If you haven’t watched Parts 1 and 2 of this series, consider taking a quick detour to:
- Get introduced to Trailhead
- Set up a Salesforce account for use with Trailhead
Then you’ll be ready to dig into Trailhead and kick your Salesforce knowledge into high gear!
Video Transcript
I’m Karin Tracy, VP of Marketing at Fíonta, a Salesforce.org Premium Partner.
Today, we’re going to talk about using the Salesforce educational tools offered through the Trailhead training program. You have a distinct Salesforce login for your training efforts – if you don’t, refer to our video called Creating a Salesforce Account for Training. Provided that you’re ready, go ahead and log in, and we’ll meet you there!
Let’s take a look at the Administrator Beginner Trail. You can see that the trail is targeted to Admins and Beginners from its tags and it also shows your percentage completion for each module in the trail as well as the estimated time to complete the entire trail. The modules below also show their estimated time to completion, and the arrows will change to checkboxes as you complete each of the modules.
Next, let’s look at the Getting Started with the Platform unit. Each unit has links to the overall trail or module and to the next and previous modules. Most start with the learning objectives and an intro and all of them end with resources and a challenge. You can navigate through the modules using the index on the right side of the page.
This module includes a hands-on example, so you need a Salesforce environment to work through it. That might lead you to ask, didn’t we just create one of those? Yes, actually, you did, but as you get more advanced, you’ll need a fresh environment to face more complicated challenges. So Salesforce gives you a system for managing additional Salesforce environments inside your Trailhead Salesforce account. Inception anyone?
So… to get started, click the three dots next to your demo org to choose which demo org you would like to work in.
Then click Launch your hands-on org to open your ‘playground.’
For this challenge, we need to add a custom field to the Contact object.
Now that I have added a custom field to the Contact object, I need to return to Trailhead and have it verify the challenge. Just click ‘Check Challenge’ and I get 500 points and the module is marked as completed.
As you complete the additional modules, usually you can re-use your ‘developer playground’ unless the module tells you otherwise. Projects and superbadges usually need their own playgrounds and as you go on you may need to name or delete your playgrounds. You can do that from the dropdown next to the ‘Launch’ button by clicking the three dots.
By clicking on ‘Manage Orgs’ you can see your existing playgrounds and edit their labels or disconnect them. Let’s say I want to rename this one to ‘Beginner Admin’ – I can just click the ‘rename’ button, edit the Label, and press Save. Now I can choose ‘Beginner Admin’ from the dropdown menu on the ‘Launch your playground’ button.
One last thing, you can see your status, points, and badges from your Dashboard, which can be a fun way to track your progress in learning Salesforce and also to encourage a little friendly office competition.
This concludes our ‘walking’ tour of Trailhead. See the links below for a few suggested trailheads for nonprofit users and admins.
Learn more about our Salesforce practice or contact us.
360 View of Salesforce for Nonprofits
Cradles to Crayons Nonprofit User
Follow the story of Cradles to Crayons as they process donations and distribute funds.
Donation Management
Create Contact and Associated Household Account
Learning Objectives
- Describe the Salesforce Account model
- Describe how the NPSP Household Account model differs from the standard Salesforce Account model
- Explain the difference between a Household account and an Organization account
- Create a new contact and associated Household account in Salesforce
- Create a second contact and create a relationship between contacts
Edit Household and Contact Information
Learning Objectives
- Describe how Household names and addresses work in the NPSP
- Change a Household address
- Override the default address for a Contact
- Customize Household names and greetings
Create an Organization Account and Affiliations
Learning Objectives
- Describe the purpose of Organization Accounts, Affiliations and Primary Affiliations
- Explain the difference between a relationship and an affiliation in the NPSP
- Create an Organization and an Affiliation
Create and Manage Donations
Learning Objectives
- Describe how the NPSP uses Opportunities to track donations
- Create a donation from an individual
- Create a donation from an organization
- Describe how donation “rollups” work in Salesforce
Create Payments and Recurring Donations
Learning Objectives
- Explain the difference between a payment and a recurring donation in NPSP
- Create payments and recurring donations
Reports and Dashboards
Introduction to Reports and Dashboards
Learning Objectives
- Explain the difference between a report and dashboard
- Create a custom report type
Create Reports with the Report Builder
Learning Objectives
- Use the drag-and-drop report builder
- Explain the value of using filters, cross filters, and filter logic
- Create a tabular report
Format Reports
Learning Objectives
- Describe the four report formats: tabular, summary, matrix, and joined
- Create a matrix report
Visualize Your Data with Dashboards and Charts
Learning Objectives
- Use the drag-and-drop dashboard builder
- Explain the difference between report charts and dashboards
- Set up a dynamic dashboard
- Add a report chart to a report
- Add an embedded chart to a record page layout
- Create a dashboard and underlying report