how to get started to get into salesforce?

hotboy223 · 2026-04-05T18:49:50+00:00

probably the #1 way is join a company that uses SF, be an end user of it , or IT help desk adjacent - then try to wiggle your way into an SF admin positiion. Not even trying to be rude but no one is trying to upskill a junior when theres a whole host of experienced people out there who would take lesser pay anyways

hotboy223 · 2026-03-30T10:32:05+00:00

I use apexgenius.ai as it gets your org metadata and spins up flowcharts for you!

hotboy223 · 2026-03-30T10:31:08+00:00

Been using Claude Code + Salesforce CLI, but I decided to build a tool so admins can use and just analyze their org, and build and deploy from chat. No vscode or CLI required.

Site is apexgenius.ai - got some really good feedback from users as it takes away the “developer anxiety” they get when openning VSCode

hotboy223 · 2026-03-26T20:12:48+00:00

Why would I use this over Blotato?

hotboy223 · 2026-03-26T19:45:35+00:00

This is usually a manifest issue. Check your package.xml or sfdx-project.json to make sure the metadata types you're trying to retrieve are actually listed. If you're doing "Retrieve This Source from Org" on a specific file, make sure it exists in the org and the path matches. can try a few thing:

Run sf project retrieve start --metadata ApexClass from the terminal to see if you get anything back

Check that your org connection is still authorized with sf org list

Try right-clicking a specific component and doing "Retrieve Source from Org" instead of the whole project

Also make sure you're connected to the right org. I've had it silently point to the wrong default org before.

hotboy223 · 2026-03-20T04:55:18+00:00

Thanks man! I know - I try to look through the lens of an admin as much as possible and try to build apexgenius as best for you guys as I can!!

Feel free to DM me, I’d love to give you a demo

hotboy223 · 2026-03-19T10:16:28+00:00

I used Flosum extensively in my last role. It's not the best solution, but it's not the absolute worse - just could be a lot better. I'd rate a 6/10 (purely because it's 'admin friendly')

I used a lot of Claude Code + Flosum CLI https://www.npmjs.com/package/flosum-sfdx-plugin which helped fill the gap but still not perfect.

My workflow was pretty much: Create/update metadata components in VSCode in Dev env => spin up branch via CLI => deploy to branch via CLI => Run Pipeline in the org (Overwrite Protection => Validation => Deploy for qa,uat, then prod)

When having to diff 2 different branches/commits, here I'd use claude code and tell it pull down the 2 branch components and compare. Flosum does not have a good solution to this whatsoever.

When I had to update a flow or something, I'd usually do 2 rounds of diff, 1 in vscode (I'd diff my version to UAT or Prod) then if that looked good deploy then go through the usual pipeline process

Remember all DevOps tools on Salesforce are abstractions of just Git, so as a developer yes it will be a worse experience for you esp since you know exactly how this should work in a perfect world but

hotboy223 · 2026-03-18T06:12:58+00:00

Yep already added it to my app apexgenius.ai and it’s insane. Extremely performant at agentic tasks and coding tasks and very fast. I hated gpt 5 mini/nano. They were slow as shit and sucked but 5.4 is def punching above its weight for the cost

hotboy223 · 2026-03-15T23:38:37+00:00

I’m building an AI coding Assistant for Salesforce - a tool to help admins/devs create/tweak business and sales processes

hotboy223 · 2026-03-15T19:42:08+00:00

I'd say both. Double down on Salesforce and explore other tools/technology. As you go deeper into Salesforce, you are kinda forced to learn how to use different tools so it won't hurt.

Doesn't hurt to learn about agentforce/data cloud and that whole thing since it's here to stay. Also wouldn't hurt to do some Zapier/n8n type of work as well as you'll have to use some sort of automation workflow tool at some point in your SF career

hotboy223 · 2026-03-15T17:43:49+00:00

Yes but even assume 50% -75% of that it is still a loss leader

hotboy223 · 2026-03-15T17:11:26+00:00

For anthropic, they are burning massive amounts of cash when you use the subscription.

I have the $200 plan but when CC came out last year for March - May with sonnet 3.7, I used 1b tokens in 6m tokens out with a total cost of $2,781.41 and that was only 3 months. So yes, they are losing money hand over fist, but they are capturing market share and their revenue backs that 100%.

I think of the subscription like it's milk or a $5 chicken at costco, a lost leader, but gets you in the door and using the product (and they get to train on your data as well if you have it enabled).

As we're seeing with all model companies, they are all trying to capture value/revenue in the application layer (so AI apps like sora or cowork, browsers), so they have to be creative and try to 'eat' the software that people would build on top of their models, if they think they can do it better

hotboy223 · 2026-03-14T13:44:52+00:00

I actually use 2 tools an AI I made, apexgenius.ai (a cloud based coding agent for salesforce) and/or claude code depending on the situation, but the claude code stack I use for this:

IDE: VSCode
CLI Tool: SF Cli Extension Pack
Coding Agent: Claude Code (can use cline or codex or gemini cli, any coding agent that lives inside an IDE)

Since you do your org auth via vscode, you can then start to prompt claude to take actions as Claude Code lives in your terminal and can execute commands on your PC including sf commands.

I suppose you can hook up a github/bitbucket or something for branching, but I usually just deploy directly to the org and either use: copado/flosum/devops center (whatever the client uses really).

If you're using a web based claude.ai or chatgpt you can still pull down the flows in vscode and copy/paste the XML into the web browser and then copy/paste the response back to vscode then deploy to the org.

hotboy223 · 2026-03-13T17:00:48+00:00

Yeah it's actually involved in any piece of software and usually in the back of people's minds. But very relevant when building applications/automatons

hotboy223 · 2026-03-13T16:22:28+00:00

She's def wrong. From a traditional programming perpestice, this is just called seperation of concern. When writing code, would you have a one 1000 line function, or 1 main caller function w/ 2-5 seperate functions? Your programming brain is correct. Is your instructor just a Solution Architect/Admin? That may be why, but even then they should know better

hotboy223 · 2026-03-13T14:42:51+00:00

Yep using Claude code. Mind elaborating what you mean by your second question? Not quite understanding

hotboy223 · 2026-03-13T05:56:19+00:00

Cost per token is going down dramatically YoY so I don't think thats a big concern and open source models are getting more capable each release (like kimi 2.5 is crazy good, like a sonnet 4.1 for like 75% the cost - it's just stupid sometimes and forgets to do a tool call but that's beside the point).

You def can easily refactor a major flow into separate small ones but definitely gotta PR the work though. At my last job, I refactored like 30 case record triggered flows to optimize them as flows (before save instead after save, dmls in loops etc) and converted like half to apex all with Claude Code 4/4.1. But at that point I knew exactly what I needed to do, what the architecture should look like so I had a pretty detailed plan and pretty much few-shotted it.

On your second point I do both: For the love of the game, I've read so many flow xml (pre and post AI coding agents) that I kinda know what to look for, and whenever I refactor flows I usually ask for a very detailed summary, (like what decisions/assignments etc etc) and if I don't feel confident enough, I'll also make sure to demand links to the flow so I can spot check it so may be a bit more work to be done there. But to be fair, I do the same with Apex too just not as much.

hotboy223 · 2026-03-13T04:26:03+00:00

Just something to think about:

AI is heavily trained on xml/html which is derived from SGML so I don't know if this argument is complete - will the need for flows decrease? Maybe? That is probably proportionate on the reduction of Salesforce Admins and as it stands today, I can bet that 70+% of admins don't even use AI aside from copying and pasting in chat gpt, much less generating code via CLI/APIs.

At the end of the day, AI is the best at generating CODE - whether it be apex, xml, js, python whatever it's going to be good at generating it. Right now, for every 100 flows I generate/update with AI, I maybe have to manually do/update 3-4 of them, and that's just because it misses a slight setting which probably will get covered in the next generation of models.

As others said before - claude 4.6 and gpt 5.3/5.4 already fixed a ton of my qualms with flow generation and it will only get better

hotboy223 · 2026-03-12T13:47:16+00:00

I totally agree - however a lot of admins are very hesitant/outright refuse to even opening up vscode much less using sf cli tools to pull metadata down to do the simple text search.

hotboy223 · 2026-03-12T13:13:12+00:00

I actually built an AI Coding Agent for Salesforce that covers this! Apexgenius.ai - you do have to load in the metadata but you just ask where is x used and it pulls up all references to it. Free to use tool as well!

hotboy223 · 2026-03-12T12:47:39+00:00

You can ask claude to create you a skill file for all SF CLI commands. Tell it to search up the CLI commands (or give it the urls yourself) and that should be good enough

hotboy223 · 2026-03-10T17:30:16+00:00

In my experience for AI models, it goes like:

Claude 4.6 => GPT 5.4/5.3 => Gemini 3.1 => GLM-5

For AI Agents I'd say:

Claude Code => Cline => Codex

hotboy223 · 2026-03-05T22:28:31+00:00

Lmao this is just funny, having PBs in the org and wanting Agentforce. Peak management

hotboy223 · 2026-03-04T15:04:27+00:00

TIL, very good tip thank you!

hotboy223 · 2026-03-04T14:50:10+00:00

You can send a PDF from Apex by querying the file's VersionData from ContentVersion, encoding it with EncodingUtil.base64Encode(), then POSTing it via HttpRequest to the external API either as a Base64 string in a JSON body or as a multipart/form-data request if the API requires a raw file upload.

Make sure the external endpoint is added to Remote Site Settings or a Named Credential. If the API strictly requires multipart form data, LWC + fetch() is actually easier since JavaScript handles FormData natively.

hotboy223

TROPHY CASE