This Salesforce website will make YOU a better Solution Architect!
Deciding on a career path is tough, especially when it comes down to Salesforce and the multitude of roles available to the likes of you and me today. But Salesforce are making it easier and easier with the likes of the website we’re going to be blogging about today.
My intention was never to be in the Solution Architect role, but I have found it to be natural progression and now love what I do more than ever. Don’t get me wrong it has it’s moments, like any role does but ultimately being responsible for the solution and being able to lead transformation within businesses is very rewarding.
That’s why, in this post today, we’re going to be talking about Salesforce’s latest and greatest website for Architects. Aspiring Architects, Existing Architects, Experienced Architects, one site to rule them all. https://architect.salesforce.com/. We’re going to cover why I think this is great, and what I think it needs to be even better. Salesforce are looking for feedback on this, so if you have your own there is a survey you can fill out here with your thoughts.
Unless I’ve already sold this website to you in the introduction, which I probably haven’t, then you’re probably asking: “Luke, sounds great but why would I even need to use something like this?” Right? Well, let me explain some key benefits straight off the bat.
One single location for everything needed architecturally throughout each stage within a lifecycle of a project .
Blog posts written by Architects, experiencing the exact same as you within projects.
Decision guides explaining the best way to implement a certain feature and the advantages/disadvantages of doing so.
Example Architecture templates.
Design patterns for multiple different scenarios with actual examples.
Governance examples around data/change management and operating models.
Continually being updated to reflect the latest and greatest from Salesforce
Very easy to navigate and designed well (expected)
Sounds good right? And we’re just scratching the surface. Hopefully now you’re on the edge of your seat and want to keep reading, so lets dive a little more into each of these areas and how they can help you become the best Solution Architect you can be. Disclaimer this website is also great for admins/consultants among many other Salesforce roles*
I am going to split this blog up to include each of the tabs offered on the site, starting first with design. Having the tabs split up like this allows you get the right material for whichever stage you’re at. If you’re ‘designing’ a solution for example in the early stage, then this tab has you covered. In my opinion this is the most useful tab, I have it bookmarked so I can reference it when need be. So what’s available?
Architect Decision Guides
Decision guides are brilliant. I don’t want to cover these too much because I did a full post on these for SalesforceBen which is available here if you’d like to give it a read. Ultimately these decision guides breakdown the multiple different ways of designing a specific solution, workflow/process builder/flow for example, then explain the advantages and disadvantages of going with each approach. They also go into a lot more depth around limitations and limits so definitely worth checking out. There are currently 3 decision guides:
Migrating Changes - How do we get config/code from one environment to the next
Build Forms - Providing the best UI and framework for forms within Salesforce
Record-Triggered Automation - Multiple ways of triggering record automation (if you read any start with this one)
These are a great place to start if you’re building out one of the solutions listed above, with plenty more to come in the future.
Diagrams and Reference Architectures
This section provides architecture templates for common solutions which are implemented on then Salesforce platform. Whilst there is only a few available at the moment, they provide a great base if you’re implementing a solution which is available. Even if you’re not implementing one of the solutions, they’re good examples of documentation and how you can present things such as complete architecture diagrams. I can see great potential with these diagrams, but would be great to also see more common documents in there as well like good ERDs (Entity Relationship Diagrams) among others which are needed in every project.
Design Patterns
Perhaps for the more technically minded, this section focuses on various different design patterns within Salesforce along with best practice and implementation guides, again for some common scenarios. A lot of these are very scenario focused, but 100% worth checking out if you’re implementing one of the solutions listed within the available guides. Here are some of the guides which are less scenario specific and are good to be aware of:
Trust & Compliance/AppExchange
To finish off the ‘Design’ tab there are links to both the Salesforce Trust & Compliance site, which is used to ensure that your instance isn’t experiencing and technical issues as well as check out the impressive wide range of compliance certifications Salesforce has. Then finally the AppExchange, which i’m assuming everyone reading this knows about, but if not, think Apple App Store, but for Salesforce. You can check both out below:
This tab focuses on the delivery aspect of a project lifecycle. The next few tabs have considerably less data than the design tab, so I’ll try and pass through them quickly explaining what’s available currently.
Release Calendars
A single location to check out the multiple release calendars and trust statuses across different clouds/platforms. If you asked me what I think, i’d say it’s probably not as fast as just Googling for the information, but could see it being useful with some future tweaks.
Release Management Resources
Some very useful resources all about release management. A huge part of any Salesforce implementation, with an ever increasing spotlight on it.
If you’re in the early stages of your implementation I 100% recommend reading through each of these resources, especially the development standards one. Setting this kind of precedence and cadence at the start will save you a lot of time later on down the line, I promise you.
Tools and Documentation
Some quick links to documentation around tools such as Mulesoft/Tableu/Heroku. Worth checking out if you have not had any experience with the tools listed.
Metadata Coverage Report
Last but not least, the Metadata Coverage Report. This table provides you with the best way to deploy certain metadata within your Salesforce environment. For example:
We can see here a CustomTab is available via all deployment methods listed, as well as if there are any known issues with deploying, which can definitely be useful (many hours have been spent trying to understand why something didn’t deploy correctly)
This tab focuses on the Governance aspect of an implementation. Although, a lot of the data governance articles listed are directed towards Tableu, so if you’re not using Tableu, it won’t be of massive help. There’s also Operating Models listed, but again, can’t see being of massive help if you’re not delivering larger scale projects. One header on this page however should definitely be looked at:
Change Management
An area often overlooked when implementing Salesforce for our customers. We’re transforming the way our clients work, age old traditions, age old spreadsheets, and often it’s easy to forget there are people on the other end which have to use the product we have implemented in it’s place. It’s easy for us because we use Salesforce day in day out, but if you’ve been inputting a spreadsheet for the last 10 years, sometimes you’re reluctant to change!
As well as change management there is also great documentation on agile delivery and CoE (Center of Excellence), both of which are highly valuable if you’re delivering agile projects. I would recommend giving all three a read.
The final tab we’re going to discuss in this blog is Roadmap. This tab is mainly focused on the Salesforce roadmap and offers a single location to find release notes for multiple different Salesforce products. If you’re looking for a specific set of release notes, it may be useful to you.
Roadmap Resources and Templates
Building out a roadmap for your clients can sometimes be a difficult task, but these resources and templates provide you with a great starting point, If you’re new to roadmaps, then this is a great place to begin, before moving onto more targeted resources depending on the type of roadmap you’re trying to deliver. Many consultancies will have their own approach to building out roadmaps, so it is also best to see what others within your organisation are doing whilst referring to these documents.
IdeaExhange
Last but not least is a link to the IdeaExchange. Salesforces latest approach to ensure that it’s delivering updates based upon our feedback and most desired features by the community. If you haven’t already check it out and spend your voting tokens! It’s also a great way to check if something you need could potentially be coming up in one of Salesforces next releases (although not certain)
So there we have it, most of the main features which the Architect site is currently offering. Here are some of the things which personally I would like to see during the future to improve:
More decision guides - In my SalesforceBen post I put forward the idea for more decision guides such as (Salesforce have stated they’re already exploring some of these which is exciting).
Integration Approaches (The best integration approach depending on your requirement and the data required)
Permissions (Choosing the best permission setup for your requirement and Permission Set Vs Profile)
Which Cloud (Useful at the very beginning of discovery, highlighting key requirements and indicating which clouds/licenses would be needed)
More relative documentation examples
As Architects we love documentation! Right? Well maybe not, but it doesn’t help us or out clients if we don’t. So i’d love to see some more examples of documentation relevant throughout the whole project lifecycle
Entity Relationship Diagrams
Functional Specs
Technical Specs
How to handle certain scenarios
Speak to Architects and find out their mistakes, how they overcame them, how they avoided them - so we can do the same
Key release notes for Architects
Highlights chosen by Architects as to which they think are the best features of new Salesforce releases
More around the design stage
More highlights around the design stage
How to design great solutions outside of Salesforce using the likes of Sketch/other design tools then translate those to solutions
How to create great user stories. What makes a great story?
These are just some of my thoughts going through the website as of March 2021. If you have any great ideas I’d love to know, leave a comment under the post.
Well, this post turned out a lot longer than I thought it would. If you made it to the end I salute you! I think this website by Salesforce it’s absolutely brilliant and 100% a step in the right direction. I can see the same being done for multiple roles, Business Analyst, Consultants for example. With the ever increasing nature of Salesforce it’s incredibly difficult as an Architect to stay on top of everything. Having a single source to reference for all things Architect is a great help and I have already seen the benefits by referencing it when solutioning for my clients.
I hope this post was useful, at least insightful if you were not aware of the the Salesforce Architect website is all about. Thank you all for reading. If you’re interested in any of my other content you can check it all out here as well as my growing Youtube channel here
