#10 - Trailhead Pt. 2: The Road to Becoming a Salesforce Admin
How I became a self-taught Salesforce Administrator by learning on Trailhead.
In Case You Missed It…
#4 - Trailhead Pt. 1: Why you should consider learning on Trailhead
I will preface my story by reminding readers that I do not have a computer science degree. Nor am I a coder. Honestly, I had never even heard of Salesforce before starting a new job several years ago.
In the employee onboarding process, I was introduced to my organization’s Salesforce database and was puzzled as to what it was used for, let alone how I ought to manage what I inherited from from my predecessor.
Coincidentally, shortly after starting this new role, the Salesforce World Tour expo just happened to be rolling through Washington, D.C., within walking distance from my office building. It was there that I first heard about Trailhead, the official learning platform Salesforce offers free of charge to both new and seasoned users as well as individuals looking to build marketable skills in a growing industry.
I was presented with a great opportunity to learn a new lifelong skill and decided to take the plunge. I was determined to give the Trailhead program a shot and set a goal to earn my Salesforce Administrator certification within a year!
Blazing a New Trail with Trailhead
Trailhead at its core is a free, self-paced learning platform centered around the Salesforce family of software products1. There aren’t even any annoying ads!
Its curriculum is structured in a way that rewards progression and encourages students to check back in constantly for updated lessons and new things to learn about the Salesforce platform. As of this writing, the service offers nearly 300 Trails that guide learners along micro-targeted learning paths of their choice, such as the Developer and Admin trails.
Most trails are not designed to be consumed in one sitting. For example, the Admin Intermediate trail alone has over 12 hours worth of content to digest! To keep the material from becoming too overwhelming, each trail is divided into many compartmentalized Modules that offer instruction and practice for specific Salesforce skills, such as creating custom objects and properly formatting reports.
Each module typically takes under an hour to complete, so determined Trailblazers can opt for a back-to-back marathon of binge learning if that’s what they prefer, or students juggling other priorities in their work and home lives can choose to make progress at a more gradual pace.
Trailhead awards completion badges after every module for display on your Trailblazer.me user profile. There is also a gamified leveling and ranking system tracking points you collect from solving hands-on assignments and quizzes. Fully embracing the charming outdoorsy theme, you start your Trailhead journey ranked as a lowly Scout before progressing to higher tiers such as Hiker, Explorer, Mountaineer, and finally the top rank of Ranger.
Aside from helping you gauge progress—and the fun of earning points and collectables for their own sake—badges also serve a functional purpose by outlining the tangible skills you’re developing. This can be helpful when updating your CV, preparing for a job interview, or even if you need to quickly refer back to an old module on your profile page for a refresher.
The Power of the Trailhead Playground
Unlike some other online learning courses, Trailhead goes above and beyond by providing an active learning experience wherever possible. Sure, a significant portion of the curriculum involves reading, watching pre-recorded videos, and taking multiple-choice quizzes, but Trailhead really shines by giving learners access to full-featured Salesforce demo environments called Trailhead Playgrounds.
Most modules will involve some sort of hands-on activity graded in one of these Trailhead Playground environments, making it much more difficult to skip through the coursework without studying. Each lesson offers step-by-step instructions that help you replicate tasks, such as building a flow or adjusting permission sets in the backend, in your Trailhead Playground. Once the task is complete, Trailhead will check your work before allowing you to proceed and offer feedback if you didn’t get it quite right. The feedback is usually balanced enough to help you understand your mistake without giving away the solution entirely.
The best part about Trailhead Playgrounds is how they are not tied to specific Trails or Modules. This means you are welcome to create many Trailhead Playgrounds for free outside the context of the official curriculum to practice the ins and outs of Salesforce administration and development in a risk-free setting. You can tinker with the settings as much as you like, and if you find a way to horribly mess up the database, you can easily delete it and start from scratch with a new Playground.
Importantly, for people who are trying to land their first job as a Salesforce Admin but don’t have the first-hand work experience, these demo environments are perfect to practice admin fundamentals and build a portfolio of work going into an interview.
Staying Motivated
It was time to finally embark on my own Trailhead journey, so I created a profile and figured there was no better place to start than the Admin Beginner trail, a collection of modules designed to familiarize students with the Salesforce architecture and teach the basics of customizing the platform. There’s a bit of a learning curve at first, but once I wrapped my mind around the lingo and had some badges under my belt, I was off to the races.
I started by completing a few modules every week, usually on lunch breaks or in between projects at work. Things were going great, but once I got to the Admin Intermediate trail, things got a little difficult as I reached more complex topics like Formulas, Validation Rules, and the Process Builder / Flow Builder.
I hit a rough patch and was getting discouraged, but fortunately Trailhead allows you to hop around and explore other trails and modules without disrupting your progress. This can be a welcome retreat if your learning starts to feel like a grind; a change of virtual scenery can really help maintain your motivation.
While looking into other trails, I discovered a trove of modules that focus on developing broader professional and career-building skills for Salesforce Administrators, such as how to make the most of one-on-one meetings with your manager, job interview tips, and how to collaborate effectively as a team. I found that taking a break from my main objective and honing these “soft skills” was just what I needed to clear my head and persevere.
And if you ever get really, really stuck on a module, the Trailblazer Community groups and Trailhead Live video learning platform are filled with helpful experts that may have already encountered your problem in the past or can help you troubleshoot the issue.
Delivering Results
After about a year of learning on Trailhead, I completed several Admin-related trails. I was able to gradually implement custom apps, simple flows, and better reports and dashboards at work (after experimenting in a sandbox environment, of course!). Using the self-taught skills I learned from my Trailhead education, I demonstrated to my colleagues how Salesforce can deliver immediate value even through simple touches like designing improved page layouts, overhauling our org’s home page and list views, and creating a simple process automation that streamlined our process to add subscribers to the company’s mailing list.
My supervisor was impressed and I was feeling proud. Was I finally ready to take the certification test? Stay tuned to hear what it was like preparing for the Certified Salesforce Administrator exam in the midst of March 2020’s peak pandemic turmoil.
Some examples of Salesforce products taught on Trailhead include the company’s namesake CRM platform, Salesforce.com, as well as acquisitions such as Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, Quip, Work.com, and more.