Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Split Views – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #452

by with No Comment Salesforce EventsTip of the WeekTrailhead

Welcome to my Salesforce Tip of the Week #452

 

Tip 1 – Split Views on Lists

Doing the Spring ’21 Admin maintenance module, this is one thing I used straight afterwards in my Org, so I thought I should highlight it.  If you find yourself working through multiple records in a list use split view, so you can see a list view and a record side by side. It is just a button click away, and a click to change back to Table or Kanban.

Further information from Trailhead:

What’s new?

First, there was display as Table, then display as Kanban. Now there is Split View. View a record while still viewing a list. Split view is great for going through records in sequence or for quickly skimming through a set of records. The split view panel is collapsible for extra flexibility.

Why was this added?

Do you often find yourself working through multiple records in a list? With split view, you can see a list view and a record side by side. To move on to a new record, select it from the split view, and the new record opens with the list still in view. No more navigating back and forth between your list and your records. 

How does it work?

To access split view, select Split View from the Display as dropdown menu. If you select split view for an object, that object automatically loads in split view until you change its Display as view.

 

Tip 2 – Events

With the obvious lack of the big in-person learning events, Dreamin’ events are the best chance to block out a day to a wide range of Salesforce sessions. Keep an eye out for international events as well as ‘local’ ones, because getting out of bed 3 hours earlier/later, is a lot easier than a 5,000 mile commute! For example, take a look at Albania Dreamin (22nd May) and Czech Dreamin (10th June).

Tip 3 – ICYMI

The Galacticos COO Paul was recently interviewed by Josh Birk on the Salesforce Developer Podcast on “Weird Apex”. You can find the full recording here.

 

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Org Shape and Critical Incidents – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #451

by with No Comment DevelopmentTip of the WeekTrailhead

Tip 1 – Org Shape

Thank you to our Architect and fellow MVP Mike Gill for this one…”The Org shape feature has had a bit of rough ride to get here, those familiar with the history of the feature will know this. Now it is officially available to all as a Public Beta, anyone can take it for a spin!

What is it? – Create an org shape to mimic your baseline setup – scratch orgs have been largely difficult to adopt due to the complexity of getting your Scratch Org setup to look like a Sandbox or Production Org. Org Shape allows you to easily create Scratch Orgs which match you Production Org in terms of licenses, features, settings and limits. The once impossible task of getting your scratch org looking like a production org is now possible.”

Take a look here for more details.

Mike also adds:

“If you don’t know the benefits of scratch orgs – here are some- As we move into a more DevOps centric world, scratch orgs provide a unprecedented level of control around org management which is necessary for CI/CD
– Ability to track changes easily and pull down only the changes you want
– It forces better developer practices – such as modularisation”

Tip 2 – Critical Incidents

Some of the Community saw this management come into affect this week, after issues on Wednesday…so if you want to learn about Critical Incidents, from either side of the desk, take a look at this Trailhead module.

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Command Line Data Loader – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #450

by with No Comment DevelopmentNot For ProfitTip of the Week

Tip 1 – Command Line 

(2 words that can strike fear into ‘non-developers’) Thank you to our Lead Developer Simon for sharing a use of the Command Line that many probably do not know about…

“Did you know that DataLoader can be launched from the command line? Setup can be fiddly, but once working this can be a robust solution for getting data in and out of Salesforce. Run a command after exporting data from databases, run a scheduled job to ensure Salesforce data is ready for work, or leave a shortcut to a batch file on the desktop of a User who needs to import data occasionally. See this for more info”.

Here is some further information from the Data Loader guide…

When running Data Loader in batch mode from the command line, several operations are supported. An operation represents the flow of data between Salesforce and an external data source, such as a CSV file or database. You can use the following operations. Enter values in the process.operation parameter in lowercase

Operation Description
extract Uses the Salesforce Object Query Language to export a set of records from Salesforce. The exported data is written to a data source. Soft-deleted records are not included.
extract all Uses SOQL to export a set of records from Salesforce, including existing and soft-deleted records. The exported data is written to a data source.
insert Loads data from a data source into Salesforce as new records.
update Loads data from a data source into Salesforce, and updates existing records with matching ID fields.
upsert Loads data from a data source into Salesforce. Existing records with a matching custom external ID field are updated. Records without matches are inserted as new records.
delete Loads data from a data source into Salesforce, and deletes existing records with matching ID fields. Deleted records are moved to the Recycle Bin.
hard delete Loads data from a data source into Salesforce, and deletes existing records with matching ID fields without first storing them in the Recycle Bin.

Tip 2 – Help when you can

I know there are a lot of important causes vying for our attention. We at Cloud Galacticos wanted to show our support for our friends and colleagues in India, but were unsure of how to do so. Just in case anyone is looking, we found the DEC a reliable and trustworthy place to donate.

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Apex Recipes – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #449

by with No Comment Tip of the Week

Tip 1 – Apex Recipes 

I recently revisited this post from the Salesforce Developers Blog by Kevin Poorman, introducing Apex Recipes last year. “Apex Recipes is a library of concise, meaningful examples of code for common use cases following best practices. They reflect enterprise patterns that can be utilized for real world solutions.”

Follow the instructions in the post to install the app, or you can do a quick Trailhead badge which guides you through it.

Look at the Trailhead module here…”Quick Start: Explore the Apex Recipes Sample App“

Tip 2 – Take a break

I like this article from BBC this week, mainly because it gives 3 practical ways to take a break from screen time. It is worth a 5 min read, but my favourite is to do some ‘walking meetings’. If you don’t need to present slides, or take detailed notes, put your headphones on and walk while you talk. Fresh air, extra steps, and less screen time!

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

TrailheaDX, Trails, and even Dreamforce – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #448

by with No Comment DreamforceSalesforce EventsSF NewsTip of the WeekTrailhead

Tip 1 – TrailheaDX

June 23rd will be TrailheaDX, you can register now for free here. Originally a Developer focussed event, more recently it is aimed at the whole Salesforce audience…”Devs, admins, architects, partners, and IT leaders, join us as we gather globally with Trailblazers looking to expand their Salesforce skills”.

It is a 1 day virtual event, so don’t expect the same as the in-person events, but the agenda includes:

35 Product demos

27 Content Episodes

25 Expert led rooms

5 Broadcast channels

Tip 2 – SDGs

As part of our commitment to promoting sustainable development, I found this Trail very useful. Take a look at the sustainable development goals and see which you can help on. It’s everyone’s responsibility.

Tip 3 – Dreamforce!?

This week saw an article in The Business Journals quoting that Salesforce were ‘absolutely committed’ to holding an in-person Dreamforce this year, Sept 21st-24th. To say I am surprised is the understatement of the week!

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Appexchange Trusted Reviewers and Rollup Helper – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #447

by with No Comment AppExchangeDataTip of the WeekTrailhead

Tip 1 – Trusted Reviewers

Have you noticed any updates on the Appexchange? Last month these updates were announced, which are useful when you are looking at reviews on Apps/Products. If there are 2 reviews, 1 good 1 bad, which do you take as the most accurate? The new Top Reviewer/ MVP/Ranger icons add some extra gravitas to certain reviews, maybe not to base a decision on, but at least to help sway a split decision!

Tip 2 – Rollup Summaries

We have featured this Rollup tool from Andy Fawcett in a number of blogs and presentations, so I am using this week’s latest release as an excuse to highlight ‘Declarative Lookup Rollup Summaries’ here. Our Architect Mike Gill says…

“Every org at some point requires a custom roll up discussion, and warranty’s at look at the options and apps out there – such as DLRS. If your use case requires a non standard roll up the first thing you should do is revisit the business requirement which has lead you to this point. Question the object model design, do you really need a custom roll up at all? If you still need a custom roll up – the next thing you need to decide is whether to build your own or use an app such as DLRS. DLRS has evolved over the years into a one stop shop for solving roll up requirements, most people don’t fully appreciate the scope of it and how it works, so we recommend taking a look!

It’s primary use case is bridging the gap between related data when no master-detail relationship is possible. Example – rolling up data from Service Cloud object such as Case to the Account object.This is all easily achieved declaratively without the need to create a single flow or apex class. On the flip side it’s not the ideal solution for simply solving reporting requirements after reporting requirement. Every roll up no matter how it’s created or implemented has it’s cost and just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

With great power comes great responsibility — alternatively known as the Peter Parker principle”

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Winter 22 Logo and Trailhead Go – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #446

by with No Comment AppExchangeSalesforce ProductsTip of the WeekTrailhead

Tip 1 – Winter ’22 Logo

TODAY is the last day to vote for the Winter ’22 logo, click here and complete the form to vote. Thanks to Jean-Michel for flagging this, I nearly missed it!

Tip 2 – Trailhead Go

It has been a long time coming…but now you can access and collaborate in the Trailblazer Community in the Trailhead Go mobile app.

Read the full announcement here. “Access Community Groups, posts, likes, comments, user following and more. You can network, collaborate, and connect with the global Trailblazer Community from anywhere, straight from your mobile device”

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Salesforce Meetings & Maintenance Exams – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #445

by with No Comment CertificationSalesforce ProductsSalesforce study resourcesTip of the WeekTrailhead

Tip 1 – Salesforce Meetings

The Founder and CEO of Slack this week tweeted how much he enjoyed the “Salesforce updates includes sales info overlay for Zoom meetings!”. This is all a part of the new ‘Salesforce Meetings’ functionality which is now available. TechCrunch states that, amongst other things “Salesforce Meetings gives an overlay of information, whether it’s advice to slow down the pace of your speech or information about the person speaking. It also can compile action items and present a To Do list to participants at the end of each meeting to make sure that tasks don’t fall through the cracks.”

Credit here to TechCrunch – https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/24/salesforce-updates-includes-sales-info-overlay-for-zoom-meetings/

Tip 2 – Maintenance time

Don’t blame the messenger…but if you have not done this already you will want to make sure you complete your Spring ’20 maintenance modules. Deadline is April 9th, 2021. See here for the full breakdown. If in doubt, make sure you are signed into Trailhead, click each relevant Cert on the list and check they show as ‘Completed’. Better safe than sorry.

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Data Recovery, Trailmix, New Community Event – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #444

by with No Comment DevelopmentSalesforce EventsSalesforce study resourcesTip of the WeekTrailheadyoutube clips

Tip 1 – Data Recovery Returns

Phew, we can all relax and delete our live data now!! Well not quite, but having have to use this safety net once in my lifetime is enough to appreciate that it is back! Read more about it here.

The post says “Last year, we announced plans to end our Data Recovery Service. We arrived at this decision through several factors — most notably, the small number of customers actively using the service and availability of numerous third-party solutions.

However, you, the Salesforce community, correctly pointed out that Data Recovery Service’s value lies in its very existence and knowing that it’s there in the event of an emergency.”

There are great backup services available on the Appexchange, but if you dont have one of those and an emergency happens, this is your lifeline!

Note also a hint of a new/upgraded feature to come…

“…based on customer feedback, we are pleased to announce that we will pilot Salesforce backup and restore services built natively on the Platform this summer. We’ve co-designed these services with customers and we expect to deliver the performance, speed, and scale that you’ve come to expect from the Salesforce Platform while continuing to provide additional ways to innovate and extend these capabilities through our vibrant ecosystem.”

Tip 2 – New Trailmix

Complete this Spring ’21 Trailmix for Developers by March 31, to earn a special community badge, and enter to win prizes…and learn more about the release contents of course.

Tip 3 – Consultancy Dreamin’

This is a new Community run event, planned for June 2021, and the call for speakers is now open. The website explains “Consultancy Dreamin’ was created for anyone who already is or wants to be a Salesforce Consultant.” Count me in.

Tip 4 – New Video

We launched this at London’s Calling last week, hope you like it 🙂

 

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Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Optimizer App and London’s Calling – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #443

by with No Comment AppExchangeDevelopmentSalesforce EventsSalesforce ProductsTip of the Week

Tip 1 – Optimizer

A great way to review your Org, and get suggestions on areas for improvement, is by using Salesforce Optimizer. The report has been around for a while, but soon to be disabled in June as the App is more interactive. Nothing to instal, just search ‘Optimizer’ in Setup and click ‘Open Optimizer’ to reveal a list of suggestions and estimates. Turns out I have lots of unused Fields, and Reports I have never run!

From the Salesforce Help docs…

The Salesforce Optimizer app analyzes more features than the existing PDF report and in a more interactive and actionable format. Quickly identify issues that require immediate attention by using the sortable list view. Read through expert Salesforce recommendations to plan next steps.

Consider running Salesforce Optimizer as part of your monthly maintenance, before installing a new app, before each Salesforce release, or at least once a quarter. You can run the report as often as you want to keep on top of maintenance activities. You can set the App to run automatically on a monthly basis.

Tip 2 – London’s Calling you Now! 

LC2021 is just kicking off. We are happy to be sponsoring today, as we have for every LC event! There is always great content, so it is THE best UK Salesforce event in my opinion. I am looking forward to:

Lawrence Newcombe’s session ‘Ready, Set, Architect’ at 10.45am,

Leslie Gestautas’s session on migrating data at 3.30pm,

and of course our very own Paul Battisson’s session ‘Improving the performance of your Apex Code‘ at 2.45pm.

I am sure the sessions will be available on YouTube in the coming weeks, but it is always good to block out a chunk of learning time all in one go at an event like this.

Keep an eye out for our new animated video & tell me what you think!

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