7 Things I Learned in Trailhead (so far!)

(this is a post from Michelle about stuff she's been doing mostly without Alli!)

If you're reading this blog you've probably heard of Trailhead, the new interactive learning platform from Salesforce. I've been working my way through the various trails and modules over the past 10 months (39 badges earned as of this writing!), and as I go, I've kept track of some of the specific "aha" moments I've had -- tiny bits of new knowledge that have come up in the middle of an otherwise-familiar subject. (Certainly there have also been big new things I've learned, like everything about Lightning, but this post is just about those little unexpected moments.)

Password Lockout Messages

You can customize certain messages that appear when users reset their passwords, or when they're locked out from Salesforce entirely. The "Message" and "Help Link" sections of this article describe how this works.

probably this isn't the message you'd actually use

Roles as a List View

I had no idea that it was possible to view the Roles page as anything other than the "tree" view -- which is a good way to look at the hierarchy if you actually have a lot of roles and you need to see the relationship between them, but if your Roles setup is simple and you're trying to make sure than everyone has one, the "list view" option is way easier to navigate.

list>  tree

Schema Builder!

There are three amazing things about Schema Builder that I didn't know because I never really looked at it closely again after it was released! (I use it all the time, but I knew the basics and apparently never… opened my eyes? again? after a while?)

1) You can toggle between displaying object and field labels vs their names.

so many custom objects

2) You can use the "Select From" dropdown to filter the list of objects that are displayed in the sidebar. Try picking "Selected Objects" and you'll get a list of just the things you've already put on the screen.

so convenient

3) If you've ever added objects to the layout and then spent the next three minutes chasing them around the screen and dragging them into place… try clicking "Auto-Layout button instead next time.

Chatter Auto-Following

I would love for everyone in the universe (and PatronManager clients in particular) to use Chatter much more than they currently do. I thought this fact was interesting for small organizations as a built-in way to jumpstart Chatter adoption:

"When you turn on Chatter for your company ...if your company has less than 16 Chatter users, all users automatically follow each other and up to 25 most recently used records."

Hilarity

The whole Trailhead team has a GREAT sense of humor. My personal favorite joke appears in the Event Monitoring module:

Let’s consider one of the example cases from earlier. A sales representative named Rob Burgle left your company a few weeks ago and joined a major competitor. All of a sudden, you start losing deals to this other company. You suspect that Mr. Burgle downloaded a report containing confidential lead information and shared it with his new employer.

Spring '16 For the Rest of Us

Even though we're just getting into the thick of things winter-weather-wise here in New York, Salesforce rolled out its Spring '16 release this month. 

While there were a ton of new exciting developments made to Lightning Experience in this release, if you're like us -- not quite ready to roll it out -- you may be wondering, "what's in this release for me?" 

Here are some neat things sure to make admins everywhere pretty happy! 

Chatter Things

Broadcast Chatter Groups

Salesforce has introduced a new type of Chatter group called "Broadcast Only," which means that only the group owner or group managers can post messages to it.

This is great way to create a place for staff-wide announcements, while preventing others from posting to the group with off-topic messages. The rest of your staff will still be able to comment on the posts in a Broadcast group.

(Groups that are not meant for the whole staff--private or unlisted groups, which are "invite only"-- can also get the Broadcast Only treatment.)

"dear staff, there are valentine's day cookies in the kitchen!"

More relevant @mention suggestions

You might have already noticed this change, before you realized it was an official improvement -- we definitely did. This makes it much easier to address your posts to the right person. When you start typing @ + someone's name, instead of seeing an alphabetical list of users (including external Chatter users or Community users that you're probably not talking to most of the time), the list starts with the people you interact with the most!

Process Builder Improvements (for Intermediate/Advanced Users)

We loooooove Process Builder. Now there's a little bit more to love!

Reuse names and descriptions when creating a new version of a Process

Previously, when you cloned an existing Process to create a new version of it, you had to retype the name and description of it. Now it's smartly copied over for you and the copy is automatically assigned a version number when you save it.

"Emailing_The_Volunteer_Actual_Final_Version_Not_Broken_I_Hope"

View the names of your fields by hovering over them

It used to be virtually impossible to see the field names that were already selected in a Process Builder step. Now you can hover over the field selection box to see the whole name.

sometimes field names are much longer than this one

Reorder criteria steps by dragging and dropping

You'll also be able to easily move the parts of your Process around on the screen to change the order of the actions, instead of having to start over if you realize that your Process needs to start off differently.

magic!

Manage Everyone’s Reports and Dashboards

It used to be hard/impossible to have true administrative rights over Reports and Dashboards, because anything saved in a user's private or personal folder remained inaccessible, even if that user was deactivated. We mentioned a previous improvement that happened in Summer '15, which gave you the option of logging in as any user (and thus gaining access to their private folders) -- but now you can do even more. Using Workbench, you can write a query that will return those hidden reports and dashboards, and allow you to delete them. (Read more here in the Spring '16 release notes.)

Salesforce1 Enhanced Charts

A flash of lightning comes to Salesforce1! Even if you'e not ready to go all in with the Lightning Experience, you can benefit from some of its shiny and new chart functionality on your phone:

good job, fundraisers!