We’re back with some tricks and treats and another great batch of Salesforce content. This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, Mike and Gillian, we’re bringing you the October edition of the Monthly Retro episode to spotlight all the blog posts, videos, and everything else from this month.
Join us as we talk about all the helpful content from October, Mike and Gillian’s favorite Halloween costumes, and the most popular Halloween decoration in 2020.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation between Mike and Gillian.
For four amazing weeks on Tuesdays, the Trailblazers Innovate series brought us the latest and greatest of what’s coming next. We take a moment to highlight the admin episode, “Go Digital Fast,” which was chock-full of helpful demos, including DevOps Center, Dynamic Actions, and Admin Home.
Both Mike and Gillian loved Emma B-F’s blog from October, “Leadership Tips for Salesforce Administrators.” Even if you’re not an admin, these tips are super helpful no matter what you’re doing in your organization and your professional life.
For Mike, the Jason Teller episode stood out as a highlight from October. If you’re looking to automate more within your organization with all the amazing things Flow is capable of, make sure you give it a listen. For Gillian, it was the episode about Salesforce Anywhere with John Brock. As we’re all finding new ways to work, the innovations coming with Chatter and Quip can make things much easier for you and your team. Make sure to check them both out!
Mike’s standout video from October is about Tableau Connector. It’s simple to set up and get amazing visualizations in a snap. Gillian loved this month’s Low Code Love video, which helps us learn new ways to do more with our existing skills.
Listen to the full episode so you don’t miss Mike and Gillian’s favorite Halloween costumes, their favorite candy, and the number-one selling decoration for 2020.
Gillian Bruce:
Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast in the Monthly Retro with Gillian and Mike episode, where we talk about pumpkin spice product, candy field community and bonafide careers to help you become an awesome admin, Halloween style. I’m Gillian Bruce.
Mike Gerholdt:
And I’m Mike Gerholdt.
Gillian Bruce:
And today, Mike, we’re going to talk about our favorite things in October.
Mike Gerholdt:
We’re going to trick-or-treat on all the topics.
Gillian Bruce:
So many goodies. So many goodies.
Mike Gerholdt:
Well, we had one big goodie to start off the month. Well, it ran all month of October. The Trailblazers Innovate series.
Gillian Bruce:
Yeah. It was amazing. I think four weeks in a row of amazing 30 minute episodes, basically coming out on Tuesdays? It feels like-
Mike Gerholdt:
Tuesdays.
Gillian Bruce:
Yeah, Tuesdays. There we go.
Mike Gerholdt:
Tuesdays. The second day of the week.
Gillian Bruce:
Sort of taco Tuesday. It was Trailblazers Innovate Tuesdays.
Mike Gerholdt:
Right. But you could still have tacos, it’s fine. That would be awesome. Trailblazers Innovate tacos Tuesday series.
Gillian Bruce:
See, now I’m going to want tacos because we might be recording this on a Tuesday.
Mike Gerholdt:
Tacos are good all the time. You can eat tacos all year. It’s the only food that’s like, oh, it doesn’t matter if it’s snowing out or if it’s 90 degrees out. You’re like, “Would you like tacos?” “Yes, I would.”
Gillian Bruce:
Absolutely. So there we go. Now I’m going to be ordering tacos for dinner. But the Trailblazer Innovate series was great because these are basically a kind of highlight reel of all of the amazing things coming for the different audiences. So the developers had one, there was a Trailhead one, but the one we want to talk about is the admin episode.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yay.
Gillian Bruce:
Which was all about going digital fast.
Mike Gerholdt:
Fast.
Gillian Bruce:
Fast, like really fast.
Mike Gerholdt:
Boom.
Gillian Bruce:
It was great. We had an amazing couple of people to deliver demos. Mike, you and I delivered some messaging along with Josie. But Jared Jones, who is a previous podcast guest, we’ve called him your friendly neighborhood Salesforce Spiderman, was able to give us a great demo on the super new and exciting DevOps center and some cool new things in the app exchange as well as some dynamic actions in action. He was amazing. And then, Mike, you had a section all about Admin Home with Grace.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. And we also talked about all the centers too. But Admin Home really stole the show, in my opinion, for everything that’s coming for admins. It’s the dashboard that we’ve all been waiting for. You can look and see everything right at a glance, dive into it, do stuff through. Amazing Grace Li walked us through a demo of it and she’s working super hard on it and collecting a lot of feedback from the community. As an admin team, we were really impressed with all of the interviews and focus groups that Grace has been doing to gather what exactly admins want in their center. So it’s going to be fantastic.
Gillian Bruce:
Yeah. And people went nuts for it. If you have not checked out this episode, it’s 30 minutes, it’s jam packed. And especially if you want a vision of what this future admin experience is going to be like. DevOps center, I think is actually officially going to be GA in early next year, so it’s coming up quick. And Admin Home, I believe is also coming up hopefully in the first half of next year, again, forward looking statement, safe harbor, all of the things. But these are amazing technologies that are drastically going to make our lives as admins so much easier. So make sure you check those out.
Mike Gerholdt:
And just to specify, GA stands for generally available, not gigantically awesome, which is probably what you were thinking. Oh, Admin Center’s going to be gigantically awesome.
Gillian Bruce:
I was thinking it was, Gillian is awesome.
Mike Gerholdt:
That could be too. Yeah.
Gillian Bruce:
I guess that’s every day.
Mike Gerholdt:
Good.
Gillian Bruce:
Okay. But there was more, Mike. Let’s each talk about some of our favorite pieces of content, aside from Trailblazers Innovate. I can start with my favorite blog or my boo blog. I don’t know if that was a bad Halloween joke.
Mike Gerholdt:
Okay. All right. Good.
Gillian Bruce:
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s a clip to save there.
Mike Gerholdt:
Okay.
Gillian Bruce:
So actually, Emma BF, who, how there’s a bee in her name so there’s a boo, Emma boo F. Okay, I’m going to stop doing that. Wrote a great blog for us talking about leadership tips for admins. And Emma BF is a two-time previous podcast guest. She is a fantastic thinker and leader within the community and she had some great tips on how as admins you should really flex your leadership skills. And basically, in a nutshell, it’s about cutting the qualifiers. So stop putting things in front of your statements to make them less impactful, becoming a storyteller, and then how you lead with compassion. So really great to the point blog post, I highly suggest you check it out. It will be valuable to you even if you’re not a Salesforce admin. This is just valuable no matter what you’re doing in your organization or your professional life. So check that out.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. And Gillian, actually I picked the same blog post for much of the same reasons. I mean, we had a lot of blog posts this last month on different topics, the various products that we highlighted in Trailblazers Innovate. But I really liked this one because as an admin, if you’re getting started in your career or you’re maturing in your career, or even if you’re just a professional, a lot of this helps you be professional within the workspace and cut through the noise. I know it’s always reassuring when I join a call and I feel like somebody is on that call, is somewhat level minded, level headed and cool, has their thoughts collected and can articulate them. They just make calls go by faster. So that would be one of the things I learned in the leadership tips that Emma wrote.
Gillian Bruce:
Well, and so we had a ton of blog content. We’re not going to go through each one, we’re picking out our favorite pieces in each category here so we’re going to keep this episode moving. But let’s move on to our next category. Mike, my favorite category, your favorite category. Podcast.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. So I picked … coincidentally, maybe we actually both did this. We picked both podcasts that we did.
Gillian Bruce:
Shocker.
Mike Gerholdt:
So we shouldn’t be on any voting panels, but I picked the podcast with Jason Teller for a couple reasons. Personally, when we do our pre-interviews, we get to know our guests, whether they’re admins or they’re product managers or they’re executives at Salesforce. It was incredibly fun just chatting with Jason. I think in the time that we’re in with limited travel, it’s great to connect with your colleagues on something other than the Zoom call or the hangout call that you’re on. So I picked it for that reason, which is behind the scenes stuff. But then on the scenes stuff, I thought Jason just did a really good job of articulating everything that you can do for admins to automate within your organization.
Mike Gerholdt:
And there’s so much, and he talks so much about the possibilities of flow. And I think back to all of the things that I wanted to do five, six years ago, that weren’t available, like pausing flows or serving up different flow screens and the amount of decisioning. And I know I’ve seen admins post incredibly complex flows on social that weren’t possible without code, but a few years ago. And now admins are creating these incredibly complex business processes that are solving problems in no time. So I enjoyed the talk with Jason, and then it was also fun to go back to a little bit of ’80s childhood and talk about Masters of the Universe.
Gillian Bruce:
For the honor of Grey Skull, I am… He-Man, I guess.
Mike Gerholdt:
He-Man.
Gillian Bruce:
You weren’t really into the She-Ra. That was-
Mike Gerholdt:
No, but there is a great documentary on Netflix about Masters of the Universe, and they cover the entire She-Ra backstory, and it is fascinating.
Gillian Bruce:
And men watch it a few times. Yes.
Mike Gerholdt:
Probably. I did. And I had no idea growing up as a kid that it was all made up.
Gillian Bruce:
Oh, you didn’t?
Mike Gerholdt:
No, I learned … that was a, today I learned kind of thing.
Gillian Bruce:
I mean, I didn’t know it started with the toys, but for me it started with the cartoons that I would watch after preschool or kindergarten or whatever age I was.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yep.
Gillian Bruce:
And then I got the … yeah. But I still have a whole box of She-Ra toys. It’s amazing. They’re worse for where they’re not worth anything except sentimental value, but you know.
Mike Gerholdt:
Right.
Gillian Bruce:
It’s still cool, I think. Maybe my son will want to play with She-Ra someday. I don’t know.
Mike Gerholdt:
I mean, I’ve still got some Transformer toys. I was excited to find those. I actually looked for those after our podcast.
Gillian Bruce:
I love it. Okay. Well, speaking of connecting with awesome people on the podcast, the podcast I want to highlight for this month is the one that I did about Salesforce Anywhere, talking to John Brock, who is an incredible product manager. He’s been at Salesforce, gosh, I think almost as long as I have, which means forever. And he is so cool because he tells us the whole evolution of the Salesforce Anywhere product. So, the evolution of like chatter and all of these things and Quip and how it’s all coming together to now really transform the way that everybody works. And it’s really cool and there’s going to be some amazing innovations coming in that space soon. So it was really fun to chat with him and take a little trip down Salesforce memory product lane a bit as well. That was fun. And then our next category, Mike, videos.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yes. We should think about maybe if we’re going to do these as categories, getting some really cool voiceovers made like they did for the Oscars.
Gillian Bruce:
Instead of me just making stuff up?
Mike Gerholdt:
Well, I don’t know. That’s how we roll though. So it’s very us.
Gillian Bruce:
Videos.
Mike Gerholdt:
Videos. Every time I hear the word video, I think of blockbuster. I don’t know why.
Gillian Bruce:
I think of, video killed the radio star.
Mike Gerholdt:
Good, another ’80s tune. So I picked out the one that Lizz did for us on the Tableau Connector, and I picked it out for two reasons. One, it’s not like some back of the house, rewiring, all kinds of servers stuff. It’s, click, click log in, and now Tableau can grab all of that metadata and data out of your org and do some amazing visualizations with it. It just blew me away that all of our products interconnect so well that I don’t have to go and … going back to the house and rewire a couple hundred servers to make them talk to each other. And I also loved seeing how quickly, within two minutes, watch this video, Lizz connects the org to Tableau and immediately pulls in some data and does a simple visualization that you could do for any executive on how the sales reps are performing. And it’s a bubble chart, which is … I just smiled-
Gillian Bruce:
I love bubbles.
Mike Gerholdt:
And it’s so easy to consume. So, I chose that as a great, grab a sandwich when you’re on a break, watch three minute video.
Gillian Bruce:
And bubbles, bubbles are great.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah.
Gillian Bruce:
Yay, bubbles.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. And if you listened to the podcast we did with Tableau, with John Demby, it actually … you can see, as Lizz is pulling in data on the right hand side of the video, Tableau is thinking and serving up what would be the best visualization. You can actually see that change, which is so cool. Just next level cool.
Gillian Bruce:
That is so awesome. That is so awesome. And it’s a great video. Well, actually, Lizz is also in this other video. She’s our video star, there you go.
Mike Gerholdt:
Lizz everywhere.
Gillian Bruce:
So the video I picked for this month is all about Low-Code Love. So it’s the Low-Code Love drive change management with new tools, with Marc Baizman and Lizz Hellinga. And I picked this because this was … it’s a longer video, so it’s a little different than the digital video about the Tableau connector. But it’s all about all of these amazing innovations that keep coming out. I mean, gosh, it’s non-stop, that are really admin tools that are going to help us do even more with our existing set of skills, because the platform is continuing to give us more power and a declared fashion. So very cool whole set of amazing features and functionality in there. It’s a good recap too. If you’re like, oh my God, Mike talked about this and Gillian talked about this and Marc mentioned this. This is a good recap and overview of where things are at, and definitely check it out.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we always wrap up every episode by going retro. And I thought, Gillian, it would be fun to go retro with a Halloween theme. So I just threw out a couple ideas on, if you had a favorite Halloween costume.
Gillian Bruce:
Oh, do I have a favorite Halloween costume? I mean, we hinted at this earlier, but I am a huge She-Ra fan, from … I remember asking my dad when I was, I don’t know, three, four, when people are like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I remember telling my dad, “Hey, I want to be She-Ra when I grow up.” And he had to be like, “Gillian. Yeah. It’s not really an option. So maybe you should try something else.” And then I subsequently asked if I could be a female wrestler and he said maybe try something else. And I said, “Oh, what about a gladiator?” So clearly I had a specific …
Mike Gerholdt:
You had a very certain vision for where you wanted to go.
Gillian Bruce:
Sure did.
Mike Gerholdt:
Okay.
Gillian Bruce:
So my favorite costume is She-Ra, because I have actually been She-Ra three different times in my life. Twice as a child and then another time in college. So clearly those were different costumes, but-
Mike Gerholdt:
Yes.
Gillian Bruce:
… yes, She-Ra is my favorite Halloween costume.
Mike Gerholdt:
That was great. Okay. I had to look my costume up. I had quite a few costumes as a child growing up, but there’s one distinctly that I remember and I had to look it up. I couldn’t remember what it was called, but according to Pinterest, because that’s the only place it’s left at in eBay, it was called the cookie spooky costume. And it was-
Gillian Bruce:
Cookie spooky?
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. I’ll include a link in the show notes. It was this inflatable head that you put on your head and it had this little Velcro. And it came with this little tube of yellow paint or orange paint, whatever the color of the inflatable head was that was above you. Because all children’s costumes in the ’80s were basically just like a bib, like a little apron thing.
Gillian Bruce:
Yeah, like big old sock essentially.
Mike Gerholdt:
Right. It came with one of those that explained that you were a spooky character. And so there’s, somewhere in my house, a picture of me in that. I just remember it was like, I was the happiest. Probably because it was one of those Halloweens that you didn’t have to bundle up for, because in the Midwest, it gets cold.
Gillian Bruce:
Mike, this costume is hilarious. I clicked the link and-
Mike Gerholdt:
I know, isn’t it? Yes.
Gillian Bruce:
I mean, you have an inflated-
Mike Gerholdt:
Head.
Gillian Bruce:
Who the heck knows what that is, on top of your head.
Mike Gerholdt:
No idea. Yup. That’s what it is.
Gillian Bruce:
Do you remember which one you had, was it the green-
Mike Gerholdt:
I had the yellow one.
Gillian Bruce:
Yellow one?
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Gillian Bruce:
Okay.
Mike Gerholdt:
I distinctly remember the yellow one. And I know I have a picture of me somewhere. But yeah, I had to look it up. And it’s also insane. Go to eBay and look up your childhood costumes. I looked this costume up on eBay, $75. And it’s basically just an inflatable head and a plastic bib.
Gillian Bruce:
Well, you’re buying the nostalgia, right?
Mike Gerholdt:
You 100% are, 100%. So trick-or-treating, going around and getting favorite candy. Gillian, did you have a favorite candy that you liked to get from the neighbors?
Gillian Bruce:
Oh yeah. When you bring your pillow case or your trick-or-treat bucket back to the house and you do candy trading with your friends and siblings, I was a chocolate hoarder. But I was very particular about my chocolate. So, I liked Twix, Kit Kat, M&M’s. I don’t like chocolate with any weird stuff in it. I don’t like Snickers, I don’t like Butterfinger. I need just like pure chocolate, maybe with a little wafer in there, but with some caramel. Don’t put any weird coconut or nuts in my chocolate. No, thank you.
Mike Gerholdt:
Gotcha.
Gillian Bruce:
That’s my go-to.
Mike Gerholdt:
Okay.
Gillian Bruce:
How about you, Mike?
Mike Gerholdt:
Growing up, it was a big thing in my small town that some of the senior people, the old people, I’ll just say, would make popcorn balls and they would wrap them in saran wrap. And they would be different colors. And I always remember getting those and just being the most excited, because they would be different colors. They’d wrap it in orange saran wrap and stuff. But when you’re a child, it was like the size of a softball, so you’d eat on it for days.
Gillian Bruce:
I don’t think I’ve ever had a popcorn ball. Are they like caramel corn kind of thing.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. You’ve made rice crispy treats, right?
Gillian Bruce:
Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt:
Make that with popcorn, but cover it in caramel.
Gillian Bruce:
Interesting. Okay.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. It’s like that. Or if you’ve had Crunch ‘n Munch and you pull out a big chunk of Crunch ‘n Munch, it’s like that.
Gillian Bruce:
What’s Crunch ‘n Munch? I don’t know what that is.
Mike Gerholdt:
Crunch ‘n Munch is like caramel toffee flavored popcorn, covered with peanuts.
Gillian Bruce:
See, the peanuts. I wouldn’t do it. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt:
Popcorn and peanuts, I like that. Hence, why I liked the popcorn balls.
Gillian Bruce:
There you go.
Mike Gerholdt:
But it was always a big thing, because they could make that and then you weren’t getting a store bought candy bar. You’re getting something that your grandma’s friend made.
Gillian Bruce:
That’s really sweet. I think as a kid, I would have been the one to be like, oh no, I want the Twix.
Mike Gerholdt:
That’s fine, more popcorn balls for me.
Gillian Bruce:
I’m also excited. I made a trick-or-treat tube at our house because social distancing. And if there are any trick-or-treaters, at least this way we can put candy down the tube and the trick-or-treaters can get the candy and it can be safe.
Mike Gerholdt:
Did you learn about that on GMA? Because my mom was talking about that. Safe ways to trick-or-treat.
Gillian Bruce:
No, I don’t watch Good Morning America. But I don’t know. I feel like maybe someone talked about it a month or two ago.
Mike Gerholdt:
It was a big thing last week in the-
Gillian Bruce:
Okay.
Mike Gerholdt:
… trick-or-treat tubes. It was the conversation.
Gillian Bruce:
Yeah. I went to call Home Depot three or four weeks ago, and it was just like, I need a big PVC pipe. And I got a big … it’s 10 feet long.
Mike Gerholdt:
You stuff candy down. I need a big PVC pipe to shove candy down, let me be 100% honest with you.
Gillian Bruce:
I walked into Home Depot, I’m like, “Where’s the PVC pipe?” And they’re like, “What kind of pipe do you need?” I’m like, “A large one.”
Mike Gerholdt:
Big enough to shove candy down?
Gillian Bruce:
And they were like, “Oh, okay.” So I feel like maybe there’s been a run on PVC tubes at Home Depot and those, I don’t know.
Mike Gerholdt:
I think so. I will also add this link. The number one selling Halloween costume … not costume, but decoration for 2020 is a 12 foot skeleton from Home Depot.
Gillian Bruce:
Really?
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. I watched this news story on it, there was a whole story. Whoever does the Home Depot ordering for Halloween stuff ordered this as a joke and ordered it in mass and sent it to all the stores. And then a few Instagram or TikTok people bought one and then it sold out. And they had the Home Depot inventory guy on GMA the other day talking about, he just ordered it as a joke and now it was the number one selling thing at Home Depot for a week.
Gillian Bruce:
That’s amazing.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah, 12 foot skeleton. We drove around the town, we couldn’t find any 12 foot skeletons in our town. But if you find a 12 foot skeleton …
Gillian Bruce:
A lot of our neighbors have the bones coming out of the grass, looking like a skeleton that’s crawling out of the grass, which I think is pretty funny. But I feel like I couldn’t put it in my yard because Rex, my dog, would take one of the bones and think it’s a chew toy.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah. We had that problem in my old neighborhood. Gunner thought it was somebody trying to get out and he would sniff up next to it and then start digging out the … like, I’m here.
Gillian Bruce:
Oh, God.
Mike Gerholdt:
No it’s-
Gillian Bruce:
Anyway. Yay, Halloween themes.
Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah, it’ll be fun. If you want to learn more about all things Salesforce admin, which is the horrible segue from talking about Halloween things, but we roll with the punches, go to admin.salesforce.com to find more resources. You can stay up-to-date with us on social for all things admins. We are @salesforceadmns, no I on Twitter. I am on Twitter as @mikegerholdt and Gillian is @gilliankbruce. so with that, stay safe, stay awesome. Happy Halloween and stay tuned for the next episode. We’ll see you in the Cloud.
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