The Salesforce Admins Podcast

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 X 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 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, welcome back to the podcast Dorian Earl: Though this is an absolute pleasure more than you know and good to see you again at all of the events. So good to see you and good to chat with you again. Mike Gerholdt: You’re one of the people that I’m happiest out in the world and we get to run into each other at different events, and you and I are such easy people to miss out in a crowd. Dorian Earl: Well, I don’t know if that’s the case. I’m the tallest person. You have the best beard and the most charismatic smile. Everybody who sees you go, literally. Mike Gerholdt: I don’t know about that. Dorian Earl: Yeah, well, yeah. When you walk past, and for the listeners who don’t hear this, Mike had walked past us at the World Tour and two people at the table said, “I don’t know who he is, but he has to be somebody.” I said, “You don’t know who Mike Gerholdt is?” And so you have a reputation. I’m surprised there’s not three people following you carrying your briefcase and just kind of handling all of it. Mike Gerholdt: There used to be. I say I’m kind of in my late ’80s John Travolta stage of Salesforce celebrityism where I’m doing the really bad B movies and nobody knows who I am. Dorian Earl: But that’s not true. Mike Gerholdt: I’m hoping for the next Pulp Fiction level role to come up and then I’ll be dancing around like a Santa Claus selling Citibank cards and stuff. Dorian Earl: I was going to say, if you just come out with a good costume, which at every event there are people with a really good… And dance moves, I guarantee you, you’ll be more relevant. Mike Gerholdt: And don’t forget, I got to shave my head. Travolta had that whole time where he shaved his head too. Dorian Earl: Ah, that’s true. I would just tell you, you should keep yours. You got good hair. Mike Gerholdt: I think so. Dorian Earl: You got a lot happening. You got a lot happening. Mike Gerholdt: You know what everybody who subscribes to the podcast didn’t want to listen to? Dorian Earl: What’s that? Mike Gerholdt: Was all of that conversation. So let’s talk about something that’ll provide business value to our customers again, and that is getting ready for Agentforce and AI. And when you and I ran into each other, well, to be fair, when you beelined through a hotel restaurant to find me horsing down my chicken fingers at the bar, you had this wonderful thing, you were like, “Mike, we got to talk about this on the podcast. I have these five things that I’m helping companies do to get ready for AI.” And I said, “You’re right.” So Dorian, let’s get into that. But let’s start off just because sometimes people don’t listen to all of the episodes of the podcast. What do you do? How did you come to be in the Salesforce world? Dorian Earl: Yeah, so I started almost 20 years ago as a sales guy. I needed a way to track my deals and opportunities, and if anybody’s around in the mid, I’m not going to give my age, in the mid 40s, we all used Franklin portfolio, Franklin Company Planners, and I would leave them at my client’s office and set them on top of my car and drive off and there goes my pipeline and all of my stuff and I couldn’t do that. So kind of being a forward-thinking salesperson, I said I need to have a way that I wouldn’t lose my notes, my deals, my opportunities, everything I had worked hard to build. Then I went to purchase programs and databases and lo and behold, I found a web-based CRM called Salesforce. That was 20 years ago. That was really became my secret sauce, Mike. I was an average salesperson and getting good, but really my secret sauce was organization and to be able to stay on top of deals. And in my line of work as a salesperson at that time, we had over 100,000 products to keep track of. So what kind of promotion was going on? Who needed what? What was going on? I was a sales rep in the medical dental supply space. So we had a lot of manufacturers and four or five different manufacturers for each line. Like gloves, we had five or six brands of gloves and masks. So who had the promotion? Which one did my customer like? Oh, my doctor liked the left-handed glove from Crosstechs or from MedTech or from all those kind of companies. And I had to keep all those things straight because I had 300 plus clients. The doctor would like one and their front desk would like another and the assistant, that kind of… And so all those things became really difficult for me to keep track of and I needed a better way to do that. And so lo and behold, I purchased Salesforce for myself, started to get some success. The down economy hit and I was of the few people that I could actually forecast my sales to my boss. I can go in and say, “This client mentioned this to me earlier on in the year. I think we can close them if we do these things.” I was one of the few people at our branch that could do that. Long and short of it, that grew to me going independent, started my own firm and then working with other companies, help bring in their sales or their product in the market. It was always, “Hey, I can help you lead your sales team, but you need to have a database or CRM.” Again, 15 years ago, it was, “I have this in some spreadsheet or somebody in our office has this in a spreadsheet.” And I said, “You need to have one, a better way to track your sales and deals.” And I would tell them, “You need to go out and buy the Salesforce thing.” And so I worked in tech startup helping companies take the product in the market. One of those products was acquired by Google. And so I became a contract sales manager for Google for a while and Apple for a little bit, and that’s part of my story. And six years ago, a company actually just reached out and said, “Can you help us with the CRM and sales thing?” And then my career helping companies from the inside out versus the outside in kind of worked. And so now, I’m the founder and CEO of a company with 450 plus clients and about 20 plus team members and things are really fun. So that’s the long story short, right? Mike Gerholdt: Right, right. It’s interesting because we’ve known each other for a while and we’ve both been the ecosystem for a while and we’ve CRM and Salesforce change and add new features to the time. I think what we’re seeing now with AI everywhere, what is your level of, let’s start off with your five things, what is your level of awareness that you’re seeing with your clients on being AI ready or even having thoughts of how they would use that? Dorian Earl: Everybody knows about it. As I said, I see articles at my desk. My team is using this. There are everyday products that they are seeing now that are becoming more intelligent or adding AI. You can’t turn on a TV today every… If you’re watching football and there’s a break, one commercial will say, “This is the product with AI now.” So there’s a lot of buzz and really awareness, and now it’s starting to really be embedded into other products. What I’m finding out with our clients is they don’t understand the real impact of what this means for their business yet. They know it’s out there, but they just don’t know how to leverage that, how LMMs work, which ones to use, use cases, but they are seeing AI being embedded into their everyday tools. They are seeing email plugins, they are seeing these things and they’re starting to encounter it. So our role is really just to say, “Look, let 2025 be the year of intelligence at your company. Let’s make everybody 10% smarter. Let’s make everybody roll in your work, let’s make everybody 10, 15, 20% smarter this quarter, this six months this year.” And they’re really getting excited with that. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It’s kind of like the early 1900s with cars. I mean, there’s how many people making an AI product right now? And I guess we’ll find out how many survive and don’t because the early 1900s, there was over 300 car manufacturers and now there’s what? 5, 10 arguably? Dorian Earl: Right. Maybe. Right, yeah, maybe. Right. Mike Gerholdt: I’m sure more, but you know. So in the five things admins can do to get ready for Agentforce and AI, you list number one is awareness. So I feel like maybe last year that was like, “Oh, we kind of need to wake up.” And most people, I don’t want to say most people, most people I know became AI aware at the consumer grade level. I think it’s another to think of AI at the enterprise level, which is where Salesforce operates because we’re an enterprise CRM. We’re operating immediately with millions of rows of records and sometimes even data lakes or multiple organizations. So I’m sure that you probably run into a few that are aware. Let’s go on to number two, which is the preparedness. Where do people fall there? Dorian Earl: They are not because one, if they are aware, and I think you hit it on the head, and I don’t want to bury what you just said. Mike Gerholdt: Sure. Dorian Earl: Really, most technology comes out as a consumer facing application to catch what’s called a user adoption, right? And I remember when I was in college and Google first launched and literally people going out and say, “You can ask Google anything and it would just come back with an answer.” Or as Amazon, you can go put in any book you want. Well, it took a few years for people to understand the business implication of having all the data on the internet to ask a question. It even took Google really by storm or Amazon if you would’ve asked them when they started what their business would look like. They didn’t know. So we are in early days, but the people that are understanding, okay, there is an entity or there is a program out there that can ingest data and then come back to you with patterns, use cases, ideas, analysis, and that could have some ramification for us as a company. So how do we get prepared to use this? And so when we start telling our clients about this, they said, “Wow, this could be really exciting. What do we do then to prepare to really turn these features on?” And so I’m going to mention this. I’m going to kind of go backward and start to go forward. This analogy I start to tell is I think it’s maybe going to ring true. So I was a previous athlete, and if I was going to ask you, Mike, “Hey Mike, my knee is swollen and it’s a little sore.” You would probably tell me rest it, elevate it, ice it. These are common things that… this is generalized intelligence, right? If my three-year-old son falls and scrapes his hand and it’s bleeding, you’re going to go wash it, you’re going to go let it air, obviously you’re going to put some things on it, you’re going to wrap it up in a Band-Aid. That’s generalized intelligence. Now, if I told you as a 40-year-old male that’s 50 pounds overweight, that played basketball at a very high level for many years, that over exercises in my yard and my knee swells probably once a month. And you would say, “Given that relative information about you, you should probably go see a doctor. You may have a micro tear, you may have tendonitis, you may have some other things. All I did was I just gave you further background and relevant information versus general. And that’s exactly how AI works. Most people are just going asking it generalized questions and getting generalized answers. But the more relevant information you can give AI, just in general, through prompting, then it can come back and say, “Based on information you told me and the background and the person and this issue, I’m going to recommend these things.” And really AI in general is as good as the data you give it. And so one of the things we are telling our clients is to prepare to use lists. In order for this to work at an enterprise level, where are all of your company data? Are you giving AI all the background you can on your company? Where would it find it? Do you have it in PDF? The origin story on your company, the history, the industry, how you service, the founders. So all of those things, the company data, the user. Tell us about the sales reps, their roles, their unique skills, the images on them. Products and services, where does that data set and how do we adequately get it into a place where AI can read it? One, if it’s not, obviously of course, on the internet, then we should put it there. But two, it should be in a place that’s up-to-date so AI can go in and read those things and answer questions. And so we just want to give it as much relative information as you can. That way, it doesn’t give general answers or general information, which of course could be issues. So we want to prepare our clients and say, “If you don’t have this, let’s start to gather it. If you need help gathering it, we’re going to help you put it in a way that AI can read it. Your company data, the user data, your products and services, your customers, and any systems you would like AI to have access to.” The good part of it is a lot of this should be in their CRM. It should already be in Salesforce. What most people don’t know is you can go into the user records and pretty much put in these custom fields about roles and background and info. And obviously, you can fill out information on the company. This is actually the good part, what a lot of people don’t really know. Your company data is stored in Salesforce, your NAP, your name, address, phone, number of the business, the website, the social. We can start enriching Salesforce with your company data. Images, logos, all of those things. And so if we do that, we are really preparing AI, we’re really just teaching it. So what can we teach it and how much can we get AI to know about your company? And then this is what I call that preparedness stage, Mike. It may take people weeks to do this. They may say, “Wow, how much data should we give AI?” As much as you want given the relevant tasks. So sometimes it takes our clients weeks to do this. Sometimes we’re putting together an entire process on what do we want AI to have access to and learn on. So that’s kind of step two. Mike Gerholdt: No, I like that. I’m thinking of all of the use cases my team puts together. When we put out the Agentforce Decoded series, a lot of it is thinking from the sales or service perspective of, hey, how do you summarize this account or summarize this case. One part that you brought up that’s very salient that I think is, not to look ahead, but is like a good quick win is also what is your company about? What is your brand voice? Dorian Earl: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: What are your, kind of if you had a front door, what are your window information? What’s your address? What’s your mailing address? What’s your hours? I say that because if you’re thinking of creating an agent to help your salespeople write better emails, well, it needs to be grounded in some information that it knows what it is and it knows what company you are and how to sound, right? I think it’s always important that brands have a voice, and even the admin relations, we have a brand voice. That they’re constructing that so it’s sounding cohesive. And that can just be a simple PDF or a knowledge article that an agent could reference. Dorian Earl: Absolutely. Mike Gerholdt: A lot of things, including data cleanup is important, but it’s also where do we go to get repositories of this information that’s just kind of the basic window sticker of your company? So that’s really good. Dorian Earl: Well, and that’s that preparedness phase. Because if you do this well, now again, I’ve thought this through because as every company you work for, you start with, “Let me give you background on the company.” Mike Gerholdt: Right. Dorian Earl: And then, “Let me tell you what we do.” And, “Let me tell you who we service and who our ideal customers are. And then let me tell you about the task you’re going to be doing.” AI is almost no different. “Let me tell you about the company that you’re going to do this work for. Let me tell you about our background. Let me tell you about our products and services.” So if this data is not in a place where Agentforce or an agent can read it, then the challenge is it’s going to make it up. It’s going to make up the answer or it’s going to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know.” And both of those items you don’t want. And so exactly to your point on brand voice, imagine a sales rep says, “I want to craft an email.” And you don’t tell the AI what the brand voice is, so then you have to prompt it. So if you can pre-ground Salesforce or your AI in this data already, then it’s that much further ahead, which is really kind of the secret sauce of this though. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Thinking ahead, moving on step three because we’re in a five-step program, got to get through our steps. But rightfully so, and even my team tries to do this, we try to come up with super complex use cases and stuff and really show the breadth of what some of these tools and features can do. But we all live in the real world. And in the real world when you’re a project manager, it’s what are the quick wins? What is the low effort, high result stuff that we can return? I think implementing Agentforce, we’re looking, as an admin you’d be looking for that too. So when you talk through quick wins and usage, what do you talk through as examples with some of your clients? Dorian Earl: Yeah, so this was really the thing that kind of got me excited about this because as I look at all new pieces of tech, I said, okay, who can use it and what’s the level of effort does it take to really get something out of it? And so when I turned on Agentforce and trails, one of the first trails, one of the first examples I saw were record summaries. And my mind immediately went back to, “Wow, as a sales rep, I wish I had this.” And those that haven’t seen this yet, you can literally, inside of Salesforce, pull up a record and prompt and say, “Summarize this record.” And it will read the record and it will read the related records and then give you a summary of what that record is. Now, I’m going to go back to my previous example. I was a sales rep with 300 clients. Some days my boss would say, “This is a new client, go visit them.” I wish I could click and summarize what the previous rep was doing with them in the last three, six, nine months. How do you do that? And so if you are a sales rep, this is great. If you’re a sales manager and somebody says, “You need to do an account plan for this client.” And you haven’t seen them, or a classic, the client is upset, “I want to talk to your manager.” They talk to the sales manager or service manager. And of course, we’ve all made that phone call of, we’re calling in and they say, “Please hold. I need to look at the notes.” Record summaries save us… I know you’re laughing, but even when I’m happy, I called in and I said, “Hey, I have a question.” “Hold on please, sir, I’m going to pull up your account. Let me read the notes.” Mike Gerholdt: Let me get up to speed really quick here. Dorian Earl: Exactly, exactly. Let me get up to speed. And that person skims through as quick as they can to try to answer, “Oh, I see you called in on January 6th and you were asked about this issue. Was it ever resolved?” Do you have an open case about… ” Well, you have the data sitting right in front of you. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Dorian Earl: So record summaries are the quick wins, I think at every company you can use. And as an admin, it’s great because it comes out of the box. As a user, these things are huge because if you’re working with a mass amount of records, any individual record, or again, a large amount of related records to a parent record. Cases, tasks, notes, all of those things, and related to an account, opportunities, the record summaries are huge. It’s actually one of my favorite features if I could say. That would be one of the very first quick wins. The second one, I would say quick reporting. I know it’s a little bit lower on my list, but I found this out just by accident. You can just query, you can ask AI to say, “How many accounts do I have in New York?” And it could come back based on the state that’s on the account. It will say, “You have 967 accounts in New York, you have 300 in Illinois.” Now imagine if you are the Salesforce admin, and I used to get this question, “Can you pull a list of leads in this city for me? I’m just curious.” I would get those questions all the time from an executive or from a manager or somebody. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yeah. Dorian Earl: Now, you don’t have to ask your admin. You don’t have to go in and learn how to build a report. You can just ask, “How many of certain record do I have?” And AI can answer that question, which is pretty cool. How many leads do I have in nurture? How many leads do I have in New York? That’s in the working status? These are huge things when it comes to quick reporting. Marketing should be able to do this, sales should be able to do this. I mean, just a sales rep, “How big is my pipeline based on this product?” It could answer that question for you. So really cool. Those are just two of the quick ones I would say, which are huge. Mike Gerholdt: I think sometimes people confuse like, “Well, that should just be a list view.” Yeah, it could be a list view, unless it’s the one time you need that data or you also need that data plus something else. Because everything you were asking for, I could create as a list view. Why have AI do it? Well, because it can probably do it faster and I can also just add a quick filter to it. And it’s a one-off use case that’s just faster than creating a list view in your example. Dorian Earl: Well, yes, yes. And one of the things our clients always ask is, should I build a report for this or should I build a list view for this? Again, if you’re just doing analysis, just build the report. You may say, “Okay, there’s 900 accounts in New York.” You say, “Okay, based on that, I can assign those accounts to a person to do certain action.” To call, to follow up, to send a postcard, to do certain things, invite to an event, start targeting for this. Then you would create a list view then to take action against that. However, before you get to the action stage, you still need to do some analysis. Not every report is going to turn into a list view, something to take action on. Mike Gerholdt: And I’m sure you’re finding too that a lot of the quick wins are, the examples you gave, somebody could be listening like, “Well, that’s not going to work for me.” Right, the quick wins, I anticipate for what you bringing up are department specific and/or company specific. So as an admin, I may go to a department and show them record summary, and they’re like, “Well, but that’s not going to work for us.” Great. Well, here’s three other things that we can do as quick wins. That might not work. So record summary may be a quick win for a customer service team or a salesperson, but might be completely different for somebody else that has to do deal ops or a deal desk kind of thing. Dorian Earl: Well, you know what? I’m going to challenge your users because I’m going to ask them, send me a message on LinkedIn and tell me when a record summary would not work, would not be relevant. Mike Gerholdt: Okay, good. Please do. Dorian Earl: Because I’ve never pulled up a record of Salesforce and said, “I don’t want a summary of everything happening here.” I’ve never had it happen. I’ve never pulled up a record in Salesforce and said, “I don’t want to see everything related to it and really have that knowledge.” Now, not every single time, but I can foresee anybody that’s ever used Salesforce, you want to pull up a record and you want to know as much as you can about that record. Now, you don’t have to know everything and to take action, but I can see every user in Salesforce can take advantage of the record summary feature. That’s really my point there. Mike Gerholdt: No, it’s good. Dorian Earl: And so somebody could say, “You know what? I’m using Salesforce. I would never want a summary of a record.” I’m like, intriguing because I’ve never worked with anybody in Salesforce that would never find that feature useful. Mike Gerholdt: I don’t know. We’re going to find out. I’ve got some edge case listeners, man. There’s dark corners of the internet. Dorian Earl: Yes, please find me on LinkedIn. Now, if somebody is like a lawyer doing auditing, “Yes, I never get in there and do it.” Okay, okay, I got it. But again, I am really, really curious who would not use or who does not find that feature useful. Mike Gerholdt: So I guess my point was quick wins could be different wherever you go. I’m betting number four is the thing you probably run into a lot, which you have down as internal process improvement. Dorian Earl: Yes. And so this is what really gets people to start moving. They’re really not adopting technology for record summaries, even though it is important. I would say internal process improvement is the first place AI will show up. It’s what everybody’s talking about in articles. We are becoming so much more efficient. We don’t need to hire that many people to do this now because internal process improvement would mean you could cut tasks down from eight or nine clicks down to two. You can have AI augment the workflow or work that is being done because it is doing things on the background that would cost you time, energy, effort, all of that. This is where the big ROI is coming in AI that a lot of people do not understand. You could say, “Please create a case. Please schedule an appointment. Please create a record. Please send a sample. Please issue a return for this record.” And just speaking of the last one, chargebacks, returns. Those usually take multiple records being opened up, some analysis being done, five or six clicks, related optics, and then emails going out, approvals. AI can handle that stuff, which is really cool because they could say, “Great, this is all done for you.” As opposed to, “Okay, give me one second, let me see which order this is from. Let me see what product this was. Let me find this view. Okay, how did you pay? Would you like a return on your card?” You could say, “AI, please go in, issue a return for this item and credit it back to their credit card.” Okay, done. And so instead of eight or nine clicks, five or six minutes of downtime on a call, all those things. And in some companies I worked with, they just was one person that just issued returns, which is crazy. Now AI can do those things or create a case. So now you’re talking about imagine one person having the benefit of saying, “I can do my job and a quarter of another job.” If you have five people doing that, you really have five people working, getting the benefit of six. That’s huge. Mike Gerholdt: Wow, I wasn’t thinking about that. But your point five. So expand on this. External tasks outsourced to AI. Dorian Earl: Yeah, so what I mentioned for number four, this is where a lot of companies are a little scared to say, “I would not have AI talking to my clients.” Okay, I got it. But if you have internal process, if AI is handling, if an agent, and we’ll mention the Agentforce in this case because it has all the relevant context on your company, all the relevant context on your products and services, the people using it and your clients. You can enable it to do narrow tasks such as, “Hey, here are a list of leads.” So imagine this workflow, Mike, and then I’ll get the external case in. You would say, “Pull up a lead, summarize the record, draft an email based on the record summary and their needs for this lead.” Okay, email draft. “Okay, put the email and send it out for me please.” So that could be five or six clicks. Pull up the record, click summarize the record, click draft an email, click send the email, right? Mike Gerholdt: Uh-huh. Dorian Earl: And then move along. Or you could just say, I will have an agent. I will program an agent or ask an agent in Salesforce to do that for all of my 30 leads in the New York area. Pull up, summarize, create an email, send off. Now, if it’s watching you do it for the next year, it would’ve learned what you’ve liked, what you don’t like, what the replies are like, information to add in because it gets smarter. This is the thing a lot of people aren’t realizing with AI is that it becomes smarter over time. And so you can allow it to do these narrow tasks. “Hey, follow up with these 30 leads that were nurturing in New York and do this for me.” Those are external facing AI agents that are taking action on your behalf. And then you can say, I will have an agent for those that are interested that reply back. I have a second agent that’s just a scheduling agent. So the Salesforce Scheduler, which allows people, external people in your email to look in, look at your calendar, look at your availability, schedule blocks of time based on their availability. All you do is really send the email with the link in there. They schedule. Now, do you have to send an email, Mike, or can you have an AI agent send the email? Okay, great. Now that’s a narrow task, but that’s an external client facing that you don’t have to be involved. They can schedule. So now we have two agents. We have one that’s doing the nurturing, we have one doing the scheduling. Okay, great. Now imagine previous to this appointment scheduling, you can say, “Summarize the record. Give me some bullet points. I want to do an account review.” Maybe that’s not a lead, maybe it’s an account in this case. Let’s do an account review of what they previously ordered or most likely to order, our recent comms, open tickets, open cases, anything that’s going on with them and give me three things that could be beneficial for us to mention. Maybe have an AI to summarize the record, come up with those things, pop that data into a field for you. So now we have the third agent that somebody nurtured, somebody followed up, somebody scheduled, somebody summarized records, prepped in account plan for you. We have three external facing agents just in the sales motion or maybe account planning motion. Those are external facing AIs because they’re dealing directly with your clients or your accounts. And just in the sales motion, those are three. Now you can have one agent to do all three. You can have three different ones. So imagine having an external facing AI that just does those three things. That’s huge, right? Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely. Dorian Earl: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, again, I’m talking about just sales motion, but there’s a whole nother workflow in there. The marketing motion, there’s a whole nother workflow and the service motion. But those are just really, really cool things though. Either way. Mike Gerholdt: Well, going back to point three, it’s always looking for the quick wins. How do you make sure you go through each department and get them up and running and then come back? Because that’s what I always like to do as opposed to spend too long in one department and they’re fully vested, and another department is like, “Well, where’s our love?” Dorian Earl: Well, true, true. And this is where if we can step back, I know this is kind being prepared for Agentforce. To my understanding, there is not an agent that can prepare a client for Agentforce. It would be great if it could, but it’s not. But there is one. It’s called the Salesforce Admin or the Salesforce product order, or whoever is in charge or forward looking for the client and saying, “Hey, in 2025, what are we going to do with our technology stack center it around Salesforce to grow our business, make us more efficient?” This is where some intelligence, some wisdom, some understanding some business analyst skills, some requirements gathering skills. This is what our team is doing with our clients. Actually maybe this new era of really intelligence, this is where Salesforce is really excited for all of us working in the ecosystem because they are saying, we now have a tool that you can make yourself more efficient. And we are all kind of shepherding them into this new era of really intelligence. So this is really fun. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s why you work in tech, right? Every day is a little bit something different. I never would’ve predicted this, but I remember back when it was social and mobile and it’s like, where are we going? And we’re talking about connected toothbrushes, and now I don’t know. Now the toothbrush maybe is going to start giving me advice. Dorian Earl: Well, it could. I mean, with all the things that are happening, obviously I used to work in the medical dental space. I give you a lot of thoughts and advice there, but I cannot wait to see in the next year as we enable customer facing agents that have been trained. There is something to that. Now, I wouldn’t put a customer facing agent out there without training. I wouldn’t put regular people out there without training. But in the next year or two, with every company that I deal with becoming smarter, the places I order pizza from, they say, “Hello, how can I help you?” I’m like, “You don’t know what I previously ordered?” “No.” That’s a lack of intelligence, right? Mike Gerholdt: Right. Dorian Earl: And so how many places that we go to and solicit, and they’re not as intelligent, that an agent can help the person on the other end do their job better, which is really cool. So I am super excited. I wish every company that we worked with, big and small, would adopt technology like this. And trust me, I’ve been singing the song to everybody going, “Hey, hey, I don’t know what systems you have internally, but let me help you.” And everything from athletics, to restaurant, to food, to the travel, to all of those things. So I’m looking forward to it. Mike Gerholdt: It’s going to be good. Dorian, thanks for coming by and helping admins out again. You’re always in our corner giving us advice and setting us on the right path. So I appreciate it and can’t wait to connect with you again later this year at all of our events. Dorian Earl: Yeah. Well, and I’ll let you know how this goes because as we shepherd clients into this new era of intelligence, I’ll tell you which ones on step two, step three, and step four. And Salesforce is really doing a good job of telling the story of what people are doing with agents and AI, which is really cool. I cannot wait. This is really, really fun. But thanks for all you do with helping us in the ecosystem. I think I mentioned to you, when I started with Salesforce 2017, I was listening. I went back and listened to all of your previous podcasts and just to get caught up, and I listened to one a day, one every other day and listened to them on one and a half or two speed. And so it was a really, really, really cool thing. One, you’ve got a great obviously voice, and you know- Mike Gerholdt: Even at two speed, I do? Dorian Earl: Even at two speed, you’d be surprised what Mike sounded like at two speed. Yep, yep, yep. Mike Gerholdt: I sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.  Dorian Earl: Mike, and Gillian at one and a half or two speed was something, right? And so yeah, that was really good. But still having a place where people can stay up to date and knowledgeable. On behalf of me and everybody else, we thank you for having a place that where we can learn and obviously stay up to date here. This is really cool.  Mike Gerholdt: I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Dorian Earl: Yep. Yeah, thank you. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that was another fun discussion with Dorian. I always love running into him at events. And if you’ve ever checked out his breakout sessions, they’re one for the books. He is an incredibly powerful and passionate presenter and knowledgeable, huge fan of Salesforce Admins. I really loved his five-step approach for preparing for Agentforce. I think it gave us some actionable insights for us to think about and look forward to bringing more intelligence and efficiency to our organizations. Now, have you found this episode helpful? Hey, do me a favor, share it with somebody. Put it out on social. I’m on Bluesky. Everybody’s on Bluesky. And if you’re on Apple Podcasts, all you have to do is tap the three dots to click share episode, and it’ll take care of posting the rest. Now, don’t forget all the links, everything that we mentioned on the episode, including a transcript, is available at admin.salesforce.com. You can find everything there, including a lot of blog posts. Tons of information. Now, as always, if you’d love to join in the conversation, and I’d love to be there with you, jump over to the Admin Trailblazer Group. That is in the Trailblazer community. You know where the link is. It’s in the show notes, which is at admin.salesforce.com. Look at that. It’s like, “Toot, toot, toot, here we go.” Anyway, thanks again for tuning in and we’ll see you next Thursday in the cloud. The post Level Up: The Admin’s Action Plan for Thriving in the Agentforce Era appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

Mehmet Orun, SVP, GM, and Data Strategist at PeerNova, delves into the transformative power of Data Cloud in creating trustworthy AI experiences. He discusses how to prevent AI agents from fabricating information and sharing sensitive data. Mehmet emphasizes the evolving data management practices, noting that old rules don't fit in the AI-driven world. He highlights the significance of personalized engagement through Agentforce and the integration of unstructured data, ultimately enhancing user experience and organizational productivity.

Sri Srinivasan, Senior Director of Information Security at Salesforce, shares his expertise on securing AI experiences with Agentforce. He outlines five essential questions for admins to consider when building AI agents, focusing on roles, data access, and guardrails. The discussion highlights the principle of least privilege to ensure agents operate safely. Sri also offers a preview of new tools his team is piloting to enhance security in AI. Tune in for insights on balancing innovation and security in Salesforce's AI landscape!

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. 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 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, 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 and 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 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 X 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 about what you do in the community and how long you’ve been working with Salesforce? Joy Shutters-Helbing: I have been working with Salesforce for 21 years, and for those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it before, it does run in parallel with the age of my son. I’ve been a Salesforce Admin for the duration. I’m a Chicago Admin Community Group leader, along with Denise and Chris. I am a Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame. I am podcast host with Mike Reynolds, and he will talk about that a little bit more in a second. I also host MVP Office Hours on the first and third Friday of every month, and I’ve spoken at Dreamforce, and TDX, and a host of other community conferences. I think that’s it. Mike Gerholdt: Well, if not, then we’ll definitely be able to find you online. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yes. Mike Gerholdt: Mike, how about you? Mike Reynolds: Well, I have been Salesforcing for about 10 years, and I’ve been able to do a lot over that time. It’s been a wild ride. I’m a credential ambassador, so I’ve helped create, I want to say, 13 different certifications or updates to them, some Superbadges and Trailhead modules, stuff like that, maintenance modules. I’ve spoken at a lot of conferences, all sorts of different topics. Things that range from DevOps to, I think most people have heard me talk about permissions. It’s been a real big deal for the last couple of years. Spoken at a lot of conferences, it’s super fun. I love connecting, and getting out, and doing all that. Now, I work at Slack. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yes. That’s right. Very communicative of you to work at Slack. Mike Reynolds: Yeah, because I like the collaboration. Mike Gerholdt: You almost threw me a perfect segue there, which is that you’ve been out and done a lot of presenting. One thing that I’ve seen when I was doing user groups when we were in Chicago, you guys also both host a podcast called The JAM Pod, and depending on when you choose to air my episode, I was on it. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yay. Mike Gerholdt: [inaudible 00:03:52] I’ll link to that. I might have to go back and link to it depending on when it happens. But one of the things that we see ebb and flow in the community is the amount of contributions that community members, of their own free will, put out, and I know, on your podcast, we talked about speaking at user group events. Where did the idea of, “Hey, let’s sit down and create something that’s not the easiest thing in the world to create, but we want to put it out and the world,” come from? Mike Reynolds: I think that’s Joy’s fault. Joy Shutters-Helbing: It’s always my fault. Everything’s always my fault. It was probably me asking a lot of questions and Mike being like, “Well, we should talk to people that have the answers to that.” I think that’s really where it started. But also, there was a challenge that happened on MVP Office Hours once upon a time from Squire. Squire, I’m sorry. Here we are, just keep talking about you. But it’s really in a good way about how he had opinions about Mike’s presentation on permissions, and I was like, “I can arrange this phone call.” There was some excitement around this throwdown-at-the-flagpole-on-the-playground situation. Mike Gerholdt: Oh my. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yes. People thought that, well, I’m not going to give it away, but people were very excited to see the fisticuffs that were going to happen around permissions and profiles between Mike Reynolds and Squire Kershner. If you haven’t heard our first episode, you should go back and listen to it, and you can find out how that turns out. But since then, we have spoken with a number of different people in the Salesforce ecosystem about, wow, a host of different things. Everything from hiring, to technical talks, to… The topics are very wide-ranging, including the podcast we recorded with you. Did you have something else to add, Mike Reynolds? I have two mics on this call. This is crazy. Mike Gerholdt: I know. I forgot to mention that Joy’s in not a good situation where she says, “Mike,” and then there are two people go up. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yeah. I say, “Mike,” and then I roll my eyes. Mike Reynolds: I can tell from the tone who you’re talking to though. We were working together at the [inaudible 00:06:16] group. Joy Shutters-Helbing: A customer? A customer. Mike Reynolds: Yeah. We were at a customer, but Joy and I were working together. This idea came up and I looked into it. It didn’t cost that much to get a really basic, “Here’s what we can do to record a podcast, doesn’t take a ton.” It’s not super sophisticated or anything, but it works, and we have a developer edition of Salesforce that we built out over… Yeah, it was on a Saturday. I think four hours to put together a very basic community site that we host the episodes on, and then that was kind of it. We just didn’t give up, I guess. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Joy Shutters-Helbing: I’m still adding fields in production. Mike Reynolds: That’s true. That’s true. Mike Gerholdt: Joy following all of the best practices that we speak about. Joy Shutters-Helbing: It’s a dev org. Mike Reynolds: All the work has been done in prep. I think that’s the key. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Yeah, all the work. Yeah, yeah. Mike Reynolds: It’s the main takeaway. Mike Gerholdt: Gotcha. Mike Reynolds: But really, it’s funny because the podcast is… It’s been a lot of fun, but when I look back at how we got here, it’s basically the exact same as how we got with all these things, the conversation about permissions. I mean, I’ve given that talk so many times, people reach out, user groups reach out, and they’re like, “Hey, we would love to have you come and get this presentation.” I’m happy to do so, but the presentation came from a work meeting where we were trying to solve the problem. Yeah. I called Joy and I called another colleague, and I was like, “Hey, this is messed up. We have to find a way around this.” We worked on it for about an hour and a half and then iterated over it for maybe a week. There’s our real life business problem and our real life solution, and then we just decided to talk about it, because it’s applicable. It happens to everybody. Everybody’s got permissions, everybody’s got the same challenges. Mike Gerholdt: What do you feel is the biggest barrier from people going from, not necessarily starting, let’s say, a podcast, but creating and contributing community content in the Salesforce ecosystem? Joy Shutters-Helbing: What’s the biggest hurdle, the biggest obstacle of folks creating and sharing their content with the rest of us? I think there’s a lot of things. There’s, where to start? You have two different people. You’ve got people that have stuff and they’re ready to share, they just don’t know where to start, and then there’s the folks that are like, “I don’t know if what I have is important enough to share with anyone.” I think the first hurdle is getting folks to a place where they understand that they are experts in the business problem that they have, that they can share with the community, and they are the experts on how they’ve applied a solution to this problem. Giving these folks the confidence to say, “There is someone out here who is dealing with this similar problem, who will learn, and engage, and benefit from what you’re sharing.” Once we get folks to build that confidence and that what their experience is worth sharing, I think then we can start getting more content from them. Mike Gerholdt: Mike, how about you? Mike Reynolds: I think one of the challenges that a lot of people have is knowing that they can and then knowing when. Maybe you’ve been to a community conference. Do you think, “Oh, I could contribute to this,” but you didn’t think of that three months ago when the call for speakers was open, and so right now is a brilliant time. I mean, I know Midwest Dreamin’s call for speakers is open. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Through the 31st, I think. Mike Reynolds: Yeah. Right after that, Florida Dreamin, their call for speakers will be open. Mid-Atlantic has got to be soon. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Dreamforce is coming up. Mike Reynolds: Yeah, it will. Here before you know it, which is crazy to think about that it sets in, but it will. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Community groups and conferences are the best place to run those through for the big ones. Mike Reynolds: Because I think most people have something that would benefit from someone else. Most of us have done something. If you’re sitting at home going, “Oh, well, I haven’t done anything that’s that cool,” you have. You have, because there’s somebody else who wasn’t able to do it that tried. Anytime you make a flow, somebody else tried that and didn’t get it right. We’ve all got things, and I think it’s that realization that you actually do have something of value to share, because you do. Mike Gerholdt: I think we talk a lot like, “Oh, you got to participate, got to do this.” Whenever I’ve done end user training or just technology training, you always got to think about the what’s-in-it-for-me perspective when you are talking with an end user, because you’re generally going from one system to another when you’re switching to Salesforce. I’m going to ask you the same question. For your podcast, The JAM Pod, what’s in it for you? What do you get out of it? Joy Shutters-Helbing: Nothing. Mike Gerholdt: I disagree. I disagree. I think you get something out of it, because there’s a reason people create that content in the community. Joy Shutters-Helbing: What does Joy get out of The JAM Pod podcast? I get to create a connection with folks that I might not have been able to unless I had done this. Being a community group leader, I don’t necessarily get a lot of time to speak with the group of people about content, or I go to a conference and I only get to speak about the content and there’s less time engaging with folks on a different level. One of our listeners said to me recently, they’re like, “Joy, when I listen to The JAM Pod, I just feel like I’m in a room having a conversation with you and Mike.” That was actually the best compliment we could have gotten, I think. You learned a lot, you just felt comfortable with us. What I forget though is that there’s a lot of people that are at these conferences that introduce themselves to me, and they know me better than I know them. It’s interesting for my brain to be like, “Oh, they have been listening to you and they’re watching what’s happening, but Joy, you don’t know these folks yet, so it’s okay.” Mike Gerholdt: Mike, how about you? Mike Reynolds: I mean, I know what I get out of it. I mean, I get to meet with people, and talk about them, and learn about them, and learn how they’ve contributed. For me, very selfishly, The JAM is an excellent way to just get to know some people a little bit better than I already do. I have to suffer through time with Joy, which I actually do like, and I enjoy spending time with Joy. But I think just broadly speaking, this idea of, “Well, why would I want to go stand up on stage and contribute? Why do I want to do anything?” There have been a handful of moments where somebody comes up to you and says, “Hey, you talked about this, and I was able to do it.” Those moments, that feeling is so damn good, to know that you have been able to make somebody a little bit more successful or speed somebody’s path to success, anything, you just helped. Being helpful is such a good feeling. I mean, for me, that’s my why. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, I don’t think you can undersell that enough, because you forget how often in life and in your career being helpful feels good, and it can almost get a little bit addictive in terms of wanting to put content out there and getting any kind of that feedback of, “Wow, that was so helpful. I’m so appreciative of your content.” Joy Shutters-Helbing: I was going to say, one of the catalysts for sharing content, to be helpful so that you can get this experience that we’re talking about that can be addictive, when you have toiled over a formula, or you have toiled over the flow, or you have toiled over a solution, and, all of a sudden, it works, and you stand up and you do some sort of victory dance, that is the thing that you should be sharing, the thing that you toiled over, because we know that you did the Google search, we know that you did… You reached out for help and you cobbled together all of these things that helped you with the solution. That victory dance is why you should share your experience so that you can help folks not have to toil over the hours of cobbling together the thing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I usually run around the neighborhood with an air horn. Joy Shutters-Helbing: That is a different victory dance than mine, but I like it. I like it. Mike Gerholdt: Letting people know what I’ve accomplished feels good, keeps the neighbors awake, keeps them on their toes. All right. Last question for both of you, and you weren’t expecting any of this, but if you were on… Mike, this is kind of interesting for you because you’re on the Salesforce side, but if you were on the Salesforce side of things, how could Salesforce enable more community content creation? Joy Shutters-Helbing: Go ahead, Mike. Mike Reynolds: Wow, okay. Yeah, sure. Joy Shutters-Helbing: I’ll jump in later. Mike Reynolds: I think that the first thing is just awareness. We shout, and we really do. If you are following the evangelists and the people that are the mouthpieces for Salesforce, if you’re following those people on the socials, you will see that they start posting things like, “Hey, it’s time to submit your ideas.” That is, I think, we can do more of that. I feel like we do a lot, but we could do more. I think the other thing is to encourage people to just submit ideas. I think what a lot of people don’t realize is… Let’s take Dreamforce, that’s the next mega event that we have. When you submit to Dreamforce, you don’t have to submit the idea for yourself. You can submit an idea and say, “I really want to hear about this, but I’m not going to be the speaker for it.” Joy Shutters-Helbing: You can nominate other people. Mike Reynolds: Yeah. You could say, “I think this person should talk about it.” I want to hear Mike Gerholdt talk about community. I can submit that as an idea.” That doesn’t mean that you’re going to have to go do it, but it gets the idea in front of the people. I think we could do a better job of making sure that we have the megaphone at the right moments and that we are helping and getting the word out right. Mike Gerholdt: Joy, how about you? Joy Shutters-Helbing: I think that is a solid way to encourage more folks to submit to these sorts of things, whether it’s a community conference, a community group, or our Salesforce conferences. I think something that Salesforce can do, it would be maybe to, wow, this is really off the cuff here, I’m sorry, but encourage the brainstorming sessions, encourage the speaking mentorship situation. I know that there is some very soft and lighthearted speaking mentorship happening. I forget where I saw it and I’m sorry if folks are recognizing themselves. I’m not putting names, and faces, and topic together, but if folks could brainstorm, and feel like they’re being heard, and have these ideas bounced around in a way that they can validate their ideas, I think that would help with more of this content creation that is not seemingly all the same, because I think that what happens is folks see this piece of content somewhere, and then they put their own twist on it or their own flavor to it, and then they try to run with it that way. It’s a formula and it works. If you’ve seen it in a small space and you can make it better, that’s great. But I think that if you want to really build some incredibly interesting content, having a safe space to brainstorm, like a writer’s workshop perhaps, would really help that. Mike Gerholdt: Those are good suggestions. Joy Shutters-Helbing: That just came to me. Mike Gerholdt: Some of the best content happens on the fly. Let me tell you. Joy, Mike, I want to thank you for taking time out and being on my little podcast with all of our five listeners that we have. Hopefully, somebody from your podcast will come over and I’ll have 15 or 20 maybe. Joy Shutters-Helbing: I think there’s going to be some crossover on this. Mike Gerholdt: I think it’s good. Mike Reynolds: I only hope so. Mike Gerholdt: I’m glad you guys are out there creating content in the world. Also, just as a side note, not that you asked for it, I’m glad it’s called The JAM Pod and not The Jelly Pod, because jam is better than jelly, and I, 100%, think you should have a jam chosen for every single podcast. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Like a pairing? Mike Gerholdt: I’m telling you, there is a shop- Joy Shutters-Helbing: A jam pairing? Mike Gerholdt: There is like two or three… Now, it’s spring, so this’ll come out in April, March something. It’s farmers’ market season. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Oh, it is. Mike Gerholdt: I spend an absorbent amount of money on farmers’ market jams, like blueberry jams, apple. In my house, jam does not last that long and there’s a couple shops that we definitely frequent, so I was thinking of… It’d also be a good excuse just to buy jam. Joy Shutters-Helbing: It is, it is. Mike Reynolds: I’m going to admit this to you because I have no shame, I, one time, made a bracket for the best jam for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mike Gerholdt: I like where this is going. Mike Reynolds: I’m just going to tell you, it took determination, it took grit and staying power, but I have some pretty strong opinions on strawberry, strawberry jam, as being the definitive leader of the field. A lot of honorable mentions available, but a good strawberry jam, so hard to do better. Mike Gerholdt: With peanut butter. Mike Reynolds: With peanut butter for peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mike Gerholdt: 100%. I can go with that. I can go with blueberry too. I’m indiscriminate. Let me tell you what I prefer with bacon on toast, blueberry, blueberry jam with black pepper bacon. Let me tell you, life changing. Mike Reynolds: This is what I’m doing tomorrow morning. All right. Mike Gerholdt: It’s life… You could put- Joy Shutters-Helbing: Are you telling me I’m making blueberry jam tonight? [inaudible 00:22:34]. Mike Gerholdt: I’m saying, you could put… Now, here’s the thing. I will also eat it with strawberry jam, but there is something about the sweetness of the blueberry and the savoriness of the bacon. Mike Reynolds: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With a little bit of smokiness in there. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, in America, we smoke our bacon. Mike Reynolds: Do you go on with a sourdough here? Mike Gerholdt: No, just regular old bread, whatever’s at the store. Joy Shutters-Helbing: This was the question, Mike, Mike and Mike. I needed to know the vehicle for the jam, because sourdough is good. Mike Reynolds: Is magical. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Mike Reynolds: Fresh bacon [inaudible 00:23:10]. Mike Gerholdt: No, I enjoy… Here’s the crazy thing, because it’s been a while since I’ve worked food into the podcast, but that’s always in our feedback of, “He works food into the podcast since [inaudible 00:23:20].” Yeah, whatever. Joy Shutters-Helbing: We talked about hamburgers last time. Mike Gerholdt: I saw that. Mike Reynolds: Look, I’m not saying we have to do this, but we can have… Here’s what we’ll do. If you create a podcast, a Salesforce podcast by Dreamforce, I will arrange… I’m saying you, anybody in the ecosystem, you go to Dreamforce, you create a podcast, I will arrange for a… We have a podcast- Joy Shutters-Helbing: Breakfast? Mike Reynolds: We’re going to do… No, not a breakfast. A bracket of jams and jellies under various circumstances, and then we can just create this. Mike Gerholdt: I’m a part of this. [inaudible 00:24:01]. Mike Reynolds: We will make this happen. You only get an invite if you create a podcast, but I will make it happen. [inaudible 00:24:08]. Mike Gerholdt: I feel like we’re going to be a- Joy Shutters-Helbing: You just created a session, Mike. He just created a session. Mike Gerholdt: I feel like we’re going to be in the mezzanine of the Marriott Marquis. It’s like me and you in 30 jars of jam. Mike Reynolds: This sounds ideal. Joy Shutters-Helbing: [inaudible 00:24:22]. Mike Gerholdt: We’re just like, people are walking by, “What are those guys doing? I don’t know, they must be really into jam.” Yes, we are. Just jam all over our face. We’re just jam drunk. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Oh my god, [inaudible 00:24:35]. Mike Gerholdt: What’s going on? Joy Shutters-Helbing: Oh my gosh. Mike Reynolds: So many jars. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that sounds like an emergency room appointment for diabetes so- Mike Reynolds: Appreciate that. Mike Gerholdt: … ought to be awesome. Joy Shutters-Helbing: Thanks, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, thank you both for coming on the podcast. I do like your idea, and now I’m going to go have some toasted jam for lunch. Mike Reynolds: It’s perfect. Mike Gerholdt: That’s a wrap on our jam-packed episode with Joy and Mike. Whether you’re team strawberry or blueberry, no judgment. We hope you’re walking away inspired to share your own admin wins and fumbles, flow fixes, and really all of your stories. If you like this episode, hey, spread the jam. I mean, the love. Thinking of jam. Tap those three dots, share it with a fellow admin, or shout it from the rooftops, or hey, ooh, I know, a Slack channel. If you’re hungry for more, head over to admin.salesforce.com for everything admin, including a transcript of the show. Oh, don’t forget, you can also join us in the Admin Trailblazers group, the conversation, and I bet the jam bracket planning continues there. Until next time, keep those flows flowing and those toast slices jammed. We’ll see you in the cloud. The post Real Talk for Admins on Content, Conferences, and Agentforce appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

Brinkal Janani, Director of Product Management at Salesforce, leads initiatives around Lightning App Builder and AI-generated apps. He discusses the exciting capabilities of the Generative Canvas, allowing admins to create dynamic, no-code layouts tailored for users. Brinkal highlights the shift from static interfaces to responsive designs fueled by AI, enhancing user experiences. He also touches on leveraging public data for dynamic sales strategies, emphasizing the importance of adaptability in tech and how admins can shape insightful interactions.

Megan Tuano, a Senior Business Analyst at Accenture Federal Services and a YouTube content creator, shares her unique journey into tech without a traditional background. She emphasizes that coding skills aren't mandatory for roles like business analysis in Salesforce. Megan explores how AI, particularly tools like ChatGPT, is revolutionizing consulting by enhancing problem-solving and creativity. She also discusses the importance of certifications in shaping career paths and encourages others to embrace the tech landscape with confidence.

Gillian Bruce, Director of Developer Marketing at Slack, is passionate about empowering Salesforce admins and sharing innovative solutions. In an engaging conversation, she reveals how to seamlessly combine Agentforce with Slack for custom AI agents. The synergy between Salesforce and Slack provides a user-friendly platform for automating workflows and enhancing communication. Key topics include AI-driven features, such as personalized assistants and Slack's rich integration capabilities, which empower teams to save time and improve efficiency across organizations.

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 Brittney’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, Brittney, welcome to the podcast. Kate: Thanks for having me. Brittney: 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 agents. So those are my two sessions, and they will be available video on demand on Salesforce+ if you’re not going to be there in person at TDX. Mike: Oh, that’s right, because Salesforce+ is a wealth of information. When we get done with events, holy cow! I wish there was an Apple TV app for that because you could just sit and stream all of those sessions all the time. You should think about getting a Lego agent cloudy, modular flows. Be kind of cool. You could rebuild it in Legos. Nope? Anyway, I think it’s a good idea. Jennifer: I might need to outsource that to my nephew. Mike: Yeah, no, we got to find the budget for it. Jennifer: Because he’s a big Lego person. Mike: Yeah. Just see if we got budget for that first. Kate, so Jen’s going to show us some amazing flows. What session you’re working on because I think it’s going to tie in? Kate: Absolutely. And I am going to leave the flows to the flow queen herself, but I will be doing a theater session. It’s on day two at 12:00 PM Pacific. That’s March 6th. And we’re going to talk demo to deployment, and this is a session on engaging stakeholders with Agentforce. I’m really excited about this session because I feel like the admins and the builders getting to know Agentforce have been operating almost in a vacuum. And while we’re creative and smart and we know our users inside and out, that doesn’t mean that we should be creating agents without input from our stakeholders and taking different business considerations into our agents and how we’re building them. So in this session, we’ll look at how to create an Agentforce demo to present to your stakeholders so that they understand the intents and capabilities of autonomous agents if they don’t already. And then we’ll work into working with them to brainstorm and prioritize how to put this technology to work in your own organization. And this is really important because it empowers admins to know exactly what to go build, and then stakeholders know what they’re getting buy-in and building internal excitement around which is going to ensure smoother adoption for everyone. Another shout out to Salesforce+ here. This will also be video on demand. And I personally missed TDX last year. I had a big family trip that I had to go on. It was terrible. I was in Paris. I know. Mike: You poor thing. However would you survive? Kate: I know. Somehow I made it. All the croissants and baguettes and cheese that I had while I was there helped ease my pain. But when I came back, I was able to just on my lunch breaks watch the sessions that had been recorded and were on Salesforce+ and it really helped me get up to speed and feel like I was there, even though I was not able to attend. Mike: So speaking of which, Brittney, you do a fabulous job of making everybody in the world feel like they’re attending our events and engaging on social. For the admins that are like Kate and just have to go to France during TDX, what do you have planned for social or what could admins that aren’t attending TDX engage with? Brittney: Yeah, of course. And I don’t mean to sound like an infomercial for Salesforce+ again, but really whether you’re attending in person or you’re going to be tuning in virtually, we have you covered. Leading up to the event, what we have is we’ll be sharing must attend sessions and can’t miss opportunities to get hands on with Agentforce. We’ll be calling out things that are available on demand. So as I’m sharing things on X, LinkedIn, and Facebook, you’ll know if it speaks to you, if you are going to join us, or if you’ll be watching online. I highly recommend if you don’t follow us on social, you go do that because that’s where you’re going to get a ton of event updates before and after. And if I remember correctly, Mike always links to our social profiles in his show notes, so you should be covered there. And then during TDX, we got a lot of fun stuff planned for you. Really we’re your go-to hub for key updates, special moments. We have an Agentforce Hackathon leading up to TDX, so we’ll be sharing some moments from that. We also just share plenty of resources. So as we’re sharing fun photos, videos, if you’re not with us in person, we always try and share something from admin.salesforce.com that you can go and get a little bit more information on that. Like Jen’s modular flow session, I think she has a, correct me if I’m wrong, Jen, but has a blog post on that already. So you will not miss out on the action. So really just get ready, stay connected, and it’s going to be an epic TDX, whether you’re there in person or you’re hanging out with me online. Mike: I mean, it could be epic. If you’re having French baguettes and watching Salesforce+, I think that would work. Before we leave sessions, I’d love to get an idea of best practices for what admins could do to take notes when they attend sessions. So Kate, I’ll start with you. You were most recently an admin. When you would attend events or watch some of the content online, how would you take notes that you could translate back to the organization? Kate: That is a great question, and it was something that I have played around with a couple different ways that I’ve done this. And what has worked for me because when you’re sitting in these sessions, you don’t want to miss a thing. You see people there that are taking pictures on their phone of every slide that they see, and that just doesn’t work for me to jog my memory and my brain. So I always have just a little notepad or my phone where I’ll take notes on just key concepts or things that I want to dive deeper into. That way I can still be really engaged, watch the content, take it all in much as possible, and then know those things that I want to go back and do a deeper dive into. Jen, I don’t know if you have a way that worked for you when you were an admin and a customer. It’s definitely challenging to balance all of the excitement and just take in all of the information. Jennifer: So Kate, I was that person with my phone taking screenshots. Mike: We found you. Now we know who you are. Jennifer: But now in the events app, afterwards you’ll have access to the PDFs of the slides. So you don’t have to be that person taking the screenshots. I would go on my phone and have a notepad up, and I would indicate the session, and then here are the things that were worthy of remembering after I go home from TDX to look further into. So those were the things that I did because there’s going to be a lot of walking around, standing around at TDX, and you don’t want to bring your heavy laptop. So definitely if you could utilize whatever’s on your phone for note-taking, I would highly recommend that. Mike: Yeah, big plus on that. I remember a few… Well, before I joined Salesforce, I used to walk around with an iPad. And now I know how silly I looked because it was like holding up a textbook to take a picture, a screen as opposed to a little phone. Let’s jump into keynotes because keynotes are always… People have opinions. They love them. They don’t like them. There’s a lot to take in. They’re always afraid, oh, my CEO is there. Now they just showed this and we’re going to have to do this. What do we do? Kate, you’re working on the keynote. Can you share anything for the keynote? Kate: Absolutely. So this is my first TDX as an employee and first time working on a keynote like this. So I’ve been learning a lot and just really taking it in. My role has been focused on the demos that you’ll see in the main keynote. So working with the team to visualize an Agentforce journey from both a customer’s perspective of how autonomous agents have revolutionized their business, but also from the builder perspective, so how admins and developers can leverage low code, no code, pro code solutions as they create agents and problem solve for their organizations using AI. So hopefully it’ll be really inspirational, visionary. You’ll see some really great new product updates at TDX, so be sure to tune in either in person or again on Salesforce+. Mike: Jen, we’d be remiss to say that everything is Agentforce at TDX this year. And I know you’re working on a big Agentforce area, I’ll call it that, because activation sounds too insider baseball. But what are you working on that’s just huge for admins in Agentforce? Jennifer: Yeah, so I’m part of the team that’s working on the Agentforce Zone because it does take a village to put this all together. Mike: It takes a whole zone. Jennifer: So the Agentforce Zone will be on the second floor right by where the staircase is in Moscone West. Walk up the stairs, if you want. Get those steps in. Get those steps in. And it’s going to be right there. And we’re going to feature really introductionary content for Agentforce to whet your appetite for more information. So we have three sessions that we will be running throughout the two-day event. First one being intro to building AI agents with Agentforce, and this will give you an overview of the core components of Agentforce talking about the Atlas Reasoning Engine and really diving into Agent Builder. We’re going to showcase and talk about all the different agent types that are available, but showcase the service agent. And also what is new to Agentforce is Headless Agents. Mike: Oh no! Jennifer: And what I mean by that is agents running around without a head. Mike: Is that like the backup movie, Headless Agents, after Agentforce? Jennifer: So it’s really events on a record that trigger an agent to work behind the scenes. So it’s not the user interacting them. Let’s say it could be someone submitted a comment on a case. And as a result, the agent’s going to do these things behind the scenes. So it might be sending an email out or things like that. Mike: Okay. We should call them like Wizard Agents or something like Wizard of Oz. Jennifer: Secret Agents. Mike: Secret. Oh yeah! Then we could play this band. That would be awesome. I’d be a fan of Secret Agents. They’re already wearing sunglasses though. Secret Agents wear two pairs of sunglasses. Just be like a dude out golfing, multiple pairs of sunglasses. Jennifer: Oh, and also in that demo, we’re going to showcase… Mike: Oh yeah, Jen, sorry, we gave you nowhere to go with that. Just completely veered off course. Thanks for bringing us back. Jennifer: Steering you all back. Mike: Yep. I know. It’s what you do. Jennifer: There’s some really cool things coming down the pike for creating agents by using AI and also creating test cases to test your agents. So I was playing around with that, really excited to have folks show you that. Our second session is build AI agents using the power of Agentforce and Data Cloud. So you know what Agentforce is. Some of you may or may not know what Data Cloud is, but why is Agentforce and Data Cloud together important to have? So we’re going to show you how you can use pieces from Data Cloud like data graphs and the Agentforce data library and pulling in Data Cloud data into your agents to really take it to the next level. And we’re also going to show you RAG 2.0. Mike: Wow! The sequel to RAG 1. Jennifer: Yeah, yeah. I was playing around with it and mind blown as to how accurate being able to pull in all that instructor data from PDFs is. It can really search all those PDFs. We’re also playing around with pulling in, having it search on audio and video files. So fingers crossed, we hope it works. Mike: Oh man! Jennifer: So we could showcase that. Mike: You can feed it a whole bunch of these podcasts and then you can understand how many times Mike says so. Jennifer: And then lastly is the intro to Prompt Builder. So we’re going to showcase how you can use it in your agents, how you can use it in field generation, so the little sparkles on your field to auto-generate content and also things like screen flows. So really a lot of great introductory content. And then we’re going to send you off to our demo booth so that you can get a deeper dive of the cool things that you saw in our demos. Mike: Can I just tell you that sparkle fields are my jam? Jennifer: I love sparkles. Mike: I think they’re the coolest things. I love them. I need a shirt that says that. Brittney, there is a buzz at TDX, and I will say you do an amazing job of capturing it from video and pictures. What would your advice be for people attending TDX that want to share out some of the fun stuff in as cool a manner as you do? Brittney: Oh, I love that question, Mike, and thank you for the compliment. I guess I’d just say video content is awesome. We love to hear from our trailblazers, agent blazers, admins on social. So just don’t be scared to pull out your phone, capture some genuine reactions to some of the things that you’re experiencing. And you never know, if you tag us on X or LinkedIn, you might get a repost. But the posts that resonate most with me that I see from our community are just general feedback and response to what you’re seeing. And I think admins who are not able to attend the event are also really excited to see what people on the ground are sharing and experiencing. So that’s my job is to make sure that I capture that so that if you’re not able to attend, you get the magic, the feel of it all. Mike: Yeah, and you have a whole command center set up in the room. Brittney: I try. Mike: It’s quite the setup. As long as the cord works, then all your monitors work and it’s fabulous. Brittney: You have to have double screens when you’re trying to see all of the action going on. Mike: Right. So now, but attendees don’t need double screens. You don’t have to walk around with two phones capturing everything for Brittney. Brittney: Do not recommend that for attendees. No. Mike: That would be hilarious. Okay, so we’ll wrap up here. But last question for everybody, and Brittney, you were the last to talk, so we’ll start with you. If you were going to TDX this year or you are planning agents in your org, what is one thing you would start doing today as of this podcast to help get ready and maybe some content you’d look at it for TDX? Brittney: I’m so glad that you asked this question because I was about to ask you if I could plug something else that is very important for admins. So we have a great resource available right now on admin.salesforce.com that our wonderful blog manager, Eliza Riley, wrote. It’s A Salesforce Admin’s Guide to TDX 2025. It captures everything we chatted about today, but it has links and way more details about everything that you’ll get to experience in person and online. So I highly recommend if you haven’t already read that blog post, go do that now. It’s a great starting point to get ready for the event. Mike: I like it. It’s very good. Kate, how about you? Kate: To build on that, I think that getting the foundations before you go is really important. Whenever you go to TDX, there’s just so many directions that you can be pulled in and there are so many exciting things you can do. So if you have it prioritized in your mind what you want to do, like if you want to be going to sessions or if you want to make sure that you get in the demos that Jen was talking about, or you want to for sure get that hands-on time building agents or get one of the Agentforce consultations while you’re there, do the homework up front. Get your foundations. Read the blogs that have been put out on what is Agentforce and the basics and have that knowledge going in so that you’re able to really get the most out of the event and prioritize what you need. Mike: That’s great advice. Jen, you’re going to back clean up because you’re our most experienced, longest lasting evangelists on the call. Jennifer: So because you’re at TDX and you’re in person, there’s all these hands-on trainings. I would sign up for as many as possible just so that you can get hands-on. Because I know going on Trailhead, you’re creating that Agentforce Trailhead Playground and that goes away in three days. It doesn’t give you a lot of time to play, but you’re going to be taught by experts and they’ll be there to answer your questions as well. So I would check those out. I would definitely check out sessions where you’re learning about the new features that are coming down the pike. So anything that you’re not aware of, you should go to those sessions so that… Again, a lot of those sessions will be led by the product manager, so you can actually talk to them afterwards. And that’s what I found helpful of attending in-person events is that you get that FaceTime with the PMs to ask them additional questions. They probably don’t like me saying that, so that people can stalk them afterwards. And I would say also build out your agenda. Make sure that you aren’t overloaded and you have time to actually go around and look at the demo booths and talk to people in addition to watching sessions and attending them. Mike: Yeah, I can’t agree more with you on that. The number of people that I’ve had walk up to me and say, “So what should I go to?” And it’s day one at 10:00 already. And it’s like, wow, clock’s ticking. You’re missing out on stuff. I think the one thing I would add to all of that, if you’re in-person, get as early as you can to a session and then talk to the people next to you or afterwards. And if you’re online, talk to other people that are on social. Talk to Brittney and see the other people that are maybe tweeting or posting about stuff like that because you can also make connections with them. I think the biggest thing is a lot of the content is recorded or online later, but those happenstance conversations or people you run into, that’s a one in a million time situation, and that’s all part of what’s awesome about going. Fantastic. Well, thank you all for coming on the podcast and giving us a roadmap to TDX. If people really like this, we might have to do a similar version for those other event, that other big event we do in October. Fabulous. So that was a fun discussion with everybody. I still think I can fit one or two more people from evangelists or admin relations on the call. So that’s going to be my goal for Dreamforce. But if you enjoyed listening to this episode and you’re on iTunes or some other podcast app, generally there’s like three dots you got to tap and you can follow or can share the episode. Hey, share, post it on social because I would love for you to share it with more people. More people can listen and be part of this wonderful admin community. And of course, as Brittney mentioned on the call, if you’re looking for more great resources, your one stop for everything admin is admin.salesforce.com, including a transcript of the show and any links that we have mentioned. And be sure to join the conversation in the Admin Trailblazer Group. That is in the Trailblazer Community. And you know where to find that link? In the show notes on admin.salesforce.com. It’s like we thought of this stuff in advance. Anyway, until next week, which funny enough is also TDX, I’ll see you in the cloud. Well, that just dropped there. Isn’t that fun? Just here it is. I don’t know where to go. Yeah, thanks. 20 minutes. Well, we’ll see if Dan leaves that in. Sometimes he just leaves some stuff like that. The post Roadmap to TDX25 for Admins appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

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