Salesforce – Salesforce Silver

Flow

Why Flow Design Matters in Salesforce

by Simone

Picture this: a flow in your Salesforce org, ticking away for years. It triggers when the Opportunity stage changes. It populates start and end dates. This is much like Opportunity History. Yet, it is easier to access for external systems.

I hadn’t touched this flow in years. My philosophy was, “Never change a running system.” But as our Sales process changed, this flow was one of the many components needing an update.

The Problem with the Old Flow

This was a fast field update flow. However, it had one glaring issue. There were way too many pink elements (you know, those “Update Records” ones). It worked, sure, but it was messy and hard to follow. Every update required wading through a swamp of elements, making it a pain for anyone to troubleshoot or change.

Starting Fresh: A Design Approach

Before diving into Flow Builder, I grabbed a pen and paper. Yes, old school! I sketched out ideas to streamline the flow, reduce decision elements, and make it easier to understand at a glance. The goal? Less complexity, more clarity.

Here’s what I ended up with:

No More Pink Elements: All updates are handled with Assignments.
Simplified Decisions: One Decision element evaluates stages sequentially, with a second check for closed stages.
Smarter Logic: Validation rules take care, that Users do not jump Opportunity stages. Our new flow triggers on changes between stages without considering stages being bypassed. For one specific Opportunity type, additional checks make sure dates are assigned correctly. We also have a second decision element on closed Opportunities evaluating the previous stage.

The Results: A Faster, Cleaner Flow

The revamped flow isn’t just easier to read and maintain; it’s also faster. The old flow clocked in at 0.78 seconds, while the new one completes its job in 0.65 seconds. It might not seem significant. However, when you’ve got hundreds of flows running in your org, those milliseconds add up.

Old Flow
Old Flow running time
New Flow
New Flow running time

Lessons Learned

Don’t Fear the Redesign: Just because something works doesn’t mean it’s optimal. Take the time to revisit and rethink old flows.
Keep It Simple: Use Assignments and Decisions wisely. Avoid cluttering your flow with unnecessary elements.
Measure the Impact: Even small performance improvements can have a big cumulative effect in a busy org.

Flow design is more than just a technical exercise; it’s an art. A well-designed flow saves time, reduces errors, and makes life easier for everyone in your org. So, the next time you’re tempted to leave that “running system” untouched, ask yourself: could it run better? Chances are, the answer is yes.

What’s your experience with cleaning up old flows? Share your stories and tips in the comments!

Salesforce Learning

New Year’s Resolution: Certifications!

by Simone

The past year has been a whirlwind of exciting projects—eliminating technical debt, building complex automations, and streamlining sales processes. It was a year full of collaboration and innovation. But let’s be real—when you’re deep in the day-to-day grind, some goals naturally take a back seat. For me, that was earning more Salesforce certifications.

Then came the wake-up call. You know that moment when you see an email from Focus on Force reminding you that your subscription has expired? Yep, that was me. My Platform App Builder (PAB) study guide and exam access had lapsed, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Fast forward to the quiet, reflective days between Christmas and New Year. I decided to use that downtime to recharge and refresh my Salesforce knowledge. I was ready for a challenge and jumped back into the world of exam prep. Those Focus on Force practice exams prepare you for that special knack Salesforce questions and answers have, which make you question everything. For that Focus on Force is the ultimate prep tool for me.

And on January 6th, I officially added the Platform App Builder certification to my Salesforce journey! 🏆 It’s a great reminder that growth doesn’t have to follow a perfect timeline. Sometimes, it’s about making progress when the opportunity arises, even if it’s not part of some grand master plan.

A Quick Tip for the PAB Exam

Now, no spoilers about the exam (we all know the rules!), but I can share a couple of tips:

After a year of working with Salesforce, you should have a solid foundation. If you’ve created or updated Mobile Apps, Lightning Record Pages, used Change Sets, and made reports and dashboards, you already have experience to tackle some PAB questions!
Just passed your Salesforce Admin cert? Keep the momentum going! In my experience, about 60% of the PAB questions overlap with the Admin exam, so you’re already halfway there.

What’s Next for Me?

Next up: UX Designer! 🎨 I’ve started exploring Trailhead and found some similarities with Business Analyst topics like User Stories and Business Process Mapping. I’m curious to see if these connections will appear in the exam.

What about you? What are your goals for the year? Whether it’s earning your first cert or tackling a new one, let’s keep learning and leveling up together! 🚀

Project

Building a Salesforce Playground: Interview edition

by Simone

When I was preparing for interviews, it was easy to get lost in theory and tutorials. Pre-built orgs for mileage tracking or job search processes have their place. However, they didn’t always provide the hands-on experience I wanted to show for practical scenarios. After some reflection, I realized that the best practice environment wasn’t one someone else came up with. It was one that mirrored the challenges I faced daily. It would also be useful for challenges I would encounter in an interview.

That’s when the idea hit me: build a Salesforce playground based on the exact improvements and functionalities I wanted in my current org. This approach not only sharpened my skills but also gave me an edge when solving realistic problems.

Here’s how I structured my playground, inspired by an interview exercise:

Task 1: Partner Lead Forms Creating Leads

The Challenge
Partners referring opportunities needed a seamless way to submit leads to the sales system. This task involved designing a form using HubSpot to gather partner and prospect details. It also required integrating it with Salesforce via an API to automatically create Leads.

Salesforce Playground Solution
In my playground, I did:

Design the Form: I created a basic web form using HubSpot that included fields for partner and prospect details (e.g., names, emails, company info, and reason for interest).
Connect HubSpot and Salesforce:
- I built a middleware layer using Zapier, as HubSpot integration wasn’t available in the free HubSpot version.
- I mapped HubSpot form fields to Salesforce Lead fields.
Automation Processes:
- I used a Flow to assign Leads to the relevant Partner Manager based on prospect location or type.
- I set up notifications to inform the Partner Manager upon Lead creation.
Reporting: I created dashboards to track the number of Opportunities generated by partners and their conversion rates.

If I had more time, I would have expanded this setup to include Experience Cloud and Screenflows. However, this task focused on Salesforce Sales Cloud capabilities.

Task 2: Optimizing Salesforce for Sales Contracts

The Challenge
The goal was to generate contracts with:

Products and pricing accurately configured.
Standard legal terms embedded.
PDFs generated and attached to Opportunities.

Salesforce Playground Solution
In my playground, I:

Set Up Products and Pricing:
- I created product catalogs in Salesforce.
- I added price books and discount structures for different customer types.
Automating Legal Terms:
- I designed templates for Contracts using SDocs.
- I included dynamic fields for terms, conditions, and customer-specific details.
Automating PDF Generation and Storage:
- I automated PDF creation upon Opportunity stage progression.
- I stored generated documents under the Opportunity records.
Built Automations:
- I used a record-triggered Flow to create Orders, Contracts, and Renewal Opportunities when an Opportunity moved to Closed Won.
Monitored Processes:
- I built reports to track order completion times and document accuracy.

Why I Built This Playground

Focusing on challenges like these ensured my skills stayed relevant and practical. For instance, my playground org was inspired by Splash Computers, a fictional company I created to reflect real-world needs.

Business Model: The playground could easily adapt its appearance and theme to align with any interviewing company.
Customer Types: Unique sales processes could be introduced as needed. The sales process, which went through Opportunity stages and contract creation, was both adaptable and realistic for different requirements.
Website Forms: Creating forms in Salesforce or HubSpot demonstrates an understanding of tasks that could also involve the Marketing team.
Sales Operations changes you could add:
- Managing requests through emails to case for after sales support.
- Utilise account teams for large clients.
- Document solution consultant support during the sales process via a custom object.

Takeaways

Creating a Salesforce playground based on actual business scenarios bridged the gap between theory and practice. It allowed me to demonstrate not only technical skills but also business acumen during interviews.

If you’re preparing for your next big opportunity, think about creating a playground. Ensure it reflects the systems and workflows you aspire to manage. For me, it wasn’t just a learning experience — it was a step toward mastering real-world challenges.

Project

Talentstacker Project – Web-to-Lead form

by Simone

A web-to-lead form was among the project’s specifications.

The web-to-lead form you generate in Salesforce right now is ugly. Not at all. In reality, it looks like this:

We didn’t want to submit our proposal with a form that looked like this! I still had some recollection of HTML and CSS from my early WordPress days. I used the Chrome Extension CSS Peeper to gather the Talentstacker colour scheme and took some inspiration from their webform to make one like this:

This web form generates an email in a lead queue that can be accepted by any of the queue team members.

Flow

Talentstacker Project – Flows

by Simone

We handed over our Non-profit-org a few weeks ago. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time for a quick recap.

The project included a brand new NSPS sandbox and three strangers had to form a team. We did receive more than 60 requirements, we did elicit in follow-up meetings. For our project, we used the Agile methodology with JIRA for User Stories and tasks. JIRA was also used to organise our backlog and sprints. We used Confluence for our requirement gathering and clarifications. The User Acceptance Training (UAT) and the user manuals were also written in Confluence. The User tutorial videos were recordet using Loom.

The learning curve for this project was steep.

I was surprised to see so many custom objects. Our team struggled with validation rules in Master-Detail-Relationships, which cost us valuable time. I finally added roll-up-summary fields on the master object. This provided the dynamic counts on the records that our validation rules required.

I found the flows to be the most enjoyable task by far! Since then, I’ve made a few more flows, and I’m in love!

I made a short video of the first record-triggered flow I made for this project:

Superbadges

Access Governance Superbadge Unit

by Simone

To get away from going through Focus on Force Practice Exams I tackle the Access Governance Superbadge Unit.

The tasks are
– Audit Privileged Users
– Monitor Data Changes
– Monitor Connected Apps

The requirements for the Users are below:

Privileged Access Type	Company Policy
Modify All Data	Only system administrators
View All Data	system administrators – 30-day temporary access for users with business justification and manager approval
Customize Application	system administrators -30-day temporary access for users with business justification and manager approval
Manage Users	Only system administrators
Delete Opportunities	Sales representatives: NOT authorized to delete opportunity records

The text mentions the “User and Permission Analyzer”. You can find this little tool in the App Launcher and it will help to find the users with the chosen permissions.

The Permission to Delete Field History needs to be enabled under Setup and the Permission Set must be setup with the permissions required.

To clean the Account field history I used the free version of Dataloader.io. If your Permission Set does not have all the boxes ticked, Dataloader.io won’t show the Account History field! Oh, and if you accidentally delete the complete Account History, add “Credit Card” as a new value in the field “Preferred Payment Method”.

Happy Trailing!

Superbadges

Authentication Governance Superbadge Unit

by Simone

What is Salesforce testing in this Superbadge?

According to Trailhead:

Audit SSO and MFA Users
Build Authentication Reports and Dashboards
Customize a flow

The Concept tested in this Superbadge:

Authentication Governance

You need to create a new Trailhead Playground for this Superbadge! The new Dev Org includes the “User Access & Permission Assistant” which you will find in the App Launcher by typing in “User”. The new Dev Org needs to be connected to your Trailhead Profile.

Users, Roles, and Profiles and the Authentification they have to use:

User	Role	Profile	Authentication requirement	Activ?
[Admin]	SFAdmin	System Administrator	none	A
User, Security	–	Analytics Cloud Security	SSO	A
Chatter Expert		Chatter Free User	SSO	A
A,Aiyaz	Customer Support, North America	Standard Plattform User	SSO	A
B,Rachel	Customer Support, International	Standard Plattform User	SSO	A
Campfire, Carla	–	Break Glass Admin	Salesforce MFA	A
User, Integration	–	Analytics Cloud Integration User	SSO	A
R,Oliver	Installation & Repair Service	Standard User	SSO
M,Becca	VP, Marketing	Standard User	SSO
G,Robin	SVP,Customer Service & Support	Standard User	SSO
P,Daniel	Director, Direct Sales	Custom, Sales Profile	SSO
Fractour,Cristal	–	Break Glass Admin	Salesforce MFA

I wrote on my Notepad the Role Hierarchy, but this information was not necessary. Also, I did not need to use the User & Access Permission Assistant but it is a nice App, I would consider using it in my Org taking the active Users in the Org into consideration.

User Authentication Reports to create

Report Name	Description
Login Attempts by Status	All login attempts grouped by login status
Failed Login Attempts by User	All unsuccessful login attempts grouped by username and login status
Verification Challenges by Method	All identity verification challenges grouped by method and status
Logins without SSO and MFA	All successful login attempts where login type does not include SSO and (Identity Verification) Method is blank; grouped by username and login type

Reports should show All Users and Logins from the last 30 Days. Don’t forget to hide the Report details.
I created a failed login attempt for the 2nd report with one of the Break Glass Admins to have a reference for the report. Do not get discouraged if the report you create is empty!

The Flow task is pretty straightforward. The explanation where to put the information and where to create the Login Flows is in the sentence. You do not have to test the flow with the Standard and Custom: Sales Profile before checking.

The Trailhead Help contains all the information you need to be successful. Good luck with this Superbadge! You can do it!

Superbadges

The Salesforce Security Superbadge – Requirements & User Stories

by Simone

Have you started to learn about Salesforce, made your way through Trailhead and now look at this Superbadge?

Have you just managed all the other Superbadges which are now required before you tackle this one?

But do not quite know where and how to start?

Following Jeffrey Alhadeff YouTube Video about the Superbadge, I have drawn out UserStories and talk about some of the challenges! Sorry, you won’t find solutions here though!

What the Salesforce Security Superbadge is about

According to Trailhead, GenZ Capital security has to meet the OldGuard requirements and you as the Salesforce Admin are the go-to person!

Here is the Organisational Chart for GenZ:

Pay attention to the Organisational Chart, it is important for the setup of the GenZ Capital Users.

The Challenge as table:

	ORG wide	Executive	Inside Sales	Field Sales	Project Manager**
*Login*	PW reset every 90 days PW 8 characters include alpha and numeric characters	mobile access on demand no hour restriction	access via IP 0.0.0.0 between 8:00am and 6:00pm no mobile access	mobile access on demand no hour restriction	mobile access on demand name security property “Project Managers”
*Accounts*	access for anyone (if profile allows it)	View all	View, create, edit all (no delete)	read, edit all*
*Opportunity*	access to their own & manager	View all	View, create, edit all (no delete)*	read, create, and edit their own (but not delete)	view all if Type = “Existing Customer & Upgrade” and Stage = “Closed Won”
*list view/folders*		create / not create or manage for others	create, manage for them and others	create / not create, manage for others
*reports/dashboards*		create R&D, not folders	create, create & manage folders	create / but not create or manage folders

*do not use View all, Modify All

**do not use Profile to set record level permission, do not use Role for sharing records

GenZ Capital User Stories

I have started the habit of writing User Stories for the Superbadges and in general, for the Dev Orgs, I am creating. It helps to get into the right mindset and keep track of the tasks and keep an eye on the Acceptance criteria, especially if you set up your own Salesforce Dev Org. I will write more about User Stories [later here]

UserStory Executive
UserStory Field Sales
UserStory Project Manager
UserStory Inside Sales

Salesforce Learning

Salesforce Order of Execution – Storyboard

by Simone

Do you struggle to learn the List called “Salesforce Order of Execution” too?

Here is, how I learned it!

You need to learn the Order of Execution, but remembering it from a list is difficult. I hear you! Have you ever heard of the Method of loci?

The method of loci is a strategy for memory enhancement, which uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique.
Wikipedia

I created a Storyboard to remember the Order of Execution!
The list includes Custom Validation, so my story somehow works around an Airport and Customs.