Trailhead Baby

A new superbadge was just announced- the App Customization Specialist!  I do not know which event I am more excited about: My new baby brother who should arrive in the next 15 days Getting started on this new superbadge! Keep your eyes out for new blog posts about this new superbadge plus photos of my new brother!  I am going to start him out on Trailhead as soon as I can teach him to type! Back to playing peek-a-boo with mom..... PS- I am very excited about Salesforce certification maintenance being moved to Trailhead! It's much easier to hop onto Trailhead than to remember my password to WebAssessor.  Thank you Salesforce!

Which tool? What is the Trailhead Baby's secret to dominating process builder challenges?  It's simple: Stop Think Click Before I start clicking, I consider which Salesforce tool is the best fit to solve the challenge.  I'm not - yet - an Apex guru, so coding is not an option.  How do you pick between Process Builder, Flow, Workflow, and Approvals?   Check out this chart from developer.Salesforce.com  Essentially, process builder offers the most flexibility, and I usually prefer it unless…. User interaction is necessary or you need to update a non-related record = use flow. (Or trigger a flow through process builder!  I try to keep my flows as simple as possible.) You need to send an outbound message (not an email alert) = use workflow. Something is being approved = approval process. (duh! ) When in doubt, look for clues.  You may recognize some of these from Superbadges.  “This approval ...

Why do these not connect? Importing Data to Salesforce using a Spreadsheet or .CSV Files How do you "patch record ID's"? Use data loader to export the "name" and "RecordID" of the object. Open the extract file. Copy/Paste the appropriate RecordID from the extract file into the spreadsheet where the ID is needed.   You need the "name" in order to match the RecordID from the export to the spreadsheet!  A RecordID is simply a 15 or 18 character set that acts as a unique identifier for the record in Salesforce.  In the example, Opportunity RecordID's have been inserted into the spreadsheet along with Contact RecordID's.   Help! Data loader gave me an error message! What do I do? My most common error is having an incorrect field type in the upload spreadsheet- primarily when a RecordID is necessary, and I included a Name instead.  For additional error messages & solutions, reference:  Common Data Loa...

Testing.  Taste is lacking.                                  Importing Data to Salesforce using a Spreadsheet or .CSV Files Trailhead Baby readers, like yourself, are very smart, so it should go without saying that testing the data upload with a Salesforce sandbox is a best practice.  Yes, it will increase the workload, but inserting a small set of records first, say 10 of each object, will ensure that your order is correct.  Imaging uploading a large batch of records to production incorrectly!  Weeding out 1,000 incorrect inserts out of 10,000 total accounts would be unpleasant!  Even worse, incorrectly inserted data could overwrite existing accounts.  Eeek!  (Admins- I know we like to click, but fixing this would be too much clicking!  Even Trailhead Babies have to sleep sometime!) Data Import Steps: 3) Test and Upload Before uploading any record...

Determine Import Order Importing Data to Salesforce using a Spreadsheet or .CSV Files                                           On the last post, we cleaned up data import files:  Removed duplicate records Merged multiple spreadsheets for the same object into one master spreadsheet per object. The data is nicely sorted, but we need to determine which order to use when uploading to Salesforce.  This is the most tricky step in a data upload operation. Why?                         Order Matters!                  Data Import Steps: 2) Determine the Insert Order The order for this data import: 1st Group - Lead ( Blue dot on diagram.) Why? Leads are not connected to any of the other objects selected for import.  Plus, we can use the da...

Cleaning Up - Organizing Importing Data to Salesforce using a Spreadsheet or .CSV Files Trailhead Baby is asked a question about data import almost every week.  Many Superbadges require some sort of data import with varying levels of object connectivity.  The most difficult require 10+ steps with data loader in order to patch all of the Salesforce record ID's.  Simple uploads may be performed solely with the data import wizard.  Let's take a look at the steps that should be completed for every manual import to Salesforce as illustrated by one of my favorite toys.  Note- There are many excellent tools available to assist with this process, but we are only going to discuss the ones native to Salesforce: the data import wizard and data loader. The scenario: We need to upload legacy data to a Salesforce instance.  The records are located in several spreadsheets with 8 standard objects.  Simple?  Let's make it a bit more challenging....