Exciting Preparations for Dreamforce: Community Engagement and Technical Insights

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to LeeAnne Rimel, Senior Director of Admin and Developer Strategic Content at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about True to the Core Deep Dive and how it will give Salesforce Admins more chances to engage with product leaders, ask questions, and influence the roadmap.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel.

True to the Core with a spin

If you’ve been to a Dreamforce or TDX, you’re probably familiar with True to the Core. Typically, it’s a keynote session with Salesforce product leaders where you can get key insights and engage them in a Q&A. However, as LeeAnne points out, we’ve noticed over the years that there isn’t always time to go deep on a particular topic.

That’s why we’re launching a special monthly video series, True to the Core Deep Dive. Each month, we’ll focus in on one core Salesforce Platform product area, with product leaders there to answer questions and really get down to the nitty-gritty.

First episode focus: Setup and user access management

For our first episode, we looked at the most highly voted topic area on IdeaExchange: Setup and user access management. So we sat down with Senior PMs Cheryl Feldman and Elizabeth Martin to walk through recent feature updates and look at what’s on the roadmap.

The highlight was definitely the 40-minute question and answer section, which really let us go so much deeper than your average keynote session. Other product owners Larry Tung and Laurent Kubaski were firing away answering even more questions in the chat. If you missed it, be sure to check out the video on LinkedIn or YouTube. 

We need you to help pick future topics

If LeeAnne wants you to take one thing away from this episode, it’s that we need you to help us pick future topics. That’s right, this series is all about transparency and that includes topic selection. So each episode ends with a survey to determine what next month’s episode will be about.

“I read every single comment,” LeeAnne says, “we read all of the feedback and it directly informs every episode we’re going to put together.” So tune in next month for the first community-chosen topic, Flow testing and debugging, and help us figure out what to look at next.

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from LeeAnne about what she’s working on for Dreamforce. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday.

Podcast swag

• Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store

Learn more

• Salesforce Admins Blog: Introducing True to the Core Deep Dive: In-Depth Product Conversations with Salesforce PMs
• First Episode On Demand: True to the Core Deep Dive: Setup and User Access
• Second Episode Event Page: True to the Core Deep Dive: Flow Testing and Debugging 

Admin Trailblazers Group

• Admin Trailblazers Community Group

Social

• LeeAnne on LinkedIn
• LeeAnne on X
• Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn
• Salesforce Admins on X
• Mike on Bluesky social
• Mike on Threads
• Mike on X

Full show transcript

Mike:
Welcome to Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today, we’re diving into a brand new way that Salesforce is connecting with the community called True to the Core Deep Dive. So LeeAnne Rimel, who’s been on the podcast before, is going to join me and talk about this new series that gives you, the Salesforce admin, more chances to engage with product leaders, ask questions, and influence the roadmap based on your feedback.

You’ll have to hear how the first episode went. I’ll have the link in the show notes. We’re going to hear a little bit about what’s coming next, but more importantly, how you can shape future topics. So if you’re as excited as I am, keep walking or riding the train or listening, and let’s get LeeAnne on the podcast.
So LeeAnne, welcome back to the podcast.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Mike:
Yeah, it’s been exciting. And last I checked, there was live, there some event that just melted my social feeds about True to the Core, so we have to start there. Tell me what’s going on.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Well, we love True to the Core and we love True to the Core so much that we are bringing it to you virtually throughout the year. So if you’re not familiar with True to the Core, if you haven’t attended True to the Core in the past, it’s a program with Salesforce that typically is a keynote setting at TrailblazerDX and at Dreamforce where all of our senior product leadership, senior Salesforce executives get on stage and they talk about Salesforce and the future of Salesforce and they answer questions from the audience.

And I think, I should know this, I can’t remember exactly when it started, but it’s more than 10 years old. So it’s a little bit of a fan favorite if you’ve been in the Salesforce ecosystem for a while because it’s such a great opportunity to get transparency into roadmap, to ask very direct questions about things that impact you as a Salesforce professional.
However, we got feedback from our community about True to the Core that there wasn’t enough of them. We only really do it at Dreamforce and at TrailblazerDX typically. And the product suite has gotten big. There’s a lot of features, there’s a lot of product in the Salesforce world, as we all know. So it was a little bit like a mile wide, an inch deep, I think is how people were feeling. Like, yes, maybe I got the opportunity to ask a question, but I wanted to spend more time on that question and more time in that area with the product managers.

So with that context, that’s why we created True to the Core Deep Dive. So that’s what we launched in August. August 12th was the first episode. And it’s very much directly in response to that community feedback that we heard. We want more opportunities for this feedback loop. We want more transparency into roadmap. We want to ask more questions, we want to dive deeper into specific features that matter to us.
So the first episode, which you can find on LinkedIn, was in August. And it was with Cheryl Feldman and Elizabeth Martin, who look after set up and user access. And it was so much fun, Mike. We did like 40 minutes of questions, which is a ton. So it was a lot of-

Mike:
It’s still not enough. It’s still not enough.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Not enough. I know, I hear you. I did see a couple notes-

Mike:
You could do 400 minutes of questions, still not enough.

LeeAnne Rimel:
I know. I know. But it’s definitely more than we had before. So we did over 40 minutes of questions, ton of live Q&A. We had product owners Larry Tung and Laurent we’re in the chat also firing away. It was the meme of doing the keyboard and the keyboard’s lighting on fire because we’re typing so fast. I felt like they were just answering so many questions in the chat about pilot programs, about roadmap, and then really specific technical questions about things that members of the community are facing.

So it was really exciting. I’m really proud of it. I’m really excited that it’s so deeply connected to community feedback. I think it’s really important. That’s basically the north star of True to the Court Deep Dive is community feedback and community voting and community questions. So it was really fun. It was great.

Mike:
So if they missed that first August 12th episode, we’ll link to that. You could still watch, it’s still worth watching, right?

LeeAnne Rimel:
Oh, absolutely. I think there was a ton Cheryl and Elizabeth, like I said, they look after user access and permissions, so they shared some of what’s coming. They also shared, Cheryl shared, “Here’s things that we’re not working on,” right? Because we’re really active on the idea exchange and they-

Mike:
Can’t work on everything.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Yeah, and I think that level of transparency is one of the reasons that Cheryl is so well-connected with the community and really listens to the community is like we need to know, as admins, as developers, we need to know what’s coming on the roadmap. And also we need to know for planning what’s not going to be worked on. If I had my heart set on a particular feature area, I think that transparency is really valuable to have the information to make plans.

Mike:
So let’s talk about the future of this series. Is it series? I think that’s fair to [inaudible 00:05:40]-

LeeAnne Rimel:
It is a special monthly series.

Mike:
Special monthly series. Oh, boy. I feel like get home from school and you get your carrot sticks and your ranch.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Exactly.

Mike:
That’s what everybody got as a kid, right?

LeeAnne Rimel:
Maybe ants on a log.

Mike:
Oh, ants on a log. I forgot about that. Yeah. Okay. There’s always food in the podcast.

So first of all, I’m Salesforce admin and I really want to contribute to this series. What are ways that I can participate?

LeeAnne Rimel:
We need you to contribute to this series, Salesforce admins. The topics for this are entirely chosen by the community. So the very first topic was chosen based on idea exchange trending topics and highly voted topic areas. But all subsequent episodes will be chosen based on the surveys and the voting that we’re hosting on each episode.

So in episode one, at the end of episode one, we had the episode one survey. And the top topic that came out of that and also happens to be a top trending idea exchange topic is flow, and within that, testing and debugging. So that’s our next episode is flow testing and debugging.

So we’ll link, Mike will link in the show notes the blog announcing this, and within that we’ll have both the recordings for the previous episodes, the link to register for the upcoming episode, and also the opportunity to vote on topics that are meaningful to you.

So that is very much, that community feedback specifically from that voting mechanism that we will have in every episode is incredibly important for us to ensure that we are putting together episodes and shows that are directly meeting the community with what you need to talk about. And we’re going very deep. We’re really getting granular with the features. So notice it’s not just a flow episode, which is a very popular topic, but there’s so much within flow.

So we went into the subtopic of what is the most hot, trending, highly voted subtopic within flow? And that was, for this round, was testing and debugging. So I think your feedback and I read every single comment, so if you’ve filled out a survey, thank you so much, from episode one. And then if you fill out surveys in the future, I want you to know we read every single comment, we read all of the feedback, and it directly informs every episode we’re going to put together.

Mike:
So you got to put Easter eggs in your comments. That’s what I hear.

LeeAnne Rimel:
You can throw a little joke in there.

Mike:
If I was [inaudible 00:08:32] I got to put something in there.

LeeAnne Rimel:
I like dad jokes. You can put little dad jokes in there if you want.

Mike:
Well, but that was actually-

LeeAnne Rimel:
As long as you pick a topic.

Mike:
Right, pick a topic. That was actually my question is so I’m glad you’re going granular. Is there a world where flow debugging gets two episodes because it just keeps rising to the top?

LeeAnne Rimel:
Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. I think we’re going to have to see what the data show us. So I think if we see something that is really persistent in where it is on the priority list, I think we will have to talk about should we have repeat kind of follow-on episodes for that. Maybe there’s additional content forms or forms that we should create for that topic area. So I think this is, I think as we face those, we’ll see the best way to make sure we’re meeting the community where they’re asking us for more information.

I would anticipate, safe harbor, but I would anticipate over the next year we’re probably going to have more than one episode on flow because it is such a prevalent topic and there’s so many areas within flow to talk about. And we do really want to be able to have this space to go really deep, really granular on those subtopic areas, if you will, like those feature areas within a larger area.

It’s a great question and I think, yeah, there’s no rules around, well, we spend time on this feature area and we’re never going to talk about it again. I think that that’s not true to the nature of True to the Core and what we’re intending here. And then also I think we’ll see what the data show and what’s demanded.

Mike:
Yeah, because I was going to say it could also be kind of frustrating if you suggest a topic. I’ll be honest, security is a topic we should cover. It never gets voted up very high. Nobody likes talking about all of the padlocks and security features, but it is important. It’s in everything that we do, and so-

LeeAnne Rimel:
Well, and I think we’re going to-

Mike:
… it’d be kind of fun to see.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Yeah, I hear you, right? If something isn’t always a number one topic, will we get to it?

Mike:
Right.

LeeAnne Rimel:
And I think to that, we’ll definitely be kind of moving down the list, if you will. Yeah, so to answer your question more clearly, I think we’ll definitely be kind of moving down the list and moving onto the, for the episode in November, we’ll be looking at, okay, based on the data that we collected so far, and we just had a flow episode, kind of what’s number two? And then we’ll be moving down in that way.

Mike:
Gotcha. So Dreamforce will be a little over a month and a half away when this episode drops. Are there big True to the Core Deep Dive plans for Dreamforce?

LeeAnne Rimel:
Well, there will be a, that we’re anticipating a True to the Core keynote at Dreamforce. So I think that is, if you are newer to Dreamforce or haven’t attended True to the Core at Dreamforce in the past, I really recommend, if you’re going to be there in person, attending the True to the Core keynote. I think it’s a really meaningful part of a Dreamforce experience.
And then also, if you’re not attending Dreamforce in person, it will, typically, it is on Salesforce+, so you can watch it on VOD afterwards. But I think that will be our big… Dreamforce is in mid-October. That will be the True to the Core for October will be the Dreamforce keynote.

We’re hoping to share more opportunities to vote, to really increase the feedback that we get on future episodes. So stay tuned for Dreamforce posts and things like that. And we’re hoping to share more opportunities for Dreamforce attendees to share what they would like to see more of with True to the Core Deep Dive episodes. And then when we’ll be back with our regularly scheduled programming, if you will, [inaudible 00:12:34].

Mike:
Right, because Dreamforce interrupts everything. For fans of LeeAnne, because they had the how… You did the Did You Know series. That was what I was thinking of. Are there other things that you’re working on that you want to share or is it all forward-looking statement right now?

LeeAnne Rimel:
Forward-looking statements. I think we’re working on, I think for Dreamforce this year, so I’m hard at work on Dreamforce technical content in general, sort of the experiences that you have in the Trailblazer Forest and across our technical tracks. And I think I am really excited to see what all the teams are working on for Dreamforce, specifically for our admin, developer, and architect audiences. I think there’s just going to be a lot of great technical learnings.

We also, I will share, are going to have more community-led sessions than ever before, so there’ll be more information coming out about that. But I think we’re going to have a lot of technical sessions, a lot of opportunities for admins and developers and architects and more community-led sessions than… We’ve always had a lot of community-led sessions, we have even more. So I’m really excited to hear and learn from our community.

Mike:
Well, thank you LeeAnne, for coming on the podcast. I know one fun fact, if people are hungry at Dreamforce, you always have snacks.

LeeAnne Rimel:
I do always have snacks,

Mike:
Always. Not candy, but snacks. So that’s always good to have

LeeAnne Rimel:
Snacks to help sustain you through… I think I have a few blogs floating out about there about my preferred snacks, but-

Mike:
I’m sure you do. You’ve always kept the team energized in a healthy way, not in a sugar inducing caffeine coma way, which is great.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Yeah, if someone’s having low blood sugar, I probably have a protein bar for you. You’ll probably be-

Mike:
Yes. Yep.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Or some sort of like-

Mike:
A nutritious organic environmental perfect protein bar.

LeeAnne Rimel:
I do my best.

Mike:
Thanks for coming on the podcast, LeeAnne. We will tune into the True to the Core sessions and I can’t wait to see what you come up with for Dreamforce.

LeeAnne Rimel:
Awesome. Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike:
Big thanks to LeeAnne for coming on the podcast and giving us the scoop on the True to the Core Deep Dive. I have a question for you. What after school snack did you get that wasn’t carrot sticks and ranch or ants on a log? Curious minds want to know. I also got Ritz Crackers with peanut butter, chunky peanut butter because chunky peanut butter on Ritz crackers is awesome. So there we go. There’s a little nugget. Share that on social, be sure to ping me. I’d be curious.

Don’t forget now, all these True to the Core Deep Dive episodes are going to be built on your questions and your input, so be sure to jump in, vote, share your thoughts, jump on the lives, ask questions. I don’t anticipate these ending for a while. We’ll have links in the show notes to the first episode and any other information that I have about it as of when this comes out.
So that’s it. I’m going to go maybe have some carrot sticks and ranch. And until next time, we’ll see you in the cloud.

The post What Is True to the Core Deep Dive? appeared first on Salesforce Admins.