Seeing a lot of surprise around #chatgpt and wanted to do my own test…
What is ChatGOPT? According to the main site “(…) ChatGPT (…) [is a trained IA that, ndr] interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.“
In 2 words, you make a question and ChatGPT tries its best to respond you via text, you can even ask it to write some coding! I asked “write a bubble sort algorithm in Salesforce Apex that sorts a Contact array based on Name field length“ Which ok, it’s not the whole codebase of the Hubble Telescope but so far this is the result:
📣Announcement to all coders: prepare to change your job 🤣🤣🤣
A new AppExchange app by WebResults (Engineering Group)
Question: What happens if you put a messy Salesforce MVP in charge of the Innovation Team of WebResults?
Answer: a lot of mess for sure, but also funny stuff!
TL;DRRequest Loop is a new free AppExchange app delivered by the Innovation Team from WebResults to help in Salesforce callouts and callins development/debugging.
What is WebResults’ Innovation Team?
I work in WebResults since 2009, when I first moved my steps into the Salesforce world, starting from junior developer till my current position as “Salesforce Solutions” Unit Manager (soon to be called “Innovation Team”).
We are a team of passionate Salesforce professionals who struggle to keep up with the technological changes in the Salesforce ecosystem and try to move our company forward…we are a sort of R&D team.
As far as I’ve seen during the past years, this is not obvious for a big company, whose people are focused on the delivery, to keep a group of people focused on innovation and research…that’s why I’m really happy to do this job!
What do we do?
Professional services: sometimes we are called as firefighters by our colleagues when needed to help with difficult tasks or technical issues
Innovation tours: we plan meetings with our customers to show off new features or products
Knowledge Hub: we try to keep track of diverse Salesforce related knowledge docs and best practices for the benefit of all WebResults
Evangelization: we struggle to keep the company technologically engaged and updated
Creative app development: is there a problem we have solved in a creative way or that can “cross-project” benefit? let’s package it and create a new app for the whole company and Salesforce Ohana!
detect SOAP callouts request body (as you know, Salesforce doesn’t let you get the full body of an Apex SOAP request)
simulate REST/SOAP callouts from within Salesforce boundaries (i.e. coming from Salesforce IPs)
create a bin that can receive callins from an external system within Salesforce bounds in order to get what’s going on (again, it’s difficult to debug an Apex SOAP callin)
Keep everything within Salesforce boundaries (it shoulnd’t be done, but often sandboxes use real data and it’s not good to send business data in unsecure/untrusted clouds)
Request Loop is a free tool meant for developers who want to debug webservice communications both inbound and outbound. This tool has been imagined as a quick disposal package that anyone can install in a DE org or a sandbox (even production but it is unlikely and not suggested to debug directly in production), use until necessary and then uninstall to clean up everything.
This package is composed by 2 features:
Request Bin: an inbound Apex webservice that can receive any supported HTTP call (REST or SOAP) and log it for further analysis. This tool can also simulate the response of a valid service (just like the famous Requstb.in online service). Imagine you need to get the SOAP payload of an Apex webservice: no Salesforce tool is available for this porpoise and with Request Loop you can inspect the content message on the fly safely.
Request Client: a tool to send outbound callouts from Salesforce to outside systems. This tool can be used to simulate an external system call from within Salesforce to test a service without the need of a complete Apex implementation.
A Request Bin is simply a record on the Request Bin object definition which handles:
Request bin’s name (which identifies the service URL to point your external system to)
A valid HTTP response code
Optional response headers
Optional response body
Request Bin configuration
Once you have exposed your bin to the world (by calling the Apex webservice with a valid session token or publishing it inside a public community/site) you can call it from an external system and analyze/debug the requests stored on Request records (request bodies are stored on Files attached to the Request record).
Easy as 1-2-3 or a.b.c…you tell me!
Request Client
Now that we have a configured Request Bin that can take any incoming request, we’ll have a look at the Request Client too that can generate a callout by hand. Click on the Home tab of the Request Loop app:
Request Client example configuration
You can configure:
Supported HTTP method (Salesforce supports a sub-set of HTTP methods, GET / PATCH / PUT / POST / DELETE)
Request URL, which helps you with an autocomplete behavior for Named Credentials, otherwise you can set your own custom URL (remember to add the Remote Site configuration to enable that specific endpoint)
Request headers, with an autocomplete features for the main standard headers (the “Content-Type” header has an autocomplete behavior for the value as well, showing the main standard content types)
the Request body
Request Body example
Click the Send button and you’ll get response’s body and headers:
Response bodyResponse headers
Use the Download Body link to download a file with the response body on it.
Finally using the Recent Requests tab you can get a list of the last requests done and send them again (info are stored on the local storage):
List of recent requests made through the Request Client
This guest post is powered by Breadwinner Integrations, Inc. the leading integration software between Salesforce and accounting systems, including NetSuite, QuickBooks, andXero, as well as major payment processors such as Stripe, Braintree, and Square.
Users of Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) software who are looking to integrate that program with accounting software, like NetSuite, have several options in the marketplace. Some are dedicated integration software for this purpose, while others are cloud computing or automation platforms.
Integration platforms
Boomi – Operates in integration platforms as a service (iPaaS) format, and also offers data management and preparation services. Boomi has solutions geared to specific applications of NetSuite and Salesforce.
Celigo – Operates in iPaaS format. Connects finance applications with enterprise resource planning to lower operating costs and reduce outstanding sales receipts.
DBSync – Integrates QuickBooks with sales and accounting departments. Connects with CRM systems and databases to load and extract data for integration with accounting.
Automation and cloud platforms
FinancialForce – Offers a cloud accounting solution native to Salesforce. Can cash process, manage revenue, and produce real-time financial analysis and audit trails.
Workato – Focuses on integrating Salesforce products with several other applications, including NetSuite, Workday, ServiceNow, and SAP.
Aside from the platforms mentioned above, Breadwinner, an integration software provider, offers a solution for linking the NetSuite corporate inventory, financials, and enterprise planning software suite with Salesforce.
Breadwinner also has other integrations to connect Salesforce with accounting programs such as QuickBooks and payment processors such as Stripe, Square, and Braintree.
How does Breadwinner integrate software?
Breadwinner’s solutions focus on integrating Salesforce with finance software and are experts in this field. Breadwinner for NetSuite has a guided invoice creation feature that can generate a NetSuite invoice out of an opportunity with just a few clicks. This is emblematic of its simplicity.
Other hallmarks of Breadwinner’s ease of use are:
Configuration wizard – Displays of NetSuite objects and Salesforce fields are intuitively mapped, making Breadwinner easy to navigate for its users.
Rapid installation – Breadwinner is built on the Salesforce platform, so a user can see NetSuite records in Salesforce within an hour of installation.
Two-way data transfer – Breadwinner can transfer enriched data from Salesforce into NetSuite for processing, then back into Salesforce immediately.
Breadwinner is efficient and fast at aligning internal teams. It syncs with Salesforce on a per-subsidiary basis when a company has multiple subsidiaries. It also works great with existing integration (iPaaS) tools in Read-Only or Read-Write modes, putting enriched data next to data and systems already in place.
Record Creation Wizard
Integrating Salesforce with your finance software using Breadwinner allows users to quickly generate records such as invoices, estimates, and sales orders from within Salesforce, speeding up payment operations. Breadwinner has a Record Creation Wizard to guide users through this. The new NetSuite records the solution creates are immediately integrated into Salesforce. Your company’s sales and support teams can track NetSuite invoices in Salesforce, including overdue status, to collect payments faster.
Data Accessibility
Breadwinner aligns corporate teams so that they may all access the same common records, including sales and finance data. It does this regardless of the location of the data or the device being used to access that data. This prevents organizational silos and makes live, accurate data available to the right users.
Global API
No matter who creates new NetSuite customer records in Salesforce, these are instantly updated in both systems. Breadwinner’s Global API makes creating and editing NetSuite records easy and with flexibility. It allows users to create and update NetSuite customers and records, such as estimates and sales orders, from within Salesforce, saving staff time and increasing data accuracy.
Compare and contrast
Knowing how Breadwinner works and performs its integration functions for NetSuite and Salesforce lets you see the solution in the context of what is available in the marketplace.
As discussed, there are many benefits of integrating Salesforce with accounting software, particularly NetSuite. Choosing one that is seamless and user-friendly will undoubtedly making your company’s financial operations much easier.
It’s been an amazing journey through the Salesforce Ohana, inspiring both professionaly and personally 💙🌈
In these 5 years I was the “one man company” behind ORGanizer, doing design, development, support, marketing, sales, PR… 🤯🤯🤯
This is not my primary job, it wass meant to be my hobby occupation, so you can understand that it’s become really stressfull to keep the pace 😓
The time has come to move on a brand new project and contribute on the Salesforce Ohana in a brand-new way. 🎁
Recently I published a new adv. on the ORGanizer that states:
📣📣 ORGanizer for Salesforce is looking for a new Trailblazer home 🏡💙
Yes guys, I’m looking for a virtuous #trailblazer company that wants to take ORGanizer by hand and make it do the next step with a more structured vision and business power! 💪💪💪
With tears in my eyes, I believe that my little child needs to spread its wings and fly away 🦅
In the past 5 years I reached many goals that I thought unreachable:
48000 weekly users 👨👩👨👨 (and new thousands counting month after month)
200+ downloads a day 💻 (and counting day after day)
Published in 3 stores (Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons and Microsoft Edge Add-ons) 🏪🏪🏪
Published on the #AppExchange with 50+ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews
It’s a way to periodically export all Salesforce data set in zipped CSV files, including files and attachments.
You can do a one-shot export or schedule it on monthly (available on Developer Edition orgs) or weekly (available on Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions only).
The one-shot and periodic export configuration is straightforward:
Select the file encoding
Select which data you want to export (including files and content can increase export size)
Select a schedule (for monthyl or weekly export schedule only)
Select all or a subset of the available Salesforce objects
Monthly Data Export configuration schedule
What’s the outcome?
You’ll come up with a set of zipped files with a size up to 512 MB, containing Salesforce extracted files (if checked in configuration) or CSVs grouped by Salesforce objects, as shown below:
The struggle of downloading
What if you have plenty of files and want to automatically download them one-shot without having to click link by link?
Unfortunately there are no Salesforce standard APIs that you can use to automate the export and the only way was to go by script by getting all download links and triggering each download on a local folder (or remote storage if you are brave enough).
I thought there was already a solution out there but as far as I know there wasn’t anything.
The script
I decided to implement a script in NodeJS that:
logs in to Salesforce with a full powered user
opens the Data Export page
looks for the download links (if any)
triggers downloads one by one, putting them on a local folder
This way you can continue doing other tasks while the scripts runs.
DISCLAIMER: the script has been written in a quick & dirty style, so please don’t tell me it’s ugly, it gets you to the point!
Install NodeJS and NPM if haven’t already (you just have do donwload the installers, follow this guide but you’ll find tons online)
Open a console and install Foreman with: npm install -g foreman An alternative is to use the Heroku command line with: npm install -g heroku
Install all required packages with command line npm install
Rename the .env-local into .env and replace the environmental variables with a local path (where the files will be stored), the login URL, your username and the password+token
Run your script with alternatively: nf start or heroku local
You’ll see the script running and the files magically will drop on the selected folder:
2020 has been a year of change. The pandemic has had a devastating effect on many, and its side-effects have re-shaped the way we live, communicate, learn and ultimately, the way we work. The Salesforce ecosystem hasn’t been an exception. It’s hard to imagine what the future will look like, but it’s worth having a look at the trends that have shaped the Salesforce universe during these past months if we want to be as prepared as possible. This is why it’s a good time to have a look at Mason Frank’s Salary Survey – the largest independent Salesforce market report worldwide. Mason Frank International is a global leader in Salesforce Recruitment, and their yearly study gives us independent insights into the latest market trends and salaries across the ecosystem. The report delves into topics such as how professionals feel about their jobs and employers, work perks, certifications and diversity, and also looks at salaries in different roles globally. Here are some key findings from the report.
Experience vs education
Let’s start off with something of an eternal dilemma – when it comes to employability, which is more valuable, experience or education? If you’re looking to increase your earning potential as a Salesforce professional, experience seems to be deemed essential, with 90% of survey respondents naming it as the most important factor. That, together with exposure to large projects and Salesforce certifications, seem to be the top-ranked aspects that increase your earning potential.
In contrast, having a university degree is considered important by just half of the survey’s participants. Formal education can lay the groundwork for a range of skills—communication and problem-solving just to name a couple—but with Salesforce being such a broad, evolving industry, experience and product knowledge seem to be better indicators of whether or not a candidate is suited to a particular post.
Which Salesforce certifications will increase your pay?
We’ve mentioned certifications being an important factor for career progression, but the real question is: which certifications are most likely to help with development and earning potential? The Technical Architect certification tops the Mason Frank Salary Survey list, with Salesforce professionals considering it to be the certification most likely to boost your pay for the second year in a row.
This qualification is still very much a rare one within the ecosystem, making it highly sought-after by employers across the globe. This certification shows the depth and breadth of a candidate’s Salesforce knowledge and demonstrates the ability to deliver optimized solutions across the entire platform. The qualification is intense, and requires some serious commitment and investment, but as with any challenge, it’ll yield rewards if you put the work in.
Let’s talk perks
We usually think of salary as one of the most significant factors affecting a candidate’s decision at that all-important offer stage. However, employers and job seekers alike should not underestimate the value of employee benefits.
Many of the benefits enjoyed by Salesforce professionals, according to Mason Frank, are either the ones supporting employees outside of the workplace, such as health and medical insurance, and retirement savings plans, or perks aimed at improving that coveted work-life balance, such as homeworking or flexible working. Other perks topping the lists are training and development opportunities, and naturally, bonuses. The value associated to each of these perks depends on many factors—but making sure your employer offers a robust benefits package as well as competitive salary will truly pay off.
Working from home
What was previously considered a more of a perk has become more or less the default following the coronavirus pandemic. Pre-pandemic, 21% of permanent professionals who took part in the Mason Frank Salary Survey worked from home on a full-time basis, while 62% worked from home at least once a week. These both increased during the pandemic, with 84% working remotely full-time, and 97% working from home at least one day a week.
Remote working definitely comes with its own set of pros and cons, and anyone currently experiencing it may have their own thoughts and concerns. However, what the remote working boom has surely done is open up roles to new, more diverse hiring pools, which is good news for anyone looking for a job and great news for employers looking to hire Salesforce talent in such a competitive market.
Salesforce Salaries
We’ve spoken about how to maximize your earning potential, but how much are Salesforce professionals actually earning? Compensation benchmarking is beneficial to job seekers as it helps them gauge whether or not their salary is on par with their qualifications, skills, and experience, allowing them to make an informed decision when looking for fresh opportunities.
It’s also interesting to look at salary benchmarking when considering re-location. Evaluating job proposals abroad can be quite tricky when you’re not sure if the salary on offer matches up to the standard of living, or whether it really is competitive in that country. For instance, a junior functional permanent consultant’s salary starts at an average of €23,000 in Italy, while that same role starts off at €48,000 in Germany, €35,000 in France and €47,000 in Ireland. It’s also worth looking at salary benchmarking if you feel like you haven’t seen a salary increase over some years, or if you’re not sure that increase matches up with your years of experience, qualifications, and ultimately, the current standard of living. For instance, the same junior functional permanent consultant salary started at €20,000 last year – an increase of €3,000 in the Italian market over just one year.
The Mason Frank Salary Survey 2020/21 is an excellent resource to learn all about the salary and benefits Salesforce professionals expect and receive today. It’s also packed with useful tips on how to maximize your earning potential as a Trailblazer, bringing you that one step closer to your dream job. Download the full report and get the most current snapshot of the Salesforce Ecosystem.
Almost exactly 1 and a half year ago I’ve been contacted by Alok Dhuri from Packt Publishing asking me if I was interested in writing a Salesforce guide.
At that time I still was a Salesforce MVP and, on my career’s checklist, I missed the authoring experience.
Since I was a child, writing a real book has been one of dreams: the only problem is that I’ve never been an artist, so writing a novel have never been an option (although I really REALLY want it was).
It’s at the age of 27, after my MsC degree, I tried to write a PHP related book for newbies: as a self-taught programming learner (I took an Electronic Engineering MsC but I learned programming all by myself), I really love to help others to achieve knowledge with less effort.
That book never saw the light, although I still have the draft on my archives (I lost the digital copy but still have a printed copy).
In 2009 I joined WebResults as a junior Salesforce developer and in 2013 I started Nerd @ Work blog with a cool technical post about a Salesforce workaround that had, and still have, much appreciation on the community.
That was the time I understood that I had enough knowledge to share to the world: it was an important step in my career, because I finally understood that, although I’ve always been a humble guy, I could give and help people just by telling them what my experience taught me. Post by post, challenge by challenge, Nerd @ Work became a known blog among the Salesforce Ohana community.
Busy on my daily work, side projects, ORGanizer for Salesforce and, recently, on authoring 2 books, I started getting help from the Ohana with awesome guest blog posts, but I try to write as much as I can.
The first book: let’s start with advanced stuff first
Although I really wanted to write something for newbies, the guys from Packt Pub. suggested me to write a guide about Salesforce Advanced Administrator certification, which I took as an amazing opportunity…after all I haven’t ever written a book, challenge accepted!
After almost 6 months, the book was out on the book shops and I had an amazing blast when I saw it on the Dreamforce 2019 book shop (picture below).
Unfortunately few months after the publication, on March 2020 I lost my Salesforce MVP status, which honestly made me feel down regarding my Salesforce Ohana involvement: I didn’t understand why, even after publishing a book, hosting my blog, running a well known browser extension used my thousands people, the status was not renewed but, after the first days of sadness, I thought that it was just a new challenge for me.
Finally a book for newbies, where I can try to introduce people to our beloved technology, speeding up their involvement with Salesforce, trying to help companies with an heavy shortage of Salesforce professionals.
The pandemic was striking across the world and a psychologically heavy lock-down hit Italy between March and middle May 2020. we lost a dear friend, Steven, that’s why I decided to dedicate this new book to him and all other Codiv19 victims.
I didn’t have much free time as I though home working could bring, so keeping in time with chapter schedule has been hard during the past months: a mean of 2-3 chapters per month, should have brought the book to life in November 2020 and, luckily, we managed to end at the beginning of October, anticipating by one month…not bad!
The first step needed when writing a book is the Table of Contents (TOC) creation: what we’ll be talking about?
I usually use a personal knowledge tool (such as Atlassian Confluence) to host these files, so I can quickly update them by accessing them whenever I need from any device.
The TOC is not definitive and it is possible to change chapter order or even chapter descriptions; indeed this is the final approved TOC:
A Brief Introduction to Salesforce
Building the Data Model
Mastering Formulas
Cleaning Data with Validation Rules
Handling Dynamic Configuration
Security First – The “Who Sees What” Paradigm
Be a Workflow Champion
Setting Up Approval Processes
Process Builder – Workflow Evolution
Designing Lightning Flows
Interacting with Actions
All about Layouts
The Lightning App Builder
Leveraging Customers and Partners Power with Communities
Importing and Exporting Data Declaratively
Learning about Data Reporting
The Sandbox Model
Deploying Your Solution
Salesforce Ohana – The Most Amazing Community around
For each chapter you need to provide:
expected page count
chapter extract
learning objectives
To keep up with the schedule I literally printed out a calendar for the next months so I always had the whole schedule on sight range, as shown below.
Each chapter has a first draft release date when the guys at Packt Pub. reviewed all the content in terms of English grammar, chapter structure and all not technical stuff: I REALLY want to thank Prajakta Naik and Tiksha Abhimanyu Lad for surviving my awful English writing!
After one or two review iterations, each book is then evaluated by a technical reviewer: I’ve been supported the whole time by my Ohana friend Fabrice Cathala, who happily joined the team and helped me in tweaking and increasing coherence in the narration on the chapters content with his vast Salesforce knowledge as a prominent Salesforce technical architect and evangelist.
If you plan to write a book, be aware that you may find yourself stuck with a new draft to write, an editor review to check and a tech review to finalise: and this is not your only job!
Time management is essential, you made a commitment and, if you are like me, you REALLY want to keep your word and finish what you started!
Pay attention to…
Check your page count: I have a tendency to write too much
Balance content depth versus page count: depending on the audience you are talking to, try not to write too much and simplify the explanation
Follow a coherent narrative style: it is your book, choose your style and don’t be afraid to adopt an informal writing…I love to put some humour (even if a tech book is not the perfect place to tell a joke!)
Use external references: there’s a plenty of stuff on the net, avoid copy&paste of tables or lists, simply add a reference / highlight box with a link to the external resource where the reader can read further details
Take good screenshots: save with good resolution and avoid typos (I’m known for writing tons of typos…). I suggest to save pictures on a dedicated folder (one per chapter) so, if you ever need to make some modifications, you have the original version
Take a note of each step in your examples: if your book has examples, take notes of any configuration/customisation, you may need to execute the same steps again in the future if you need (for example) to take another screenshot and, believe me, after few months from that writing you may forget what you were doing
Not forget the final goal: during the writing you may find weeks where you believe you want to give up, you may be stressed, but remember that this is pretty normal, it is the so called writer’s block, and if you are not an experienced author, well…soon or later you’ll fill this awful feeling
Finally the publication
But at the end of your journey finally the book gets published: this is an amazing feeling and now you have to wait patiently to see reviews coming from all around the world, hoping that the efforts you did to write those hundreds pages have been worth a bit at least, and maybe helped someone in achieving some knowledge.
I really love the feeling of taking a copy of my own book, turn the pages, and randomly read an sentence and check if I’ve been clear enough.
My free copies of the book, a cool gift from the publisher
Writing a book is an interesting and formative journey, if you believe you have something to tell the world, start a new authoring project, think of a cool title, plan your content and start writing: believe me if I tell you this is not a waste of time!
If you want to start a Salesforce career give my book a try and let me know if you enjoyed it!
Global leader in Salesforce recruitment, Mason Frank International, recently got in touch with me about an opportunity for an important project they were working on. In response to the Covid-19 crisis, they have collated expert advice from leading Salesforce MVPs and professionals into an industry whitepaper, of which I am proud to say I am part of.
The whitepaper covers five common challenges many are struggling with at this moment: cost saving, data security, remote working, growing at scale, and business continuity.
I am honored to have been involved in this project, providing Salesforce advice to those who need it. I hope my own and my peers’ insight helps those looking for answers at this unprecedented time.
I’m happy to announce that my book, “Salesforce Advanced Administrator Certification Guide: Unleash your Salesforce administration superpowers with an advanced training certification guide”, made it to BookAuthority’s Best New Salesforce eBooks. BookAuthority collects and ranks the best books in the world, and it is a great honor to get this kind of recognition. Thank you for all your support! The book is available for purchase on Amazon.
