Hey! Welcome aboard
I’m sure you’ll enjoy to work on SFDC, an amazing platform to deliver awesome applications.
But when it comes to get trained on Salesforce, it can be… hard to understand to know from where you can start.
No panic! I’ll explain you how to start start learning on Salesforce platform, how to get started.
Chose a role
Ok, you’re working on Salesforce. But what’s your goal? I mean, what do you plan to do? Several career paths are possible, with differents short/long time objectives.
Business Analyst: you’ll be charged to analyse the business requirements. Analyse the process of the company, understand what is possible or not in Salesforce, work with Architect to design the solution, with the devs to validate the implementation and many more
Developer: You’ll implement the business requirements, take care of Flow, Apex development, code awesome Lightning Web components…
Architect / Solution Architect: Depending on where you work, you’ll design the integration with other systems, train other resources, design the datamodel, work on RFP if, like me you work for a company like Cognizant…
Project manager: A basic knowledge of SFDC is required if you want to be a Salesforce project manager, on top of other organizational skills to drive the project successfully.
And for all these roles, there are different ways to improve your skills, let’s deep dive into them…
Trailhead
What is trailhead?
For me this is one of the strengths of Salesforce.
Trailhead is THE Salesforce learning platform. How does this tool works? Basically, you create a profile and you can start learning. Good news, Trailhead is TOTALY FREE OF CHARGE! all you have to do is to register.
This platform is very well done: you have courses (entry, middle, expert levels) and it gives the possibility to create training orgs.
These training orgs embed most Salesforce features and are designed to practice on all the proposed exercises. Furthermore, when you work on an exercice, at the end of the exercise, the platform is able to evaluate that you completed the exercise correctly. I never saw that anywhere else before !!
What is fun with Trailhead is that it exposes your learner profile publicly (this is not mandatory, it’s up to you)
The more you practice, the more you gain experience and the more attractive your profile becomes! Incredible!!
Which Trailhead module should I get started with?
There are many ways to start on SFDC, but from my part, I would recommend to start with the trail of preparation for the Admin certification.
This trail will help you to understand all the basic knowledge: Datamodel (Object creation, fields creation Permissions, how to import data, Layout customization…)
It’s a very good way to start when you’re a beginner.
Tip: Focus on the projects that are listed in the list of modules to work on. For me, projects are the better way to progress because you will do things by yourself, see the result… From far the better way to improve your skills!!
Training with an instructor
Not very original you’ll tell me 😉 but Salesforce.com is something quite complex to understand on all aspects: administration, fields, fields types, objects relationships, best practices, limitations…
So, for that, attending a training session can be a good idea, the instructor will help you get started better than self learning (of course you can continue after that on Trailhead).
Some companies give training, like Cognizant, the company I work for (I don’t get any cash for posting the link 🙂 🙂 )
You can also give a try on udemy for example that is a good learning platform.
Specialized platforms
After learning a lot lot lot, a ton of badges on trailhead, and dozens of super badges, the supreme recognition of you brand new talent is the certification.
But wait! Salesforce certifications are not so easy to take 😉 before that, make sure that you get the appropriate learning related to the certification.
One of the recognized platform for that is the focus on force platform. You’ll find on it all the materials necessary to prepare a lot of certifications. Courses as well as practice exams.