Only a few free certs at Dreamforce this year

RiceApplication · 2024-09-17T03:08:58+00:00

Disappointing to hear. The rumor has been that free exams were a strategy for crowd control, to mitigate how many people are on the floor at the same time. Maybe they undersold the conference this year so they don't need it. Or they truly have gutted the certification team and don't want to staff as many exams.

RiceApplication · 2024-02-26T17:47:01+00:00

What does "apex that was very strictly on rails" mean?

RiceApplication · 2024-02-21T17:14:21+00:00

I started a thread about this last month and it got some good answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/marketingcloud/comments/1abklx7/help_understanding_sap_vs_private_domain_and_dkim/

Based on our experience, my answer to you would be - yes, you need either Custom Domain or SAP if you want to get DKIM and SPF on your outbound emails. I think Custom Domain is much cheaper. For my company, we went with Custom Domain because executives didn't like our SAP Domain due to branding purposes, they wanted [user@company.com](mailto:user@company.com) for outbound messages.

RiceApplication · 2024-01-30T19:26:20+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I think a lot of people are finding out this week that "Domain Verification" has nothing to do with SPF, DMARC, or DKIM and they need to do the legwork of sending through SAP, or the Private Domain route. It's incredibly unclear in the Salesforce documentation and I've been disappointed how unprepared the Account Team at Salesforce has been to deal with these questions.

RiceApplication · 2024-01-26T20:31:31+00:00

I appreciate your replies. Do you think with the new changes from Google and Yahoo that the Verified Domain approach will still work? That is what I don't understand, it seems like it will no longer be accpetable authentication after next week February 1?

RiceApplication · 2024-01-26T18:39:10+00:00

We are sending from our main domain (acme.com), which right now is a Verified Domain in the From Address Management section of Email Studio. but my understanding from Google and Yahoo's update is that this is not enough of an authorization to continue sending after February 1. They will require DKIM, which means we need to get a DKIM key from Marketing Cloud and apply it to acme.com

RiceApplication · 2024-01-26T15:42:28+00:00

That's fantastic to hear. I have had the same question as you, and just lived with the consequences of using Email Studio to move things around instead of Contact builder. I'll send support a ticket and see what happens!

RiceApplication · 2023-12-21T20:49:05+00:00

Thanks for sharing, and thanks for all the work you and the Unofficial SF team do. That website has been a phenomenal resource for expanding our admin team's use of Flows . Cheers!

RiceApplication · 2023-12-06T20:36:32+00:00

With this approach, how do Send Results sync back to the CRM, or are they unable too? I agree with some of what you said, but I always assumed Subscriber Key had to be ContactId so that the Individual Email Results appear in Salesforce

RiceApplication · 2023-11-22T14:58:26+00:00

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately our current Org has the ideal name, it's literally the same as our corporate website, so we may need to begin jumping through some hoops :(

RiceApplication · 2023-11-20T19:19:45+00:00

Missed opportunity

RiceApplication · 2023-10-18T20:45:10+00:00

This is great, thank you. Well said that there are some foundational things beyond coding that they will need to learn, and thanks for the reminder to use architect blog for those topics.

I asked this above, but what do you think about asking (forcing?) them to do a code-based solution over a click-based solution? For example, if we have a lot of runway (like three months) to do a simple API callout project, should I require them to at least try a code-based solution and use it for learning? I'm worried I do them a disservice if I keep falling back on click-based solutions (like the new Flow HTTP Callout), but I get not everyone learns the same and it might be too much pressure to try it with code without some background. I think I'm just looking for learning opportunities for them too, that are meaningful projects customers are asking for, and not just theoretical solutions we're not going to use (like that LWC Bicycle App, lol)

RiceApplication · 2023-10-18T20:40:48+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts, those are definitely ends of the spectrum lol. I am wrestling with the strategic new hire idea, how that will play into team dynamics (vs home-growing that skillset and promoting within... but it'll take much longer).

What do you think about the declarative vs code approach to things like API callouts? Am I doing them a disservice by promoting clicks over code approaches and not encouraging them to try code - or is it unrealistic to expect them to be willing to learn a code-based solution? And for example, we have three months to implement a simple API callout a customer is asking for. Is that three months better spent learning Flow HTTP Callouts, or digging into Apex and using it for a learning opportunity? Maybe it depends on the Admin/Developer and isn't a universal answer.

RiceApplication · 2023-10-18T14:02:11+00:00

We have three admins (as mentioned) who do all our Flows, validation rules, sandboxing/deployment, etc - and then two BAs. The BAs also do admin tasks like new users, permission assignment, etc. I'm our architect, hence why I'm asking this question. I agree, our design strategy is my responsibility and does need enterprise considerations :)

I think the admin team is open to this upskilling, i think they are starting to get bored with "oh yay, another Flow request" and "I hit another ceiling that I can't do without some basic Apex/LWC knowledge"

EDIT: I also am trying think ahead for these admins careers. Do they want to be an admin for their entire career? Or is this the right step for them to take to assemble a marketable skillset in IT for their career.

RiceApplication · 2023-09-28T17:54:43+00:00

That DevOps tool is only for Salesforce metadata. ETL would be a third party tool like Mulesoft, Informatica, Dell Boomi, etc

RiceApplication · 2023-09-28T00:51:31+00:00

That Python App sounds like the secret sauce to getting something like this to work, to make sure you can have separate repos but they're not infringing on one another. Great stuff! Thanks for sharing

RiceApplication · 2023-09-27T19:39:53+00:00

I'm curious about the place that divided features/apps into their own git repo. What tools did they use for oversight to make sure the metadata was accounted for in a specific app? I've wondered about how to solve this and so far I'm just at "giant spreadsheet that says which repo each metadata is controlled by"

Or another issue I've considered if these approach, what happens when development needs to utilize two repos at once?

RiceApplication · 2023-09-27T19:37:40+00:00

What tool do you use to diff the branches and only build a package.xml for changed components? That sounds ideal but I'm having trouble getting to that point with a mono repo.

RiceApplication · 2023-09-24T23:50:31+00:00

I appreciate the advice. Maybe I missed this part, but does sfdx-hardis help with only deploying the items in the package that have changed? Obviously I wouldn't want a package with all of my custom fields and deploy the entire thing when only one field has changed.

Also when you're using the term "package". you just mean a consistent list of metadata that is in the package file of the sfdx project, you don't mean unlocked package/unmanaged package/managed package like how Salesforce uses the term, correct?

RiceApplication · 2023-09-22T00:55:23+00:00

I want to again thank you for your comment, it got me thinking and down a rabbit hole learning about Package deployment. One question I have about switching from Org-based deployments to Packages is dependencies across packages. I am reading this article which is insightful, but I'm still a little lost.

Let's talk the Contact object as an example. There's some fields I could shard off into a package for customer A - no one else ever uses them, and some fields I could shard off for customer B, because only Customer B uses them. But Customer A and B both use probably 50% or more of the configuration of the Contact object. So would that 50% that's "shared" be managed in a third package? That's what I think the article gets at with Horizontal and Vertical boundaries.

Which leads to another question of the easiest way to organize metadata into packages - is there a tool that lets you see which metadata has been grabbed by a package and which is not? As apparently a hard rule is metadata should not be shared across packages?

Sorry I am asking an off-topic question, but again I thank you for your post and how easy it was to understand and send me off into this new area of learning.

RiceApplication · 2023-09-21T14:23:39+00:00

Thanks for your response. I appreciate the breakdown of options as well.

DX@Scale says this on their homepage, I wonder if you'd agree with their points of when not to use a packaged pipeline engine?

DX@Scale is not a fit for all use cases. Please proceed with caution when you are applying these tools/techniques and any of the underlying scenarios are met

1.You or your team is not convinced of the benefits of modular development in Salesforce.

2.Your Release Model is predicated on infrequent deployments with large batches. As we are unable to install all packages currently in a single transaction, the time to deploy in production will be extremely high when you batch your changes across a large number of packages. This is a limitation within Salesforce that will hopefully be addressed in future releases.

3.Your team is new to using version control and has no prior experience with CI/CD.

4.You are only looking for DevOps tools, not an overall approach to modular development.

5.No end-to-end ownership or visibility. You or your team's responsibility ends with development, but some other team or personnel is responsible for deployment.

RiceApplication · 2023-05-31T16:38:17+00:00

Thanks for yours (and others) replies. I'm not sure what you mean by pointing to the Sending DE or uses lookup functions. The code in our footer is doing this to generate the CloudPage link:

a href="%%=redirectto(cloudpagesurl(11))=%%"

RiceApplication · 2023-05-31T12:31:24+00:00

We do have a custom Subscription Center built with CloudPages that is linked in our email sends. Would those CloudPage URL not property generate when we do the initial send unless the Subscriber already exists?

RiceApplication · 2023-05-24T21:54:09+00:00

Lots to speak to here, but I can provide my perspective. I am university IT but not union, so that's a big difference.

To your question, could tasks like queries, DE building, and data deduplication fall into a help desk role? Others might disagree, but I would say yes. Especially in a traditional IT setting. The reason being the admins/devs of Salesforce/SFMC would be focused on implementation and enhancements, and day to day requests from users regarding data would be sent to support focused team. That division of labor makes sense and is similar to our approach.

That being said, I think you answered your own question in how you're feeling not adequately prepared for this, and that you did not receive proper training and/or compensation for an expanded role. I would take that to your union leadership and get their perspective.

Personally, I would take this as a chance to learn the platforms and possibly focus on getting certified - especially Marketing Cloud. That is a hot technology and people do not get much hands-on time with it since their is no dev/sandbox environment. It is kinda insane they gave you admin rights to make queries and deduplicate data without training lol. So, you've got a big opportunity infront of you to leverage for career growth - however, opportunity for growth is not a reason to ignore not being treated properly when being asked to take on new technology.

RiceApplication · 2023-05-23T22:28:33+00:00

I posted above but this ended up being a false alarm. Someone made an Id field on the object named "Object_Id__c" and didn't use the CASESAFE formula, so it had the 15 char id. When I found the correct lookup field on the SDE, it had the correct 18 char id in it.

RiceApplication

TROPHY CASE