Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got the Monthly Retro for August. Join us as we talk about all the Salesforce content you shouldn’t miss from August, and some Dreamforce goodies.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation from our Monthly Retro.
Pre-release orgs have been available for Winter ‘23 since August 11th, so make sure to sign up, and release notes have been out since the 17th. If you’re trying to move a sandbox onto the new release, the deadline to get that done is TOMORROW, August 26th.
Join us for our 20th Dreamforce, coming up September 20-22. Full conference passes are already sold out, but you can jump on a waitlist or tune in via Salesforce+. We also have a full slate of pods to help you get ready coming up in September, so smash that subscribe button!
There was a flurry of great Automate This! content in August, including an appearance by pod regular Karmel James. Jennifer Lee’s blog posts are thorough, fun, and easy to follow so make sure you’re not missing out.
We’ve given “How I Solved It” a Salesforce+ glow up and we think it’s worth a watch. A dream team of Trailblazers tackle real problems in their orgs and takes you through the process, every step of the way.
A couple of podcast episodes stand out from August. We spoke to Amit Malik, a longtime instructor for the Global Architect Program about why admins should take architect courses. We also caught up with Stuart Mills, VP of Trailhead EMEA to learn how you can grow your career and why you might end up in a role that hasn’t been invented yet.
Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast in the August Monthly Retro for 2022. I’m your host, Mike Gerholdt. And in this episode, we’ll review the top product, community and careers content, well, for the month of August, just like I said. And you know what? Helping me do that the very familiar and excitingly fun posting voice of Gillian Bruce. Hi, Gillian.
Gillian Bruce: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Mike Gerholdt: Thank you for surviving the heat waves.
Gillian Bruce: Well, we didn’t get any heat waves out here in San Francisco, at least not yet, but our summer is coming soon, soon.
Mike Gerholdt: Summer and state fair for everybody right now.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Things on a stick. Things are fried. People are getting sunburned.
Gillian Bruce: I’m going to have to go to a state fair at some point.
Mike Gerholdt: Funnel cakes. That’s the one thing. Funnel cakes and Ferris wheels.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah. I remember as a kid getting on some janky, awesome carnival rides at I think it was the County Fair or something.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, there is no safe fair. They’re all sketchy. They all make you question the safety. And that’s why they’re fun.
Gillian Bruce: I always remember it was like a spaceship one you go into and it’s spins really fast and you’re on the wall. And then the centrifugal force pushes you up against the wall.
Mike Gerholdt: Oh.
Gillian Bruce: So you’re kind of like, yeah, I remember it was like, God, I was really young, but I think we went on that about 10,000 times in a row. So we just spent all of our tickets on that one. I’m surprised nobody got sick.
Mike Gerholdt: Oh yeah. Well, yeah. I usually rode the little thing where the cars went in the circle.
Gillian Bruce: Shocker. You liked the car ride. I’m so surprised.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I couldn’t do anything. The steering wheel, you just spun. There’s pictures of me as a child looking over at my mom turning this steering wheel that does nothing.
Gillian Bruce: Aw. You’re like, what is this? Come on.
Mike Gerholdt: Come on. Seriously, people get it together. And then two minutes later, you’re off. Ugh, waited in line forever. Anyway, nobody wants to hear that. What is going on besides state fairs and things on a stick?
Gillian Bruce: Well, Mike, we are getting ready for a couple of big things in Salesforce world. The first of which is relevant for every single person, no matter whether you are coming to an in-person event that we will talk about in a moment. Winter ’23 is coming. Believe it or not it’s August, but it’s time to start thinking about the Winter release. So August 11th is when the pre-release orgs have been available. So get your hands on that. Release Notes coming out on the 17th. So they’ve been out for a little bit now that you’ve heard this podcast. And then if you’ve got sandboxes that you want to move to the new release or keep on the existing ones, that deadline is the 26th of August. So start thinking about Winter ’23, we’ve got some really awesome Winter ’23 release stuff happening at Dreamforce, which is coming soon.
Mike Gerholdt: Ooh.
Gillian Bruce: So stay tuned for more on that. I’m not going to give away all the deets yet. It’s a little early, but yeah, Winter ’23, here we go. Another release.
Mike Gerholdt: Another release and another Dreamforce.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah. Sorry. I buried the lead there. Yes. Another Dreamforce. A really big deal. Dreamforce. This is our 20th Dreamforce believe it or not.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. I haven’t been to 20. I bet some of our listeners have been to 20.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: That’s a lot. And we have some Dreamforce themed pods coming up. In fact next week after this one.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of really exciting and special Dreamforce pods coming your way. And even if you’re not attending Dreamforce, which I totally understand.
Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm.
Gillian Bruce: It’s still not the easiest thing to travel and all of that.
Mike Gerholdt: Right.
Gillian Bruce: But good news is this Dreamforce is going to be the most digital Dreamforce that’s going to be the first real hybrid in person/digital experience. We learned a lot over the last few years about digital and we keep getting better. So there’s going to be a lot of content and a lot of great things that we’re working on for Dreamforce that everyone will be able to participate in and get a piece of. So we’ll cover a lot of that in these upcoming next episodes. So again, we’re just full of teasers today.
Mike Gerholdt: We are just full. And to continue the teaser theme, we might actually tell you some of the stuff that we’ve got planned for Dreamforce in those episodes.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Just saying.
Gillian Bruce: And ways that you can come be a part of it either virtually or in person, so.
Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm. Or just be jealous, be like that sounds cool.
Gillian Bruce: Yes. Yes. Green with envy.
Mike Gerholdt: So for the month of August we did some really cool content. I’ll start off, literally the note that I wrote was to highlight, Automate This on the blog, because when I go to our website, it’s really hard to miss all of the Automate This stuff.
Gillian Bruce: And it’s amazing.
Mike Gerholdt: I know that’s why I’m calling it out, because I clicked on it, it was like, I seem to find a link for one of my previous podcasts here. Nope, Automate This. Oh, on this and on this and on this. Seriously, maybe you’ve been at a state fair and you had too many corn dogs and you took a week off and you missed all the Automate This stuff. Well now is the time to catch back up, because we have a ton of really cool Automate This content on the blog. Jennifer did an amazing job with all of that.
Gillian Bruce: Well, yeah, and she does live Automate This on YouTube, which is incredible.
Mike Gerholdt: Right.
Gillian Bruce: And I think Karmel James was just a guest not too long ago. That’s a great episode.
Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm.
Gillian Bruce: It’s incredible content. So hey, whether you’re a flownatic or new to the idea of automation, you’re going to get something out of this really incredible content that spans both the blog and video and all of the things.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, speaking of video, it’s like you gave yourself your own segue.
Gillian Bruce: Oh, it’s natural at this point, Mike. We’ve been doing this long enough. Yeah, so we had an amazing… Well, the first one came out the end of July, but this whole month of August, we’ve been releasing How I Solved It videos, specifically made for Salesforce Plus. So it’s a long, beloved and amazing series that Jennifer Lee hosts on YouTube as is. And what we wanted to do is kind of bring that magic to Salesforce Plus and expand it beyond kind of our typical admin channels. And we did. So we have five incredible episodes that have been coming out over the last five weeks actually, between Trailblazers solving all different kinds of problems, from user management to marketing automation, to security, to project management. There’s five total, so you can check out, I’m going to do some Trailblazer callouts. We got Andrew Russo, we got Madeleine Coutanceau from Brisbane and we’ve got Karmel James.
We’ve got Tony Nguyen and we have Sarah Pilzer. So definitely check those out. I don’t know how you missed them if you haven’t seen them already. But definitely make sure at the end of this pod you go check them out because they’re pretty awesome. And if you really like them, or you have feedback or questions, please let us know. Not only does each of the Trailblazers featured in those episodes, super excited to talk more about what they did or to answer any questions, but we also want to know what Salesforce what you think, because we take all of our direction for what we do from what you tell us you like or didn’t like, or what worked or didn’t work. So let us know. Let us know what you think.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I was just thinking we should probably spin up an IMDb page for all of them at some point.
Gillian Bruce: I love it. Like an IMDb of the Cloud.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, where’s all of Karmel James been on? And you just go to IMDb. It’s like, oh, well she’s been on all these Salesforce Plus, this other little thing called podcast that a couple people listen to. So pretty cool.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. Like a Salesforce IMDb. It’s an Internet Movie Database is what it stands for.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Gillian Bruce: It could be Internet Salesforce Database.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. Oh, this is why we don’t name… Actually it’d be called Internet Salesforce Database for a release.
Gillian Bruce: Right.
Mike Gerholdt: And then it would be called the Lightning Internet Salesforce Database.
Gillian Bruce: It’ll be Einstein and it’ll be [inaudible].
And then we could go old school and it’ll be touch and then it’ll be [inaudible].
Mike Gerholdt: Right.
Gillian Bruce: Then it’ll be… I mean, let’s just go through all of the things.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. Yep. And then we’ll scrap all that and we’ll go back to our roots, right? We’ll stay true to the core. And we’ll call it the Internet Salesforce Movie Database 2.
Gillian Bruce: Yes. It’s always fun poking at our own [inaudible].
Mike Gerholdt: Well, anyway. So other fun stuff. I recorded a couple podcasts in August. Had to think about the month for a second.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah, you were busy.
Mike Gerholdt: Geez. Wow. Hey, here we go. So the first one was with Amit Malik just, could you bottle his energy? That’s all I wanted the whole time. I’m soaking up all the information he’s throwing down and I’m just like, wow, I really would love to pick up your energy. But he’s so passionate about teaching admins. A lot of the fundamentals that architects know and love. So we covered that in that podcast. And then Stuart Mills, who’s the VP of Trailhead for EMEA got on. He was over attending a community conference and had time to chat. Lot of really cool stuff coming from him. A lot of cool perspective on the admin role, on admin careers, trajectory, where things are going, where he sees things going, skills going. I got him talk about admin skills, Gillian.
Gillian Bruce: Good job.
Mike Gerholdt: Yep. But the one line that stuck with me was, “grit is a transferable skill.” Thought that was a really great line. So check out those two. We’ll include links. Yeah.
Gillian Bruce: So good. That was such a great interview. You did a great job with that, Mike.
Mike Gerholdt: It’s a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with both those. Sometimes you’re kind of, especially heading into Dreamforce, availability’s tough and getting stuff scheduled is tough. And then people really just don’t want to talk about deep subjects. But I think we did the pod proud.
Gillian Bruce: Sure did. Sure did. Good job.
Mike Gerholdt: The last thing that I noted, so I know in the July retro, we gave you a link to filling out a letter to convincing your boss to go to Dreamforce. And if you still need that, if Dreamforce is still open for registration, I’ve included a link to our blog where we kind of help you fill out that form a little bit. Also it works for other events. If you want to go to a community dreaming event, or a world tour event, which we’ll have coming up later this year, I think that form would work as well.
Gillian Bruce: 100%. I mean, even if you were having a hard time getting support to go to a lunchtime user group meeting or something. If nothing else, even if you don’t use it, it helps you frame why participating in Salesforce focused events is valuable to not only your career but to your company, right? To me, sometimes it takes a while for people to understand that jump or really how to frame it and talk about it. And this is a great tool to help you.
Mike Gerholdt: Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Well, Gillian, this is our last Retro before Dreamforce.
Gillian Bruce: Oh my gosh. You mean the next time we’re going to do a Retro it’ll be after Dreamforce?
Mike Gerholdt: We’ll be retroing Dreamforce.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah, we will. Hopefully we’ll still have voices. How about that?
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It might be a few octaves lower.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah. We’ll make it through.
Mike Gerholdt: Right.
Gillian Bruce: And yeah, again, so much great Dreamforce related content coming your way over the next few weeks. And again, if you’re not able to join us in person, don’t worry. A lot of this will still be very relevant for you. So stay tuned.
Mike Gerholdt: So if you want to learn more about all of the things we just talked about in today’s episode, please go to admin.salesforce.com to find those links and many more resources. You can stay up to date with us for All Things Admin on social. We are @SalesforceAdmns. No I on Twitter. I am on Twitter @MikeGerholdt and Gillian is @gilliankbruce. So with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode. We’ll see you in the Cloud.
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