Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Nicole Pomponio, Director of Delivery Management and Operations at SaltClick.   Join us as we chat about how admins can unlock the full potential of Slack in Salesforce.   You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nicole Pomponio. Why Slack is changing what it means to be an admin If you’re planning on coming to Dreamforce this year (or catching it at home), you’re probably going to hear a lot about new ways of combining Agentforce and Slack. That’s why I’m excited I got a chance to sit down with Nicole for this episode and have a conversation about her Dreamforce presentation.   Nicole is the Director of Delivery Management and Operations at SaltClick, a consultancy for Salesforce and Slack, so she’s eager to find new ways to get the most out of both platforms. The ever-deepening integration between Salesforce and Slack means there are all sorts of new ways to connect users with data.   As Nicole explains, all this means that the entire idea of what an admin can do is becoming more and more expansive. Getting organizational buy-in for Slack If your organization isn’t using Slack, how do you get the buy-in you need to overcome inertia? And if you are using Slack, how do you get the most out of it?   Nicole is an admin, but she’s also a decision-maker at SaltClick, and when she puts on her leadership hat, she wants to hear about business problems and possible solutions. So the key to getting buy-in is to reposition Slack from something that sends messages to something that can solve real business problems.   “I think the magic of Slack is that when you're using it and when you're using it right, it's easily adopted,” Nicole says, “you don’t have to sell it because when you use it, you showcase it.” For example, identify how many meetings can be eliminated with a dedicated channel on Slack, or show how much you can simplify your team’s workflow with the Jira integration.   Tips, tricks, and best practices for Slack As Nicole explains, it’s helpful to establish some rules of the road for how your organization will use Slack. Here are a few tips to get started: Have consistent naming conventions for channels. SaltClick uses prefixes to keep things organized: #ext for external channels, #int for internal channels, and #salt for fun stuff like #salt-babies. Let your users know how to organize things for themselves, especially how to leave or mute a channel that they don’t need to use every day. Make a channel for dedicated Slack support, so you can quickly help folks who get stuck. Establish guidelines for what Slack etiquette means at your organization and any emojis you’re using. Make space for fun, but mostly on a different channel from work.   Make sure to check out Nicole’s Dreamforce presentation, in-person or online. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.   Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Can Salesforce Admins Do With Slack and Agents? Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Can Salesforce Admins Do with Slack Integrations? Salesforce Admins Blog: Slack and Salesforce: The Power of No-Code Automation Salesforce Admins Blog: Getting Started With Slack and Agentforce Integration   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Nicole on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: Slack-first doesn't have to mean Slack-only. And today's guest, Nicole Pomponio, tells us why. Nicole is the delivery and operations manager at SaltClick, and she's going to tell us, Salesforce admins, how we can unlock the full potential of Slack and Salesforce. In addition, Nicole shares her journey from accidental admin to leadership, and she gives us some insight into building intentional channel structure, integrating external platforms, like Jira, and reshaping the admin role in this new very connected era. So whether you're Slack-curious or already swimming in salty channels, you're going to walk away with some ideas you can use. And with that, let's get Nicole on the podcast. So Nicole, welcome to the podcast. Nicole Pomponio: Thank you so much for having me, Mike. Super excited to be here. Mike: I'm excited for everything that's coming up for Dreamforce. Last week we got done talking about navigating flow errors as an administrator, and the irony is I had to do a workshop and navigate my own flow error. So it's fortuitous the way things happen sometimes when you report a podcast. Nicole Pomponio: It was meant to be. It was meant to be. Mike: But Slack is a thing, and Slack's been a thing for a while, and you're going to present about Salesforce channels inside Slack. Before we talk about that, let's learn a little bit about you, Nicole. Tell us what you do in your everyday life and how you got into the Salesforce ecosystem. Nicole Pomponio: Absolutely. I have been in the Salesforce ecosystem for about 14 plus years. I stopped counting because it makes me feel old. Got started reporting, and it grew from there. I was lucky enough to become a solo accidental admin, and then the opportunities just spun up from there. My day-to-day life right now, I manage delivery and operations over at SaltClick. We're a consultancy for Salesforce and Slack, so I get to work with very bright people building out super fun solutions for customers and ourselves, and that's Salesforce and Slack together, which also gets me very excited. Mike: I reached the same kind of milestone where my Salesforce experience, somebody said, oh, it's old enough that it could have graduated from high school. Nicole Pomponio: Oh, ouch. Mike: Yeah, burn. Yours at least has a learner's permit. Nicole Pomponio: I'm almost driving, yeah. Mike: Right, almost driving. Nicole Pomponio: I'm almost driving. Mike: There's no segue to talk about Slack and driving. Things you shouldn't do while driving. Nicole Pomponio: There you go. Mike: Have your phone and use Slack. Why do admins need to discover channels in Slack? Nicole Pomponio: It's such a great timely question, Mike. For me, there's no better time because Slack is being positioned in front of Salesforce, and I know we just aged ourselves a little bit, but it's really the first time that I've seen that happen and seen it done in a really meaningful way. So from my perspective, we're starting to see a really close merge of Slack, this communication powerhouse, with Salesforce and having the ability to understand and navigate both right now is going to be such an amazing opportunity, and I think it starts to rewrite the narrative of what an admin is. Mike: Oh, how so? Nicole Pomponio: An admin, I think it's been changing over the years. If we look at what a Salesforce admin historically was, we're creating workflows, we're navigating some fields, some page layouts, and then we're growing from there. We're working with flows, and we're starting to dip our toe into becoming developers maybe, if we want to take that path. And now it's merging more with other platforms. As a Salesforce admin, I need to also understand connected platforms, how to maybe connect to different systems. So over the course of, I think rapidly the past three years, what an admin has been I think is no longer just those foundational Salesforce elements. It's really starting to evolve. So I see that happening too with Slack, so bridging the gap a little bit, expanding out to other systems. So I do think it's shifting, and Slack has helped shaping that. Mike: I mean, I always look at how many meetings are people in. And I remember when Salesforce required Slack. Of course, we had a lot of collaboration tools, and organizations have a lot of collaboration tools. With channels, does the collaboration tool become the channel, or how does it really narrowly define what some of the users are looking for in terms of supplemental data outside of what's on the record? Nicole Pomponio: That Slack channel, now merging with Salesforce, of course, we've got Salesforce channels, really is that collaboration. It's a point where teams are coming together. They're not having to wait for that weekly meeting. I'm not having to wait for my monthly meeting, my weekly meeting. I can work async in Slack, but all of that information is being condensed and surfaced in that Slack channel, so it's easier for us to find what we're looking for. Everything stays together. If we're using threads like we should, all of those answers are within one thread. We're seeing associated files. And now with Salesforce channels, we're seeing that Salesforce data as well in details tabs and related lists. Everything's right there surfaced and condensed for us, so it really creates an efficiency that I don't think we've seen before. Mike: Do you feel in terms of broadening the reach and looking at other platforms, I mean at Salesforce we look at Slack and Salesforce is really just the platform, how have you navigated working with others in your organization to integrate platforms into Salesforce? Nicole Pomponio: It's one of my favorite questions. Mike: Ooh. Nicole Pomponio: I love to bring things into Slack. I really want to, and this is a little bit selfish of me, I just want to be in Slack. I'm biased heavily here. So the more that I can bring in, I think the better it's going to be for me. But also our teams. We talk about Slack being our work operating system and wanting to do more in the flow of work, all these buzzwords and phrases we hear. What does that really mean? It's bringing those systems in, whether it's just the data or it's actually actions and connecting out too. So I think the example that is top of mind for me, because I'm in it constantly, is Jira. So I want to connect with Jira through Slack so that I can create issues, I can update issues. I just get things done faster with pulling in those external systems, the data, but now the actions too, right? Mike: Right. Nicole Pomponio: Which that gets me really excited because if we're talking about our agentic era, then if I start to think about the data that's available to me and the actions I could potentially do, I think natural next step is can I get an agent to do them for me? Which, if we're talking about efficiency, frees up my time for the higher level things. I love to spend my time with people. So I know that was a long way from connecting systems and bringing things in, but it becomes my favorite question because we can start to do so much when we connect systems that we're using every day and when we're actioning in those systems too. Mike: Well I, just for clarity's sake, I prefer the long scenic route of the answer, not the short, short route. Nicole Pomponio: Oh, good. Oh, good. Yeah, mine are long. Mike: Drive around the block, got to see everything, take the long way. Sunday afternoon cruise in the convertible. Nicole Pomponio: Perfect. Mike: So one question I have, and this goes back to maybe I was an admin in a different era, it sounds like your organization is bought in and your leadership is bought in to let's make Slack the interface for a lot of our work. Is that true? Nicole Pomponio: Yeah, we are Slack-first. Mike: Okay. Did you sell that vision or was that a consensus that came down from leadership that you embraced and get to work towards? Nicole Pomponio: I mean, Mike, I would love to take all of the credit for this. Sometimes I do. Just kidding. I don't. It's a top-down, bottom-up type of approach. I think the magic of Slack is that when you're using it and when you're using it right, it's easily adopted, and I don't have to sell it, if you will, because I use it, I showcase it, and then everyone sees the power of that. My favorite thing is the light bulb moments. So the more that we can do that, the easier that story becomes. But I will say when I started at SaltClick, it was almost three years ago, time flies, it was already heavily being used, and one of my predecessors was really starting to push on what is Slack, how can we use it? And I really gravitated toward that, so I just started to pick that up, training sessions for folks, really empowering people and pushing them to Slack's help articles because they're amazing. So it just became a natural conversation for us. And now it's people coming to me saying, hey, can we do this with Slack? I just posted something about Gearset and getting notifications and then linking out to pull requests to understand what's being validated, what's failing. That wasn't my idea. Shout out to Jacob on my team because he knows that we can use Slack for many different things, and he wants to make his own life easier. So it's become a natural conversation for us. What can we do in Slack, and how can we do it? People come to me with half-baked ideas. I love it, and then I just help get it to the finish line. I might have an idea I reach out to somebody about, but it is really all hands in on Slack. Mike: Okay, you win. You got the fun leadership. So let's play the opposite side of that coin. The admin's bought in, you, and you see the vision, you see the potential, but perhaps leadership, they're busy. They don't pay attention 24/7, like you do, to the innovation that's coming out of Salesforce and Slack. But you know your users and you know the pains and the gaps within the organization. What would your advice be for an admin that's maybe going to go to Dreamforce or maybe watched a YouTube video online about Slack or just knows that their organization has Slack, but it's like, to me it's like Slack's like a Ferrari and you use it to go to the store and buy a gallon of milk every week and you don't use it to its full potential. What would your advice be for those admins to get the organization to flip to where you are at? Nicole Pomponio: I think that's such a great question. And just to be fair for the previous question, I am on our leadership team, so that was- Mike: So you have sway there too. Nicole Pomponio: ...it's an unfair advantage for me. But if I put my leadership hat on, what I'm looking for is not just the problem but the solution. So for folks that are trying to navigate, well, how do I really showcase this, it's really difficult sometimes to get enough data to show ROI. But if you go to leaders in your organization, you say, hey, I see this problem. I think that Slack can solve this for us, can fill this gap, here's how we could do it, I don't know many leaders that would just say, hard pass. I don't want to even look at that. I think taking that initiative would really show that you're invested and showing the solution to that problem I think would be phenomenal. I think as leaders we tend to see problems and we have potential solutions, but we really want input and buy-in from the people that are using the tools, right? Mike: Right. Nicole Pomponio: It shouldn't just be the Nicole show. I want to definitely understand that it's going to add value for folks. So if you are one of those people that are really trying to showcase what Slack can do, I would suggest going to Slack sessions at Dreamforce. I would suggest joining the Slack community and making some friends in there. I'll definitely say hi to you, but really poke around at here's a problem I'm trying to solve, what's a way I could do it With Slack? I know I would be willing to help folks, but anyone in the community would be willing to help too. And I bet you, in some of the sessions that you're going to, you're going to see a lot of use cases and a lot of ways to solve those problems. So that's what comes to mind for me when I think, how do I reposition this tool that might just be seen as a way to send messages to something that can actually solve some business problems for us. Mike: I mean, I've felt that way. So you opened up a whole other can of questions when you said you're on leadership. I think that's incredibly awesome that you're a Salesforce admin and you're in leadership. For admins that aren't in leadership, was this just the way that your organization operates, the admin is part of leadership, or how did you get that seat at the table? Nicole Pomponio: Such a great question. Many of your questions are great questions. Mike: I try really hard. I'm thinking of hosting a podcast where I ask questions. What do you think? Nicole Pomponio: I think this would be a great journey for you [inaudible 00:14:58]. Mike: Okay, we'll see how it works out. Nicole Pomponio: I think in our organization I have the flexibility and opportunity to be the Slack owner as well as participate in being that Salesforce admin as well. It's a shared responsibility, so it's not just me doing it. But because of the experiences I've had, not only being a Salesforce admin, being a Salesforce BA, being the doer and the navigator in different business units in my past life, I've been able to take that with me wherever I go. So it is a gift that I'm able to bring at SaltClick to be able to do multiple things, but I really enjoy coaching others on that too. So for me in leadership, it's been very powerful because I can understand how we can use our systems to really solve our business needs. And again, SaltClick gives me the opportunity to continue to do the things that bring me joy. Mike: That's a really good, really good answer. See good questions, good answers. On the subject of Slack, because I'd love to know, how often do you communicate with your users broadly? Do you have a dedicated Slack channel? Do you run help through Slack? Is there a place for them to ask questions? How do you run user engagement on your end? Nicole Pomponio: So from the SaltClick lens, we have fun channels. We have learning channels, training channels. We have chit-chat channels. We all have some salty channels as well because we like to have fun. We have Salty Babies and Salty Pets. I'm a jokester, and I can't help but bring corny jokes into every aspect of my life. And then as a Slack community group leader, I have a channel in our Slack workspace as well. So from the Slack community lens, the engagement there is really answering questions that come in. Sometimes you're going to get a meme. Sometimes you'll get some help articles and some directions and a path forward. And it's really posting consistently there to help people understand that you're there for them, that you can bring them information in the flow of their lives that's going to help them. On the SaltClick side, it really is about trying to organize because I did some kind of research pretty recently to understand how many channels are we in, how many messages and files and all kinds of stuff are we sending around. It's a lot. I think on average people are in 100 or 200 channels, so the noise can become pretty robust. You want to try and organize that and make it meaningful. So really helping navigate with channel descriptions. What are we even doing in this channel, what's our goal, what can you expect? Letting people know that they don't have to be in a channel. They can exit it. They can leave. They can set their own notifications. I really like to advocate for not only the way that we have our channels set up, but the way that they can help themselves in that experience as well. But we have all kinds of fun. I think my favorite is probably the Salty Babies one. Mike: I won't dig into that because who knows where that goes. I would like to know because, and we have this a little bit at Salesforce, did you enforce or did you... Enforce sounds bad. I don't have a different word for it. Parameter, I don't know, fence. Did you put out guidelines? That feels the best. Nicole Pomponio: Guidelines feels right. Mike: You put out guidelines. Guidepost, yeah. Because people can name channels whatever they want, did you put out a naming thing so that people know... You mentioned salty channels and chit-chat channels, and boy, say that one five times fast. Nicole Pomponio: I can't. I can't. Mike: I will. I'll just get myself kicked off the air. And work channels, and we have that at Salesforce too, did you put out a guide and get leadership, I mean, you're on leadership, but a corporate understanding of here's how we should name things so that people can easily quantify stuff? Nicole Pomponio: Yes. You want to have some pretty solid channel naming conventions to help people organize their day and to make it easier to find things. So I did mention the Salty Babies channel. The fun ones could start with Salty. They could start with Fun, but you want to make sure that you are outlining what those are for your teams and that you're building out some Slack etiquette. But thinking about too not only our internal channels, our external ones as well. Mike: Oh. Nicole Pomponio: So yes, we don't want to confuse ourselves or our vendors or customers, so. And I'm sure you know, you might be in many different channels. And you have an external channel, you want to quickly know that it's external, so putting ext in the front of it is definitely helpful for your eye to make sure you understand you're posting something in the right location. And then if it's internal, putting an int in front of it. And then we did develop a standard naming convention for our project channels because again, we are Slack-first. So we are running our projects through Slack, and then we have our customers in Slack channels as well. So we wanted to define what those naming conventions were so that we could organize ourselves a lot more efficiently. And then we also think about too what should go in that channel. Should there be a canvas or not? So not only are we thinking about standard naming conventions for channels, we're also thinking about what would add value right there in the channel. So if I have a canvas for a project, what should I have in that canvas? If I have a canvas and a DM with one of my direct reports, what should I have in that canvas to make it meaningful? So in my mind, it's definitely thinking about the structures of the channels, how we're using Slack, what our etiquette is for each other. And even things like defining the emojis that you use. A thumbs up or thumbs down could mean something else to someone. I like to give the example of my parents texting one another back and forth. My mom sent a long paragraph to my dad, and then his response was a thumbs up, but we probably had a good five-minute conversation around what his thumbs up meant. Was it a good thumbs up? Was it a sarcastic thumbs up? So defining what your emojis mean could avoid some confusion down the line. Mike: Yeah, I would agree. There's a few channels that, well, we have one internally on the admin team, and we use an emoji just to recognize or put your hand up for something, and I never realized how many different hands there were as emojis. Because it also kicks off a workflow that like, hey, so-and-so said, yes, and they would do this. And I'm like, I put my hand up. Why didn't the workflow fire? Oh, I used the wrong hand. I used hand two instead of hand one. Nicole Pomponio: There are a lot. There are a lot. And then you can make your own custom emojis. That can get real. Mike: Oh, well, that's a requirement on my team. Everybody has to have their own emoji. Nicole Pomponio: You have to have it. I love that. Mike: And I'm blessed enough somebody made one of me giving a thumbs up, so I got both. Nicole Pomponio: Nice. Mike: I got me and a thumbs up. Nicole Pomponio: That's awesome. Mike: Last question. For all of the stuff that you're working on for Salesforce, for Dreamforce... Sorry, so many forces. I'm sure it'll be Slackforce, right? Nicole Pomponio: It could be. Mike: If admins were listening to this and they had to go what's one reason I need to talk to my leadership about Slack and why because I heard it from Nicole, what would that answer be? Nicole Pomponio: My gosh, Mike, no pressure. Mike: No, none. Nicole Pomponio: I truly believe that we are going to continue to see an evolution of the integration between Slack and Salesforce. It feels like we're on the arc, we're on that path, right? Mike: Uh-huh. Nicole Pomponio: Purchased in 2021, started to hear some rumors about things being connected, started to see it happen. We've got Salesforce channels. We have to be empowered to understand what we can do with both systems. And the best way to do that is to immerse yourself in at least three days of sessions heavily centered around what you can do with Slack, what you can do with Salesforce, and what you can do by combining them. I think it is the perfect opportunity. I was at TDX and started to hear a lot of Salesforce people asking, what's up with Slack, what can we do there? A lot of people are starting to join the Slack community. It's the perfect time. And I think with how fast things are changing, I don't want anyone to get left behind. I don't want them to feel like they're being left behind, certainly not anyone's company. So I think, for me, it's really, really being at this point of being able to understand both and connect them. Mike: Well, I think that's very, very solid reasoning right there. I can't think of anything better. Nicole Pomponio: It feels right. I feel like anyone would say yes to that. Mike: I mean, it's also one of those pretty obvious things. AI is a very conversational tool, and so is Slack. Nicole Pomponio: Yes. Mike: It's made for each other. Nicole Pomponio: I think so. I want an agent right in there chatting with me helping me with my day. Mike: I would love. I'm a fan of Marvel. One of these days I'm going to get my own assistant. Nicole Pomponio: Yes, yes. Mike: And it fires up, "Good morning, Mike." Nicole Pomponio: I want my own J.A.R.V.I.S. I wouldn't name them J.A.R.V.I.S., but- Mike: Oh, I would totally name them J.A.R.V.I.S., and I expect him to have a British accent because it sounds just very proper. But yes, open up my shades, tell me what the weather's going to be in my first meeting and summarize the urgency of Slack messages that I got. That's what I want. Nicole Pomponio: I don't think we're asking for too much. Mike: No. I mean, we were supposed to have flying cars by now. Nicole Pomponio: Yes. Mike: So... Nicole Pomponio: The least we can do is have a Slack agent that could do work around our house. Mike: That speaks in a British voice. Nicole Pomponio: Yes. Mike: Cool. Thanks, Nicole, for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it. Nicole Pomponio: Thank you so much for the opportunity. Mike: Big thanks to Nicole for sharing how she's leading with Slack and evolving the admin role along the way. I really love the fact that she is an admin for multiple platforms and has leadership in leadership at her organization. It's great to hear from her how she's building smart channel conversations and also, yes, finding that seat at the table. I don't know about you, but I got a lot of strategy. I got a ton of inspiration out of this episode. Now I know not everybody's headed to Dreamforce, but if you are, I hope this session got you excited for some of the content that's out there. If you're not, that's okay. There is a ton of content on Slack, on both Trailhead, on our YouTube channels. You're not going to miss out. We'll also broadcast a whole bunch of this. I do believe Nicole's session will probably also be online, so I'll just let that out as a sneak peek. Now, if you learned something new or you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, share it with somebody, promote it on social, spread the word. Let other admins find some of this great content that you enjoy listening to. And with that, until next time, I'll see you in the cloud.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to David Simpson, Salesforce Admin at the 1916 Company. Join us as we chat about his process for troubleshooting Flow errors and his unexpected path into the Salesforce ecosystem. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with David Simpson. Why can Flow errors be so intimidating? If you’ve ever received an emergency ticket from a user because they’ve encountered a Flow error, you know just how cryptic they can be. It’s not always clear at first glance what’s going on, or what your user can do to fix it. What’s more, if you’re hearing about an error from a user, that means it’s made it to production. So now you need to start worrying about your testing and anything else that might pop up. And oh yeah, you need to fix the dang thing, too. That’s why I was so excited to sit down this week with David Simpson. He’s doing a Dreamforce presentation about how to better navigate Flow errors and how to prevent them from happening in the first place. Five steps to resolve a Flow error David breaks down the process of fixing a Flow error into five steps: Gather information about the Flow error. What’s in the error notification? Is it specific to a particular user or record? Try to replicate the error in a sandbox environment. Find the fix. Test the fix in your sandbox, and test for any similar scenarios. Push your fix to production. David emphasizes the importance of communicating with stakeholders at every stage of your solve. You don’t need to share every single detail, but you want to make sure your user knows that you’ve identified the error, how long it will take to fix it, and if there are any workarounds in the meantime. Reach out to the community We also discuss David’s path from finance into the Salesforce ecosystem. He started out as a staff accountant, but when he was asked to take over some of the Salesforce administration duties, he realized he loved working with the platform far more than burying his head in spreadsheets. Finally, I ask David about his top tips for getting better at solving Flow errors. He points to the Trailblazer community and Salesforce help articles as two of his best resources. However, he also suggests getting hands-on in a sandbox by trying to build things that might break. It’s a low-risk way to flex your problem-solving skills and will give you valuable experience for when a real error ends up in production. Make sure to listen to our full conversation for more from David about how to solve Flow errors. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.   Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Navigating Flow Errors Session at Dreamforce True to the Core Deep Dive: Flow Testing and Debugging Test or Troubleshoot Flows With the Flow Builder Debugger   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social David on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X   Full show transcript Mike: Ever had a flow error throw your day off track? You're not alone. This week on the podcast, we welcome David Simpson, Salesforce Admin at the 1916 Company who's bringing his session from Dreamforce navigating flow errors as a new admin right into your old earbuds. David's going to walk us through his process for troubleshooting errors, he shares tips for smarter flow testing, and we even talk about his unexpected path from finance into the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, if you've ever stared down an Apex exception email and wondered what is this trying to tell me? I promise you this episode is for you. So with that, let's get David on the podcast. So David, welcome to the podcast. David Simpson: Thank you for having me. Mike: Let's get started with what you do in the Salesforce ecosystem and the topic you're going to talk about at Dreamforce this year. David Simpson: Sounds good. My name is David Simpson. I am a Salesforce Administrator at the 1916 Company. I have been an admin for a little over eight years now and a flownatic for over five years now, and my session is Navigating Flow Errors as a New Salesforce Administrator. Mike: Okay, do you have a robe? David Simpson: I had a cape from being an awesome admin back at Dreamforce 2018, but that has been lost in multiple moves. Mike: Okay, well I'll say this publicly. I have an extra one in my basement and I'm going to get it after this podcast. You getting the cape back. David Simpson: Sounds good to me. Mike: So there we got that solved and all 35 people who are listening are like, cool, David's getting a cape, what else can I learn? But I saw your session. So navigating flow errors as a new administrator. I think for me, I've built demos for Flow. I am nowhere near Jennifer Lee level, Jennifer Lee's admin evangelist on my team. I think she knows more about Flow than Flow knows about itself. But I've always, I'll run into that error and be like, cool. I don't know Jennifer, what do I do? And for those people that don't have Jennifers, why are flow errors daunting? David Simpson: Flow errors can be daunting first off because the error message itself can be very vague. You're dealing with developer query language and it might not be incredibly clear on first glance what the error is. So you have this issue where your end user or your stakeholder is stopped in doing their job, and they get some cryptic error that they don't know how they can fix it and they are now looking to you and now you have to decipher this cryptic error message. So it can be pretty daunting even when you have experience in the Salesforce ecosystem to know exactly where to go and what to do to solve that error. Mike: So when do you find... New administrators, even experienced administrators get flow errors. Are you focused on when users get the flow error or when the admin is building a flow and testing it? David Simpson: So it's actually both. My session is planning on covering what happens when you encounter an error, more specifically once it's live in your production environment and maybe somebody has encountered it and maybe your testing didn't cover that aspect. How you can handle that, how you can troubleshoot it and get to the bottom of it. But then also how you can do some more comprehensive testing when building your flows. So if you get those errors, you can adjust them immediately or you can read those errors and understand what you have to do without going through a bunch of help documents online and figuring out what that code means. Mike: Yeah. So let's take us through David's thought process when you get a flow error. What happens? David Simpson: So the first thing I do is I go see how I was notified of the flow error. If it is an Apex exception email, I'll read through the Apex exception email and try and see, okay, who caused this? What's the record? What step in the process did it fail? And just all of that information that's in those emails. Alternatively, if it happened to have been triggered via a Flows fault path, I will then investigate that notification. But then what I try to do is I first see what the error message is, if it's something that I'm familiar with, if it seems like it might be related to a validation rule or permissions or just general access, I'll see if I can address that quickly. But if it's something a little bit more convoluted or harder to decipher, normally what I like to do is to take that same flow and we have sandboxes, so I'll go into the sandbox and I'll just try to replicate those steps. I will perhaps use the flow debug and run it as the user who encountered the issue. Maybe I'll try and recreate the record if it feels like a particularly daunting error and then just run through the flow and see where it fails. Those are normally my processes and through that I will eventually encounter the cause of the error. And then at that point it's just going through the process of fixing the error in the flow, performing more tests to make sure that I've covered that as well as any other potential unexpected issues that might arise from the change and then getting that pushed out, all the while communicating to whoever encountered the issue that this is being taken care of, this is the ETA, and if possible, any workarounds for that fix and error. Mike: Wow, you're better than the local mechanic that works on your car. Here's my car, it's making a noise. Three weeks later, you find anything out? David Simpson: Yeah. With Salesforce, it's really nice because there is so much information that it can almost seem a little bit overwhelming, but that information can be used to get to the problem a lot faster. We're not getting just some generic error that says, oh, an issue occurred, good luck. We're getting a more specific error that is pointing us where we need to go. We just need to be able to translate that into human readable language in order to solve it. Mike: Yeah, so I'm thinking of this. You've mentioned you've been an admin for eight years now, that's a decent time in the seat. How has working with Flow changed over time for you? David Simpson: It has gotten so much better, so much easier, but also more complicated. I remember just a few years ago having to perform a process builder that triggers an auto-launched flow that might have some issues accessing certain records or a collection of records. And throughout the years with all of these releases and updates, it's just gotten a lot easier and more intuitive. A great example would be just the introduction of an auto-layout in a flow. Being able to see that clear process and order of operations to the flows, it's really helped. But also with all of these features, it does get a little bit more complex. What is the best element to put on your flow in order for this to not only run but run efficiently? Is it multiple update records? Is it doing a loop and an assignment and then an update? Is it using Transform? There's so many options and there's no particular right way to do a lot of stuff, which is really freeing. You can get super creative with these solutions and I think that that's been an awesome thing. And not to mention testing, going back to the flow errors. The recent introduction of an enhanced flow debug has really made my life a lot easier. I can see so much more detail in what's going on in my flows than what I just built. I can see the technical specs behind it, and that's really helped me narrow down what exactly needs to be done or what needs to be fixed in my flows when I do encounter an issue. Mike: I'm going to say this respectfully. You sound like you have a lot of technical knowledge coming into the role of Salesforce Admin. David Simpson: Oh, well thank you. Mike: What was your history before being a Salesforce Admin? David Simpson: Before I was a Salesforce Admin, I actually worked in accounting and finance. I was a staff accountant. Mike: Oh, detail. Hello? David Simpson: Yeah. Very process-oriented, very consistent in my day to day, and I at one point made a transition from being a staff accountant to a financial analyst, which was just essentially more spreadsheets. But during that time, my supervisor said, "Hey, I administer our Salesforce instance here. I think you'd be good at it. I need some help. Our professional services team, they put their opportunities in and we need to clean up their financials at the end of each month, but you should probably know the system in which they're putting this in." So he gave me an admin license and told me go on Trailhead, start learning some of the beginner stuff, and I just instantly fell in love with it. I love the problem solving aspect. I love the ability that there's so much you can do and build, that Salesforce is just a canvas of process creativity that I said, you know what? I don't think I want to do finance related work anymore. I want to do Salesforce full time. Mike: Wow. Okay. So that's another podcast I'm going to have you on because I want to talk about career path. I think that'd be really cool, but I can see now the structured way that Flows work really could appeal to an accounting mindset. Is that the first feature that you really gravitated to? David Simpson: Interesting that you asked that. It did take me a few years to get into the flow space and the automation space. When I became an admin, the first automations I touched were Workflow and a little bit of Process Builder, but I was really moreso focused on user access and just general custom object setup. It wasn't until a few years into being an admin that my manager, I had switched jobs, he said, "I need you to build this automation and it's not going to work in Process Builder. It's not going to work in Workflow. You'll have to do Flow." And I was very intimidated at the point. But I had a mentor who walked me through flows that they had built and it just clicked. It was so logical and just made so much sense while still being flexible that it was, I didn't go back to Workflows and Process Builders unless I absolutely needed to. Mike: Yeah. David Simpson: So yeah, it took a few years, but once I was on the flow train, I could not stop. Mike: Yeah, no, I get you. I remember seeing Flow in its early early days back in 2012 when you used to have to actually download software to use it and the various iterations that it went through. But it's very useful now I think because of the visual aspect of it. David Simpson: Yes. Mike: I'm a very visual person and I've always, that's the thing that I loved about Process Builder was it looked like a process flow that you would diagram, and I'm glad that Flow has caught back up to that now. David Simpson: Yeah. Mike: Where do you stand on, so new admins, building flows, I've seen all kinds of flows. What's your process on how complicated you get a flow and testing it as you get more complicated? David Simpson: Well, the complexity of a flow, I try to start by being simple first and only using some basic decision elements and update or create records elements, something that is really just a simple if/then statement and then add the complexities as the business requirements change. But with every single change that is made, I just test. That debug button is right there on the flow and is so easy to use. You just click it, pick a record or put your inputs in and let it run and just make sure that you're seeing everything that should be happening with each step. It's like cooking. You should be tasting as you go to make sure that nothing unexpected is happening. And you can do the same with the flow. You add a new element, you click the debug and you test it. You add a couple of decisions or a loop, click that debug and test it. So it can get as complicated or as complex as you need it to be. But you can also just start very simple and you can test along the way and it will come out fine, just provided that you're being proactive in your testing. Mike: Yeah, no, sometimes I just dive in, I just want to build the whole thing and then it throws a million errors and I'm like, I should have built this more step-by-step. What was I thinking? It's the reason when they build houses, they home inspectors come at every stage. There's a reason for that. Let's talk about screen flows. I'm sure you touch on them in your session. I personally think they're really cool. I'm from, I was a Salesforce admin back in '06, and I remember thinking if only I could do a screen pop that walked people through filling out an account page or something, and now I could right? My fear if somebody turned me loose as an admin or I would do screen flows for everything. What is your decisioning on should I make this screen flow or not? David Simpson: I am incredibly pro screen flow, much like yourself. In our company, we use screen flows for almost everything that requires end user interaction. The idea is to provide our users only what they need to interact with or change or take action on, and nothing beyond that for both an efficiency sake and also to make sure that there's no confusion or there's potential bad data. So we utilize opportunities to process our sales. We actually use Salesforce as our main point of sale, and when they go to close out their sales, they click a button which triggers a screen flow that says "Have you gotten all of your tasks in order for this opportunity? Do you have the opportunity products added? Are they available for sale? Have you synced this opportunity to our external system?" And then all they have to do is just fill out a few fields, probably less than a dozen throughout the entire screen flow, and then it completes the sale for them. Similarly, when they want to create a brand new sale, they click a button on the account that creates a screen flow instead of the new opportunity standard action. Because it has many less fields on it, they only need to fill out, okay, who the customer is, what's the deal name, and then some just basic additional info that our customer experience team likes to have. So it's a very streamlined process and we find that it not only saves them clicks, but it saves them time and gets them back to helping out their clients a lot faster. So I'm very much screen flow. I just gave an example about opportunities, but we use it throughout the entire Salesforce org. Mike: Yeah, no, I'm with you. Pop a flow for everything. That'd be what I would do. So you're going to present this at Dreamforce next month. For people going, they'll see the presentation, not everybody goes and they listen. For people not going, but still really want to dig into what are things I should understand or how should I navigate flow errors as an administrator, what are some resources that helped you learn how to read through those error messages and understand them as a Salesforce administrator? David Simpson: So the first thing I would suggest is the Trailblazer community. There are so many helpful people on those forums, and if you encounter an issue, you can post a question and in a matter of minutes you'll get a response. But they're also just generally friendly people and they just want to see you succeed and they will help you out. So that is an incredible resource. Just the community that is built up around Salesforce and administrators is so great, and I highly recommend that if you ever run into an issue that you check out the Trailblazer community. Additionally, the Salesforce help articles have been super helpful for me. They're a little bit more technical. They're more about the steps that a process or a system can do, but those are also great for getting a foundational knowledge. And then the third and final resource that I would say is just build and break in a sandbox. Just try to make things that don't work and see what happens, and then try to fix them. Because it's a sandbox and it's not real data you're not at risk of causing any issues. But I learned the most by making mistakes, by building a flow and maybe not testing it thoroughly enough or forgetting a field or forgetting a step where I get a certain record and then seeing what that error is and then adjusting that. That generally happens to all of us eventually, but try and do it deliberately and see what error results you get back. You'll be surprised to find that they're the same errors that you get when you're not trying to make mistakes. So a great way to learn is just by simply doing. Mike: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I'm from the days when you used to get a little help box and you just hit this most frustrating error and try it again, try it again, try it again. It goes back to that was it Thomas Edison, he didn't find one way to invent the light bulb, he found 99 ways to not invent the light bulb or something like that. I feel like we're all that way. I've found 99 different ways to make a flow not work out of trial and error. And sometimes that's all it takes. But you can only read so much and then you have to actually go do and try things out and poke around in the org. So last thing that's on my mind, and I wonder. AI in the last few years has just erupted. What in your job has changed because of AI? And I just mean in general. Doesn't have to be Agentforce, nothing like that. Just in general, has anything changed for you as an admin because of AI? David Simpson: Yes. With the advent of AI, there is this unspoken expectation to be a little bit faster and a little bit more efficient. We are encouraged to use AI to help assist in creating solutions for the tasks that we are given and turn them around a little bit faster. It's just a general efficiency overall with AI. And I use AI in my day-to-day to help maybe create some tickets. We use Jira to spin up our tickets for the work that we need to do, and I will use AI to put my thoughts in. If I don't know a solution to something, I can say, "Give me the best recommended suggestions for implementing this type of action on the flow." Additionally, I can put in a solution that I've already had and have it output a nice format so that way if maybe I'm not the one doing the ticket, whoever I hand this off to, it can be much easier understood. So overall, just AI is making us more efficient and making us have a faster turnaround time, and that's just in turn building up the expectations for our stakeholders to deliver faster. Mike: Yeah, plus now they're the ones feeding the error messages to AI being like I think I know what the answer is, David. David Simpson: Yeah. Mike: Really? Did AI tell you that? I bet it told you to go buy me a cookie and a coffee at Starbucks because if it didn't say that, then it was wrong. It's lying to you, Alice. David Simpson: It's hallucinating. Mike: It's hallucinating, Alice. AI's hallucinating. All right, David, this has been super fun. I look forward to your session. I will ping you after this and get you that cape because I have one downstairs and I don't like it when people lose their capes. David Simpson: Sounds good. Mike: We'll get that taken care of. Absolutely. Thanks for being on the podcast. David Simpson: Yeah, thank you. Mike: Big thanks to David Simpson for joining us and sharing his approach to navigating flow errors. Whether you're a new admin or just trying to make sense of that latest debug message, I think David's insights really offer some practical steps to take the fear out of flow troubleshooting. Now, I'd love for you to get the whole story. So if you're able to make his session at Dreamforce, that's great. If not, follow his tips and learn on Trailhead like he did. And I will say this, cape not required, but bonus if you do Trailhead with a cape on because I think that's really cool. Do me a favor, if you enjoyed this or you have friends that are navigating flow errors, share this episode with them and I would appreciate that. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jim Ray, Director of Developer Relations and Advocacy at Slack. Join us as we chat about enhancements to Workflow Builder, the Slack features everyone should be using, and the future of AI and Slack. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jim Ray. Usability upgrades to core Slack features Jim and his team have been improving the core Slack experience. “We’ve really been focusing on those little paper cuts, the smaller features that just never quite made it into the next release,” he says. So essentially, Slack is a little better everywhere. One area they’ve focused on is Workflow Builder. In particular, they’ve added new branching functionality—allowing admins to create conditional paths like “if/then” logic. They’ve also been hard at work upgrading canvases and lists. With new data like AI-generated meeting notes, canvases provide a central place for all the relevant information. Jim also urges you to check out lists as a sort of “semi-database” for data you want handy in Slack. Slack’s AI vision centralizes agent interactions For Jim, Slack is one of the best tools to interact with and fully take advantage of the AI agents you build with Agentforce. It’s already the place your team communicates with each other, so why not be able to loop in AI teammates? “In the same way that Slack is the single place where every person in your organization is communicating, now it's the place where you're all working with those agents,” Jim says. And so his team is looking at how Slack can bring together every AI agent your team uses, whether they’re built in Agentforce or another third-party platform. Dreamforce 2025 will spotlight Salesforce-Slack integration I asked Jim for a sneak preview of what he has in store for Dreamforce 2025, and he did not disappoint. We’ve come a long way with tools like Salesforce channels and the ability to deploy an Agentforce agent directly to Slack. Now his team is working on ways to deepen the integration. So look for improvements to search and embedded Salesforce data in the coming year. There are so many more great insights into how you can get the most out of Slack in the Agentforce era, so be sure to listen to our full conversation with Jim. And be sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Can Salesforce Admins Do with Slack Integrations? Heroku   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jim on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X   Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. This week we're catching up with Jim Ray from Slack because it's very conversational. He's going to walk us through what's new in Slack from major releases that you may or may not have been paying attention to on Workflow Builder, Lists, and Canvases to, of course, all of the latest around AI and Agentforce. Plus, we're going to talk about what's coming at Dreamforce this year and how admins and developers like yourself can get the most out of Slack. So whether you're all in on automation or just exploring Slack's potential, I promise you there's something here for you. So you've already got those earbuds in? Let's get Jim on the podcast. So Jim, welcome back to the podcast. Jim Ray: Mike, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be back. I'm excited to talk to admins and maybe we'll talk a little bit about what's coming at Dreamforce. Mike: I mean all the things, because it's not that I didn't want you back sooner. It's just a really big platform and there's so many things to talk about. Jim Ray: Of course. Mike: But we use Slack every day at Salesforce and a lot of our customers do too. So it's been a while since we've chatted, but what's some of the big stuff that Slack has come out with this year that admins should be excited for if they haven't been paying attention? Jim Ray: Oh, that's such a great question, and obviously we use Slack every day as well, and nobody uses Slack quite like Slack uses Slack. Mike: Oh. Jim Ray: And I think that's probably true for Salesforce in some ways too. But we've been really excited to talk to some of our admins. We're continuing to learn more about the Salesforce developers in particular, and so always excited to hear about the use cases there. A few exciting things that have come out recently that I think will be pretty interesting. So our Workflow Builder product, so this is our no-code automation product that's built right into Slack, I think that's probably something that a lot of Salesforce admins and Slack admins are using. I like to think of Workflow Builder as the front door to the platform. And it's certainly adjacent to the platform in a lot of ways. So we've had some really great development happening in Workflow Builder. Something I'm actually really proud of is we've been really focusing on the core user experience of Workflow Builder. We've got a whole team that's working on something that internally we call Back to Basics, which is really just all about focusing on those little paper cuts or the smaller features that just never quite made it into the next release. So they've been building that out. So hopefully just the experience of using Workflow Builder is a little bit nicer, which is something that we always aim for. Mike: I never found it bad. Jim Ray: It's not that it's been bad, it's just that as the- Mike: To be fair. Jim Ray: Yeah, it's a great point. As the surface area of Workflow Builder has grown, we've added lots of new functionality and we've just needed to go back and polish here and spit-shine there. Mike: Sure. I mean, for me as an admin, it was the most intuitive thing that I could immediately jump into and kind of feel like I made a difference when we got Slack and when we started setting up channels. Because I think you probably hear this a lot, but to me the fallacy of, well, Slack is just where we communicate. No, you can actually guide the communication, and we do that with our team to help get the right information to the right spots. Because there's data and then there's contextual data, which is the conversation, and that's where we use a lot of workflows. And I was almost overwhelmed by the number of options that I had on ways and things I could do with the conversation or the input, like we use it, like an input form. I was like, "Wow." Jim Ray: Right, exactly. Mike: "Oh my God, now I got to go back and rethink this." It wasn't something where I was diving into it and thinking, "Okay, well, I'll just figure out what I got and just work with what I had." It was showing up to the grocery store and being like, "Oh, so you guys really do have everything? All right, cool." Kind of wasn't expecting that. I was expecting three kinds of cheeses and you got a whole cheese counter. Jim Ray: That's really great to hear. And even with the addition of things like Lists and Canvases, which are some features that we're continuing to expand on, we released those a while ago and obviously we use them a ton internally, but we're hearing from our customers that they're putting more and more of their mission-critical data. Canvases are fantastic because it's a really lightweight form of documents. You're not overwhelmed with all the different formatting options, but they're still really quite powerful, still a great way to capture information and add context to your channels. And my team uses them with Notes and with some of the AI generated notes that are happening within huddles and things like that. But I think Lists are another place that we're seeing a ton of value with things like Workflow Builder. So you were saying you've got an input form, but where are you going to put that once somebody has filled out the form? Lists are a perfect place for that. And again, it's not a full-blown database or even as powerful as something like an Excel or a Google Sheet, but if you just need to capture that data and you want it native inside of Slack, something that's searchable inside of Slack, something that you can easily add workflows to, I love Lists. And so they're both really fantastic features. Mike: I haven't used Lists. I can't speak for them yet, but I have used Canvases. Jim Ray: If you don't need something as full-featured as Jira, for instance. Mike: Maybe that's why. Jim Ray: My team, we use Lists a lot to track the projects that we're working on. We don't need a full suite of Jira tools. We're not working [inaudible 00:06:19] and things like that. So it's actually a really great way to do some lightweight project management as well. Mike: Ooh, I like that. You said a magic word, AI. Jim Ray: Yes. Mike: So I feel like Slack's built for AI because AI everywhere is just conversation, and I'm like, "Well, naturally, that's Slack." So talk to me about Agentforce and AI and Slack. Jim Ray: Absolutely. Before I jump to AI, I do want to mention one more Workflow Builder feature- Mike: Oh, yeah. Jim Ray: ... that I want people to check out is this is probably the longest standing request, which is the ability to branch your workflows. Essentially think of them as an if statement or a case statement if you're a programmer. But this was, when we gave people the ability to start doing some automation, the first thing they said is, "Oh, I need to branch my automation." So if they hit this button, do this thing, and if they hit this button, do that thing. We have finally built that into the product. It's a really fantastic way to make your automations even more powerful. If you are a programmer or if you're a developer and you're building on the Slack platform, one thing that I like about the new branching feature is that you can actually handle a lot of the, for lack of a better word, validation that you would normally be doing on the back end. Now, you can do a lot of that on the front end inside of Workflow Builder itself. So quick plug for branches there, another fantastic feature that we rolled out to Workflow Builder. And it's going to make those workflows even more powerful, but now we're ready to talk AI. Mike: Yeah, no, that's good. I do like that. I kind of want to play with that now. Jim Ray: It's really great. So yeah, so with AI, obviously, and Mike, as you implied, Slack is the best place to interface with the agents that are popping up in every single application that we use. And in some ways this is a return to form for Slack and the Slack platform. So when Slack launched in 2014, part of the reason that we were able to be so successful is we were riding this wave of a few trends that were happening in the industry. One of them, I'm sure you remember, DevOps. And DevOps was hugely successful to Slack being successful because a lot of our earliest customers were startups, engineering-focused organizations, media organizations, places that understood kind of the basic premise of DevOps, and we could just plug Slack right into it. So many developers looked at Slack and they were like, "Oh, this will fit right into my GitHub pipeline or my Jenkins pipeline, and then I can just pipe messages right into Slack. I can have all my entire engineering team in a channel and they can all come take a look at this." But as the platform grew and evolved, we added all of these features for interactivity. We added Block Kit, which is our UI composition framework. And now that we have all of these large language model and other generative AI tools, it is kind of this return to form for the platform in many ways. And so 10 years ago, if you wanted to build a Slack app that interacted with you, it was almost like a command line more than anything. It wasn't a natural place to chat. You would kind of send off some commands and then wait for the response. It felt very much like using a terminal or a Unix command line or something like that. But now with all of these LLM tools that are being plugged into all of the various systems of record, Slack is of course the place to bring all of that into the same place where you're working with your colleagues. And that's kind of been the basic pitch of the platform for a long time. Mike: So I do want to touch on that because it's a thing that I've been thinking of a lot. And of course it's the admin podcast, but that doesn't mean that admins don't code. Jim Ray: Sure. Mike: Lots of admins code and they just choose to identify as admins. Some developers only code. I don't want the perception to be, well, Slack is just for admins because they don't have to write code to do anything. But I think as you sit and look at when you're working with your team, whatever, of stakeholders, it's an admin and a developer, especially at a large organization, probably an architect. There's a lot of roles involved. Slack can really interface with a lot of different products that you have across the enterprise. What do we do for admins that had to be like, "No, let me talk to my developer because Slack is very developer friendly"? When we say Slack is very developer friendly, what do we mean by that? Jim Ray: Well, I like to think that our platform, first and foremost, is just one that developers really like to use. Again, that was something that was really critical to the success of the platform pretty early on. It doesn't feel like developing on a piece of enterprise software. And so we would hear from these developers that were used to these massive Java stacks, or they had to use an SDK that they weren't familiar with, or even a programming language that they weren't familiar with. And the premise for the Slack platform from the very beginning, and this is still true today, is that you can bring whatever programming language you want to. We make some first party SDKs available, but you don't have to use those. We have some frameworks that are even a little bit higher level than the SDKs. Those are all available in Python, Java, and JavaScript, but you don't have to use them if you don't want to. We have some amazing community-developed SDKs and frameworks as well. So that's the initial thinking as to what makes developing on the Slack platform great. But then the other part is that you can do things with the Slack platform that really you couldn't do with other forms of communication. They just didn't make sense in the context of email, for example. Even if you wanted to use email as the ultimate endpoint, it kind of didn't make sense because an email inbox is a one-to-one relationship with every person in the organization. Well, there's no really good way to collaborate until you pull people into these channels. And so that was another part of Slack's big success we kind of created, and again, we were pulling from a lot of what was happening in the world at the time, but we pulled a lot of these ideas and we put them into this kind of channel-based interface. And now you bring groups of people together that are working on a similar project, similar feature. And then when you layer on top of that, the platform pieces, that's where it starts to get really powerful. So again, think about your engineering org within your organization. So you've got a team and they get an alert from somebody has pushed some code and the tests fail. Well, now everybody on that team can see why the tests failed. So the engineer who pushed the code, that test probably wouldn't have failed if they knew what the problem was. So another engineer that might have a different bit of context, oh, I just checked in this bit of code, that's probably why your tests are breaking, for example. They can see that. And so now you're maximizing that visibility. And so when we layer on these other tools, to bring us back to this AI, so now every tool that you're using in your organization, they're starting to add these agentic features. And we were talking about, so if you're an admin, well, Slack now becomes the place. Rather than having to administer an agent in every single platform that you use, you bring those agents into Slack, so now you have a single place to work with them. In the same place that Slack is the single place where every person in your organization is communicating, now it's the place where you're all working with those agents. And so we're not there yet. We're still working on it. Obviously Agentforce is the best place to, if you're just getting started with this and you have a ton of data inside of Salesforce, of course Agentforce is the place where you're going to go, maybe try out some of these agents built on top of your data. But as we're seeing many of our partners, many of the other SaaS tools that our customers are using, all of these agent features are being built on top of the systems of record that they manage. And so what we've got, we've made those same AI features available to everybody on the platform. So now anybody can build an agent that works inside of Slack. And if you're an admin, this is fantastic news because now you've just got one place to manage all of these. Mike: And we use agents a lot at Salesforce. It's kind of fun. Sometimes I don't know where to look for my approvals. Jim Ray: Yeah. Mike: One thing to look forward to, bury the lead there, Dreamforce, it's coming now. Jim Ray: Absolutely. Absolutely. Mike: They just announced the band. Are you going to go? Jim Ray: I have never made it. Usually, because I'm so swamped, I've never made it to see the show. Mike: I know. Jim Ray: But we've got two choices this year, I think. Is this the first time that there's going to be two different stages? Mike: I don't know. I feel like they're doing that now because there's a generation of us that are coming up in the years, and then there's a younger generation. I remember a couple Dreamforces ago, I didn't even know one of the opening acts. Jim Ray: Oh, boy. Mike: And I was like, "Oh, I didn't know what my parents feel like now when I was a kid, and be like, "But Mom, of course it's Michael Jackson." Jim Ray: Right, exactly. Mike: "Duh." And that happened. I'm with you though. I have been once to the concert because that year we had the admin keynote the first day and we could go and it was almost like, I don't know, a celebration for us because it's like, "Yay, our keynote's over, we can go." Jim Ray: Oh, nice. Mike: And it was fun because it was Foo Fighters. I don't know if you were around then. I can't remember the year, but it was the one year it felt like it was out in a field or somewhere. Jim Ray: I think that was our first year as an official Salesforce company. Mike: Okay. I went, we got in, it was like, "Okay, I really need something to eat." They had hamburgers and stuff. I had that. And I was like, "Oh, the stage is that way. Let's walk that way." We got to what we thought the stage was, it was a giant TV screen. Jim Ray: Oh, no. Mike: Because they had all these satellite stages. Jim Ray: Yeah, exactly. Mike: And I was like, "Oh, well, this isn't so bad." And it was Foo Fighters, which was awesome. It was one of the years that Dave Grohl broke his foot, and so he was in that really cool throne. But I mean, of all the people that could still put on a show, he put on a show. Jim Ray: Nice. Mike: And I looked over and I was like, "Well, no, it looks like the stage is over there." Long story short, we ended up walking to all three of the satellite stages and never found the main stage because we kept thinking we were. And I was like, "You know what? I think this is the point at which I need to stop going to the concerts because-" Jim Ray: Yeah, there you go. And so this year we have a choice between, and you were talking about that generational divide, so it'll be very obvious. We've got Metallica on one stage and then Benson Boone on the other. Mike: Yes. Yes. Jim Ray: I can definitely remember buying Metallica on cassette tape. Mike: Yeah. Yep. I used to buy Metallica stuff when you could go to the convenience store and buy a glass bottle of 16-ounce Mountain Dew. Jim Ray: Oh, wow. Now there's a throwback right there. Mike: Everybody's like, "Oh man, old dudes on the podcast." Anyway. Jim Ray: Yeah, exactly. Mike: Let's give admins and developers some sneak peek stuff or what are some of the stuff, Jim, maybe that you're working on for Dreamforce this year? Jim Ray: Well, everything is still very much in flight. Mike: Oh, absolutely. Jim Ray: We just had our half year- Mike: Full-on forward-looking statement. Jim Ray: Absolutely. We just had the half-year company kickoff, but it was super exciting. The things that we're most excited about, obviously continuing to deepen the integration between Slack and Salesforce. And I think certainly from the Slack perspective, but I think even from the Salesforce perspective, that's really going to be a big story at Dreamforce, is deepening that connection. We've had things like Salesforce channels and these agents, the ability to deploy an agent from Agentforce into Slack with just clicks without having to manage any of the deployment bits. So super excited to just see that deepening continue to happen. And we've been working behind the scenes on some things that I think will continue to make Salesforce even more embedded and useful with the context of Slack, a lot of them having to do with things like search. And so we've been releasing these new features to search that allow you to search not just your Slack corpus, but your Salesforce data and your Google Docs data and your Microsoft data. And so continuing to broaden and make search that much more useful. I feel like search is one of those hidden superpowers inside of Slack. People will sometimes come ask me a question and I don't know the answer, but I know how to search for it and where to find it. Mike: Oh, literally how to search for it. Ha-ha. I see what you did there. Jim Ray: Well, and you kind of become the oracle within an organization in some ways. But there are some things that we can do on the product side to make some of those things a bit more obvious. So I think that'll be good. I'm excited about our continued partnership with Heroku. Heroku is really doing some really amazing work. And they're in a big reboot phase right now over there in Heroku, and they're really leaning heavily into AI. But if you are doing custom development work, Heroku really is the best place to deploy those apps, especially if you want those apps to show up inside of Slack. But some of the work that they're doing with their custom inference and the databases that they've got for AI tools, I think is really, really cool. So if you're a developer, if you've got a team of developers that's really interested in pushing pretty hard into some of this custom AI tools, it's probably time to give another look to Heroku and see what they've got going on. Really, we're doing some workshops with that team as well, and so we'll be showcasing how to build great custom apps, deploy them to Heroku and have them show up inside of Slack. Mike: Oh, very cool. Awesome. Well, thanks for making time out of your day, Jim. And I mean, you're always welcome back to the podcast. I'm sure after Dreamforce, we should have a debrief and be like, "Okay, remember all those things we talked about? Here's where we're at." Jim Ray: Absolutely. And by then, we'll have figured out what we're actually going to be talking about. So that'll be great. Mike: That's always the plan. That's always the plan. Jim, it's great to have you on the pod. You're always welcome back. So thanks for keeping us enlightened. Jim Ray: Excellent. Thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate it. Mike: Well, that was a Slack-tastic time with Jim. You know I had to throw that in, try something, right? I appreciate him giving us a sneak peek on what's ahead for Dreamforce. It's going to be exciting this year. And enhanced workflows, smarter agents, I'm telling you, there's just never been a better time for admins to explore what Slack can do. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, share it with a fellow Salesforce admin or somebody else in the community that you think would enjoy listening to it. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to LeeAnne Rimel, Senior Director of Admin and Developer Strategic Content at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about True to the Core Deep Dive and how it will give Salesforce Admins more chances to engage with product leaders, ask questions, and influence the roadmap. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel. True to the Core with a spin If you’ve been to a Dreamforce or TDX, you’re probably familiar with True to the Core. Typically, it’s a keynote session with Salesforce product leaders where you can get key insights and engage them in a Q&A. However, as LeeAnne points out, we’ve noticed over the years that there isn’t always time to go deep on a particular topic. That’s why we’re launching a special monthly video series, True to the Core Deep Dive. Each month, we’ll focus in on one core Salesforce Platform product area, with product leaders there to answer questions and really get down to the nitty-gritty. First episode focus: Setup and user access management For our first episode, we looked at the most highly voted topic area on IdeaExchange: Setup and user access management. So we sat down with Senior PMs Cheryl Feldman and Elizabeth Martin to walk through recent feature updates and look at what’s on the roadmap. The highlight was definitely the 40-minute question and answer section, which really let us go so much deeper than your average keynote session. Other product owners Larry Tong and Laurent Kubaski were firing away answering even more questions in the chat. If you missed it, be sure to check out the video on LinkedIn or YouTube.  We need you to help pick future topics If LeeAnne wants you to take one thing away from this episode, it’s that we need you to help us pick future topics. That’s right, this series is all about transparency and that includes topic selection. So each episode ends with a survey to determine what next month’s episode will be about. “I read every single comment,” LeeAnne says, “we read all of the feedback and it directly informs every episode we’re going to put together.” So tune in next month for the first community-chosen topic, Flow testing and debugging, and help us figure out what to look at next. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from LeeAnne about what she’s working on for Dreamforce. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog: Introducing True to the Core Deep Dive: In-Depth Product Conversations with Salesforce PMs LinkedIn: True to the Core Deep Dive: Setup and User Access YouTube: True to the Core Deep Dive: Setup and User Access Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social LeeAnne on LinkedIn LeeAnne on X Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today, we're diving into a brand new way that Salesforce is connecting with the community called True to the Core Deep Dive. So LeeAnne Rimel, who's been on the podcast before, is going to join me and talk about this new series that gives you, the Salesforce admin, more chances to engage with product leaders, ask questions, and influence the roadmap based on your feedback. You'll have to hear how the first episode went. I'll have the link in the show notes. We're going to hear a little bit about what's coming next, but more importantly, how you can shape future topics. So if you're as excited as I am, keep walking or riding the train or listening, and let's get LeeAnne on the podcast. So LeeAnne, welcome back to the podcast. LeeAnne Rimel: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Mike: Yeah, it's been exciting. And last I checked, there was live, there some event that just melted my social feeds about True to the Core, so we have to start there. Tell me what's going on. LeeAnne Rimel: Well, we love True to the Core and we love True to the Core so much that we are bringing it to you virtually throughout the year. So if you're not familiar with True to the Core, if you haven't attended True to the Core in the past, it's a program with Salesforce that typically is a keynote setting at TrailblazerDX and at Dreamforce where all of our senior product leadership, senior Salesforce executives get on stage and they talk about Salesforce and the future of Salesforce and they answer questions from the audience. And I think, I should know this, I can't remember exactly when it started, but it's more than 10 years old. So it's a little bit of a fan favorite if you've been in the Salesforce ecosystem for a while because it's such a great opportunity to get transparency into roadmap, to ask very direct questions about things that impact you as a Salesforce professional. However, we got feedback from our community about True to the Core that there wasn't enough of them. We only really do it at Dreamforce and at TrailblazerDX typically. And the product suite has gotten big. There's a lot of features, there's a lot of product in the Salesforce world, as we all know. So it was a little bit like a mile wide, an inch deep, I think is how people were feeling. Like, yes, maybe I got the opportunity to ask a question, but I wanted to spend more time on that question and more time in that area with the product managers. So with that context, that's why we created True to the Core Deep Dive. So that's what we launched in August. August 12th was the first episode. And it's very much directly in response to that community feedback that we heard. We want more opportunities for this feedback loop. We want more transparency into roadmap. We want to ask more questions, we want to dive deeper into specific features that matter to us. So the first episode, which you can find on LinkedIn, was in August. And it was with Cheryl Feldman and Elizabeth Martin, who look after set up and user access. And it was so much fun, Mike. We did like 40 minutes of questions, which is a ton. So it was a lot of- Mike: It's still not enough. It's still not enough. LeeAnne Rimel: Not enough. I know, I hear you. I did see a couple notes- Mike: You could do 400 minutes of questions, still not enough. LeeAnne Rimel: I know. I know. But it's definitely more than we had before. So we did over 40 minutes of questions, ton of live Q&A. We had product owners Larry Tung and Laurent we're in the chat also firing away. It was the meme of doing the keyboard and the keyboard's lighting on fire because we're typing so fast. I felt like they were just answering so many questions in the chat about pilot programs, about roadmap, and then really specific technical questions about things that members of the community are facing. So it was really exciting. I'm really proud of it. I'm really excited that it's so deeply connected to community feedback. I think it's really important. That's basically the north star of True to the Court Deep Dive is community feedback and community voting and community questions. So it was really fun. It was great. Mike: So if they missed that first August 12th episode, we'll link to that. You could still watch, it's still worth watching, right? LeeAnne Rimel: Oh, absolutely. I think there was a ton Cheryl and Elizabeth, like I said, they look after user access and permissions, so they shared some of what's coming. They also shared, Cheryl shared, "Here's things that we're not working on," right? Because we're really active on the idea exchange and they- Mike: Can't work on everything. LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah, and I think that level of transparency is one of the reasons that Cheryl is so well-connected with the community and really listens to the community is like we need to know, as admins, as developers, we need to know what's coming on the roadmap. And also we need to know for planning what's not going to be worked on. If I had my heart set on a particular feature area, I think that transparency is really valuable to have the information to make plans. Mike: So let's talk about the future of this series. Is it series? I think that's fair to [inaudible 00:05:40]- LeeAnne Rimel: It is a special monthly series. Mike: Special monthly series. Oh, boy. I feel like get home from school and you get your carrot sticks and your ranch. LeeAnne Rimel: Exactly. Mike: That's what everybody got as a kid, right? LeeAnne Rimel: Maybe ants on a log. Mike: Oh, ants on a log. I forgot about that. Yeah. Okay. There's always food in the podcast. So first of all, I'm Salesforce admin and I really want to contribute to this series. What are ways that I can participate? LeeAnne Rimel: We need you to contribute to this series, Salesforce admins. The topics for this are entirely chosen by the community. So the very first topic was chosen based on idea exchange trending topics and highly voted topic areas. But all subsequent episodes will be chosen based on the surveys and the voting that we're hosting on each episode. So in episode one, at the end of episode one, we had the episode one survey. And the top topic that came out of that and also happens to be a top trending idea exchange topic is flow, and within that, testing and debugging. So that's our next episode is flow testing and debugging. So we'll link, Mike will link in the show notes the blog announcing this, and within that we'll have both the recordings for the previous episodes, the link to register for the upcoming episode, and also the opportunity to vote on topics that are meaningful to you. So that is very much, that community feedback specifically from that voting mechanism that we will have in every episode is incredibly important for us to ensure that we are putting together episodes and shows that are directly meeting the community with what you need to talk about. And we're going very deep. We're really getting granular with the features. So notice it's not just a flow episode, which is a very popular topic, but there's so much within flow. So we went into the subtopic of what is the most hot, trending, highly voted subtopic within flow? And that was, for this round, was testing and debugging. So I think your feedback and I read every single comment, so if you've filled out a survey, thank you so much, from episode one. And then if you fill out surveys in the future, I want you to know we read every single comment, we read all of the feedback, and it directly informs every episode we're going to put together. Mike: So you got to put Easter eggs in your comments. That's what I hear. LeeAnne Rimel: You can throw a little joke in there. Mike: If I was [inaudible 00:08:32] I got to put something in there. LeeAnne Rimel: I like dad jokes. You can put little dad jokes in there if you want. Mike: Well, but that was actually- LeeAnne Rimel: As long as you pick a topic. Mike: Right, pick a topic. That was actually my question is so I'm glad you're going granular. Is there a world where flow debugging gets two episodes because it just keeps rising to the top? LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think we're going to have to see what the data show us. So I think if we see something that is really persistent in where it is on the priority list, I think we will have to talk about should we have repeat kind of follow-on episodes for that. Maybe there's additional content forms or forms that we should create for that topic area. So I think this is, I think as we face those, we'll see the best way to make sure we're meeting the community where they're asking us for more information. I would anticipate, safe harbor, but I would anticipate over the next year we're probably going to have more than one episode on flow because it is such a prevalent topic and there's so many areas within flow to talk about. And we do really want to be able to have this space to go really deep, really granular on those subtopic areas, if you will, like those feature areas within a larger area. It's a great question and I think, yeah, there's no rules around, well, we spend time on this feature area and we're never going to talk about it again. I think that that's not true to the nature of True to the Core and what we're intending here. And then also I think we'll see what the data show and what's demanded. Mike: Yeah, because I was going to say it could also be kind of frustrating if you suggest a topic. I'll be honest, security is a topic we should cover. It never gets voted up very high. Nobody likes talking about all of the padlocks and security features, but it is important. It's in everything that we do, and so- LeeAnne Rimel: Well, and I think we're going to- Mike: ... it'd be kind of fun to see. LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah, I hear you, right? If something isn't always a number one topic, will we get to it? Mike: Right. LeeAnne Rimel: And I think to that, we'll definitely be kind of moving down the list, if you will. Yeah, so to answer your question more clearly, I think we'll definitely be kind of moving down the list and moving onto the, for the episode in November, we'll be looking at, okay, based on the data that we collected so far, and we just had a flow episode, kind of what's number two? And then we'll be moving down in that way. Mike: Gotcha. So Dreamforce will be a little over a month and a half away when this episode drops. Are there big True to the Core Deep Dive plans for Dreamforce? LeeAnne Rimel: Well, there will be a, that we're anticipating a True to the Core keynote at Dreamforce. So I think that is, if you are newer to Dreamforce or haven't attended True to the Core at Dreamforce in the past, I really recommend, if you're going to be there in person, attending the True to the Core keynote. I think it's a really meaningful part of a Dreamforce experience. And then also, if you're not attending Dreamforce in person, it will, typically, it is on Salesforce+, so you can watch it on VOD afterwards. But I think that will be our big... Dreamforce is in mid-October. That will be the True to the Core for October will be the Dreamforce keynote. We're hoping to share more opportunities to vote, to really increase the feedback that we get on future episodes. So stay tuned for Dreamforce posts and things like that. And we're hoping to share more opportunities for Dreamforce attendees to share what they would like to see more of with True to the Core Deep Dive episodes. And then when we'll be back with our regularly scheduled programming, if you will, [inaudible 00:12:34]. Mike: Right, because Dreamforce interrupts everything. For fans of LeeAnne, because they had the how... You did the Did You Know series. That was what I was thinking of. Are there other things that you're working on that you want to share or is it all forward-looking statement right now? LeeAnne Rimel: Forward-looking statements. I think we're working on, I think for Dreamforce this year, so I'm hard at work on Dreamforce technical content in general, sort of the experiences that you have in the Trailblazer Forest and across our technical tracks. And I think I am really excited to see what all the teams are working on for Dreamforce, specifically for our admin, developer, and architect audiences. I think there's just going to be a lot of great technical learnings. We also, I will share, are going to have more community-led sessions than ever before, so there'll be more information coming out about that. But I think we're going to have a lot of technical sessions, a lot of opportunities for admins and developers and architects and more community-led sessions than... We've always had a lot of community-led sessions, we have even more. So I'm really excited to hear and learn from our community. Mike: Well, thank you LeeAnne, for coming on the podcast. I know one fun fact, if people are hungry at Dreamforce, you always have snacks. LeeAnne Rimel: I do always have snacks, Mike: Always. Not candy, but snacks. So that's always good to have LeeAnne Rimel: Snacks to help sustain you through... I think I have a few blogs floating out about there about my preferred snacks, but- Mike: I'm sure you do. You've always kept the team energized in a healthy way, not in a sugar inducing caffeine coma way, which is great. LeeAnne Rimel: Yeah, if someone's having low blood sugar, I probably have a protein bar for you. You'll probably be- Mike: Yes. Yep. LeeAnne Rimel: Or some sort of like- Mike: A nutritious organic environmental perfect protein bar. LeeAnne Rimel: I do my best. Mike: Thanks for coming on the podcast, LeeAnne. We will tune into the True to the Core sessions and I can't wait to see what you come up with for Dreamforce. LeeAnne Rimel: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Mike. Mike: Big thanks to LeeAnne for coming on the podcast and giving us the scoop on the True to the Core Deep Dive. I have a question for you. What after school snack did you get that wasn't carrot sticks and ranch or ants on a log? Curious minds want to know. I also got Ritz Crackers with peanut butter, chunky peanut butter because chunky peanut butter on Ritz crackers is awesome. So there we go. There's a little nugget. Share that on social, be sure to ping me. I'd be curious. Don't forget now, all these True to the Core Deep Dive episodes are going to be built on your questions and your input, so be sure to jump in, vote, share your thoughts, jump on the lives, ask questions. I don't anticipate these ending for a while. We'll have links in the show notes to the first episode and any other information that I have about it as of when this comes out. So that's it. I'm going to go maybe have some carrot sticks and ranch. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce.   Join us as we chat about the new Agentforce Adoption Framework and her new YouTube series, “Kate Clicks Through It”.   You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kate Lessard. A flexible, nonlinear learning journey for admins   It’s been a while since we’ve had Kate on the pod, but she’s been cooking up something cool, and I wanted to sit down with her to hear all about it. It’s called the Agentforce Adoption Framework, and it’s your guide for bringing the power of AI into your organization.   Kate and the Evangelist team identified a gap: admins needed a structured path to get up to speed with everything Agentforce has to offer. The framework breaks this down into five areas of focus:   Explore what’s possible Get curious Try it out Make it work Use it often   You can check out Kate’s post on the Admin Blog for more details, but the goal is to help you set goals for your organization and get ready for what’s coming next with AI. Hands-on learning through “Kate Clicks Through It” Kate’s also started a new YouTube series, “Kate Clicks Through It,” where she walks you through Salesforce processes step by step, with demos so you can click along and try them yourself.   “I personally am someone who learns best by doing,” Kate says, “I need to get hands-on, I need to do something. In many cases, I need to do it over and over again.” The videos are around 10 minutes long, giving you quick tutorials on subjects like how to build an Agentforce data library, or how to use Org Check as an alternative to Optimizer. A framework for learning just about anything The Agentforce Adoption Framework was developed through tons of research and feedback from admins, Salesforce MVPs, and folks on the product team. We think it’s pretty spiffy—so keep an eye out for more adoption-focused content at Dreamforce or even an event near you.   As Kate points out, while Agentforce might be the shiny new toy, the adoption framework can be adapted to just about anything you want to implement. She uses the example of Data Cloud to highlight how important it is to have that fundamental level of adoption for both your users and your external customers.   There are so many more great insights from Kate about how to level up your understanding of Agentforce, so be sure to check out 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 Admin Blog: Your 5-Step Guide to Successful Agentforce Adoption YouTube Series: Kate Clicks Through It   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Kate on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full Transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admin's podcast. This week, admin evangelist Kate Lessard joins us to dive into the Agentforce adoption journey. From building a foundation AI to launching the new Kate Clicks Through It YouTube series, Kate walks us through how admins can thoughtfully and confidently bring AI into their organizations. We also chat about how feedback shaped the adoption framework and, sneak peek, what you might see at Dreamforce. So if you've been wondering where to start or where you are on your AI journey, this episode's for you. Let's get Kate on the podcast. So Kate, welcome back to the podcast. Kate Lessard: Thanks. It's been a while. Mike: Yeah. January. Was it when we did the kickoff? That was the last time. Kate Lessard: Maybe. Or maybe did we do a TDX, prep for TDX call maybe? Mike: We might've. Other podcasters would remember their episodes, but me, just crank them out. Kate Lessard: Yeah, you're a little busy. Mike: It's okay. So you've been busy as well. Let's talk about Agentforce stuff and YouTube stuff and everything you've been working on. Kate Lessard: Yeah, absolutely. It has definitely been a busy year. It's been flying by. And some really exciting stuff that we've been working on for admins this year. Mike: First up being Agentforce stuff, because Agentforce. I know there's not too much Agentforce out there. People say that, there's not. When we're recording this ChatGPT is coming out with a new model. This is our new norm. It's like when the iPhone drop, there's not enough iPhone information out in the world. There's always iPhone information out in the world. There's always going to be AI stuff for us to learn. Kate Lessard: Yeah, agreed. I think that that's the really cool thing about Agentforce and the job that we get to do is that we get to play with and learn the new things as they're coming out because it's so important for us to share with others and let them learn from our mistakes. So I think that that brings a lot of fun experimentation into our jobs. Mike: Right, absolutely. So speaking of that, how do we kind of walk people through the journey to Agentforce? Kate Lessard: At TDX last year we, or I guess this year, we announced that we have this Agentforce development life cycle. But then we kind of started asking what comes before that? How do we get into this cycle where we're iterating through ideation, configuration, testing, deployment, and supervising our agents? How can we get ready to actually go live with agents and Agentforce and using it? And so on the admin relations team, we kind of took a step back and started to think about adoption and how we can set up adoption for admins and get them not only familiar with Agentforce, if they have no idea what it is, where they can get started, how they can start to learn the fundamentals of AI just in general, and then dive into Salesforce and Agentforce and using AI within their CRM. That's been something we've been really focused on, is creating the concept of this adoption framework to help admins get ready to move their organizations towards actually using Agentforce consistently. Mike: Yeah, because I think it's one thing ... I mean, it's a little different than ... And I use this a lot when we talk about Flow or some of our other products. Automation within the CRM space has always been there. We didn't really have to learn it. But with AI, we're all learning AI on top of our organizations learning AI, on top of us going, "Okay, so now how do we use this? And what's the best use of this?" And all of that has to transfer into the admin sitting there going, "Oh my, I have a lot to learn. Where am I at?" And I think that's really one of the goals of coming out with the journey, is helping people understand where are you at, where do you want to go? Kate Lessard: Agreed. I think that the development of Agentforce and of course more widely artificial intelligence, it's fast. It feels like there's something new to learn every week. I think that can cause a lot of overwhelm because we're trying to keep up without maybe even having a solid foundation. So this concept of the adoption framework was really designed as a baseline for admins to be able to take stock of where they are in their Agentforce learning journey, overcome that analysis paralysis that I think many of us have been feeling over the past couple years, and then have resources and a guide for exactly where they are now and what is coming next. Mike: Yeah. So where is this guide or the adoption journey going to show up for us? Kate Lessard: So you will be able to see it, we have a nice blog on the admin's website right now. It is called Your Five Step Guide to Successful Agentforce Adoption. Just double checking that title, but that is correct. And this kind of introduces that adoption framework, the steps that are included with it, some resources for each step along the way. And then you might see this show up in a couple other places. It might show up in a Dreamforce session or it might show up on our website or any other place that I could maybe tease that it would come out. I think it's something that you might see here and there. And the nice thing is that it's ever-changing because we're constantly having new content and new resources to add to it in each step. So I think it's something that you're going to see in multiple places moving forward. Mike: And I was a part of you brainstorming this and bringing it to the team, and really it was everybody on the team had something to contribute to this. Where do you feel like admins are progressing through in terms of the journey? Are we starting off? Does everybody start off at the beginning, or we jump in steps? I mean, is it like a step method, everybody has to go through every single step? Kate Lessard: I think you go through every step, but maybe you don't recognize that you've gone through some of them. So our first step is really exploring what's possible and just really understanding what AI fundamentals are, what is Agentforce? And a lot of our admins are really active. They've already been hands-on in Trailhead. So they've maybe gone through this stage themselves without even realizing it because they've kind of figured out how the technology works. They've actually done a little hands-on work. They have been picturing use cases for their organization. And so maybe they're hopping into that next phase where they're actually sharing this and doing demos to their stakeholders and trying to bring this to their organization. So I think everyone goes through all the stages, but you might not be just starting directly at the beginning. Once you become aware of this framework, I think that you can hop in and find the point that is most relevant to where you are on your journey and be able to kind of pick up from there. Mike: Yeah. And hopefully it kind of helps you gut check content and say, "Hmm, Maybe this is for next week when I'm moving into a different phase." Not to say that it would be a week that you would be in a phase. I'm just using it as a example. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. I mean, admins move fast. I would not be shocked if some of them were moving from phase week to week. Although I would be surprised if they didn't spend some time in that phase where they're building out a demo and getting stakeholders involved in really building that support. I feel like that always takes time. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. So in addition to the adoption journey, what else have you been working on? Kate Lessard: Lots. It's been a busy year. I'm super excited to share some of the things that I've been working on and the team's been working on. We recently launched a new series on YouTube called Kate Clicks Through It, which has been just a labor of love. And I feel like it has been something that I'm really excited about, really excited to put out into the world because it is a series that allows admins to get hands-on and follow along different Salesforce processes step by step. And I personally am someone who learns best by doing. I need to get hands-on. I need to do something. In many cases, I need to do it over and over again. I need to try. I need to fail. That's why admins love sandboxes so much. That's why we love Trailhead, so that we can get in there and we can actually just try things out and see what works and what doesn't, and then take the best version of that to our business. So Kate Clicks Through It launched in July. We have two episodes out right now, one on Agentforce data libraries and one on using Org Check as an alternative to Optimizer, which is retiring this winter. And it's just a way to follow along step by step. They're short episodes, less than 10 minutes spent on each demo so that you can actually have your computer up and click along beside me, and by the end we've accomplished something together. Mike: It's kind of like a Salesforce Twitch stream. Kate Lessard: Yeah, absolutely. Mike: You're not playing the video game, you're building the app or clicking through the app. Kate Lessard: Exactly. Mike: Cool. So Kate, it is, boy, end of August. Well, end-ish of August. I swear these months, it's like it took forever ... February took like eight or nine months. And then we had TDX, and then it was spring for a day, and now Summer is flying by, it's already the end of August. The kids are back in school. Dreamforce is right around the corner. Which usually for most of us is September. It's October this year. It's not close enough to Halloween, but it still would be close enough that you could totally get away with wearing a Halloween costume at Dreamforce. I just realized that, that might be kind of fun. I mean, the biggest costume is Cloudy and Codey. They would win, I suppose. Would they wear a costume? Would the costume wear a costume? Kate Lessard: I don't know the answer to that. Mike: It's inception, like Astro in his Tanooki suit, would he wear another costume on top of that? These are the things that keep Mike up at night. We did wear a Yeti suit. Kate Lessard: [inaudible 00:11:30]. That is true. The Yeti suit and the safari suit. Mike: I forgot about the safari. Kate Lessard: I think we could all just call it a win across the board and wear some awesome admin capes. Mike: Right. I mean, if you don't wear that in your every day, just because you could. We're going to see some of the Agentforce adoption journey show up at Dreamforce, maybe in the keynotes, maybe in the track? Kate Lessard: Maybe. I think that the nice thing about the adoption journey is that it really is applicable to so many situations. I think that it is, even if it's not called out directly, it is going to be there and you're going to start noticing it as part of that underlying education and the foundation of how we're talking about and building things. It's also really nice because it doesn't just have to be for Agentforce either. I think that what we've created is really applicable for a lot of different adoptions of different technologies. So I think that it's something that maybe we'll see as the world continues to progress and AI gets more advanced. So it's definitely something that you'll start to notice at Dreamforce. Mike: Yeah. I'm also thinking of, it always seemed as when I was an admin going to Dreamforce, nine times out of 10 it was, I need to learn about this other cloud because we're getting ready to implement it. So I could see that Agentforce adoption journey being applicable as you're looking at additional clouds as well. Kate Lessard: Yeah, I think especially if you're using something like Data Cloud to unify your data and bring things from multiple sources, that it becomes really important to have that foundational level of adoption for your users in general and your customers, external customers as well. Mike: Yeah. One thing we didn't touch on, and we're not giving away the chili recipe ... I always think back to Food Network where they're, I've got some ... It's always they're making a sauce and they put in, "Well, I've got some salt and pepper and some onion powder," and you're like, "Yeah, that goes in everything." And then I got my seasoning blend, and you're like, "Oh, that's you don't want to tell us everything else that you put in there." Kate Lessard: The secret admin sauce. Mike: The secret ... Yeah. But I mean, I don't want people to think like, "Oh, well, Kate just sat down and mapped out a journey and presented it to the team, and then now it's on the website." What was some of the process or the input that we got on the adoption journey? Kate Lessard: Absolutely. That is a great question because we involved a lot of people in creating this. Not only the team, although that's where we certainly started, but the framework was not built in a vacuum. We had a ton of feedback and interaction both internally and from the community as we developed this. So we got feedback from members of our product team at Salesforce. We did a very soft launch at TDX as part of my demo to deployment session and got some feedback from that. And then we continued to refine and then get feedback from admins in a survey that we shared at a local community conference. And then after that, we took that survey to the Salesforce MVPs and got some more feedback from some of them as well. So everyone that weighed in helped us refine this framework. They called out some things that maybe we hadn't thought were really that important for admins to include in this journey, this roadmap. But once we heard that and we saw it consistently show up, we added it in. So a lot of people weighed in and helped us create this journey map. Mike: And some of it was us just looking at each other and being like, "Is this what we're going through?" Because we're going through Agentforce adoption as well. I mean, from the moment the product hit some of our orgs for us to try and play around with, it was, what are we learning and is this what we're going through? Kate Lessard: Absolutely. And I think that that really hits the nail on the head. I think that we went through a lot of these different emotions that we associated with each stage here. We were curious, we were frustrated, we were feeling really proud once we got to this stage. So selfishly, this framework has kind of evolved into a game changer for our team internally and our internal content strategy as well, because we've been able to see where there are content gaps that we have experienced, as well as what we've heard from the community and what we should be focusing on to give admins the knowledge that they need for a successful Agentforce implementation. And we're able to collect that feedbacks from the admins and the community about what they've been struggling with and what resources and discussions they feel have been missing, which was the biggest thing that was contributed to us as we were building this. Mike: So here's a meta question. Did you use AI to create any part of the adoption journey? Kate Lessard: I did. Okay. So let's think back to this ... It's been such ... Oh gosh, we've been working on this for months. But- Mike: Got to do the flashback [inaudible 00:16:51]. Kate Lessard: First it started off with just a giant brain dump mind map. That was what helped us kind of sort out the emotions and the stages. And then they've shifted terminology and what we are referring to them and how we process them a few times. I think AI really helped me with the survey, is where it helped out. So I was like, "These are the things that I'm trying to get. This is how I'm trying to ask the questions. This doesn't feel quite right. Can you help me refine this?" And so I did use AI to help me with that survey. And then got feedback from our internal marketing team as well to make sure that it was capturing what we needed it to. Because I think the biggest thing that we see with surveys in general, and this is me going down a total rabbit hole from my past project management and consulting experience, when you send out surveys or you're gathering requirements or you're asking questions, if you do so without having the specific goal in mind of what you're trying to get back, you can get so much information that is valuable, but maybe not what you're looking for or answering the questions that you really need answered. So I think that AI, as well as our internal marketing team, was super helpful in refining that. Mike: That, or what I've found is you can ask the question in such a way that it elicits only a certain answer, as opposed to kind of an A, B, C answer. Really you're asking it, is it this or not this? And then you end up with an answer where the person really kind of hones in. And it's almost like, I don't know if the term confirmation bias is right, but I do know a friend once asked me, "When you ask somebody their opinion, it's because you really want them to confirm that you're right." And I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's kind of true." Kate Lessard: Right. Yeah. Do I look good in this? Mike: I mean, all of the time. Yeah. You ask questions like that, "Do you really think I should buy this house?" And it's like, you don't want them to say no. You want them to be like, "Yes, it's going to be an amazing house for you." Kate Lessard: Yeah. Mike: "Absolutely. It's a totally good decision." I don't know. That just stuck with me, that kind of thing. Kate Lessard: Yeah. Big shout out to our research team that does that every day, right? They're putting together these questionnaires and they're talking to people at events like TDX and Dreamforce and having to just put together these thoughtfully designed surveys and questionnaires, and it really is an art. Mike: Well, Kate, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and talking about adoption journey and Kate Clicks Through It. You're out there helping admins progress through different emotions, not just learning. Because that's also important, because emotions drive a lot of things, and creativity and inspiration are definitely two of those things. So I appreciate you coming on the pod and talking about that. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. And I think that you're exactly right, those emotions are important. And they help make us better admins and the passion that we have for helping out the business and the organizations that we work with. It's just really important. It's a driving factor. And that's part of what makes us so successful and helps make both our users and our external customers happy. Mike: Big thanks to Kate for walking us through the Agentforce adoption framework and showing us what a thoughtful community-driven AI adoption can look like. Be sure to check out her YouTube series, Kate Clicks Through It, and explore the resources linked in the show notes. Whether you're starting or already building AI demos, I promise you this journey's for you. So until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Amit Malik, Content Portfolio Lead for AI at Salesforce, shares insights on teaching AI to Salesforce users. He emphasizes the shift from traditional knowledge to value-based learning, advising admins to grasp core AI concepts as they evolve. Amit introduces a five-question framework to assess when to use AI agents and discusses various pre-built templates available for specific needs. He also highlights the significance of understanding Data Cloud and the role of effective instructors in enhancing the learning experience for diverse learners.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to John Wall, co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee Podcast. Join us as we chat about how new generative AI tools are enabling marketers to get more personalized. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Wall. Six core marketing use cases for AI Thanks to Agentforce, generative AI has moved from novelty to necessity for most organizations. It’s a key tool for strategic content creation, customer insight, and business transformation. That’s why I sat down with John Wall, co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee Podcast, with guests like Simon Sinek, Seth Godin, and Debbie Millman. John identifies six key areas where marketers can lean on AI support: Generation Summarization Extraction Rewriting Classification Question answering These tasks are helping marketers analyze massive datasets, repurpose content, and simulate customer feedback in ways that were previously unimaginable. So my question for John was: what can we, as admins, build to help them out? Better data, smarter personas Marketers use personas to help them think about the specific people in their audience that they want to reach. “Right now, that’s four people in a conference room coming up with cute nicknames like Sally Shopper or Wally the Weekend Warrior,” John says. In the future, however, AI will make it possible to decide on marketing personas based on data-driven profiling. Marketers can extract customer patterns from engagement data and train real models based on statistics, not spitballing. Even more exciting, these new persona agents are essentially customers on demand. You can ask them questions and get their feedback while you plan your next marketing campaign. Why you need a human in the loop As everyone rushes to deploy AI, John emphasizes the importance of the human in the loop. Mistakes are bound to happen, and rushed implementations can harm brand trust. You need to make sure that any solution you deploy has gone through a thorough internal vetting process before it goes live. As John says, AI advancements are probably not going to put you out of a job, but they’ll definitely make your job easier. “The big thing is you have to be curious,” he says, “go play with something and see what you can make it do and what kind of results you can get from it.”  Listen to the full episode for more from John about how AI is transforming marketing. And make sure you’re subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more John’s Podcast: Marketing Over Coffee Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: 2025 Roadmap for Salesforce Admins: AI, Agentforce, and Emerging Trends Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Agentforce Transforms Customer Interactions at Salesforce Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Agentforce Is Changing the Career Landscape Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social John on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript   Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admin's Podcast, we're catching up with John Wall, longtime marketer, podcaster, and co-host of Marketing Over Coffee. We're going to dive into the rise of AI in marketing from smart summarization and rewriting tools to full-blown virtual agents. We're going to unpack how marketers can stay ahead and why AI is not magic, even though it kind of feels that way, and what smart Salesforce admins should be watching for next. Plus, you'll hear why having a human in the loop is still the secret sauce to marketing. So give this episode a listen and join me in welcoming John Wall to the podcast. So, John, welcome to the podcast.   John Wall: Mike, it's great to be on the mic with you again.   Mike Gerholdt: I know, it's been a while. I feel the last time we recorded was in Boston, 100 years ago.   John Wall: Yeah, downtown Boston. I remember we were live on Newbury Street. That was like the heart of all the action.   Mike Gerholdt: Yep. We were recording the old style podcast. We had an Edison, it was putting it on a phonograph and some wax tubes.   John Wall: That's right. Sitting there with my ear trumpet listening.   Mike Gerholdt: Ear trumpet, I love it. For those people, like the two people in the world that don't listen to Marketing Over Coffee, can you give us a brief overview of what you do and what Marketing Over Coffee is?   John Wall: Yeah, sure. So, my whole career I worked in marketing and tech, and God, going on what, 16, 17 years ago when podcasting was just done with steam engine and hammers and nails. We created Marketing Over Coffee, with my co-host Christopher Penn. And we've had this ongoing dialogue of just every week, 25 to 30 minutes talking about what's going on in marketing and tech. And just like CRM, this space is so insane and changing every week, there's no shortage of stuff to talk about. But then, and it's also grown up enough that I've been fortunate enough to get a lot of big marketing brains and authors on, like Simon Sinek and Debbie Millman, Seth Godin, folks like that. So yeah, it's really kind of opened up the world because the family doesn't want to hear what I have to say about marketing over Thanksgiving, so I have somewhere to talk about that.   Mike Gerholdt: Oh, that could be another, you should rename the podcast that for the holidays, Marketing over Thanksgiving.   John Wall: Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: Just see if anybody notices.   John Wall: That glazed overlook when I'm talking about what I do for a living.   Mike Gerholdt: So I make ads, I'm like Jon Hamm on Mad Men. No, and I remember the Boston. So much of what admins do I remember, is interface with marketing. And that's why I love having you on because not only as a personal brand, but also as somebody that does a lot of podcasts and content creation, it just overlaps with what admins do. And marketing is such a big facet of any organization now. I mean, you can't sit down and talk sales without, well, we should have the marketing person in here, and they always want 5,000 more requirements than what you started with, but that's why I love having you on. So, let's dive in. I feel like we woke up from the pandemic and AI just was everywhere now. I'd love to know on what the world of AI looks like for marketers now.   John Wall: Yeah, I mean, you totally nailed that, and the world has changed yet again. We were kind of finally, things were finally stabilizing a little bit. Platforms that matured, as far as email and text messaging and advertising and things are fairly solid, and now AI has shown up to destroy everything. It's been a little weird though, because our world didn't change as much. We've been working a lot with machine learning to do data analysis for years. So my co-host on the show and partner at Trust Insights, Christopher Penn, had long been using machine learning to measure PR and advertising results. Doing statistical models to prove like, okay, what's actually working in your branding and your advertising? These things that you can't easily measure with clicks. And so that has been an area where we were able to kind of provide some value and insight that nobody else could get. But then really, I don't know, about a year and a half ago when generative AI became the hottest thing going on all fronts for marketing, the amount of interest in that has just exploded. So yeah, we have a bunch of fronts that we're applying the technology and it's just amazing to see the range of how marketers adapt. There's still plenty of marketers that don't want to look at it and have their head in the sand, and all the way up to, we have clients that are like, "Hey, we want to reimagine our entire business because we think it's going to be something completely different in the next five years." So yeah, we spent a lot of time thinking about where this stuff is going to go, and it's amazing how... And literally we have, Christopher works full time on monitoring this space and seeing what's new and what's coming next, because it's just insane when you look at the fact that we've had six major models this year. There's never been a time in tech history where you have six major products show up at once. So, yeah, everything is changing and it's just a challenge to keep track of what's happening this week.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I remember not that long ago, thinking how long in the tooth we've been working in tech, when I heard some statistic of, today we'll create more content than was ever previously created in human history. So now with AI, are we exponentially creating more? Are we creating better content? Is that the converse... I always dig into like, what's that next layer down? Are we really caring about creating better content with AI or are we just creating more content with AI?   John Wall: Right. Well, of course, marketers ruin everything, right?   Mike Gerholdt: Right.   John Wall: This is nothing new. Yeah, there's a whole army of people that are taking their stuff that was pretty crappy and now we have an exponential amount of pretty crappy stuff out there. So yeah, and it's going to be really weird to see how all this goes because it's the classic antivirus defense too. It's, as soon as people are creating exponentially more junk, all of the search engines or AI powered search engines are adding defenses to pull all that stuff back out. So it's just this never ending battle and yeah, the level of content, I don't know, it's so much so that we're going to burn more electricity in the next year than the power of the sun. I mean, it's just insane how this is all changing.   Mike Gerholdt: But we'll have better copy for our websites.   John Wall: Right, you'll have a better landing page. It's going to convert for you. But then we do see, as with everything, right? There's people that are using the technology to automate the foolishness of the past, we have electronic yellow pages being created. But at the other end, there's people who are using these tools in totally brand new and novel ways to get some insight that they've never had before, or automate things that used to be just insanely difficult to automate, and yeah, go to new places and create advantage. So there are ways to win and yeah, there's going to be a ton of things that we never even expected that will change everything for us.   Mike Gerholdt: I mean, the biggest thing before AI, the wave of AI hit, the biggest thing we were dealing with was data lakes and these massive data volumes. And I think even marketers were dealing with that too, because you have people going to their website and they're unauthenticated and we're assigning a profile to them. How do we dig through when you've got millions of impressions on a page? What was that journey of that person? How did they actually get to the pair of shoes that they bought? Now with AI, are we getting smarter at doing that? Is that kind of the data that we're digging into?   John Wall: Yeah, absolutely. And so yeah, when you look back, step back and look at the landscape. Generation, we consider that one of only six different options to use AI for to help get you places. And two of them extraction and summarization, that's just what you're talking about. It's like to finally be able to have all of these different data sources all over the place, load them up into a system and have it do the heavy lifting of, okay, find the commonalities between these things. And yet it's just, we had been promising this for decades, this idea that when people in marketing talk about personas, that's just because four people in a conference room came up with cute nicknames and an idea of who these people should be. They're like, oh yeah, Sally Shopper and George Weekend Warrior, or whatever. But now you can get actual summarizations based on the data itself. And you actually know that, okay, we do see that 40% of the buyers look like this, and they have these things in common, and it's all based on statistics, none of it's based on gut. So yeah, those kinds of insights are really interesting. And we've actually been pushing another level. You can go ahead and create these profiles of who these people are, but then use those profiles to train the large language models. So now that you can actually treat that as a customer on demand that you can survey and ask questions to, instead of emailing everybody with every purchase of $0.35 to ask for feedback on what's going on, you just go to the large language model and say, "Hey, here's the next four marketing campaigns. Tell us what you think about those and does this resonate with you?" And you can get similar insight but not cause as much trouble and not have to wait.   Mike Gerholdt: You mentioned six, I think you gave us one or two. What were the other four?   John Wall: Yeah, so obviously generative AI, you've got generation, we just talked about extraction and summarization. The other three, rewriting, which is just something that can easily raise your productivity, right? If you're somebody who's having to, okay, I wrote this white paper for the construction industry. I want to write about the same kind of stuff for the food service industry. Rewriting is very easy and instant for generative AI to do. Classification is another use case. We see this a lot where people that have multiple products, they don't know how they fit in together, or even if you just have large amounts of data. A good example is for a call center, you've got 30,000 calls a month. To have AI transcribe those and go through and find the 20 features that you should fix to make 10% of your calls go away. That kind of stuff is a huge benefit, huge lift. And then out of the six, yeah, the last is just question answering. You can really get better insight into topics than search engine results by asking AI to not only give you the answer, but explain how it got there and educate you on, what do you need to know to kind of understand the space a little bit more.   Mike Gerholdt: And I think we're seeing, I mean, from the Salesforce side, we're showing a lot of use cases and we have a lot of customers that are standing up agents on public facing sites. Are you seeing that more and more as a trend for marketers to work with? I think one of the things, as I say this, one of the stereotypes that most marketing falls into is, how do we drive more sales? But I think a lot of marketers are also, how do we divert service cases as well and drive sales through service? Are you seeing agents on public-facing websites as something marketers are paying attention to for that?   John Wall: Yeah. I mean, everybody wants that, right? And unfortunately, we've all seen this cycle. This happens where there's the board meeting and the board is saying, "Hey, we got to get onto this," and so now somebody's like, okay, I need to get me one of these shiny object things. And unfortunately, it's mostly disaster-ville, right? We were seeing these things of people hooking up a chatbot or whatever, and it's starting to just spout off lies and crazy answers and it just becomes a train wreck. So yeah, that is one thing that's going to be huge over the next couple of years. The idea of, okay, yeah, you've got these bots or these agents, but which ones are enterprise-ready? There's a huge difference between something that's been vetted and tested. For most of our clients we're saying, no, you need to have a human in the loop. A great... The use case that you just talked about would be, yeah, have the AI generate the top 2,000 answers for problems that it sees, but then that goes through the product manager for verification to prove that they're all real. You can't go live with that, but yeah, there's definitely going to be a lot of, unfortunately, we're going to see a lot of scary news as people pull the trigger on something that goes awry.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, that's kind of like we saw like the, we're not ready for the self-driving cars. We've seen that in San Francisco, but they still have somebody in the passenger seat or in the driver's seat just in case. The human in the loop.   John Wall: Right, and that's always been, even you look back in history and it's like, yeah, escalators and elevators. There used to be people that was their job just to make sure that nothing went wrong.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, and of course not to be predictive, but I don't know the last time I rode an elevator where there was a person there to press the buttons for me.   John Wall: Right, exactly. And yeah, there are... Well, yeah, it's just so much of that is the media and the way information gets presented to us as news. It's like, yeah, okay, these three automated cars got in some kind of weird accident, but we're not getting the story of all the ridiculous stuff humans did over the past month in cars. That's just not news for us anymore.   Mike Gerholdt: Right, contextual. You mentioned at the beginning, sort of the great spectrum of marketers with their head in the sand, all the way to, we want to revolutionize our business. Where do most marketers fall, in terms of thinking with AI, thinking about AI? And where should that be?   John Wall: Yeah, that's a great question because it's really, in a lot of ways this is a retooling for everybody. You have to go back and look at all your processes and figure out which ones apply. And because, and you've talked about this in the past, the fact that it's not about AI showing up and it's just like the marketing department's going to get wiped out. What's going to happen is over time, there's going to be three or four marketers that have added AI to a bunch of their workflows, things that they've hated doing, and so they've figured out how to automate them. And those people are going to be exponentially more productive than the folks that are avoiding AI and trying to stay away from it. So yeah, where people should be. The big thing is you have to be curious. It's just like with every other major tech change. Go start playing around with something and see what you can make it do and what kind of results you can get out of it. Because at this stage of it, you're going to find these really crazy things. You're like, oh man, I never thought that I could use that to come up with an intelligent email address predictor. Every sales and marketing person has this where they're like, oh, I have to get in touch with this person and they haven't put their email up on the social networks that I normally follow. And so getting some suggestions to do that kind of stuff. And the other one is, yeah, so much of marketing is combing through spreadsheets and trying to prove results or manage copy and things like that. So much of that stuff can be automated and give you hours back in your day. So yeah, it's a matter of having... Be bold, play around and kind of see what you can break.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think back to, and I've tried to look this up, but I've heard the story of in the late-1800s, I forget who it was. I want to say Thomas Jefferson but that's probably not right, writing a letter to the US patent office saying, "You can shut down because everything that's been invented has been invented." And correlating that to, we can't let cars happen in the world because they'll put wagon wheel manufacturers out of business. And the labor force of wagon wheel manufacturers, it'll be devastating to the economy that all these wagon wheel manufacturers will go out of business. And I think back to, well, they just didn't understand. If you're a wagon wheel manufacturer, you're just really good at making things with wood. And if cars come around, then make things with wood for the car, as opposed to making wagon wheels. And I feel like we're in that age now where people are, if AI comes out, AI's going to take my job. AI can generate an image, there's no more graphic designers. No. Have you seen AI's images? Graphic designers are going to be around for a while, but there will be a point where I feel we're riding on the elevator where it'll be pretty good, but the really good stuff will be the boutique stuff. And you think about it now, probably what, 90% of the furniture in your home probably was made by a robot. I mean, it's slapped together really good, but the craftsmen, the people that know how to make that stuff, they're still in high demand. There's just a smaller labor force of them.   John Wall: Yeah, right, and that's the, we see this all the time, is the expert tools versus tools for experts, right?   Mike Gerholdt: Right.   John Wall: The idea that the tool is just going to do all the things for me. But yeah, no, the real neat, interesting stuff, like you said, the master woodworker who doesn't have to deal with all of the paper instructions and measuring things. They can just work on picking the right wood and thinking about the design of the furniture itself, rather than the more mundane tasks. And yeah, that's where things are going to... And you hit another great point of freeing resources up. I mean, yeah, okay, the big one is stock photo. Stock photo takes a huge hit if people are able to generate and just kind of get images that they want. But now it's the thing of, okay, all these companies that really had a hard time having quality graphics and images on their website, what happens if they finally have the ability to create a better website and be able to kind of do more with less? What kind of lift can they see from that?   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. So I'll ask a big question. Does AI make us better?   John Wall: Well, it's like any tech tool, right? That's the problem. It can make us better and it can make us worse. It's all about whose hands is it in and what are they trying to do with it and where are they trying to go? But it is weird in that it, again, tech, it makes everything faster and bigger and accelerating. And unfortunately, our kind of caveman brains are already having enough difficulty handling the speed and volume of everything that's going on around us in the world. So yeah, it's going to get a little bit wonky and weird, and the idea of me even trying to predict something is kind of silly.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, I think that's the hardest part of it is, great tech appears as magic. Right? Isn't that the saying? And we're getting to the point now where we can't tell magic from great tech. So, I guess that's always where we're going, but we're always trying to out-invent ourselves. You know?   John Wall: Yeah, and ultimately, it just comes down to the good news is, okay, what are people actually willing to pay for? I mean, we can do a lot of weird and crazy stuff, but what's actually going to find something that fits? And that's funny, that's something that's kind of evolved over the past 10 years too, is that we'd always thought about sales as kind of guiding people to your thing and moving the river to go in your direction. But really what we're seeing is that business is more about, what is the existing system already there and how do we move our business so that we can get in front of whatever's coming next and where to go? And so that idea of being able to strategically see what's coming next and already be there waiting for the customers as they show up with the money, that's a different approach and kind of changes everything for sales and marketing. Right? It's not about just banging the drum, it's more about listening ahead and figuring out where to be.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, and that's the part that I think all of this and we've never touched on, is the economics of AI, right? So we're approaching all of this now because almost everything has some sort of freemium model, which means we're the product. And it's free because they need our data, they need our prompts, they need to be able to comb the internet. They need to be able to read our blog post and our white papers. But when they don't need that anymore, then what is the economics of AI? Will there quickly become a have and have-nots layer? Because the have-nots can't afford the AI, because there is a cost to it now.   John Wall: Yeah, that is a gigantic question that I think is just underappreciated, is the fact that AI has taken all the oxygen out of the room as far as VC. And we normally would kind of see money being sprinkled across a whole bunch of places, but everybody is just putting all their chips on this and it's, yeah, the-   Mike Gerholdt: Well, everybody wants to have the iPod. They want to be the one that invested in the Facebook and the one that wins.   John Wall: Right, yeah, yeah. Everybody is going for the top. But I can't think of a period of time where we're getting more powerful, free stuff than ever before.   Mike Gerholdt: True.   John Wall: And so, yeah, yeah, there's huge questions as far as like, okay, when this shakes out and suddenly maybe there's three winners or one winner or whatever, how does that change? Yeah, unfortunately, marketing again, has a horrible track record for like, yeah, it's great and free at the beginning, but then once it starts getting tuned for ads and traffic, yeah, it gets expensive fast, and a lot of people get left behind.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. I mean, that was just as you were answering that, that was something I was thinking of is, at some point, and I suppose we thought about this with social networks too, at some point they're going to start charging. And we didn't think that day would come, and I actually thought the model would be very different. Now, the social networks charge to verify you're a human, which I wouldn't have expected. We thought everything on social would go to a subscription price. We're seeing AI be subscription price early on, but I don't even know if in five years AILB subscription price, because there could be a completely different cost model to it because of, I don't know, right? Could you have predicted that Facebook is going to charge you to become a verified Facebook user, as opposed to a monthly subscription, which was the traditional magazine model?   John Wall: Yeah, that's a turn that is bizarre. And I don't know, part of me too is still hoping one day we get to that point where it's more about verified users. Because when you get back to all these platforms, the problem is, they do violate the laws of communication. Right? Anybody can go on any platform and just say whatever they want and it can be unchallenged. Whereas for all of human history prior to that, if you were talking some crazy stuff, there was instant ramifications, whether it was somebody throwing a tomato at you or whatever, but there were repercussions for this. And so we see this as a crisis to entrust across the board in all institutions and yeah, I kind of think at some point somebody's going to get the bright idea that by verifying who's real and what's fake and what's not in anybody's best interest, when that stuff gets filtered, how does that make it different? But I [inaudible 00:24:35], I thought that that would've happened a long time ago and it's not here yet, so I don't know. Can it even happen?   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, yeah. I mean, selfishly, I know I've had a friend have a YouTube video of his transcribed and turned into three online magazine articles, all without his consent. And then posted to Facebook via a bot, and the bot 100% had an AI-generated profile image. So, I'd be afraid. Yeah, verified users, that would be.   John Wall: Yeah, it would be.   Mike Gerholdt: It's like when you get pulled over by the police, you have to hand them your ID. We need some sort of digital ID for that.   John Wall: Yeah, that use case that you've described as crazy when you think about it, right? Because that's playing under old SEO rules. Somebody's thinking like, oh, I'm going to get in three or four more different channels and I'm going to take that traffic. And the reality is, all the search engines now, the first five things they're throwing up are their own internally-generated AI. Organic traffic just continues to crater.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, yeah. Well, especially when you take other people's stuff and you duplicate it, at least they're not rewarding that bad behavior.   John Wall: Yeah, right.   Mike Gerholdt: John, it was great having you on the podcast. I'm sorry it took so long, but I promise I've not stopped drinking coffee since then, nor will I ever, usually.   John Wall: That sounds great. Yeah, no, it's good to be back. We haven't had a chance to hang out at Dreamforce like I used to do all the time, so it's good to catch up.   Mike Gerholdt: I know, but there is still the Dreamforce Marathon. I don't even know what people are wearing now for wearables. You remember, it used to be Fitbits, and-   John Wall: Oh, yeah. Right, yeah, yeah-   Mike Gerholdt: I mean, we were all Fitbits and everybody had that, and it was the Dreamforce Marathon. I think, to be fair because I am Salesforce, we did hear that. And there has been a very long look at, how do we not necessarily keep people in the same space, but reduce the amount of-   John Wall: Yeah, [inaudible 00:26:35]-   Mike Gerholdt: ... the 30-mile across San Francisco. Because it can be banned, there's a few of them hills that you just look at and be like, yep, I'm just going to stay at the bottom.   John Wall: Always a fan. I just get the cable car pass for the week and take care of that.   Mike Gerholdt: There you go, there you go. Well, it was great having you on. I promise to have you back on sooner, because I'm sure we're going to have more AI to talk about as it's ever evolving so quickly.   John Wall: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully it'll still be us and not just avatars of us having to do it for us.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, that'll be fine too. We'll see. Maybe people won't know the difference, and then you and I can be riding a cable car in San Francisco.   John Wall: Right, right, as they're watching the video of me with my third arm wave.   Mike Gerholdt: Don't forget your sixth finger. It always gets the fingers wrong too. Huge thanks to John for joining us and bringing his insights on AI marketing trends and why curiosity is your greatest asset right now. I know I'm always curious to hear his podcast, Marketing Over Coffee. And it being summer, I like to listen to it while I'm on my yard. That's just how I listen the podcast. How do you listen to this podcast, mowing and walking the dog? I'd love to know. Shoot me a message on social somewhere. If this episode got you thinking or questioning some AI landing pages, hey, as an admin, time to meet with your fellow marketing peer and learn more about what we can do with Agentforce and everything else. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Derika West, IT Application Support Analyst II at KinderCare Learning Companies. Join us as we chat about how she got started in her tech career and how she started her Salesforce journey. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Derika West. Getting started in a tech career Derika started her career in the U.S. Army as a Carpentry and Masonry Specialist. From there, she bounced around between service industry jobs while she tried to figure out what was next. “There’s no way I could get into tech,” she told herself, “that’s way too smart for me.” However, when Derika moved to the West Coast, her friends believed in her. She applied for a position as a QA Test Technician, and spent a lot of time figuring out how to pitch her skills in a way that would make sense for the role. And that position gave her a foothold into an entirely new career. Getting hands-on with Salesforce In her current role, Derika is the SME for her organization’s transition from Classic to Lightning. It’s an org with over 40,000 users, so change comes slowly. She found herself in more and more conversations with end users about their pain points using their Salesforce deployment, and started looking for solutions. One thing that has been very helpful for Derika is to reach out to the people at her organization who are more experienced with the Salesforce platform. Even learning the basics of what they do and how they got to where they are today was very helpful in making the decisions that would shape her career.  Why you should go to a Salesforce Admin Meetup Derika resolved to go to the next Portland Salesforce Admin Meetup, where she happened to meet Admin Evangelist superstar Kate Lessard. “I told everyone in the room that I’m new and I know nothing about what I’m doing,” Derika says, “and everyone was so welcoming and so helpful.” Kate connected Derika with Supermums, an organization that provides training and volunteer opportunities to help people get started with a career in Salesforce. She’s about to take her certification exam, and let’s all send her good vibes and good luck. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Derika, 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 Supermums Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Derika on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Josh Birk: Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Salesforce Admins Podcast. I am your guest host, Josh Birk, and today I'm delighted to bring Derika West onto the show, to talk about her journey into Salesforce, into the world of tech. And where she is on that journey, where she's looking for to go. Welcome to the show, Derika. All right, welcome everybody to the show. Today we are going to welcome Derika West to talk about her journey into Salesforce, where she is with it right now, and we're her future looks. And Derika, in looking at your CV, it pretty much starts with your military experience. What was it like being in the Army? Derika West: Yeah. The Army was a wonderful thing for development for myself. I've always been a self-starter, I would say. And someone who thinks outside the box. And I just didn't know where that would fit for me in terms of which direction of a career I wanted to take. I initially started in college, and then I met somebody in my math class in college who was actively in... I think it was the reserves at the time, and I think she's full-time active duty now. But we just started talking about options of careers. And I'm always asking questions, as you'll find out. I just asked her, what is it like being a female in the military? And she just said, "There's so many things that you can do as a female that you aren't really told growing up, and even high school." For me, I never considered the military as an option for me. And then, I just learned that there's so many different routes you can take. It's a way to build yourself up and get some self-confidence, really, as a female. And so, I ended up speaking to a recruiter, got involved, and then I joined the Army. And did battle buddy things with her and talked to her throughout my journey. It was really great. Yeah, I had a good time in the military. Josh Birk: So two follow-up questions to that. First, was there something about the Army role that you were looking at that you were... Going back to your point, I didn't know. I didn't think about me being as an engineer because I haven't seen a lot of women in tech, women in engineering, stuff like that. Was there something about the role that was like, oh, this could be something cool and new that I could learn that I hadn't thought about before? Derika West: Yes, absolutely. That was one of the main points for me in joining the military. I really wanted self-confidence. I wanted to build myself up, and I didn't know where to start. For me, the military seemed like a wonderful route. It had a lot of structure. I was looking for discipline, I was looking for travel, I was looking for all the things that the military had to offer. And I think anybody knows that the military is very eager to get people in. Yeah, it was pretty much, once I talked to a recruiter it was no-brainer after that. Josh Birk: Nice. I got to ask, what is traveling with the military like? I can imagine it's wildly different from commercial. Derika West: Absolutely different. You are definitely the government's property. Anywhere that they say you're going, you're going. Luckily for me, my first duty station was Hawaii, so I got very lucky. Josh Birk: There you go. Derika West: And it was just, I lucked out because nobody else got a duty station like that. And I know my brother-in-law, he's currently active in the Army, he doesn't really get that much flexibility on travel. But it's definitely, it's very safeguarded when you travel. It's not picking the cheapest flight and going somewhere beautiful. It's very structured in that way. Josh Birk: You roll the dice, sometimes you get a 20-unit up in Hawaii, but other times maybe not so much. That makes sense. Derika West: I got very, very lucky. Yes. Josh Birk: What was life after the military? What was that like? Derika West: Life after the military was a bit confusing for me. I was struggling with figuring out which path I wanted to take for my long-term in terms of career. Outside of having that structured day-to-day life, I was pretty much a spinning compass at that point. I decided to move back home and start from the ground and spend more time with my family. Recharge my roots back home a bit. And then for, I would say, about five to 10 years there I was just doing service industry things and just trying to find my way. And then I made another move after that out to the West Coast. And then I got more connections out here, much different than the Midwest, and found my way into tech eventually. But it did take me a while to get to this point. Josh Birk: You moved to a new coast and you started getting into tech. What was the appeal of tech to move all the way out there and try to get a job in it? Derika West: Life brought me out to Oregon. I was looking for expansion. I wanted to really grow myself physically and mentally, and I wanted to learn things that were outside of my Midwestern bubble. Josh Birk: Got it. Derika West: I felt like when I came out to the West Coast, a lot of people acted different, they thought differently. A lot of the things that I learned about in the Midwest were produced from the West Coast, so I felt like I could [inaudible 00:06:12] to people here. Josh Birk: I love that. I love that. Derika West: You feel that... I don't know how to put this. You're from the Midwest. Josh Birk: Yeah. Derika West: You feel a bit siloed in the Midwest. And I never really considered tech as a career option for myself when I was living there. So when I moved here and I started hearing about all these new people and different career paths, I was like, I need to expand my brain and I need to think outside the box of these potential possibilities for myself longterm. I think, really, it came down to the careers before this point that didn't work out for me. The things that I liked about those careers and the things I didn't like about those careers. And then just simply networking with like-minded individuals who were really interested in self-growth and just being in a space of learning more. Yeah. Josh Birk: What were some of those early touch points of here are other people in a similar situation that they're trying to put themselves into a new skillset and something in technology? Derika West: Honestly, it started with meeting a software engineer in a friend group. And she worked for a local cannabis company here in Oregon. And she and I just started chatting, and I just asked her what she liked about tech, what got her into it. And she gave me the breakdown of her day-to-day. And just asked if I had ever considered getting into tech. And my response was, "I've never considered that. And also, it's way too smart for me. There's no way I could get into tech, I don't understand anything about it." That's my first touch point in getting some exposure. Josh Birk: It's such an important one. I feel like there's so many people that I've met over the years who just needed that one friend to help demystify it a little bit. Derika West: Definitely. Josh Birk: It'd just be like I've done interviews where people are like, "I challenged myself to learn JavaScript by not going out socially for three months, but now I work in my dream job." So that [inaudible 00:08:27]. What was some of your early successes? What jobs were you getting into? Derika West: My first job was a QA test technician, which I would've never pictured myself doing ever, but it was incredibly helpful to get me started into tech. It was everything that I didn't know that I needed getting into this industry. It taught me how to ask hard questions. It taught me how to put myself in uncomfortable situations, and just to get into something that I know nothing about. And I honestly didn't even think that I would get a QA job, but it really laid the foundation of my tech career. And I am very lucky and fortunate that I got that job. Because coming from a background that has zero experience in tech, I really had to talk myself up about the skillset that I had prior to that position, and that was something that I didn't know would sell. And I just did a lot of research prior to my interview and I looked up what a QA does. I looked up where you could go with it. And I just was doing a lot of homework, I guess you could say. Just doing a ton of research. Josh Birk: Yeah. And what I love about this, and for anybody who's listening, and if this vibes with you, I know so many people who are now product managers and senior engineers, and all of these things, and a lot of them got their start in customer support or QA. And I think part of it is you get confronted with technology that even if you didn't build it, you have to understand its working parts. Right? Derika West: Right. Josh Birk: And then, also that QA mindset is also very similar to a programmer's mindset, to a developer's mindset. I'm going to get the joke wrong, but it's like the QA engineer enters the bar. The bartender says, "What do you want?" And it's like, "One beer, two beers, an owl, no beers, zero, null." You have to take in all these weird use cases. Then, how did you start... Was your transition into more of the software side of things, was that Salesforce itself, or was there a transition period? Derika West: There was definitely a transition period. I went from QA to my current role, which is more software-based. My QA position was more testing hardware behind the scenes, working with our devs and working with the product owners and things like that. My current role is more end user facing, but also working with the product owners and other teams. It's a lot of cross collaboration. In my current position, that's where I work directly with Salesforce. And I work with their team, and I'm the person who's the SME of our current project. And undergoing a bunch of transition from changing our old Salesforce platform to Lightning, which is a new one, for those who don't know about it. Josh Birk: Welcome to the club. Derika West: It was quite the transition. Yeah, yeah, it was big. It's huge. We have 40,000 users. It's a lot. Josh Birk: Oh, wow. You have 40,000 users? Derika West: I can't exaggerate that enough. Yes. Josh Birk: And how many of them are system administrators? Derika West: Honest, on our Salesforce team, I don't know at the moment. But for me, it's just me on my team. Josh Birk: Got it. Okay. It's the old admin joke, 200 people in the company, 180 of them are system administrators. Derika West: Right. Yeah. Few and far between, that's all I got to say there. Josh Birk: Nice. Which is the way it should be. What was it like... I'll just come right out on that. What was it like learning Salesforce? Derika West: Learning Salesforce was something that was self-taught for myself. I knew absolutely nothing about it. I was like, "What? What do you sell? What products do you sell?" Even my family was like... My grandma was like, "Salesforce is you're selling things?" And I was like, "No, no, no." Josh Birk: Right. Derika West: Yeah. I had no idea what it was, so I just simply pulled out my resources. I started asking about it. I asked our Salesforce team, "Hey, what do you do? What is Salesforce?" And I had individual meetings with every single team member on that team for myself. And I just made it a point to let them know that, "Hey, this is something I'm very interested in. And on my outside working hours I'm learning this on my own." Josh Birk: Got it. Derika West: So, yes, Trailhead was my first stop. Trailhead was very overwhelming for myself. I was like, where do I start? And also, what am I supposed to be studying? And then I found Trailmixes. And then one thing just led me to another thing, and that's just how my tech journey has been since the beginning. I found that just played out in my own learning with Salesforce. So, that's how I got started with that. Josh Birk: How long do you think you took from you, okay, I want to put this under my belt? Because you work with other applications as well. Or at least you have been, right? Like, oh gosh, I want to say Office 360, and that's the worst example. Derika West: Office 365, yeah. Josh Birk: Like, who doesn't? Derika West: Yeah. What is your question? Josh Birk: Well, no. Yeah, let me start with the question, because that was a tangent [inaudible 00:14:27]. Anyway, it worked in my brain. I swear it worked in my brain. Derika West: It's like... Josh Birk: How long do you think it was before you're like, oh, I really want to put this in my tool belt, I'm going to take some time that's my own personal time and I'm going to start learning it, until you were like, I feel pretty comfortable that I could help administer our Salesforce work? What are we talking weeks, months here? Derika West: I would say about the three-month mark into our transition with our project at work is when I was like, okay, I'm fully going to dive into this and take the reins myself. Because I noticed there was a gap between our team and the Salesforce team. And I was helping these end users on a live call, and they would become extremely frustrated. It's a big pain point in our company, and I'm the one to bring it up because I'm going to bring it up, because I want change and I want things to be smoother for people. And that's really what I'm passionate about in this career is helping people. Josh Birk: Nice. Derika West: And I told our Salesforce team, "Hey, I do not have permissions to do X, Y and Z. Can you get them for me?" And they said no. And then, I took it upon myself to start going to more Salesforce related things so I could learn the platform better. It came down to me and wanting things to be better for myself and for other people, but no one would have bridged that gap had I not been in that gap. Josh Birk: Right. Did you eventually get those permissions? Derika West: No, I did not. Josh Birk: Okay. All right. Derika West: But I am in a place where I'm in a transition, so I understand the business needs and I understand the Salesforce side of things as well. It's my passion hobby right now is learning Salesforce on the side. And it's taught me a lot. Josh Birk: At least you can be that interaction between a user and what Salesforce is when the Salesforce team isn't in the room. Yeah. Derika West: Right. Exactly. Josh Birk: Now, you recently got involved in Supermums, right? Derika West: I did, yes. Josh Birk: How did that get on the radar? And can you give us a quick elevator pitch on Supermums? Derika West: I will try my best. Josh Birk: Okay. Derika West: As I was mentioning before, I work full-time. In my application support role, I am wanting to get into our transition to the admin role. I went on Trailhead and I found one of our local Portland admin meetup groups, and I noticed that they had one coming up. I think it was back in February, it was like four months ago. And I was like, I know nothing about automation. I have no idea how it works, but I'd love to know. I'd love to learn more about this thing. So I just went as a newbie to one of these local admin group meetups. It was my first one ever. And at the end of the meeting I met a wonderful human, her name's Kate Lessard. Shout out to you, Kate. Josh Birk: Shout out to Kate. Derika West: Hey, Kate. We just started connecting afterward. I told everyone in that room that I'm new, I know nothing about what I'm doing. And everyone was so welcoming and so helpful, and it just further enhanced my want to be in the Salesforce ecosystem. So that's where I got started. And then Kate introduced me and gave me a bunch of resources after that meetup, and Supermums was one of those things. And Supermums is a global training program, and it helps people transition their careers and also learn Salesforce. And it can help you get into the tech industry if you aren't already in. They offer flexible hands-on courses. They offer one-on-one mentoring sessions, and then career coaching. And then all of that bundled together at the end, you'll get hands-on work experience with nonprofits. It's a really cool program, and not something that I knew that I would get into. But I wanted more structure for myself, and so I just reached out, I just sent them an email. And I think there's one slot left. Josh Birk: Nice. Derika West: And I was like, sweet, okay, I'm going to take this opportunity to learn more. And I got in there. Josh Birk: Love it. Derika West: That's where I started, with Supermums. It's been a game changer, for sure. Josh Birk: And I've talked with people who there are similar programs out there. But the thing I love about that structure twofold is the fact that I find that a lot of... Without the soft skills part of it, without the career advice part of it, like, okay, now you have a certificate, now what? But the nice thing about getting to work with nonprofits, first of all, nonprofits love people who work with Salesforce that can help them. They need this help so badly. Back when I was consulted, nonprofits and small businesses were always my favorite. Because that thing that you just fixed for them has probably been annoying the heck out of them for the last year. And suddenly you are the superhero, you're employee of the month. But it also solves, because I've talked to developers, I've talked to admins, and they're trying to get a new job, and it's the classic tech chicken and egg problem. You have no experience. I want a job. Well, I won't give you the job because you don't have any experience. And it's the two things. If you can work with a nonprofit and be like, "This is what I have fixed for them." I've told developers, just go get a developer edition and start coding. Just have an application that works that will prove to people that this is going to work. Derika West: Right. Josh Birk: Yeah. I'm assuming the learning experience has been good. Where are you in the course history right now? Derika West: Yeah, we're actually in exam prep, so we're at the very end. And everyone is extremely nervous to take their exam, including myself. But I am also really excited, because I know that everything I've been learning over the last six months has really helped me in my full-time position, and will only further enhance my skillset moving forward. I'm really excited. Josh Birk: And I will repeat words of advice I've gotten from people who have taken multiple exams in our own Salesforce certifications, and stuff like that, and people who are now technical architects. It's like, always remember, failure is an option. It doesn't mean you fail, it just means it's part of the learning process. They do happen, but good luck. Sorry. Derika West: Absolutely. Josh Birk: I didn't want to be pessimistic with that, but it's always like we have... It's part of our ecosystem a little bit, like coders who think that they have to be perfect. No, your code's going to break the first 15 times you're trying to make it. That's just the iterative process. I want to shift gears a little bit, because I get paid a nickel every time I say the word AI. And I guess this is a weird question now that I know that your current big project is moving from classic to Lightning web components, so you might be a little hindered with this, but let me ask. In general, AI has become such a focus of all of our lives. How do you think it's been... Has it impacted your work? Not necessarily even in an agent force point of view. But when you're learning things or you're researching things, has AI either impacted your work or your life? Derika West: On the work aspect, we are gearing up for AI. And that was actually one of our meetings today was going over the impact that it's going to have on our applications. We're literally switching every application that we own over, and we're going to start implementing AI. Our daily functions, how we support users. So it's going to be really exciting, but we're not there quite yet. We're at the very beginning of that transition, and Salesforce being one of them. That's on the work front. On a personal front, I've been using AI to do so many different things for myself. To help learn at my own pace, to gather different types of documentation for myself just to organize my thoughts better. It helps me brainstorm better. It helps me get all my ideas down into a simplified version. AI is something I utilize all the time, if not daily. I love AI, and I'm excited to see how it's going to grow the ecosystem. Josh Birk: Yes, and the same. And it's like, you're definitely sounding... From a work point of view, I think that's where a lot of people are right now. It feels like a lot of people are moving out of the awareness phase and more to an adoption phase. That was a lot of nickels, so thank you for that. Okay. I have one final question for you. What is your favorite non-technical hobby? Derika West: Oh, goodness. Favorite non-technical hobby is probably hiking or snowboarding. I'm going to put them together because they're one in the same. Hiking as a summertime activity- Josh Birk: I was just going to say. Derika West: ... then snow [inaudible 00:24:12]. Josh Birk: Yep. That totally tracks. And you are in a perfect part of the world in order to do both of those things. Derika West: Yes, yes. Those are definitely my hobbies. It's summertime here in Oregon now, so I'm taking full advantage of all the beautiful hikes nearby. And then, during the winter I go up to Mount Hood and snowboard. Josh Birk: That's awesome. Derika West: It's been great. Josh Birk: Awesome. Derika West: I love living here for those reasons. Josh Birk: I love it. All right. Well, Derika, well, first of all, good luck on your exams. And thank you so much for the conversation, it was a lot of fun. I want to, once again, thank Derika for the wonderful conversation. And of course, I always want to thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about this show, head on over to admin.salesforce.com where you can hear old episodes, see the transcript, and also see our blogs and our videos and other aspects of being a Salesforce admin. Thanks again everybody, and I'll talk to you soon.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Chris Emmett, Salesforce Solution Architect at Capgemini. Join us as we chat about how to clean up your data to prepare your org for Agentforce, and why data without context is useless. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Chris Emmett. AI requires clean data I caught up with Chris hot on the heels of his TDX London session, “Prep Like a Pro: Clean Data and Metadata for Agentforce.” He’s an experienced Salesforce consultant who has helped countless organizations of all sizes reboot their business processes. As Chris explains, unless you have a company of five people that started last week, your org probably needs some data cleanup. And if you want to get started with Agentforce, you need to do the work to make sure the agents you build can understand your data and use it to generate actionable insights. After all, if you can’t derive useful information from your data, then it’s useless. Why cleaning data can feel like boiling the ocean When I worked in sales, we used a CRM that was so complicated that only one guy at our company knew how to use it. Talk about a bottleneck! The truth is, if your business has been around for a little while, you’ve probably inherited all sorts of legacy data. Maybe it’s some random field created by that one guy in the 90s who didn’t document anything, or a legacy system like SAP or MSX that is essential to your day-to-day operations. Chris has seen it all, and it can often feel like cleaning up all that data is akin to boiling the ocean. It’s a monumental task with no end in sight, let alone getting the organizational buy-in to do it in the first place. A practical way to start cleaning your data Chris recommends focusing your data cleanup strategy on the functionality you want to build in Agentforce. For example, if you want an agent to email a customer when their opportunity is five days from the close date and still unsigned, what data do you actually need? You don't need the 300 fields that might be on the opportunity page, or the 300 fields in that account. You might need the opportunity's name, the stage of the opportunity, the close date, the account, and maybe the primary contact of that account. That’s five pieces of information. Suddenly, you don’t need to boil the entire ocean—you just need to boil a cup of water. So start small, focus on the functionality your data cleanup project will deliver, and get the ball rolling. Trust that the things you build with Agentforce will speak for themselves, and you’ll be able to generate momentum to clean up your data project by project. Make sure to listen to our full conversation with Chris to learn more about how to clean up your data and provide context for AI agents. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Automate with Agentforce Episode: Using AI To Maximize Sales | Automate with Agentforce Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Should I Clean Metadata for Salesforce AI Agents? Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Chris on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're joined by Chris Emmett, consultant, data enthusiast and Salesforce evangelist accidentally. Well, Chris is passionate about data, and he takes us on a journey from legacy systems and those DOS screens to databases and AI-powered actions, all while sharing practical advice on how to clean up your data without making it feel like you're boiling the ocean. So if you ever wondered how to prepare your org for Agentforce or why data without context is basically useless, this one is for you. So listen in, share it with somebody who maybe is swimming in a sea of records. So let's have Chris swim his life raft over and let's get him on the podcast.  So Chris, welcome to the podcast. Chris Emmett: Thanks for having me. Mike: Yeah. Well, it's good to be here. I got a note from Jennifer Lee. She saw the session that you and Jonathan did at TDX London about cleaning data and cleaning metadata, and last week, we talked with Jonathan about cleaning metadata, so this week, of course, we're going to clean our data because who doesn't have clean data? But let's start off first with a little bit about you, Chris. How did you get into Salesforce and why are you so passionate about clean data? Chris Emmett: Yeah. Before I start that, you said who doesn't have clean data? It really should be the other way around. Mike: I know. It was a rhetorical question to get people to listen and be like, oh, but there could be that one person that tunes into the podcast, like I don't need to listen to this. My data is sparkling. Chris Emmett: You know what? If there is a company out there with five people who just opened up last week, their data is going to be impeccable, and they do want to listen to this podcast. They can tune out. Mike: Right. Chris Emmett: I started in the ecosystem in a weird and wonderful way because a lot of ... you've obviously got your accidental admins that find a weird and wonderful way into Salesforce. I was an accidental consultant. So I started out fresh from university as a desktop support engineer, just fixing Windows and fixing printers and fixing Office, and it was great, fun. Then I did a bit of work as a developer, cutting my teeth on Visual Basic 6.0 and .NET all the way back in 2008. But that entire team was made redundant to make way for an off-the-shelf manufacturing system. And as an SME, as an expert in how that old system worked, I was brought in, and then the project manager on that project quit, and I became a project manager, and I was a project manager for 10 years.  And then about 10 years later, around 2016, I was working for a company and we were really interested in changing how we managed products. We wanted a brand new system to manage our projects, and one of the products that we looked at was Salesforce. And my word, I was blown away. Literally within one day of using Salesforce, I was creating formula fields and workflow rules as they were back then, and I just fell in love. And this is coming from a person who had spent the best part of a decade dealing with systems where if you needed to add a field, it would take two, three months to get through, and I was dealing with a system where I could start a sentence, explaining to someone what Salesforce was, and by the time I've finished that sentence, I could have created a field. I could have expanded that data model, and I fell in love with it.  The company I was working for did not fall in love with it, and that pilot failed. It fell by the wayside, but I was hooked. I was like, man, I need to change my career. So I start looking for project management jobs within the Salesforce space. I had never project managed software before. I had project managed big old factory systems that were very waterfall in their approach. I had never done agile before, so I was applying and applying and applying, getting nowhere. I was probably applying for about eight months, and then this small company in Cambridge were like, dude, you are not great for a project manager but you seem really enthusiastic. Had you considered being a consultant? And I went, but yeah, because it's not managing the projects that I love. It's the system that I love. Salesforce is a platform that I love. I want to be able to empower other companies to improve themselves through Salesforce.  So I got a job there as a consultant, and that was 2017, and I have just been building up and flourishing, and since then, I've got 600 odd badges on Trailhead and I think 23 certs now. So I've just gone all in and built my career up. Mike: Wow. Holy cow. That's a lot. I feel such a kinship with you because I joined ... when I started doing Salesforce stuff, I worked at a publishing company, and we had this Apple-based CRM. I can't even remember what it was called, but there was one guy in the office that still knew how to use it, and he would create views or lenses, and that was basically the only way we got things done. All of the salespeople, I was one of them, had to go to him and be like, please, Mr. Jay, would you create a view of ... because none of us knew how to use it. It was incredibly complex.  And then we tried to go to this other, this was 2004, we tried to go to this other web-based CRM thing. It was called absoluteBUSY. And if you wanted a field created, you had to log a ticket, and then the person that created the CRM in Sweden would create the field. And it would be like you. It was sometimes months. I just need another phone field. How hard can that be?  Chris Emmett: Yeah. Mike: And then I went to another company and they had Salesforce, and I was like, oh, click, click, boom. And I remember, I was like, this is almost too easy to create a field. This is dangerous. Chris Emmett: Dangerous is the right word. It is. I'd like to think most Salesforce professionals go through some ... it's not quite like the seven stages of grief, but it's the seven stages of Salesforce acceptance. You can't go in. You're very skeptical, and then you're like, oh, wow, this can create whatever fields I want, whatever data points I want, whatever automation I want, whatever reporting I want. And then at a certain point, you go, oh, wait a minute, I have just created a monster for myself, and then you learn to think before you build. Mike: I feel like that's a good starting point. Is that where you find most people go off the rails, is maybe they get Salesforce and like, you know what, let's start fresh and they create too many fields? And then because there's too many fields and they're in such a hurry that they get to bad data. Chris Emmett: I look at it a different way. It may be my exposure. I deal with a lot of existing companies. I've not really dealt with a lot of brand new companies. So a lot of existing companies, especially if they're at least 40 or 50 years old. They've got a lot of older systems. They might have a bit of SAP. They might have mainframes kicking around. They might have things written in COBOL or FORTRAN. I would even deal with companies today that have things in MSX, believe it or not.  So the danger isn't, oh, let's just create everything in Salesforce. The danger is 14 years ago, Derek created this field. We don't know what it does. We don't know where it's hooked up to. It's not documented anywhere, but we feel like we should pull it over. So the real danger is actually migrating everything. If you don't know what that data point is, you don't know what use it is, you can't validate it, and you can't use it in any meaningful way. Because if you don't understand, then to bring it to the point of this pod, if you don't understand what that data is, what it means, what it's doing for your business, how can an AI agent understand that? An AI agent is not magical. It's not telepathic. It reads the information as if it's a human. It tries to interpret that information. So you've got to know what it means so your AI agent can be told what it means as well. Mike: Yeah. I think people forget that new systems or new features won't save them if they haven't started to save themselves. Chris Emmett: Yeah. This is genuine, by the way. I was thinking this morning as I was just leaving the gym, so I can sound like I'm healthy. Mike: Oh, wow. Fancy. My weightlifting for this morning has been coffee cups. Chris Emmett: Yeah. So I was thinking this morning like, oh, what intelligent things can I say on this pod? I was actually thinking about the meaning of information technology as a term for a department within a business. Information technology, what does that actually mean? It's not about the data. It is, but it's not about the data. It's not data technology. It's not technology that drives data to help a business. It's information technology. And the information that you derive from that data is the most important thing because you can throw data into a data lake or just into a database and just have it stored there. But if you can't derive useful information from it, and similarly, if an AI agent can't derive useful information from it, it's actually pointless. Mike: Yeah. I've once heard information described as data plus context. Chris Emmett: Yeah, absolutely. Mike: And so if your data is bad, then it really lacks context, or you could say it doesn't provide context. Chris Emmett: Yeah. It is all about that context. And again, just to bring it back to the whole Agentforce thing. Agentforce needs to understand that context. It needs to be able to derive some meaning from it. So just as a random example, let's say you've got an opportunity record, which is great, and you've got a date on that opportunity. Cool. Agentforce, can you tell me if there's a date on this record? Agentforce might go away and it might find that date and it might go, cool, Chris, I found a date. It's July the 24th, 2025.  Now, if that's written in a note without any context, and I say Agentforce, what does this mean? It's going to go, well, I don't know. A date in the future. But if it's against the close date field, it's immediately got context, and it immediately can derive something from that. It can say, oh, right, okay, so this is the close date. I can see that we are in a negotiation stage. We've got one more stage after this, which is sign contract. It's the 24th. It's a few weeks away, or at least from when we're recording. I understand a bit of context. I understand that there's another stage ahead of this, and I've immediately got more information other than just a record with a random date. That context is everything, especially for an LLM. Mike: But the irony is, and I've done other episodes on this, you could have a close date, continuing your idea, of July 24th. In the close date field, except your company doesn't use that, that's the date that this part of the opportunity is going to close. But then maybe there's a follow-on implementation stage, and that's the context in which you use that. However, if you haven't given your AI any kind of information about that, the context at which you use the close date, ironically, because you have a date in that field, it's bad data, even though it looks like good data. Chris Emmett: Yeah, absolutely. And the point of the TDX talk I did with Jonathan, and I'm sure Jonathan has already mentioned this in last week's episode, the data is important, the data has to be valid, but it also has to sit within contextual metadata. Because if you have a field on your opportunity that is called installation date or delivery date or deployment date, whatever, and you have an accurate data against that, again, you're giving meaning to that data. You're giving meaning to Agentforce so it can interpret it and give you useful information because it is about information. It's not about the data. It's the information. In fact, if I had a time machine, I would go back three weeks, redo my TDX talk, and it would be called prepping your information like a pro, and I guess your meta information. Mike: Yeah. But let's pivot into that because it's time to get actionable and less heady. And I've heard this a thousand times, it can feel like boiling the ocean to clean your data. What is your approach that you would suggest people use to start cleaning their data in preparation for deploying Agentforce? Chris Emmett: Yeah, sure. So again, unless you are that three-day old company with three people in and the data is perfect, it's probably safe to assume you are sat on a mountain of data. If you are a relatively small company, maybe it's tens of thousands of records. If you are a medium or enterprise, you might have hundreds of thousands or millions of records. I certainly worked for a company that had 30 million accounts in the system. That is a lot of data, and you cannot possibly begin to go through that top to tail, making sure that every field is correct and accurate and has meaning.  So how do you actually break that down? You're right. You cannot boil the ocean. We start off by thinking about the actions and the intents that you want your agents to do. So if you want your agents to write an email to a customer if their opportunity is within five days of the close date and they've not signed yet, well, what do you need for that? You don't need 300 fields that might be on the opportunity page or 300 fields in that account. You might need the opportunity's name. You need the stage of the opportunity. You need the close date. You need the account, and maybe the primary contact of that account. That's five pieces of information.  And then you do not really need to think about all of the old opportunities because this is about an action where you are emailing people for opportunities that are about to expire or about to close. So immediately, you've gone from a million records, let's say, you've got it down to a thousand records, and then you're only looking at those five pieces of data. So you got it down to a thousand records and you got it down to five pieces of information on those thousands records. So I'm not going to do the math in my head because I'm terrible at that, but it's- Mike: Nobody should do math live. Chris Emmett: Yeah. You're probably looking at about less than 1% of data because you're thinking about the intent of that action, that AI action. You're thinking about exactly what pieces of information you need to help that agent. And you're making sure that that specific data is accurate.  My theory behind this, my thesis, is by doing that, by getting rid of 99% of the data that you don't need to worry about today, you can get agents and agent actions out to your users quicker, which means they're happier. They're trying new things. You're getting feedback on those new things. And it means that you can improve more processes because you're getting more feedback. You're getting more insight into what is helping people, what's hindering people. And you're doing that because you're just targeting the data that matters, and everything else can wait until it's actually needed. Mike: That is probably the most concise spot-on answer I have heard in a long time. Chris Emmett: I felt like I was talking for about 20 or 30 minutes on that.  Mike: No, you weren't. So targeting the data that matters. Chris Emmett: Yes. Mike: Those words, put that on a shirt. Somebody needs to wear that shirt at Dreamforce because ... so that as you were talking through, I was realizing you're really making it from boiling the ocean to boiling a cup of water. Everything doesn't have to be perfect for you to start this project. Just the part that you need to worry about.  And I was thinking back to last week. So in Iowa, in the US where I live, we had a really bad frost all winter. We didn't get the snow cover that we usually do, and some of my landscaping plans didn't make it because the roots were just burned by the frost, but not all of them. Some of them were hardy and they're fine. And so I called my landscape company. I was like, I need to replace all these, and plus I want different ones anyway. He's like, good, because if we go through another winter like this, we're just going to be replacing them. And I promise you this gets somewhere. But much like your analogy, so the landscape company came out, and just in the area that they needed to replant those bushes, they scraped all the gravel, leveled the bed, put new tarp down, replanted the bushes, put the gravel back. They didn't have to clean the entire planter bed and scoop all the gravel out and dig up all the bushes and start from scratch. They only had to do the part that mattered. And I felt like that was like, wow, that's like a real life scenario of if we're going to implement this and we're going to really laser focus on this one part of it, let's do that.  But the other key thing that you said that nobody has said on a podcast about cleaning data is you improve the process while you do it. Because if you are not going to improve the process that led you to the bad data, you're always going to be cleaning data. It's almost like sending a janitor out to a sports stadium to pick up trash because there's no trash cans. Well, if you're not going to sit down and say, okay, how do we put trash cans out so that trash isn't everywhere? All you're doing is sending the janitor back out to clean up trash. You're not actually fixing the problem that led to the trash being everywhere. Chris Emmett: Yeah. It's interesting you say that because I genuinely hadn't really thought that far ahead. Mike: Yeah, you had- Chris Emmett: Probably not. Mike: ... at night in your brain while you were sleeping. Chris' brain is like, I got this idea about this process and then it was going to sound smart, and then it surfaced while you were working out. Chris Emmett: Yeah. People are going to be so disappointed when they see a picture of me because I'm making it sound like I'm some sort of gym monkey. Gym monkey, that's probably not the right word. Mike: Well, I could throw your picture in AI.  Chris Emmett: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should. Mike: You're like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chris Emmett: You should. Yeah. I'll look exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Mike: Yeah, absolutely.  Chris Emmett: I look more like Captain America at the start of the film. Mike: That is the best description. I look more like Captain America, but at the start of the film. Chris Emmett: Thanks. I'm glad you agree. I'm really glad you agree. Oh my, what was the point I was trying to ... yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, back on track.  So the whole point of IT, the whole point of computer systems is to improve things. So if you genuinely are taking an existing process and you are just throwing at an agent and say, robots, do my bidding, without changing anything, you really are missing the point of IT. It's about evolution, it's about simplification, and it's about making things more efficient. So why wouldn't you try and make it more efficient in the process of moving it over? Because if you don't, you are just lifting and shifting a process, and that is not going to help anyone. It's not going to fix any errors. The worst case of that is that you program an agent with all of the issues and problems that a human would have, so you are just replicating those problems. You've got to improve. You've got to evolve. Mike: Do you find, because you mentioned you work with mature companies that often when they're doing a Salesforce implementation or they're bringing you in or they're thinking about something, that they're stuck thinking within the constraints of the legacy system that they have? Chris Emmett: I was going to be kind. That sounds terrible.  Mike: Well, you don't have to ... I don't want you to- Chris Emmett: I was going to be kind and say the majority of companies will try and hold onto legacy, and there's a few that don't. But actually, I would be as bold as to say every single customer I've worked with, not necessarily through any fault of their own, holds onto the past. And it is either because there's things that they don't know, there might be fields or tables or data points or integrations that no one knows why they exist, and they're afraid of removing them. And in the data, they don't know what the data means or whether it's useful. It's just there. So they don't don't know know how to cleanse it. They don't know if it's got any meaning.  But then you've got companies who are just in a bind where they've got a 30-year-old system and they do not have the budget to replace it, but Salesforce has got to integrate with it, and the design decisions 30 years ago for that system that Salesforce has to adhere to. So sometimes, it is because the systems that you have to hook Salesforce into are just bound by old design, and then you have to introduce those bad data decisions into Salesforce. Mike: I could see that. I was also thinking back as you were saying that. About a week ago, I was standing at a rental counter and I happened to see their screen and it was still a DOS screen, like the whole ... I was like, wow, you still work on that? I'm fairly certain the car you're about to hand me keys to has a stronger computing system in it than what you're sitting at right now. Chris Emmett: Probably. The phone in that pocket is probably more powerful. I definitely worked for a company, I can't say their name, I'm pretty sure, but I worked for a company where they were using an MS-DOS program because the person who wrote it, he wrote it in his garage and then retired in the '90s. And if he's still with us, he's probably, I'd like to think, on a yacht somewhere because the software developers in the '70s probably earned quite a lot of money. He's enjoying life and not thinking about it. But that company was stuck with that MS-DOS program because it did a vital thing and it can't be removed. It can't be replaced because they know it does a vital process, but they don't know how it works. And then it becomes a business risk. It's like, do you risk the operation of the business to try and rebuild this or do you just leave it?  And then another thing I was thinking about this morning, I was thinking a lot of stuff at the gym. Mike: Apparently. Holy cow. But to be fair, you're always thinking like this. This wasn't just this morning. Chris Emmett: You are right. You are right. I'm always thinking this. My thought process flips between IMDb trivia and Salesforce. I was thinking that I have worked with a lot of companies where it's common practice to buy old equipment from eBay. Mike: Oh, wow. Chris Emmett: If you're a retailer and you've got systems that haven't been made in 10, 15 years, but you need that equipment, your only course is to scour eBay. I've worked with two or three companies that have done that, and it becomes a risk. But again, not to be too mean against them, it's more often than not a budget constraint. So bad systems and bad data with those bad systems is not necessarily because people have just made bad choices or due diligence isn't being put into it. More often than not, it's about legacy systems and budget, and that's a difficult thing to overcome. Mike: Especially the budget part. Chris Emmett: Yeah. Mike: I was just thinking back. I worked retail in the '90s. And retail in the '90s, if you were a smaller retailer, it was common practice for smaller retailers, when the big box companies would change systems, they would have a clearing out, and smaller retailers could buy enough POS systems that worked and then enough that didn't work for parts and literally upgrade their whole system, even though it was used systems. And that was common in retail in the '90s. Now, it's all changed. It's all online. I'm sure that doesn't happen. But I remember working for a couple retailers and like, oh, we're getting new cash registers, and they would show up, and why are some of the keys sticky? And they're like, well, they're not new. THey're new to us. Chris Emmett: Yeah. Mike: I wonder what's creeping around inside of those old systems.  You bring up a good point. I think I've done a lot of podcasts on cleaning data and cleaning metadata, but what's interesting about this one, to put a point on it, is you pointed at something that none of the others have brought up, which is it's not necessarily bad user's fault that we have bad data. It's sometimes a systematic failure of bad decisioning or a lack of budgeting priorities that leads to it. It's not just Bob, the sales guy, who puts his call notes in the phone field because that's what he does because he pays no attention. It's sometimes working within the constraints of the budget. You're probably doing that now, even doing a Salesforce implementation with AI. You're like, well, we would love to do all this, one through five, but we can afford one now and maybe two later. They maybe even start on the second project, and then that's as far as they get on their list of one through five. Chris Emmett: Yeah. You know what? If Bob wants to put his data in the wrong field, that is, in my opinion, that is probably a low impact. It's a quick fix because either you can tell him to move it or you can, if it's consistent, you can go in with Data Loader, export it in Excel, copy it from one column into another column, re-upload, you're done. For me, it's about all of this historical data that you may be pulling into Salesforce where you don't necessarily understand its context. You don't necessarily understand its validity.  And that's where the whole point of trying to identify what's the actual action that you want your AI agents to carry out, and what are the data points that that action needs to interact with? Okay. And then let's tackle those data points and turn those data points, to go way back to the start of the conversation, you turn those data points into information, because you cannot boil the ocean. And the majority of companies, at least the ones I've dealt with, have a sea of data that just either makes no sense or comes from old systems or comes from unnecessary decisions. And you cannot ... there's no business case that will ever be put forward to say, we need to spend 10 years improving all of this data. But there definitely would be a business case that says, we need to spend a month chipping away at this opportunity data or this account data so we can deliver this agentic functionality. Mike: Right. Spot on. Now, I want to end on a fun note. You said IMDb data trivia. Chris Emmett: I like IMDb. Mike: Is it trivia about the website IMDb or is it trivia about movies and TV shows? Chris Emmett: Oh, wow. I'm really upset that I don't know the history of the website now. Mike: Oh, I kind of do. Chris Emmett: Oh, do tell. Mike: So the Cliff Notes version is a guy started, I don't know when, but it was started pretty early in the ... maybe even pre-internet. I want to say he either had a huge collection of VHS tapes or he ran a rental movie store, and he created this literal database of movies and actors and actresses and roles and directors, because he found it fascinating to see what, like we've all heard, the seven, six degrees or Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, like connecting people to different movies. He found that fascinating. And I want to say early on, Amazon bought it and curated it into the big website that it is now. That's the amount of history that I know about it. Chris Emmett: Well, I can add to that. Mike: But it was one person's passion project. Chris Emmett: That's crazy. I can add to that in a related way, in a very Salesforce related way. Mike: Oh. Chris Emmett: And if anything, that's why we're all here. So during COVID, we were all watching a lot of TV at home, I'm pretty sure. I was. And I wanted to track what I was watching. I wanted to be able to give it some fun ratings. And I could have done that in a notebook or on a spreadsheet or in my notes on my phone. But 23-time certified, of course, I'm going to build it on Salesforce. Mike: Yeah. You have 600 badges. You can't not. Chris Emmett: So I built it in a developer edition, salesforce.org. I was tracking all of the movies, all of the TV programs I was watching during COVID. And to just take it a step further, I didn't build it, I ripped it off the internet, an integration into IMDb to pull the correct title, the director, the Rotten Tomatoes rating, I think, and the synopsis. So all I needed to do is type in the title and my own personal rating. And when it saved, it pulled back the poster, all of the cast, the directors, genre, everything. And that took one weekend. If people are listening to this and they never touched Salesforce before, that's how quick it is to build something in Salesforce. I did that in a weekend. Mike: So you're my long-lost brother, I swear. No lie. And I can show this to you. I'll show this to you at Dreamforce, hand to god. I was in the same scenario in December of 2013. I took a long vacation break. And for many years, up until that point, I was hooked on Top Gear, and I thought I should keep track, because you could also get all of the Top Gear episodes off of iTunes, off of that, it was called iTunes at that point. Chris Emmett: Yeah. Mike: And I was like, I should keep track of this so that I know which ones to buy, which ones I like and have a whole ... And so I literally spent 30 seconds. I was like, I could do this on a spreadsheet, but wait a minute, let's do this in a developer org in Salesforce. And I created a Top Gear app, and I branded the whole salesforce.org Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson and all of them. I had cars and stars and lap times and episode ratings and titles. I ended up, for almost a whole weekend straight, just non-stop binging Top Gear and building this org. Chris Emmett: That is awesome. Mike: And now, it's one of those where I have to remember every month I log into it to make sure that that org dies. I would cry if that org went away. I seriously would. But yeah, I'm not fancy and smart like you. I don't know what I'd integrate it to. I guess I could integrate it to IMDb to pull that stuff in, but I more just wanted it of my own information. But it was so old. It was back in the day when you used to stick image files in resources. Chris Emmett: Oh, yeah. Mike: And then you would do an image. You would create a formula field that returned an image, and that's how I did star ratings on the page. Chris Emmett: That is still a valid way to do it. I don't care what anyone says. Mike: It just feels so old school. But I remember showing it to somebody and they're like, how did you get stars to show up on the page? It was like, well, let me tell you. Chris Emmett: That's what it's about. I don't care what anyone says. Salesforce for me is about, as a profession, you are obviously going into businesses and building out their systems to improve the way they work, but for me, the beauty of a dev or a developer org is to be able to just do my own personal random projects where I might have an idea where it's a weekend. I want to see if it works. And nine out of 10 ideas may burn and fail, but that one idea out of 10 might be just gold. And all of a sudden, I have a movie tracker that I can use, and I've learned something. And you know what? I can then take some of that integration knowledge to my next customer. It's about just trying stuff out, exploring, being bold, being crazy. Mike: I would argue even those other nine are still fun when they fail because there's a moment when you're like, I think this is going to work. Well, I know it's not going to work now, and now I know what not to do. Chris Emmett: Exactly. Mike: Chris, this was a blast. Chris Emmett: It was amazing. Mike: I'm so glad ... I think we talked about some clean data. Chris Emmett: Data is important. Data and information, very important. That's the takeaway. Mike: Yeah. We got to get some shirts made for Dreamforce. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. And I'm fairly certain you and Jonathan will have long legs in presenting your clean data and metadata information to the world. Chris Emmett: Yeah, no doubt. Thanks for having me. Mike: All right. So that's a wrap for today's therapy session with Chris Emmett. I can't help but say we laughed, we learned, we IMDb'd. I will say after the call, we probably went down a rabbit hole of movie fun facts from television shows from the '80s. That was incredibly fun. But again, if you're secretly running a DOS system or still mourning a lost developer org, just remember, not all your data deserves your attention. Boil a cup of water, not the ocean. And maybe for fun, build a movie tracker while you're at it or a television show tracker.  So if you love this episode, be sure to give us a review on iTunes. Share it with another admin who needs a nudge in the better direction of cleaning data. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jonathan Fox, Head of Salesforce Architecture at IntellectAI. Join us as we chat about why we should rethink how we label, structure, and maintain Salesforce metadata. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jonathan Fox. How do you know if your metadata needs to be cleaned up? When we were trying to implement Agentforce on the Admin Evangelist org, we came to a sobering realization. Despite all the content we create on how to do things the right way, it turns out that we all approach metadata a little differently. That’s why I was so excited to sit down with Jonathan to talk about how to clean up your metadata for AI. Training an agent is like showing your org to someone who knows nothing about your business. Suddenly, it’s really important what the labels mean and that they’re consistent. Start small with metadata The thing about technical debt is that it’s not a problem until it becomes a problem. Your metadata is probably fine for most of your users, who have a working knowledge of your business processes. It’s only when you try to implement Agentforce that you realize you have a problem. Jonathan recommends that you start small when you’re trying to clean your metadata. Roll out Agentforce for a small use case and only clean up the metadata associated with that specific task. If you need to generate buy-in, try running Agentforce as-is and then show your stakeholders just how much difference a little bit of cleanup can make. Metadata is the foundation “Your metadata is the foundation of your Salesforce org,” Jonathan says, “you don't want to get it wrong, you don't want to make it worse. So it needs to be treated with that respect and that kind of importance when you're changing it.” Documentation is the key to making sure that you’re keeping things usable for human and AI employees alike. You need to make sure that you fully understand the impacts of any changes you’re implementing, or you risk breaking all sorts of automations in your org. Jonathan had so many more great insights about how to start cleaning up your metadata for AI agents, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jonathan on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admin's podcast, and hey, how did we do last week? Did you listen to that episode to see how our 2025 admin predictions were holding up? If not, add that to your play next list, because that was a fun look back. I like listening to things from the past, but let's go ahead to the future. So in this episode this week, we're joined by Jonathan Fox, who takes us behind the scenes on something every admin deals with, and maybe you don't think you do, but it's metadata. And in fact, in next week's episode, we're going to talk about cleaning data, so buckle up folks. It's summer cleaning time. But the fun thing is we start off with a conversation around a barbecue that sparked Jonathan's career and got it into amazing directions. How many people talk Salesforce over barbecue? And Jonathan also helps us rethink how we label, structure and maintain Salesforce metadata. So whether you're prepping for Agentforce or just going through an org and wondering what some of those data labels mean, I promise you, this episode is for you, and if you love what you hear, be sure to give us a favorite or a review on iTunes. But with that, let's get Jonathan on the episode. So Jonathan, welcome to the podcast. Jonathan Fox: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on. Mike: Well, I'm excited to tackle this because we've bounced around and I've done a few episodes on cleaning data and cleaning metadata and back and forth and back and forth, and I think it hit our team like a truck when we were working on implementing Agentforce in our org, and Josh, who was working on it, came to the realization that despite having three or four evangelists on the team, we'd all named fields differently and we'd all done things a little different. And he's like, "We really have to talk to people about metadata." And we'll get into that and we'll have a follow-up episode on data data, but Jonathan, let's hear about you. How did you get started with Salesforce and what do you do? Jonathan Fox: My journey into Salesforce was, well, most people say this, a little bit unorthodox. My background is the military in the British Army, and I stumbled across Salesforce, family barbecue. My brother-in-law brought me into the Salesforce world and taught me how to be a developer basically, and I worked my way up through- Mike: At the barbecue? Jonathan Fox: At the barbecue, yeah. That was the riveting conversation we were having over beers and burgers, was Apex in fact. Not quite metadata, but at least a bit of Apex was the topic of conversation. He taught me how to get started in tech and how to be a developer, and the rest is history as they say. Mike: I feel like that was the one line that he's telling his significant other. "No, this line's going to pay off. I'm going to find somebody at a party or a barbecue that wants to talk about Salesforce stuff, just trust me." Years go by, he goes to parties and nothing happens, and then he finds you and he just says something. You're like, "Yeah, that sounds good." "What?" Jonathan Fox: His significant other and mine at the time were just sick of hearing about what is Salesforce? It's all we spoke. Mike: You two go off, grill a burger, talk Salesforce. Jonathan Fox: Come back later. Mike: Come back later. That's crazy. So when we talk about data, every single feature that we roll out, it always comes back to data, but I think more so with Agentforce. Now we have to go one layer deeper with metadata, and I'm going to start off with a hard question. Jonathan Fox: Go for it. Mike: I think it's hard. How do you know your metadata is bad metadata? Jonathan Fox: I think that's a really good question, and I think it is a hard question. I think it's really difficult to know whether your metadata is bad, and until you start poking around with things such as AI, you probably don't realize it. And a really good example, and probably one that we've had conversations in the past about this at your org that you use and things like that where you have these field names. Field labels for example is a type of metadata, and they often have acronyms or naming conventions that only you, the users, actually know about. And until you start trying to make AI understand what they mean, you don't realize because you've got all your industry knowledge, you've got all your organization knowledge, you've done your onboarding. You know how the org works because you've been trained and taught and you speak the lingo, but the AI doesn't know that. So it's only until you start getting to play around with these kinds of things, you go, oh, actually, a fresh set of eyes, somebody who has no idea about this hasn't got a clue, and I think it's at that point you start realizing our metadata needs to have a little bit of a revamp. Mike: Yeah, the field labels and values that you use for fields that are going to be displayed on a page is one thing. I always got quite cavalier, I'll use the term, with fields and labels for stuff that I just needed on the object that wasn't going to be displayed on a page. And now I'm thinking, oh God, Agentforce is going to have reference those and it's totally not going to understand what SP_25Z_PRD means. Jonathan Fox: Exactly, but you know what it means? Mike: The whole organization knows what it means, because everybody's into acronyms, and I just need to store the value on the object for the record but I didn't need to display it for the user, but now I'm going to ask Agentforce for what's the speed record number or something, and it's going to look at me like, "I don't know. You're not capturing that. I'm going to go back over here and talk with this dude about some Apex and grill a burger." Jonathan Fox: Yeah, exactly. There are ways we can get around it with Agentforce and it's things like putting those acronyms in instructions, but is that really the best way to do it? That's almost like hard coding references within Apex. And at that point, you start thinking, yeah, this isn't right. This isn't the best way to do it, and I think that probably answers your question. At that point, when you start having to do workarounds and figure things out like that, you know your metadata is not in a good state. Mike: So that feels like we're walking down a path and we hit a fork in the road where we realize there's a whole bunch of these weird fields. They always include underscores. Why is that? I don't know. People like the underscore. They do that on Instagram too. Do we create this massive dictionary and feed it to Agentforce, or do we have to go back and... When we talk about clean data, you extract the data, you look at it, you fix what's wrong and you shove it back in for the most part, or should we do that with metadata? Jonathan Fox: I think you have to take a pragmatic approach with anything that you do in the Salesforce org, and that goes for metadata, data, tidying up your flows or refactoring your Apex classes and methods. You take a look at it and go, how big is the job? You impact SS? You go, how big is the job? What's the return on investment of me doing this now versus the cumulative over the next few years? Is it worth my time to go back and fix it all? And gold standards, what we teach and what we hope to aim for is yeah, go back, refactor it, make it perfect, but sometimes it's not an issue until it becomes an issue. In this case, for example, your field labels, they weren't an issue in the past, they are now, and I think it's one of those where you have to sum up all those different variables and think, is it worth it? Now, if it's only a couple of fields and it's only ever going to be a couple of fields, maybe it's quick enough just to go back and fix it, or maybe it's not worth the effort and you write it in the instructions. But I think it's org dependent, variable dependent, even individual skill set dependent. But it's one of those that you have to... It's a really non-answer, I know that, but I think there are so many variables. You can't just blanket rule. Obviously, we want to aim for gold standard. Mike: Well, the fallacy is we hear metadata and data and you think, "Well, I'm just cleaning data." But the cleansing of it is actually very different, so what are the implications? I'm sure Chris and I will talk about this, but if you go through your org and you're like, well, everybody has to have a proper name, and so you fix all the nicknames or shortened names. And so you come across the John Fox record. You're like, nope, it's got to be Jonathan. I can confidently say for the most part that changing John to Jonathan isn't going to fire anything, isn't going to break anything, but my question to you is if I go in and I change a field label or I change some metadata on a field, what could I break? Jonathan Fox: Oh yeah, you are risking breaking things. You're potentially risking breaking your flows, your Apex, your validation rules. Sometimes, hopefully you referenced them through API names and we might not be changing them here. We're probably changing field labels, not API names, but you may want to change those as well, and then at that point, you are potentially impacting all of your automation in the org, your validation rules, your assignment rules, et cetera, et cetera. So you have a big knock-on effect by changing metadata, and that's because metadata in Salesforce is the replacement for you writing code on the back end. That's the whole point of it. That's why it's a SaaS and a PaaS to some degree. Salesforce themselves by producing the platform is saving you having to write how fields appear on the UI. You are just putting placeholders there and that's what metadata is on the Salesforce platform, and you change that, you're impacting everything else that references it potentially. So there are big consequences and it isn't just a case of going to object manager and going switch some characters around to make it look neat for Agentforce. Mike: So I think oftentimes, people hear cleaning data and I'm sure cleaning metadata, which feels like next level cleaning. It's like having your carpet shampooed. It's like, cleaning your house is just vacuuming. Nope, we're calling in Stanley Steamer. They're going to do the rugs now. They're going to get all of the dirt out. It can feel like, oh, we have to do all of it. We have to clean everything. And I don't know, maybe you have a tiny house and you can spend half a day and clean your whole house. I can't clean my whole house, but people for some reason look at, "I have to clean all of my data." Given the implications of updating information and metadata, how should people approach cleaning or getting their metadata right for Agentforce? Jonathan Fox: There's probably a couple of ways to approach it. I have a small house, I can probably clear most of mine within a day so I'm lucky. That doesn't mean I enjoy it though, so there are definitely- Mike: No. Well, there's that. I don't know, using the big leaf blower, I could probably clean my whole house and I wouldn't enjoy it, but it'd be clean. Jonathan Fox: Well, that's true, and it'd be good fun in the process. I suppose if you think you're going to have guests over to your house, you're going to host a dinner party or just have some friends, you don't go cleaning all the bedrooms necessarily, and you clean the places that they're going to see. You clean your living room or your kitchen and the bathroom that they're going to use. In a similar way, what is Agentforce going to be using within your org? You might be rolling out Agentforce for a small use case first to prove the ROI to your org. Fantastic. So you might have a small use case and it's only referencing fields on the contact object. Start with the contact object then. Start with those fields that Agentforce is going to be using, and you've proven out that return on investment, your organization loves it, and now they want to expand it to using data from opportunities or orders or whatever else. Then you start moving out to where your guests, your agent, is going to look next. So that's how I would personally approach it, is start with what it's going to be looking at first, because otherwise you're going to be overwhelmed with such a huge task and that's not going to be as productive. Be iterative, work on it in chunks, break it down. Mike: No, I like that. Clean where the guests are going to be, close the doors to the rest of the house. There's nothing there. Jonathan Fox: Exactly. Mike: It's a doorway to a big black hole. Don't open that. Jonathan Fox: You don't need to look in there. You don't need to see the piles of boxes. Mike: Here be dragons. So one thing, and I'm going to have to ask Chris this when we record his podcast, because I've done data cleansing exercises before where you look at things and consultants, you're brought into jobs and stuff, and you look at the data and you're like, well, this is close date and there's July 27th, 2025. That's a valid close date. Why is that bad data? And it's bad data because the process is, well, but after the opportunity closes, we also have an implementation stage and blah, blah, blah, and so if we ask Agentforce, what's the close date? It should say August 24th because it's always a month after the close date of the opportunity. How do you know when you're looking at metadata in the same way that you're like, oh wait, this is something that Agentforce can't use, although it completely looks like usable metadata. Jonathan Fox: I guess you have to almost treat the agent as it is your employee. It's your agent employee within your org, but it's one that hasn't gone through on board and it doesn't work day to day in your org doing all the different processes that your service agents or sales reps might be doing. So you've got to look at it and treat it as if it is a brand new fresh employee that hasn't been through any of that training, hasn't gone through any of that. Straight out of college or something, never been in the industry either, and walk through the life of what you're asking that agent to do, and if it can't do it, then that's where you need to be looking at changing that metadata, change that label. And you've also got to think as well, you don't necessarily want to change it if it's going to impact all your human employees either, so where do you draw the line and strike the balance between making your metadata perfect for agents, AI agents, and making it really confusing and changing it all after many, many years for your human employees? And I think there's a balance that needs to be struck there. Mike: So that to me sounds like the importance of perhaps a data dictionary or just org documentation, right? Jonathan Fox: Absolutely. Mike: We can upload those as resources. I think that's getting better. I haven't done it. Have you done that? Jonathan Fox: I've played around with it a little bit and I think it'll only get more powerful, and I think it only really highlights the absolute need to have strong documentation within your Salesforce org. Again, documentation is one of those really good topics that we can speak for hours about because documentation is only as good at the point in time when it's written because your org is ever evolving. As soon as you bring out a new field, you're having to update that documentation, so keeping on top of it is really important, and trying to have that living document, you upload it to Salesforce for Agentforce to use, it comes out of date immediately. So again, that's a whole topic of its own, but I think it does really highlight to Salesforce customers and people working in Salesforce orgs that tracking all these kind of things is really key if you haven't already done it, and that is a big task, but it will pay dividends. Mike: Yeah, I think sometimes people, and myself included, you get caught up in the speed and the immediacy at which you can do things and you forget, oh, I need to, best practice, write down what I created, why I created it. So I want to pivot off that because if you have bad metadata, it could be the result of you have a bad deployment process or a bad, I don't know, requirements or discovery process. Can both be true? Jonathan Fox: Yeah, absolutely. If you think all the way back to the beginning of their future and you've got your BAs looking into what the product owner wants and they're trying to gain this information from them and then perhaps translate it into Salesforce terms, and maybe there's a gap there or maybe the Salesforce consultant hasn't poked enough holes in the requirements and tried to transform them a bit more. You may have missed that gap all way at the beginning. Or it may be it's absolutely fine for what you've been requested to do and you've built it exactly to spec, but it gets to UAT, and at that point, it was missed that your users had no idea or your agentic employees had no idea what it was doing and it got deployed. And absolutely, that whole lifecycle of development there, there are different quality control gates that absolutely could have missed this or just never had to think about it in the past, and now we do have to think about it. And I heard you laugh a little bit then about the agentic employees and the UAT. Is that something that we maybe need to start thinking about? Testing in UAT, but with agentic employees rather than just running scripts to test things, and taking it outside of the box a little bit. If we're going to treat them as employees then perhaps that's the right stage for them to get involved in a different way. Mike: Until you said that, I never thought about UAT for agentic employees, but it completely makes sense. And it completely makes sense you can do it with user testing because you don't want to get all the way to production and then suddenly it falls on its face so you're like, wait a minute, how come that didn't work? No, it's fascinating concept. I think one of the things you mentioned that I want to bring up, so when we have Chris on next week and we talk about data cleansing, I'm going to ask him about changing data. Because data, for everybody, they see it, it's very visual. If you change the date format, let's say, of a field and you go from European style to American style, your user is going to be, "Whoa." They're going to immediately see that. I don't know that they would immediately see, or they probably shouldn't unless they're pulling in weird fields and reports, metadata fixes. But with that, I think what is important to get in terms of sign-off or process or executives to go through this process? Because at some point, you're going to have to talk, well, we got to fix this data, we got to do this, we got to do that, and we need to make sure that we're fixing the process. I think data is a public thing, your users see it, but metadata is almost the behind the scenes. How do we make the backstage cleaner, and then how do we make sure that all the stagehands know to keep the backstage cleaner? So that's a really long question of in addition to knowing we need to fix it, if I'm sitting here saying, "Cool, I've listened to this podcast and Jonathan's hammered it into my head, I need to fix it," who should I start talking to? What are the sign-offs I should get? Jonathan Fox: Yeah, I think you are obviously going to need sign-off. You're going to need the buy-in of the people who hold the budget within the organization, and that could be all sorts of different roles within your organization to all sorts of different levels. I don't know who that will be in your given organization, but it's whoever owns the platform ultimately and whoever has the budget to deploy the team who's going to do, one, the analysis, but two, the actual development, we'll call it the implementation and the testing and deployment afterwards. And I think the best approach for that is to even perhaps try using Agentforce today without changing your metadata, in a sandbox or something, and then show even the smallest of change and how it impacts the agent. Because listening to the podcast today and hearing that you need to transform your metadata isn't going to get the sign-off and the approval of these people within the organization. They're going to want to see how it changes, why, the metrics behind it, and I think that's the best way to do it because every org is so different. Your metadata is going to be so different from the org next to yours, there is no one rule fits all, and I think other than just showing and visually demonstrating how much Agentforce can enhance your org without it versus with the change and show how much it can speed up your users and all the automations it can do, I think that's the best way to approach it, and it is with that person who ultimately holds the budget. Because it's not a one-person job. There is going to have to be some analysis there. You're going to have to do some changes, you're going to have to test them and deploy them. It's almost a project in itself, and I think it should be treated as such because it is such an important step. And your metadata is the foundations of your Salesforce org. You don't want to get it wrong, you don't want to make it worse, so it needs to be treated with that respect and that importance when you're changing it. Mike: Well, if you think of it, I've always answered the question, if you ask a company what's its most valuable asset, it shouldn't be the product it puts out. It's the data that it has, and its second most valuable is its metadata because that's the way that you find out what data you have. Jonathan Fox: Yeah, exactly. Mike: And you query it. Jonathan Fox: Yeah. If you don't have a strong metadata structure within your Salesforce org, well, then you don't really have a Salesforce org because your data's not going to fit. So yeah, it's second because obviously the data is what you're using day-to day. That's the valuable part. Mike: One thing we haven't touched on is we've lived in this perfect world of we're just fixing metadata in Salesforce. I don't want to say the wrong term, but when I think about it, integrations, I call it the data you inherit, the data that comes from other systems. How should we approach metadata fixes for that? Jonathan Fox: It's difficult, especially if you're forced into a particular route because of an integration or another system, but the Salesforce platform is really flexible. There's not really any reason why the metadata that Agentforce uses today can't be specific and clean in accordance with your Salesforce org. There is no other external system out there that necessarily will force you down a rabbit hole and make you have to do it in a certain way. There are always ways that within the org, you can transform your data from where it's held on that metadata and make it work for those external systems. I think it goes back down to again though, making sure your documentation's clean, because if you are forced down a particular route through inherited metadata or third party systems and all the things that you can't control perhaps, then that's where the documentation becomes vital again as we mentioned earlier. Mike: Yeah, especially if you're... Anytime you bring something in or Salesforce pushes data out, there has to be some documentation on that. That was always the fear that I had as an admin of did I leave enough behind so that somebody knows if things go thermonuclear, what buttons to push? And the end result is if you feel like you have enough, you're probably halfway there because you could always write more. Jonathan Fox: Yeah, absolutely, and even look at the things that you can't control. You have some really cool app exchange apps in your org. You can't control their metadata. That's the whole point of those vendors, and perhaps they're not top of mind for AI at the moment or they're getting round to doing it, but you want to adopt it before they've had chance. That's where documentation is going to become key, because you can't control what they've produced for your org, and it works amazingly because it's the product you've been using for years. But you need it to work today for Agentforce and perhaps they're not ready or it doesn't work the way that you want it to but it works for them and all their other customers. Documentation is going to be a key there. Mike: Right, absolutely. Well, this is fun. We dove into the scenes behind the scenes. It's like best practices on writing cue cards for comedians. Jonathan Fox: Absolutely. Mike: It's the person that stands behind the camera that tells the camera and the comedian what to do is often underappreciated. There's a whole world of people, just to go off on a tangent, that do write cue cards, and there's a script to learn how to write it so that it's very readable. It was a fascinating- Jonathan Fox: I did not know that was a thing. Mike: A fascinating little rabbit hole I went down one day on YouTube and the internet, because you can learn everything from the internet these days. Jonathan Fox: Oh, it's so true. Mike: Yeah, isn't it? But you'd think by now we'd be printing it, but nope, it's humans writing it. So Jonathan, this was a blast. I'm glad we came on, we got to talk about metadata. I think it's probably the thing that most people aren't looking at. They're probably like, "Oh, I got to fix my data. I got to do this," and they're just tidying up the entryway and they're forgetting there's a whole lot more to do behind the scenes in addition to just the data that Agentforce consumes, and it pays dividends outside of that too. Better reporting, better everything. I know that I'm guilty of users running reports and including fields and them saying, "I don't know what it is, but I just included it because it had numbers in it." I'm like, cool. Jonathan Fox: Because it makes the report look fancy. Mike: I need to fix that field and make it a little bit better. But no, this was great. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Jonathan Fox: Yeah, thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed it. Mike: Big thanks to Jonathan Fox for joining us and breaking down the realities and opportunities of cleaning up metadata, and as Agentforce becomes part of the how we work, taking a closer look at what's under the hood of our orgs is more important than ever. Now, before I say that and you're this far, get ready for next week's episode because in addition to cleaning metadata, I'm going to talk with Chris Emmett about cleaning data, and this is a super fun episode. We do go off the rails a little bit about movies, but that's okay. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you take the time, listen to what Jonathan has to say, talk to your executives, your stakeholders about field labels, documentation habits. And if you loved what you hear, share it with a fellow Salesforce admin, tweet it out on social, and until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.