Is Salesforce development and designer specializations for everyone?

Salesforce is definitely one of the most highly sought after skillsets in the IT industry today – and they have one of the best training platforms – Trailhead. Though the numbers of modules and topics have increased over the years, and content gets updated frequently, I’ve found that complementing Trailhead with online tutorials is always beneficial – especially if you’d like to move to custom development. SF Custom development has come a long way with transitions from S-controls to Apex / VF to Lightning Aura and now the latest Lightning Web Components (LWC) – so developers and technical team members need to keep updating their skills.

Now the question – would everyone who is learning Salesforce need to know custom development? How much deeper into Salesforce do I need to dive into? Well – my answer would be – it depends (ha – very diplomatic response right?) There are various roles that folks can play in Salesforce – some are purely into functional areas such as Administrators, Business Analysts and Functional Consultants. I have also come across team members who are involved with Salesforce teams – such as Product Owners, Project / Delivery managers, Release managers / leads, etc. Many of them are content with learning declarative development (just clicks – no code) and do not venture into custom development. For those functional consultants, I’d still recommend going deeper into some of the Designer areas that Salesforce has come out with as shown below.

Even if you are Functional Consultant, there’s no pre-requisite in diving more into some of the specializations. For e.g. a Delivery / Release manager will definitely benefit from learning about Development Lifecycle and Deployment Designer. Sharing & Visibility is really helpful for administrators when focusing on the overall security model involving OWD, Roles, Profiles, Permission Sets and Record Sharing. Even understanding Data Architecture helps consultants to take into account how to build integrated solutions from a scalable perspective in order to handle larger data volumes without hitting limits and performance issues.

If you have a passion for programming, and even if you are not currently in a development role, it’s always good to learn custom development in Salesforce. Again where do you start? Should I learn Apex / VF – or should I go straight to Lightning? If Lightning, should I learn Aura or the new LWC? If you have a background in Object Oriented programming, then you should be able to pick up Apex without much difficulty. If you have experience in web development – especially with HTML and Javascript, then you’d easily understand Visualforce and Lightning. It’s always recommended for you to start with Apex and VF as there are still a lot of customers using Classic and features having customizations in Apex and VF. If you are new to Lightning and just starting out, an overview of Aura and building Lightning components is good to have – but not mandatory for you to learn Lightning Web Components – and it’s recommended to use LWC for any new development for your org.

I am from a Computer Science background and have experience in programming from my younger years – so passion for coding and problem solving has always been in my blood. Even though I had been with my Salesforce team for more than a decade, I had chosen to remain more on the delivery and project management side of things with a high level knowledge of the Salesforce Platform. With the launch of the designer certifications, I tried my first one – the Development Lifecycle and Deployment Designer exam, which I aced since it was closely related to the work that I was already doing (and having an agile background definitely helped). I then started going into more detailed areas thanks to Trailhead and slowly but gradually gained few of the Consultant and Administrator certifications as well.

I thought that would be the end of the road for me since I wasn’t involved in development – and didn’t pursue the Platform Developer or the other Architect certs. Earlier this year, I felt that it’s never late to learn Salesforce development – but wasn’t sure how to start? There’s lot of great content and tutorials online – not to mention the Apex and VF developer guides and books. I wanted something simple – and which I could learn online at my own pace. I came across a set of Visualforce tutorial videos from MyTutorialRack by Deepika Khanna on youtube – and decided to go through them. Yes! – I first did VF before even going into Apex! Having worked on HTML, Javascript and the occasional web development in PHP, learning VF seemed easy. I was now hooked onto Salesforce custom development – and wanted to learn more. I’ve listed a few tutorials that I came across:

MyTutorialRack

MytTutorialRack has courses on Admin, Apex, Visualforce, Lightning development (Aura), Process Builder, Flow, Git, Javascript – and last but not the least the latest Lightning Web Components (LWC) – you can buy a specific course or take the monthly subscription. I decided to subscribe for the courses in MyTutorialRack on a monthly rate – it’s only about 9$/month – and you get access to most of the important topics – it’s a real value add in my opinion. I have been learning through Deepika’s tutorial and the videos have really helped me improve my experience with Salesforce development. She explains concepts well and uses good scenarios in a proper flow so it’s easy to understand for newbies. I have already recommended the tutorial to some of my community and team members who were looking for advanced content on Lightning especially LWC. Thanks to Deepika’s training videos and ofcourse to Trailhead, I was able to pass Platform Developer 1 and achieve the Application Architect level this year. I no longer feel a stranger when my team discusses code near me – and always keep looking for ways to help them (hopefully fix and not break something!).

Apex Academy – SFDC99 by David Liu

David launched the Apex Academy a few years back and introduced few courses which are now on Plurasight specifically covering:

• Play by Play: Knowing When to Code in Salesforce
• Apex Academy: Fundamental Salesforce Coding Techniques
• Apex Academy: The Power of SOQL
• Apex Academy: Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Coding in Salesforce

These are definitely good topics, but the content is a bit dated – and I couldn’t find any on Lightning yet. The personal subscription for Plurasight is about 29$ per month – so if you have a free corporate subscription, then it’d be good to go through these tutorial videos.

Jeet Singh – free Salesforce Tutorial Videos

I have seen mixed reviews for Jeet Singh’s tutorial videos – I’ve included the link to his set of FREE Salesforce tutorial videos which should help if you are looking to gain knowledge on specific areas in admin or development. I wouldn’t recommend subscribing for the course at high price as there are more cheaper options online and many of the topics are already covered in the free videos.

SFDCFacts – by Manish Choudhari

Manish’s site SFDCFacts has some good tutorial videos – highly recommend his detailed videos on Lightning. He also has some nice blog posts on DX, CPQ, Lightning and Interview questions – so definitely worth checking. He has started a few topics on LWC – hoping to see more content in the near future!

Few SFDC blogs worth checking out

• Jitendra Zaa’s Blog and Videos
• Magulan Duraipandian’s InfallibleTechie
• Salesforce Ninja
• Naveen Dhanraj’s blog posts

For my friends who are already into Salesforce custom development, I’d also recommend you definitely get experience in declarative development (Admin and App Builder) – like David mentions in one of his courses, knowing when to code is really essential. Just because you know how to write a trigger, doesn’t mean that you always have to! I have also seen extreme cases where teams keep adding more and more logic into Process Builders and hitting performance issues as time goes by. Choosing the right approach is quite important – understanding sequence of execution, number of DML Statements executed, limits that you may hit all can help you narrow down – sometimes it’s more wise to write a trigger than use a Process Builder or Flow.

That’s all for now folks – thank you for reading. I will update the post if I come across more tutorial sites or interesting blogs that is highly recommended in the Salesforce community – please do subscribe to be notified of updates. Also do keep checking Trailhead for new modules and updates to existing content – and of course features launched as part of the Salesforce releases. Till then, happy learning!