Recently, in a highly technical discussion with a Senior Architect regarding possible solution options for a client, he stated “If Salesforce were simple we wouldn’t have careers”. It is funny because it is true. While Salesforce is not the simplest of systems, it certainly is one of the most robust, with arguably the best features. And the intricacies it encompasses makes those of us that have chosen to make a profession out of it look good. Queue the confetti. Like most consultants, I started in Salesforce as a customer, overwhelmed by the amount of information and confused about how it knew so much about my job. But as I figured out the relationships of the data structure I was intrigued by the capabilities and ease of automation.
As my career grew so did my knowledge of Salesforce and was soon tasked to implement the platform as a whole, in a new position. The number of idiosyncrasies that I had to quickly learn and make my way through was a challenge, but I quickly discovered one of my favorite features, the Salesforce Ecosystem. Salesforce has created a community of users to connect, trade tricks, discuss frustrations, and support each other and the platform. The level of intelligence the Ecosystem has attracted makes figuring out the puzzles most of the fun. Depending on your expertise you can always find someone else to help run a solution with you. So much so that the best-of-the-best become consultants to assist Salesforce customers. Salesforce has continued to build their online community, providing groups at a local level all around the world, and if a community group isn’t nearby, they encourage you to start one.
The foundation of “clicks-not-code” removes the barriers for those of us without coding know-how, and for me it introduced a system I could understand, manage, and build to do some pretty amazing things. I love workflows, process builders, and flows. The pure power of automation is amazing. I will never forget learning about a guy I worked with who fully automated his whole job so he could focus on building his own patented products. He worked every day for himself, while fully meeting the requirements of his position through some very advanced development and coding skills. Salesforce as a system provides automation in this capacity at a very basic level that everyone with some experience can understand, then build from there. As soon as you discover the amount of work you can mitigate through the automation of one workflow, you’re hooked for life!