Salesforce Admins Pre-Dreamforce Checklist

As a busy Salesforce Admin it is easy for Dreamforce to sneak up on you and leave you scrambling last minute to get ready. So with a little over one month to get all your Dreamforce things in order I wanted to give you a simple checklist to help you prepare for Dreamforce and not fall behind when you return.

1. DPBWA- Dreamforce prep by Wandering Around

Dreamforce this year will be packed with amazing content for Admins, Developers, and Executives. Which means it’s easy to feel like you are missing out on something. So in the weeks leading up to Dreamforce lets practice DPBWA, or Dreamforce prep by wandering around. As part of our daily habits of interacting with our users, we should include a discussion about Dreamforce with them.

• Are there features or functionality they would like you to get more information about?
• Do they have plans for expanding Salesforce in the company in 2015, like adding Service Cloud or ExactTarget?
• What questions do they have about Salesforce1?

Not only will this help you prioritize your list of topics to look for when building your agenda. But it will also help you deliver valuable information back to your company and your users so that when you ask “Can I go to Dreamforce 2015?” the answer is a resounding “YES!”.

2. Check out what the Community has to say about Dreamforce.

Whether you are new to Dreamforce or a seasoned pro, the Salesforce community has plenty of resources to help you maximize your time, your packing, and your experience.

To help you find some amazing groups our Director of Community Engagement, Phoebe Venkat recommends:

• New to Dreamforce
• All Dreamforce Parties & Networking
• Salesforce Certification at Dreamforce 
• Dreamforce central

In addition to the Success Community there are some great resources from Salesforce MVPs like Brian Kwong who wrote a post – Preparing for Dreamforce  and Cheryl Feldman who has some great packing tips in her post – Packing for Dreamforce.

3. Don’t forget about your Certification Maintenance Exam

With the Summer ’14 release in our rearview mirror and Winter ’15 release shortly after Dreamforce, we will have plenty to do on our trip back from San Francisco. The last thing we want to worry about is cramming for our Summer ’14 Certification Maintenance Exam. So let’s take the time now to access the Release training found here. And while we are at it we can update our calendar with the exam schedules found at – https://certification.salesforce.com/schedules.

If you are already ahead on your maintenance exam, then let’s take a moment to review the Winter ’15 release notes. Chances are good that you might have questions or features you want to see first hand at Dreamforce. Making that list of features to see now means we won’t have skip a party later.