The world of Salesforce this week was focussed on Dreamforce, the yearly big event, showcasing the latest and greatest in development, releases and plans. A large portion of Salesforce evangelists descended on San Francisco to be there live and network. For those, like me, who could not be there, we could join in and experience the event through Salesforce+, the dedicated live streaming service.
The event kicked off on Tuesday with the big Keynote. As expected, everything centred around AI. With this comes a name change, the platform will know be known as Einstein 1. One of the many name changes Salesforce has implemented recently!
My main take away from the keynote was that clicks and code will be replaced by conversations and prompts. Not that this will happen overnight, but it does mean that all of us in the eco system, and those coming into it, will need to adapt and learn new skills. Having used ChatGPT for quite a while now, I know it all comes down to good instructions to get good outcomes. Being able to properly define what you want Einstein 1 to do, will required some training and thought changes.
On Wednesday, the day is all about Admin Keynote.
One of the first slides struck really home. As a certified Admin Trainer I have seen the enormous amount of change the Admin role has gone through. But actually seeing that reflected on a slide is really impressive. Especially over the last couple of years, more and more skills that used to be Developer have landed on the Admin desk. Think Flow and Dev Ops Centre.
Thinking about this, maybe it is time for a name change? Is Admin still the correct term for people who are so multi skilled and knowledgeable on the system?
Before I side track to far on this, let me give you my 3 take aways from the Admin Keynote
- AI for Flow
simply give the instruction and the Flow will be build for you. Of course never as simply as that, but for sure, this will make a world of difference if you just still trying to get your head around Flow building
- Dynamic Forms widely available including mobile
Working with Page Layouts and Record Types is great, but has it draw backs. You can still have cluttered work spaces. Dynamic Forms are really the answer for showing only what the user needs, when they need it
- Permission Set Summary
As Salesforce is moving speedily away from Profiles and towards Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups, being able to quickly and easily understand what they do, is really useful. Now just with a click of a button you get an overview.
Following the Admin Keynote, I joined the Release Readiness Live Session or RRL as it will now be branded going forward (yay another name change)
My take aways from this session:
- Flow is getting bigger and better
Reactive Screens, Custom Error Messages and much more will make Flows a really crucial element of automation and one technical skill an Admin (or any Salesforce Expert) will really need to master
- Group and Queue auditing
Although I cannot say I would have thought about this as a focus area, but being able to see how has been added or removed from Public Groups or Queues in an easy way can be really helpful.
- Better Reporting Options
New report types are being released and especially around Permission Set Assignments. No longer data export needed and hoping you get what you need
Bonus Take Away
What got the biggest cheer in the room and in the chat, was that now we can have a select all option on FLS in Permission Sets. No longer clicking every single
Of course much more content was covered and I haven’t even been able to watch yet the Cloud specific keynotes. Luckily this will all be available on Salesforce+.
One final thought on Dreamforce.
It is a major event and I am glad they broadcast keynotes for those people who cannot be there in real time. However, it would be great if they also started to stream or record for on demand later, the session delivered throughout the day but so many other amazing people. Maybe it is worth thinking about an online watch ticket to get the option to dive into these sessions. I would seriously consider this as must of the time the real useful and workable session are done outside the Keynote
Overall, Dreamforce will remain on my bucket list to go to, for the experience, atmosphere and connections. Who knows, maybe next time!
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