Top 5 AwesomeAdmin Moments from 2016

Let’s face it, 2016 has been a tough year for many of us. As the year winds down, I wanted to share some of the best parts of 2016 for the AwesomeAdmin world: great new features, incredible community moments, and some of my favorite stories to help brighten your new year.

1) Custom Home Pages in Lightning

In Summer ’16, we got the ability to create custom home pages, record pages, and app pages using the Lightning app builder. This was huge for admins! I loved it so much that I wrote a post showing some of the ways you can create a customized home page experience. Since then, I’ve used Lightning app builder to build custom pages for specific profiles, add charts to chatter groups, and find some great components on the AppExchange to up the cool factor.

2) The Salesforce for Admins Keynote at Dreamforce 2016

There’s no question that Dreamforce was a highlight for the year, but one of the best parts about the AwesomeAdmin experience at Dreamforce was the Admin Keynote. It was a celebration of all the incredible things that the Admin community has accomplished: transforming careers like Zac Otero, guiding product decisions through the Idea Exchange, and inspiring hundreds of new Admins through mentorship. The keynote was also where we shared some exciting demos about what you can do with new features (all of which you can see in the video):

• Lightning Readiness report
• Lightning calendars
• Building home & app pages in the Lightning app builder, including adding images
• Making Visual Workflow appear for your users using Lightning components (no more coding!)
• Bringing Salesforce into your users email inbox using Lightning app builder
• Changing permission sets from mobile using SalesforceA
• Using Einstein to get predictive lead scoring & viewing those leads in kanban
• Invokable processes in process builder

3) Health Check

Another one of my favorite features for Admins in 2016 is Security Health Check. IT nerds unite! This dashboard shows how my org measures up according to best practices for password, network, session, login, and certificate settings. I’ve definitely spent some time adjusting settings and refreshing health check to see how much my rating changes.

4) Girl Develop It, Trailhead4All, Salesforce Saturdays, Mentorship Central

The Admin community launched some amazing initiatives this year to give back and help everyone learn. I got the chance to help Mary Scotton teach a room of women how to build a Salesforce app in just one day at Girl Develop It in Chicago this summer, and I was so impressed by each woman’s story and their passion to spend a whole Saturday learning a new technology. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The community has built programs like Salesforce Saturdays and #Trailhead4All to make learning Salesforce accessible for everyone, everywhere. And, once inside the Salesforce ecosystem, now there is Mentorship Central where Admins can find a mentor or start mentoring someone else. Amazing stuff!

5) Admin Stories

One of my favorite projects this year was working on Admin Stories. I’ve been so inspired by all the stories I hear from Admins while at events, via twitter, or from other evangelists, and this project is a way for us to share those stories with the entire community. Not only does each story demonstrate how there are many paths to becoming an Admin, but I’ve also unearthed some very interesting facts about these Admins, like how Samantha used to write obituaries and how Ben has run 52 marathons.

As we wrap up 2016, I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of love, pride, and hope for the AwesomeAdmin community. Take a moment and celebrate all the awesome that happened in your life this year. Did you have a Salesforce ah-ha moment? Did you connect with another Admin? Did you present or share something you learned? Share your 2016 moments with me @gilliankbruce so we can celebrate together and bring in 2017 on a hopeful, happy note. Happy New Year!