Category: Weekly Newsletter

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) have faced an uphill battle delivering premium customer experiences while driving business in the last year. Not only do they have to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation and change, they also have to measure the impact their marketing efforts have on customer experience and acquisition. Only 29% of global marketing leaders said they were satisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI and attribution last year. 

For the metrics they seek, CMOs are turning to personalized data to uncover new opportunities for customer growth and acquisition. These insights can help capture the attention of C-suite peers and reaffirm marketing’s position as the leader in customer experience.

As we move into 2021, CMOs should keep the following points in mind to maximize customer engagement and drive marketing performance.

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FREE Workshops at DEVOPSJS Conference

Workshops are targeted both at DevOps.js newbies and hardcore fans. Take full advantage of your remote conference experience and get training from our best speakers and trainers.

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We’ve distilled everything our partners need to know for 2021 into a 90-minute keynote and will be bringing it to you in three regional Partner Kickoffs on March 25th. After each keynote, we will have live networking for you to connect with your local MuleSoft team.

Three events on March 25th – APAC: 12pm AEDT / EMEA: 9am GMT / Americas: 9am PDT

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In Winter ‘20 we introduced the ability to schedule a flow, which allows you to run a certain flow on a daily basis, for example. With Spring ’21, we take it a step further by introducing scheduled paths inside of a flow. With Scheduled Paths, you can trigger certain types of events based on date fields on the object that triggered the flow. A great example of a scheduled path would be to create a task AND schedule a notification to be sent out to a user one hour before the task is due. In the past, this would require a lot more heavy lifting.

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Level Up Your Developer Skills with the Modern App Development Video Series

In December 2020, Salesforce published a blog post that explains various patterns combining low-code and pro-code. These patterns show that by combining Heroku’s elastic runtime and Salesforce core’s multi-tenant architecture, one can deliver solutions that can not only scale but are flexible and require less time to build and deploy.

We looked into the skills required by developers to implement the patterns highlighted in that December blog post, and we concluded that Salesforce Developers would enjoy learning more about the Heroku platform. With Heroku, Salesforce developers can offload complex operations and take advantage of open-source libraries. Similarly, Heroku developers can benefit from learning about the low-code capabilities of the Salesforce Platform. Combining the power of low-code and Heroku allows apps to be deliveredfaster .

The “Modern App Development on Salesforce” video series is a set of thirteen videos on the Salesforce Developers YouTube channel. These videos teach you how to design, build, test and deploy apps using Salesforce and Heroku.

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We’ve distilled everything our partners need to know for 2021 into a 90-minute keynote and will be bringing it to you in three regional Partner Kickoffs on March 25th. After each keynote, we will have live networking for you to connect with your local MuleSoft team.

Three events on March 25th – APAC: 12pm AEDT / EMEA: 9am GMT / Americas: 9am PDT

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Every year the Ecma International Technical Committee 39 (TC39), which Salesforce is a member of, releases a new edition of ECMA-262, the ECMAScript Language Specification standards, which JavaScript is based on. The next edition is ES2021 (ES12), which is currently in draft and planned to be released in June. Browsers, compilers (such as Babel and Typescript), and runtimes (such as Node.js) work hard to keep up-to-date with ECMAScript standards by implementing support for newly added features. Continue reading to learn about some of the newest and coolest ECMAScript features and how you can use them in Lightning Web Components.

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Open Sourcing Salesforce CLI Update Feb. 2021

Just take a peek at https://github.com/salesforcecli to see all that we’ve been working on over the past eight months. Once we settled into a rhythm, the team started migrating into new plugins very quickly. Each repository corresponds to a plug-in. Here’s the current status of the plug-ins we’ve open-sourced

Some plug-ins have been brought to the top level, which means, for example, that you now run sfdx config:set instead of the old sfdx force:config:set. We’ve completed this work for the auth, alias and config topics. But don’t worry, we’ve aliased them so they also work under the force namespace, which means your current scripts won’t break. However, we highly recommend that you start using the new command names as soon as possible.

From the table above, you can see that we’ve made great progress towards open-sourcing everything! Unfortunately, some of the remaining topics to be broken out, specifically, are the most complex and will take the longest to open source. We are prioritizing them over the next year

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To provide a connected experience, data may need to be integrated between a broad range of business applications, systems of record, and external sources.

Again, taking a use case approach can help you decide what systems and data need to be integrated. If, for example, you want to provide personalized product recommendations for customers via email newsletter, product data from your eCommerce platform will need to be accessible from your email marketing engine. And you will likely want to automate processes, such as sharing pricing information between your enterprise resource planning (ERP), CRM, and eCommerce systems.

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Modern apps require embracing a combination of low-code and pro-code. Salesforce developers have the challenging task of delivering scalable solutions faster than ever, as organizations look to speed up their digital transformation.

In December 2020, we published a blog post that explains various patterns combining low-code and pro-code. These patterns show that by combining Heroku’s elastic runtime and Salesforce core’s multi-tenant architecture, one can deliver solutions that can not only scale, but are flexible and require less time to build and deploy.

We looked into the skills required by developers to implement the patterns highlighted in that December blog post, and we concluded that Salesforce Developers would enjoy learning more about the Heroku platform. With Heroku, Salesforce developers can offload complex operations and take advantage of open-source libraries. Similarly, Heroku developers can benefit from learning about the low-code capabilities of the Salesforce Platform. Combining the power of low-code and Heroku allows apps to be deliveredfaster .

The “Modern App Development on Salesforce” video series is a set of thirteen videos on the Salesforce Developers YouTube channel. These videos teach you how to design, build, test and deploy apps using Salesforce and Heroku.

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Learn MOAR with Spring ‘21: OpenAPI 3.0 Spec for REST API

Salesforce offers hundreds of well-documented REST and SOAP APIs that can help with all your integration needs. While the documentation and the Postman API collection help you explore these APIs, they must be documented in a system-understandable format for external systems to quickly consume them. In this blog post, we’ll talk about a new feature that’ll allow you to quickly integrate Salesforce into an external system.

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When a user presses save in the user interface, a lot happens in Salesforce – validation rules kick in, triggers are executed, flows are run, assignment rules are executed, and much more. This can all add up to a lot of logic being executed while that user is waiting for the application to respond again. Typically, not all of that logic needs to be ran immediately and can be processed at a later time, increasing the performance of the transaction.

In this blog post, we’ll look at a way to offload some of that logic from the save event with a combination of clicks and code. This way, you’ll have the benefit of being able to build your processes quickly using Flow and your users will have more responsive interactions with Salesforce.

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I’m so excited to announce that the new version of the Salesforce Mobile SDK is now available. Mobile SDK 9.0 is focused on developer and end-user productivity. Regardless of whether you’re building iOS apps, Android apps, or cross-platform apps, you and your end-users will love the enhancements in this release.

Your multitasking end-users will jump for joy with our support for multiple windows for iPadOS. Manage different accounts, records, and use cases side-by-side.

You spoke, we listened. Based on developer feedback, we have added an external ID to eliminate duplication of records after a sync restart for parent/child info. No need to code this yourself, we’ve done it for you.

And… we highlight the power of open source. We’ve incorporated TypeScript for React Native with the help of a community contribution! Now, React Native developers can leverage the debugging and error detection features of TypeScript early and often during mobile app development.

If this is your first introduction to the Salesforce Mobile SDK, head straight to Trailhead and check out the Develop with Mobile SDK trail to get started today.

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Take the New Salesforce Developer Survey Today!

At Salesforce Developer Relations, our primary goal is to inspire Salesforce developers and help you be more successful. To achieve our goal, we need to know what excites you and the type of help you want, need, and deserve from us.

This is why we run a few global surveys every year – by getting your input, we can identify trends in the developer community. Please click here to take the survey now!

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JavaScript is the language of the web. That is reality; every major browser supports JavaScript as its main language for developing client-side web applications.

Even if you’re using a different language like TypeScript, in the end, it will be transpiled/compiled to JavaScript to be able to run in the browser.

As a Salesforce Developer, you might already be using JavaScript to create your applications: Lightning Web Components (and Aura Components) are powered by JavaScript.

JavaScript isn’t only for the browser, you can also use it to build server-side applications like web APIs, microservices, and CLI applications (like the Salesforce CLI and Heroku CLI). This is thanks to Node.js.

In addition, JavaScript remains the number one language in GitHub and is the most popular language according to the latest StackOverflow 2020 developer survey. SlashData, in their State of the Developer Nation 19th edition report, shows that the JavaScript community has around 12.4M developers, making it the largest Open Source developer community.

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The Community Hub is a space dedicated to elevating the people and programs of the community. It is one, centralized location where you can discover all community programs, making it easier for newcomers and community veterans alike to figure out how they want to engage. The Community Hub also showcases powerful content, projects, and visualizations from the community. You all have so much to share, and the Hub will be a great platform for your stories, expertise, and insights to reach more people. 

The Community Hub will include:

• A new Community Blog dedicated to highlighting content, projects, and stories from all over the world. This is an easy way for you to stay up to date on everything going on in the #DataFam. The blog will also feature a weekly community round-up that consolidates what’s trending in the community in one post. 
• Community Profiles helping you learn more about each other and your journeys. 
• Program updates so you know what’s happening with all of the community programs. From the latest user group in your area or industry, to new Public Featured Authors, or upcoming DataDev Hackathons, you’ll always be in the know. 
• New to the Tableau Community? Check out the Welcome page to discover useful resources and ways to participate in the community, including tips directly from current community members!

The Community Hub is there to make it easier for everyone to engage, get inspired, and move forward in their data journey with the help of the powerful Tableau Community!

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Salesforce Announces Vaccine Cloud to Accelerate Global Vaccine Management

Vaccine Cloud helps public health authorities, healthcare providers, and nonprofits quickly scale vaccine operations, from recipient registration and scheduling to inventory management and public health outreach

Now that safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are available, every country, state and city is rapidly establishing vaccination programs to get shots in the arms of billions of people. However, many government agencies and healthcare organizations don’t have the technology infrastructure in place to handle the complexity, speed and scale necessary for vaccine administration, such as inventory and logistics management, getting people registered and scheduled for their vaccines, and recipient outreach and vaccine outcome monitoring. Governments are also partnering with private sector companies to help manage this mass vaccination effort, and these businesses need the same technology infrastructure to help deliver safe, efficient and effective vaccine administrations and programs.

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Salesforce World Tour ‘21 debuts on February 9 with a live show hosted by our Chair and CEO Marc Benioff and special guests in our first surprise location. Attendees and viewers worldwide will be in awe of the impact of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform — empowering employees, governments, and businesses of all sizes to drive change during times of uncertainty. Tune in to experience the magic and learn about the latest Customer 360 innovations to help everyone achieve better business outcomes.

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Pick Your Trailmix (Or Do Both)

Follow the Admin or Developer Release trailmix (or both) to watch and read about the Spring ’21 Release. Complete a Learn MOAR Spring ’21 for Admins or Developers trailmix to earn a community badge and a chance to win 1 of 5 Trailhead Certification vouchers (up to $200USD value) by March 31, 2021 Restrictions Apply. See Official Rules below

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Learn MOAR with Spring ‘21: OpenAPI 3.0 Spec for REST API

Salesforce offers hundreds of well-documented REST and SOAP APIs that can help with all your integration needs. While the documentation and the Postman API collection help you explore these APIs, they must be documented in a system-understandable format for external systems to quickly consume them. In this blog post, we’ll talk about a new feature that’ll allow you to quickly integrate Salesforce into an external system.

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For many of us, SQL semantics and data exploration go hand-in-hand. Whether you possess a background in working directly with databases or have developed expertise using SOQL, Salesforce’s own query language, the ability to write a query and get data from it is immensely valuable. That’s why we’re so happy to introduce a new, simple way to explore the data in your Salesforce Objects: the SOQL FIELDS() Function!

The FIELDS() Function enables authors of SOQL statements to designate a predefined grouping of columns that will be automatically returned in the result set of records. FIELDS() provides a way to leverage existing platform constructs that decouples data management from business logic in integrations and helps reduce the effort involved to administer an org’s object model.

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Maximize your Salesforce ROI with all the latest features!

Our Spring ’21 release is almost here and we want to make sure you have all the information you need to make the most of all the new features. We may not be in the studio this time, but we still have our product managers coming to you live. They’ll guide you through what’s new and give you a sneak peek into their roadmap for the rest of 2021.

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Explore the Salesforce APIs with the Upgraded Postman Collection

In case you missed the original announcement, the Salesforce API collection is a Postman resource that wraps together 200+ request templates for tens of Salesforce APIs (REST, bulk, tooling, metadata…). This open source collection comes with a configurable environment and variables that let you easily authenticate and try the requests on multiple Salesforce orgs with a declarative interface. You can even run it from your browser if you don’t want to install the Postman desktop app. Think of it as a clone of Workbench’s legacy REST explorer with more features.

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JavaScript is the language of the web. That is reality; every major browser supports JavaScript as its main language for developing client-side web applications.

Even if you’re using a different language like TypeScript, in the end, it will be transpiled/compiled to JavaScript to be able to run in the browser.

As a Salesforce Developer, you might already be using JavaScript to create your applications: Lightning Web Components (and Aura Components) are powered by JavaScript.

JavaScript isn’t only for the browser, you can also use it to build server-side applications like web APIs, microservices, and CLI applications (like the Salesforce CLI and Heroku CLI). This is thanks to Node.js.

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In the age of DevOps, we see a major trend towards Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD). More and more teams adopt development workflows based on git as their version control system and single source of truth. This move has also never been easier since the introduction of the Salesforce DX toolset.

Salesforce DX also introduced new solutions to move to modular development and a package-based approach, thanks to second-generation packaging and the new org-dependent unlocked packages (Beta).

Unlocked packages are a great way to organize your code and teams when working on custom apps, but they’re not necessarily the best fit for every project.

It’s not always easy to untangle the org and break it down into smaller packages when the initial implementations of Sales or Service Cloud used the production org, or a single metadata folder as the single source of truth (sometimes known as the “Happy Soup” approach, as opposed to the Package Development approach).

When used in combination with source control, the unpackaged development model usually implies that all sources lie in the same git repository. This approach is convenient in terms of dependency management: no need to manage dependencies since everything is in one place.

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Explore the Salesforce APIs with the Upgraded Postman Collection

In case you missed the original announcement, the Salesforce API collection is a Postman resource that wraps together 200+ request templates for tens of Salesforce APIs (REST, bulk, tooling, metadata…). This open source collection comes with a configurable environment and variables that let you easily authenticate and try the requests on multiple Salesforce orgs with a declarative interface. You can even run it from your browser if you don’t want to install the Postman desktop app. Think of it as a clone of Workbench’s legacy REST explorer with more features.

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When a user presses save in the user interface, a lot happens in Salesforce – validation rules kick in, triggers are executed, flows are run, assignment rules are executed, and much more. This can all add up to a lot of logic being executed while that user is waiting for the application to respond again. Typically, not all of that logic needs to be ran immediately and can be processed at a later time, increasing the performance of the transaction.

In this blog post, we’ll look at a way to offload some of that logic from the save event with a combination of clicks and code. This way, you’ll have the benefit of being able to build your processes quickly using Flow and your users will have more responsive interactions with Salesforce.

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Demand is not going away anytime soon. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, business analyst roles are expected to grow 14% from 2018–2028.

Business analysts can be found at the center of a cross-functional team, helping a company in multiple ways. In our new work-from-anywhere world, business analysts are key in helping companies go digital fast. In fact, 77% of professionals are involved in digital initiatives.

So thank you. It was the feedback from all of you in the Trailblazer Community that inspired us to create and deliver this new Salesforce Business Analyst learning path. We are always listening to what you want to see next. And we built this content based on the expertise of our Trailblazers and Salesforce MVPs.

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Trailhead. Learn in-demand skills that lead to top jobs

Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Salesforce — game-changing technology and the #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform. And Trailhead is no exception.

Trailhead is a gamified learning platform that anyone can use to build their skills. Sign up with Google, LinkedIn, or an email account. Or, if you’re a Salesforce customer, you can log in with your credentials.

And Trailhead makes learning all about YOU. You choose the time, place, and topic. Trailhead provides an interactive model that makes you want to learn.

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Over the last few months, we’ve all been challenged. Life as we know it transformed overnight. Businesses were forced to move to remote workspaces or close their doors, employees shifted to virtual offices or lost their jobs, and communities around the world sheltered-in-place.

Throughout it all, the resilience and innovation of the Trailblazer Community have inspired me. One shared thread that continues to unite our community is a passion for learning with Trailhead. Undoubtedly, empowering anyone to reskill has never been more important.

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