So everyone could talk about what's going on. Well, we already have Salesforce channels live in Slack, as of Dreamforce. This means that you can have a dedicated record channel that automatically gets spin-up for that record in Slack. So you have a channel there where you can collaborate, you can talk about it, you can interact with folks, you can bring other systems data in right there. Coming in February, that same UI, that channel experience is going to be visible in Salesforce for those records. Mike: Well, that's going to be incredibly useful, because I think that was always the disconnect. You know, I'm over here for one thing, and then I'm over there for another thing. And I mean, Slack is already such a conversational UI. It makes sense that I should think about not only building agents in the Salesforce UI, but in Slack as well, because that's where people are already talking. Gillian: So, yeah, and two things on that, Mike, right? So one, it's a place where people are already talking. It's the place where they're being able to interact with systems beyond Salesforce as well, right? So maybe they have Workday in there, maybe they're pulling in JIRA tickets. There's a lot of other systems that integrate with Slack, so that people don't have to leave and swivel chair out of that interface into something else. So by putting your agent in there, bringing that Salesforce experience into Slack, you're again making it much more efficient for people to get their work done. But then, that second piece of it, Mike, is that Slack is going to be the way that you're going to be able to not just bring that systems and all of that data together, all those people together, but those agents are going to be able to interact there in Slack with you, and you're going to be able to tell that agent to do things that are pulling from Salesforce, from all of your data cloud sources, and take action right there in Slack. And you're going to be able to, come March, actually have that in a threaded conversation. So you're going to be able to interact multiplayer style. So you'll have a conversation with an agent and other people can join in in that conversation. Mike: And they can converse with the agent? Gillian: Correct. Mike: Oh, boy, we're going to keep agents busy. Do you think of agents like interns? Somebody said that the other day. It's like, if you're trying to think of what to build an agent for, think of what if you had an intern? Gillian: Well, I mean, yes and no. I'd like to think that when you have an intern, you're spending a lot more time training them, and mentoring them, and... Mike: Not us, we get smart interns Gillian: Giving them unique opportunities. Mike: More than just getting coffee. Gillian: Well, yeah. Can you find me an agent that can get you coffee? I guess you could probably- Mike: That would be awesome. Gillian: ... build an agent that could order you coffee and get it delivered. Mike: That would 100% win every hackathon, an Agentforce that just all of a sudden, out of your screen comes a cup of coffee. Gillian: Well, so- Mike: You're like, "Mike, this isn't what I wanted to talk about." Gillian: No, it's good. Actually, you know what? But having your agent take an action... So one of the things I did want to highlight is when we're talking about Agentforce and Slack, so there are kind of three main elements when you're talking about Agentforce and Slack that are important to think about. Number one, deploying your agents in Slack, right. Taking that agent you've built with Agent Builder and bringing it into Slack. That second thing is having your agent take Slack actions. So in Agent Builder, you're going to be able to tell your agent to do things with Slack, like search Slack data, so that unstructured data in Slack. These are going to be actions available in Agent Builder. You're also going to be able to tell your agent to create or update a Slack canvas, which is pretty great. Again, you're a fan of canvas. Mike: Oh, yeah. We use it a lot. Gillian: Great way to aggregate and share information. The other Slack action that's going to be available is be able to send a DM. So that's that simple kind of direct, one-on-one, agentic experience of being able to talk to an agent. So those are going to be actions that are available natively in Agent Builder that anyone can use. Additionally, the team is going to be working on a lot more, including... I just heard about this the other day. So they're actually going to build some template agents, some template employee-facing agents. So things like imagine a product specialist. So you're in Slack, and you have a question about how a product works, because you are in a conversation with a customer or you're trying to answer a question, instead of having to go search all of the documentation and figure out, "Oh, who's the right product manager to reach out about this?" You can just ask the agent right there in Slack your question and get served up an answer, as well as, "Hey, how do you want me to format this answer? Is this for a sales customer? Is this for a sales engineer?" And that is just one use case that I get excited about, because I'm always knee deep in product, and I can never keep up on everything. So that's one good example, and that's a template that's going to be available, so that people can take that, put that in Agent Builder, and then customize it to sort from their own knowledge base. Mike: So when you're thinking of agents, I mean, you probably know this, like with Salesforce, we can control the agent on the profile, and well, not profile, permission set and perm set group. If you're deploying agents in Slack, is it to all the users, or can you do the same thing? Can you like, "Ah, I really want a test group of users to have access to this agent"? Gillian: Yeah, so the first thing I'll say is that no agent you deploy to Agent Builder or you deploy to Slack will override any of your Salesforce permission structure. So all the security settings you have about visibility and who's able to edit and make updates to different records, all of those permissions are going to carry over into Slack. So there's never going to be a situation where you have an agent in Slack, interacting with someone who doesn't have access to the data that they're requesting, things like that, so it will never override. The next thing to that is you might have a situation where you have part of your company, part of your employee base that actually doesn't even work in Salesforce. They don't even need Salesforce seats, but you want to build an agent experience for them, in Agent Builder that extends an agent functionality to them, so you don't actually have to buy a Salesforce seat for them. Maybe you have a group of, I don't know, marketers who never go into Salesforce, which is probably a bad use case, maybe, but- Mike: We'll say warehouse workers. Warehouse workers. Gillian: Warehouse workers, right? Yeah, who don't have to log in, [inaudible 00:13:01]- Mike: They're driving forklifts all day, they don't have time for the Salesforce. Gillian: Exactly. But what you could do is build an agent in Agent Builder that enables those warehouse workers to be able to be in Slack, maybe ask questions about inventory, when certain products are going to be available, and all of that information that they're going to be able to see is, again, permissions that you control in the Salesforce side of what's publicly available, what are people able to see, what level of permissions are accessed. But that's a way you can extend all that information that's otherwise just held within Salesforce, beyond Salesforce, into Slack, in that agentic experience. Mike: Yeah. I mean, we've talked about before, and Gillian, this was even back before you joined Slack, but I do think you look at the way that conversational AI and even some of the voiceover apps are going, Slack could be the front door for everything Salesforce within your organization, and then you button up data cloud on top of that. Now, they basically could, via Slack, have access to the right data anywhere in the organization, conversationally. Gillian: And not just Salesforce data, but data in Workday, or Asana, or any of the other of the 2,700 integration apps that we have out there in the marketplace that connect all of your systems in one place, and that is Slack. Mike: Yeah, that's crazy. Gillian: I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty happy to be over here. I do feel like Slack is the future, and this is why I am extremely passionate about helping every Salesforce admin understand that they should be using Slack, they should be learning how to build in Slack, because it is going to be something that opens up the world beyond just Salesforce for folks in a builder capacity. And it just, I mean, imagine the value you can deliver your organization by saying, "Hey, just by using Slack as our work OS, we can bring in these six different systems that people have to log into at some point every week, and I can deploy these agents there that reduce their time of work by hours every week or hours every day." I mean, that level of efficiency and productivity you can deliver, I mean, that is one of the number one goals of every Salesforce admin. Mike: Yeah. Well, and I don't know what Slack battles with in the marketplace, but I have to believe the nice thing I like about Slack is, even if you spin up a channel and then you archive it, you can still go back and search it, and you can still... It's like you never lose that information. And I know we used to have, I don't know, Google had the instant messenger and stuff. The second you closed your window, it was gone, and that information, it was like Snapchat, it was just gone. But at least with Slack, it's retained for a little bit that you can actually make it actionable and be like, "Oh, I did need to pull this thing back up," as opposed to scrolling through a huge Chatter thread or something. Gillian: Oh, yeah, I use command K at least 20 times a day. Mike: Oh, is that what it is? That's a shortcut? Gillian: A shortcut, and command K is not just search, it's like recent history search, so- Mike: Oh. Gillian: Yeah. Mike: Oh, I didn't know this. I just go [inaudible 00:16:22]- Gillian: Command K all day. Mike: ... like old screwball. You know, I still use a mouse. I'm very mouse centric for a reason. Gillian: Well, mosey your fingers on over from the mouse to do command K, and you'll be able to find- Mike: I suppose. Gillian: ... recent things so, so much... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34283945

How Can Small Teams Benefit from Salesforce Foundations and Generative AI? 11/21/2024

How Can Small Teams Benefit from Salesforce Foundations and Generative AI? Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Andrew Russo, Salesforce Architect at BACA Systems. Join us as we chat about Salesforce Foundations and why it’s a game changer for solo admins and small orgs. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Andrew Russo. The solo admin guide to Dreamforce Andrew calls himself a Salesforce Archi-admin-eloper. At BACA Systems he’s a team of one, managing a complex org with all sorts of flows and customizations. Despite his busy schedule, he also manages to get himself out there to all sorts of Salesforce events, so I wanted to chat with him about what caught his eye at Dreamforce as a solo admin. Like everyone else, Andrew is psyched about the possibilities for generative AI and Agentforce. He knows that data health and cleanliness are crucial in order to take advantage of these new features, and he’s already started a project to implement Salesforce Knowledge in his org. But what he’s really psyched about is Salesforce Foundations. What’s so exciting about Salesforce Foundations? Like many smaller companies, Andrew can’t easily do a pilot to test out larger features. “Having access to try things before you actually fully configure them is really helpful for us to look at where we can grow and move to with the platform,” he says. Salesforce Foundations gives you access to all of the little features you wish you had from each cloud. For Andrew, they can swap over from using an external email marketing tool to doing everything in Salesforce. They’re also looking at implementing Salesforce Payments instead of doing it over the phone. While they may not be the shiniest tools in the toolbox, the time saved with these little features adds up in a small organization like Andrew’s. Manage requests with a Salesforce roadmap One thing that can get tricky as a solo admin is handling requests while keeping the org on track. Andrew keeps a Lucidchart roadmap for where they’d like to be with things like data cleanup and their Salesforce Knowledge project, which helps him balance short-term needs with long-term goals. “We’re not trying to implement features just because we have them,” he says, “it has to align with ‘our company goals.” Andrew has more to share about tips for solo admins, why you should get started going to Salesforce events, and the best cold pizza, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Hey there, Salesforce Admins. So, buckle up because today we got Andrew Russo on board, who's not just managing the Salesforce org, but is essentially the captain of a one-man cruise ship. That's the analogy that we made. So, you like that? I said on board. No, but seriously, this guy is juggling a lot of flows, customizations, and data, much like we all are, and he's steering the ship solo, so single Salesforce admin. Now, in today's chat, we're talking about everything from taming data gremlins to rolling out Salesforce Knowledge, but big is what he found impactful at Dreamforce this year, which was Salesforce Foundations. And we're also getting some insight into how Andrew's planning on keeping his org ready for the next wave of AI. And of course, we reminisce a little bit about Dreamforce, and it wouldn't be a Salesforce Admins podcast without food. This time we're talking pizza. No surprise. So, before we get Andrew on though, make sure you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on your favorite podcast app or wherever you listen to podcasts. That way, as soon as a new episode becomes available, it will download. So, that being said, let's get Andrew on the podcast. So, Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Andrew Russo: Thank you for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely. Well, it's been a little bit since you've been on, so let's refresh everybody's memory. What have you been up to and what do you do in the Salesforce ecosystem? Andrew Russo: So, right now, my role is as the Salesforce architect, admin, developer. I mean, we're a small company at BACA Systems, so I'm the solo Salesforce resource. So, I kind of play a lot of hats and I manage our entire org. So, that's the main thing that I do here. We have a lot of flows, of customization. So, I've been trying to learn a lot about that and how to manage our complex org. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Captain of the ship, which is what most admins play. Andrew Russo: Yeah. It's a big ship though. It's challenging. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Yep. Well, the whole goal is to grow the ship and then maybe you get a fleet of people to help you. Andrew Russo: It started as a rowboat. Currently, it's like a cruise ship with one person in charge of it, and cruise ships are hard to drive with one person. Mike Gerholdt: They could be, yes, but you need to have resident comedian, house band, buffet. I'm sure those are all fun analogies to things. Before we go down the cruise ship line, that's for another podcast, let's talk about, you were at Dreamforce and I think a few Salesforce Admins were at Dreamforce. If not, they definitely saw some of the content that's online. I'd love to know when you get back from, was it three days of Dreamforce now? And the content that you're a part of and the notes that you've taken, what are some of the things that you do to think about what's next or to put into action some of the things that you learned? Andrew Russo: Yeah. I think when I'm there, really the big thing is I like to take high-level notes when I'm there. I think if you get too in the details trying to take notes, it's hard for me at least to go and actually take actual things. So, generally what I've learned to do is I take some of the high-level notes of key areas and then I go back to them. So, when I'm there, I'm able to just focus on the content and the learning and connecting with other people in the community, and then I go back to the content that I thought was really helpful and I look at it. But for me, right now, if I think about some of the big takeaways, one of them was data quality and really getting everything in shape is probably the most critical thing that you can do for an existing org like us. Trying to fix those type of things that are just foundational to support all of our future things we're trying to do. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, I know anecdotally from seeing some of the session data, all of the sessions that were about data and cleanliness were really well attended, and it makes sense, right? Because good data in, good data out, and now good data for AI to consume. Andrew Russo: Exactly. I think that's probably one of the biggest drivers is looking forward of the AI, and it's also thinking about what can we do to position ourselves to be ready for generative AI and how that will play a role. Thinking about on our service side, one of the big projects that became probably one of our top projects we're going to be rolling out, Salesforce Knowledge, I think was probably one of the biggest takeaways or actionable things that I now am ... That's my big project for this fall is to get our Knowledge base for service up and going to help our customers. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, that's no small feat. I feel like that's building your own library. Andrew Russo: It is building a library, an organization system and structure for a library, and then getting everyone who hasn't gone to the library in years to want to go to this library, and authors. Mike Gerholdt: Free library cards for everybody. Exactly. Yeah, I know authoring, ah, fun times. Andrew Russo: That's probably the hardest part is getting the content created. Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm. You mentioned you're an admin of one, and I want to get into some of the stuff that was announced at Dreamforce because that's why I had you on. But one other thing that crossed my mind, for admins of companies that are smaller and everybody defines their own size, how do you see AI and some of the new Agentforce features rolling into orgs like that? Andrew Russo: I think, for me, I was actually lucky enough to be able be part of some of the pilot stuff that happened. And one of the biggest ones, which it sounds crazy, but the formula one, that's to help you with formula fields. So, you could do it when you're making a formula field for a row level summary for reporting as well as on the admin side to just explain a formula. It sounds so simple, but the amount of effort that that has saved me from finding those pesky, you're missing the parentheses, or you had a curly comma or the curly single quote instead of it being a straight single quote. So, it doesn't work. Those kind of things, having it where it just fixes it, it's like the quality of life features for an admin that are amazing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I never thought about it that way. That's a good perspective. Andrew Russo: Especially if you think about copying and pasting. That's where it's challenging. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that's 90% of how I wrote all my formulas was copy and paste. "Somebody else, please write the formula. Okay, there's about 90% of the formula that I need. Let me just plug in the fields that it makes sense to." A lot of this stuff ... I mean, obviously Agentforce was the big headliner at Dreamforce this year, but you pointed out you really see also the not off Broadway show that Salesforce talked about, which was Foundations. So, tell me from your perspective why as a Salesforce admin, Foundations was so big at Dreamforce this year for you? Andrew Russo: Yeah. I think Foundations, I mean, when I was watching the keynote, it was almost, I think kind of the last ... I think it was soft announced just right before Dreamforce, but then during the keynote it was also kind of re-announced it. I think that what was announced of what's included with it, having some of the different parts, like we're a small company, I don't really have the opportunity to just go try out some of the big, more expensive or larger features. I don't have the ability to just, "Oh, well let me go try and do some pilot..." It's kind of challenging. So, having access to a try before you actually go fully configure is really helpful for us to be able to look at where can we grow and move to with the platform? Mike Gerholdt: I mean, are you looking at data integrations across marketing or commerce or service? I mean, I know you mentioned Knowledge. Andrew Russo: Yeah. So, having Knowledge now is definitely a big thing. So, some of the little parts like sales and service cloud that were really heavily overlap, but just a little couple things, now that it's kind of more unified to be one thing, it makes it a lot easier. So, now we have access to Knowledge for all of our search [inaudible 00:08:41]. So, it kind of enabled that project, which we need to support generative AI as we go into the future too. Mike Gerholdt: I suppose we jumped maybe a little bit of the cart in front of the horse. For you, if you had to describe Foundations to another Salesforce admin, maybe they didn't hear about that, how would you describe it? Andrew Russo: All of the features that you wish you had five months ago that you now have. Just the little bits of the features, I think, that's how I look at it, as like, they're the features that you wish you had, but you would've had to go buy multiple cloud to just get the small, little piece that you wish you had. Mike Gerholdt: Gotcha. Well, that sounds awesome. So, it can be, like I remember sitting in Dreamforce keynotes and hearing sometimes about features that we were using, sometimes about features that we weren't using. With multiple features being announced as part of Foundations, for you, how did you prioritize your one admin, your one org? Obviously, you just can't go and it's like a gym locker and turn all the light switches on. How are you kind of prioritizing what features to use and how to roll them out? Andrew Russo: Yeah. So, for us, it's really about looking at where do we want to be strategically. So, I actually have a lucid chart, which I took one of the ... I think on the architect website, they have a roadmap one, so I kind of just copied that and then I just changed it a little bit and did a lot of copy paste and modified it. So, it's just a really high-level view of what we're doing as a company with Salesforce, just so that I can also show from a strategic point of view when people have these requests of like, "Oh, well, I want this." "Okay, but here's kind of what we have. We don't have an unlimited bandwidth here, so is that more important than all of these?" And then, that helps to keep requests that don't really make sense or align with the company goals. So, that kind of became still the guiding light to it, and I think that even after Dreamforce, that didn't change a lot because it's still what are the company priorities? We're not just trying to go implement features because now we have them. It has to align with what our company goals are. Mike Gerholdt: That makes sense. That definitely also helps you prioritize, right? Andrew Russo: It helps me prioritize and also it helps me keep focused on what's the important thing that we need to do to keep our business growing overall? Mike Gerholdt: So, I realized this when I was sitting down, what are we going to talk about? A lot of the times we talk about the benefit to the admin, because that's the person listening, right? "What's it matter to me?" But so often, everything that we implement, everything that we do is on behalf of a user because we know sitting in their chair what their pain points are. How for you, is the admin looking to communicate some of the benefits of Foundations to your users? Andrew Russo: Yeah. I think it's looking at where the challenges are. An example for us that's why I'm also really excited for it is today we use an external marketing email sending tool that we just take exports of emails, put them in, send email list. So, on the sales side, we use sales engagement to send the sales cadences, right? Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Andrew Russo: Just a very small tree one just for trying to drip information about a specific product, but we're not doing full-scale marketing across the board, but for that use case today, right now, we're sending it out like that, but with Foundations now, we can use the marketing emails that get sent and it's essentially can do exactly what that is, but just from Salesforce. So, we can skip the whole having to send it out, then the emails will log in Salesforce, so our sales team can see when they were sent. Right now, the ones that are sent as bulk mail don't show up in Salesforce. So, just that little quality of life thing and it's just easier overall. That's kind of a big thing, but we don't have a strong use case to go get a giant marketing automation system because honestly, we don't have the people to go generate all the content for that. Right? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's always, you never have to apologize for the size that you are. I think that's, "Oh, we're not a big organization." That's okay. You're the size that you are and you're also proportionate. You always need a couple more admins, right? But you're proportionate to the size that you can support. You don't need to apologize for, "Well, we're not this massive $10 billion email monster." Andrew Russo: It would be nice, but also I feel like if I got a bunch of emails from us every day, I would be a little ... Just thinking from the customer point of view, who I get emails from vendors and stuff like that all the time. I'm like, "Lululemon, how do you get me an email every day, 5:00 to 6:00 PM?" But I look at them like, "I should unsubscribe." But I also am like, "Okay. Well, I haven't yet, but I get them every day 5:00 to 6:00 PM." Mike Gerholdt: No. Sure. Andrew Russo: So, somehow it's enough that ... So, it's like, how do we become the company that can give information that's valuable enough that people don't want to unsubscribe because they find value in the content, but also be able to manage doing that? Mike Gerholdt: I know. I've got a whole folder of emails that's like that, that I don't want to unsubscribe because that one time that I need to get something, chances are they probably will have emailed me maybe a 20% off code. I'm just cheap enough that I want to keep those emails going to get that 20% off. You mentioned marketing and email and stuff like that, that makes you think of the app exchange and the upgrade includes access to third-party extensions through the app exchange. Are you looking at ways or maybe things you could do now with that? Andrew Russo: Yeah. I think for us, a couple of the areas that we're excited also to extend out is one of those is on collecting payments and stuff. Right? We've got sales cloud, we've got service, which means we've got revenue, but we need to collect payments. Mike Gerholdt: It's very important. Right? Andrew Russo: It is very important. Today, right now, when they want to take ... They just log into this separate system. They type in a card number, right? The customer calls over the phone, they type it in, they process the payment, they download the PDF receipt, they send it to the customer. Right? So, it's not a good experience. It also takes time. But if we could send a link- Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Andrew Russo: ... that then the customer could put their stuff into themselves. And maybe we include that link on the invoice ahead of time so the customer could self enter it in and we don't even have to have that phone conversation because it's just not a good experience. That's kind of big, and we could do that now. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And I mean, you think of that person's time, rarely are they hired to just do that. There's also other things they need to do, but they've ... It just so happens, I imagine maybe over the lunch hour they get busy because that's when everybody calls in to make their payments really quick because they have to talk to a person. Andrew Russo: Exactly. The exact problem of like ... Or, they're busy working on sending out invoices to some of the other customers and now they're, "Oh, well, a phone call came in." You can't hold off on a phone call because you don't want to put a customer on hold or have it just ring continuously. So, you have to pick up that. Trying to prioritize ways to not have to do that type of thing. Also, from a customer point of view, if I got a link that I could pay with Apple Pay or that I could put a card into myself, and when I've got an iPhone, it auto-fills my card that I have saved, that's a lot better of an experience. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I had no idea, not that I want to turn this into an Apple Pay podcast, about a year and a half ago, finally the Luddite in me got to using Apple Pay, and since then, the frictionless payment method of Apple Pay has caused me to buy a lot more things than I probably should have. Andrew Russo: I think, honestly, for me, if I think about as a customer experience, everyone hates paying utility bills, right? Became a homeowner, I have utility bills that come in. The easiest one I have to pay, that's not an auto-pay one, because auto-pay is kind of scary to an extent. You don't realize how much money goes out. It's nice. But the one that I have is the water bill. It literally has a QR on it. It comes quarterly. The QR code, you scan it with your phone, it opens. You can click Apple Pay. You put in the amount, which you just type the amount that's on it. You click pay and it's done. It's the easiest thing I've ever had. Mike Gerholdt: That's nice. Andrew Russo: That's the kind of experience we want to deliver as a company. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well,... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/34035246

Key Security Best Practices for Salesforce Admins Using Data Cloud 11/14/2024

Key Security Best Practices for Salesforce Admins Using Data Cloud Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, Josh Birk talks to Jagan Nathan, Technical Architect with Customer Success at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about guest user anomalies and what you can do about them with the Threat Detection app. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jagan Nathan. The most important thing for a successful Data Cloud migration Jagan works as a Technical Architect with the Customer Success Group at Salesforce. He’s focused on helping businesses use Data Cloud to de-silo their data so they can get a full picture of their customers. Jagan estimates that 60-70% of the time you spend on a Data Cloud migration is used to make sure you understand what needs to be done. That’s because the most important decisions are around what objects and data sources you want to map and how it all fits together. If you need help getting started, his team has put together the Data Cloud Workbook Template to walk you through everything. What is a guest user anomaly and why is it dangerous for your data security? The biggest security issues Jagan encounters in orgs come from changes made to profiles and permissions over time. All those consultants can begin to add up! At some point, you need to do an audit of who can see what and apply the principle of least privilege. And that’s the reason we brought Jagan on the pod, because one way this can happen is through something called a guest user anomaly. Essentially, it’s when a guest user account has more access than it otherwise than it should. For example, an Apex class that allows them pull all of your data. It’s the kind of thing that’s difficult to identify but can leave you primed for a data breach if you don’t know about it. How the Threat Detection app can help you identify guest user anomalies The good news is that there’s something you can do about guest user anomalies. If your org has Event Monitoring, you can use the Threat Detection app to identify problematic accounts and take action. It uses the power of machine learning to figure out where the gaps are in your permissions and flag them for you. In fact, the Threat Detection app can help you monitor all sorts of other anomalies, too. Like if a user who does their reports in the same time window each week suddenly logs in at 3 a.m. to pull a bunch of data, or someone based in Albuquerque logs in from Finland. It can even monitor your APIs. And the best part is that enabling Threat Detection is as easy as turning on the permission set. Jagan gets into more specifics in our interview, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Security Guide: Salesforce Security Guide: Salesforce Help: Trailhead: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Josh Birk: Hello Admins, it's your guest host Josh Birk here. Today, I'm going to welcome Jagan Nathan to talk about some very specific things about security, specifically quirks in security that can sometimes be a little difficult to detect and how we're going to help you detect them. So without further ado, let's go to Jagan. All right. Today on the show we welcome Jagan. Did I do that right, Jagan? Jagan Nathan : Yes. Josh Birk: All right. We're going to talk about some very interesting security things, but first of all, welcome to the show. Jagan Nathan : Thank you, once again, for having me. Josh Birk: Thanks. All right, well, let's start, once again, in some of your early years. How did you originally get into computing? Jagan Nathan : Oh, yeah. So back then during school days, we used to play Counter-Strike. We have in-house network connected with a group of friends. Josh Birk: Nice. Jagan Nathan : So that is how we started into it. We started in a playful mode and then we slowly started programming and all those aspects to it. Josh Birk: Did you actually get into modding Half-Life and all that stuff? Jagan Nathan : Not really. Josh Birk: Got it. Nice. How did you originally get involved with Salesforce? Jagan Nathan : Salesforce, initially I got trained in the Java platform and then back then we got a new project on Salesforce and we have been asked if we could try this out and then I initially thought of giving it a try. I initially thought Salesforce is purely sales driven or some sort of MBA-related work, but that is how it was. And then slowly I got into it. It was quite interesting. And then back then it was even more interesting without Trailhead. We had a lot of learnings. We used to push in developer forums. It was quite challenging and interesting. From that point of time, there's no looking back. We just love this platform. Josh Birk: Nice. How did you find the transition from Java to Apex? Jagan Nathan : So I was able to correlate most of our things through the basic modules. I usually compare Java-related world with Salesforce Apex related, so that it was easy for me during the transition phase. Josh Birk: Got it. And how would you describe your current job? Jagan Nathan : So current job is more of a technical architect part of customer success group. Work with different set of customers. Each customers have their own set of challenges and problems to be solved. So right now I'm even focusing on the Data Cloud related piece of it. Try to stitch in the data from multiple data source what customer is having. They have a lot of silos data across the platform. We are using the power of Data Cloud to bring in and harmonize all those data. Josh Birk: Got it. I feel like that's a very common thing at the company right now. So welcome to the club. Just as on that topic itself, especially when it comes to Admins, are you finding any particular specific challenges that run into when they start adopting Data Cloud? Jagan Nathan : Our Data Cloud, the best part is we at Salesforce, we have a template called Data Cloud Workbook Template, which is mainly recommended for all the admins and then whoever is trying to configure Data Cloud. So Data Cloud, what we have seen so far is 60 to 70 percentage of time we need to spend on understanding what needs to be done, like what objects we're going to map, what are the data sources we're going to map. So we have a pretty good decent template out there called Data Cloud Workbook Template, which is highly recommended for our customers so that they spend a lot of time on what needs to be done, what fields needs to be mapped, what should be the data sources. So once we have that in place, admin life looks even more simple. Josh Birk: Got it. Nice. And I think I'm going to ask this in the right way because I believe I don't know the answer, but since we're talking about security today, does Data Cloud offer any new thoughts on what to be concerned with security, or does it just kind of bolt itself on the platform and the platform is taking care of security like it normally would? Jagan Nathan : Yes. So Data Cloud currently supports our data spaces. We have this concept called data space filters through which we can set up the security of it so that authorized users can access a particular set of data instead of accessing all Data Cloud data. Josh Birk: Got it. Before we get into some of the specifics, when you first start talking to clients and customers, are there very common security issues that you find people aren't concerned about or aren't aware of that they should be aware of? Jagan Nathan : Yeah, so the main concerns or challenges what customer was facing right now is down the line, Salesforce or a lot of consulting companies work for them and then they have tons of changes made on the profiles and the permissions, and then someone got access to something which they are not supposed to. For example, I have seen customers, some marks, they have lot of sales users have export report function permissions and a customer is thinking about do they really need those export reports permission? Definitely not, only a subset of users need that. So it is all about backtracking and trying to find out how did they got this permission? Do we really need to give this user a permission to those reports? That is one of the challenges there. Josh Birk: Right. Nice. It's amazing how many of the security issues really can be boiled down to the concept of lease privilege. Jagan Nathan : Oh, yeah. There are a lot of things happening around the permissions and then recently we also rolled out object permissions and permission sets, for example, how the particular permission got assigned to the particular user. Is it through profiles or a permission set? So we have all those enhancements as part of recent releases too. Josh Birk: Right. Now today we're going to talk about a very specific one, and I'm going to give you credit because I had not heard of this, although I think I was kind of aware of the concept, I swear back from my IoT days, but we're going to talk about what a guest user anomaly is. Let's start at the beginning. Define that for me. What is a guest user anomaly? Jagan Nathan : So this guest user anomaly, before we talk about it, in the last podcast we discussed about event monitoring in general, what are the events we have as part of event monitoring. For the listeners, to give a quick background, event monitoring is a subscription-based QVF. The beauty of our Salesforce platform is everything is built on top of event-driven architecture, right from the user logs in, logs out, when the user access the list views or reports, all those are captured as events at the backend. So when it comes to threat detection, threat detection is one of the submodule of the event monitoring, which comes free of cost. If customer has event monitoring, then they would be able to use threat detection free of cost. So threat detection has a lot of events built into it and one of the events is a guest user anomaly event. So guest user anomaly is one of the interesting event because there are a lot of customers who are using guest users in their communities or back then they used to have a Force.com site. So they have built a business process surrounding guest user. So here at Salesforce what we thought is why can't we build a guest user anomaly even so that customers would be able to identify if there is any threat around the guest user. Josh Birk: What sort of traffic is the threat detector picking up that says this is a guest user and then this is a guest user anomaly? Jagan Nathan : So behind the scenes we have a lot of machine learning methods through which we constantly understand the profile of a guest user, what they are supposed to access. And there are a lot of parameters at the backend, which is quite black box for the customer, which is totally handled at the product side. So at the higher level we use a machine learning algorithm to detect if there are any information which the guest user is not supposed to access to, but due to some different options, if the guest user is able to access it, then we are throwing that as guest user anomaly events to our customers. Josh Birk: So go down one more level to that for me because it was interesting that, so I've set up a guest user, I expect him to have this set of lease privileges, but you're saying there might be some things that I did in setup that would cause an unexpected ability to access data. Is that what the anomaly is? Jagan Nathan : For an example to deep dive into it, let's say we have lightning community, which is running on a guest user mode, and then behind the scenes it all starts with the OWD settings. So our recommendation for a default external access is a public read or some customers might have a public read. It depends on the business use cases. Let's say if there is any suspicion even caused by a guest user, for example, if there is a Apex class which runs in without sharing mode for an example, and then if that guest user through some ways, if they are able to get the data, which they are not supposed to get. So in this scenario in general, guest users should not have access to the objects. But in a worst case, if something happens and if there is any Apex class without sharing, if they're able to get some information out of it, so it is inadvertently permitting the guest user to access some data which they are not supposed to. Josh Birk: Got it. So it's nothing necessarily that the admin would see from a setup point of view when it comes to inspecting profiles or permission sets or anything like that, but it would be access to et cetera, et cetera, something else like an Apex class and then how that was designed is giving them access to something that's outside of their profile. Jagan Nathan : Exactly. From the admin standpoint, what we recommend is whatever list views which are getting shared, make sure it is getting shared only with a certain set of groups which are set to private. That is one recommendation, what we could say to our customers. And then the next one is make sure to do a proper analysis on all the sharing rules we have. Do we have any sharing rules, which is sharing with any side guest user? That is one option we would recommend. Josh Birk: What are some inherent risks here? Is it simply access to data that they shouldn't have or can it get more nefarious than that? Jagan Nathan : Let's say if that guest user is not supposed to access the data what they should have, then what happens at the background, it could lead to a data breach in the near future because there could be some guest user, there could be some data Apex class which runs in without sharing mode, for example. It gives a view all data of all the accounts, then the guest user would get all the accounts. Then that eventually turned out to be a data breach. Josh Birk: Got it. Got it. In reference to these tools, let's assume that an admin, they're not familiar with it. What does it look like? Is this a report that they're going to run from time to time? Is this an app that's going to alert them that maybe something is wrong? What's the user interface here that's letting them know that there's a red flag? Jagan Nathan : So it all starts with a permission. So there is a permission called view threat detection event. So once that permission get assigned to us through a permission set, then we will get access to a threat detection app. So threat detection app, once you navigate to a threat detection app, we should be able to see the list of anomalies. For example, if there is any guest user anomaly happens, then we will see a record on the threat detection that says guest user anomaly event. Then it is up to customer to take up a decision if they really think it's a threat, or else, if they think it's not a threat, they can provide feedback back to Salesforce. Josh Birk: Got it. So it is kind of a constant monitoring, taking action when they feel like that was definitely a set of data that this person shouldn't be able to have access to. Jagan Nathan : Exactly. So in addition to it, we are also giving customers option to build a transaction security policy as well. Transaction security policy is something like it is automatically monitoring the trades. For example, guest user anomaly is one event. So we have an anomaly event called report anomaly event. For example, user is everyday logging in on a particular time interval and they are working on the reports, but suddenly if the user works over the weekend or suddenly if the user tries to connect from a different VPN network altogether, and if that particular user is trying to export a report, if that report count is more than 10 million rows, for an example, then Salesforce can throw that as an anomaly event and then customer can take up an action. If they really feel it's a threat, then they can block it or else they can add it in some audit log for their purposes. Josh Birk: Got it. Without going into too much detail, what are some of the other events that the threat detector is monitoring? Jagan Nathan : One of the event is a session hijacking event. This is more of a customer-focused attack event. For example, if any attacker is trying to steal information from using client access to their web application, then through session hijacking event we would be able to identify if the attacker tries to hijack the client's session by obtaining some session token. Josh Birk: Got it. How about APIs? Jagan Nathan : API, that is super important. Thanks for bringing that up. So behind the scenes what we do is once we have the streaming and storage enabled for API anomaly, let's say there's an integration user who periodically runs the API scan and then they get data out for business processes, but suddenly out of nowhere, if the integration user is trying to export more than X number of records or else the way the integration user is pulling the data, for example, the row count might be new or else they might be logging in from a different IP address or some sort of anomalies. So what Salesforce does at the backend is it constantly understand the pattern of how that API user is being used for all the API requests. And if Salesforce thinks the new request is quite different from the existing request in the past, then Salesforce will throw it as an anomaly. Josh Birk: Got it. So kind of at a high level, because if we look at the session hijacking, that's where I steal your cookie for lack of a better term. I steal your session ID, I hijack your identity, I try to access Salesforce as you, that would be something very difficult for somebody, a human on the Salesforce side to detect, well, that's not Jagan, that's Josh. With the APIs it's sort of similar. It looks like somebody knocking on the door and the fact that they are doing something once that door is open that's anomalous is not something easy for a detect and then finally going back to the guest user. So at a high level, the threat detector is giving us this machine learning eyeball into what the traffic is coming out and saying, "Hey, that thing doesn't..." It's kind of like when you get the fraud alerts, right? It's like you don't normally buy $300 worth of goods in Ohio,. Maybe you should call us before we spend $300. But it gives us this suite of tools to be able to do that kind of investigation. Jagan Nathan : Yeah, perfect. Exactly. Josh Birk: Nice. Where can people learn more? Jagan Nathan : Oh, yeah. So we have a help article, which we'll be adding it in the podcast as well. That help article talks about threat detection and how the machine learning algorithm at high level works and how customers can proactively build a transaction security policy on top of it to play around with the threat detections. Josh Birk: Nice. And once again, this is not a licensed add-on, it's on a SKU, it's once somebody turns on the permission set, they're good to go. Jagan Nathan : Yes, exactly. Josh Birk: Very nice. In general, do you have any security resources that you'd like to share? Jagan Nathan : Oh, yeah. In general? Josh Birk: Yeah. Jagan Nathan : I will add that as well. Josh Birk: Okay, perfect. Well, Jagan, thank you so much for the great conversation information. That was a lot of fun. Jagan Nathan : Good. Thank you so much to, Joshua, for having me again. Josh Birk: I want to thank Jagan for the great conversation information. And as always, I want to thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about this podcast, head on over to admin.salesforce.com and of course you can subscribe to it in the podcast client of your choice. Thanks again for listening everybody. I'll talk to you soon. /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/33916617

What Makes Tableau Pulse Essential for Salesforce Admins? 11/07/2024

What Makes Tableau Pulse Essential for Salesforce Admins? Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to John Demby, Director of Solution Engineering at Tableau. Join us as we chat about Tableau Pulse, Tableau Einstein, and how easy it is to get started. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Demby. Getting to know Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein John leads a team of demo engineers for Tableau. What that means is they get their hands on all the new solutions and products ahead of time, and use them to make cool things. And two of the coolest, newest things out there are Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein. Tableau Einstein takes all of the goodness of Tableau, the powerful features of Data Cloud, a new semantic layer called Tableau Semantics, and brings that into Salesforce. There’s also a Tableau Agent, allowing you to open up the power of business intelligence and analytics to everyone on your team through Agentforce. Introduction to Tableau Pulse “We started thinking about how people consume data,” John says, “and I think it’s changed.” People want to consume data within the flow of their work. They don’t want to have to go looking around for things, or sift through multiple dashboards to figure out what information is relevant. That’s where Tableau Pulse comes in. It provides contextual, relevant insights from your data directly into Salesforce. With a simple KPI scorecard, you and your users can see what metrics are up, what metrics are down, and get insights about the next steps you should take. AI-infused and ready to share The scorecards Tableau Pulse provides are just the beginning because you can also ask it questions. Pulse is AI-infused, meaning you can ask plain language questions to generate specific insights about your data. It’s also built for collaboration, so it’s easy to take these insights and start a conversation with anyone else in your organization. Getting Tableau Pulse is as easy as installing a managed package in your Salesforce instance. “We’ve made it really for a Salesforce Admin to set this up with little to no Tableau experience,” John says. There are nine premade dashboards to get you started, and it’s easy to customize things to get something that works for you. John shares a lot more great stuff about Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Learn more Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we've got the much loved John Demby, our resident Tableau guru, here to talk about some of the really super cool things that Tableau has come out with, specifically Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein. Now, you may remember John and his team create these amazing demos that really show all of the possibilities of Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein. And boy, we get into it, about how we're driving insights with AI, and of course we talk about why pie charts are so out. This is really a fun episode. Now before we get started just a quick reminder, if you want to hit that follow button, that way whatever podcast app you're listening to, every Thursday a new episode will be downloaded right to your phone. So with that, let's talk Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein and get John on the podcast. John, welcome to the podcast. John Demby: Hey Mike, it's great to be back. Mike Gerholdt: I know, it's been a while. So what have you been up to? What do you do at Salesforce, for the people that haven't run into you at our many events? John Demby: Well, I have I think today the coolest job in the world. I work in our pre-sales organization in solution engineering but what I do is, I lead a team of demo engineers. You might go, demo engineers, why is that really cool? Well, we get our hands on the solutions and the products ahead of our customers. We get to put it through its paces and figure out what it really can do and how it can do it, and then we build these just really ... pardon the expression, kick-ass demos to show to our customers and to anybody else that wants to see them. So yeah, that's what I do. I lead a team and they are all all-stars and amazing people, and we have just been killing it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, it sounds like fun. I mean, that's also what admins do, get our hands on stuff and try and build killer demos to get our executives to fund it. John Demby: Yeah, we've got a lot of similarities there. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, I mean, also a very close kinship. You kind of started out with Tableau the same way I did, you were just a super admin power user that got hired on. John Demby: Yeah. My story goes back to a long time ago ... man, probably about 12, 13, 14 years ago, I was working with Salesforce data. I was leading at that time a pre-sales organization, and I couldn't get a decent report out of Salesforce, no offense to dashboards and reports. It was partly because of the way we had configured our Salesforce data. I mean, we had the same company in Salesforce maybe 70 times because they were all around the globe and stuff like that. I couldn't figure out where my solution engineers were spending their time. I did a Google search, found this really cool thing called Tableau, downloaded it, and within about 10 minutes I had the report that I'd been wanting to make for months. So I filed that away and became a power user of Tableau, and then when I was ready for a career change, it just worked out. Tableau and I made things happen, came to work for Tableau. I did some pre-sales work for Tableau and then we got acquired by Salesforce. And then I got to do all sorts of cool things, like move into the office of the chief product officer where I worked on Salesforce Tableau integration strategies, and now I get to lead my fun team. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I remember ... Well, I mean, you're right, there's totally a limitation on the reports and dashboard stuff. But I remember the last time we talked, one of the things you gave me the insight into was just all the visualizations that Tableau could do. I think it was, "The biggest common mistake is, everybody makes a pie chart." John Demby: Oh yeah, pie charts are not very good for analyzing data, believe it or not. But yeah, we build that into the product. In fact, when you start analyzing your data in Tableau, we actually propose or suggest or give you the best practice visualization for what you're trying to find. Mike Gerholdt: So it's not a dashboard of pies. John Demby: No, not a dashboard of pies. Mike Gerholdt: That's okay. We have AI now, so let's talk about that because we've got Tableau Einstein and Pulse. Help me figure out what these are because these sound fun. John Demby: Well, I want to talk to you a lot about Pulse today, but let's talk about Tableau Einstein real quick. So Tableau Einstein ... Well, just back up. AI in general is disrupting everything and very much so in the business analytics space. Two years ago I went to the Gartner Data and Analytics Conference, and all the vendors were starting to talk about AI. Last year, it was the subject of everybody. It was everybody had a cockpit, or a copilot rather, and were starting to feed data into LLMs, and now it just got to be part of the table stakes of the application. You've got to be able to use the power of AI to be able to generate and understand and see things even quicker. So what we did with Tableau Einstein is, we are envisioning a new paradigm infused with AI and built on the Salesforce platform. So we're actually taking all of the goodness of Tableau, we're bringing it over to Salesforce, we're using all of the fantastic features of Data Cloud. We're adding things like a new semantic layer that we call Tableau Semantics, and then on top of all that we have Tableau Agent, which is part of the Agentforce family. It is going to be an evolving product, we showed our vision at Dreamforce. It'll take us the next couple of releases to fully get it realized, but it is an amazing leap forward as it relates to AI and especially integrating into Salesforce data. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, is it really any surprise? Because I feel like for the last couple of years, especially once we talked about Data Cloud, I remember having guests on talking about data lakes, and joked about putting the cabin out on a data lake. I mean, we're at the point now where the amount of organizational data that we are creating, it's almost incomprehensible to be analyzed by any human. John Demby: Oh, absolutely. In fact, what AI gives us, which is kind of cool is ... traditionally BI tools rely on structure. They need the data in rows and columns or in a database or in something of that format. And what AI begins to do is, it allows us to reach unstructured data and that's a big value prop for Data Cloud right now, is that people are able to ingest unstructured data. Tableau Einstein is on top of that and able to see both structured and unstructured data through AI. So it's really, to me it's exciting. I've been in this space for a long time, and to see this disrupt and then us embrace the transformation has been pretty fantastic. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I think back to the early days of Salesforce, talking about Einstein, and us talking about having to feed it 100,000 rows for the LLM to understand in a very simple use case, what makes an opportunity more likely to be won versus lost? And to feed it all of that data, but boy, you had to get your data in line. Everything was, get your ducks in a row, data, data, data this. And now it's data but it's like, well, let the AI figure it out. Right? John Demby: Yeah. I think that's one of the things that Salesforce has really hammered home, especially with our AI vision is, context is everything when it comes to AI. As much context and information that you can drive ... and we have it in Salesforce just out of the box, begins to really drive that AI interactivity in a way that without the context, yeah, AI is pretty dumb at that point if it doesn't really understand the context of what you're asking. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Now, you sounded excited for Tableau Einstein, but you sounded over the moon for Tableau Pulse. So tell me about Pulse. John Demby: We released Pulse back in February ... I guess, here's my question for you, Mike. When is the last time you picked up an actual newspaper? Mike Gerholdt: You mean, outside of needing it to start a charcoal fire? John Demby: Yeah. Or actually read it or something like that. But you were probably like me, you probably got the Sunday paper back in ... now, we're dating ourselves here- Mike Gerholdt: I know, little age. Absolutely, the Sunday, because it had the thickest classifieds. John Demby: Oh, yeah. Well, thickest classified, but it had all the- Mike Gerholdt: And the Sunday cartoons. John Demby: ... cartoons and for me it had the score, all the information about the college games from around the country and stuff like that. But even when we had Sunday papers, if you were like me, you didn't read it in order, you went and grabbed your favorite section. Maybe for you it was the classifieds, maybe it was the comics or something like that, so you would pick and choose. And then when you actually go through the newspaper, you probably would read a headline and if the headline didn't grab you, you probably just moved on. Since the pandemic and since the advent of smartphones, and our attention spans really coming down considerably ... there's lots of research that talk about that, now most people consume their news maybe on their smartphone. I know I use a news app and I've curated what I want, I pick the sources that I'm interested in, and it surfaces me high-level summaries. In the morning when I wake up, I look at the news, want to make sure the world is still around. I scroll through and I find something, maybe the latest story about Taylor Swift and that other dude she's dating. Mike Gerholdt: He plays football. John Demby: Yeah. He plays football and they were saying, at the Taylor Swift concert Sunday they were actually playing the football game on the big screen. So go figure how far we've come. But yeah, it's really a different paradigm where we look for information so we started thinking about, how do people consume data? I think it's changed. I think people want to consume data in the flow of their work. I think they don't necessarily want to have to go look for it. They don't want to have to go interrogate a very complex dashboard. They want it to be contextual, they want it to be informational, they want it to be relatable to what they're looking at. And then they want it to tell them maybe in plain language, maybe through AI, things that they should be worried about and things that they should double-click on. So that's what we did with Pulse was, we totally re-imagined how people consume data for information. We built an app that's very similar in some ways to a newspaper app on your phone, that lets you pick the metrics that you're interested in, you can double-click on them. It'll tell you what's up, what's down. It has AI infused in it, it has the ability to really give you insights very quickly. So then what you need to do is to take action, either early warning or corrective action, or even if something's going great, letting your team know it's going great. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, listening to you describe it, for the longest time that I've built reports and dashboards, I've never really thought about it in the way that you described it. But the way that I hear you talk now, it makes sense. Because if you think about driving your car down the road, you look down at the speedometer and some gauges, make sure you have gas. You get real-time information in your car so that if you're coming up on an exit and your car is getting low on fuel, you know to exit to get fuel. Whereas traditional reporting, you would do most of the trip and then you'd stop and go, okay, so how fast was I going and when do I need fuel? You're like, oh, I actually ran out of fuel a mile ago, as a traditional dashboard. So when you say it gives insights in the flow of work, where does that surface? What should an admin be thinking about, where should they put these insights and what should they be looking for? John Demby: Well, we launched the original product, Tableau Pulse, in February. Since then we have over 5,000 customers, that were basically Tableau customers that have adopted the product. About the beginning of the summer we started asking the question, what if we could do, bring Pulse natively to the Salesforce platform? What would that look like? How would people consume it? And things like that. So we were very aggressive. We took a very agile approach, maybe almost like a startup, and we built a companion product to Pulse that we called Pulse for Salesforce. And what it does is, it takes these metrics really show up in the form of a KPI card. The KPI card, like I said, has a big number. It tells you if you're up or down, gives you a spark line, begins to tell you in plain language what's happening. So you can read that and then as you double-click into it, it gives you all of the additional information you've asked for. The outliers, the what's up, what's down, what's causing this, what should I be looking at? So over the summer we built Pulse for Salesforce and we released it a couple of weeks before Dreamforce. It is as simple as installing a managed package, and then we drop in nine pre-configured Sales Cloud metrics. So we started with Sales Cloud, we're looking at expanding into the other clouds, into the industries and Service Cloud. But it actually gives you nine pre-built metrics. The good news is, we gave you permissions to be able to create all the metrics you want on any of the data, as long as you surface it inside of Salesforce from that perspective. If you've got some external data that your salespeople would really value and seeing right there on the opportunity record or the home page or something like that, you can actually add those metrics, not just the nine that we ship. It's just embedded in Salesforce. It works on Salesforce mobile. We actually made it to pop up off the utility bar, which people think is really cool. So I'm right there in the sales app and at any point I want, I hit the button and I've got Pulse metrics. But yeah, you can stick it anywhere inside of Salesforce. We give you those nine pre-built ones, but we don't limit you to that. It's a simple app but it is a very powerful app, and we're already seeing demand. We've got hundreds of customers already lined up that want to get onboard with Pulse for Salesforce. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, that utility bar is so underutilized, I need to work that into demos more. As you explain through that, I'm hearing yet another reason for Data Cloud. Because it's not only the data in Salesforce but the data that you bring to, or surface as you said. So if I had Data Cloud and I was just bringing in data, then Tableau Pulse can help me bring insight to that as well. John Demby: Oh yeah, absolutely. Pulse for Salesforce assumes that maybe you don't have Data Cloud, so we don't make that a requirement. But if you do have Data Cloud ... or if you are moving along with us because you really see the value of Agentforce and all the things that Data Cloud is going to power, then yes, Tableau has a live connector to Data Cloud. You could create these additional metrics or data that you bring into Data Cloud or Zero Copy or any of that kind of stuff right there in Data Cloud, and then have these Pulse metrics sit on top of them, so that you're giving your people the most up-to-date information possible so they can make data-driven decisions. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I think I heard you say this, but I just want to make sure because this is really cool. Tableau Pulse helps me understand the what, but I think you were getting at more than that, it also helps me understand the why. Can you explain that? John Demby: One of the things we've built into Pulse for Salesforce and Tableau Pulse is, in addition to surfacing insights that may be relevant and popping those up immediately ... Let's just say for instance I'm looking, one of the out-of-the-box metrics for Pulse for Salesforce is conversion rate. The metric card tells me my conversion rate is down over the last month and gives me some indicators from that perspective. I double-click in, and maybe the first thing that Pulse tells me is, these are the segments that you're underperforming in. So I can begin to take some analysis, maybe I need to look at that. But maybe I want to ask it a question, so we do have Q&A built into the product. I'm not bound by what Pulse tells me, I can actually click the ask button and then just type a plain language question like, tell me what industries are in decline? Or something like that. And then it will source that information for me and I can begin to do that additional analysis, and then with tools like Slack and others I can take those insights and even share them with others in my organization. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that was going to be my next question is, it's fun if one person knows about it, but how do they broadcast that out? It sounds like you've got that figured out with collaboration. John Demby: Yeah, collaboration is built into the product. This idea of sharing is really critical in the solution, I could share a number of different ways. But keep in mind, we do usually encourage customers to adhere to some level of security. So if I try to share an insight with somebody they don't have access to, that I've set up in Tableau, they won't see it. But that's fine because we want governance, we want data governance and stuff like that. But it... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/33817782

How Can Salesforce Admins Overcome Imposter Syndrome and Stress? 10/31/2024

How Can Salesforce Admins Overcome Imposter Syndrome and Stress? Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, guest host Josh Birk talks to Katie Villanueva, Golden Hoodie winner and Salesforce Administrator at 10K Advisors. Join us as we chat about her work with mental health advocacy and mindfulness principles that you can apply to your work as a Salesforce Admin. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Katie Villanueva. Mental health advocacy in the Salesforce ecosystem Katie started out as an accidental admin, getting her degree in radio and television. These days, she works as a Salesforce Administrator for 10K Advisors, where she’s hard at work updating legacy code with flows and improving workflow processes. Katie’s also the founder of the Mental Health and Illness Trailblazer Community Group. It’s a space in the ecosystem to make meaningful connections, share resources, and share stories. “We’re not alone in our struggles,” Katie says, and what’s important is to build that support network and talk about it. Mindfulness principles for stress management and personal growth Recently, Katie gave a talk at Midwest Dreamin’ entitled “Appreciate Your #AwesomeAdmin Self,” based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s seven principles of mindfulness. The principles are a skill and something you have to practice, but they can help you overcome fear, doubt, imposter syndrome, burnout, stress, and negative self-talk. The principles are: Non-judgement Patience Beginner's mindset Trust Non-striving Acceptance Letting go In the talk, Katie gets into how you can apply those principles to your work as a Salesforce Admin. As seen on the Dreamforce stage At Dreamforce, Katie presented “Automate with AI: Prompt Builder, Flow, and Slack,” about the magic you can make when you get all three working together. If you missed out, she recently covered the same topics on How I Solved It with Jennifer Lee. Katie has so many great insights to share, so be sure to listen to the full episode to learn more. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Learn more Trailblazer Group: How I Solved It: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full Transcript Josh (00:05): Hello, Admins! Guest host Josh Birk here, and today I'm going to bring you my guest, Katie Villanueva. You may have known Katie Villanueva from her recent Golden Hoodie Win. Also, Katie and I share a long history of mental health advocacy, and indeed, today we are going to talk about mental health and wellness tips for the workplace. Now a quick note due to the Gravity, well, which is Dreamforce. We actually recorded this shortly before Dreamforce, but it is not coming out until well after Dreamforce. So just kind of imagine when Katie's talking about the session that she's going to do at Dreamforce that she already did it. I attended it and it was wonderful. Now over to Katie. Alright, today on the show we welcome Katie Villanueva to talk about her work with mental health advocacy and some of her upcoming presentations. Katie, welcome to the show. Katie (00:56): Hi, thanks for having me. Josh (00:58): Alright, well let's start with your early years. What did you go to school for? Katie (01:02): I went to school for radio. Television. Yeah. Well, no, actually a farmer. And then I graduated with radio, television, so I bounced around until I found my niche in the world, which is Salesforce being an admin. Josh (01:20): Okay. And what was your first involvement with Salesforce? Katie (01:23): I was an accidental admin, accidental on purpose admin. I wanted to do the job so they didn't have anybody doing the job. So at a company that didn't have a team or didn't have any experience with Salesforce, you always have that one person who ends up being the accidental admin. I sought out that position and said, I want to do it. Josh (01:49): So you were kind of a voluntold admin, but you sort of voluntold yourself? Katie (01:54): Yeah, yeah. I had a lot of really good ideas and nobody was going to execute 'em the way that I wanted to execute them, so I just decided to steer the ship myself. Josh (02:09): A classic form of if you want a job done. Right. Got it. Katie (02:13): Yes. Love it. Josh (02:16): And how would you describe your current job? Katie (02:18): Oh, my current job, I am no longer steering ships. I am absorbing all the things about Salesforce. I went to, the first role that I had was at a smaller company, no integrations, we only use Sales Cloud. It was a great role to wrap my arms around Salesforce and what its core capabilities were. But I graduated into this role. Now I'm with 10 K advisors. They're amazing, made up full of great people, and they have a really old org and it's full of code, and they're looking to update it with flows and retire those old workflow rules and put 'em into flows and clean up that old code and put it into something that now Salesforce is capable of doing that it wasn't able to do eight years ago. So I'm learning a lot about Code and Flow and also just the mega massive org that it is. And I'm working with a team, so I'm also learning best practices and how to work with others and share the helm. Josh (03:31): Got it. Nice. Nice. Well, we're focusing on mental health for the most part today and awareness. So tell me a little bit about the Trailblazer community that you started. Yeah, Katie (03:40): So I created the mental health and illness user group, and it is a space in the ecosystem where we can make meaningful connections and share resources and share stories and try to figure out this not only work-life balance and build up a support system around you, but understand that we're not alone in the struggles that folks have that I think everybody has at one point or another in their lives, or folks that are dealing with mental illnesses such as myself, I have bipolar disorder and I get to meet other people with bipolar disorder, and we get to talk about how that affects us doing the job and how we get through that. So all kinds of, everybody's got stuff going on and we weren't talking about it that much prior to the group, openly, at least that I was aware of. And I started talking about it and folks gathered around and I went to Salesforce and said, Hey, I think there's a community here that could use some support and can flourish. And they agreed and we created the user group. It's a virtual user group, but at conferences we try to meet up and color Well, I mean, conferences are so exhausting. Katie (05:15): You get zapped or whatever the word you want to use, you get drained really easily over socialized, overstimulated. And some folks use it as a quiet time and put on some music and chill out. And then other folks just use it as icebreakers too, to meet some other people, conference goers, and then it's very library vibes. It's quiet, there's small talk or there's no talk. I love it. Josh (05:47): Which is sometimes exactly what people need. So that's good. Yeah, no, I agree. And I feel like it's actually Dreamforce and Trailhead DX have only gotten, I think is the way I'd put it. Being on the floor on Moscone can just be visually overstimulating even before you start lingering in sounds and social interactions and things like that. And I know it's become even more important for me to remind myself that sometimes you just have to take a walk, get outside, enjoy that wonderful park that's right next to Meko before things get a little haywire. Tell me a little bit about before you started grappling with your bipolar disorder and with stress and anxiety, what were some symptoms that you saw at work that were causing you pain? Katie (06:43): Oh man. I was a wreck. I think the first thing that comes to mind was probably the most impactful that had happened to me is that I had a manager just blow up at me on one day and say, I don't know which version of you I'm going to get. Katie (07:06): Some days you come in here, you're on top of it, you're productive, you're all over it. I don't have to worry about anything. And then other days it's like you don't know what's going on or you're crying or you just aren't thinking through some simple tasks, stuff like that. And he couldn't depend on me, which broke my heart because I am a hard worker and I put so much of myself into my work because, and this was at the radio station, I loved the radio station. I found a direction at that time in my life and the fact that I was failing it and failing at what I'm capable of really just hurt me to my core. So that was an issue. And then a lot of times I cried a lot. I cried so much if my personal life was not steady, which at age 20, trying to figure life out, it's not really one thing Katie (08:20): Yeah, yeah. You don't have balance in your life. That was a trigger. And then some personal stuff, deaths in the family, stuff like that, just like anybody else would react to. But for me, when I had those triggers, it was exponential. I mean, here's good example. Just recently my dog died and it was my soulmate dog, and I had a manic episode after she died. Yes, I was grieving, but I took that for the nth degree and abandoned my everyday life. And just because I was so obsessed about, I went to a manic episode about creating a photo album. I created three, I printed 400 pictures out of, I only had 200 out of my dog and I printed 400. I had triplets of the same picture, and I kept on printing them. And then I bought photo album after photo album after photo album because the photo albums weren't good enough for the kind of book that I wanted to make. And then I spent time obsessing and I wasn't doing my work. I wasn't going to the gym. I was eating crappy food, I was also depressed. So I was drinking every night and I was just going through pictures, and I spent a ridiculous amount of money on this more than anybody really should when they want to put together a photo album for a dog that may have passed away. Katie (09:57): So when life gets imbalanced for me, it trickles into my work life. And unfortunately, that just means, I guess my manager said, I can be unpredictable or unreliable. It's hard. It's hard to hear because I know I can do a good job and I know I am a good worker and I know I produce good work. Josh (10:25): Yeah. Well, and we've talked about this back on the dev pod days, and it's so important to be able to talk about it because first of all, I think in the tech industry, it's really hard for people to admit that they might become unreliable for some reason because so much of our jobs, it is supposed to be show up. I was just at a user group meeting and they were joking about how they figured out that the best way to learn how to do flow was by failing at it five times. Right? It's the same thing with coding. You're going to break it three times to Sunday before you ever get anything work. But our outer image is like, oh, you need that code to get you to work. The train's going to come on time, boss. You're going to just kind of get it done. But if you don't talk about it, you don't normalize it. You don't rationalize it. And then we realize so much that we're not alone, that there are so many people out there dealing with depression, anxiety, chronic illnesses, or even just basic, Katie (11:26): I can't be, there's 10 million people with bipolar disorder. I cannot be the only person that this company who employs not 10 K, but I mean a company of however, a hundred, I worked for larger companies, national, global companies with a hundred thousand plus workers. I can't be the only one with this. So how are you going to deal with this? How do we learn how to deal with this when it comes up? So yeah, you got to talk about it. Josh (11:55): Yeah. And I'm on the record on a different session than I did, basically saying to people, managers, I know you didn't sign up to be somebody's therapist, and we're not asking you to be somebody's therapist. That's not your job. However, part of your job as a people manager is to recognize, acknowledge and work around mental health challenges because it will happen. It will happen to somebody who has, I don't even know if normal brains exist in a post pandemic world, to be honest. When somebody loses a dog or a mom or a father or something like that, every now and then life is going to break you down a little bit and you're not going to show up to work and be a hundred percent and maybe not showing up to work for a while is exactly what you need. And I will, as I always do, give a shout out to the wonderful people I've worked with at Salesforce who have been so supportive in things that I've done in the past and really helping prioritize mental health days and be able to take time off and the important things. So the self-care is very important to the employee, but it's very important to have a safe space that management can help provide that as well. Katie (13:03): Yeah, agreed. I think, I don't know, I got nothing. I feel like we hold so much back Josh (13:19): Because Katie (13:20): We're spending so much energy trying to cover it up. When I let go of holding back and I got my medication and I found my balance and I went to therapy, all that energy that I had trying to hide, it turned into something really productive and my career skyrocketed. Josh (13:40): Yeah. Yeah. Nice. What are some things that you do on the day-to-day that kind of help you regulate your stress and monitor your stress? Katie (13:55): Definitely workout. Workout and eating. That is what I can keep in my control Katie (14:04): When I, I reduce my stress levels, which evens out my moods. And then I also, I get a boost of serotonin in my brain, which is pretty much a dose of happy medicine. Then you put that on top of the actual medicine. Then it keeps me my boat upright. Nice. I like it. Yeah. Eating. I try to eat healthy and I control how much I drink. Unfortunately, like I said, when my dog passed, I wasn't monitoring those things and I spiraled and I felt like junk and alcohol's a depressant. So when I was depressed, I, and I knew I was digging myself deeper in the hole. I didn't have the energy to stop myself, but it was enough for warning signs for my loved ones to know, Hey, Katie doesn't drink that much. And my husband said, if you're sad, we can't drink. He helped me. He was like, I'm not going to buy any alcohol this week. Josh (15:16): Nice. Katie (15:18): And it helped and it just broke the chain and we got alcohol back in the house. Again, not that I'm an alcoholic, but I couldn't stop myself, but my support was able to see these signs that this is irregular, this is not everyday, Katie. So when I stopped going to the gym and when I stopped eating healthy, those were signs. Josh (15:42): I had somebody, actually, I think it was an article I was reading, and this is mostly about anxiety. So serotonin inhibitors, they work by forcing serotonin to go back to the front lines and keep working. And then she's like, so it's a very healthy thing because you're basically just tricking your brain into doing what it was supposed to be doing in the first place. And then if you smoke marijuana, marijuana goes after the same receptors, it goes after the same serotonin receptors, so it doesn't let this SSRIs do their job. And so she's like, now think if your house is on fire, right? Serotonin is like a sprinkler system in your house goes off, fire is down, your house is fine. Marijuana is kind of like you call the fire department even though it's just a kitchen fire. So now the fire is out, but your entire house is drenched and you have all this property damage. Josh (16:40): And then she's like, alcohol is like you have your house on fire and you call in the military and send in a tank to blow up your house. That's how much more powerful alcohol is taking the attention away from what your brain is supposed to be doing. Alright, well let's shift gears here a little bit. Move into kind of positive vibe mode. And I want to talk about the talk that you did at Midwest streaming, which is appreciating your awesomeness as an admin. And the first thing I want to ask you, because you kind of set up the session is like, this is about you. This is about a person, but you bring up somebody, John Cabot, Z, and I don't know if I'm saying that right, but who is John Cabot Zi and how did he impact your session? Katie (17:21): Oh my gosh. Actually, I have a funny full circle story about him. So I'll just start with, so the session is based off of the seven principles of mindfulness, which he is known to have created or at least put pen to paper and say, these are the seven principles. I'm sure they existed prior before that, but he popularized the principles. So the principles are widely accepted around the world for its impact on stress. It will, and this is what I tell the folks that come to my session. It'll help you overcome fear and doubt and imposter syndrome and burnout and stress and negative. The principles are a skill and it's something you have to practice. But if you practice, you will be able to manage your stress. And sometimes I even catch myself thinking, oh, I am not applying a principal right now. But the principles themselves are non-judgment. So I relate that to folks. I say, are you comparing yourself to others? Because that means you're passing judgment on yourself. Josh (18:29): Yes. Katie (18:31): Which everybody does at one point or the other. And then the second question is, are you patient with yourself? We all want to learn everything right now, especially the new stuff that comes out. I remember when AI came out and people were experts the next day, they're self proclaiming experts. Josh (18:57): That is a very important addition to that phrase because I assure you, as somebody who jumped on that bandwagon and had to do a lot of reading, unless you were already an AI researcher, nobody was an expert when this certain bandwagon started rolling up. Katie (19:11): Yeah. Yep. Exactly. So the second one is be patient and give yourself time and space to learn. The third question that he cited was having a beginner's mindset. So are you being open to learning new things, which is so important. I mean, you can't be in this profession without it. And if you don't have it, you probably aren't very good at your job. And I'd say that sounds harsh, but what I'm saying is having a beginner's mindset is being open to new things. We always have new releases. It's being open to new solutions. If you come to a table and think that you already have the fix and you haven't heard other ideas or other things that may snag it up in the process, then you're being very closed-minded and may not have the best solution. And then being open to learn, like I said. And so it's having a beginner's mindset. And I say this in the session and it's my favorite line in the entire session is having a beginner's mindset is the thing that prevents you from getting stuck. It allows you to grow. Josh (20:24): Yeah, yeah. Well, and as you're saying, it's very important in our culture and Salesforce culture because we do stuff changes so quickly. Three releases a year, new features, new products. The joke that I've been putting on the road these days is at one point you could actually learn the whole platform. You could learn almost everything about being an admin. You could learn almost everything about being a developer. And it wasn't, wasn't a mind killer. And now it's practically impossible because even within just the Salesforce platform itself, there's so many moving gears, but then you add in MuleSoft and Tableau and Slack and they... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/33687522

How Can Salesforce Admins Leverage Foundations to Prepare for Agentforce? 10/24/2024

How Can Salesforce Admins Leverage Foundations to Prepare for Agentforce? Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about Salesforce Foundations and how it can give you access to even more capabilities within Sales, Service, and beyond. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Eddie Cliff. Introduction to Salesforce Foundations Eddie is the lead PM for Salesforce Foundations, and he’s here to tell us how it can be a game-changer for orgs looking to incorporate AI. Now, if you’re a longtime listener to the podcast you know that AI tools are only as good as the data you give them. And while Data Cloud is meant to help you bring all your data into one place, it’s not always easy for customers to make the transition. That’s where Salesforce Foundations comes in. It adds the basic capabilities of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud, and Agentforce to your org, for free. How to get started with Salesforce Foundations The goal with Salesforce Foundations is to make it easy to get that 360 view of your customers. As Eddie says, their philosophy is “Easy by default, advanced by choice.” And you’ll find that as you start doing more with segmentation and personalization, you’ll realize just how much further you can go. Right now, customers with Sales or Service EE or UE can get Salesforce Foundations for free. All you have to do is go into Setup and click on the Salesforce Foundations node, and you’ll be presented with a handy-dandy checklist with everything you need to get started. Preparing for Agentforce Foundations makes it easy to get your org ready for Agentforce. That’s why Eddie and his team have included a freemium version of Agentforce in Foundations. “What’s really cool,” he says, “is that as you do more and you use more of these cross-cloud capabilities, your data in Data Cloud gets richer and more powerful and so does Agentforce.” There’s a lot more in this episode about how Foundations was developed, what’s coming in the future, and the ins and outs of sea kayaking, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Trailhead: Help docs: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce, about some exciting developments in Salesforce Foundations. It was the subline to Agentforce that you heard at Dreamforce this year. Eddie has been at Salesforce for nearly 14 years, transitioning from roles in go-to-market and solution engineering to now product management. And in this episode, Eddie shares insights into the evolution of Salesforce products like Starter, Pro Suite, and we learn about Salesforce Foundations. Now, before we get started, I just want to make sure that you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins podcast on whatever platform you get your Salesforce podcast on. Go ahead and click that subscribe, or sometimes it's a follow button. And that way, when new episodes come in every Thursday morning, they will be downloaded to your phone. So with that, let's jump into our conversation with Eddie where he explains how Salesforce Foundations is designed to give customers access to even more capabilities within sales, service and beyond, including all of their existing Salesforce implementations at no cost. So Eddie, welcome back to the podcast. Eddie Cliff: Hey, thanks for having me again. Good to be here. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Well, product managers that work on good features that admins love, we love to have on the podcast. So if people aren't avid listeners, let's refresh their memory. Tell me what exactly you do at Salesforce and how you came to be? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, definitely. So my name is Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management, leading product for our Starter, Pro and now Foundation Suite, which I'm really excited to talk about today. I've been at Salesforce for almost 14 years now, and I've done a variety of roles, from go-to-market and sales and solution engineering and customer success prior to moving into product management about eight years ago now. Mike: Wow, I didn't know you were an SC. I don't think you said that in the last podcast. That's awesome. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, SCs are amazing in what they can bring from their technical understanding and how Salesforce works, but also working with our customers to understand their requirements and needs, and ultimately designing the solutions that they can present back to the customer to hopefully prove out the value of Salesforce as they look to explore it. So actually, have a couple of SCs on my team... Well, former SCs that are now PMs. SCs make really great PMs because of that solutions mindset that's really tied to customer outcomes, which is super valuable. Mike: Yeah, no, I hear you. I also steal from the SC pot as well because they make for good evangelists too. Eddie Cliff: Definitely. Mike: And they help us present and run demos at Dreamforce, so it doesn't hurt. Speaking of Dreamforce, maybe not lost in, but the byline under Agentforce was Salesforce Foundations, which we announced, and your leading as the PM force. So let's talk about what Salesforce Foundations is. Eddie Cliff: So it was buried there at the very end of the keynote. So perhaps some people missed it because it was all about Agentforce and it was an amazing keynote. But we're really excited about Foundations because it's going to help customers unlock Agentforce. And so before I talk about Foundations a little bit more, I want to take a step back to talk about AI in general, which I know is top of mind for a lot of businesses today and probably a lot of the admins listening today. And I promise we're going to get to the meat of Foundations, but I think it's important to talk about this first. So first and foremost, great AI starts with great data, and you can only have great data if all of your apps and systems are connected and you have that single source of truth. And that's what Data Cloud really does for a lot of our customers. Now, bringing all that data into one system will lead to happier customers because now you can do targeted marketing, smarter commerce, and more effective sales. And what's really cool is that this also gets all of your data centralized and ready for AI, but it's not easy for a lot of our customers to go from say just Sales Cloud or just Service Cloud on their own to the full Customer 360 that we talk about a lot. You need time and resources, and I know from a lot of customers I talk to, that's not something that they have the luxury of having. And so that's the goal here with Foundations is we're making this easier by bringing all of these capabilities to all of our customers through Salesforce Foundations. So Foundations gives all of these sales and service customers access to more of Salesforce included with their existing Salesforce implementation, and this is free. I want to make sure that's clear. That's not something we're charging for, and you can add this to your existing organ, we'll talk a little bit about that. But ultimately, with Foundations, we've made it easier than ever before to get started with that Connected Customer 360 by building our foundational apps into your CRM. And this includes the basic capabilities within Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud, and now Agentforce, which is really exciting because as of today, it's now available at no additional cost as part of Foundations. Mike: Yeah, free is always good. I also thought for a second that I was like, somebody said, "Well, did you hear about Salesforce Foundations?" And I think they dropped the S and I was like, "Yes, I've heard of the Salesforce Foundation." That's not what we're announcing. Eddie Cliff: No, that's right. Yeah, I know there's a lot of words that we use at Salesforce and a lot of them sound familiar. This is Foundations with an S, not our .org and all of the amazing things that we do via the Salesforce Foundation. This is, if you think about it, like the foundations, the platform, the beginning point of your Salesforce journey and all the power you can bring. Mike: So I feel like all of this existed prior, we just brought together... I've seen all this stuff. How did Foundations come to be? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, and I think, Mike, last time I was on, we were talking about the Pro Suite and hopefully everybody had an opportunity to listen to that, but this is a refresher, the journey we've been on over the last few years with Salesforce Starter launching back in 2022. We really built this with this ethos of being easy by default and advanced by choice and creating that 360 out of the box, sales, service, commerce and marketing with a hidden version of Data Cloud that was powering all this behind the scenes. And we were getting a lot of great feedback on Starter. It's really a self-service product. You didn't need any help to get up and running. You didn't need to talk to an account executive. You could sign up online, try it for free and purchase with a credit card. But what we started to hear from our customers is they wanted more, either because they were growing or they just needed more advanced capabilities and more customization options. And so that's why we launched Pro Suite last year to allow for that seamless upgrade from Starter, and to allow our customers to get that enhanced set of capabilities and customization options. And again, we were getting really great feedback, which is awesome. And so what we started to hear from customers is they wanted to go up, they wanted to expand to Enterprise or even to Unlimited Edition, but they didn't want to lose any of that 360. They didn't want to go to Sales EE and lose the marketing and the commerce and the service capabilities that came with Starter and Pro Suites. So that was the beginning of, "Well, let's create this in a way that we can allow customers of Starter and Pro Suites to upgrade and not lose any capabilities." But at the same point, we realized, "Well, we should make this base set of capabilities available for all of our customers so they can get that value, and they don't have to start with Starter or Pro Suite. So they can do this directly in their EE or UE org." And so doing things like allowing sellers to speed up things with payment links, and so they can send people to a digital storefront to take care of transactional deals that might free them up to focus on more strategic opportunities or doing cross-cloud scenarios like driving loyalty with Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud, working together to create onboarding journeys and loyalty campaigns. And then also allowing marketing teams to get into the mix with really targeted Data Cloud segmentation and personalization tools to execute their email marketing campaigns. And ultimately allowing all the teams within an organization to get better cross-functional visibility by working out of that same system, all underpinned by Data Cloud. Mike: I think some of that, I'm thinking through as you were talking through that, a lot of that saw in the keynote with how... I forget the retailer we were talking about, but retailer can go in and the person can shop online and then look at it and then immediately pay in the store, making everything a little bit more seamless as opposed to having to send a link or somebody just call in with a credit card or paying online the modern way. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, that's exactly right. So bringing all of these pieces together and making it easy to consume and connecting all of the dots so you don't have to do that on your side, allows you to do more with Data Cloud, to do more segmentation and personalization because you're capturing that full Customer 360 in that unified profile that you can then use. So if you have say your commerce order data flowing in, that can be used to trigger marketing campaigns or can be used to surface in a service interaction within a case. And as you start to think about all of the Agentforce use cases you saw at Dreamforce, it's predicated on the fact that you have a connected view of your customer. You built that Customer 360, which we know is a challenge for a lot of our customers. And so again, that's the hope here with Foundations is it will help give you a starting point to start building that Customer 360 that you can grow with and scale up with as you need to. Mike: So one thing that struck me as you are walking through your last answer is thinking, I started as an admin and admins start in different orgs that are of different size. I started in enterprise level, so we were EE with days of always becoming a UE org, the big shiny emerald city. But you said in your answer, customers wanted to expand to EE and above. Was a lot of this predicated on our organizations that were below EE that set up very transactional use cases? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, good question. It was primarily with those that had started with Starter or with Pro Suite for one reason or another, maybe that fit their business needs when they were first evaluating Salesforce, and then their needs grew and they needed the EE level of capabilities from a sales standpoint, from a service standpoint or just from a platform standpoint. And so that's where we wanted to create this seamless motion that they could go up to EE without losing any of the functionality as well as the experience. It's something we haven't talked about that we've brought in with the Starter and Pro Suites with things like the Left Nav and our homepage, but ultimately allow them to grow as they need to without losing anything was really important to us. And again, as I was talking about before, we realized that there was a large opportunity here to say, "Hey, there's a lot of EE customers." It's by far and large the most adopted addition for us. There's an opportunity to bring this starter level functionality from marketing, from commerce and from service to let's say, a sales EE customer to start taking advantage of, to start trying out and using and see if it's a good fit. They can start to bring in more team members across the organization, and then those solutions will scale and grow with them. But again, all can underpin by Data Cloud. So this makes it really easy for them to create that 360 view and sets it up really nicely now for the launch of Agentforce. Mike: Yeah, so that begs the question then, who's eligible to get Salesforce Foundations? Eddie Cliff: So right now, customers with sales and/or service, EE or UE, so Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition can get Foundations for free, and that's something that you can do. It just takes a couple of minutes, we'll talk about it. But for those customers that have industries or might have some additional capabilities already in their org, we are working really hard to make Foundations available for you in the near future as well. So stay tuned there. And if you're unsure of what your Salesforce org has, and if it's eligible for Foundations, we have a lot of documentation, but of course, you're also always able to reach out to your account executive and talk with them and learn more, and they can even assist with getting Foundations turned on. Mike: Right, because it normally was available to people EE and below, right? Eddie Cliff: That's right. Yeah. So if you think about what we've done in Starter and Pro Suites, I think probably a simple way to think about what Foundations is, is the Pro Suite level of capabilities that we built, which is based on professional edition, sales, service, marketing and commerce. And in bringing that level of functionality up to EE and UE so that you get those additional capabilities that you didn't have access to before. If you had sales EE or sales UE, you didn't have a lot of this service or marketing or commerce capabilities and you didn't have Data Cloud. And so that's really what we're trying to bring when you think about a foundational layer of capabilities and value that we can bring to all editions so everybody can take advantage of it and see the value from it. Mike: It's almost, I think of the the Steve Jobs early Apple mantra of them looking at remotes and seeing 1,000 buttons and saying, "Well, yeah, anybody can make something complicated. It's really hard to make something simple," and bringing that motion forward. Sometimes you can overcomplicate things and set up. In this way, it's just bringing it forward and making it very simple and logical to set up. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, that's certainly the goal and that's the ethos that we took with Starter, that easy by default, advanced by choice, that you don't need to be a Salesforce expert to get started with Salesforce. And we've carried that forward as we launch Pro Suite and now as we're launching Foundations, to try to make this as easy as possible for everyone to set up and use and save everyone time in the implementation or adoption of these key features. And you're right, Mike, it's really hard to take something that's hard and to make it easier, and we have a better, better, never best mentality as we approach this. There's always work to be done and sharp edges and rough corners to round off and make the experience better and easier to use and fewer clicks to accomplish key tasks. And so that's near and dear to my heart, my team's heart, on everything that we do in Starter and Pro and Foundations to hopefully make their products experiences as easy to use as possible and as delightful to use as possible as well. Mike: So you mentioned customers with sales and service, EE or UE are eligible. How do they turn it on? Is it light switch? That was the joke we made with Lightning, right? Eddie Cliff: Yeah. And as I transitioned into product management, you gave me some PTSD a little bit for the early days of Lightning back... When was that? 2015, 2016. And yeah, we had to do a lot of work to really make it so Lightning was something that large organizations could adopt. Foundations is a little bit different, which is really exciting and it is really simple to add it to your word. And actually, in setup now, there's a new Salesforce Foundation setup node, which you'll notice at the top left. So if you go into setup and you click on Salesforce Foundations, you'll see all of the steps you need to do in a section called Start Here. And so we've made this super simple to get Foundations added and to get started with in your work. And it does require that you'll need to add some skews as we call them, some licenses that you get added to your order to provision the right level of functionality. And so you'll have to accept some terms and go through that process, top power via your account, hopefully everybody's seen that really cool self-service capabilities to manage what you have access to in Salesforce. But again, this is free. You're not paying anything. It's just adding these capabilities, accepting the terms because it's some addendum cinema says, and that's legal terms and the lawyers required it. But once you agree to all that, then we take care of the rest and provisioning and adding everything to your work. And so then all of the necessary pieces will then be present. And so you can go through the rest of the steps once you've added it in. There's some more sections in that set up node. So if you want to go ahead and enable Data Cloud, you can go through that process. If you want to get started with Marketing Cloud, you can enable that, and Commerce Cloud and so forth. And we're going to continue to add on to this page as well to make it simpler, and so that you can take advantage of some of the experience pieces too, like being able to add the Left Nav, to get our homepage in the... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/33584452

How Business Process Documentation Enhances Data Collection 10/17/2024

How Business Process Documentation Enhances Data Collection Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Cole, Director of Business Intelligence and Automation at 908 Devices. Join us as we chat about how Salesforce Admins can bridge the gap between business processes and data accuracy. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Cole. The importance of understanding the 'Why' behind data entry Jen gave a stellar presentation about business processes and data strategy at World Tour Boston, and I wanted to bring her on the podcast to learn more. “Data isn’t helpful if you don’t know your process,” she says, “it’s just interesting facts on a screen that maybe make pretty graphs. But what does it tell you if you don’t know what questions you’re answering?” More often than not, the people doing a business process don’t understand why they need to log data a certain way. That’s why as Salesforce Admins, we need to understand the “Why” behind data entry. If we can bridge the information gap and explain why having accurate data is so important, we’re more likely to get people on board. The impact of inaccurate data on business tools With new AI tools like Einstein Copilot or Next Best Action, having accurate data is more important than ever. As Jen puts it, “Inaccurate data creates inaccurate business decisions.” But in order to get there, you have to explain why it’s important. Jen supports a lot of sales teams, and it’s a great example. Sales teams want to sell things, and they don’t always understand why they need to log an email into Salesforce or create the next step on an opportunity because they don’t know how that information will be used. It’s up to Salesforce Admins to bridge this gap and spell out what the data is used for. If your sales team knows that logging their calls accurately will help you tell them the best time to call each prospect, they’ll be a lot more attentive to how they enter that data into Salesforce. Strategies for improving data collection Jen points out that trainings are a great time to get started with explaining the why behind data collection. When they fill in this field, who else will use that information and how will it help the business as a whole? You need to get them invested in the process and help them see the broader picture. Finally, it’s important to establish feedback loops that help your team stay invested in the process. If they can see how accurate data impacts their day-to-day, they’re much more likely to be invested in the project of data collection. There’s a lot more great stuff from Jen about how to look at your business processes and data strategy, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Podcast: Blog: Blog: Podcast: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Jennifer Cole about data strategy and process. Well, yeah, a little something different because in the world of AI and a lot of tools just in general, not to mention automation tools, it's good to know what you're doing with your data and do you have a process in place to make sure you're collecting good data. Also, I ask her about bad data, so that's an interesting answer. But really understanding what data are you collecting, and does everybody know the process for data collection because as we know, it's going to be even more important to have great data so that AI can give us even better insights. But if we don't know the process, then I think we're in trouble. So Jennifer's going to help us with that. But before we get into the episode, just a reminder that if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, be sure to click the follow button, that way this podcast can automatically be downloaded right to your device so that when you're out on your dog walk, you don't have to worry about downloading it because it'll already be there. And of course, I always appreciate a good review, so let me know how we're doing. With that, let's talk process and data quality and maybe data strategies. There's quite a few things in this podcast with Jennifer. And let's get Jennifer on the podcast. So, Jen, welcome back to the podcast. Jennifer Cole: Thanks, Mike. I'm really excited to be back. Mike Gerholdt: Well, last time, and I'll put a link in the show notes because you won't hear that a thousand more times today, but we were talking about documenting your process as an admin when you're solving things. Jennifer Cole: Yes, good stuff. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Well, I really enjoyed that. I could spend, again, probably another two hours doing that because, first of all, I constantly forget, "What was I doing here?" I should have wrote that down better. But we've since caught up a thousand other times and wanted to expand on that conversation because with AI, there's so many more shiny tools out there. Jennifer Cole: There are. Mike Gerholdt: I know, seriously. Jennifer Cole: A lot. Mike Gerholdt: I'm getting the cart in front of the horse. Let's refresh people about the amount of awesomeness stuff that you work on and what you do in the community. So let's start there. Jennifer Cole: Sure. Yeah. I am Director of Business Intelligence and Automation at 908 Devices, which is a super cool title that basically says, "I am still an awesome admin." I'm building apps and supporting my team. I run a team of awesome admins and have recently been able to co-present with one of my awesome admins at the Boston World Tour last, what, two months ago? Wow, time flies. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Yeah. Jennifer Cole: Oh, so much. Talking about process and data strategy. So that is my sweet spot and what I'm still rocking out at 908. Mike Gerholdt: I feel everybody now is paying attention to data with AI. Data, data, data. Pay attention to your data, clean your data, wash your data, put your data in a dishwasher. Jennifer Cole: Give me your data. Mike Gerholdt: Cascade is going to have special data tabs here pretty soon. Tide's going to have data pods, right? I'm kidding. Jennifer Cole: I was going to ask if they were going to be Salesforce branded, that would've been fun. I would've bought those. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, I know, right? But they only work in the cloud, so you'd have to stand outside in the rain. That wasn't a well-thought-through joke, so that's okay. You can't have a zinger every single time. But you bring up a good point. So what good is data if you don't know your process, right? Jennifer Cole: Yeah. I don't know that it's helpful if you don't know your process. It's just interesting facts on a screen that maybe make pretty graphs, but what does it tell you if you don't know what questions you're answering? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I guess in the scheme of things, if we're sitting down and we're looking at our data and we're cleaning our data, we should really take a step back and think about, "What are we doing with our process?" And maybe to your point, and you can expand on this, does everybody know the process? Do you run into a lot of organizations that don't know their process? Jennifer Cole: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: Or a process, I should say. The process, like there's one. Jennifer Cole: Can I choose C, all of the above? Mike Gerholdt: C, all of the above. Jennifer Cole: Yeah, actually quite a few. And I would expect most people assume it's certain pockets of the organization or those who just aren't doing the day-to-day work, but I don't think that's true. I actually experience people that are doing the day-to-day work don't even fully understand the process or why they're doing what they're doing or what information downstream or upstream their process is being leveraged in. So it's everywhere, honestly. Mike Gerholdt: Look, we all go to work. People are probably listening to this podcast going to work, like, "I'm going to go to work and send some emails and do work." And they do things. So when you say they don't know the process, what about that do you... Is it there's no organizational book or they don't know where the data comes and they don't know what they're shipping out or where it goes? Jennifer Cole: I think a little bit of both, but if I think about the group of folks I support the largest amount of my time against is the sales organization. They have an objective to make sales, right? They're in sales. It's literally in their title. And for them, they just want to get the job done, right? They want to make a customer happy, they want to book that order, and they want to move on to the next one. And they don't always understand why they have to log an email into Salesforce or why they need to create this next step on their opportunity, and who is actually using the application field that they're tagging about their customer. I think they get rightfully so focused on what they're trying to achieve, they don't see the broader picture of where their data's going and how that helps the company refine what they're doing or tweak the customer they want to focus on or tweak how we do things to make them more efficient. So I think in that particular very specific example, they're just so focused on their job, they don't understand why or how it matters. Mike Gerholdt: You bring up a very good step in the sales process. If they don't understand why that step's required and the data they're gathering for that step, then they're less likely to do it, right? They'll just do it in a spreadsheet and then when the deal's closed, they'll just go in Salesforce and just bang through the opportunity as fast as they can, right? Jennifer Cole: Right. There's nothing enriching in that. I can't look at a bigger scope of data to understand, "Geez, a lot of our opportunities close faster when they do a follow-up call 20 days after X event." And that would be juicy information to know because then it becomes a feedback loop in the process to say, "Hey, it looks like the odds of closing your deal faster if you do this particular step." But if all of that is being logged outside of the system and we don't know how many follow-up calls there are or face-to-face meetings or customer demos that are taking place, then we can't provide that intel back to help them achieve their goals faster and smarter. Mike Gerholdt: So if they're logging, let's say, a required field, which is an arbitrary date because they're trying to get through to the closed one because they think they're following the process, but they really did the whole thing out of Salesforce, and then it's Friday night and the quarter closes and they're trying to get their opportunities in, by not understanding the process, are they then creating bad data? Jennifer Cole: Oh, bad's a funny word. I would say inaccurate data. I would say data that's going to mislead you. Yes, there's technically bad data, but in that case, it's not intentionally bad. It's more just inaccurate to the true story. And I think that can make it very misleading for the business because they might adjust their workflow based upon the intel they have and it actually isn't improving anything because nobody was being honest about what they were entering. Mike Gerholdt: So CEO goes to, we'll use your example, Boston World Tour and sees the new AI, Copilot and Einstein stuff, and maybe wants to use Einstein Next Best Action, but because they're just putting in arbitrary dates, the new shiny isn't really helping them. Jennifer Cole: No, it just becomes a very expensive toy. Sorry, but it does. It doesn't help them move anything faster, right? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And I think it's an interesting concept because we always go back to, "Well, this one thing will just help you do stuff better." But ultimately, before you even look at those things, it's, "But what is the process that you're trying to get to? Do you even understand the process?" Is that where you start with a lot of things? Jennifer Cole: It's where I start everything. When a person comes for an enhancement or wants to report out on this particular metric or get data to understand what's happening with their business, the question always begins with, "What questions are you trying to answer? I understand you are asking for this data point, but why? Is it something you're doing today or you're not doing today and you want to understand how well you are or are not filling that information in or following that process?" Because understanding the process for me and my experience and my team's experience helps us serve our customers better. And when I say customer, I mean internal employees in this case because we're an internal team. We help them achieve so much more when we can get underneath and get to the why. Understanding their why is what drives bigger change for us because it often is not just them who need the help or need the change, but actually other people in the organization have that same why. So process is almost like a keystone in the bridge for us. We have to get to it. We have to understand it before we start building across and bridging islands together. Mike Gerholdt: Man, the number of times understanding the why has come up. I should get a shirt that says that. Jennifer Cole: That'd be a great shirt. Mike Gerholdt: Understand the why. So let me dial in specifically for an admin that's listening. Are there things that you build into your application when you create something, let's say for sales or customer service, that helps remind the end user about the why? Jennifer Cole: Sometimes, yes. Actually, a recent deployment we did was to enable sales to capture who should get automated booking and shipping notifications. And we moved that into Salesforce so that when it replicates over to our ERP, it's auto-fed. It's just more accurate. The sales rep knows who should be getting those notices. And we have those fields there to fill in those addresses, but we did something super simple. We added a little text bubble, an actual text component on the lightning page that explained what field did what, and critical reminders about which field you should fill in and which field you should update this address only. And the feedback we got was, "That was great. I need that. That always will remind me because I can never remember what I'm supposed to do or why it matters." And it was just a really simple little text component on the screen. So we try to do small things like that where we nudge them through the workflow with those gentle reminders, conditional visibility reminders, anything that helps them in that moment for that particular step in the process to remember the critical reason why it matters helps. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. That's really great because you think about the level of complexity that is getting added to everyone's job. I remember as an admin, I'd spent two, three months with maybe a department or a team working on what their process is and getting their app right in Salesforce. And by the end of it, man, you could have quizzed me Jeopardy-level on what was going on with that team and how the data flowed and I would have nailed it, but two months later- Jennifer Cole: It's gone. Mike Gerholdt: ... no idea. It's gone. Jennifer Cole: What's my name? Yes. Mike Gerholdt: I'll take, nope, I don't know, hodgepodge for 500, Alex. Jennifer Cole: Yes. Real admin life. Mike Gerholdt: Exactly. But somehow you just expect to turn that app over to your users and like, "Oh, I'm sure they'll remember this." So when you're creating an app and have those epiphanies, "Let's add this box that reminds people," how important is it for you? Or how important do you feel it is that admins make sure that their users know where the data that they're working on comes from and where it goes? Jennifer Cole: I think it's actually critical to adoption. Everyone loves to throw this word adoption around, and it's more than just logins. It's actually usability of the system and following the process. And we had a sales meeting, was it two years ago, a year ago? And we were asked to present as a Salesforce team to the sales team about critical fields they need to fill in. And everyone's done those trainings. They're painful for the salespeople. They're just sitting there, "Yeah, okay, I have to fill in the application. Yeah, okay, I have to update my close date. Yeah, okay." And they go through this monotony. But what we found was so successful and an incredible adoption to following the process was when we told them why. We said, "Okay, when you fill this in, here are the people after you that are using this data. Here's your marketing team and how they're using it to refine the drip campaigns to send to your customers. So if you classify them right, they're going to get special content against their industry or application usage." And we found, Mike, it was the coolest thing, we found in our support channel, we use Slack for issues and questions by the business, people after that sales meeting we're just saying, "Now, what if I choose this and what happens if I choose this?" Because they knew who was using the data that they input and where it went, they started to care. And then we just saw greater adoption and questions around, "Well, what happens if I choose the wrong thing? Can I fix it?" And that's a win as an admin in my book when your business suddenly cares about the data they're putting in. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, especially for salespeople. I did an exercise like that where the salespeople went through the call center. And I remember sitting in the break room and the salespeople sitting down with call center agents and like, "Well, whenever we get this from sales, it says this." And them sitting there going, "Well, we fill it out because we think it's this." But those two people had never talked. And the second they talked, it was like, "Oh, well we could 100% get this." And then the customer service agent is like, "Oh, that would be so helpful because then when they call in and ask, we don't have to spend 20 minutes looking something up." Jennifer Cole: It's amazing. It's powerful. Mike Gerholdt: I'll take ownership of this too, it's the fact that when you sit down sometimes, you work at processes at a stage gate level and you forget, "Okay, well, I did sales and then sales ends here." Well, sales doesn't end there. There's that gray area, and I just didn't bring those groups together. I jumped over to service and obviously everything shipped and it was fine or then they'd call, except that gap in between there is the parts you got to work on. Jennifer Cole: The bridging of the teams and how the data flows between them. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Jennifer Cole: I think that's where the secret sauce is. Mike Gerholdt: A lot of it is. So let's touch on this. Automation has always been huge, and I know we've talked a lot with you about integrations and bringing data over. How does not knowing the process really impact automations? Jennifer Cole: How much time do we have? No, I'm kidding. Mike Gerholdt: As much time as you'd like. Jennifer Cole: I think it can have a huge impact on the business in not a good way. I think it could accelerate inaccurate data faster. If you don't understand your process and why you're filling in what fields, you could be filling in fields that mean nothing to your business, that mean nothing to you learning how to change your process, adapt your process to better suit your business and your customers. I think it can actually be an unfortunate waste of energy for your admins and money for the organization if you just don't understand what you want to do and who's doing what and why. Remember the TV show Lost, which is very controversial, no one likes the ending of Lost. But remember- Mike Gerholdt: I... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/33483717

What Can Salesforce Admins Do with Slack Integrations? 10/10/2024

What Can Salesforce Admins Do with Slack Integrations? Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jim Ray, Director of Developer Relations and Advocacy at Slack. Join us as we chat about Workflow Builder, Slack integrations, and what happens when you put them together. You should for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jim Ray. Slack as a multi-purpose tool Jim is here to tell us that Slack is much more than a chat tool. Automations and integrations can open a whole new world of utility for your organization. And while Slack integrations have always been a thing, you used to need some technical knowledge in order to build your own. All that’s changed with the launch of Workflow Builder. This tool allows you to build automations in Slack without ever having to code or host an app. Once you get started with making your own Slack integrations, you’ll never know how you got by without them. Empowering admins with Workflow Builder You can do a lot of cool things in Workflow Builder, like create a new channel or automatically post a formatted message at a certain time each week. But Slack integrations are where it really gets interesting. For example, let’s say you have a weekly status report meeting. You can create a scheduled workflow that automatically drops the relevant Salesforce info into a Slack channel so everyone can refer to it for the meeting. Slack integrations go both ways, so you can also use a Slack automation to execute a flow in Salesforce. With Workflow Builder, you can bring your Salesforce data directly into Slack and vice versa, and the possibilities are endless. Enhancing Productivity with Slack AI Finally, Jim had a lot to say about Slack AI, which gives you the ability to search Slack with natural language queries and summarize or format the results. When he came back to work after his paternity leave, he needed to prep for a first meeting with a new skip-level manager. So he asked Slack AI, “What does this person think about the Slack platform?” It gave him a summary of everything they ever posted on the subject, complete with footnotes so he could look at specific comments. Most importantly, Jim points out that the automations you create in Workflow Builder are exactly the kind of structured data that Slack AI loves to work with. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for how you can share information across your organization without the need to put everyone on Salesforce. This episode is full of use cases and tips for how to get started with Slack integrations, so be sure to take a listen. And don’t forget to subscribe for more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Social Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Okay, this week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are going to have a lot of fun because we are talking about Slack automations with the director of developer relations and advocacy, Jim Ray of Slack. Now, you're probably a Salesforce Admin, you're like, "Oh, but we don't use Slack. I'm not going to listen to this." No! This is a fun episode and it's going to give you a ton of ideas for, hey, maybe we should think about using Slack. I'm not here to sell you anything. I don't get any commissions. I just love when I can give you ideas and creative answers to challenges that you're facing. And Jim talks us through a whole bunch of fun stuff that you can do in Slack and gave me a ton of ideas. We talked about canvases. I don't know if you use canvases, but it's a ton of fun. Now, before we get into that, I want to tell you about, hey, what we got coming up in April, because this is last episode of March. I have architect evangelist Tom Leddy coming on to talk about decisioning. I reconnected with Lizz Hellinga at TrailblazerDX. Remember, she was on a previous episode talking about the importance of clean data and why that's important for AI. She's coming back. I'm working on getting Skip Sauls with the Data Cloud update, so Data Cloud. And then I'm going to introduce a new episode at the end of April where I'm bringing my co-worker, Josh Burke, on, and he's going to do a deep dive episode with a product manager. We're working on getting somebody really cool to help you change the way you do some of your thinking. That's all I'm going to tease out for right now. But of course, if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you're doing that, make sure you're following it. It's a different word on every podcast platform. But if you do that, new episodes automatically get downloaded to your phone. That way when you wake up in the morning, you put the leash on the dog, you go out, boom! You press play, podcast is going, and you can get some great information. You don't have to think about it, or maybe you're riding the bus to work or bicycling. It's starting to become summer now. So anyway, that's a whole long way. This is fun. You're going to enjoy this podcast. Let's get Jim on the pod. So Jim, welcome to the podcast. Jim Ray: Thanks so much. It's great to be here, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: I always have fun talking Slack. I feel like the last time we talked Slack was with Amber Boaz and she was telling us how to replace meetings with Slack. And then you did a presentation in the admin track at TDX about automating in Slack, and I just feel like that's the next level for people that use Slack is getting it to do stuff automagically. So that's what I'd love to talk about, but let's start with how did Jim get all the way to Slack? Jim Ray: That's a great question. I'm also glad you mentioned Amber Boaz. I had the opportunity to meet her at TDX. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, she's wonderful. Jim Ray: She's from my neck of the woods, so I'm going to try to drive down to Durham in a month or so and hang out with the user group that she's got. Mike Gerholdt: That's pretty country down there too. Jim Ray: It is. It's nice. I went to school down there too, so it's pretty great. So if we're talking background here, my background is actually in journalism. I have a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina. That's what I did. Mike Gerholdt: So it's obvious that you would work in tech. Jim Ray: Obvious that I would be working in developer relations at Slack. It's maybe not as much of a leap as people might think. I was always kind of the techie guy that was looking for... My degree is in this multimedia storytelling. This was the late '90s. We were trying to figure out how to do interesting new ways of telling stories on the web, and that's what I was into. So I always had a tech mindset inside of the newsrooms that I worked in. And then when I switched over to tech, I still brought that media background with me. And interestingly enough, DevRel has merged those two things. It wasn't something that I'd set out to do, but I was really interested in what was going on at Slack. I started working at Slack in the middle of 2016, so just as the company was really rocketing off. It was a really incredible first year. The user growth was happening a lot. The company itself was growing tremendously. It was a different place every year for the first couple of years that I was there. And so I've been working on the DevRel side for most of that time. And then recently, about a year and a half ago, I took over our developer advocacy team. And so on developer advocacy in Slack, what we do is we work primarily with our customers who are building on the Slack platform. The platform is multifaceted in some ways. We have our Slack App Directory where you go and you install apps that are built by our partners, or they're built by companies that are building their business on top of Slack. But the bulk of the work that happens on the platform is custom apps and integrations that are built by our customers to solve their own needs. We're always looking for ways to engage with that audience and help them understand how to do automation in Slack. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, I think too often people just look at Slack as like, oh, it's just another communication tool. But just as we were chatting before we even got started, the number of features that it has and the way you can configure things to, lack of a better term, almost communicate back with you and make life easier, which is what the point of automation. I remember the first time I built an automation, which I believe was just for a simple Slack group where it was like, I really want questions in the Slack group formatted in a certain way, and so I just stuck up that form and they just auto created that post. But the cool thing was somebody on my team pointed out, you know it could also put all of that text into a Google Doc so that you have this running FAQ? I was done at that point. I was like, oh God, no idea, right? Because for so long, you mentioned you started in 2016, but you got a degree in multimedia storytelling, who would've thought like, VHS, what are we going to do? DVD now for a certain period. Now, so many of these communication apps are not just like remember the days of MSN Messenger. It's not just text back and forth. It's actually managing of information and context. Jim Ray: I think that's such a good point, and I really love your example of formatting your questions. I think one of the things, and this is something that I learned from working more closely with my friends on the sales side of the house, is that if you're just using Slack for communication, you're overpaying for a chat tool, as they like to say. And there's a lot more that you can do to broaden your usage of Slack, and we're increasingly trying to be a surface area for getting work done. Obviously, Slack doesn't have any desire to be the only place where you come and do your work. It would pretty well constrain the work that I think people could do. But it's definitely a place, particularly those quick interactions, and that's where some of the automation comes in. But things like approvals, things like questions, even quick bug reports where you're already interacting with your colleagues, automation allows you to bring in your other tools, and that's where the power of that lies. And the platform has really expanded a lot in the early days. Slack came with some built-in integration. So if you wanted to do things like get an alert whenever somebody uploaded a file to Dropbox, then we had that automatically configured. But if you wanted to do something outside of the bounds of that automatic configuration, then that wasn't really possible. Then we launched the API and along with that we launched the app directory. And so we were approaching it from a couple of different ways. You could build custom integrations, or you could install apps and integrations that other people had built from the directory. And then that's where we saw that usage explode, where people were really building custom use cases. The problem was for those early days of the API was that it really did require a fair bit of technical knowledge. You had to know how to program against our APIs, which means you had to know how APIs work. You also had to host the app yourself. And so in those early days of the APIs, you had to build out an application. And it worked very similarly to how you might build a Twitter app or something like that, but you were responsible for hosting that. And then we built a lot of tooling around that to help improve that. We built some frameworks to make it easier to build with some of our most popular programming languages. And then we acquired a company called Missions, and this is where Workflow Builder really... Where its origins lie. We acquired this company called Missions, and the team that built Missions, they were a team that was actually inside of a consulting company called Robots & Pencils, and they were like, "We've got this idea for our product that can interact with Slack." Mike Gerholdt: That's a great name. Jim Ray: It's a cool name, right? And so the Missions app was all about making it easier to build automations without having to write any code. So we acquired that team, fantastic team, really love working with them. A number of them are still at Slack, thankfully, and they're doing fantastic work. And that became the first version of Workflow Builder, and Workflow Builder was our no code automation product. And that was a way to use the platform without having to know how to program, without having to host an app. And so that was the first big expansion beyond just writing applications. Mike Gerholdt: Jumping ahead to your TDX presentation, because we talked about automation, because the example I gave was just literally Slack just automating within itself, what were some of the examples you gave in that breakout presentation? Jim Ray: The evolution of Workflow Builder also mirrors the increased complexity of things that you can build. The initial version of Workflow Builder allows you to do exactly what you were just talking about, allows you to automate work within Slack. So if you wanted to do something like create a new channel or post a message that was formatted in a certain way, then you could do that with Workflow Builder. The second version of Workflow Builder that we released, and this is the current contemporary version, allowed hooks into other applications. And so apps could build custom steps that could then be inserted into workflows. And so you could install an app, and then that app would bring custom steps along with it. And what we've done now is continue to expand on that surface area. So now anyone can write a custom step and you can actually deploy that up to Slack and we'll run that custom step inside of Workflow Builder. We've also built out a number of what we call connectors. These are connections to other third-party tools. So Salesforce is a great example. So if you want to create a new record in Salesforce, then we have that connector built in. And what's nice about the way that we've built it is we handle things like authentication. We handle all of the API communications so that you don't have to worry about that, and then all you have to do is off with your credentials. And then when you run the workflow, then it will just essentially act on your behalf. And so we've got about 70 of these connectors into a whole bunch of apps. So Salesforce is obviously one. The Google suite, so if you need to create a new Google Doc or if you need to insert a row into a spreadsheet, if you want to upload files into various file providers. So we've got a number of steps that do things like that. And then one of the Salesforce steps that we've also got is to kick off a flow. So if your organization is dependent or you've built out a lot of custom flows or things like that, then you can insert a step into Workflow Builder and then we'll kick off that flow. So it'll actually execute a more complex workflow instead of just creating a new record or updating a record or something like that. Mike Gerholdt: I think the really cool automation stuff, at least cool to me, was giving Salesforce admins the ability to, lack of a better term, expand the footprint of Salesforce within an organization, but without having to add per se more platform licenses. And we did an example where like a warehouse manager really deals with the data, but a lot of people also needed to just know about things. And with automation, they could follow records and channels and get updates, but they never needed to update any of the physical data on the Salesforce record. Jim Ray: That's such a good example, and it's something that we see from our sales and customer success friends all the time as well is... So at Slack, the way that our channels are organized is that every account that we're attached to gets its own channel. They all have their own prefix and stuff like that. So it might be Account-Salesforce and Account-Acme. And then you can actually build automations that will do things like one of the ways that you can trigger your automation is you can have your automation set to go at a certain time once a week. So maybe you've got a Monday morning meeting and you want to get the entire sales team around that, but you want to pull some data from Salesforce. So you can go grab some information from Salesforce. You want to get the latest updated figures that have come in over the past week, and then you can just drop that information into channel, and then now everybody's got the context. And so you're not just blindly talking about, "Hey, what's going on with the customer this week," you actually have some information, and then you can start a conversation around that. It's actually a great way that teams have eliminated those regular meetings that we have so that everybody stays in sync. There's often good reasons why we have them, but maybe not good reasons why we keep them, especially now that everybody's working in a more distributed way these days. This works across all kinds of teams, not just sales team, but you might have a marketing team and maybe you want to pull some data from Google Analytics or any of your social analytics platforms or anything like that. You can drop that information in there and then the team can have a conversation around that. Maybe you notice something's right, or maybe everything's great and then you just don't need to have a meeting. It's just like, "Looking good and all systems go," and then you've just saved your entire team half an hour. Translate that over a quarter or a year, and that's some actual real-time savings. Mike Gerholdt: Am I understanding you right by also saying it could pull from reports or dashboards in Salesforce? Jim Ray: Absolutely. Because everyone's Salesforce instance is special, we operate on the record level, and so we'd be able to look at how those records are set up. And one thing that we're interested in getting a little bit closer to is things like Tableau and MuleSoft where there might be some complex records that run in the background, and then how do we pull that information into Slack? So we haven't quite fully figured out that level of automation yet, but it's absolutely something that folks on both sides are working on. Mike Gerholdt: On top of it just being cool, the part that really appeals to me is the lack of having the context switch. So this concept came to me, oh, I want to say four or five years ago when we were trying to work through a ticketing system for what my team does. We really tried to narrow down, what is the hardest part of your job? Well, the hardest part of your job is regardless of where your mind is at at say 12:30, you have to join this meeting. And for me, oftentimes I'll sit down at my desk, I don't know what the priority is that morning. I could get working on something. And then to your point, oh, it's 10:00. I got to join this team meeting. Boy, if I didn't have to and I could just stay in my mindset and do another 45 minutes, I could finish this project. But now I have to context switch. Join this meeting, look at 20 people on a call, waste an hour, and then spend another 20 minutes getting my brain back to where it was. I could have been done with this project and maybe my update was five minutes. And I bring that up because I think like, wow, just the ability to, hey, we're still going to have that Monday team call at 10 AM, except it's going to be a scheduled Slack post. And then I just expect you, the directs, to respond to as needed throughout the day. Because if you're a sales guy, you probably have a 10 AM with a customer, and that's bringing money in as opposed to, well, my update was only five minutes anyway, I'm going to add this update at 11:05 after I'm done with my customer call. I'm not going to prevent anybody. I bring that up because I think the value of not having to context switch by just putting in simple automation is... /episode/index/show/buttonclickadmin2/id/33391202

Salesforce Admins Podcast

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