After being on and off again since June 2004, I’m done with renting DVDs from Netflix. I can remember when I signed up like it was yesterday: I just graduated high school, and received my first debit card. So what did I do with my newfound way to spend money? I signed up for Netflix.
Continue reading “Saying Goodbye to Netflix DVDs”My Favorite Things in the Salesforce Spring 19 Release
It’s a brisk 40 degrees in Chicago. The weather has changed about 60 degrees from last week to today, and that has me feeling like Spring is right around the corner. To celebrate, here are my favorite features of Salesforce’s Spring 2019 release.
Sales Stage Customization
This gets a much needed UI overhaul. Creating a path prior to this felt like you stepped outside of Salesforce into some bizarro application. Now it looks and feels more consistent with the rest of the application.
Mobile Publisher
Do you use Salesforce Communities? If so, this is is going to be a game changer. You will now have the ability to package and publish your community as a mobile application to both the Apple Store and Google Play. All your customizations like authentication carry over to the app, so your users will not have to re-authenticate every time they open the app. With a single “clicks not code”-base, you’ll be able to maintain both a web presence and a mobile presence. This is an elegant, scalable, and sustainable solution.
This new functionality requires a new license in addition to your community licenses: Mobile Publisher.
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=s1_branded_apps.htm&type=5
Lightning Scheduler
Often Solution Engineers are asked to make scheduling in Field Service Lightning work in ways that function well, but are more like putting a circle in a square hole. If we’re doing this, our customers are certainly doing this too.
Lightning Scheduler will remedy this. It’ll help find the right person, at the right place and time for your customers. It takes the inbound scheduling already found in FSL and makes it outbound, customer facing. This in tandem with Lightning Flow Builder will be a great addition to your organization.
Access to Lightning Scheduler will require Lightning Scheduler licenses.
Lightning Flow Builder
I’m still new to Salesforce, and I was always surprised that Flow required installing Flash. Even Microsoft got away from this, as well as Silverlight. Lightning Flow Builder does away with atavistic programming standards. Not only is it a prettier UI, but it feels much more intuitive than classic Flow. As Salesforce continues turning on Lightning, I expect more of the edifices from classic to start looking and behaving like Lightning Flow Builder.
https://admin.salesforce.com/flowbuilder
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2018/09/flow-builder-lightning-flow-design-principles.html
Salesforce Connect: External Data Change
Every customer I talk to wants to integrate data. Most customers require a third party tool which may have some costs. Salesforce Connect is a pretty great tool for simple integration scenarios, but now it became a great tool. Having real-time change in External Objects execute business processes is a game changer. This significantly lowers the barrier for integration for administrators and it also empowers business users because things are happening in real-time, not “near real-time.”
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=external_object_change_tracking_intro.htm&type=5
Permission Set Groups
When you learn Salesforce, one of the things you spend the most time on is learning Salesforce’s permission model. It’s very novel compared to other applications. And by novel, I mean, confusing.
There’s a couple things I miss from Microsoft consulting, and one of them is Active Directory. Permission Set groups to me seem to be more akin to groups in AD. Instead of having Permission Sets run amuck, you can now collapse some of your groups and nest them.
I doubt people will be clamoring for this, but to me it’s a major win that will help administrators. Happy admins, happy life.
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=perm_set_groups.htm&type=5
The Air Force Loves DMX
Did you know that that the Air Force’s 124th Fighter Wing loves DMX?
Here’s how I feel about the 124’s DMX love. I enjoy late 90s and early 2000s hip-hop as much as the next person, and the Ruff Ryders have a sweet spot in my heart. “Double R What” slaps so hard. And then when the Pink Floyd sample comes in, it’s just magical. DMX is just ok, but he’s got some real club bangers.
But then it dawned on me that while the 124th Fighter Wing may love DMX, the intent of their comment is pride that a stealth bomber can murder people like DMX does in his songs. Genius.com confirms this.
This probably isn’t the first time songs are being misappropriated. The legend goes that in the first Gulf War, the fighter pilots played “Rock the Casbah” in their cockpits; upon learning of this Joe Strummer cried.
I find it in poor taste that a verified account of the Air Force is openly using the lyrics of a song about drive-by shootings to boast about their air power prowess. But I’m not sure that using jingoistic songs instead would be any better.
Here’s a Little Story I Got to Tell: The Beastie Boys Book is Essential Reading
In 1999 I was in eighth grade. To get on the internet, I had to have my parents enter in the password before the modem dialed up our internet provider. Clever me, I tacitly installed NetZero and was able to get on the internet without their knowledge. Once online, I downloaded Napster, and the first song I downloaded is the Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic.”
Flash forward a couple of months. I’m on a week-long church confirmation trip. My parents give me $100 to spend on souvenirs and to use on the roller coaster at Mall of America. The first stop our coach bus made was at a Wal-Mart in Wisconsin, and I dropped $35 on the Beastie Boys’ The Sounds of Science compilation. When the trip was over, my parents asked for their remaining money back. I told them there was none and lied about how I spent the money. Then they found all the CDs I bought. They were not happy, but for reasons I don’t remember, my dad was really not happy I bought a Beastie Boys album.
Continue reading “Here’s a Little Story I Got to Tell: The Beastie Boys Book is Essential Reading”Tales from Adolescence: New Year’s at Jewel with Stoner Kelly
I don’t remember when I met Stoner Kelly. Jewel was full of colorful characters and I recall there were some silly nicknames, but nobody had a name like Stoner Kelly.
My first recollection of him was as I walked to the break room one day and saw this tall, hirsute, mouth breathing man, with large bags under his eyes, wearing a butcher’s apron and staring into space behind the meat counter. In other words, he looked stoned. All the time.
Continue reading “Tales from Adolescence: New Year’s at Jewel with Stoner Kelly”