Blaze the Trails on journey to be a Salesforce Professional.

I emphasized in my previous post about various Learning resources available on path to be a salesforce professional. Out of all these learning resources my primary choice has been Trailhead which was introduced to me in my first local Trailblazer Community Groups event by way of few goodies that included Trailhead and Trailblazer Community stickers.

I have been on Trailhead since November 04, 2017 and during this tenure I have slowly and steadily climbed to various trailhead ranks and currently ranked as a Mountaineer (working towards Ranger rank – the highest rank available as on date of this post). I like this gamification to Salesforce learning. It really keeps you motivated to continue further and take on hands-on activities/challenges that fetches higher points leading towards higher ranks. Behind this gamification you are ultimately learning lot of important salesforce concepts and also getting hands on exposure.

So, keep blazing the trails on Trailhead and move up the ranks and soon you will realize that you have climbed a mountain…. not really 😊…. but definitely you would learn a lot about salesforce.  

Here are those Trailhead and TrailBlazer Community stickers from my first community event that connected me to the world of Salesforce learning. These are pasted on my personal laptop and always remind me to keep blazing the trails and continue on the journey to be a Salesforce Professional. 

Time to blaze the next trail :-)

Salesforce - Learning Resources

In my previous blog post, I have indicated that there are plenty of products and services offered by Salesforce to serve diverse needs of the customers. Learning about each of these products indeed requires lot of time, effort and learning resources. So, the big question in mind is where to start as there are plethora of learning resources and also how does one gets access to the salesforce application for learning & experimenting. Well, for learners Salesforce has sorted this out by providing few great options as follows:

• Free lifetime Developer Edition (don’t worry it’s not only for developers/coders) It's a fully featured copy of the salesforce platform and can be created by signing up at: https://developer.salesforce.com/signup

• Free Online Learning platform known as Trailhead which has various courses (called trails) and combination of courses (called trailmixes). An interesting aspect of this platform is gamification of the learning wherein you earn badges and points to achieve higher ranks on the platform.

• Salesforce Certifications (Paid - unless you are lucky to win a free certification voucher by completing trails or participating in various salesforce/company events). Certifications helps you to add value to your resume and let the world know that you have mastered to an extent the concepts around a particular salesforce product or expertise area.  More details about salesforce certifications for various roles available at https://trailhead.salesforce.com/credentials/

• Trailblazer Community It’s a great way to learn and connect with other salesforce users who come here to share their problems and solutions while using the salesforce platform. It’s a very active and vibrant social networking engine which can connect you to plenty of people, resources, events and happenings in Salesforce Ohana (Ohana means Family in Hawaiian language, get used to some Hawaiian keywords like Ohana, Aloha etc.. as Salesforce uses lots of them may be due to its CEO’s deep connection with Hawaiian Culture…that’s how I read it somewhere 😊)

• Trailblazer Community Groups  There are many local groups formed in all the prominent cities/countries and Salesforce encourages and supports local connections to further nurture the Salesforce Eco-System by building local community groups. I got a chance to attend one of the local events in my city and was amused to see the talent and passion of individuals coming together to solve problems and share their knowledge. Free Goodies and an opportunity to interact directly with Salesforce leaders was indeed an icing on the cake. 😊

Looking at the available options, one thing is for sure that Salesforce is investing considerably to build and provide an eco-system towards democratizing the learning of Salesforce. I feel this is also one of the vital reasons for its success as one of the leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System. It’s not that difficult to embark upon the journey to learn Salesforce when you know there are plenty of learning resources and a vibrant community available to help you solve problems and become a Salesforce professional.

Hauʻoli hele ana (‘Happy Journey’ in Hawaiian language. Courtesy google translator)

Salesforce - A Brief History and its Product Offerings

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce (also known as SFDC, salesforce.com) is world’s leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application hosted on the cloud platform. Salesforce is easily accessible from a web browser through Internet. Salesforce also has mobile application versions for both iOS and Android Operating Systems allowing users to access salesforce features on mobile devices.

History of Salesforce

Salesforce was founded in year 1999 by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. It has grown to become the world’s largest CRM company and in year 2018 reported earnings of US$127 million, with an annual revenue of US$10.480 billion. Salesforce ranked 285 on the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States (US) companies by revenue with 29000+ employees worldwide.

Salesforce Products & Services

Salesforce has divided its products and service into various categories to support each stage of the Customer Journey as follows:

Category	Salesforce Product	Product Description
Marketing (Pre-Sales)	Marketing Cloud	Marketing Cloud helps build and manage marketing campaigns e.g. e-mail marketing, mobile messaging, social media marketing etc.
Sales	Sales Cloud	Sales Cloud helps in Sales processes e.g. Lead Management, Accounts and Contact Management etc.
Service	Service Cloud	Service Cloud helps in servicing the customers by customising support and help desk functions like Case Management, E-mail Support, customer self-service portals etc.
Community	Community Cloud	Community Cloud allows to build portals that connects employees, customer, partners and business processes to enable seamless collaboration.
Commerce	Commerce Cloud	Commerce Cloud allows to build great shopping experiences and channels for the customers.
Analytics	Analytics Cloud	Analytics Cloud helps provides business analytics through comprehensive data analysis & in-built artificial intelligence.
Others	Financial Services Cloud	Financial Services Cloud is a CRM offering targeted specifically for Banking, Financial Services and Insurance Industry.
Marketing (Pre-Sales)	Pardot	Pardot helps in customising and automating business to business (B2B) Marketing activities.
Community	Chatter	Chatter allows to create a social networking experience at an enterprise level.
Others	Salesforce IoT	Salesforce IoT helps to connect the internet of things (smart devices etc.) with CRM system.
Others	Salesforce Integration (Mulesoft AnyPoint Platform)	Salesforce Integration product was included in Salesforce products portfolio through an acquisition of a company called Mulesoft. Mulesoft AnyPoint Platform allows to integrate other systems likes Oracle, SAP, Workday etc. with Salesforce.

Source of Information & link to various Salesforce Products & Offerings: 

https://www.salesforce.com/in/products/