How to Be a Salesforce Administrator, According to a Salesforce MVP

Ready to begin your journey as a Salesforce administrator? Here’s some sound advice from CASE Partners’ Salesforce Technical Lead and Salesforce MVP Maria Belli on the best places to get started.

So you want to be a Salesforce Admin but don’t know where to start? Luckily for all of us, there are many, many wonderful resources available to learn from.

Salesforce MVP Maria Belli

First off, I highly recommend creating a Salesforce Developer org to practice in. I suggest using a personal email address to sign up for your developer org instead of a work email address. The biggest benefit to using a personal email address versus a work email address is your Developer org can follow you wherever you go. This org will allow you to test the concepts you learn along the way and possibly try out apps from the AppExchange all without disrupting your employer’s sandbox or production orgs.

Ok, so now that we got that out of the way, on to the resources!

Trailhead

My new favorite that I keep telling everyone about is this fantastic Salesforce interactive learning path called Trailhead. There are currently nearly 20  different “trails” to choose from. And Salesforce keeps adding additional trails. Some trails include:

• Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Admin trails
• Learn CRM essentials
• Migrating to the Lightning experience
• Prepare for Salesforce releases

There are quite a few learning objectives and modules to choose from within these trails. There are challenges built right and you have the opportunity to earn some really cool badges.

Salesforce Help and Training

Second place to look for information would be the Salesforce Help & Training. It’s my go-to place when looking for specific content such as Release Notes, Knowledge articles, guides, tip sheets, and some basic online training videos. I have to say, it’s probably one of the most robust documentation repositories I have ever seen any company provide.

The Salesforce Success Community

Another valuable resource is the Salesforce Success Community. You can join local User Groups, Collaborate with other Salesforce users around the world, ask questions, and create and/or promote Ideas. One fantastic group to follow, among many in the Success Community, is “Success – Getting Started” – it is monitored by Salesforce employees, Salesforce MVPs, and other customers like yourself. With a community of over 1.5 million contributing members, you are never alone!

Salesforce University

Lastly, if you have the means, you should try to take the Salesforce Instructor-Led Training. I was fortunate to attend the “Administration Essentials for New Admins (ADM201)” course back in 2010 and it was a great starting point.

CASE partners offers cloud-based and on-premise systems design and development, systems integration, and network & infrastructure solutions for businesses throughout New England and across the U.S.