Learning Coding Skills May Be Easier Than You Think

Last week, I tried to convince you how easy the path can be from Salesforce Administrator to developer.  This week, I'd like to look at a couple of additional resources for the administrator who is beginning to dabble in code.

Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and
try new skills.  You may be better than you think.

As I've mentioned before, Flow, or Visual Workflow, is a lot like a visual programming tool in the ways that it can be used to add complex functionality and alter the Salesforce user interface just by clicking on various programmatic elements.

But you can make Flows even more impactful by employing Visualforce as well.  With Visualforce, you can further customize the user interface and even incorporate HTML, CSS and JavaScript to provide more bells and whistles.

Visualforce also opens the door to more programmatic control over your Flow.  You can create more complex data interactions, such as referencing static resources, by adding an Apex controller to a Visualforce page that calls a Flow.  You can also use a custom Apex controller to specify a variable finish location for the Flow, for example finishing on a newly created record detail page.

I have written about this previously on my blog, here: http://www.snugsfbay.com/2014/04/salesforce-flow-using-record-ids-at.html

You might also be interested in watching a Dreamforce session I co-presented on this topic, which includes all the code you need to customize your Flow from start to finish, including the unit test: http://dreamforce.vidyard.com/watch/7mBX_EQGTTz8pmZeo0724A

Either way, I hope that you'll agree Flow is a great tool for administrators who are interested in expanding their skills and taking on more complex business problems.  And it provides a great stepping stone into learning to code in Visualforce and Apex as well.