Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we have another Lightning Champion Spotlight episode. We talk with Martin Humpolec, a Salesforce Consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers. This episode is part five of a six-part series, the Lightning Champions Spotlight, hosted by Kelly Walker, Senior Adoption Consultant at Salesforce. We talk to our amazing Lightning Champions to find out about their career journey, how it lead them to the Lightning Experience, advice on handling change management, and why Lightning Experience is so awesome.
Join us as we talk about how Martin uses Flow to make a big difference for his users, and how you can get started today.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Martin Humpolec.
When Martin was on paternal leave, he ended up with a little time on his hands. He kept on hearing about something called “Salesforce,” and since this was in the days before Trailhead he went over to Salesforce.com to get a free developer instance to play around in and the documentation he needed to get started. “That was seven years ago, ansd those seven years passed really quickly,” he says. These days, he’s an active member of the community, writing blog posts, speaking at conferences, and getting involved any way he can.
Recently, Martin’s been discovering the magic that is Lightning. “In Classic, we weren’t really able to change the page layout,” Martin says, “but in Lightning with the Lightning App Builder, we are really able to change the screen as much as we want.” With dynamic options, tabs, and prettier reports, you can do so much more for your users without needing developer skills. This can help drive adoption and make a difference in your organization.
Flow is a powerful tool that can really transform people’s day-to-day experiences. “I use the ability to embed the Flow to the record page itself to show related data,” Martin says, making it easier to pull up key information when you’re working with a particular record or opportunity. For one client, they can display a sorted list of all notes they have about a particular customer on any opportunity that comes up, regardless of how it enters their database. “The client is so happy because it finally makes sense to them and it’s so easy to use and it brings new functionality that they didn’t have before,” Martin says.
If you’re a little intimidated by Flow, Martin’s advice is to dive in. “I hear quite often from people asking how they can start with Flow because it’s so complex,” he says, but the UI has gotten easier to work with and there are even templates you can use to understand everything more easily. Trailhead can also help, with modules specifically designed to help you get off the ground. For additional resources, Martin recommends Jen Lee’s Salesforce Blog and Rakesh Gupta’s Automation Champion blog. One big tip he has is to always draw out what you’re trying to achieve.
Besides Flow, Martin loves a few other Lightning features. There’s Path, which helps you customize what your users see at each stage and helps them decide what to do next. He’s also a passionate fan of the Kanban view, which lets you see opportunities from a different perspective. “When I showed it to one customer he was like, ‘Now I suddenly understand my business because I can visually see how we should move the opportunities from left to right, from negotiation to win,’” Martin says. “That was the highlight of Lightning for him,” he says, “he didn’t need anything else, just the Kanban view.”
Dashboards can also be a big difference-maker if you’re trying to get executive buy-in to make the switch to Lightning. “It’s so sexy,” Martin says, “it might sound cheap but basically that’s the main difference to me.” In Classic, you’re constrained to just three columns with every component taking up the same amount of space. In Lightning, you can adjust the look of your dashboards to really make them pop. “I don’t need anything else,” he says, “it just looks good.”
Kelly: All right. Welcome back to the Admin Podcast, where we are highlighting amazing Lightning Champions around the world. Today, I have Martin Humpolec joining me from Prague, Czech Republic and I am so excited to hear his story and to have it known by the larger community. He has some great tips as it relates to Lightning Experience. Let’s go ahead and dive right in.
Kelly: Martin, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited that others can get to know you better. You are an amazing Lightning Champion and I am so glad to have a conversation with you today.
Martin: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Kelly: Let’s just go ahead and dive right in as it relates to who you are and how you got here. Let us know what you’re doing within your community and how Lightning all plays into that.
Martin: I’m a Salesforce consultant and I’ve been in the IT world for the last 20 years, doing [inaudible] in the history and then I went to parent leave, having a break, baking cake about kids. And during the parent leave, I realized I have nothing to do so I decided to find something and I’ve been to some conference and I heard about Salesforce and it will several times. I decided to learn more and it was before the Trailhead so I went to the salesforce.com, I found there is some free developer license or instance I can register and I can download all the documentation. I started to play around and it was seven years ago and those seven years just pass really quickly and I love what I do and I build on that.
Martin: I became [inaudible], I spoke at a few conferences, I write blogs and I tweet, I try to be active in the communities as much as possible. A few years ago, I formed Lightning because you decided to change the classic Lightning and I fell in love again because Lighting allowed me to do things which I wasn’t able to do before with my non-developer knowledge. I apply this Lightning, I propose it to clients and organization I work with and then you opened the Lighting Champions program and I decided it’s the right place for me and that I want to be involved and I get involved.
Kelly: Now, I know you mentioned Lightning, the capabilities or what you’re able to do that really doesn’t involve any developer skills. Can you dive a little bit more into that? What do you mean and what have you been able to accomplish, without really introducing any code?
Martin: In the classic, we had those two columns, fields everywhere, it wasn’t really nice, but in Lightning with the Lightning App Builder, we are able to change the screen as much as we want, add the new tabs, add the [inaudible], the sections, put nice reports and dashboards, even use the quick actions to dynamically hide part of the form and that flow on the screen so the user can really do something or see something from really [inaudible]. To me, it feels so easy and it’s definitely easier than to develop it from scratch. That’s the main change, to me, as [inaudible].
Kelly: Now, I know one thing that you deal with a lot and that many of our customers might be struggling with revolves around change management. Can you speak to what you found to be useful and what’s driving adoption in Lightening for your customers?
Martin: That’s probably the most important point in switching to Lightning because basically, you can just switch on to Lightning can be on Lightning immediately and you don’t need to worry about anything. But at the same time, to use the users will not really enjoy much benefits because it will change, but not that much. If we speak about change management, we definitely speak about cleaning the users because a lot of them just feel it looks different so let’s be scared and say something new and we can’t use it. At the same time, to me, the change management is also about improving the system to be better for the users, so to me, it involves shadowing the users, watching what they do, asking questions, came with some ideas, how we can improve the flow and change the system based on the feedback we get from the users. This is different for each and every client and most likely for each and every user and the same client. It’s probably the most time-consuming part of the switching to Lightning, but I think it’s definitely worth the time and an energy.
Kelly: I know you’ve been able to accomplish some really cool things with Flow and with screen flows in particular, can you dive into how you are using Flow, especially within the Lightning Experience framework to help your customers and their users drive efficiency and productivity?
Martin: I would say I have two examples here. One of them is the wizard part of the Flow where we can let the customer to fill in the fields and that’s it or we can create the Flow with several screens which guide them through the process and they more understand what’s needed at each step and can fill in just just a few fields, so it feels easy. The second part, to me, is the ability to embed the Flow to the record page itself, which I use it, for example, to show related data which are not really on the related list but there has to be some selection behind it. A lot of my customer use it to show notes they have about clients and opportunities and basically they take the notes related to clients and opportunities and the notes have some validity rate and have some priority. Based on those two fields, we need to sort the notes and maybe even omit some of them, those which are not valid anymore and then you want to do show them on every opportunity related to that client.
Martin: That’s something which we weren’t able to do in classic but it was so easy to create a Flow in Lightning and embed it and the client is so happy because it finally makes sense to them and it’s easy to use and it bring a new function that they didn’t have before like the priority of the notes.
Kelly: Those are two really awesome use cases for Flow, but Flow is one of those tools that maybe some awesome admins are hesitant to dive into or maybe they’ve tried in the past and it hasn’t clicked for them. Can you give us some pointers on where to start or how to improve our Flow knowledge so that we can utilize what you just talked about or maybe some other use cases that we’re trying to try? I’d love to understand, too, how you got started utilizing Flow and any pieces of advice that you may have.
Martin: That’s an interesting question because when you are a new [inaudible], you don’t really see where is the problem, but at the same time, I hear quite often that, “How can I start with the flow? It’s so complex.” And I would say it’s better now because they really simplify the UI and nowadays, they even involve the templates, the Flow templates, which you can use to get started so you have some example how it can look like and what it can do. But besides that, the obvious start nowadays is the Trailhead and a few interesting modules or related modules and if you’re not happy with Trailhead and it doesn’t feel enough, I would say Jennifer Lee or Rakesh Gupta is this automation champion blog. They have some really good use cases which are precise enough to really show you how to do that simple specific use case you might need and you basically copy and paste or repeat what you see on the pictures.
Martin: It might be the good start, even something simple, try it, just two elements at first. Then, you are … It’s pretty simple. It’s just a decision, assignment, getting records, maybe updating records. You still repeat the same four actions and you build on top of that. What I would say, maybe at the beginning, is to really draw what you want to achieve. If you have it in a text, you can’t really see it but if you put it in bullet points like, first I need to do this, second, I need to do that, then this and then this, it will suddenly click together which elements you need to use and how to connect them.
Kelly: Awesome. Yeah, Flow really is a powerful tool and it’s becoming more user-friendly in my opinion over the last few releases and will continue to do so over the next few. Let’s dive into your favorite Lightning feature. I know you mentioned so many awesome features previously, but what is your favorite?
Martin: I have more of them. The Flow is something I really like but besides the Flow which might look complex to some, I would say there are two simple features which the customers like. The first is the path. You can use typically on opportunity, but I saw use cases on different objects as well, which you basically put usually on top of the record and use some big list at the stages and for each stage you can have related fields which are important for that specific stage and maybe include some guidance what to do next. The second is the combined view, which you can gain typically on opportunities list, you can switch to combined view and you suddenly see the opportunities not in a table but in columns with each column for one of those stages and you see the summary of the value on top and you can drag and drop the opportunities between those columns. When I show it for the first time to one customer, he was like, “That’s super awesome because now, I suddenly [inaudible] my business because I can visually see whether we have enough and where we don’t have enough and how we should move the opportunities from left to right, from negotiate, from negotiation to win,” and hat was the highlight of the whole Lightning to him. He didn’t need anything else, just the combined view.
Kelly: Yeah, combined is definitely one of those features where you show it and it makes the case of moving forward into Lightning. That is so awesome. The other thing that I know helps move executives and others into Lightning is dashboards. We’ve definitely talked before about your love of the new dashboards in Lightning Experience. What can you share with others to get them excited about the new features, new functionality and really the new look of dashboards.
Martin: It’s so sexy. It might sound cheap, but basically, that’s the main difference to me because in classic, you have just three columns and every component took the same space but in Lightning, you don’t have three columns, you can use as much space as you need and you can make the components bigger and smaller and the columns are way nicer. I don’t need anything else. It just looks good.
Kelly: It sure does. And with what you can do around the different color palettes or … I love to show the different dashboard components in a slide show of fact by expanding one and scrolling through and then chattering around the results. That really does peak some interest with executives and other users. Anyone listening who may be struggling with adoption as it relates to Lightning Experience, really drive home those dashboards and as Martin said, show them how sexy they are in Lightning Experience.
Martin: Yeah, I would say, nowadays, the hardest part to do a dashboard is to really choose the right component because there are not many, but are quite a few and you really need to think which one is better, whether it’s the [inaudible] or the number or pie chart or whatever. They all looks good, each of them have different use case, but at the same time, it’s usually the biggest debate, what’s the appropriate component type or what’s the appropriate visualization of this data and especially in link to the other components we have all the dashboards. How to make it nice.
Kelly: Awesome. Well, Martin, I would love to end here with something special that we’re doing with the Lightning Champion spotlight on the Admin Podcast and that really is to share some piece of advice that you may have. I know that your native language is Czech and I would love for you to share with your community the advice that you have and then, if you don’t mind translating that into English for us, that would be awesome.
Martin: Sure thing. I would probably say, [Native Czech]. And if I should translate it, it’s probably, stop waiting, just switch it on and then shadow your users and think about ways how to make it better and nicer for them to use it and they will fall in love.
Kelly: That is great advice. Thank you so much for sharing that and thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. It’s a pleasure talking to you as always, but really, I’m so glad that others get to know you as I have over the year or so that you’ve been a Lightning Champion. Thank you again.
Martin: Happy to be here. Have a great day. Bye.
Kelly: Martin was so great to talk to and I appreciate all the use cases he came with for his favorite Lightning features. Getting down and technical is always fun to hear on the Salesforce admins podcast. As he mentioned, Flows are a hot topic when figuring out solutions for your org or for your clients and Martin gave a few great examples of some of the more simple Flow features, so hopefully anyone listening who might be a little intimidated by Flow can go and try those out to start. If you’re interested in reading about more use cases, we’ve linked the blogs from Jennifer Lee and Rakesh Gupta, as Martin had mentioned, down in the show notes. Go check those out.
Kelly: An important thing to remember when transitioning to Lightning is approach the change management process carefully. It is not always easy. Your job is to make this transition easier for your users. Start by getting to know your users, then get hands on with them. Watch what they do, ask them questions along the way. Then provide feedback and build solutions to what you’ve heard, all in Lightning. With your help, they will fall in love with Salesforce just like the rest of us. We are coming close to the end of our Lightning Champions spotlights here on the Admins Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and don’t forget to tune in next month for our final episode of the Lightning Champion spotlight series. Until next time, keep those dashboards sexy.
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