(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.