Why you should join a local Salesforce Community Group

Hey there, Salesforce user!

Do you ever wish that you could meet other local Salesforce people to chat, learn and ponder over all-things Salesforce?

You may be a new user or a seasoned pro but we find it’s so enriching to meet other people who have Salesforce in their life.

Guess what? We have a community group for you!

Paul Harris our founder, runs the quarterly Cotswold Salesforce Community Group event and we’d love to see you there.

Taking place in-person in Cheltenham or online, we’ve been running the Cotswold group since 2019 and covered dozens of topics. We thought we’d share some highlights of this year’s June event to give you an idea of what to expect.

We gathered together local Salesforce users, consultants and vendors to meet for an informal yet informative evening of expert talks, networking, refreshments and of course everyone’s favourite, the quiz!

Paul Harris hosted the evening, sponsored by Improved Apps, and we were treated to 3 expert speakers.

Read on!

David Loch – Digital Adoption Legend at Improved Apps

A Senior Partner Account Manager at Improved Apps, Dave is passionate about helping customers thrive and succeed by improving Salesforce adoption, reporting accuracy and change management.

“Boost efficiency, drive adoption, reduce costs and realise ROI”

Dave discussed the importance of being able to reliably measure your Salesforce usage using the free Improved Usage Tracker app so that you can understand what users are doing in the system.  He also covered embedded help and training and managing critical user communications, thereby showcasing the 3 products outlined below.

1. Improved Usage Tracker

• A free app that tracks in real-time how your Salesforce users are interacting with the platform.
• You can monitor usage by role, location, department or profile via the dashboard.
• Identify potential for user improvement to boost productivity and Salesforce ROI.

2. Improved Noticeboard

• A tool that sits within your org to deliver important messages to users every time they log in.
• The user must acknowledge the message in interactive banners, meaning vital comms aren’t missed.
• This ensures that compliance and knowledge sharing is enabled in a cost-effective way.

3. Improved Help

• Authoring tools for you to create in-context help and training to your Salesforce users.
• This allows delivery of the right information to the right people at the right time.
• Embedded help reduces training time and cost and increases efficiency of users.

Key Takeaways

• Being able to track every interaction users make on every page gives valuable insights into what gaps in adoption there are and how you can address those through training.
• Without being able to measure Salesforce adoption and usage, you’re basically wandering in the dark. Using a usage tracker is a little like Google Analytics for Salesforce and brings your data to life.
• Bite size training can be tailored to each user based on their skills and profile, saving time and improving adoption in the right places at the right time.

Lizz Hellinga – CRM Strategy Consultant at Walden Edge

Salesforce MVP Lizz, has spoken at Dreamforce 7 times and has been active in the Salesforce community for many years, teaching people how to make Salesforce really work for them. Lizz specialises in CRM Strategy and activation at Walden Edge and loves solving small and medium size companies’ Salesforce challenges.

“Create Adoption Success“

Salesforce admins are problem solvers and build creative solutions, but end-users need support to adopt those solutions. Lizz discussed and showed us tools & tactics that Salesforce Admins can add to their planning to create adoption success.

Salesforce tools you can use today:

• Help Text. Users don’t always know what the purpose of a certain field might be and adding help text gives instant guidance.
• Help Menu. Customise Help to add in anything useful such as links to internal resources, org charts or newsletters. Especially useful for onboarding.
• Learning paths. Assigned in Guidance Centre, you can share learning modules or links to documents for your end users on any topic relevant to them.
• In-app guidance prompts. Add single prompts on a page where a change needs to be highlighted. These can be assigned to everyone or to specific profiles and can be active for a set amount of time.

Key Takeaways

• Adoption is a process, people should accept and integrate new technology and then use it in the way it was intended. Anyone who is building, designing or analysing the platform, such as Admins, should always be adoption-minded when building.
• Knowing who is in the system is vital as any changes you make on the platform will have a downstream effect. Keeping a stakeholder registry is a great way of understanding users and informing them of changes being made and how it might affect them.
• Finally, Lizz showed us some of the Salesforce tools that can be used to assist the end-user, such as help text in fields, demonstrating how this is just as important as the build itself.

Vicki Moritz-Henry – Salesforce Architect & Certified Instructor

Vicki is 19x certified, a Certified Salesforce Instructor, Marketing Champion and is passionate about empowering organisations to harness the full potential of Salesforce.

“From Stuck to Certified“

Vicki gave a great talk sharing her Top 10 Tips on how to pass your next Salesforce certification – and being 19x certified she has plenty of experience in this and offered a thorough walk-through of how to prepare!

Top 10 Exam Tips

1. Choose your exam. Which path are you keen on? Admin? Developer? Marketer?
2. Set a goal and book your exam.
3. Get friendly with the exam guide in Trailhead.
4. Get familiar with the types of questions.
5. Take advantage of online resources (see links below).
6. Take a mock exam.
7. Create your flashcards.
8. Get hands-on, eg. get a study buddy or see if there is a Superbadge related to the content.
9. Make a study plan based on the tips above.
10. RELAX! It’s natural to feel nervous, so perhaps you can try practising some box-breathing to reduce your stress.

Key Takeaways

• Commit upfront. Choose which certification path you want to follow and then book your exam. This way you have a solid goal to work towards.
• Use all of the resources that Salesforce has to offer. Find your exam guide, the related Trailmix, Salesforce Ben and mock exams. They’re all there to help you understand what to expect and study.
• Remember, a lot of people do not pass their certification first time. This is OK! Focus on the topics that are suggested with your exam feedback and get that exam re-sit booked.

We want to say a huge thank you to all our speakers! There was a lot of great stuff to discuss and everyone took away something useful from each presentation!

Sound like something you’d enjoy?

If you want to feel part of a friendly, supportive community who have one thing in common, you can join us next time.

We’ll have up to 3 speakers sharing their Salesforce knowledge with us, the ever-popular Salesforce Trivia Quiz, refreshments and networking.

To register for this free event which takes place in Cheltenham (or online) at 6pm on Thursday 5th October 2023, simply click here > https://bit.ly/44PiEQk

Keep your eyes peeled for the full details of our October event.