What It Means To Find Success

The San Francisco Bay Area has its share of famous people, and for the most part, San Franciscans could not care less.  So when I saw a familiar looking face near China Town, well, it could have been a famous person, but if it was, he was dressed like a panhandler.  He was entertaining a group of tourists on the corner.  That's not odd either, San Francisco has some entertaining buskers.

At home, I told my kids that I saw someone who was likely this famous person they would recognize.  One of them had time to go downtown with me to see.  'No,' my kid said, 'it's not him.'

But it didn't matter.  The guy had been entertaining tourists and we stopped to be entertained as well.  He told riddles and made us laugh.  He invited my kid to hang out with him any time when I took their picture together.  It was an enjoyable moment with someone we normally wouldn't be talking to, whether it was the famous person or the panhandler didn't matter.

Even though my kid said no, I still believed that it could have been the famous person in a bit of disguise, just hanging out.  Why would a famous person do that?  Why not?  It would be an opportunity to connect with people without particular regard for social status and money.

I went back a few days later for an autograph.  That's right.  I decided I didn't care one way or the other whether this was the famous person or the panhandler.  There are a lot of people who aren't famous at all who deserve to be treated like a star, and everyone feeling a little down-and-out can benefit from a bit of appreciation.  I wrote a note of thanks for entertaining us and spreading joy.  The message applied to either the star or the panhandler.  But I put some money in the card just for the panhandler.

I'm keeping the autographed picture for my kid.  I don't know what kind of success my kids might ultimately find, but I hope the photo reminds them that nothing of much importance separates the star from the panhandler.  And opportunities to connect with other people offer the best success any of us can find.

Now what does any of this have to do with Salesforce?  If you check out the community at success.salesforce.com and the power of us hub, you will see two online communities where people connect on business and technical topics, including offering each other professional and career tips.  It's a very friendly and supportive environment.  Salesforce clearly has invested resources into keeping the community strong and relevant and the opportunities to connect with other people truly offer all of us more chance of finding success.

5 Ways To Get Help With Your Salesforce Problem

Q:  How many different ways can you find help with your Salesforce implementation, administration and development?  A:  Lots!

If something appears to be off, you can easily find help!

Salesforce is so chock-full of features and the thrice-yearly releases offer so many improvements, it can be challenging to keep up.  For administrators who support smaller implementations, they may be the only person trying to keep up with everything that Salesforce can do for your business.  Salesforce has found a way to help with both of these situations by offering multiple avenues for help and support, including making it easy for the community of Salesforce users and administrators to help one another.

When you find yourself in need of help, here are my top five recommendations for finding the answers you need:


1.  Help and Training -- Salesforce offers standard and Premier Support and training for most users.  Help, without training, is offered for users with developer accounts.  Salesforce Help and Training should be your front-line for finding out how to do things in Salesforce.  All of the product documentation is searchable here, including some Best Practice documents.

Premier Support is what you want your support to be like, really.  Open 24 hours a day, they will track down even the craziest problems and solve them for you.  In addition to fantastic support, the online training available with Premier Support includes several of the classes offered in-person by Salesforce University. If you are working on Salesforce certification, you should definitely take a look at these training options!  And developers should note that Premier Support even offers help with code.

2.  The Community -- Let your peers give you a hand.  Online communities, success.salesforce.com and, for nonprofits using the nonprofit starter pack or other nonprofit specific applications, the Power of Us Hub, offer multiple channels for helpful discussions.

• Answers -- Search for questions that others may have posted on topics of interest to you or post your own questions.  Lots of folks are looking for a Salesforce challenge and would love to answer your questions.  Note that the questions are organized by categories listed on the left side of the page.  For nonprofit organizations, you have an additional avenue for answers through the Power of Us Hub Q&A, a resource for applications and concerns specific to nonprofits.
• Chatter Groups -- Sometimes, what you really want is to be kept abreast of what's happening and hear ideas from other Salesforce users and administrators.  Chatter Groups provide just that sort of information.  With groups like the Success -- Getting Started and Success -- Release Readiness, among others, you can keep up with Salesforce features.
• User Groups -- Among the most helpful Chatter Groups, you will find the Salesforce User Groups online as well.  If you find a group in your geographic area, consider signing up for your local group and trying to attend meetings in person to get to know your peers.  Meetings give you an opportunity to ask other administrators, users and developers how easy or difficult a task may be before you try to hire a consultant.  User Groups can also keep you informed about Salesforce features and best practices and third-party application availability as well.
• Developer Groups -- Like User Groups for developers, these provide opportunities for discussing technical issues and topics.

3.  Developer Community -- the developer boards offer a great place for help with all your Apex and Visualforce needs.  If you are trying to go beyond formulas and workflow, you may have questions that have been previously discussed on the developer boards.  You can find code samples to get you started with your projects as well.

4.  Office Hours -- both the Salesforce MVP community and the Salesforce Foundation host office hours as a regular webinar that folks can join to ask questions and get answers. Both provide a forum for conversations about problems and challenges you may be encountering.  The MVPs offer general help with Salesforce and the foundation offers help with issues concerning the Nonprofit Starter Pack and any related topics.

5.  Out in the Wild -- The community is also active outside of the Salesforce environment in places like Twitter (try #askforce when you want to make sure your question gets seen) and StackExchange, which tends to focus on technical challenges and developer concerns.  FindSFinfo is another great resource when you are looking for information to solve your problems, it performs a search of official documentation, discussion boards, blogs, code repositories, AppExchange, and videos for any text you enter.

By cultivating a strong community, Salesforce ensures that you can always find the help you need!