Salesforce Admins Podcast

Why Secure AI Starts With You: What Admins Must Know About Agentforce Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Sri Srinivasan, Senior Director of Information Security at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about what admins need to know about Agentforce and how to build secure AI experiences. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sri Srinivasan. Quick heads-up before we get started: This episode may include forward-looking statements—things we're excited about, but not yet available. So please make any purchasing decisions based only on products and features that are currently available. For all the legal details, visit salesforce.com. The hidden job of AI security: admins build the brakes Sri gave a great TDX presentation about AI security and the crucial role admins play in the future of Agentforce. "Admins are key to everything that we do," he emphasizes, "they understand everything that's happening within their environment. They know which actions, what permissions, what they do, and agents are just another avenue to expose and interact with this crux of it." As Sri puts it, Agentforce is like a sports car in terms of what it can do with your data. But how fast would you drive a sports car with no brakes? That's why admins are so important in the age of AI. We can build the brakes for Agentforce to make sure our agents are behaving correctly. Five questions to ask when building secure Agentforce experiences Security conversations can get very scary very quickly, but Sri boils it down to five questions admins should ask when they're building with Agentforce: What is the agent's role and scope? What data will the agent have access to? Which actions should be public and which should be private? Do you need to build any extra guardrails? Which channels will the agent use? The key here is practicing the principle of least privilege. And for admins, that comes down to managing permissions and profiles in Salesforce and following security best practices. Every agent runs as a user—and that user needs to be tightly scoped. Test before you trust: scaling with the Agentforce Testing Center Going back to the idea of brakes, Sri cautions that just because you built an agent fast doesn't mean that it's ready. Luckily, his team has been hard at work on new tools to help you make sure your agents are working as intended. The new Agentforce Testing Center helps simulate and validate agent behavior at scale—without needing a QA army. You're also able to peek under the hood to understand why an agent made a certain choice—turning debugging into decision-making clarity. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more on what admins need to know about Agentforce. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss out. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Sri at TDX: 5 Easy Steps for Secure Agentforce Implementation More from TDX: Security Best Practices with Agentforce Trailhead: Trusted Agentic AI Blog: Best Practices for Building Secure Agentforce Service Agents Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Sri on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Sri Srinivasan about secure, reliable AI experiences with Agentforce. Now, Sri is a leader on the security compliance customer trust team at Salesforce, where he helps customers understand and implement security best practices. Of course, before we get into this episode, be sure to follow the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That way you get a new episode every Thursday delivered right to your phone or your mobile device. So with that, let's get into our conversation with Sri. So Sri, welcome to the podcast. Sri Srinivasan: Thanks for having me here, Mike. Super excited for it. Mike Gerholdt: Well, I love the presentation that you gave at TDX, and I'm sure more people would love to hear about it too, which is why I wanted to have you come back on, because everything now is Agentforce and security is always top of mind. I've always preached security ever since I started at Salesforce. I've had, I think, Laura Pelkey on quite a few times. But that was the compass of what you talked about at TDX. But I'm jumping ahead. Let's talk about you a little bit. Tell me kind of where you got started and how you got to Salesforce. Sri Srinivasan: Let me try to make it very sweet and sharp. So I have always been in security. I have a master's in information management specializing in security. I worked for big four accounting firms, but not doing accounting. I did security for them, data security and data privacy. Then I ended up working for a little gaming company where I really got involved in security, due diligence. Was a small company based out of

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Dana Walton, Senior Manager of Credential Programs and Operations at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how the certification experience is evolving with smarter personalization, easier access, and a learning journey built just for you. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dana Walton. Certifications are moving to Trailhead Academy Dana has been working on the certification team since 2015. When she started, Salesforce had nine certifications. Today, they offer 83. I sat down with her for this episode because her team is finishing a two-year project to overhaul the certification experience. The biggest change coming is that certifications are moving to Trailhead Academy. While you can still go completely self-guided with your learning, Dana and her team are making it easier to find the help you need—whether that's an instructor-led course or curated Trailmixes and modules. Why skills are the most important factor in choosing new certifications One thing that Dana wanted to know during testing was how her team could help people figure out which certifications they should work on next. She asked Salesforce MVPs how they choose new certifications to target: are they looking for things that fit a specific role? A particular product? The answer was none of the above. The Salesforce MVPs in Dana's testing group look for certifications based on what new skills they can learn. Armed with that knowledge, her team added a skills breakdown for each cert to make things easier to browse. They're also adding more personalization to your Salesforce learning journey, with AI recommendations to help you plan your roadmap. Dana emphasizes that these are recommendations, not requirements. Your certification experience can still be completely self-guided; they've just added a helping hand. Why certification is the final step on your learning journey If she could give one piece of advice to admins looking for the next steps in their Salesforce learning journey, it's that you need to look at every possible pathway. "Certification is not how you learn," she says, "it's how you prove the skills and knowledge that you've already learned." Go to Trailhead, reach out to the community, or find a mentor who can help you understand what you're getting into and create achievable goals for yourself. And then, when you're ready, certification will be a breeze. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from my conversation with Dana about what's coming next for the certification experience. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more New Salesforce Certification Experience FAQ Certification: Salesforce Associate Certification: Strategy Designer Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: When Collaboration Meets Agentforce: The MH4 Hackathon Story Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Dana on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today we're sitting down with Dana Walton from the Salesforce certification team. Dana is here to share how the certification experience is evolving. I want you to think smarter personalization, easier access, and a learning journey built just for you. We'll talk about the exciting move to Trailhead Academy and how it's making certifications more accessible than ever. Be sure to stick around. I promise you're going to walk away and be ready to take your next step in that Salesforce ecosystem. And hey, if you enjoy this episode, go ahead and give us a follow wherever you listen to podcasts. So with that, let's get Dana on the podcast. So, Dana, welcome to the podcast. Dana Walton: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Mike: I'm excited to talk about certification. I've been talking about it ever since 2008 when I first got certified, which is a super long time ago. But let's get started with you. Tell us a little bit about how you got to Salesforce and what you do at Salesforce. Dana Walton: Happy to. You predate me just a little. Yes, but I mean, I think in terms of longevity, I hit Koa this year, so I'm very excited. Mike: Congrats. Thank you. And for those of you that don't know, Koa is 10 years. Dana Walton: Yes. So my 10-year anniversary will be in June, and I have been a part of the certification team for almost all of my tenure. I joined in October 2015 because I started as a contractor and then got hired on through the certification team, and I have been a part of the growth of this program since then, and it's been really excited to see when we first were in a very... When I joined, we only had nine certifications. Mike: Only. Only nine. Dana Walton: Only nine. Now we have 83. It's been quite a journey.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Melissa Hansen, Co-Founder and Principal Architect at HiFi Consulting Group, RAD Women Curriculum Lead, and Salesforce MVP. Join us as we chat about her journey from fixing printers to developing an agent-powered scheduling tool in the TDX Agentforce Hackathon on Team MH4. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Melissa Hansen. How Melissa started her career as a Salesforce Developer Melissa started her career at a nonprofit, where she was the go-to person for troubleshooting tech issues. "You just become the person who's best at fixing the printer, and then fixing the database, and then, before you know it, you're a database administrator," she says. These days, Melissa is a developer, a consultant, and a Salesforce MVP for her work with RAD Women. She's also a member of Team MH4, and I brought her on the pod to hear what building a conference scheduling agent in 16 hours was like from the dev side of things. Building an agent-powered scheduling tool at the TDX Agentforce Hackathon Melissa is not someone who wants to be up until midnight coding, but she was so excited about the solution they were building that it was worth the sacrifice. Like most people on the team, it was her first time making something with Agentforce, and this was a great use case to learn more about it. One of the biggest challenges for Melissa in going from building with code to grounding an agent is that the output is nondeterministic. In other words, if you run an automation, you expect to get the same results every time you give it the same data. Agents don't work that way, they'll give you something slightly different every time, and so you need to account for that in how you build and test your solution. To code or not to code, that is the question We don't always have a chance to talk to devs on the pod, so I wanted to hear what Melissa thinks about admin and developer collaboration. For her, the most important conversation to have is around automations. Flow is a powerful tool for automations, but it's not the only game in town. Melissa's seen her share of scary flows for things that would be fairly straightforward in Apex. For her, the biggest determining factor is who will maintain the automation after it's up and running. As no-code tools like Flow and Agentforce continue to improve, it's especially important for admins and devs to help each other out. There are so many more great insights from Melissa on where Agentforce is headed and how to work with developers, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: When Collaboration Meets Agentforce: The MH4 Hackathon Story Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Transforming Conference Scheduling With Agentforce MH4's presentation at the TDX Hackathon Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Melissa on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full Transcript Mike: Ever gone from changing printer ink to writing Apex code? Melissa Hansen has and she's here to tell us all about it. So, today's episode, I am chatting with Melissa Hansen, Salesforce MVP, RAD Women Curriculum lead and longtime champion of nonprofit tech. We talk about her journey from, well, fixing printers to architecting agent-powered scheduling tools and what she learned working on the team of MH to the Power of Four at the TDX Hackathon. Now, she shares her thoughts on building ai, designing for users, and what every admin should ask their developers. So, you don't want to miss this one. Now, be sure to follow this podcast on whatever platform you listen to so that you never miss an episode. And with that, let's get Melissa on the podcast. So, Melissa, welcome to the podcast. Melissa Hansen: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Mike: I'm excited. This whole series of talking to the MH to the Power of Four team has been such a thrill because I know we've done hackathons... by the time this episode comes out, we've done a hackathon at TDX in India. I know there's a virtual hackathon we've done. I feel like we've done hackathons everywhere, but it's such an interesting perspective because I was at TDX in San Francisco. I saw some of the teams working, but to sit down with each of you, and hear the perspective and what happened through your eyes is such a neat way of hearing the story and getting the full vibe of what's going on. So, before we get into that though, Melissa, tell us a little bit about yourself, and what you do in the Salesforce ecosystem and how you got on this Power of Four team. Melissa Hansen: Oh, sure. Yeah, I've bee

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Marisa Hambleton, Chief Delivery Officer and Founder of MH2X, and a member of the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame. Join us as we chat about her experience in the TDX Agentforce Hackathon as a member of team MH4 and why clean data is essential for AI. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marisa Hambleton. The intense Tetris of conference scheduling Marisa is a co-leader of the Phoenix Developer Group and the lead organizer for Cactusforce, a community conference for Salesforce Developers and Architects. In other words, she knows how much work goes into scheduling speaker tracks and getting everything organized. Juggling speaker availability and placing them in the correct conference rooms without double-booking anyone takes up hours of time behind the scenes. "It's an intense game of Tetris," Marisa says, "and that's a gross understatement." So she was thrilled when Melissa Hill Dees asked her to join team MH4 and build a conference scheduling agent for the TDX Agentforce Hackathon. Why data hygiene is foundational for Agentforce With only 16 hours to build a working agent, the team had to split up responsibilities so they could hit the ground running. Marisa's focus was on the data, which they brought in from Cactusforce and Midwest Dreamin'. Marisa's biggest takeaway from her first time building an agent is that data quality is foundational for any work you do with AI. That needs to be the starting point. Even though they were working with a relatively small data set, they had a lot of cleanup work to do if they wanted their agent to work right. How to get your org ready for advancements in AI If you're looking to implement Agentforce in your org, Marisa recommends starting with the Salesforce Well-Architected Framework. We're only scratching the surface of what will be possible with AI, but you need to do everything you can right now to make your data easy to work with. There's a lot more great stuff from Marisa Hambleton about data hygiene and what's next for Agentforce, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: When Collaboration Meets Agentforce: The MH4 Hackathon Story Trailhead: Salesforce Well-Architected Framework Cactusforce Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Marisa on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admin's podcast. Today, we're chatting with Marisa Hambleton, Chief Delivery Officer at MH2X, and a longtime leader in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, this is part two of the MH to the Power of Four episodes where we talked to the team that participated in the TDX Hackathon about the agent that they built. Boy, I got to tell you, if you ever organized a community conference or just wrestled with a gnarly spreadsheet, Marisa's insights into scheduling and automation using Agentforce technology we're really going to hit home. I love that she's going to walk us through how she and the Hackathon team built the agent from her perspective and what she did. Plus, she shares why clean data and a well-architected mindset are must haves for any admin looking to build for the future. Make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss out on more great conversations like this one. With that, let's get Marisa on the podcast. Marisa, welcome to the podcast. Marisa Hambleton: I'm glad to be here. Mike Gerholdt: You are the second MH of the MH, I believe it's MH quad, right? Isn't that what Melissa Hill Dees told me? It is MH to the Power of Four. Marisa Hambleton: MH to the Power of Four. Mike Gerholdt: Power of Four. Marisa Hambleton: Yes, or MH four. You can just read it MH Four, but MH to the Power of Four, to the Fourth ... Mike Gerholdt: I know, but I like the Power of Four. It sounds a little more strong. Marisa Hambleton: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: We talked with Melissa Hill Dees on the last episode about the TDX Hackathon and the agent that you built, but just per chance, if somebody didn't listen to that episode, can you tell us a little bit about, well, first, who you are and what you do, and then a brief overview of that project that you built at the Hackathon. Marisa Hambleton: Sure. Marisa Hambleton, I am the Chief Delivery Officer of MH2X. That is my consulting firm. I've been in the ecosystem over 15 years. I'm a Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame, and I am also the Phoenix developer, one of the leaders. I am the lead organizer of Cactus Force, a community conference for Salesforce developers and architects. My role in Cactus force is one of the things that led me and Melissa to connect around this agent that we built for the Hackathon. Mike Ge

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Melissa Hill Dees, nonprofit Salesforce consultant and Salesforce MVP. Join us as we chat about how her TDX Hackathon team built a conference scheduling agent from scratch in 16 hours. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Melissa Hill Dees. How to help nonprofits define goals for Salesforce Melissa majored in computer science back when you still programmed with punched cards. However, she didn't really start her career in tech until 2008, when the nonprofit she was working for started using Salesforce. She was hooked on how she could help these organizations use technology to do more with less, and quickly pursued an MBA in digital entrepreneurship. One thing that came up in our conversation was the difference between how nonprofits and businesses approach Salesforce. In particular, Melissa emphasizes the importance of defining measurable goals for any tech project so you have common ground when prioritizing requests. As the capabilities of Salesforce continue to grow with Agentforce, admins need to help their organizations maintain focus. Building an agent in 16 hours at the TDX Hackathon Melissa is fresh from the TDX Hackathon, where she put together an all-women team of Salesforce MVPs called MH4. Why the name? Because everyone on the team has the same initials: Melissa Hill Dees, Michelle Hansen, Marisa Hambleton, and Melissa Hansen. Together, they had 16 hours to make a working agent, but Melissa was the only person on the team who had built one before. However, from their experience as Dreamin' event volunteers, they had a pretty good idea for a problem they could solve: scheduling a conference. Finding the right-sized room for each talk when there are several concurrent speaker tracks gets complicated, especially when people are presenting more than once. It's a problem that everyone on the team could rally around. As Melissa explains, building the agent wasn't the hard part. It was setting up the backend to make sure it had the right information and permissions to accomplish its goal. Why admins should get the Strategy Designer Certification If you're looking to learn more, Melissa highly recommends getting the Strategy Designer Certification. You can learn tons of valuable tactics, like consequence scanning, that help you align a group of people around an idea and allow everybody to feel like they have input. Finally, Melissa emphasizes how crucial it is for admins to start learning Agentforce now, even if your organization is hesitant. "Admins have to see the big picture," she says, "so start learning it now so you don't have to play catch-up when everybody comes around and wants to use AI." Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from my conversation with Melissa, and don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Certification: Strategy Designer MH4's presentation at the TDX Hackathon Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Melissa on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: You've got a dream team when everyone's name starts with MH, and you're building a functioning AI agent in 16 hours while laughing and having fun at it. This week we've got Melissa Hill Dees on the pod, and the vibe is totally Agentforce, nonprofit tech, and I even talk about the future of Salesforce admins in the era of AI. And we also talk about the little thing that she built at the hackathon. It's just a scheduling tool that is really cool for all the dream and events. But let me tell you this, if you've ever said, "I'm not a developer, but ...", you're going to feel right at home. So with that, let's get Melissa Hill Dees on the podcast. So Melissa, welcome to the podcast. Melissa Hill Dees: Thank you, Mike. I'm so glad to be here. Mike: Well, I'm glad to have you on, and we're going to kick off ... I'm going to call it a few weeks of MH4s. Melissa Hill Dees: I love that Mike: All of the MH4s because you guys were such a cool little group that got together for the hackathon at TDX, which we're going to talk about. But before we get into that, Melissa, which spells out some of the MH4, tell us a little bit about yourself. Melissa Hill Dees: Oh goodness. So a little bit about myself. I found Salesforce in 2008 after becoming a stay-at-home mom for a little while and not knowing what to do with myself and trying to help small businesses improve what they were doing from a customer relationship management side. I didn't really get very deep into Salesforce then but a couple of years later, I went to work for a nonprofit and they had Salesforce and I became the classic accidental admin. Which was ironic considering that back in the dark ages when dinosaurs still roamed the e

Level Up: The Admin's Action Plan for Thriving in the Agentforce Era Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Dorian Earl, Salesforce Admin and Founder of Development Consulting Partners, LLC. Join us as we chat about the 5 steps admins can take today to lead the charge in the Agentforce era. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dorian Earl. Admins are at the center of the Agentforce era I always love having Dorian on the pod because he has an amazing origin story. He started out as a traveling sales rep for medical and dental equipment. He had to keep track of over 100,000 products and 300 clients, all in paper notebooks, until one day he left his Franklin planner on the roof of his car and realized he had to find a better way. That's when he started looking into a new digital CRM platform called Salesforce. These days, Dorian helps organizations with digital transformation through Salesforce, and he sees admins as the linchpin for driving organizational change in the Agentforce era. In fact, he flagged me down at a recent event because he was so excited to share his 5-step action plan for how Salesforce Admins can lead the charge on AI. 1. Build awareness beyond the buzz While most people have talked to an LLM by now, Dorian has noticed that most of his clients don't quite grasp what it could mean for their organization. Admins are in a unique position to translate the buzz into action. Start by educating your teams, surfacing practical use cases, and bringing the conversation into team meetings. This isn't about replacing people—it's about making everyone 10–20% smarter, faster, and more capable. 2. Prep your data for Agentforce AI is only as good as the data you give it. And we're not just talking about client data, though that needs to be in a healthy place. As Dorian points out, consumer-facing agents need to know things like your operating hours, company values, and brand voice. Prepping your data for Agentforce makes it easier to try new features and build something that works. 3. Identify the quick wins Admins don't need to wait for long-term projects to start making an impact with AI. Agentforce comes with ready-to-use features that drive value today. Dorian points to two in particular: Record Summaries: AI-generated account overviews save time and provide instant context, especially for reps managing hundreds of accounts or taking over a book of business. Quick Reporting: Need to know how many leads are in New York with a certain status? You can just ask. No more report-building marathons—admins and users alike can get insights on demand. These tools aren't just time-savers—they're credibility builders. They show stakeholders the value of AI quickly and easily without much heavy lifting. 4. Find internal processes to improve The biggest thing that should be on your radar is how Agentforce can overhaul internal business processes. There are so many places where an internal-facing agent can save clicks and smooth out a workflow. Dorian brings up the example of processing a return. An agent can take care of all the little steps, like creating a case, logging information, and authorizing a refund, instead of that being a multi-person business process. 5. Lead the AI transformation Admins are no longer just behind-the-scenes builders—they're transformation leaders. You understand the org's data, its pain points, and its goals. That makes you the ideal person to customize and scale AI across departments. As Dorian puts it, success with Agentforce isn't just about features—it's about alignment. Help your teams adopt AI by showing them how it can support their goals, simplify their day-to-day, and elevate their performance. There were so many great tips in my conversation with Dorian for how admins can thrive in the Agentforce era, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday morning. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Keeping Processes Fresh in Salesforce with Dorian Earl Salesforce Admins on YouTube: Agentforce Decoded Trailhead: Einstein Work Summaries for Service Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Dorian on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome back Dorian Earle, founder and CEO of a thriving consultancy that has over 450 clients and just a massive wealth of Salesforce experience and knowledge. Dorian has been the Salesforce ecosystem for nearly two decades. He started as a sales rep who needed a better way to track his deals and opportunities and really turn that into a career empowering companies to e

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mehmet Orun, SVP, GM, and Data Strategist at PeerNova. Join us as we chat about how to use Data Cloud to create trustworthy AI experiences. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mehmet Orun. How Data Cloud powers trustworthy AI experiences The last time we had Mehmet on the pod, the big concern with AI was hallucinations. How can we be sure that the agents we create don't start making stuff up? What's more, how do we know that they won't share data they shouldn't? In short, how do we create trustworthy AI experiences? As we've learned time and again, AI is only as good as the data you give it. But, as Mehmet explains, Data Cloud has changed the game for admins in terms of control over who sees what and in what context. Admins can create personalized experiences with Agentforce, constrained by the permission model and capabilities of Flow to ensure that everything is working as intended. How data management best practices have changed with AI One thing Mehmet reflects on is the way that data management techniques have changed over time. Several best practices no longer make sense in today's context of AI. For example, duplicate records that used to be a mortal sin make more sense when you're trying to constrain what a customer can see vs. your employees vs. your vendors. However, the personalized engagement that is possible with Agentforce requires a complete understanding of what's happening with someone. At the same time, you want your agents to only act on information they're "allowed" to see, or generate insights that are relevant to the outcomes you want to achieve. As Mehmet explains, "good" data and "bad" data is really about making sure your data is structured in a way that makes it easy to use. Data unification made easy with Data Cloud The good news is that it's never been easier to take care of your data with Data Cloud. Mehmet's seen this with the nonprofits he works with. Data unification projects that used to take months or even years are now relatively simple affairs. You can identify bad data, filter out irrelevant data, and put the right data standardizations in place all in setup. Mehmet's biggest piece of advice is to measure your data quality in terms of the business outcomes you are trying to achieve. As he points out, the amount of data you need to open an opportunity is different than what you need to close an opportunity. The same principle applies to AI agents. If you make sure they get everything they need and nothing extraneous, you'll get good results. There are a ton of great insights about data management best practices for AI in our conversation with Mehmet, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Understanding the Importance of Data Health in Salesforce Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Mehmet on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on TikTok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome back to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today we're catching up with Mehmet Orun, longtime friend of the pod and true expert in data and AI. I'm going to tell you, a lot has changed in the world of artificial intelligence since our last chat. And Mehmet's here to break it down from hallucination risks to the role of data cloud in creating trustworthy AI experiences. If you've ever been wondering how to make your data more meaningful and your AI outputs more reliable, well, you are in for a treat. So, make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss a single episode. And with that, let's get Mehmet back on the podcast. Mehmet, welcome back to the podcast. Mehmet Orun: It is wonderful to be back, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: I know. You just come by with all these wisdoms and knowledge that you have in the world. Last time we were on, and I'll link to that show, we were talking about hallucination risks. And it's been a year. And boy, I tell you, a year in AI time, everything's changed. So, what's new in your world? What are you paying attention to in terms of AI and Agentforce? Mehmet Orun: To be honest, one of the interesting things about having been around a while is while the technologies are new, our overall objective haven't really changed. And one of the things I've been really trying to look back to is what were past challenges we overcame, what were the parallels, and what were some of the best practices that people newer to the field around data integration, artificial intelligence, may not know about, so we can share this knowledge while absolutely picking up new ways of doing things? Also, because we definitely have

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Sri Srinivasan, Senior Director of Information Security at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about his recent presentation at TDX and how to build secure, reliable AI experiences with Agentforce. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sri Srinivasan. Quick heads up before we dive in: This episode may include forward-looking statements—aka things we're excited about that may not be here just yet. So, as always, make your purchasing decisions based only on what's currently available. For the full legal scoop, check out salesforce.com. Five questions to ask when you're building with Agentforce I caught up with Sri fresh off his TDX presentation about secure Agentforce implementation to pick his brain on how admins should think about security and AI. For Sri, there are five things to think about in order to build secure AI agents: What is the agent's role and scope? What data will the agent have access to? Which actions should be public and which should be private? Do you need to build any extra guardrails? Which channels will the agent use? As always with security, the key concept here is the principle of least privilege. Running through Sri's questions helps you build an agent that can't do something you don't want it to do. What's coming next for security in Agentforce Sri also gives us a sneak peek at the new tools his team is piloting to help admins build secure AI agents. You'll be able to look at metrics like instruction adherence, coherence, how factual the responses are, and how grounded the agent is. They're also trying to simplify how user permissions work with AI agents in order to make it easier to keep things limited and secure. It's easy to turn things on and off when you're trying to get something to work, but you need to revisit your permissions from time to time and apply the principle of least privilege. The role of admins in the future of Agentforce Finally, I asked Sri about how admins fit into the future of AI on Salesforce. "Admins are key to everything that we do," he says, "they understand everything that's happening within their environment. They know which actions, what permissions, what they do, and agents are just another avenue to expose and interact with this crux of it." How fast would you drive a car with no brakes? Sure, Agentforce is a sports car in terms of everything it can do. But it's up to admins to build the brakes and make sure that AI agents are only doing the things you want them to do. And that starts by understanding the systems and data behind them and then asking the right questions. There's a lot more great stuff in my conversation with Sri, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Sri at TDX: 5 Easy Steps for Secure Agentforce Implementation More from TDX: Security Best Practices with Agentforce Trailhead: Trusted Agentic AI Blog: Best Practices for Building Secure Agentforce Service Agents Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Sri on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Sri Srinivasan about secure, reliable AI experiences with Agentforce. Now, Sri is a leader on the security compliance customer trust team at Salesforce, where he helps customers understand and implement security best practices. Of course, before we get into this episode, be sure to follow the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That way you get a new episode every Thursday delivered right to your phone or your mobile device. So with that, let's get into our conversation with Sri. So Sri, welcome to the podcast. Sri Srinivasan: Thanks for having me here, Mike. Super excited for it. Mike Gerholdt: Well, I love the presentation that you gave at TDX, and I'm sure more people would love to hear about it too, which is why I wanted to have you come back on, because everything now is Agentforce and security is always top of mind. I've always preached security ever since I started at Salesforce. I've had, I think, Laura Pelkey on quite a few times. But that was the compass of what you talked about at TDX. But I'm jumping ahead. Let's talk about you a little bit. Tell me kind of where you got started and how you got to Salesforce. Sri Srinivasan: Let me try to make it very sweet and sharp. So I have always been in security. I have a master's in information management specializing in security. I worked for big four accounting firms, but not doing accounting. I did security for them, data security and data privacy. Then I ended up working for a little gaming company where I really got involved in security, due diligence. Was a

Real Talk for Admins on Content, Conferences, and Agentforce Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joy Shutters-Helbing, Senior Manager of Salesforce Practice at Captech and Salesforce MVP Hall-of-Famer, and Mike Reynolds, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Slack. Join us as we chat about creating community content, navigating conference submissions, and their new podcast, the Jam Pod. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joy Shutters-Helbing and Mike Reynolds. Catch Mike and Joy (and me) on The Jam Pod Mike and Joy are movers and shakers in the Salesforce community. Joy's in the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame, hosts MVP office hours on the first and third Friday of every month, and has spoken at Dreamforce, TDX, and tons of community conferences. Mike has helped create 13 different Salesforce certifications as a Credential Ambassador, and he's a regular speaker at conferences big and small. Together, Joy and Mike are the dynamic duo behind the Jam Pod, where they talk to folks in the Salesforce ecosystem about everything from hiring to technical talks to highlights from the release notes. In fact, they just had me on the pod to talk about the Salesforce community, so be sure to check that out at the link below. How to come up with ideas for Salesforce presentations and content As veteran speakers and content creators, Joy and Mike want to know that you have what it takes to give a Salesforce presentation. In their experience, most people fall into one of two camps: I don't feel like anything I have is important enough to share with anyone. I have something to share, but I don't know where to start. If you're in camp number one, it's important to remember that you're an expert on your own business's problems, and how you solved them can help someone else facing a similar issue. "When you've toiled over a solution and, all of a sudden, it works and you stand up and do some sort of victory dance, that is the thing you should be sharing," Joy says. If you're ready to give a Salesforce talk but don't know where to start If you're in camp number two, where you think you could share something but you don't know how to get started, Mike recommends following Salesforce Evangelists & Advocates and event organizers on social media to hear about calls for speakers. I've included a few links below for Midwest and Florida Dreamin', and Mid-Atlantic Dreamin' is right around the corner. Smaller events like community groups and conferences are a great place to polish your presentation and practice your public speaking skills. And while you might not feel ready for the Dreamforce stage just yet, you can submit topics you'd like to hear more about or even nominate someone to give a talk. There's a lot more great stuff from Mike and Joy about giving presentations and creating great Salesforce content, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Listen to Mike on The Jam Podcast here Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Unlocking Salesforce Efficiency with Joy Shutters-Helbing How I Solved It: Get Agentforce Ready: Move From Profiles to Permission Sets | How I Solved It with Mike Reynolds Squire Kerschner on the first episode of The Jam Podcast Midwest Dreamin' Call for Speakers Florida Dreamin' Call for Presentations Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Joy on LinkedIn Mike on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on TikTok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're jamming, literally, with Joy Shutters-Helbing and Mike Reynolds about creating community content, navigating conference submissions, and yes, even launching a podcast of their own. It's called The JAM Pod. I listen to it, do you? Joy is a longtime Salesforce MVP Hall of Famer, community group leader, and admin extraordinaire with over 21 years of experience. Mike is a Salesforce credential ambassador, known for his deep knowledge on permission sets, permissions, and profiles, and now, he works with Slack. Before we get into this episode, be sure to follow the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. That way, you get a fresh episode every Thursday, right on your phone. With that, let's jump into the conversation with Joy and Mike. Joy and Mike, welcome to the podcast. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Hi. Mike Reynolds: Thank you. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Thank you. Mike Gerholdt: Joy, let's start with you. You've been in the community, you've actually been on the Salesforce Admins Podcast before, but for listeners, just finding out who you are and probably missed your wonderful TDX presentation, can you tell us a little bit a

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Brinkal Janani, Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the future of AI-powered customization that's coming with Generative Canvas. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Brinkal Janani. Build dynamic experiences for users with no code Brinkal has always been fascinated by how admins can build dynamic user experiences without code. He was on the original team of engineers that built Dynamic Forms, and as a product manager, he's been leading the charge on Lightning App Builder and AI-generated apps. Today on the pod, we're going to take a sneak peek at what Brinkal's working on right now. Think of all of this as one big Forward looking Statement™ but right now, they're calling it Generative Canvas. How admins can create AI-powered dynamic layouts with Generative Canvas I've been in the ecosystem long enough to remember how much of a game-changer things like Lightning Forms, Lightning Page Builder, and Dynamic Forms were for admins. These tools put admins in the driver's seat to guide users to the insights they need. However, as Brinkal points out, it's difficult to anticipate what users will need in terms of data and workflows. The concept of Generative Canvas is to leverage AI agents to go beyond static user interfaces to something more dynamic and responsive. The user prompts an agent that responds with Lightning Components that can be slotted directly into the UI. As an admin, you build the agents, connect the relevant data, and Generative Canvas takes care of the rest. Suddenly, without any coding, you've built AI-powered dynamic layouts for your users. Generative Canvas in action You really have to see a video of Generative Canvas in action to get how big this is going to be. But imagine a team is collaborating for a sales meeting. You can drop the pitch deck into the UI and ask for an outline to work from. Another person can pull up data about the customer from Data Cloud, and maybe a chart built from public data showing growth in the market. And this is just scratching the surface of what Salesforce Admins will be able to build with no code. If all of this is exciting to you, make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Brinkal. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Generative Canvas demo video Help Article: Visualize Your Data with Generative Canvas (Preview) Release Notes: Generative Canvas (Preview) Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Brinkal on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're diving into the future of AI-powered customization with Brinkal Janani. Now Brinkal is a product manager here at Salesforce and he's leading the charge on Lightning App Builder and AI-generated apps. Today, specifically we're talking about Generative Canvas, forward-looking statement. I bet it's going to get renamed. So we're going to call it Generative Canvas for now, but literally watch the video that's in the show notes. This thing is so cool because it's going to reimagine how admins, how our users can interact with data and build dynamic experiences. And my two most favorite words, without code. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. That way when a new episode like this drops, boom, you can listen to it. I don't want you to miss out, so be sure to pay attention in whatever app you are using to either press that follow or subscribe button. So with that, let's get Brinkal on the podcast. So Brinkal, welcome to the podcast. Brinkal Janani: Thanks, Mike, for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Well, we're fresh off the heels of TDX and with AI and everything going on, I feel like the metaphor I've used of how fast technology changing is jumping out of a plane, it's moving very fast. I feel like it's jumping out of a plane and skydiving superfast towards the earth because with AI, everything's changing. And we're going to talk about some of the really cool stuff that you're working on on the platform, but let's get started with just learning a little bit more about Brinkal and what you do at Salesforce. So why don't you tell us what you do and some of the stuff that you work on? Brinkal Janani: Sure. Mike, as you guys know, I'm Brinkal Janani and I've been at Salesforce for a little over than nine years now, and throughout my career at Salesforce. I've played various roles. I started my career as a software engineer in test, eventually transitioned to full stack software engineer, and now I'm a product manager overseeing a couple of product portfolios, namely Lighting App Builder and generating apps using AI. And that's w

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Megan Tuano, Sr. Business Analyst at Accenture Federal Services and an amazing YouTube content creator. Join us as we chat about how she uses AI in her consulting and Salesforce Admin work, and how she's built a career in tech without a traditional tech background. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Megan Tuano. The misconception about tech careers Megan started her career at UC Berkeley as an admissions and career counselor for a data science program. Watching her students break into the tech industry without a traditional tech background inspired her to make a career shift of her own. She didn't have to look far for inspiration—she was already using Salesforce every day to move students through the admissions process. Many people believe a career in tech requires a background in engineering, but Megan shares a different perspective. You don't need to know how to code to be a business analyst, a product manager, or a Salesforce Admin. And AI is transforming the landscape even further. AI's impact on consulting and problem-solving One thing that stands out to me about Megan's story is how well she prioritized her learning. She started with her career goals, and then worked backwards to figure out which Salesforce certifications she needed to achieve those goals. And the biggest difference-maker in her career has been learning how to use AI in her consulting and Salesforce Admin work. When she's solutioning, Megan uses AI to help her brainstorm. For example, if she's building something to solve a specific business problem, she might ask ChatGPT to suggest other use cases she hasn't thought of. AI helps her generate ideas beyond her personal experience, making her consulting work more effective. The importance of soft skills in tech We also touched on soft skills and why they're so important for Salesforce Admins. Getting your users to buy in to what you're trying to do and how it can help them is all about showing that you care and that you're here to help them. One way you can do that is by asking questions. Don't be afraid to ask about a business process that you don't understand—it shows that you care and want to get it right. In tech, your soft skills will make you stand out. If you want to hear more from Megan, be sure to check out her YouTube channel. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Megan's YouTube channel Megan's article on Salesforce Ben: Can ChatGPT Replace a Salesforce Consultant? Trailhead: Prepare for your Salesforce Certified AI Associate Credential Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Megan on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admin's Podcast, we're talking to Megan Tuano about navigating career transitions in tech, the power of AI, and making your mark in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, Megan is a senior business analyst team leader, and let me tell you, a prolific YouTube content creator with a knack for turning really complex concepts into engaging lessons. But before we dive into this insightful conversation, make sure you're following the Salesforce Admin's podcast on your favorite platform. I don't know which one that is, but I bet you have yours. And if you do that, you're never going to miss an episode because it's just going to show up every Thursday morning. All right, enough of the promo. Let's get to our conversation with Megan. So Megan, welcome to the podcast. Megan Tuano: Hey, I'm happy to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Well, I came across your YouTube channel. We did a military... What was the official name of that? Was it a happy hour that we did? Megan Tuano: It was the military trailblazer office hours. Mike Gerholdt: Office hours. I keep calling everything happy hour, maybe it's wishful thinking. Megan Tuano: It was happy. Mike Gerholdt: It was happy hours, office hours, but it was fun doing that with you. Jennifer Lee was on, there was quite a few people on. Warren Walters, former podcast host. It was like a roundup, and I was like, "Wait a minute. Megan hasn't been on the podcast, so it's not a true family reunion, vet force, happy hour unless I had Megan on the podcast." So I had to have you on the podcast to talk about career and life, your YouTube channel and all of AI and Agent Force that's coming in everywhere in the Salesforce ecosystem. So let's get started there. How did you get started in the Salesforce world? Megan Tuano: Yeah, so taking me back. So basically I was actually working for UC, Berkeley at the time. I was an admission's counselor slash career counselor. I was helping a lot of students at the time really figure out if they wanted to start the data science

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Gillian Bruce, Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Join us as we chat about how to combine Agentforce with Slack and all the cool new things you can do with custom AI agents. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Gillian Bruce. If you can build on Salesforce, you can build on Slack Peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, cookies and milk—some things just go together. That's why I've brought Gillian Bruce back on the pod to talk about her new role as Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Gillian's still a Salesforce Admin at heart, and she's constantly seeing new ways that Slack can help admins with low and no-code solutions. If you can build in Salesforce, you can build in Slack. And with powerful features like Slack Canvas, Slack Lists, and Workflow Builder, you have a ton of flexibility to communicate information effectively and save time for your users. She also has another great combo to add to our list: Agentforce and Slack. How to combine Agentforce with Slack Slack has over 2600 integrations, allowing you to bring in data from Jira, Workday, Salesforce, and more. This lets you build workflows for users and share information with them without needing to set them up on every platform you're using. But how can you help them interface with all of that data? That's where Agentforce comes in. With Agent Builder, you can create custom employee-facing AI agents for Slack to cut through the noise. These agents can update information in Salesforce, pull data your users need to know, give them a summary of service interactions with a customer, and it all happens in Slack. Get started with employee-facing AI agent templates If you need some help getting started, we've got you covered. Slack has built a plethora of templates for employee-facing AI agents that you can adapt as needed. For example, there's a product specialist agent that can ingest documentation and answer questions from your users so they don't have to pull up a bunch of PDFs. If there's one thing Gillian wants you to know, it's that every Salesforce Admin should be building in Slack. "It's going to not only set yourself up to be super valuable to your organization in this era of agents," she says, "but it also is going to open up so much more possibility for you career-wise." Be sure to listen to the full episode about more cool things you can do with Salesforce and Slack, and why you might see Gillian at your next Dreamin' event. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more slack.dev Slack Developer Program Workshop: Build an automated workflow Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Can Salesforce Admins Do with Slack Integrations? Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Gillian on LinkedIn Gillian on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're thrilled to have Gillian Bruce back with us. Gillian, who now leads the Slack ecosystem marketing team and is on a mission to show why every Salesforce admin should be jumping into Slack and using it to not only build custom agents, but also amazing workflows and incredible integrations that Slack can do. Gillian explains why learning and leveraging Slack is simply a must for an admin. I mean, it's so easy to use. I love it. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That way, you can catch every new episode immediately when it comes out on Thursdays. So be sure to hit the follow button on whatever podcast platform you're listening for. So now, let's welcome Gillian back and talk about Slack and Agentforce. So Gillian, welcome back to the podcast. Gillian: Mike, thanks for having me. Mike: I know, you've been over overly communicating with people. Gillian: It's been a while since I've been on the pod with you, it feels like I just rewound the clock quite a while. Mike: I know, in the Wayback Machine. Don't forget, we have the Wayback Machine. I don't have the fancy noisemaker, you just got to put it in your head and envision that. What have you been up to since we've last talked on ye olde podcast? Gillian: Oh, just a few things, you know? A few changes. Mike: Okay. Still all about admins, obviously. Gillian: Admins are always in my heart, and it's actually been quite fun, because about, what, eight months ago at this point, I have transitioned over to Slack to lead up their ecosystem marketing team, which includes developers, community, and partners. And one of the big things I'm focused on is, as I've gotten to know the Slack community over here, is helping all Salesforce admins understand how awesome Slack is, and how important it is that you learn

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Kate Lessard, and Brittney Gibson from the Admin Relations team. Join us as we chat about what they're looking forward to at TDX 2025 and the keynotes, sessions, and how to make the most of your time. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee, Kate Lessard, and Brittney Gibson. Don't miss Jen and Kate's sessions at TDX We're looking forward to seeing you at TDX next week, and we want to extend a personal invitation to friends of the pod to come to our breakout sessions. In Unleash the Power of Modular Flows for Agentforce, Jen will be teaching you how to break down flows into smaller, modular components, so you get the most out of them. She's also running another session, "Elevate Prompt Template Agent Actions with the Power of Flow," where she'll look at how to use flow to enrich your prompt templates with data. Kate will be in Theater 2, presenting Demo to Deployment: Engaging Stakeholders with Agentforce. She'll go over how to create a demo that shows your stakeholders everything Agentforce can do, enabling you to get better input and transform your organization with AI. Where to learn more about what's next with Agentforce Kate's also been working on the demos you'll see in the keynote. We'll be looking at how Agentforce has enabled builders with low code, no code, and pro code solutions to create agents and problem-solve for their organizations using AI. You can also stop by the Agentforce Zone, where we'll have plenty of introductory content to get you started with AI. You can learn about Agent Builder, find out more about Service Agents and Headless Agents, and how to use AI to test what you've built. We'll also cover how you can get data from PDFs with RAG 2.0, and what happens when you combine Agentforce with Data Cloud and screen flows. How to keep up with everything at TDX If you're not able to attend in person, Brittney's got your back. You can catch key sessions on Salesforce+ and she'll cover all the TDX action on our socials. We're also sharing must-attend sessions and opportunities to get hands-on with Agentforce to help you plan ahead. Listen to the full episode for more on how to get the most out of your time at TDX, and don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Blog: A Salesforce Admin's Guide to TDX 2025 Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jen on LinkedIn Jen on X Kate on LinkedIn Kate on X Brittney on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, well, I hope you took the over on the over-under of number of admin relations team members that can fit on a pod, because I've got the second most or maybe the most, but we're all here to give you a roadmap to get prepared for TDX. I almost said Trailblazer DX, but then it was Trailhead DX. I'm going to go with TDX, that's probably the most current name right now. But we're going to talk about keynotes. We're going to talk about sessions. We're going to talk about stuff to walk around and look at and put your fingers on the keyboards. And then also, everybody's got a phone in their pocket and you've got to be on social. So Brittany's back from 100 years ago when I first had her on the podcast to help you engage in social and share all the fun pictures and stuff. So Kate, Jennifer, Brittany, welcome to the podcast. Kate: Thanks for having me. Brittany: Thank you. Jennifer: Glad to be here. Mike: Let's get started with sessions because I don't know about you, but every time I sign up for a conference, it's like I got to figure out what sessions I'm going to. So Jen, Kate, I know you're both working diligently on some amazing sessions. Jen, you have the most, and that's no surprise. But let's start with you. What are the two breakout sessions you're working on for TDX? Jennifer: Yeah, very excited for this. So my first breakout is called Unleash the Power of Modular Flows for Agentforce. I know that sounds a lot, but it's your admins, you're building out those flows. Now you could maximize those flows by building them modularly, and what I mean is breaking them down into the smallest components. So I will show you how you can go from a big flow down to a small flow and really optimize it for use with your agents. So that's the first one. And then the second one is called Elevate Prompt Template: Agent Actions with the Power of Flow. So there is a theme that you see flow, flownatics, right? I love flow. I love the ability to leverage that flow magic in our prompt templates to really enrich your prompt templates and ground them in data. So I'm going to step through how to do that, how to use that power of flow in your prompt templates, and then further enrich your AI agen

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about Salesforce Foundations and why it's the key to unlocking the power of Agentforce. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Eddie Cliff. Introducing Salesforce Foundations Everyone's excited about Agentforce and everything you can do when you combine Salesforce with AI. But what about smaller orgs? How will EE or UE orgs be able to keep up without access to all of the bells and whistles? That's exactly what Eddie and his team have been working on with Salesforce Foundations. It's a free way to add the basic capabilities of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud, and Agentforce to your org. How Salesforce Foundations supports AI and Agentforce Salesforce Foundations eliminates the need for 3rd-party solutions to do that one little thing, like creating a payment link, or triggering a marketing campaign based on Commerce data. You can get all this cool cross-cloud functionality without having to upgrade your org, allowing you to start building that full Customer 360 in Data Cloud. And this is crucial because Salesforce Foundations also gives you access to a freemium version of Agentforce. "What's really cool," he says, "is that as you do more and you use more of these cross-cloud capabilities, your data in Data Cloud gets richer and more powerful and so does Agentforce." And did I mention it's free for Sales or Service EE and UE users? How to activate Salesforce Foundations Getting started is as easy as going into Setup and clicking on the Salesforce Foundations node. You'll go through a checklist of everything you need to get going. From there, you're in for a whole new world of segmentation, personalization, and automation. Listen to the full episode for more from Eddie on Salesforce Foundations and what's coming next, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead: Salesforce Foundations: Quick Look Help docs: Considerations for Salesforce Foundations Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Eddie on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce, about some exciting developments in Salesforce Foundations. It was the subline to Agentforce that you heard at Dreamforce this year. Eddie has been at Salesforce for nearly 14 years, transitioning from roles in go-to-market and solution engineering to now product management. And in this episode, Eddie shares insights into the evolution of Salesforce products like Starter, Pro Suite, and we learn about Salesforce Foundations. Now, before we get started, I just want to make sure that you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins podcast on whatever platform you get your Salesforce podcast on. Go ahead and click that subscribe, or sometimes it's a follow button. And that way, when new episodes come in every Thursday morning, they will be downloaded to your phone. So with that, let's jump into our conversation with Eddie where he explains how Salesforce Foundations is designed to give customers access to even more capabilities within sales, service and beyond, including all of their existing Salesforce implementations at no cost. So Eddie, welcome back to the podcast. Eddie Cliff: Hey, thanks for having me again. Good to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, absolutely. Well, product managers that work on good features that admins love, we love to have on the podcast. So if people aren't avid listeners, let's refresh their memory. Tell me what exactly you do at Salesforce and how you came to be? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, definitely. So my name is Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management, leading product for our Starter, Pro and now Foundation Suite, which I'm really excited to talk about today. I've been at Salesforce for almost 14 years now, and I've done a variety of roles, from go-to-market and sales and solution engineering and customer success prior to moving into product management about eight years ago now. Mike Gerholdt: Wow, I didn't know you were an SC. I don't think you said that in the last podcast. That's awesome. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, SCs are amazing in what they can bring from their technical understanding and how Salesforce works, but also working with our customers to understand their requirements and needs, and ultimately designing the solutions that they can present back to the customer to hopefully prove out the value of Salesforce as they look to explore it. So actually, have a couple of SCs on my team... Well, former SCs that are now

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Marianna Torres, Associate Salesforce Labs Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the Salesforce Labs AI Library and how it can get you started with implementing AI agents in your org. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Marianna Torres. What is Salesforce Labs? Growing up, Marianna was always interested in more creative pursuits and had never considered a career in tech. That all changed during the COVID-19 lockdown when she enrolled in a workforce development program called Year Up United and landed an internship with Salesforce. Today, Marianna works on the Salesforce Labs team, curating the Salesforce employee-built apps, components, and flows that are available for free on AppExchange. Now with the release of Agentforce, the team has put together the Salesforce Labs AI Library as a resource to help you get started with AI. How the Salesforce Labs AI Library helps you get started with Agentforce If you've been keeping up with the pod, you know that prompt engineering can be tricky business. But what if you could copy all the best, most useful prompts from Salesforce product experts? That's what the Salesforce Labs AI Library is all about. It gives you everything you need to get AI agents up and running. When she's going through submissions, Marianna asks three simple questions: Will this help the customer? Does this simplify something that historically takes a lot of time? Is it easy to use? If the answer is yes, it gets included in the library, ready to help you implement Agentforce AI in your org. More resources for Salesforce Labs If you don't know where to start, Marianna recommends going through the Salesforce Labs Basics on Trailhead. You can also listen to the full episode, where she walks Josh through the process of looking something up in the Salesforce Labs AI Library. That's it for this episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast and we'll catch you next week. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more The Salesforce Labs AI Library Trailhead: Salesforce Labs Basics AppExchange: Salesforce Labs Year Up United Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Marianna on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Josh Birk: Hey, gang, Josh Birk, your guest host here for today. Today we're going to talk to Marianna Torres about a project that I am very, very excited about. It's live now, it's called the Salesforce Labs AI Library. I'm really not sure if I'm getting that name right, but I will ask Mariana here in a second. All right. Today on the show, we welcome Marianna Torres to talk about the Salesforce AI Labs library. Do I have that title right or is there are more official one? Marianna Torres: The Salesforce Labs AI Library is the official title. But yeah, you did a good job. Yeah. Josh Birk: Okay. Welcome to the show. First, I want to talk a little bit about your early years. Was computers and software engineering, software in general something you always wanted to get into? Marianna Torres: Honestly, no. I'm actually surprised about how I ended up here at Salesforce. But yeah, so growing up and stuff, I was always more of a creative person, so I was drawing, singing, doing all that. Basically anything that's creative, I was doing. So as I got older, it kind of got to the point where it's like you kind of realize that, okay, it's like I can go to school, I could pursue this, I could potentially do something. But at the same time, I had graduated and it was shortly before COVID. Josh Birk: Oh. Marianna Torres: Yeah, so instead of going the traditional route, I had just joined a workforce development program. The program was called Year Up. Yeah, so through that I did the six-month corporate training. They had transitioned it to virtual and everything. So yeah, I actually started my internship here at Salesforce in 2020, so peak COVID. And from there one thing led to another, I was a contractor for a couple years, and then I got full time. Josh Birk: Nice, nice. What was the connection to get into the AI labs job itself? Other than the fact that we get paid a nickel every time we say the word AI. Marianna Torres: Yeah. So yeah, the team that I'm with now, it's the exact same team that I had joined five years ago as an intern, and that is the Salesforce Labs team. So primarily, our job is to provide our customers with some free employee-built apps, components, and flows on AppExchange. Then this past whole year, AI became huge, and then we had to pivot and we're like, "Okay, the customers want AI, what can we give them?" Seeing as how AI wasn't packageable yet, so- Josh Birk: Right. Marianna Torres: Yeah, we actually just launched Actions, I believe. So Agent Actions are now packageable, prompt templates are not though

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce and the host of How I Solved It and Automate This! Join us as we chat about everything coming with the Spring '25 release and what's new for Agentforce and AI on Salesforce. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee. Jen's highlights from the Spring '25 release Every year, Jen's release readiness blog post is our most popular piece of content. So I thought I'd bring her on the pod to talk about Spring '25 so we can hear it straight from the source. She shares [number] areas where there will be big changes: 1. Agentforce for all with Salesforce Foundations With Spring '25, more orgs than ever before will get access to Agentforce for free with Salesforce Foundations. This is a game changer for smaller orgs and solo admins, allowing you to use AI to harness the power of the Sales, Service, and Marketing Clouds to transform your business. One thing Jen wants to highlight is the ability to add agent quick actions right on a record page. Prompting is an art, but sometimes your users just need the AI to do the thing. Now you can give them a magic button to give the agent the correct prompt. If you have Einstein Bots, you can easily convert them into templates for agents to save some steps getting started with Agentforce. 2. Einstein AI for flows For the flownatics out there, there are a ton of new ways that AI enhancements in Spring '25 can help you build flows. You can describe what you want a formula or flow to do, and Einstein will build it for you. While you'll need to go in and iron out the details, it can get you 80% of the way there. No more googling to look up how to write a specific formula. If you're like most admins, your Salesforce org is probably full of flows that you didn't build yourself. With Spring '25, you'll be able to get Einstein to summarize what they do, which makes documentation and debugging much easier. 3. User management made easy Meanwhile, there are several user management changes coming in Spring '25 aimed at minimizing clicks and making permissions easier to manage. The group summary page lets you view all the sharing rules and list views in one place, so it's much simpler to figure out why someone can see something but someone else can't. 4. Better screen flows in Spring '25 Action buttons let you automatically trigger a flow when your user clicks a button, but what if you could pull up the output without any other user interaction? That's where screen flows come in. For example, when your user selects a contact you can automatically pull up the associated cases or opportunities. How to get ready for a Salesforce release Jen's advice for going through release notes is to start with your org. What features do you rely on? Search through the release notes for those things, specifically, and make sure you know what's new and what's changing. Two things that will affect every org are security updates and release updates. These security and performance enhancements will improve your org across the board, so be sure you know when they'll be enforced and how to test them. Remember, a sandbox org is your best friend. There's a lot more great stuff from Jen to get ready for Spring '25, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Blog: Jen's Top Spring '25 Release Features | Be Release Ready Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Can Small Teams Benefit from Salesforce Foundations and Generative AI? Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jen on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admin's podcast, we're thrilled to welcome back Jennifer Lee to talk about the Spring '25 release and all of its exciting features. Now, as you know, Jennifer is lead admin evangelist here on the admin relations team at Salesforce and host of the How I Solved It and Automate This video series on YouTube. She's also known for this blog post, which comes out with every release. I know you find it incredibly helpful. I do. Now, before we jump into the conversation with Jennifer, I want to make sure that you are following the Salesforce Admin's podcast on your favorite platform so that you never miss an episode, which could include really cool features like this one. So with that, let's get Jennifer on the podcast. So Jen, welcome back to the podcast. Jennifer Lee: Thanks for having me, Mike. Glad to be back. Mike: Well, it's almost spring. It doesn't feel like it where we're at- Jennifer Lee: No. Mike: ... but isn't that how it always is with all of our releases? Jennifer Lee: I just want it to fast-forward. Mike: Yes. Jennifer Lee: Get me to spring. Mike: Right. But you

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Erick Mahle, VP of Revenue Operations & Digital Transformation at Lendz Financial. Join us as we chat about how he's using AI to drive digital transformation and how he started FlowFest, the largest global Salesforce flow competition. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Erick Mahle. Solving business problems with Salesforce Erick was always interested in technology as a kid, helping his dad build computers. However, he originally started his career in marketing. Everything changed when his manager asked him to take over Salesforce for his organization and he saw what he could do with declarative solutions. "I thought it was the grownup version of Legos," he says. In his role at Lendz Financial, he's combining those problem-solving skills with the power of AI to spearhead digital transformation. The mortgage lending industry is full of complicated business processes that need to be checked and re-checked, so it's the perfect place to put new AI capabilities to the test. How AI can streamline mortgage lending If you've ever bought a house, you'll know that getting a mortgage is incredibly complex. With so many steps and regulatory requirements, Erick and his team are using AI to streamline these business processes and limit costly errors. They call it Project Lexi. Obviously, with mortgages involved, they're not ready to turn everything over to AI just yet. However, they've already found several wins by eliminating handoffs with automation and training the AI to flag potential problems. For Erick, the key to any successful digital transformation initiative is to focus on the humans you're supposed to be helping. FlowFest, the largest global Salesforce flow competition Erick also runs FlowFest, a competition where Flownatics can strut their stuff. It started with the idea that although Trailhead is great at teaching you how to build things, a big part of your job as a Salesforce Admin is to fix broken flows. Contests are put through several rounds of debug challenges, culminating in a livestreamed event where the finalists race to be the first to find a working solution for the final flow. It's basically an esport, complete with live commentary and dramatic photo finishes. They just did their first in-person FlowFest at Mile High Dreamin', and it may be coming soon to an event near you. Erick had a lot more to share about how he's thinking about AI and some of his favorite FlowFest stories, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Video: FlowFest V6 Mile High Dreamin' on YouTube Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Erick on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full Transcript Josh Birk: Hello, admins, your guest host Josh Birk here. Today, we welcome Erick Mahle to talk a little bit about AI, digital transformation, and a lot about one of his projects, FlowFest, and how people can learn Flow in a really fun and interactive way. So, without any further ado, let's go welcome Erick. All right. Today on the show, we welcome Erick Mahle to talk about, of course, probably a little bit of AI since that's what we have to do these days and Mile High Dreamin' and FlowFast. Erick, welcome to the show. Erick Mahle: Well, thanks for having me, Josh. Josh Birk: So, let's start with your early years. Did you always want to get into software? Erick Mahle: No, I had no idea I was going to get into software. Although, when I was a very young kid, my father used to build computers and I know I used to do a little bit of the same as well like getting all the video cards, the motherboards, getting all the components, joining them together. But that wasn't something that stuck with me throughout all these years. So, I went to school for marketing, but somehow ended up as the accidental admin and here we are 15 years later. Josh Birk: Got it. Well, that kind of segues to the next question. How did you first get introduced to Salesforce? Erick Mahle: Well, since accidental admin is the default answer for most folks... Josh Birk: Right. Erick Mahle: I will basically say, I joined a company as a marketing analyst. It was a small company. And like most small companies, you get to wear many hats and they basically said, "Hey, we have Salesforce, why don't you manage Salesforce?" And really had a great experience there. We had brought in my boss at that time who was a Silicon Valley-type global sales director, and he really challenged me a lot. He used to say, "Hey, at SuccessFactor, Salesforce used to do this, or at Zuora, Salesforce used to do that. And really, challenged me to kind of reverse engineer Salesforce and I found a lot of joy in that. I thought it was the grown-up version of Legos. I

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Dorian Earl, Salesforce Admin and Founder of Development Consulting Partners, LLC. Join us as we chat about the 5 steps you can take to prepare for Agentforce and AI. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dorian Earl. Preparing for big changes with AI Dorian started his career as a medical and dental equipment sales rep. He had over 100,000 products and 300 clients to keep track of, and he was looking for something to replace his paper notebooks. That's when he came across a new CRM platform called Salesforce and a new career in tech. Today, Dorian runs a consulting firm that helps organizations leverage their tech stack to improve their business processes. The changes that are possible with AI are just as big as switching from paper planners to a CRM, so I wanted to sit down with him to find out how Salesforce Admins can get ready for Agentforce. 1. Awareness Dorian is seeing a lot of enthusiasm and curiosity from his clients about AI, but most organizations are unsure about how best to use it. He compares it to when search engines were first coming out. The idea of being able to search the entire internet with a query was so groundbreaking that it took time for people to understand the business implications, even at Google. 2. Preparedness Since the possibilities of AI applications are so broad, the best thing we can do is to get any data that an AI agent might need into Salesforce. That can be anything from your operating hours to your company values to your brand voice. Essentially, the same sorts of things you'd go over with a new hire. That way you don't have to start at square one every time you want to build a new agent. 3. Quick wins and usage AI implementation starts with finding quick wins for your organization. Dorian's found the summarize record action to be particularly useful for just about everyone who works with customers. He also recommends taking advantage of AI's ability to do quick reporting for users without the admin needing to get involved. 4. Internal process improvement The biggest changes AI will bring are to internal business processes. Essentially, this comes down to saving clicks and smoothing out workflows. Dorian brings up the example of processing a return. An agent can take care of all the little steps, like creating a case, logging information, and authorizing a refund, instead of that being a multi-person business process. 5. External tasks outsourced to AI The final thing to look at is whether or not any external-facing tasks can be outsourced to AI. Something like prospect nurturing can be handled by an agent that summarizes a record, drafts an email based on that summary and your business information, and then sends it. And then a second agent can schedule a phone call with an actual sales rep for anyone who replies. Obviously, you want to be fairly confident in the agent you've built before you put it directly in touch with customers. But that's why you need to get started now. For Dorian, Salesforce Admins are uniquely positioned to transform their businesses with new AI solutions. There's more great stuff from my conversation with Dorian, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you stay up to date. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Keeping Processes Fresh in Salesforce with Dorian Earl Trailhead: Einstein Work Summaries for Service Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Dorian on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome back Dorian Earl, founder and CEO of a thriving consultancy that has over 450 clients and just a massive wealth of Salesforce experience and knowledge. Dorian has been the Salesforce ecosystem for nearly two decades. He started as a sales rep who needed a better way to track his deals and opportunities and really turn that into a career empowering companies to embrace better CRMs and smarter systems. Now in today's episode, we dive into Dorian's five steps to prepare for Agentforce and AI. Now, from understanding the buzz around AI to implementing quick wins and long-term strategies, Dorian shares invaluable insights to help you, the Salesforce admin, and/or organizations you work for stay ahead of the curve this year in 2025. Now, of course, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following or subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so that you never miss a great episode like this. New episodes drop every Thursday morning. That way you've got them, boom, right on your phone before you head off for your dog walk or your commute to work. So with that, let's get Dorian on the podcast. Dorian, welco

Agentforce's Best Friend: Clean, Reliable Data Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lizz Hellinga, a Consultant and Salesforce MVP. Join us as we chat about why clean data is essential for leveraging generative AI and how you can get your organization moving. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lizz Hellinga. Generative AI thrives on clean data Lizz has a clear message: clean data isn't optional anymore. She stresses, "If your data isn't ready for generative AI, your business isn't ready." As organizations eagerly adopt generative AI tools, Lizz cautions that the insights and outputs from AI are only as reliable as the data feeding into it. Simply put, poor-quality data undermines the potential of these powerful tools. What constitutes "bad data"? Bad data comes in many forms, and Lizz highlights the usual suspects: Duplicates Inaccuracies Incomplete records Outdated information Hoarded data The concept of hoarded data stands out as particularly problematic. Many organizations have accumulated large amounts of data they no longer use but are reluctant to delete. According to Lizz, the solution starts with collaborating with stakeholders to establish a robust data governance policy that defines data quality standards and retention policies. Reporting, she adds, can be a powerful tool to illustrate the value of clean data and spotlight areas of improvement. Steps to prepare data for AI Lizz has four steps you can take to start your journey toward clean data: Document your processes: Map out key workflows to find the key points where data enters the system. How can you make it easier to get high-quality data at these moments? Engage your stakeholders: Explain why clean data is vital for AI initiatives. Use examples to illustrate how high-quality data enables AI to deliver actionable insights that can make their work easier and more efficient. Prioritize key areas: Focus on cleaning data critical to processes where AI will have the most impact, such as sales or customer engagement. Start with essential objects and gradually expand to other areas. Leverage your tools: Use reports, dashboards, and tools like Salesforce's "Clean Your Room! Dashboard" to gamify data-cleaning efforts. Friendly competitions can motivate teams to tackle bad data without feeling overwhelmed. Proactive data management strategies Preventing bad data is just as important as cleaning up existing records. Lizz suggests: Using paths and dynamic forms to streamline data entry. Highlighting key fields on page layouts to emphasize their importance. Integrating email tools like Einstein Activity Capture to ensure accurate, up-to-date information. Customizing user interfaces to make data entry intuitive and error-free. Why data quality matters Clean data isn't just about fixing reports; it's about future-proofing your business. "Data is an asset," Lizz explains. For organizations looking to adopt AI, ensuring that data is accurate, current, and relevant is a crucial first step. Without it, even the most advanced AI tools won't deliver meaningful results. Get started today Lizz advises admins to start small but think strategically. Build baseline reports to identify problem areas, engage stakeholders to define what good data looks like, and focus on key processes that need improvement. With these steps, you'll not only prepare your organization for AI but also elevate your role as a Salesforce Admin by demonstrating leadership in data governance. We get into a lot of specifics with Lizz on the podcast, so be sure to take a listen to learn more. And make sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Resources Podcast: Sarah Flamion on Generative AI McKinsey Article: The data dividend: Fueling generative AI Clean Your Room! Dashboard Social Lizz on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are talking with Lizz Hellinga about why clean data is so important for AI. Lizz is a consultant and Salesforce MVP, and before you think, "I can skip this," it's probably going to be boring. Let me tell you, this is a fun conversation because you're going to learn about different types of bad data. One of them is super fun to understand. Also, Lizz shares with us a lot of tips and tools for cleaning up your bad data, and also making things a little bit more easy for your users, so I really enjoy this conversation. But before we get in the episode, can you just be sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or just wherever you get your podcast. That way, you get a new episode every Thursday right on your phone. So with that, let's get to the conversation with Lizz. So Lizz, welcome back to the podcast. Lizz Hellinga: Thank you, Mike, for

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to John Wall, co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee Podcast. Join us as we chat about how tools like generative AI are reshaping workflows, strategies, and content creation for marketing. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Wall. AI and the future of marketing Most Salesforce Admins need to work hand in hand with marketing to give them the tools they need to do their jobs. As we continue our conversation about Agentforce and the impact agents can have across an organization, I thought it would be great to hear from John Wall about the future of AI and marketing. He co-hosts the great Marketing Over Coffee Podcast, with guests like Simon Sinek, Seth Godin, and Debbie Millman. Most marketers are already using AI for data analysis and insights, with a little help from their admins. However, the game is changing fast with the proliferation of LLMs and the ability to build custom AI agents. How AI will revolutionize marketing personas Recently, we've been hearing a lot about how Agentforce can help you manage your documentation or take the load off your customer service reps. So what can admins build for marketers? John brings up the idea of marketing personas. "Right now, that's four people in a conference room coming up with cute nicknames like Sally Shopper or Wally the Weekend Warrior," he says. But with AI, you can use its classification and summarization abilities to pore over your customer data and generate personas based on statistics, not spitballing. Where it gets even more interesting is how you can use that information to create customers on demand. John suggests building an AI agent for each marketing persona, which can answer questions as that type of customer to give you insights or plan a new campaign. The human in the loop Just like with any new technology, some businesses will rush to adopt the new shiny tool and mistakes are bound to happen. John emphasizes the importance of "the human in the loop," which is a key role for Salesforce Admins going forward. AI advancements are probably not going to put you out of a job, but they'll definitely make your job easier. "The big thing is you have to be curious," he says, "go play with something and see what you can make it do and what kind of results you can get from it." There's so much more great stuff in our conversation with John Wall, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss out. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more John's Podcast: Marketing Over Coffee Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: 2025 Roadmap for Salesforce Admins: AI, Agentforce, and Emerging Trends Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Agentforce Transforms Customer Interactions at Salesforce Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Agentforce Is Changing the Career Landscape Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social John on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full Transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're joined by John Wall, co-host of the long-running Marketing Over Coffee podcast. That's right, we're starting 2025 off on the right foot, because John shares with us insights into the ever evolving landscape of AI in marketing, including how tools like generative AI are reshaping workflows, strategies, and even content creation. I bet admins, you know about this. Now, before we jump into the fascinating discussion that we have with John, I want you to be sure to jump over and press that subscribe or follow button, depending on what kind of app you're using. It's probably on your favorite platform. And then that way you don't miss a single episode, because new ones come out every Thursday and I would hate for you to miss something like this discussion that I'm going to have with host of the ever-popular Marketing Over Coffee podcast, John Wall. Let's get John on the podcast. So, John, welcome to the podcast. John Wall: Mike, it's great to be on the mic with you again. Mike Gerholdt: I know, it's been a while. I feel the last time we recorded was in Boston, 100 years ago. John Wall: Yeah, downtown Boston. I remember we were live on Newbury Street. That was like the heart of all the action. Mike Gerholdt: Yep. We were recording the old style podcast. We had an Edison, it was putting it on a phonograph and some wax tubes. John Wall: That's right. Sitting there with my ear trumpet listening. Mike Gerholdt: Ear trumpet, I love it. For those people, like the two people in the world that don't listen to Marketing Over Coffee, can you give us a brief overview of what you do and what Marketing Over Coffee is? John Wall: Yeah, sure. So, my whole career I worked in marketing and tech, and God, going on what, 16, 17 years ago when p

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Joshua Birk, and Kate Lessard from the Admin Evangelist team at Salesforce. Join us as we ask our guests three questions about what Agentforce means for admins, content they want to highlight from 2024 to help you get started with AI in Salesforce, and what they're looking forward to in 2025. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee, Joshua Birk, and Kate Lessard. What is your Agentforce content highlight of 2024? If you know anything about Jennifer Lee, it's that she puts out a lot of great content for admins. Between "Automate This" and "How I Solved It", she also finds time to write some pretty great blog posts. Her highlight for 2024 is her walkthrough on how you can build modular flows, breaking things down into smaller chunks that make it easier for your organization to take advantage of everything Agentforce has to offer. Kate Lessard is the newest member of our team, and she makes a strong case for why you as a Salesforce Admin might be the best-positioned person in your business to become an AI specialist. She gets into all this and more in her intro to Agentforce blog post. Finally, if you're a regular listener to the pod, you've heard some of what Josh Birk has been up to. He's been digging into the technical side of AI, including LLMs, RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), and why prompt engineering is easier than it sounds. If you want to learn more about RAG, take a listen to his recent episode with Nochum Klein about how he's using an AI agent to help with information security documentation at Salesforce. What are you looking forward to in 2025? Moving into 2025, Kate is interested in how emerging AI technologies fit into admins' core responsibilities. In particular, she anticipates that security and the need for AI governance will become increasingly important. Jen, meanwhile, is expanding her video empire with two new series for 2025. The first is about automation and how to build things with an eye toward what will be possible for your business with Agentforce. She'll also be doing a series about how she's learning Agentforce, so you can follow along. And if the idea of RAG is getting you excited, Josh has even more in store for you in 2025. It's going to be very, very doable to build an AI agent to interface with dense documentation and make everything faster and easier for your users. "It's the end of 2025, and I can't believe Salesforce Admins _____!" "It's the end of 2025, and I can't believe Salesforce Admins found Agentforce so easy to work with," according to Josh. He thinks you'll be surprised how simple it is to build your own AI agents, once you get started. You can download a free version of Agentforce right now and jump in with Trailhead. For Kate, "It's the end of 2025 and I can't believe Salesforce Admins are creating dynamic experiences this advanced!" She compares Agentforce to what happened when dynamic forms were released. The possibilities for creating customized, dynamic user experiences are incredible with Agentforce. Finally, for Jen, "It's the end of 2025 and I can't believe Salesforce Admins can now do things like troubleshoot user management issues faster than ever before!" Agentforce isn't just about helping your users—there will also be agents that help you, too. There's so much more in this conversation with our Admin Evangelists about Agentforce and how to get the most out of Salesforce events, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And make sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss out. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Jen's 2024 blog post: Embrace Modular Flows to Build Smarter Automation for Agentforce Kate's 2024 blog post: Introduction to Agentforce for Salesforce Admins Kate's other 2024 blog post: Advance Your Admin Career With Dev Fundamentals Josh's 2024 Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Agentforce Transforms Customer Interactions at Salesforce Video series: Automate This! Video series: How I Solved It Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jen on LinkedIn Josh on LinkedIn Kate on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're kicking off 2025 with an amazing lineup of guests. So today I have on the Admin Evangelist Team, Jennifer Lee, Kate Lassard, and Josh Burke. We dive into the year ahead looking at topics such as Agentforce, emerging AI technologies, and best practices for Salesforce admins navigating this transformative time. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you listen to, that way you never miss an episode. So let's dive into our chat with Jen, Kate, and Josh. Welcome, everybody, to the podcast.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Nochum Klein, Director of Information Security at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how Agentforce can make customer interactions and interacting with your organization's documentation much, much easier. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nochum Klein. A rabbi, a mainframe programmer, and a data security expert… Nachum might have one of the most interesting paths to the Salesforce ecosystem of any guest we've had on the pod. Before he ended up as Director of Information Security at Salesforce, he originally trained as a rabbi. However, after he graduated, he realized that it wasn't for him. Instead, Nochum wanted to get into computers. By day, he was a coupon broker, buying and selling frequent flyer miles. By night, he went to school to learn mainframe programming in COBOL. Eventually, he got into mainframe integration and parlayed that into a career at Salesforce. How Agentforce can help you manage your documentation Salesforce is SOC 2 compliant, which means that Nochum's team gets audited twice a year. As a part of the process, they have to prepare pages and pages of PDF documentation about their security measures. And while this information is also handy for fielding customer questions, it's not exactly the most user friendly way to keep track of everything. What the Security team used to do is take the information in their PDF documentation and compile a response database. Essentially, it's a list of questions and their answers. But that means you needed someone to update the answers every time something changes, and things at Salesforce change fast. With Agentforce, they've been able to take their documentation PDFs and break them down into a vector database, making it legible for AI. That means they can chat with an agent to get the most complete, up-to-date answer to a customer's question in moments. For Nochum, it means he can spend less time digging through PDFs to make sure his language is correct and more time making sure his customers have the answers they're looking for. Building AI agents you can rely on None of this would be possible without the confidence that the agent they've built is only pulling from the correct information. That comes from thorough testing, and thinking about edge cases where you might be able to get it to give you the wrong answer. For Nochum, building an agent isn't just about what you want it to do, it's about being explicit about what don't want it to do. There's so much more great information in our conversation with Nochum about building agents and how to think about security with Agentforce, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss out. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Build Effective Agentforce Agents for High-Impact Automation Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Nochum on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full Transcript Josh Birk: Greetings, admins. It's your guest host, Josh Birk here today. Today, I'm gonna bring Nochum Klein to the mic. He's the director of security here at Salesforce and he has found a transformative experience with agents, shall we say. Uh, we're gonna talk about use cases, we're gonna talk about building agents, we're gonna talk about, uh, security around agents and, um, I hope you have a lot of fun listening to that. So let's go to the tape. All right, today on the show, we welcome Nochum Klein. Um, am I saying your name correctly? Nochum Klein: Yes, you are. That's perfect. Josh Birk: Alright. Uh, we are gonna be talking about agents and building agents and maybe even a little bit about security around agents, but first of all, Nochum, welcome to the show. Nochum Klein: Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. Josh Birk: Let's, uh, let's talk a little bit about your early years. Uh, what did you go to college for? Nochum Klein: I became a rabbi. Josh Birk: Ah. (laughs) Nochum Klein: So I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household, and so throughout my years of school, I never went to public school, I went to the Jewish religious school system, which prepares you for one thing and one thing only. Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: (laughs) So I finished and, uh, I did my thing and became a rabbi and I said, "No." Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: "I don't wanna do this." Josh Birk: (laughs) So, so you're saying that, uh, you didn't have access to a lot of computer labs right out of the gate? Nochum Klein: No, uh, i- it's funny you say that, because as a child, we were really poor. Josh Birk: Yeah. Nochum Klein: Uh, so, yeah, I had no access to that. And we had, I remember as a kid, and I'm gonna age myself- Josh Birk: (laughs) Nochum Klein: For those who can't see me, I've got kind of salt

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Megan Tuano, Sr. Business Analyst at Accenture Federal Services and an amazing YouTube content creator. Join us as we chat about navigating career transitions in tech, the power of AI, and making your mark in the Salesforce ecosystem. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Megan Tuano. Overcoming barriers to a career in tech Megan got her start working in college admissions for a data science program at UC Berkeley. "A lot of the students I talked to were scared about breaking into tech because they didn't come from a traditional tech background," she says. After seeing what her students were able to accomplish in tech, Megan got curious about what she could do with her career. She was already using Salesforce to get people through the admissions process, so she started looking into how to get certified. There's this idea that you can't work in tech if you don't need to know how to code, but there are so many roles out there where that's not important. You can be a business analyst, a product manager, a project manager, or even a Salesforce Admin. How Megan uses AI in Salesforce consulting One question that I always get is how to prioritize Salesforce certifications. For Megan, that comes down to setting clear goals for your career. What roles are you building towards, and what do you need to stand out? Megan's found that AI certifications and knowing how to use AI to help you with your work have been a difference-maker for her career. She likes to ask ChatGPT about other scenarios her solution could apply to. The AI has had conversations with many other people about similar problems, so she's bringing all of that knowledge into her solutioning process. Why soft skills matter for Salesforce Admins Megan highlights how important soft skills are for Salesforce Admins. We've all sat in a boring meeting, or a presentation where the speaker didn't seem to care. She always looks for ways to spice up her presentations with visuals and humor. Most importantly, you need to have passion for what you're doing with the platform and what it can do for your users. Passion is infectious. Finally, don't be afraid to ask questions if you don't understand a business process. There's often some fear that creeps up that asking too many questions will you seem incompetent or unqualified. But consider the opposite: asking questions shows that you care, that you're thorough, and that you're trying to find the absolute best solution for the business. There's a lot more great stuff in my conversation with Megan about shaping your career in tech, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Megan's YouTube channel Megan's article on Salesforce Ben: Can ChatGPT Replace a Salesforce Consultant? Trailhead: Prepare for your Salesforce Certified AI Associate Credential Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Megan on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admin's Podcast, we're talking to Megan about navigating career transitions in tech, the power of AI, and making your mark in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, Megan is a senior business analyst team leader, and let me tell you, a prolific YouTube content creator with a knack for turning really complex concepts into engaging lessons. But before we dive into this insightful conversation, make sure you're following the Salesforce Admin's podcast on your favorite platform. I don't know which one that is, but I bet you have yours. And if you do that, you're never going to miss an episode because it's just going to show up every Thursday morning. All right, enough of the promo. Let's get to our conversation with Megan. So Megan, welcome to the podcast. Megan: Hey, I'm happy to be here. Mike: Well, I came across your YouTube channel. We did a military... What was the official name of that? Was it a happy hour that we did? Megan: It was the military trailblazer office hours. Mike: Office hours. I keep calling everything happy hour, maybe it's wishful thinking. Megan: It was happy. Mike: It was happy hours, office hours, but it was fun doing that with you. Jennifer Lee was on, there was quite a few people on. Warren Walters, former podcast host. It was like a roundup, and I was like, "Wait a minute. Megan hasn't been on the podcast, so it's not a true family reunion, vet force, happy hour unless I had Megan on the podcast." So I had to have you on the podcast to talk about career and life, your YouTube channel and all of AI and Agent Force that's coming in everywhere in the Salesforce ecosystem. So let's get started there. How did you get started in the Salesforce world? Megan: Yeah,

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Gillian Bruce, Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Join us as we chat about how Agentforce allows you to bring Salesforce to Slack, and why every admin should learn how to build Slack solutions. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Gillian Bruce. Why Salesforce Admins should build on Slack If you're a longtime listener to the pod, you've got to be excited about this week's guest. Gillian was my co-host for years, and I thought we should bring the dynamic duo back together to talk about her new gig as Director of Developer Marketing at Slack. Ever since she went over to the Slack team, Gillian's been struck by how friendly the platform is for admins. There are tons of solutions that you can implement with low or no code, and powerful features like Slack Canvas and Slack Lists that give you a lot of flexibility without the need for customizations. All this is a cinch if you're used to building things in Salesforce. And when you hear what Gillian has to say about combining Agentforce with Slack, you'll want to get started today. Bringing Agentforce to Slack In our episode with Jim Ray about Slack integrations, he told us how Slack can be a multi-purpose tool. There are over 2600 integrations currently out there, letting you bring information from Jira, or Workday, or Salesforce, directly into Slack. While that could be a lot of information to sift through, Agentforce is here to lend a helping hand. You can now use Agent Builder to create employee-facing AI agents for Slack. There are special Slack actions, like searching and summarizing data in Slack, creating or updating a Slack Canvas, and sending DMs. This gives admins all sorts of new ways to integrate Salesforce into your business processes with less friction and more wow. The future of Agentforce and Slack Agentforce is new and we know it can be hard to get your head around everything that it can do. That's why Slack is building some templates for employee-facing AI agents. For example, a product specialist agent that can give you quick answers so you don't have to comb through pages of documentation. If there's one thing Gillian wants you to take away from this episode, it's that Salesforce Admins should start building on Slack. "It's going not only set yourself up to be super valuable to your organization in this era of agents," she says, "but it also is going to open up so much more possibility for you career-wise." There's so much more in this episode about tricks for Slack and why you should look out for Gillian at your next Dreamin' event, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more slack.dev Slack Developer Program Workshop: Build an automated workflow Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Can Salesforce Admins Do with Slack Integrations? Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Gillian on LinkedIn Gillian on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're thrilled to have Gillian Bruce back with us. Gillian, who now leads the Slack ecosystem marketing team and is on a mission to show why every Salesforce admin should be jumping into Slack and using it to not only build custom agents, but also amazing workflows and incredible integrations that Slack can do. Gillian explains why learning and leveraging Slack is simply a must for an admin. I mean, it's so easy to use. I love it. Now, before we jump in, I want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That way, you can catch every new episode immediately when it comes out on Thursdays. So be sure to hit the follow button on whatever podcast platform you're listening for. So now, let's welcome Gillian back and talk about Slack and Agentforce. So Gillian, welcome back to the podcast. Gillian: Mike, thanks for having me. Mike: I know, you've been over overly communicating with people. Gillian: It's been a while since I've been on the pod with you, it feels like I just rewound the clock quite a while. Mike: I know, in the Wayback Machine. Don't forget, we have the Wayback Machine. I don't have the fancy noisemaker, you just got to put it in your head and envision that. What have you been up to since we've last talked on ye olde podcast? Gillian: Oh, just a few things, you know? A few changes. Mike: Okay. Still all about admins, obviously. Gillian: Admins are always in my heart, and it's actually been quite fun, because about, what, eight months ago at this point, I have transitioned over to Slack to lead up their ecosystem marketing team, which includes developers, community, and partners. And one of the big things I'm f

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Andrew Russo, Salesforce Architect at BACA Systems. Join us as we chat about Salesforce Foundations and why it's a game changer for solo admins and small orgs. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Andrew Russo. The solo admin guide to Dreamforce Andrew calls himself a Salesforce Archi-admin-eloper. At BACA Systems he's a team of one, managing a complex org with all sorts of flows and customizations. Despite his busy schedule, he also manages to get himself out there to all sorts of Salesforce events, so I wanted to chat with him about what caught his eye at Dreamforce as a solo admin. Like everyone else, Andrew is psyched about the possibilities for generative AI and Agentforce. He knows that data health and cleanliness are crucial in order to take advantage of these new features, and he's already started a project to implement Salesforce Knowledge in his org. But what he's really psyched about is Salesforce Foundations. What's so exciting about Salesforce Foundations? Like many smaller companies, Andrew can't easily do a pilot to test out larger features. "Having access to try things before you actually fully configure them is really helpful for us to look at where we can grow and move to with the platform," he says. Salesforce Foundations gives you access to all of the little features you wish you had from each cloud. For Andrew, they can swap over from using an external email marketing tool to doing everything in Salesforce. They're also looking at implementing Salesforce Payments instead of doing it over the phone. While they may not be the shiniest tools in the toolbox, the time saved with these little features adds up in a small organization like Andrew's. Manage requests with a Salesforce roadmap One thing that can get tricky as a solo admin is handling requests while keeping the org on track. Andrew keeps a Lucidchart roadmap for where they'd like to be with things like data cleanup and their Salesforce Knowledge project, which helps him balance short-term needs with long-term goals. "We're not trying to implement features just because we have them," he says, "it has to align with 'our company goals." Andrew has more to share about tips for solo admins, why you should get started going to Salesforce events, and the best cold pizza, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Andrew on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Hey there, Salesforce Admins. So, buckle up because today we got Andrew Russo on board, who's not just managing the Salesforce org, but is essentially the captain of a one-man cruise ship. That's the analogy that we made. So, you like that? I said on board. No, but seriously, this guy is juggling a lot of flows, customizations, and data, much like we all are, and he's steering the ship solo, so single Salesforce admin. Now, in today's chat, we're talking about everything from taming data gremlins to rolling out Salesforce Knowledge, but big is what he found impactful at Dreamforce this year, which was Salesforce Foundations. And we're also getting some insight into how Andrew's planning on keeping his org ready for the next wave of AI. And of course, we reminisce a little bit about Dreamforce, and it wouldn't be a Salesforce Admins podcast without food. This time we're talking pizza. No surprise. So, before we get Andrew on though, make sure you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on your favorite podcast app or wherever you listen to podcasts. That way, as soon as a new episode becomes available, it will download. So, that being said, let's get Andrew on the podcast. So, Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Andrew Russo: Thank you for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely. Well, it's been a little bit since you've been on, so let's refresh everybody's memory. What have you been up to and what do you do in the Salesforce ecosystem? Andrew Russo: So, right now, my role is as the Salesforce architect, admin, developer. I mean, we're a small company at BACA Systems, so I'm the solo Salesforce resource. So, I kind of play a lot of hats and I manage our entire org. So, that's the main thing that I do here. We have a lot of flows, of customization. So, I've been trying to learn a lot about that and how to manage our complex org. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Captain of the ship, which is what most admins play. Andrew Russo: Yeah. It's a big ship though. It's challenging. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Yep. Well, the whole goal is to grow the ship and then maybe you get a fleet of people to help you. Andrew Russo: It started as

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, Josh Birk talks to Jagan Nathan, Technical Architect with Customer Success at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about guest user anomalies and what you can do about them with the Threat Detection app. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jagan Nathan. The most important thing for a successful Data Cloud migration Jagan works as a Technical Architect with the Customer Success Group at Salesforce. He's focused on helping businesses use Data Cloud to de-silo their data so they can get a full picture of their customers. Jagan estimates that 60-70% of the time you spend on a Data Cloud migration is used to make sure you understand what needs to be done. That's because the most important decisions are around what objects and data sources you want to map and how it all fits together. If you need help getting started, his team has put together the Data Cloud Workbook Template to walk you through everything. What is a guest user anomaly and why is it dangerous for your data security? The biggest security issues Jagan encounters in orgs come from changes made to profiles and permissions over time. All those consultants can begin to add up! At some point, you need to do an audit of who can see what and apply the principle of least privilege. And that's the reason we brought Jagan on the pod, because one way this can happen is through something called a guest user anomaly. Essentially, it's when a guest user account has more access than it otherwise than it should. For example, an Apex class that allows them pull all of your data. It's the kind of thing that's difficult to identify but can leave you primed for a data breach if you don't know about it. How the Threat Detection app can help you identify guest user anomalies The good news is that there's something you can do about guest user anomalies. If your org has Event Monitoring, you can use the Threat Detection app to identify problematic accounts and take action. It uses the power of machine learning to figure out where the gaps are in your permissions and flag them for you. In fact, the Threat Detection app can help you monitor all sorts of other anomalies, too. Like if a user who does their reports in the same time window each week suddenly logs in at 3 a.m. to pull a bunch of data, or someone based in Albuquerque logs in from Finland. It can even monitor your APIs. And the best part is that enabling Threat Detection is as easy as turning on the permission set. Jagan gets into more specifics in our interview, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Security Guide: Threat Detection Salesforce Security Guide: Guest User Anomaly Salesforce Help: Best Practices for Investigating Guest User Anomalies Trailhead: Get Started with Event Monitoring Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jagan on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Josh Birk: Hello Admins, it's your guest host Josh Birk here. Today, I'm going to welcome Jagan Nathan to talk about some very specific things about security, specifically quirks in security that can sometimes be a little difficult to detect and how we're going to help you detect them. So without further ado, let's go to Jagan. All right. Today on the show we welcome Jagan. Did I do that right, Jagan? Jagan Nathan : Yes. Josh Birk: All right. We're going to talk about some very interesting security things, but first of all, welcome to the show. Jagan Nathan : Thank you, once again, for having me. Josh Birk: Thanks. All right, well, let's start, once again, in some of your early years. How did you originally get into computing? Jagan Nathan : Oh, yeah. So back then during school days, we used to play Counter-Strike. We have in-house network connected with a group of friends. Josh Birk: Nice. Jagan Nathan : So that is how we started into it. We started in a playful mode and then we slowly started programming and all those aspects to it. Josh Birk: Did you actually get into modding Half-Life and all that stuff? Jagan Nathan : Not really. Josh Birk: Got it. Nice. How did you originally get involved with Salesforce? Jagan Nathan : Salesforce, initially I got trained in the Java platform and then back then we got a new project on Salesforce and we have been asked if we could try this out and then I initially thought of giving it a try. I initially thought Salesforce is purely sales driven or some sort of MBA-related work, but that is how it was. And then slowly I got into it. It was quite interesting. And then back then it was even more interesting without Trailhead. We had a lot of learnings. We used to push in developer forums. It was quite challenging and interesting. From that poi

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to John Demby, Director of Solution Engineering at Tableau. Join us as we chat about Tableau Pulse, Tableau Einstein, and how easy it is to get started. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Demby. Getting to know Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein John leads a team of demo engineers for Tableau. What that means is they get their hands on all the new solutions and products ahead of time, and use them to make cool things. And two of the coolest, newest things out there are Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein. Tableau Einstein takes all of the goodness of Tableau, the powerful features of Data Cloud, a new semantic layer called Tableau Semantics, and brings that into Salesforce. There's also a Tableau Agent, allowing you to open up the power of business intelligence and analytics to everyone on your team through Agentforce. Introduction to Tableau Pulse "We started thinking about how people consume data," John says, "and I think it's changed." People want to consume data within the flow of their work. They don't want to have to go looking around for things, or sift through multiple dashboards to figure out what information is relevant. That's where Tableau Pulse comes in. It provides contextual, relevant insights from your data directly into Salesforce. With a simple KPI scorecard, you and your users can see what metrics are up, what metrics are down, and get insights about the next steps you should take. AI-infused and ready to share The scorecards Tableau Pulse provides are just the beginning because you can also ask it questions. Pulse is AI-infused, meaning you can ask plain language questions to generate specific insights about your data. It's also built for collaboration, so it's easy to take these insights and start a conversation with anyone else in your organization. Getting Tableau Pulse is as easy as installing a managed package in your Salesforce instance. "We've made it really for a Salesforce Admin to set this up with little to no Tableau experience," John says. There are nine premade dashboards to get you started, and it's easy to customize things to get something that works for you. John shares a lot more great stuff about Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Get Tableau Pulse More about Tableau Pulse What is Tableau Einstein? Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social John on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we've got the much loved John Demby, our resident Tableau guru, here to talk about some of the really super cool things that Tableau has come out with, specifically Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein. Now, you may remember John and his team create these amazing demos that really show all of the possibilities of Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein. And boy, we get into it, about how we're driving insights with AI, and of course we talk about why pie charts are so out. This is really a fun episode. Now before we get started just a quick reminder, if you want to hit that follow button, that way whatever podcast app you're listening to, every Thursday a new episode will be downloaded right to your phone. So with that, let's talk Tableau Pulse and Tableau Einstein and get John on the podcast. John, welcome to the podcast. John Demby: Hey Mike, it's great to be back. Mike Gerholdt: I know, it's been a while. So what have you been up to? What do you do at Salesforce, for the people that haven't run into you at our many events? John Demby: Well, I have I think today the coolest job in the world. I work in our pre-sales organization in solution engineering but what I do is, I lead a team of demo engineers. You might go, demo engineers, why is that really cool? Well, we get our hands on the solutions and the products ahead of our customers. We get to put it through its paces and figure out what it really can do and how it can do it, and then we build these just really ... pardon the expression, kick-ass demos to show to our customers and to anybody else that wants to see them. So yeah, that's what I do. I lead a team and they are all all-stars and amazing people, and we have just been killing it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, it sounds like fun. I mean, that's also what admins do, get our hands on stuff and try and build killer demos to get our executives to fund it. John Demby: Yeah, we've got a lot of similarities there. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, I mean, also a very close kinship. You kind of started out with Tableau the same way I did, you were just a super admin power user that got hired on. John Demby: Yeah. My story goes back to a long ti

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, guest host Josh Birk talks to Katie Villanueva, Golden Hoodie winner and Salesforce Administrator at 10K Advisors. Join us as we chat about her work with mental health advocacy and mindfulness principles that you can apply to your work as a Salesforce Admin. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Katie Villanueva. Mental health advocacy in the Salesforce ecosystem Katie started out as an accidental admin, getting her degree in radio and television. These days, she works as a Salesforce Administrator for 10K Advisors, where she's hard at work updating legacy code with flows and improving workflow processes. Katie's also the founder of the Mental Health and Illness Trailblazer Community Group. It's a space in the ecosystem to make meaningful connections, share resources, and share stories. "We're not alone in our struggles," Katie says, and what's important is to build that support network and talk about it. Mindfulness principles for stress management and personal growth Recently, Katie gave a talk at Midwest Dreamin' entitled "Appreciate Your #AwesomeAdmin Self," based on Jon Kabat-Zinn's seven principles of mindfulness. The principles are a skill and something you have to practice, but they can help you overcome fear, doubt, imposter syndrome, burnout, stress, and negative self-talk. The principles are: Non-judgement Patience Beginner's mindset Trust Non-striving Acceptance Letting go In the talk, Katie gets into how you can apply those principles to your work as a Salesforce Admin. As seen on the Dreamforce stage At Dreamforce, Katie presented "Automate with AI: Prompt Builder, Flow, and Slack," about the magic you can make when you get all three working together. If you missed out, she recently covered the same topics on How I Solved It with Jennifer Lee. Katie has so many great insights to share, so be sure to listen to the full episode to learn more. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailblazer Group: Salesforce Mental Health + Illness Group (Virtual) How I Solved It: Harness the Power of AI, Flow, and Slack to Summarize and Notify Users Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Katie on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full Transcript Josh (00:05): Hello, Admins! Guest host Josh Birk here, and today I'm going to bring you my guest, Katie Villanueva. You may have known Katie Villanueva from her recent Golden Hoodie Win. Also, Katie and I share a long history of mental health advocacy, and indeed, today we are going to talk about mental health and wellness tips for the workplace. Now a quick note due to the Gravity, well, which is Dreamforce. We actually recorded this shortly before Dreamforce, but it is not coming out until well after Dreamforce. So just kind of imagine when Katie's talking about the session that she's going to do at Dreamforce that she already did it. I attended it and it was wonderful. Now over to Katie. Alright, today on the show we welcome Katie Villanueva to talk about her work with mental health advocacy and some of her upcoming presentations. Katie, welcome to the show. Katie (00:56): Hi, thanks for having me. Josh (00:58): Alright, well let's start with your early years. What did you go to school for? Katie (01:02): I went to school for radio. Television. Yeah. Well, no, actually a farmer. And then I graduated with radio, television, so I bounced around until I found my niche in the world, which is Salesforce being an admin. Josh (01:20): Okay. And what was your first involvement with Salesforce? Katie (01:23): I was an accidental admin, accidental on purpose admin. I wanted to do the job so they didn't have anybody doing the job. So at a company that didn't have a team or didn't have any experience with Salesforce, you always have that one person who ends up being the accidental admin. I sought out that position and said, I want to do it. Josh (01:49): So you were kind of a voluntold admin, but you sort of voluntold yourself? Katie (01:54): Yeah, yeah. I had a lot of really good ideas and nobody was going to execute 'em the way that I wanted to execute them, so I just decided to steer the ship myself. Josh (02:09): A classic form of if you want a job done. Right. Got it. Katie (02:13): Yes. Love it. Josh (02:16): And how would you describe your current job? Katie (02:18): Oh, my current job, I am no longer steering ships. I am absorbing all the things about Salesforce. I went to, the first role that I had was at a smaller company, no integrations, we only use Sales Cloud. It was a great role to wrap my arms around Salesforce and what its core capabilities were. But I graduated into this role. Now I'm with 10 K advisors. They're amazing, made up full of great peop

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about Salesforce Foundations and how it can give you access to even more capabilities within Sales, Service, and beyond. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Eddie Cliff. Introduction to Salesforce Foundations Eddie is the lead PM for Salesforce Foundations, and he's here to tell us how it can be a game-changer for orgs looking to incorporate AI. Now, if you're a longtime listener to the podcast you know that AI tools are only as good as the data you give them. And while Data Cloud is meant to help you bring all your data into one place, it's not always easy for customers to make the transition. That's where Salesforce Foundations comes in. It adds the basic capabilities of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud, and Agentforce to your org, for free. How to get started with Salesforce Foundations The goal with Salesforce Foundations is to make it easy to get that 360 view of your customers. As Eddie says, their philosophy is "Easy by default, advanced by choice." And you'll find that as you start doing more with segmentation and personalization, you'll realize just how much further you can go. Right now, customers with Sales or Service EE or UE can get Salesforce Foundations for free. All you have to do is go into Setup and click on the Salesforce Foundations node, and you'll be presented with a handy-dandy checklist with everything you need to get started. Preparing for Agentforce Foundations makes it easy to get your org ready for Agentforce. That's why Eddie and his team have included a freemium version of Agentforce in Foundations. "What's really cool," he says, "is that as you do more and you use more of these cross-cloud capabilities, your data in Data Cloud gets richer and more powerful and so does Agentforce." There's a lot more in this episode about how Foundations was developed, what's coming in the future, and the ins and outs of sea kayaking, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead: Salesforce Foundations: Quick Look Help docs: Considerations for Salesforce Foundations Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Eddie on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management at Salesforce, about some exciting developments in Salesforce Foundations. It was the subline to Agentforce that you heard at Dreamforce this year. Eddie has been at Salesforce for nearly 14 years, transitioning from roles in go-to-market and solution engineering to now product management. And in this episode, Eddie shares insights into the evolution of Salesforce products like Starter, Pro Suite, and we learn about Salesforce Foundations. Now, before we get started, I just want to make sure that you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins podcast on whatever platform you get your Salesforce podcast on. Go ahead and click that subscribe, or sometimes it's a follow button. And that way, when new episodes come in every Thursday morning, they will be downloaded to your phone. So with that, let's jump into our conversation with Eddie where he explains how Salesforce Foundations is designed to give customers access to even more capabilities within sales, service and beyond, including all of their existing Salesforce implementations at no cost. So Eddie, welcome back to the podcast. Eddie Cliff: Hey, thanks for having me again. Good to be here. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Well, product managers that work on good features that admins love, we love to have on the podcast. So if people aren't avid listeners, let's refresh their memory. Tell me what exactly you do at Salesforce and how you came to be? Eddie Cliff: Yeah, definitely. So my name is Eddie Cliff, VP of Product Management, leading product for our Starter, Pro and now Foundation Suite, which I'm really excited to talk about today. I've been at Salesforce for almost 14 years now, and I've done a variety of roles, from go-to-market and sales and solution engineering and customer success prior to moving into product management about eight years ago now. Mike: Wow, I didn't know you were an SC. I don't think you said that in the last podcast. That's awesome. Eddie Cliff: Yeah, SCs are amazing in what they can bring from their technical understanding and how Salesforce works, but also working with our customers to understand their requirements and needs, and ultimately designing the solutions that they can present back to the customer to hopefully prove out the value of Salesforce as they look to explore it. So actually, have a

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Cole, Director of Business Intelligence and Automation at 908 Devices. Join us as we chat about how Salesforce Admins can bridge the gap between business processes and data accuracy. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Cole. The importance of understanding the 'Why' behind data entry Jen gave a stellar presentation about business processes and data strategy at World Tour Boston, and I wanted to bring her on the podcast to learn more. "Data isn't helpful if you don't know your process," she says, "it's just interesting facts on a screen that maybe make pretty graphs. But what does it tell you if you don't know what questions you're answering?" More often than not, the people doing a business process don't understand why they need to log data a certain way. That's why as Salesforce Admins, we need to understand the "Why" behind data entry. If we can bridge the information gap and explain why having accurate data is so important, we're more likely to get people on board. The impact of inaccurate data on business tools With new AI tools like Einstein Copilot or Next Best Action, having accurate data is more important than ever. As Jen puts it, "Inaccurate data creates inaccurate business decisions." But in order to get there, you have to explain why it's important. Jen supports a lot of sales teams, and it's a great example. Sales teams want to sell things, and they don't always understand why they need to log an email into Salesforce or create the next step on an opportunity because they don't know how that information will be used. It's up to Salesforce Admins to bridge this gap and spell out what the data is used for. If your sales team knows that logging their calls accurately will help you tell them the best time to call each prospect, they'll be a lot more attentive to how they enter that data into Salesforce. Strategies for improving data collection Jen points out that trainings are a great time to get started with explaining the why behind data collection. When they fill in this field, who else will use that information and how will it help the business as a whole? You need to get them invested in the process and help them see the broader picture. Finally, it's important to establish feedback loops that help your team stay invested in the process. If they can see how accurate data impacts their day-to-day, they're much more likely to be invested in the project of data collection. There's a lot more great stuff from Jen about how to look at your business processes and data strategy, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Podcast: Solving Business Problems with Composer and Flow with Jennifer Cole Blog: How to Use Salesforce to Manage Your Documentation Blog: How to Write Great Documentation to Help with Future Problem Solving Podcast: Understanding the Importance of Data Health in Salesforce Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jen on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Jennifer Cole about data strategy and process. Well, yeah, a little something different because in the world of AI and a lot of tools just in general, not to mention automation tools, it's good to know what you're doing with your data and do you have a process in place to make sure you're collecting good data. Also, I ask her about bad data, so that's an interesting answer. But really understanding what data are you collecting, and does everybody know the process for data collection because as we know, it's going to be even more important to have great data so that AI can give us even better insights. But if we don't know the process, then I think we're in trouble. So Jennifer's going to help us with that. But before we get into the episode, just a reminder that if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, be sure to click the follow button, that way this podcast can automatically be downloaded right to your device so that when you're out on your dog walk, you don't have to worry about downloading it because it'll already be there. And of course, I always appreciate a good review, so let me know how we're doing. With that, let's talk process and data quality and maybe data strategies. There's quite a few things in this podcast with Jennifer. And let's get Jennifer on the podcast. So, Jen, welcome back to the podcast. Jennifer Cole: Thanks, Mike. I'm really excited to be back. Mike Gerholdt: Well, last time, and I'll put a link in the show notes because you won't hear that a thousand more times today, but we were talking about document

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jim Ray, Director of Developer Relations and Advocacy at Slack. Join us as we chat about Workflow Builder, Slack integrations, and what happens when you put them together. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jim Ray. Slack as a multi-purpose tool Jim is here to tell us that Slack is much more than a chat tool. Automations and integrations can open a whole new world of utility for your organization. And while Slack integrations have always been a thing, you used to need some technical knowledge in order to build your own. All that's changed with the launch of Workflow Builder. This tool allows you to build automations in Slack without ever having to code or host an app. Once you get started with making your own Slack integrations, you'll never know how you got by without them. Empowering admins with Workflow Builder You can do a lot of cool things in Workflow Builder, like create a new channel or automatically post a formatted message at a certain time each week. But Slack integrations are where it really gets interesting. For example, let's say you have a weekly status report meeting. You can create a scheduled workflow that automatically drops the relevant Salesforce info into a Slack channel so everyone can refer to it for the meeting. Slack integrations go both ways, so you can also use a Slack automation to execute a flow in Salesforce. With Workflow Builder, you can bring your Salesforce data directly into Slack and vice versa, and the possibilities are endless. Enhancing Productivity with Slack AI Finally, Jim had a lot to say about Slack AI, which gives you the ability to search Slack with natural language queries and summarize or format the results. When he came back to work after his paternity leave, he needed to prep for a first meeting with a new skip-level manager. So he asked Slack AI, "What does this person think about the Slack platform?" It gave him a summary of everything they ever posted on the subject, complete with footnotes so he could look at specific comments. Most importantly, Jim points out that the automations you create in Workflow Builder are exactly the kind of structured data that Slack AI loves to work with. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for how you can share information across your organization without the need to put everyone on Salesforce. This episode is full of use cases and tips for how to get started with Slack integrations, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe for more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Amber Boaz on Slack Best Practices Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jim on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Okay, this week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are going to have a lot of fun because we are talking about Slack automations with the director of developer relations and advocacy, Jim Ray of Slack. Now, you're probably a Salesforce Admin, you're like, "Oh, but we don't use Slack. I'm not going to listen to this." No! This is a fun episode and it's going to give you a ton of ideas for, hey, maybe we should think about using Slack. I'm not here to sell you anything. I don't get any commissions. I just love when I can give you ideas and creative answers to challenges that you're facing. And Jim talks us through a whole bunch of fun stuff that you can do in Slack and gave me a ton of ideas. We talked about canvases. I don't know if you use canvases, but it's a ton of fun. Now, before we get into that, I want to tell you about, hey, what we got coming up in April, because this is last episode of March. I have architect evangelist Tom Leddy coming on to talk about decisioning. I reconnected with Lizz Hellinga at TrailblazerDX. Remember, she was on a previous episode talking about the importance of clean data and why that's important for AI. She's coming back. I'm working on getting Skip Sauls with the Data Cloud update, so Data Cloud. And then I'm going to introduce a new episode at the end of April where I'm bringing my co-worker, Josh Burke, on, and he's going to do a deep dive episode with a product manager. We're working on getting somebody really cool to help you change the way you do some of your thinking. That's all I'm going to tease out for right now. But of course, if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you're doing that, make sure you're following it. It's a different word on every podcast platform. But if you do that, new episodes automatically get downloaded to your phone. That way when you wake up in the morning, you put the leash on the dog, you go out, boom! You press play, podcast is going, and you can get some great information. You don't

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Warren Walters, Salesforce MVP and host of the Salesforce Mentor YouTube channel and website. Join us as we chat about how we're all becoming adminelopers and why you should learn to code. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Warren Walters. What is an admineloper? Salesforce Admins and Developers are increasingly overlapping in their roles, leading to the rise of the "admineloper." AI has made it easier than ever to get things done with Apex, even if it needs some tweaking to get everything working right. A little coding knowledge can go a long way. For developers, declarative tools in Salesforce are becoming incredibly powerful. Using flows and formulas can often be a simpler way to solve a problem than creating something custom in Apex. In short, if you know a little about both admin and developer tools you can truly get the best of both worlds. Learning to code as a Salesforce Admin There's a common misconception that only geniuses can understand code. However, Warren says, some of the best developers he knows didn't go to school for computer science and are entirely self-taught. A little can go a long way. Basic coding skills can significantly enhance an admin's ability to implement more complex solutions and collaborate effectively with developers. Combining a working knowledge of how programming works with the declarative tools we all know and love can get you far. Soft Skills and Career Advancement Beyond technical skills, Warren emphasizes that soft skills are just as important for career growth in the Salesforce ecosystem. While he identifies as an introvert, he's made a focused effort to become a better communicator, and that's helped him grow into new roles and bigger opportunities. Warren also urges you to spend some time thinking about your personal branding. His YouTube channel has opened a surprising number of doors for him, but even a simple portfolio can do a lot to help you stand out. There's more from Warren about what he's learned as a consultant and as a mentor, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more SalesforceMentor.com freeCodeCamp.org Video: Salesforce Mentor on YouTube Video: Salesforce Apex Hours on YouTube Video: Coding with the Force on YouTube Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Can Solving Sudoku and Wordle Enhance Your Critical Thinking Skills? Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Warren on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are talking about mentorship and learning how to code. Surprisingly, not surprisingly, because admins and developers need to know the best practices for creating our apps and deploying the best technology for our organizations. So I'm going to bring on Warren Walters who is a Salesforce consultant. He's an admin, he's a developer, he's a mentor and a self-described general geek. Now, Warren's on because he runs a really cool YouTube channel, and I came across his TikToks where he does Salesforce tutorials to help you understand and master the concept of different things in Salesforce. He has this really cool site, salesforcementor.com, and just a really fun guy to talk about in terms of the world of mentorship, what a lot of skills are that he's seeing, and things that people should be paying attention to. Now, before we get Warren on the podcast, I just want to make sure that whatever you're using to listen to the Salesforce Admins podcast, make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button because then new episodes will show up on your phone or on your computer right away. So with that, let's get to our conversation with Warren. So Warren, welcome to the podcast. Warren Walters: Well, hey Mike, I'm happy to be here. Super excited because I've been listening to the podcast for such a long time and I'm finally on it, which is, I don't know if it's a dream come true or an honor, but I'm just happy to be here. Mike Gerholdt: It's destiny. Warren Walters: I'll take that. Mike Gerholdt: That's what I'll call it, it's destiny. Well, I ran across your TikToks when I was posting stuff about the podcast and really loved some of the videos that you're doing and the topics you're talking about. So let's just start off with what you do in the Salesforce ecosystem and how you got started. Warren Walters: Sure. So my name is Warren Walters. I am a Salesforce engineer. I do lots and lots of development. I probably talk too much about development. Some of you may or may not have seen my face on YouTube, and that's where I primarily host a lot of my content. And just from my side, I've

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ben Sklar, Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how he's making setup into a better, more consistent experience. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ben Sklar. The problems with Salesforce setup If there's one thing Salesforce Admins know a lot about, it's setup. It's time-consuming, complicated, and varies wildly depending on what you're looking at. Answering a simple question like what objects does this user have access to and why turns into an arduous process. That's why I was so excited to bring Ben Sklar on the pod to talk about how his team is fixing setup in Salesforce. We'll find out how they're laying the groundwork for faster updates and creating a more consistent user experience. Gradual improvements to setup A big question I had for Ben was how the changes he's making to setup will show up for those of us who use it every day. "All these amazing enhancements we're making to the setup platform are really behind the scenes," he says, "if we do this right way you don't really even need to know that it's there." However, you might notice a few improvements here or there. For example, there are new user summaries that allow you to see all the permission sets that a user has, all in one place. They're also working with the Sales Cloud Go team to make sure that you can turn on features, discover new ones, and assign permissions, all in one place. Creating a consistent experience At the end of the day, the goal is to make things easier for the people who use it the most (that's you!). "We've heard our admins often complain about inconsistent experiences," Ben says, "and by being able to reuse components across setup you'll be able to see more consistency." As Ben says, setup was turning into the "Wild West" and it would feel different across experiences. His team has done a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that setup always has a consistent look and feel, and they've established a setup design council to create guidelines that make sense. The future of Salesforce Setup is bright, and a whole lot easier. You should listen to the full episode for more from Ben, including what's next for setup and why he loves ultimate frisbee. And subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Ben on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking about Setup, and I joked before I pressed record with Ben Sklar, Admins live in Setup. We probably could pay a mortgage based on the amount of time that we spend in Setup. And the reason I talk about Setup and Ben Sklar is Ben is one of the product managers who's tackling Setup and fixing Setup, and he's working very close with another product major that you may have heard of, Cheryl Feldman. And so that's how Ben came to the podcast. He was a suggestion from Cheryl. Hey, you got to talk about all the cool stuff that Ben's working on with Setup on the podcast. And so we cover that and I'm sure many of you probably have seen some of the very cool stuff that Ben and his team are working on in Setup, but at Dreamforce last week, and so we're going to talk about that. But of course, before we get into it with Ben, just a quick reminder, wherever you're listening to the Salesforce podcast, if it's in app, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button. That allows you to get new downloads anytime a podcast drops, and every time a new podcast drops, you what time that is? It's Thursday mornings, so that way new pod right on your phone. If you're listening on the website, you don't have to worry about it. You should sign up for our Admin newsletter though, because we highlight podcasts in the newsletter. But enough about that, let's talk about the exciting world of Setup. It's really where all of us Admins live, and all of the cool stuff that Ben and his team are doing. So let's get Ben on the podcast. So Ben, welcome to the podcast. Ben Sklar: Hey, Mike. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Mike: Yeah, well, when Cheryl comes knocking at the proverbial podcast door and recommends a guest, I can't turn her down, because every time Cheryl Feldman gets on stage to talk about the future of something in Salesforce, Admins flock to those sessions. So she recommended that we have a discussion. I'm very excited for this, but before we get into that, why don't we learn a little bit about you? So tell us briefly how you got the journey to becoming a PM at Salesforce. Ben Sklar: Yeah, absolutely. So I started at Salesforce a few years ago. I joined as a product manager in our backend data services area. I became the product manager for our UI API, or user int

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Douane James, Salesforce Application Product Manager. Join us as we chat about his Dreamforce presentation about how reducing profiles in your org can enable faster deployments. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Douane James. How permission sets can help you reduce Salesforce profiles in your org Douane's giving a talk at Dreamforce this year so I was excited to get him on the pod and hear more. He recently went through the process of reducing the number of profiles in his org from 11 down to only 2, so his talk is centered around why you can and should do the same. I know I don't need to tell you this, but Salesforce best practices change over time. Most Salesforce orgs are built to work right now, which is how you can wind up with technical debt. For example, permission sets have become a much more elegant solution to the problems we used to solve with profiles. Sounds like a big project, but Douane's here to tell you that reducing the number of profiles in your org is not as hard as you might think. Profile footprint reduction speeds up deployment A few years ago, Douane's organization started using a new dev ops process. And while this made it easier to identify what needed to be built and do it quickly, he couldn't help but notice how long the deployments were taking. More often than not, the delays were related to configuring profiles. He realized they needed to do an overhaul and reduce the number of profiles in their org. The first step was to get buy in. For Douane, the key was to emphasize how much quicker his team would be able to respond to requests if they spent time on cleaning up profiles. It also helped that they were committed to gradual improvements over time. Profile footprint reduction isn't something that happens overnight, but it takes less time than you might think if go step by step. How to move from profiles to permission set groups Douane and his team set out to move everything they could from profiles into permission set groups. They identified a representative for each user role they could interview to make sure everything was still working as intended throughout the process. When you're looking at your existing profiles, you need to find out: What are the permissions in the profiles? What permissions are common to each job function? Are there any special cases? For users that need a lot of special access, Douane recommends creating a "heavy" permission set that allows you to give them exactly what they need. If Douane has one message for you, it's that the hardest part of reducing their Salesforce profiles was getting started. And the impact was felt immediately in terms of much quicker deployments and better security. Make sure to catch Douane at Dreamforce and subscribe to the Salesforce Admisn Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead Module: Permission Set Groups Trailhead Module: Data Security Best Practices Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Douane on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jason Atwood, CEO and Co-Founder of Arkus. Join us as we chat about how to land your first Salesforce Admin role, from where to find good opportunities to how to prep for the job interview and more. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jason Atwood. How Salesforce Admins should split their learning time We're talking with Jason because he spends a lot of time interviewing and hiring people for Salesforce roles. So if you want to be a Salesforce Admin, how should you split up your learning time? Jason recommends following the 20/30/50 rule. Spend 20% of your time on Trailhead, 30% on acquiring certifications, and 50% on finding some way to gain experience. This split corresponds to how important they are on your resume. Trailhead: Becoming a Ranger is priority one, followed by getting some Superbadges. Take the time to set up your profile with a photo, a description of yourself, and a custom URL so that you look like you're an active member of the community. Certifications: When is the best time to take a Salesforce certification test? As soon as possible! If you don't get it this time, you can use your results to help you prep for the next exam. And if you do pass, you can get the next cert sooner. Gain Experience: Volunteering isn't the only way to get experience. You can enroll in a program where you build mock projects in Salesforce, or just build something on your own. The important thing is to have projects you've built in Salesforce that you can demo in your job interview. Interview preparation and skill assessments When you're going for your first Salesforce job interview be ready for some sort of skill assessment. Time pressure is usually a factor in these tests, so Jason recommends doing a practice run. Talk to a friend, find out what kind of data they collect, and then give yourself a day to build them an app. It could track the books they've read or the distance they've run, the important thing is that you don't know what it's going to be before you talk to them. All admins are consultants It's also important to realize that an interview isn't just about showing your skills—it's about showing who you are. It's a chance to listen and empathize with the person on the other side of the table. It's a chance to share something that stood out to you in your research about the company. And most importantly, to show who you are by asking questions. Why does Jason place such an emphasis on soft skills in a Salesforce Admin job interview? Because, at the end of the day, every admin is a Salesforce consultant for their organization. You talk to people about their problems to get requirements, come up with a solution, and then iterate on that solution. We touch on a lot more in this conversation about how to look for Salesforce jobs, developing listening skills, and what it's like to be a Salesforce consultant, so be sure to listen to the full episode and subscribe so you don't miss out. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Pei Mun Lim on the Skills of a Business Analyst Salesforce Admins Blog: Develop Your Communication Skills as a Salesforce Admin Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jason on X Jason on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: I got an idea. How about we tackle the hardest question on the Salesforce Trailblazer community? That's right. This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're going to look for advice on finding your first admin job and doing the interview, getting experience, and more. And we're going to do all that with CEO and co-founder of Arkus, Jason Atwood. Jason and I chatted at TrailblazerDX and really wanted to dive into this topic. Now, before we bring Jason on, I just want to make sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or Spotify. That way, when new episodes like this one come out, they're automatically downloaded to your phone. But enough about that. Let's talk about finding that first job or even finding your next job as a Salesforce administrator. Oh, I almost forgot to mention we tackle the myth of "but it's just an admin job." So with that, let's get Jason on the podcast. So, Jason, welcome to the podcast. Jason Atwood: Thank you for having me. It's been a long time since we've podcast together. Mike Gerholdt: I know. I was thinking back; well, we were just reminiscing of the days at the Marriott Marquis and the Arkus podcast. Jason Atwood: Yep. You were on an episode of CloudFocus Weekly. We had it as part of our trivia once there was only four or five guests ever on the podcast, and you were one of them. Mike Gerholdt: Snuck in, only proximity. I'm going to say. So catch people up. What have you been up to? Jason Atwood: Well, since then

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rangsk, a Wordle and Sudoku educational YouTuber. Join us as we chat about how solving puzzles every day can help you sharpen your critical thinking skills. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rangsk. The role of puzzles in critical thinking development I'm addicted to word games. They give me a chance to practice my problem solving skills and, hopefully, get better. That's why I was so excited for this week's guest, Rangsk, because he makes some of the best educational content out there on how to get better at solving puzzles. For Rangsk, puzzles are a way to develop your critical thinking skills. They give you an opportunity to think about how you think. "Overthinking has a negative connotation," he says, "all I'm doing is thinking, and there's nothing wrong with thinking when you're solving a puzzle." Practicing your problem solving skills in a low-stakes environment like a puzzle gives you the experience to fall back on in high-pressure situations. The process over the result A key part of using puzzles to develop critical thinking skills is taking the time to reflect on your thought process. When you solve a problem, don't just move on to the next one. Instead, Rangsk encourages you to do a postmortem so you can learn something about how you think. Look through each step of a solve and analyze your decision-making. Where did you get stuck or tricked and why? What could you have done differently? And where did you make good choices that got you closer to the solution? If you take the time to internalize what worked and what didn't work you'll improve your critical thinking skills over time. How to know when to ask for help When I'm solving puzzles, one thing I always struggle with is when to hit that hint button. Rangsk's advice is to make an honest assessment of your mindset. Are you well and truly stuck? Or have you hit a snag but are still enjoying the process of working through it? In puzzles and the workplace, we might not be able to solve every problem we encounter on our own. Maybe there's some trick that we don't know about or some key piece of information we don't have. Puzzles help you teach your brain how to learn, and that's something Salesforce Admins need to do every day. Listen to the full episode for more from Rangsk on his approach to teaching and some other word puzzles you might like if you're already hooked on Wordle. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Connections and Wordle games from the New York Times are wildly popular. Can they improve cognitive function as you age? Follow Rangsk on YouTube Cracking the Cryptic on YouTube Other word puzzles Cell Tower Squardle Squaredle Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social @Rangsk_YT on TikTok Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Wordle, Strands, Connections, not just random words, but word games. And I am addicted to them. So, this week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I had to get arguably the best word and logic solver I can find from TikTok and YouTube on the podcast. He goes by Rangsk on TikTok, and I'll put a link below. But David and I are talking about critical thinking and problem-solving using word games. Also, just how that applies to life. This is a phenomenal conversation. Don't be scared about the time because this is such a fun discussion. Also, how looking for answers and the journey of problem solving really applies to just everything that we do, not only as Salesforce admins, but in our learning journeys and as we navigate life. So, this is fun. Let's get David on the podcast. So, David, welcome to the podcast. Rangsk: Well, thank you. Mike Gerholdt: I'm glad to have you on. I feel this is one of those times where I'm way more the super fanboy because I have seen a ton of your TikTok videos and your New York Times solves. But without tipping too much, how did you get into word gaming and solving word games online? Rangsk: Well, it's a long story, but I can give the short version. Basically, YouTube likes to give random recommendations, and one day it recommended me a Sudoku video by Cracking the Cryptic. And I was familiar with Sudoku because it was a huge craze in the early 2000s. Do you remember that? Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Rangsk: Everyone was doing Sudoku. Mike Gerholdt: On the planes, there were books. Every airport had a Sudoku book. Rangsk: Yeah. And so, I got into that craze back then, but then I burned out of it. And now, I realize it's because of the way I was solving it. It's because of the way everyone was solving it, it burned out quickly. But I was like, "You know what? Sudoku, I'm familiar with that." I clicked the video and I just immediately got hooked beca

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat get to know the newest member of the Admin Evangelist team and her journey through the Salesforce ecosystem. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kate Lessard. Giving back to the Salesforce community Kate actually got her master's in museum studies, so how did she get involved in Salesforce? "I started at a nonprofit in Denver, Colorado, and my first day on the job they asked me if I had ever heard of Salesforce," she says, "and I said no and they said, 'that's okay but you're in charge of it now!" One thing that really helped Kate, back when she was an accidental admin, was finding a mentor in the Salesforce community. That's why she's been so focused on giving back through programs like Super Moms, WITness Success, and Forcelandia. And now, she's the newest member of the Admin Evangelist team. Working behind the scenes Kate takes the stage at tons of events but she also does work behind the scenes. For Forcelandia, she's the Communications Lead, where she coordinates with speakers and makes sure they have all the information they need to be successful. The two main lessons she's learned from this work are that no question is a dumb question and that you balance how you communicate information. For the first one, you don't want to be the person who shows up in the wrong place when people are depending on you. For the latter, it's important to realize that some people want one big communication with all of the facts and others prefer it broken down into smaller snippets. Kate is great Kate is excited to join the Admin Evangelist team and share how awesome it is to be a Salesforce Admin. "I'm really drawn to this because you get to still be technical and know how to do all the things," she says, "but you also get to share the excitement behind them." We think Kate is great, and if you want to meet her she'll be presenting two sessions at Dreamforce this year. The first will be on why admins should learn dev fundamentals, and the other will be a security breakout session. Make sure to stop by and say hello! Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Developers Podcast Episode: Creating User Stories with Kate Lessard WITness Success Forcelandia Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Kate on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Josh Birk: Welcome, Salesforce admins. I'm Josh Birk, your guest host for this week. This week we're going to sit down with our brand new Lead Admin Evangelist, Kate Lessard, and get to know her a little bit better. So let's go straight to the tape. All right. Today on the show we welcome Kate Lessard to talk about, well, mostly Kate Lessard, and the things that you're doing and some of the conferences you're going to be going to. So Kate, welcome to the show. Kate Lessard: Thank you. Excited to be here and to talk about myself. Josh Birk: It's all of our favorite topics. All right, so going into your earlier years, the first thing that I see in your early years is that you studied abroad in France. How did that come about? Kate Lessard: Oh, my gosh, I was so lucky to be able to do that, and my study abroad sister is still one of my very best friends. I just went back and saw her this year. She just had a baby, so that was really cool. Yeah, I studied French in high school and just really loved the language and learning about France. And had the opportunity to go with my high school for a really short spring break-style program, and then went back in college. Josh Birk: I got it. I did like that underneath you listed some of your activities that included gastronomy. Isn't that just a fancy word for saying French food? Kate Lessard: Oh, yeah. We had a whole class that I got credit for in college on gastronomy, which was wine tasting and learning how to cook desserts and cheese tasting. Josh Birk: I had to take PE. Kate Lessard: I know it was the best class. Josh Birk: Not fair. Okay. And then you went on to study art and eventually a master's in museum studies. Where did that interest come from, and what's it like studying museum studies? Kate Lessard: Yeah, I've always loved art, and that was my favorite subject in school growing up, and especially when I went to France and got to see all these incredible artworks at some of their wonderful museums, decided that I really loved art, loved art history, and wanted to find a career in that. And museum study seemed like a cool way to be able to do that, to just be able to experience some of the best artworks in the world and be able to share that with others. So that was where I went into that kind of study path. Josh Birk: Nice, nice. Well, and to put a cap on that,

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lisa Tulchin, Senior Curriculum Developer at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about user learning styles and how to use them to create better training sessions. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lisa Tulchin. Choose the right learning style for you on Trailhead As a Senior Curriculum Developer for Salesforce, Lisa spends a lot of time thinking about user learning styles. That's why there are two paths to learning new Salesforce skills. You can use Trailhead to go at your own pace or sign up for Trailhead Academy to work in an instructor-led group setting. The best way to choose between Trailhead and Trailhead Academy is to think about what's worked for you in the past. When have you been able to learn something quickly, and when have you struggled? Remember that it doesn't have to be an either/or decision. You can always see how far you get working through recommended badges and trails, but consider Trailhead Academy as an option if you get stuck. Breaking through fear in user training Fear can be a major barrier to learning, and it's often what's behind resistance to a new process. That's why Lisa recommends starting your training sessions by "hugging the elephant." Acknowledge that, yes, this new process is tricky while also explaining how it will make their lives easier. What makes sense to you may not work for other user learning styles—some people want to run down a checklist and others need more context. "Kids are a lot more comfortable making mistakes than we are as adults," Lisa says, "saying, 'I don't know,' is one of the scariest things for adults to admit." In any user training, make sure give your users explicit permission to ask questions so no one gets left behind. Best practices for planning user trainings When she's writing a new training, Lisa tries to separate what information her users need to know from what would be nice for them to know. She calls it the 80/20 rule. Generally, if you can get your users to 80% with a training, they have what they need to do their job. You can fill in the other 20% as you go. Another user training hack is to break complicated things down into manageable tasks to make them easier to learn. Lisa explains that our brains tend to remember 5-7 chunks of information at a time (for example, phone numbers or ZIP codes). So if you're writing out a task and the individual steps get into the double digits, you might want to break it down differently so it's easier to remember. Lisa has tons of great tips in this episode for how to keep up with your own learning and take advantage of the resources out there from Salesforce, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe for more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Elizabeth Bochanski on Starting Learning on Trailhead Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: New Admin Classes from Trailhead Academy with Stuart and Feroz Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Lisa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisatulch/ Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Threads Mike on Tiktok Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we were talking to Lisa Tulchin about learning and how you can be a better learner, and also, as a Salesforce admin, how you can help teach and educate and drive user adoption with your user. I've known Lisa for over a decade now. She's a senior curriculum developer at Trailhead. She's done both in-person and self-paced learning. She's created both. Mike Gerholdt: So I feel like she's a real expert on this, and we cover a lot because I had a lot of great conversations at TrailblazerDX about learning, and I know admins are always learning, so that's why I wanted to cover that. Now, before we get into the episode, I want to be sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. That way, when a new episode drops like this one, and it's amazing on learning on Thursday mornings, it's immediately on your phone. So be sure you're following that, and then a new episode will drop. So with that, let's get to, this is such a fun episode, let's get to Lisa Tulchin. So, Lisa, welcome to the podcast. Lisa Tulchin: Thanks. It's such a privilege to be here. Mike Gerholdt: Well, we've known each other for a while, but I am unleashing you to the Salesforce ecosystem because I feel like I've secretly held this decade of awesomeness of knowing you and talking about learning. That's what we're going to talk about today, in case you didn't listen in the intro. But Lisa, let's level set because I've had the privilege of working with you and seeing you teach, and create, and do, and that's why I wanted to have you on the podcast. But let's start with what you do at Sales

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ella Marks, Senior Marketing Manager at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the keys to creating an effective presentation, how to prep, and how to create a strong ending. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Ella Marks. Core principles to prep any presentation We're starting the last quarter of the year and that means it's presentation season. Whether it's presenting about the work we did last year or trying to get budget for next year, creating an effective presentation is a core skill for Salesforce Admins. That's why I'm so excited to bring Ella Marks on the pod. She's presented on some of Salesforce's biggest stages, like Dreamforce and multiple World Tours. So I wanted to hear her tips for how to put together a great presentation. The cool thing is that no matter the format or venue, Ella uses the same core principles to prep for every presentation. 1. Who is your audience? Ella's first step is to identify the audience that you're presenting for. Who's in the room? What do they already know, and what are you going to teach them? Your content is going to be very different if you're presenting to a room full of admins versus a room full of new users. If you don't know exactly who's in the audience or what their level of expertise is, just ask them. For example, "Raise your hand if this topic is new to you." In general, it makes your presentation more engaging if there's a little bit of back-and-forth with the audience. 2. Make an outline and blue box your slides The next step is to make an outline. Ella recommends starting by making a big list of everything you could possibly say about the presentation topic. Then you can start moving things around, whittling it down, and picking some themes. All of this helps you decide on a call to action. When she's ready to start creating her slide deck, Ella uses a technique called "blue boxing" to make a rough draft. Essentially, you use blue boxes to rough out what you're going to put on each slide. So a slide might have three blue boxes that say: Title about why this is important right now Text of the most important point I'm going to say Image to illustrate the point We're trying to sketch out just enough to see how the presentation flows as a whole. Look for a balance of slides with more text and slides with more visuals because that variation will keep your audience engaged. That way, we're not spending time looking for the right image or writing the perfect title until we're sure we need it. 3. Nail the ending Conclusions are always tricky. Ella recommends asking yourself three questions: After my presentation, how do you want them to feel? After my presentation, what do you want them to think? After my presentation, what do you want them to do? These are your three goals, and the secret to nailing your ending is to address them throughout the presentation. Every slide should be aimed at answering one of these questions so that, by the end, the conclusion feels inevitable. Ella has lots more great tips for creating effective presentations, including how to prep with a group and the importance of a good pump-up song, so be sure to take a listen. And be sure to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead: Storytelling & Communication Admin Trailblazers Group https://sfdc.co/admintrailblazers Social Ella: @Marks_Ella Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike` Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: So we're halfway through August, and for many of us, that's the start or getting real close to the start of the last quarter of the year, which means we're doing a lot of presenting, either presenting to show our work, what we've got done for this year, presenting to get budget for next year as admins for what we'd like to do or, if you're like me and a few of my colleagues, going to world tours, going to events, going to community events, and presenting. Presenting, presenting, presenting is at the heart of a lot of what Salesforce admins do. Mike Gerholdt: So this week on the podcast, I pulled in Ella Marks to talk us through and give us some tips on building phenomenal presentations in the art of presenting. Now, if you're not familiar with Ella, she's on our admin relations team, and she has done quite a few Dreamforce keynotes. She's helped coordinate a lot of our release readiness lives at Dreamforce, both on stage and recorded. So she's presented to cameras, and she's presented live on stage, and she's also coached quite a few presenters. Mike Gerholdt: And I think this is really important for us to learn because no matter how great the app is that we build, and no matter how cool the functionality is, we need to be able to stand up and deliver. And b

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Cole, Director of Business Intelligence and Automation at 908 Devices. Join us as we chat about why understanding and documenting your business processes is critical for collecting quality data in your org. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Cole. Admins connect the dots Jen recently co-presented at World Tour Boston about business processes and data strategy, and I wanted to get her on the pod to tell you all about it. "Data isn't helpful if you don't know your process," she says, "it's just interesting facts on a screen that maybe make pretty graphs but what does it tell you if you don't know what questions you're answering?" I think a common misconception is that it's the people not doing the day-to-day work who don't understand the business process. As Jen points out, it's often the folks actually doing the process who don't understand why they need to log data a certain way. As we'll get into, that's not necessarily their fault—there's an information gap. So it's up to us as Salesforce Admins to connect those dots and spell out why accurate data is so important. How inaccurate data gets in your org Jen often supports sales teams and it's a great example of how inaccurate data can end up in your org. Now it might sound obvious, but sales teams want to sell things. They don't understand why they need to log an email into Salesforce or create the next step on an opportunity because they don't know how that information will be used. So you see a lot of rushing through fields or just filling in a random date because it doesn't matter anyway, right? And that's where the problems creep in. Inaccurate data creates inaccurate business decisions. AI tools like Einstein Copilot or Next Best Action turn into useless, expensive toys without accurate data. So the first step is to figure out what questions you need to answer with data. If you can get to the Why behind the business process, you can build bridges across your organization and bring people together. Business processes and getting to why The next step is to explain the Why to the people involved in the business process. For example, "If you log your follow-up calls accurately, we can look at all that data and tell you the best time to make those calls," or, "Sue from marketing will use this to send a targeted drip campaign that we know makes them more likely to buy from you." Suddenly, you've created a feedback loop that gets the people entering data invested in data quality. Training is the best time to get started with explaining why. When they fill in this field, who else will use that information and how will it help the business as a whole? You need to get them invested in the process and help them see the broader picture. There's so much more great stuff from Jen about how to look at your business processes and data strategy, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Podcast: Solving Business Problems with Composer and Flow with Jennifer Cole Blog: How to Use Salesforce to Manage Your Documentation Blog: How to Write Great Documentation to Help with Future Problem Solving Podcast: Understanding the Importance of Data Health in Salesforce Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Jen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcole-trailblazer/ Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Jennifer Cole about data strategy and process. Well, yeah, a little something different because in the world of AI and a lot of tools just in general, not to mention automation tools, it's good to know what you're doing with your data and do you have a process in place to make sure you're collecting good data. Also, I ask her about bad data, so that's an interesting answer. But really understanding what data are you collecting, and does everybody know the process for data collection because as we know, it's going to be even more important to have great data so that AI can give us even better insights. But if we don't know the process, then I think we're in trouble. So Jennifer's going to help us with that. But before we get into the episode, just a reminder that if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, be sure to click the follow button, that way this podcast can automatically be downloaded right to your device so that when you're out on your dog walk, you don't have to worry about downloading it because it'll already be there. And of course, I always appreciate a good review, so let me know how we're doing. With t

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Elizabeth Awad, Associate Product Manager for Prompt Builder at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how you can use Prompt Builder to simplify users' daily tasks by integrating generative AI moments powered by prompt templates into their workflows. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Elizabeth Awad. What's the difference between Einstein Copilot and Prompt Builder? There's been a lot of buzz around Prompt Builder these days, so I was excited to get Liz Awad on the pod to pick her brain about it. She's a product manager on the Prompt Builder team, so you could say she knows some things. The first question I had for her is one I hear frequently from the community: What's the difference between Einstein Copilot and Prompt Builder? "They go hand in hand," Liz says, "the prompts that you create in Prompt Builder can be connected to custom actions in Copilot." In other words, Prompt Builder is where you as the admin create custom prompts to write a sales email or summarize a case, and Einstein Copilot is what allows your end users to invoke those prompts. Practice your prompts We've had more than a few guests suggest that you jump on an LLM to practice prompting but I wanted to know from Liz, specifically, what she's found helpful. She had a really interesting answer, which was to try to get ChatGPT to write a birthday text to her mom. If you think about it, that's a perfect use case for practicing writing better prompts. It's pretty simple in terms of information but it's tricky to get the right tone. More importantly, you probably have a good sense of what sounds right and what doesn't. And so when you give adjustments, you instantly know how well they worked. Liz points out that this process is what people mean when they talk about "grounding" a prompt. It's the extra bits of information you give an AI to adjust the response, like "That sounds too formal" or, "Here are three other texts I've sent my mom." Prompt templates you can use in Salesforce right now As a reminder, there are four prompt template types that you can use in Salesforce right now. They are: Sales email Field generation Record summary Flex templates Josh Birk and Raveesh Raina went over all of this in detail in their episode last month, so I'll link below. However, Liz wanted to draw special attention to a new addition to the flex prompt template, which is the ability to use free text as an input. That means you can use something like a chat transcript or a case summary to ground your prompt. It's super flexible, and the sky's the limit. There's so much more great stuff from Liz about what you can do with Prompt Builder and how she approaches her role as a PM, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Podcast: Salesforce Prompt Builder Features Every Admin Should Know Podcast: Get to Know Prompt Builder with Marissa Scalercio Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Liz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-awad/ Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike: Earlier this year, we talked with Melissa Scalercio about Prompt Builder, because she was on the customer side and she had some pretty neat things to say about how they were using Prompt Builder. You can go back into the Salesforce archives there to listen to that episode. In case you're not familiar, Prompt Builder allows you to simplify users' daily tasks by integrating generative AI moments powered by prompt templates into their workflow. It's really cool. You get to bind a field and put sparkles on it. That's what it's called literally, sparkles. I wanted to talk to one of the product managers that is working on Prompt Builder. That is Liz Awad, who is based in New York. She is helping build the future of Prompt Builder. She not only gives us some really useful insights into Prompt Builder and how she's seeing other customers use it, but also into what's coming with Prompt Builder, and you may have already seen it. Then, fun fact, we get to learn a hobby. I bet it's one maybe that most of you do. I've seen it on a ton of TV shows. But I'm not going to tell you because you have to listen to the episode. With that, let's get Liz on the podcast. Liz, welcome to the podcast. Liz Awad: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Mike: Well, I'm excited to talk about Prompt Builder. We've talked about Prompt Builder in the past, with Melissa, earlier. I wanted to hear from somebody that's actually working on the product and doing some really fun stuff, because not only is Prompt Builder a really cool tool for admins to use. We're seeing that in all of our

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, it's another deep dive with Josh Birk as he talks to Bobby Brill, Senior Director of Product for Einstein Discovery. Join us as we chat about how you can use Model Builder to harness the power of AI with clicks, not code. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Bobby Brill. What is Model Builder? Bobby started his career at Salesforce in Customer Success before working on Wave Analytics. These days, he's the Senior Director of Product for Einstein Discovery, and he's here to talk about what Model Builder can do for your business. If you have Data Cloud, then you already have access to Model Builder via the Einstein Studio Tab. With it, you can create predictive models with clicks, not code, using AI to look through your data and generate actionable insights. As Bobby says, the AI isn't really the interesting part—it's how you can use it as a tool to solve your business problems. BYOM - Build Your Own Model In traditional machine learning, models are trained on data to identify successful and unsuccessful trends, which is fundamental for making accurate predictions. For example, if you want to create an opportunity scoring model, you need to point it to the data you have on which leads converted and which leads didn't pan out. Model Builder lets you do just that, building your own model based on the data in your org. What's more, it fits seamlessly into the structures admins already understand. We can put our opportunity scoring model into a flow to sort high-scoring leads into a priority queue. And we can do all of this with clicks, not code. Building a predictive model that's good enough Einstein's LLM capabilities offer even more possibilities when it comes to using your data with Model Builder. You can process unstructured texts like chats or emails to do something like measure if a customer is becoming unhappy. And you can plug that into a flow to do something to fix it. One thing that Bobby points out is that building a model is an iterative process. If you have 100% accuracy, you haven't really created a predictive model so much as a business rule. As long as the impact of a wrong decision is manageable, it's OK to build something that's good enough and know that it will improve over time. There's a lot more great stuff from Bobby about how to build predictive models and what's coming next, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailmix: Drive Productivity with Einstein AI Trailhead: Learn Artificial Intelligence with Trailhead Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Bobby: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbybrill/ Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Josh: Hello, everybody. Your guest host Josh Birk here. Today we are going to talk to Bobby Brill about Model Builder, which is going to allow you to create your own predictive and generative models to use within Salesforce. So without further delay, let's head on over to Bobby. All right, today on the show we welcome Bobby Brill to talk about Model Builder. Do you prefer Robert, Bob, Bobby? What do you like to go by? Bobby: It's an excellent question. So I'm a junior. My dad is Robert Howard Brill Sr. I have the same first middle and last name. He goes by Robert, Rob, or Bob, so I've always been Bobby my whole life. Josh: Yeah, I feel you. My brother is Peter. My father was a Carl Peter and my grandfather was a Carl Peter. Bobby: Wow. Josh: Got very confusing sometimes. Yeah, yeah. So introduce yourself a little bit to the crowd. What do you do at Salesforce? Bobby: That's a great question. I've been at Salesforce almost 13 years. I was a customer of Salesforce for about three and a half years prior to joining, so I've been in the ecosystem for quite some time. Josh: Got it. Bobby: I started off in actually customer success group, actually it was called Customers for Life. So I worked with customers getting on boarded onto Salesforce. I joined the product team back in 2015 in analytics, so we had this thing called Wave Analytics. So even well before AI I've been working with data. The last year I've actually been part of the data cloud team, so I do AI for data cloud, so it's called Model Builder. Josh: Got it. Got it. Were you interested in AI before it blew up, before it got all big? Bobby: Am I interested in AI? I think it's interesting. I think it's really cool technology, but what I really like is how the technology can help our customers solve their business problems. I was a customer, I understood what it was like to just have this tool available and put my data in and what can I do with that data. What I like is

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mehmet Orun, GM and Data Strategist at PeerNova. Join us as we chat about why data health is easier than you think and what you can do to get started. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mehmet Orun. Healthy data drives business outcomes We talk a lot about getting your data ready for AI, but there's a simpler question you need to ask yourself: is your data driving business outcomes? After all, AI insights are only as good as the data they're based on. That's why I've been looking forward to this episode with Mehmet Orun. He recently gave a presentation about all this and more, entitled "Harnessing AI: Strategic Planning & Data Best Practices for Salesforce Success," and I was able to grab him for a quick conversation how you can improve data health in your org. Questions for a foundational data health check If you're cooking, you want to make sure that you have the basic ingredients and enough space on your countertop. And the same is true with your org. You need to have your data health squared away before you can cook up something tasty. For Mehmet, a foundational data health check starts with asking three questions: Do you have any objects that are close to or past their limits? Are you retaining too much data in your CRM that you don't use? Do you have unintentional duplicates in your solution and do you know where they come from? You want to zero in on which data matters for which specific business need. You don't need it to be perfect, you just need a solution that is good enough to do what you want it to do. How to get started with data cleanup Every org is going to have some duplicates, and Mehmet recommends thinking through a few things about how data works in your business before you merge everything. Is there a business reason to have duplicate records? Do you have other information in objects or fields that can help you decide whether to match or merge? Above all, Mehmet wants you to know that obtaining good data health in your org isn't as difficult or time consuming as it sounds. There are free data profiling tools on AppExchange that can help you get most of the way there. So what are you waiting for? There's a lot more great stuff from Mehmet about what to look for when you're doing a data health checkup, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Video: Harnessing AI: Strategic Planning & Data Best Practices for Salesforce Success Podcast: Why Clean Data Is Non-Negotiable in the AI Era with Lizz Hellinga Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Mehmet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehmetorun Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike: We talk a lot about data readiness and getting ready for AI, but let's take a step back. Is your data really driving business outcomes? So that's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, and I am bringing in Mehmet Orun, who is the GM and Data Strategist at PeerNova. I mean, just looking through his LinkedIn profile, he has a ton of publications and a ton of patents. I actually don't think I've ever had anybody on the podcast that has had patents. And I should have asked him about that. So spoiler, I don't ask him about patents. But we're going to talk about getting your data ready to drive business outcomes. You know what? Even if you're not ready to use AI, this is still a good podcast for it. So with that, let's get Mehmet on the podcast. So Mehmet, welcome to the podcast. Mehmet: Thank you, Mike. It's a true pleasure to be here. Mike: Yeah, well, you ran into colleague of mine at World Tour London. And well, I mean everybody's talking to AI and you're talking to AI and data. But before we get into that, why don't you give me a little bit of a brief history of how you got into the Salesforce ecosystem? Mehmet: So before I was a partner, I was a Salesforce employee. Before I was an employee, I was a customer. I worked for Genentech, which is a biotech company, for a period of time. And what was interesting about Genentech was our CEO was a scientist. We looked at problems like they were clinical trials. You formed a hypothesis. In a safe way, you chose to assess if that hypothesis was going to be true or not. And then we would look at how can we solve it at greater scale. What that meant was when we were getting ready to launch a new set of products, and the enterprise architecture was going to be shifting from 150 or so disconnected applications, this is 20 years ago by the way, and the story today may sound much the same for many customers and companies, we wanted to bet on a new CRM solution, rather

Why Mentorship is Crucial in the Salesforce Ecosystem Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Warren Walters, Salesforce MVP and host of the Salesforce Mentor YouTube channel and website. Join us as we chat about what admins and devs can learn from each other and why everyone can learn to code. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Warren Walter. The rise of the Admin-eloper If you've ever taken a peek at Warren's content, you may have noticed that a lot of it is about learning how to code in Apex. So why have him on a podcast for admins? That's dev stuff, right? Warren has noted that there's an increasing convergence between these two roles. Personally, I've gained confidence in implementing code because AI assists in clarifying the processes involved. Similarly, for developers, using declarative tools such as flows and formulas can be much simpler than crafting solutions in Apex. In short, we're all becoming admin-elopers. Why Salesforce Admins should learn to code One of the biggest misconceptions that Warren wants to dispel is that only geniuses can understand coding. The truth is that some of the best developers he knows are people who never went to school for it and taught themselves everything they know. As an admin, you don't necessarily need to know how to build complex Apex customizations. A basic working knowledge of how programming works can get you far, especially when combined with all the declarative tools at your disposal. Soft skills can help you build your career Finally, Warren emphasizes the importance of honing your soft skills. A self-described introvert, he's found that focusing on becoming a better communicator has helped him find his way into new roles and bigger opportunities. He also urges you to think about your personal branding or, as he puts it, "how you want to present yourself to the outside world." His YouTube channel has opened doors for him, but even something as simple as a portfolio can really help you stand out from the crowd. There's a lot more great stuff from Warren about his experience as a consultant and as a mentor, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more SalesforceMentor.com Video: Salesforce Mentor on YouTube Video: Salesforce Apex Hours on YouTube Video: Coding with the Force on YouTube freeCodeCamp.org Podcast: How Can Solving Sudoku and Wordle Enhance Your Critical Thinking Skills? Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Warren on X: @TheWalter954 Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we are talking about mentorship and learning how to code. Surprisingly, not surprisingly, because admins and developers need to know the best practices for creating our apps and deploying the best technology for our organizations. So I'm going to bring on Warren Walters who is a Salesforce consultant. He's an admin, he's a developer, he's a mentor and a self-described general geek. Now, Warren's on because he runs a really cool YouTube channel, and I came across his TikToks where he does Salesforce tutorials to help you understand and master the concept of different things in Salesforce. He has this really cool site, salesforcementor.com, and just a really fun guy to talk about in terms of the world of mentorship, what a lot of skills are that he's seeing, and things that people should be paying attention to. Now, before we get Warren on the podcast, I just want to make sure that whatever you're using to listen to the Salesforce Admins podcast, make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button because then new episodes will show up on your phone or on your computer right away. So with that, let's get to our conversation with Warren. So Warren, welcome to the podcast. Warren Walters: Well, hey Mike, I'm happy to be here. Super excited because I've been listening to the podcast for such a long time and I'm finally on it, which is, I don't know if it's a dream come true or an honor, but I'm just happy to be here. Mike Gerholdt: It's destiny. Warren Walters: I'll take that. Mike Gerholdt: That's what I'll call it, it's destiny. Well, I ran across your TikToks when I was posting stuff about the podcast and really loved some of the videos that you're doing and the topics you're talking about. So let's just start off with what you do in the Salesforce ecosystem and how you got started. Warren Walters: Sure. So my name is Warren Walters. I am a Salesforce engineer. I do lots and lots of development. I probably talk too much about development. Some of you may or may not have seen my face on YouTube, and that's where I primarily host a

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, it's time for a deep dive with Josh Birk, who talks to Raveesh Raina, Principal Solutions Engineer at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about what Prompt Builder can do and how to write effective prompts. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Raveesh Raina. Intro to Prompt Builder Raveesh is the perfect person to talk to about Prompt Builder and all the cool stuff you can do with it. As a Solutions Engineer, he works with customers to implement the latest and greatest Salesforce innovations and right now, that's Prompt Builder. Prompt Builder takes all the power of LLMs and combines it with your Salesforce data. You can use it to help you write personalized emails to customers, build out records with more information, and much, much more. The four prompt template types and what they do Right now, there are four prompt template types in Salesforce: The sales email template drafts an email you need to send to your customer. Some examples include introducing them to a new product, or reminding them about an appointment. With the field generation template, you can quickly and easily populate or complete a specific field on a record page with a summary or description created by an LLM. The record summary template does exactly what it says it does: summarizes a record. This one is really easy to use via Einstein Copilot, and his clients love it for meeting prep. Finally, there's the flex prompt template. This can be used anywhere and everywhere on the platform to create a customized prompt template that incorporates records from multiple objects simultaneously. An example would be to create a personalized product recommendation for a customer based on an Einstein Next Best Action. With all of these prompt templates, you can dynamically ground them with data from Salesforce or Data Cloud. That gives the LLM the power to pull data from records or, with flows, from pretty much any object—standard or custom—in your Salesforce org. How admins can write effective prompts So how do you write effective prompts that do what you want them to do? Raveesh has four tips to share with us: Be explicit about your expectations and goals. What are you hoping to get out of the response? The AI needs a clearly defined goal in order to generate a good response. Contextualize the information. State if you want to add related records to contextualize the response. Specify your role. What is the persona for which this prompt template is built? Add limitations and set boundaries. For example, "do not exceed 500 characters." The AI needs to be told, and sometimes told again, what not to do. This is especially important to think about as you test and refine your prompt in order to get consistent results. There's a lot more great stuff from Raveesh about building better prompts and how Salesforce protects your data, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Blog: The Ultimate Guide to Prompt Builder | Spring '24 Trailhead: Get Started with Prompts and Prompt Builder Video: Salesforce Admins Innovate with Prompt Builder Podcast: Get to Know Prompt Builder with Marissa Scalercio Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Connect with Raveesh Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Josh Birk: Greetings everybody. Guest host, Josh Birk here, to take another deep dive into a topic. And this week, the topic is going to be Prompt Builder and Building on Prompts. I am joined by my good old colleague, Raveesh Raina, who is one of the people who wrote, for instance, our Ultimate Guide to Prompt Builder. Now, with no other hesitation, let's get over and talk to Raveesh. All right, today on the show, we welcome Raveesh Raina to tell us about all things Prompt Builder. Raveesh, welcome to the show. Raveesh Raina : Thank you very much, Josh. It's an honor to be here and thank you for having me. Josh Birk: Excellent. Well, let's start off with a little bit about you. Tell me, what is your current role at Salesforce? Raveesh Raina : So I am a Principal Solutions Engineer. I work predominantly with our account executives and account directors to helping customers get inspired with our latest and greatest innovations that we are publishing and that we are releasing into the market. So I have a specific focus towards financial services. I'm based out of Toronto, Canada, so I work with all of our major enterprise banks with a lot of the different innovations and as far as financial services cloud is concerned, which is our flagship industries product. So helping them get inspired and sharing ideas on how we can help them better meet their goals. Jo

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we sit down for an Admin Evangelist roundtable discussion with Josh Birk, Jennifer Lee, and yours truly. Join us as we chat about how AI can help you be a better Salesforce Admin and what you can do to improve your prompts. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Josh Birk and Jen Lee. Practice your AI prompts With everything going on with Einstein Copilot and Prompt Builder, I wanted to bring the Admin Evangelists together to find out how they're thinking about AI and what you should do to get ready. The number one thing that everyone agreed on is to start practicing your AI prompts. Josh recommends seeing if you can get your LLM of choice to tell you a dad joke. Then try and get it to tell you a better one. Just like how we had to learn how to write a good Google query, you'll quickly find out that some prompts are more effective than others. Jennifer shares the story of how her husband used ChatGPT to help with their itinerary on their trip to Italy. They still had to double-check that the restaurants it recommended were still open and that the timing of everything made sense, but it was a great starting point for planning their vacation. How Salesforce Admins can get help from AI Both Josh and Jennifer also use AI to help with work. Jennifer's found ChatGPT to be really helpful for writing formulas. She used to spend hours on Google trying to find an example that matched the exact scenario she needed. These days, she can just write a prompt with her specific parameters and get back something useful in seconds. If Salesforce gives her an error, she can tell ChatGPT about it and it'll try to fix the code. Josh, meanwhile, has been using AI to help generate Apex code from scratch when he's spinning up a demo org. As he's quick to point out, it's not necessarily helpful for the maintenance and debugging tasks that most developers do on a daily basis, but it's perfect for his particular use case. The human in the loop One last thing we talked about that I want to highlight is the importance of the human in the loop. We used the example of someone calling a power company to find out why their electricity bill is higher. If a human has realized that the weather has a major effect on usage rates and created a screen flow to call the right API, then an AI might be able to give the customer the right answer. But you need a human in the loop to do that second-order thinking. We'll have even more about how Salesforce Admins can use AI next week in Josh's deep dive episode, so be sure to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead: Get Started with Prompts and Prompt Builder Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jennifer on X: @JenWLee Josh on X: @JoshBirk Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: So in the world of AI and GPTs, and I think one's called Hugging Face, maybe it's Hugging Chat, I don't know. There is a lot to learn and people maybe you're afraid of it or you haven't tried something out. I don't know. We've heard a lot as evangelists on the admin relations team. And so this week I wanted to dive in with all of the rockstar evangelists that I have. Josh Birk, our Senior Admin Evangelist, and Jen, our Lead Admin Evangelist. Also, everything flow about let's dive into prompts and let's start learning about prompts and what should we be afraid of or what shouldn't we be afraid of, or what should we start doing? So that was a really long, highly caffeinated intro, but welcome to the show, Jennifer and Josh. Joshua Birk: Thanks for having us. Jennifer: Hey. Mike Gerholdt: So I won't name names, but I have been around in the community, and I have heard people like, "Cool, oh, you've done something with ChatGPT." And to be frank, if you follow me on Instagram, you'll realize that my feed, sometime in March, quickly took over crazy images generated by Dall-E. Because I find it fascinating that I can give it words to a 1970s music classic rock and say, "Make a picture." And it will produce something that would take me years to put together. And sometimes it's crazy, and I have to share that with the world because I think that's just so cool. But I guess I'm not afraid to try things out. So that's where I was with the world of AI. Where do you guys fall? Joshua Birk: Well, first of all, I want to go back to something you just said about what's dangerous about talking to something like let's just call it ChatGPT. Just use that as the generic one since it's the most famous and most popular. But I go back to- Mike Gerholdt: It's like the Kleenex of AI. Joshua Birk: Yeah, exactly. M

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Chris Zullo, Global Practice Director of Customer 360 and Marketing at AllCloud. Join us as we chat about integrating Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud and how you can do more with your data. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Chris Zullo. Bring all your customer data together in Salesforce Chris is kind of my go-to Marketing Cloud guy, so I wanted to bring him on the pod to talk through how Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud go hand-in-hand. In his role as Global Practice Director of both Customer 360 and Marketing at AllCloud, he's seen firsthand just how much of an impact Data Cloud can have by allowing both departments to work in tandem. There are so many applications businesses use in today's environment that each store data about your customers. But there's a problem. As Chris puts it, "The likelihood of all of those systems talking to each other in any cohesive fashion is slim to none." That's where Data Cloud comes in. It allows you to bring all of that data into one place in Salesforce, and that's where the magic happens. Data Cloud creates a consistent customer experience When a customer interacts with your business, they don't care who they're talking to—they just want to be treated consistently and as if they're the same person. If they had a conversation with a sales rep about a certain product or feature, they expect the customer service rep they call to know what they're talking about. With Data Cloud, your customer service rep can look at all the communications a customer might have had with sales so they're on the same page. And if they notice that there's an email sequence scheduled next week to remind them about their warranty, maybe they can cancel it ahead of time and head things off at the pass. That's why it's so important to give everyone a seat at the table when you're establishing Data Cloud at your organization: marketing, sales, service, eCommerce, IT, and your data team. You want everyone working together to create a unified experience for your customers. Data Cloud makes your data actionable Some business units get really attached to their data. Sure, they'll build you an API to provide a one-way glass view of their data, but why do you need them to integrate it with Data Cloud? "It's all about making it actionable," Chris says, "it's a verb, it's an action. Just because I have a view doesn't mean I can do something with it." Data Cloud lets you do segmentation and targeting at scale without having to copy-paste into a bunch of pivot tables. And with AI features like lookalike segments, the possibilities are endless. There's a lot more great stuff from Chris about how Data Cloud can transform your organization so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailhead: Explore Data Cloud Watch: Data Cloud Decoded Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Chris on Twitter: @ChrisZullo Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike: With Data Cloud, you can organize and unify data across Salesforce and other external data sources. After data has been ingested into Data Cloud, it can be used to drive personalization and engagement through the creation of audience segments. So that's what our help documents say. And I wanted to find out from Chris Zullo, who is a business puzzle solver, Salesforce MVP and Global C360 and marketing practice director at AllCloud. What he's seeing when he's helped other admins integrate Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud and all of the benefits across the organization from having visibility into that. Also, what are some of the questions that admins should be asking in order to get that integration going? Now, before we get into the podcast, I want to be sure you're doing one thing and that's following the Salesforce Admins Podcast. And the reason I ask is if you're doing that on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or iHeartRadio, then the newest episode will automatically be downloaded right to your phone so you can listen to it on your bike ride or your dog walk, or maybe you just walk around the neighborhood to clear your head. But let's talk about integrating data with Chris and get Chris on the podcast. So Chris, welcome back to the podcast. Chris Zullo: Thanks for having me. Mike: It's probably been a while, but you're my go-to Marketing Cloud guy, and I feel a lot of people have seen you present in the ecosystem and talking Marketing Cloud. But catch us up. What have you been up to? What do you do? What's your exciting passion in the Salesforce ecosystem? Chris Zullo: Sure. So I mean, right now, I am doing a lot of things around Marketing Cloud

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joe Sterne, a Solutions Architect and Salesforce contractor. Join us as we chat about his tips for job interviews, what to look for in a job description, and how you can use AI to help you prep. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joe Sterne. Contract work in the Salesforce ecosystem Last month, we talked to Jason Atwood about how to prepare for a Salesforce job interview. That episode was fantastic because Jason interviews job candidates all the time, but I wanted to hear from someone who's had experience sitting on the other side of the table. That's why I was so excited to hear from Joe Sterne about his experience as a contractor. Contracting is becoming more common in the Salesforce ecosystem, and it can be a great way to get experience to land that next-level position. "At the end of the day, certifications are great," Joe says, "but certifications aren't the be-all, end-all—it's also experience." Of course, being a contractor means that you're constantly looking for that next gig, so Joe has a lot of great tips to share from going out on so many interviews. What to look for in a Salesforce job description Looking for a new position usually starts with reading through a bunch of job descriptions. Joe recommends taking a close look at what responsibilities are actually listed because it doesn't always match the job title. It can happen for any number of reasons, but it's important information to know going into the interview process because it can affect the salary band. Joe also suggests investing the time to make sure you have something to talk about once you land that big interview, especially if you're bound by an NDA. It could be Superbadges, or work you've done for a nonprofit, or, as Joe says, "maybe it's something you did for fun just so you could talk about it in an interview." No matter what, you need a way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge and how they're a fit for your new role. How to prep for a Salesforce job interview When you're prepping for an interview, Joe recommends taking some time to learn about the business and the industry they're in. Who are their clients? What problems are they trying to solve? And, most importantly, why are you a good candidate for them to help them address those problems? At the end of the day, that's what you're selling. As Joe says, you want to be able to walk into the interview and say, "Here are your problems, I understand them, I'm going to be able to fix them, here are some ways I should be able to fix them, and here are other ideas I have that I could work on with other people as I learn more to evolve those solutions." There's a lot more great stuff from Joe in this episode about how to deal with weird interview questions and how he uses ChatGPT to help him prep, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Listen: How to Prepare for a Salesforce Job Interview Listen: Being Neurodivergent in the Salesforce Ecosystem with Joe Sterne 5 Ways to Make Your Sales and Service Reps' Lives Easier with AI Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Joe on Twitter: @MrJoeSterne Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike: So let's say you're out there as a Salesforce admin and you're interviewing and you get a crazy question like, "If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?" Well, I won't tell you the answer that Joe Sterne gave but Joe Sterne is on the podcast today and he's going to help us flip on the other side of the coin. That's right. So it's June. If you remember back in May, I had Jason Atwood on the podcast. He's from Arkus and he was talking about what he does to interview Salesforce admins. My hope was to get you in the mindset of what a hiring manager is looking for. Today, I got Joe Sterne, who is out there in the job market and he's interviewing as a Salesforce admin, at least he was at the time that we reported this. And gave some tips to help you get ready for your interview, some things that he's doing. Also, you know what? We talk about contract work because I think that's a very viable solution as a new admin. Now, of course, before we get into the episode, I want to make sure you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it be Apple Podcasts or Spotify or iHeartRadio. Go ahead and click that follow button and the reason is then a new episode will be put on your phone right away when you wake up Thursday morning. So with that, let's get to our conversation with Joe. So Joe, welcome back to the podcast. Joe Sterne: Hello. Mike: Good to have you on again. It's

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we have another deep dive with Josh Birk, who talks to Shoby Abdi, Principle Architecture Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the Well-Architected framework, why you should start using Data Cloud, and what you need to do to get ready. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Shoby Abdi. The Well-Architected framework Shoby is the Principle Architecture Evangelist at Salesforce, and he's come on the pod to tell us about the Salesforce Well-Architected framework. And he's here to tell you that the framework is not just for Salesforce Architects—everyone should take a look at it. As Shoby puts it, if your customers or users open Salesforce and it scares them, that's how you know you need to use the framework. It can help you identify anti-patterns in your org and fix them by building solutions that are trusted, easy, and adaptable. Those are the essential ingredients for a healthy org, and that's what puts you in the best position to take advantage of everything Data Cloud has to offer. If Data Cloud was a parking lot We've talked a little about Data Cloud on this podcast in the past, and that's linked below, but Shoby helped explain why it's such a big deal. The main point he makes is that by bringing all of your data together in one place, it can start to tell a story. As he puts it, "What is your customer doing? Where are they? And then how do you interact with them next?" When we talk about Data Cloud, it can often sound like it's some sort of parking lot for all of the information you have about your customers. But as Shoby points out, it's so much more than that. It's more like if your parking lot had a valet that could tell you everything about who's parked there, what kind of car they drive, how long they're staying there, and exactly when they plan to leave. Einstein and Data Cloud If you're a Salesforce Admin looking to enable Data Cloud, Shoby recommends working through the Well-Architected framework to make sure that your org is healthy. After all, these tools are only as good as the data you give them. If you've done all that, there's a lot to get exited about. Data Cloud brings everything into Salesforce as standard objects, which means you can build all sorts of interesting things with flows and everything else you're already using. And with Einstein Copilot and other AI tools, the possibilities are endless. There's a lot more great stuff from Shoby in this episode about how Data Cloud works, so be sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Well-Architected Framework Making Data Cloud Work With Your Existing Salesforce CRM Data Salesforce Architects Blog Podcast: Well-Architected Automation with Tom Leddy Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Shoby on Medium Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Josh Birk: Greetings, Salesforce admins. It's Josh Birk here, your guest host for this week. This week on a deep dive, we're going to dig into data cloud and then talk about data cloud. I brought one of my good friends and old colleagues, Shoby Abdi. All right. Today on the show we're going to welcome back Shoby Abdi to talk about data cloud. Shoby, how you doing? Shoby Abdi: Not too bad. Just doing well. Connections is right around the corner. Just to timestamp this for everybody. Josh Birk: It's a Connections week. It's a DevOps streaming week. Everybody here is in Chicago and I'm still at home talking to you. So that's my social calendar. Shoby Abdi: Exactly. That sounds very similar. I am also in Chicago. Josh Birk: Nice. Okay. So introduce yourself a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your current role. Shoby Abdi: Sure. So my name is Shoby Abdi. I am a principal architecture evangelist on the Salesforce's Architects and Well-Architected team or the other way around. Essentially, if anybody has ever gone to or if you're a Salesforce architect or if you've ever gone to architect.salesforce.com or if you've ever heard of the Well-Architected framework, my role, along with a few others is that we are evangelists. So it's very similar to the work that Josh does or on the admin side or developer advantage to the developer size, except our audience is firmly architects. Architects of all kinds, whether that be our internal ones, customers, partners, architects all over the place. Josh Birk: There's a nice overlap between admins and architects. So actually let's give you that this is the Tonight Show portion where you get to do your own plug. Tell me a little bit about the Well-Architected framework. Shoby Abdi: Sure, absolutely. So the Well-Architected framework in a very simp

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Brandon Walton, President, Owner, and Principal Consultant at Cypress Learning Solutions. Join us as we chat about discovery, building trust, and why building with core Salesforce features is the best option for small organizations. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Brandon Walton. Creating a puppy pipeline in Salesforce Brandon started his career as a car salesman and support tech in the Redmond, Washington area when a fateful call with a tech executive who liked how he explained things led to a job offer. That company used Pardot and, when it was acquired by Salesforce, he had the opportunity to become the implementation partner. The rest is history. Today, Brandon's a Salesforce Consultant for small businesses. One of his clients is Family Bred Puppies, which works to maximize the quality of life for dogs by matching families with small breeders. I wanted to bring him on the pod to share how he created a Salesforce implementation for them that's scalable and easy to maintain. After all, who doesn't love talking about puppies? Creating a low-maintenance, scalable Salesforce implementation As Brandon explains, when you're working with a small team they want Salesforce to help them do what they do best. They often don't have the resources to hire a full-time admin or developer. However, as he was doing discovery, Brandon realized that there was a way to map their already-existing business process onto basic Salesforce architecture. Family Bred Puppies needs to go through an application and interview process to qualify families looking to adopt, which are handled with the standard Salesforce lead and lead status objects. If they've found a suitable candidate, they can upgrade that lead to a contact and use the stages of an opportunity to track the adoption process. There is, however, a custom puppy object for puppy-specific information like vaccinations and genealogy. Because almost everything is built with standard Salesforce objects, the implementation is extremely low maintenance. It's also easy to upgrade and expand. In fact, Brandon just came from a meeting to talk about adding case management and Marketing Cloud, and AI features like Einstein Next Best Action just work because it's all standard. How to build trust with clients While all of this is good in theory, I really wanted to know how Brandon was so successful at getting his client to follow his advice. That's the real challenge, isn't it? You can explain all day why an opportunity would work better than building a custom adoption object, but how do you get them to believe you? For Brandon, it comes down to building trust. "When someone believes that you're listening to them and have their best interests as your top priority, that's the foundation of trust," he says. Keep asking questions instead of jumping to a solution right away, and get them involved in the process of creating a Salesforce implementation that works for them. There's a lot more great stuff from Brandon in this episode about scalability, user training, and puppies, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more How I Solved It: We Turned Salesforce Into a Puppy Adoption Platform! Puppies: Family Bred Puppies Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Brandon on Twitter: @WaltonForce Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: I got a plan. How about this week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk about the Puppy 360 instead of the customer 360. That's right. So this week we're doing a follow-up. You might've seen Brandon Walton on How I Solved This with Jennifer Lee. If not, I'll include that link in the show notes. But Brandon helped a small family business that helps place puppies with the right people to use Salesforce. And so I'm having him on the podcast to talk about discovery, and building trust, and really building applications with native Salesforce features that require some, let's call it minimal maintenance, because I think there's parts of organizations that you build high maintenance or applications for because their business is constantly changing and ones that will require minimal maintenance. We also talk about the art of building trust, which is fascinating, but also puppies. So I'll warn you, there's a few puppy talks in there. But before we get into the episode, I want to be sure that you're following the Salesforce Admins Podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. It's super easy. Just click on the follow or subscribe button inside the app. And the reason I tell you to do that is then the app will automatical