Salesforce Ninja: An Elite Blog about Salesforce.com

  One of the early challenges that I faced while learning Salesforce, almost eight years back, is that it was too big of a cookie to eat. It still is. Salesforce Platform is huge- it has many products, integrations, different design patterns, different coding standards and  Reid Carlberg  is always experimenting with something next!!!. On top of that, new developers and admins are walking into the fold with their ideas of coding, the uncertainty of the job and a massive task at hand- learn this new technology that starts with a dot com. The task is daunting.  Salesforce on its part is very forthcoming to help the community- with its trailhead, online videos, webinars, and certification programs. But too much information in itself is not a very helpful start of a career. At times like these- you sometimes wish, you could take a deep breath, pause, reflect and say - ok this is where I start. That moment is exactly why the new book -   Salesforce Platform...

Today I added most important color to my certification journey. As of May 1st 2013, I am a Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant. After the straight forward questions and where is what in the Administration and Advance Administration exams, Sales Cloud Consultant examination is more like how are you going to achieve it. This is a 60 question exam with 105 minutes allowed to complete and a 73% is passing. This was the exam that took a lot of time, since the questions are tricky. Few helpful hints that will help you crack this exam. 1. Read. Read. Read. Read the questions carefully, very carefully. There were instances were most answers are straight forward wrong and some answers are completely confusing. Select two options and I thought all four correct. 2. Prepare throughly. Don't look for any documentation, dumps or any other material online or offline. Don't go for the questions captured in a word document that was shared to someone you know by someone h...

In my attempt at maximum certifications in 60 days, I completed Salesforce Certified Administrator exam on February 11th 2013 So you have decided to ramp up your career and take certifications in your hand. Good choice. It is also likely that this is the first time you have heard of Salesforce, certification and since your company has a vision of you completing the certification you have decided to do it. At this stage it is likely that, You have done extensive googling. You have received countless brain-dumps. And you have received plenty of advise from different types of users which ranges from Admin certification is easier than making coffee to Admin certification is tougher than building a rocket-ship to fly off to the moon. The purpose of this guide is to give you a clear understanding of what to expect when you are expected to become Certified Salesforce Administrator. To bring sense to all the things you have seen so far and to clearly explain w...

Every-time I am in a training room, there is a single most query asked by almost everyone, is there a book on Salesforce. The answer is very difficult to answer for multiple reasons. One, Salesforce is always on steroids, meaning it changes a lot in too shorter time, the changes are good and excellent, however it poses a trouble for book publishers. Any book project takes at-least 8 to 9 months to complete and going by that standard, Salesforce would be already changed thrice in that period. Yet, still books are there and some very good books are available on Salesforce . One small effort in the books was Force.com Developer Certification Handbook (DEV401) written by me along with the great team of Packt Publishers and even greater reviewers Ankit Arora , Matthew Botos and  John Rotenstein  The book is primarily aimed at certification and will be helpful in easing out the biggest trouble, where to start. Its a simple marker which says, start here. With the...