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Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about all the cool new features coming in the Winter '27 Release, including Builder Central, Setup with Agentforce, and what's new with Flow. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee. Admins are agent-powered with Builder Central and Setup with Agentforce First of all, this is the first week with our new format, there will be a video version as well. Coming soon to the Salesforce Admins YouTube channel to see demos, clips, and visual explainers for each episode. Today, we're looking ahead to the Winter '27 Release with Jennifer Lee to find out which new features admins need to know about. One thing that generated a lot of excitement at Dreamforce is Builder Central. It's an intelligent, agent-powered workspace where you can build, test, and deploy solutions using natural language. You really need to see it in action to understand how powerful it is, so check out the video for this episode, where we have a demo for you. Setup with Agentforce is also now generally available (GA). This tool simplifies so much about managing users, configuring your org, and troubleshooting user access issues. Jen's found it to be especially helpful for reorganizing role hierarchy and, in general, taking control of permissions in your org. Three Flow enhancements to make your life easier Jen highlights three Flow enhancements that she thinks will have a big impact for admins: Edit History allows you to review, restore, and reuse past versions of a flow. If you've ever found yourself staring at a broken flow and asking yourself why you can't just go back to a version that worked, this enhancement is for you. Also new in Winter '27, you can now process multiple records with Screen Flows from List Views and Related Lists. This makes it easier than ever for your users to do bulk updates with a quick mass action, without having to leave the screen flow they're already working in. Finally, Test Mode (Beta) allows you to debug and test in Flow Builder in one place. You can save manual tests so you're not entering the same criteria over and over again, and use them to build an automated testing suite. Jen's steps for release readiness The wonderful thing about Salesforce is that a new release is always around the corner. For Jen, release readiness comes down to four steps: Plan and learn Get hands-on Test Communicate with your team and users The good news is that by reading this post, you're already doing step 1. So my advice is to pick one new feature for this week's episode and spend some time exploring it. As admins, we learn so much more when we get our hands dirty and start building. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Jen for more highlights from the Winter '27 Release. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch a new episode every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins YouTube Channel: @SalesforceAdmins Salesforce Admins YouTube video: A 4-Step Release Readiness Guide for Admins Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Jen's Top Winter '27 Release Features For Admins Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Introducing Setup with Agentforce: Your New Admin Superpower Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: September Monthly Retro Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jen on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full Transcript Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast, this week I'm joined by Jennifer Lee to walk through Winter '27 Release readiness, including Builder Central setup with Agentforce Flow and some of the features that admins should be paying attention to after Dreamforce. Now, hey, quick heads up, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, there's a video version of this episode over on our Salesforce Admins YouTube channel and this time it matters because we're actually dropping demos and clips into the conversation. Now, don't get me wrong, you'll still get the full discussion right here but you're going to miss out on some really fun stuff by not seeing the video one. So, go check out that video version on YouTube, let me know what you think, in the meantime, let's get Jennifer on the podcast. So, Jennifer, welcome to the podcast. Jennifer Lee: Thanks for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, it's October, it's post Dreamforce time which means we got to start paying two releases and you put out an amazing release readiness blog. We've also gone through Dreamforce, there's been iterations of stuff being updated so I figured why not have Jennifer back on the podcast to talk about everything that we saw at Dreamforce, everything that was in the release and maybe, I think, some stuff that missed your blog or needs to be updated. Does that sound current? Jennifer Lee: Yes, that makes sense. Mike Gerholdt: Okay, perfect. Well- Jennifer Lee: And I had to get all dolled up for this episode. Mike Gerholdt: I know. It's a video podcast so, for those of you listening on iTunes, there's a video version of this over on YouTube where hint, hint, there will actually be GIFs and video demos to watch so stay tuned. Hopefully it turns out, it's early, here we go. First thing I want to talk about is one of the cool ... There's a lot of cool stuff that we launched at Dreamforce but Builder Central. It was right after the keynote with our Salesforce live content, it was featured in the admin keynote. I hadn't had a chance to really play around with it until after Dreamforce which is now. You've had a chance to see it and interact with it but tell people about Builder Central if they skip past it. Jennifer Lee: All right. So, what Builder Central is, basically, it's a tool where you go in and describe what you want. You can describe the app or the agent in plain language and then the build agent goes and does all these things and it creates this plan for you, describes all the requirements and then it goes and builds all the things and you can go in and preview the items and make tweaks to it. And then, when you're ready, you can go, say, deploy from your sandbox to production. Mike Gerholdt: Yup. Yeah, it builds it. So, I talked to the PM just this morning, it builds it in a virtual environment because I had no ... I was like, "How is it doing this thing? Is it changing stuff already?" He's like, "No, it's a virtual environment and it doesn't change anything until you deploy." Even in a sandbox, you deploy it. So, I used it, it was so cool. I think it was so cool because it's just top of mind, you're like, "Hey, could you give me this?" And, spoiler alert, I had it create a screen flow. Not that I can't create screen flows, I can, it just takes me a little bit and Builder Central just cranked it out, no problem then it was like, "Hey, do you want to add this to a page?" and I said, "Yes." And then I could go back ... The cool thing is then I could go back in and I could actually see the flow components that were built, to me that was like, "Ugh." This is so much easier not because it's building it for me, it is, but because now I can learn and go back and see what are the components I should have built as opposed to getting frustrated that I don't know what the right thing is to build next. Jennifer Lee: Yeah. The great thing is, in that preview mode, you can go in and drill into the data model and you can actually see the things versus it just coming back and saying like, "Oh, I did these things for you and here's just a list." Mike Gerholdt: Right, yeah. Jennifer Lee: The fact that you can actually drill into it and look at it is really cool. Mike Gerholdt: Yup. And it doesn't just duplicate stuff. It looks at your org and says, oh, well we have this, let's integrate this. It really feels like, man, if I would've had that as a new admin, it would help me jumpstart all of the things that I need to build. And could you go over your skis building a little bit? You could but I think the onus is then on you to go back and learn all the things that it built and why it built it. Jennifer Lee: And I love that it puts that human in the loop piece, it just doesn't just do it for you. You're going in and you're like, "Okay, this wasn't quite right so I'm going to tweak this a little bit," but, yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Right. It's currently in beta, right? Jennifer Lee: Correct, correct. So, this is the time where folks can go in and just kick the tires and check it out. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I can't, I can't wait. Actually, one thing we're going to do so, if you're listening to the audio version of this, jump over to YouTube because right now I'm going to put in a demo of Builder Central. Okay. So, that was the demo that the PM team put together of Builder Central, I think it's really cool, it's also the demo they showed in the connected content. It only begins to scratch the surface, I think this is the strongest V1 product I've seen us come out with in terms of just admins having a superpower. It needs a cape, Builder Central should get its own cape. Jennifer Lee: Let's totally make one. Mike Gerholdt: I know. So, there's a lot of other tools. Set up with Agentforce is one of them, let's talk about that. Jennifer Lee: Yeah. So, folks, if you're in my release notes blog, notice that I don't nearly have as many of the setup with Agentforce features that are currently in the release notes so don't come at me for that but let me just highlight a few that weren't in my blog. So, Data 360 is no longer required so that's great but do note that there are some specialized tasks such as, if you're using related list enrichmen

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Alastair Dinning, Senior Solution Architect at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the process of adding new features to your org, from what to look for when you're reading through release notes to rolling something new out and driving adoption. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Alastair Dinning. Which new features should I pay attention to in the release notes? The exciting thing about working in the Salesforce ecosystem is that it's continually evolving. A new release is always around the corner, chock-full of new features that could improve your org. But how do you sift through everything to figure out what will add value and what's just a shiny new toy? My guest this week is Alastair Dinning, a Senior Solution Architect with Salesforce Professional Services. He has 14 years of experience as a consultant for businesses of all sizes, helping admins change their orgs for the better. For Alastair, the most important thing when you're looking through release notes is to have a clear understanding of your business processes and problems. Do any of these new features address a pain point? Whether you practice SABWA, run a steering committee of power users, or use a case management system for feedback, you need to have your finger on the pulse of your users. Three pathways for adding a new feature to your org Once you've identified a problem you'd like to address, Alastair lays out three options: you can build a declarative solution yourself, you can buy a solution off of the AppExchange, or you can work with a developer to code something custom. Building your own declarative solution means that you end up with something that's tailored exactly to your specific business requirements, but it also costs you resources in terms of time. Buying something off the AppExchange, on the other hand, costs you money up front, but you're saving a lot of time and can deploy the change quite quickly. Even if the solution isn't 100% right for your specific problem, Alastair encourages you to reach out to the AppExchange partner because they're often willing to make improvements. Finally, coding a custom solution is probably the most expensive in terms of internal resources, but gets you exactly what you want. The drawback here is flexibility. You don't want to end up with a solution that you can't update if your business context changes in the future. Know when to keep Salesforce steady for your users If you've spent time with your users and really understand their pain points, adoption should come easily. But at the end of the day, the job of the admin isn't to constantly roll out new features—it's to make life easier for your users. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to keep your Salesforce environment consistent and stable. That means not only identifying which new features could possibly be helpful for your org, but having proactive conversations with leadership about the bigger picture.  Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Alastair for more about how to roll out new features to your org and how admins can best work with consultants. And remember to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: September Monthly Retro: What Changed, What Matters, and What Admins Should Do Next Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Alastair on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm talking with Alastair Dinning, a senior solution architect with Salesforce Professional Services about how admins can decide if a feature is right for their org. We're going to dig into how to spot the business problem behind a feature, when to click, buy, or code your solution, how to prototype before making a big investment, and why timing and support ability matter just as much as functionality. So next time you find yourself reading the release notes and thinking, "Oh, that looks cool," you'll have a framework for deciding when to implement it. With that, let's get Alastair on the podcast. So Alistair, welcome to the podcast. Alistair Dinning: Thank you, Mike. It's good to be here. Mike: We connected ironically over Slack. Not ironic. Is it ironic? I always get hung up because I'm afraid I say ironic because I learned irony from Alanis Morissette, but we connected over Slack because you're a fan of the podcast and you work at Salesforce. And I was like, "Hey, I have this topic that I think you're perfect for." So let's start off by you letting everybody know what you do at Salesforce and how you got there. Alistair Dinning: So I am a senior solution architect with Salesforce Professional Services. I've been at Salesforce for give or take five years. I've been working in the ecosystem for 13 and my entire career has been as a declarative consultant and into being in the architect world. And I came to Salesforce through the acquisition attraction on demand and having spent my whole career, my Salesforce career in Salesforce consulting. So I've worked with a good number of organizations, whether they be small business, medium business, large business, government. I'm working currently with the Canadian federal government. I've worked with education, with nonprofit. And I mean, as a consultant, that's my approach to this job. And it's like, how do we as admins do things declaratively and do things well? And what can we bring to the table? Mike: Yeah. Wow. Worked with government. You must have a lot of scissors to cut all the red tape. Alistair Dinning: Yeah, government does bring a lot of red tape with it, but you make sense when you're talking about taxpayers' money. Mike: Yeah, no. I mean, it's all intentional for a reason. So let's talk... One of the biggest questions I always get, and it's a question I had as a Salesforce admin, which is how do I decide if this feature is right for my org? And feature could be anywhere from the biggest feature do we flip on? At one time we had customers had a choice of turning on lightning all the way down to the smallest little checkbox that maybe we added. And I was reading through some of the stuff that you do at Salesforce and I thought it'd be great to have that conversation with you about helping admins figure out if a feature is right and maybe give them some of your thought process into that. So I think that's where we'll start. Alistair Dinning: Absolutely. So one of the fun things about Salesforce that I've always appreciated is the three releases a year and the fact that we get new functionality every four months or so, and there's always something that's in those release notes that's exciting. And again, the advantage of having been a consultant is I've seen all of these different organizations and I see these new tools coming from the release notes and I'm like, "Oh, that's cool. That's really fun, and I think that's going to add value." But to your question, is it just this shiny new toy or is it actually going to add some real value into the solution? I think I always start with, "Okay, so that looks cool, but how is the business going to utilize it?" From two points, either is there a business value that we can add with this new feature or is there a pain point that I as an admin have seen, I've heard from my users time and time and time again where they're all like, "I don't like this. I don't like this. This is a slow process. This is in my way," boom, boom, boom. And does this new feature address that pain point? So if I was to take Dynamic orms in the Lightning Page Builder, they're super cool because we could do all sorts of fun things with it. But it's only useful if, for example, the business say to me, "Hey, my page layout is completely cluttered with all this stuff that I don't use at the beginning of a opportunity process. So why do I have deep fields on or a whole ton of fields on opportunity development when really we're just trying to identify what the opportunity value might be, value prop might be for this customer?" Mike: I think that's a great start. And I know I thought of that. I'll say this, I would really love it if the business was as explicit as you say they are like, "Oh, there's really this problem with too many fields." I think oftentimes you have to peel back a layer and listen to users say, "I'm just struggling to find the right information on this page." Or I remember when I was an admin, we brought on a different business unit and I remember the business unit asking why there was this entire section of the account page and it was kind of in the middle and it was above all of the information that they needed. And I said, "Well, if you don't like it, you can just collapse that section." And they said, "Yeah, but shouldn't it know whether or not it should show that to me?" And this was before Dynamic Pages. And so I bring that up to say, I hear you. I wish it was that explicit, but sometimes you almost have to listen and put two and two together for them. Alistair Dinning: That's right. It can be hard for the business to know how to articulate what they want from the solution. But as an admin, there are a couple of tools you've got. One is you could spend some time desk side with your key users or have a steering committee of users who are giving you feedback on a regular basis on what they're using, what they like, what they don't like. The other option is that if you have an ITSM light solution where you've got case management, so your users are providing functionality cases or technical cases on Salesforce, on their usage of Salesforce, then you can actually scroll through the

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joshua Birk, Senior Director of Admin Evangelism, and Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about what caught our attention at Dreamforce, what surprised us, and what's worth spending time on. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joshua Birk and Kate Lessard. Build fast and accurately with Builder Central Probably the most exciting announcement from the keynote is Builder Central. It's a low and no-code workspace to enable admins to build fast and accurately, without compromising on security. From React sites to flows to agents, you can get an idea off the ground with plain language prompts. But just because you move fast doesn't mean you need to break things, thanks to automated testing, safety checks, and built-in controls. "We can take what we as admins already know about data models and our org structure and really, truly define what we're building," Kate says. You can upload requirements documents and information about your organization's business processes to make sure everything that you build works from the get-go. Create consistently amazing Salesforce experiences The other thing that was touched on in the keynote was Headless 360 and the Headless Experience Layer. You can bring Salesforce to Slack, Claude, and anywhere else your users need to interact with your data. If you're feeling overwhelmed by how many different ways there are for users to interact with your Salesforce data, know that you're not alone. But at the end of the day, these are experiences that you're designing for your users to make their lives easier where they're already working. Admins need to focus on governance and security Finally, the biggest takeaway from Dreamforce this year is that governance and trust are more important than ever. Hackers use AI too, and the threat landscape is constantly evolving. Now more than ever, the role of the Salesforce Admin has shifted into governance. That means data cleanup and strict permissions controls to make sure that your agents are working as intended. And that also means getting a better handle on how your data is moving across platforms and who might have access to it.  Trust is a core principle at Salesforce, and so we're rolling out new tools like Security Center Essentials and the Transaction Security Policy Accelerator to help you take control of what's going on in your org. There's so much more great stuff in our September Monthly Retro recap of Dreamforce, so make sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Dreamforce 2026 Product Highlights for Admins Salesforce 360 Blog Post: Introducing Builder Central: The No Code AI Workspace for Salesforce Salesforce Platform Guide: Your Guide to the Headless Toolkit: Bring Salesforce Anywhere Humans and Agents Work Salesforce 360 Blog Post: Deploy Best-Practice Security Policies Instantly with Transaction Security Policy Accelerator Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Josh on LinkedIn Kate on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Before we jump into today's conversation, I want to give you a quick heads up about what's coming on the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Starting in October, we're moving to two episodes a month with a little bonus episode to kick things off. So October 1st, we're talking about how do I decide if a new Salesforce feature belongs in my org? Because Salesforce just released it and we should turn it on, are two very different things. Then on October 15th, Jennifer Lee joins me for a special video and audio episode, Winter '27, What Admins Should Check Before Their Org Updates. We'll help you figure out what deserves your attention, what you should test, and what you need to be ready for before the release hits your org. And then on October 29th, we're asking the question, what does an admin certification prove in the Agentforce era? We'll look at what certification tells employers and admins today and where hands-on experience and judgment fit into that picture. So after October, you can expect two episodes a month focused on helping you understand what matters, why it matters to your work, and what you can actually do with it when you get back to your organization. And that brings us to today's episode. So I'm joined by Kate Lessard and Josh Birk for a post Dreamforce conversation about what caught our attention, what surprised us, and more importantly, what's actually worth an admin spending time on. We're going to talk about Builder Central and what it could change about how admins build, new ways Salesforce can show up in tools like Slack and Claude, and why that data permissions and security in your org are even more important. We'll also get into Security Center Essentials, transaction security policy accelerators, Agentforce vibes, and some of the new tools that can help admins understand and work with their org faster. But there's a bigger thread running through all of it. AI can help you build, investigate, and move faster, but it doesn't replace knowing your business or knowing when something is actually right for your org. Josh calls it trust but verify. And I think that's a pretty good way to head into this conversation. So let's get Kate and Josh on the podcast. So Josh and Kate, welcome to the podcast. Joshua Birk: Thanks for having us, Mike. Kate Lessard: Thanks. Mike Gerholdt: We all have a little post Dreamforce voice in our step because it's been a long few days, but I wanted to get something together with all of us really fresh right after we landed. Some of us landed sooner rather than later leaving San Francisco and talk about what we saw, what really stuck out to us, maybe some of the demos we got to work on and things that surprised us. So Kate, you are in the keynote and keynotes always get top billing, so we're going to start with you. Kate Lessard: Woo, I love it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Talk to me about some of the stuff that you guys showed in the keynote for people that missed it and what you're excited for. Kate Lessard: Yeah, the keynote this year was really fun to work on the demos because there's just some really exciting new technology out there for admins to leverage. I think that there are just a lot of exciting new features that are specifically for admins that are really designed to improve our building experience. And if you are able to catch any of the sneak peaks or any roadmap sessions, you know that there are even more coming. But if you did join us for the keynote or if you plan to go watch it later, a really great example is Builder Central. And this is an amazing AI builder that is specifically designed for low-code and no-code builders. So not only can we use it to build fast and accurately, but we can also use it to edit directly in the Explorer, which is I think my favorite feature. And we can really visualize everything that we build and that spans from things like react sites to flows to agents, and then even all the way over to data model and permissions, which is super cool as an admin. And I want to say that I think that the most important thing to note though as an admin is that using tools like this, my expertise and my strong foundational skills that I've developed are still really necessary. With Builder Central, we have the ability to add things like requirements, documents, or information about the different business processes from our organization so that we can take what we as admins already know about data model and our org structure and really truly define what we're building. And so I think to me, the message and the excitement here is that as admins, we still need to understand the business and the technology to be successful and that doesn't go away, but using a fantastic product like Builder Central, we're more important than ever and we get to create these exceptional experiences and that really has lit me up this Dreamforce. Mike Gerholdt: I'm going to pause you there because I know you've got more to talk about. Kate Lessard: Oh, yeah. Mike Gerholdt: I'm so glad you brought up Builder Central first. I was floored. So I had seen, obviously we work on stuff prior to seeing it at Dreamforce and I'd seen demos and I think maybe it just kind of skipped off the surface for me as, "Oh, it's another AI thing and it can do this." And it kind of looked like a little bit of setup with Agentforce or Agentforce for setup. And I gave it some credibility, but I didn't really understand what I was looking at. And then I got on the show floor and this was Thursday and Daivat, who works for Tiaan, who was in the keynote, pulled me aside and said, "Mike, you got to come to our demo booth." And I'm like, "Okay." And he showed me a customer that came up and was really into Star Trek and this is why I'm like, "Okay," took a screenshot of a Star Trek set, kind of like those glittery panels that 70s, 60s tech ad. And he said, I think I want to make a dashboard for my executives because they're really into Star Trek. And they gave Builder Central that screenshot and the data it should pull and it created a dashboard, I kid you not, that looked just like Gene Roddenberry had created it for the 1960s Star Trek episodes. Kate Lessard: Oh, very cool. I love to hear stuff like that. Mike Gerholdt: I was like, "Seriously?" Joshua Birk: Right. Mike Gerholdt: Now I have no idea. This is where my limited information comes in because Josh, it's a React site or it's a React page or I don't know what to do with it after that, bu

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli, Founder and Principal Consultant for Throughline HR LLC, and William Walsh, Salesforce and AI Recruitment Lead at Harvey Nash. Join us as we chat about what Salesforce employers are looking for in new hires and how to get your career started. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli and William Walsh. How the Salesforce Admin job market has changed Over the past few years, the role of the admin has changed a lot. It's no longer about how many certifications you have or how many users you can manage. While those skills are still important, being a great Salesforce Admin is much more about how you put that knowledge into action to support core business processes and generate value for your organization. So how do you stand out from the crowd? That's what I wanted to talk about with Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli and William Walsh. As recruiters, they see the Salesforce Admin job market from both sides: what it's like when you're looking for a role and what employers are asking for when they hire. Increasingly, it's not just about what you can do in Salesforce, but how you can connect it to the business and make an impact. Talk about business impact The number one thing that Maria looks for in a Salesforce Admin is requirements literacy. "It's not just being able to take a set of orders and execute it, but really be able to fine-tune that," she says. "Push back, make recommendations, be in front of what's happening and have that longer future vision, knowing that so many of these runways are going to be short with AI." Showing you have that skill is tricky, but it starts with how you talk about your experience. Are you describing features, or are you talking about the benefits? Don't just list outcomes; talk about impact. You need to show that you can think bigger than what you're building and understand how it fits with larger organizational goals. The power of showing up William urges job seekers to spend real, face-to-face time in the Salesforce community. At this point, everybody has shiny, AI-polished LinkedIn profiles and resumes. But meeting someone and making a connection with them can be so much more powerful than sitting in front of your computer mass-applying to every job opening you come across. "This ecosystem is super welcoming, and everybody wants to see everybody succeed," William says. "So go to some user groups, some local events, and you'll see how quickly people around you start to root for you and start to put your resume in front of the people they know." Maria and William have a ton of great tips for interviews and navigating the Salesforce Admin job market, so make sure to listen to the full episode. And while you're at it, subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Skills Transfer Well Into a Salesforce Admin Career? Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How the Salesforce Administrator Role Is Evolving in the Agentic AI Era Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Maria on LinkedIn William on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: The Salesforce admin job market looks a lot different than it did a few years ago. So, what are employers actually looking for right now? And how do you make sure your resume, experience, and interview skills line up with that? Well, today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm talking with Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli, founder of Throughline HR, and William Walsh, who leads Salesforce and AI recruitment at Harvey Nash. We get into why certifications alone aren't enough, how industry experience can help you stand out, and why curiosity and communication matter so much once you get into the interview. So, whether you're looking for your first admin job or your next admin, we're also going to tell you about where it's worth spending your time. With that, let's get Maria and William on the podcast. So, Maria and William, welcome to the podcast. Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli: Thank you so much for having. William Walsh: Thank you. Thank you for having us. Mike: This is going to be exciting. I have not had two people on in the job space ever, so I go from zero to two, which is smart. But Maria, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about what you do in the job recruiting, job placement space. Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli: Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for having us. My name is Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli. I am the founder and CEO and principal consultant for Throughline HR LLC. And very much in the vein of what we're talking about, this is my new solopreneurship venture launched in the last two months in response to everything that's happening in the job market. I've done every side of the recruiting, staffing, hired and being hired from doing Salesforce recruiting at Robert Half, supporting them, Protiviti, staff augmentation to going in-house with Vicasso, formerly Internet Creations, helping build both professional services and their ISV side. I worked at Salesforce directly in workforce development in Salesforce Talent Alliance under alliances and channels and helped get employer commitments to continuing to grow the ecosystem, investing in that top of the funnel Salesforce talent, building programs to help bring people in, admins, BAs, developers. And now I am working all different roles, but still very much in touch with the Salesforce ecosystem, still working with so many of the amazing partners that I've built relationships with over the years, supporting outsource hiring, staffing, job coaching, and career guidance. Mike: Wow. So, a few things. Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli: Just a couple things. Mike: William, how about yourself?  William Walsh: Yeah, I don't know if I'm as impressive as Maria, but I'll try to keep up as we go along here. But I lead our Salesforce and AI recruitment practice at Harvey Nash. So, here, what I basically do is work with companies across not only the Salesforce ecosystem, but multiple CRMs as we continue to grow. And that ranges to help them build out their teams of admins, business analysts, all the way up to architects, AI specialists, data focused people and leadership roles as well. The neat thing about what I do is I work really closely with both sides of the market. So, I'm talking to not only hiring managers for what they need for their teams, but also speaking with Salesforce professionals every day on what they're seeing in the market and where they want to take their careers next. So, I think I get a pretty unique view of the market from both the employer and candidate side.  And a big part of my job is understanding obviously where those two things line up. So, hope we can give everybody some good information today as to what employers are really looking for and how to stand out in this ever-changing job market. Mike: Yeah, I think that's why I was so excited. Shout out to Umer who was on the podcast a long time before he even joined Salesforce that connected all of us. But I love that both of you had the same but different lenses into the job market. And William, you set me up perfectly. So, I mean that's the first question on my list, which is when you look at the Salesforce job market right now, specifically for the admin role, what are you seeing? William Walsh: Yeah, I think it's definitely a more competitive market than it was a few years ago. I think there's a lot of really good admins out there. So, just being that Salesforce admin and having a few certifications on your resume isn't really necessarily enough anymore. What I'm seeing clients respond to is admins who really understand businesses behind the platform, whether it's sales, service, operations, data, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit more, but really admins who can show they've solved business problems in Salesforce are the ones that are standing out currently. People that can, again, not just be that general admin, but can differentiate themselves with whether it's an AI tool or a specific industry, that's kind of been the biggest thing that I've seen change. It's become a much broader role. Again, a company would just look for someone who was able to manage users, build reports, handle workflows, keep the org up and running. Now they really want someone who can be a real business partner for them, understand the data and automation integrations. So, I don't think the admin role has necessarily become much of a different role, but it's definitely, you want to add some more skill sets to just your generalist admin at this point. Maria Alvarez-Zarrilli: Absolutely agree. I think we're seeing a really important evolution and one that really follows a lot of what we've seen before in ERP and MCSC before where you're getting a role that used to be about just configuration, build this, set this up. You had a lot of single seat admins that assist admin, a lot of people didn't even call themselves Salesforce admins when I first started recruiting in this space, which is what made it so difficult. And now there's this concentrated branding and it's evolving into this governance and you really need to be able to stand out in ways that say, to William's point, this is an outcome I can provide, not here's the number of seats I can manage, but this is what I'm able to do in terms of business impact. I understand how this is going to affect what the top line is for the company, how this evolves into the mission. People need to understand the actual companies, not just the platform itself. Mike: Those are really good points, I think. And that's one thing to jump off of too is so broader, I h

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Sabrina Simeroth, Product Manager on the Salesforce Security Product Team. Join us as we chat about the new Security Center Essentials feature and how to work security reviews into the rhythm of your organization. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sabrina Simeroth. What is Security Center Essentials? The last time we had Sabrina on the pod, we were talking about Health Check scores. However, as she explains, that number is meant to be an assessment of your organization's security Configurables at a single point in time. But what about continuous monitoring? That's where Security Center Essentials comes in. "With Essentials, we're trying to give a broader and more ongoing visibility," Sabrina explains, with a focused set of security metrics you can monitor over time. It makes it easy to see things like what managed packages are supported, which third-party platforms have access to your data, and who in your organization made changes. In other words, Security Center Essentials gives you a map for how your org is structured, making it easier to spot potential problems and make sure your security and governance are aligned with your business goals. Two questions to ask for security reviews So how do you get started with Security Center Essentials? For Sabrina, it's all about context. Once you've run Health Check and dialed in your security settings and policies, you want to use the metrics on Security Center Essentials to get context for how things work in your organization. From there, Sabrina recommends asking yourself two key questions: What should be in my environment? Who owns this managed package? Who installed it? Who is using it? What has changed most recently? Were you expecting it? Who did it? How does it affect your business processes? Sabrina recommends establishing a monitoring cadence around regular business process milestones. If something is updated every Tuesday, check before and after to make sure everything happened as expected. As an admin, you have the best operational context to flag potential problems and bring them to your security and governance team. Why you shouldn't chase a perfect Health Check score While your Health Check score is helpful for giving you a general understanding of how your security standards compare to industry best practices, Sabrina urges you not to chase a perfect score. "Your Health Check score should begin a security review, rather than ending a review," she explains. It's there to flag areas of your org that need a closer look, so you can make decisions about how much intentional risk your business needs to carry. The most dangerous security threats are the ones you don't know about. It's OK not to have a perfect Health Check score, as long as you know why you're doing it. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Sabrina about how to use Security Center Essentials and Health Check. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Help Docs: Security Center Essentials Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Are Security Essentials for Salesforce Admins? Kate Clicks Through It: Protect Your Salesforce Org With Health Check Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Sabrina on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: Security is one of those things where it's really easy to look at a score and think, "Great. I'm done." But your Salesforce org doesn't sit still and neither does your security posture. Today I'm talking with Sabrina Simeroth from the Salesforce Security product team about Security Center Essentials and how admins can use it to understand what's connected to their org, what's changed, and what deserves a closer look. We talk about why getting a perfect Health Check score isn't necessarily the goal and how to work security reviews into the rhythms of your organization. So if you've ever opened up a security dashboard and wondered, "Okay, what am I actually supposed to pay attention to?" This episode is for you. Let's get Sabrina on the podcast. So Sabrina, welcome to the podcast. Sabrina Simeroth: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me back. Mike: Well, it's worth talking about because security is always top of mind for Salesforce admins. And the last time I had you and Laura on, we were talking about Security Center Essentials. And I think if memory serves me right, people now have that available to them and admins can start getting in touch with it, right? Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah. Absolutely. So that has been launched and it is fully rolled out. They should be able to see that in production orgs and some sandbox orgs as well. Mike: Sweet. So you're integral part of security at Salesforce and you do a lot. Refresh my memory, what's your domain and what do you handle at Salesforce? Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah, absolutely. So I sit on the product management team. I support our security center product and that also incorporates the Essentials product that we just launched and some of our other free tools like Health Check in setup. And then I actually work really closely with a few other PMs that support other features of the premium products like our agentic features and work really closely with the Shield team as well. Mike: Shield. Sabrina Simeroth: Yes. Mike: Yes. Sabrina Simeroth: All security, all the time. Mike: Our secret MCU product. So let's talk about Security Center Essentials and actually Health Check. I'd love to know, and probably admins too, we love when we get these features, but what exactly were you trying to solve with Health Check? Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah. So Health Check is a really valuable ... I would call it a point in time assessment of some of the critical settings that we find in setup. These are your security configurations. Oftentimes if you've been to any events, you hear them called configurables. So these are settings like your password policies, your session settings, some of those toggles that you can turn on and off. But with the Essentials, we're trying to give a broader and more ongoing visibility. So it's not just a point in time, this is something that extends that capability. Health Check is still really valuable and it is a collection of these configurations that are set against a baseline or a set of standards so that you can see where your posture is at at any given time. But we really wanted to extend that and allow admins the ability to see how changes in their system, how changes in their configuration occur over time, as well as broaden the view of what they're actually looking at. So not just those toggles. Mike: I always liked Health Check was like right now, here's where you're at with links to open things. So that makes sense. It's making the dashboard a little bit bigger. I think for a Salesforce admin who just opens Security Center Essentials for the first time and they have a whole bunch of different metrics looking back at them, where should they focus? I think of a car dashboard. Well, if I start my car and the fuel light comes on, probably the most important thing to pay attention to. But as an admin, depending on the level of security awareness that I have, I may not know what number is the most important number. So help me walk through those different metrics that they're seeing. Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah. You are so spot on. So I think there's a tendency to want to stack rank, which is the most important thing to look at. If I could put it very simply, so we started with a very narrow scope of, let's call it metrics. So we wanted to extend the capabilities of Health Check. We wanted to give a broader view and give admins access to what does the actual state of your org look like? What are the things that are connected to your org? What are the managed packages that are being supported? Where are your access points? Those types of things. These are all really critical things for admins to be aware of because it's basically how is your org structured? So I think that that's the key. It's not that you should focus on or stack rank immediately any one metric in Essentials. It's more around let's figure out what our baseline is and what is the actual standard for our environment. So I would resist saying one over the other. Obviously, I think the tendency is to lean towards let me look at the thing that has a score. Let me look at Health Check. I would actually say, ask yourself two questions as an admin. What looks unfamiliar to me? So look at the seven metrics. And I apologize in advance because come Dreamforce, we're extending that seven metrics to 14 metrics, but we're still keeping the scope very narrow. Mike: It's no like Salesforce to just double anything, right? Sabrina Simeroth: No. Not at all. But we're trying to bring the most critical things for you to pay attention to the forefront and just keep it narrow so that you have a really, really solid idea of what should be in my environment and then what has changed most recently. Those are the two things to be really looking at so that you can start asking yourself questions. Does this actually make sense? Should it be here? Is there an assigned owner? These are the types of questions. It's really about laying out a map for the admin to start getting the right context about how the org is configured and then start evaluating is this good or bad and does it align with the business needs? So that would be my advice using essentials. Mike: Yeah. No. It makes sense. And I think you pointed out that what's really nice is you're not just seeing today's configuration, you're seeing how things changed an

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Alexis Kingma, Senior Certification Developer at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the newly updated Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam and the best way to prepare for certifications. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Alexis Kingma. The Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification gets a refresh The Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam has been updated, and the process is more complicated than you might think. This week, I'm talking to Alexis Kingma from the Salesforce Certification team to find out what's changed, why it matters, and how to best prepare for an exam. Whenever Alexis and her team are doing a refresh for an exam, they start by interviewing a range of subject matter experts working in the real world. For the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam, they're trying to answer a simple question: "What is the industry saying is most important if somebody's looking to hire an app builder?" Alexis encourages you to think of a certification exam as a validation of your knowledge. In other words, it's proof that you have the expertise to build cutting-edge apps and implement them in your organization. Shifting the focus to Flow and Agentforce So what's changed? The focus is on automations with Flow and Agentforce. As Alexis explains, if you're looking to hire an app builder, you're looking for someone with a deep understanding of Flow. Do you know which flows are best for which situations? Can you troubleshoot them? Can you maintain and monitor them? They want to make sure that anyone who passes the certification exam has the Flow expertise they need to hit the ground running. The other change is including Agentforce as an automation tool for app building. While you don't need to be a power user (there's another certification for that), Alexis and her team want to make sure that you have it as an option in your toolkit. How to prepare for Salesforce certification exams According to Alexis, every Salesforce certification serves as a gauge for your practical, on-the-job skills. This means if you are currently building applications for your company, you are already ahead of the curve. To support the recent updates, her team has curated a specialized Trailhead trail that features interactive badges, allowing you to practice directly within a sandbox environment. Alexis also highly recommends taking a close look at the exam guide for any certification you're going for. They're written very intentionally, she explains, to give you a very specific idea of what level of understanding they're asking for on each topic. Words like "create" or "configure" are asking for much more in-depth knowledge than "describe" or "understand." Finally, if you're attending Dreamforce, Alexis wants to remind you to schedule your free certification exam. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more about the Salesforce Platform App Builder certification exam. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Exam Page: Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder Trailhead: Prepare for Your Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Dreamforce: Guide to Certification Exams at Dreamforce 2026 Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Alexis on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X   Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm talking with Alexis Kingma from the Salesforce certification team about the newly-refreshed Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam. We're going to get into exactly what changed, why Flow now has a bigger role on the exam, and where Agentforce fits into the app builder skillset. So whether the Platform App Builder is your next certification or you just want a better sense of where admin skills are headed, this episode is worth a listen. Now, before we get into it, be sure to subscribe and share it with any other admin who's thinking about their next certification. So with that, let's get Alexis on the podcast. So, Alexis, welcome to the podcast. Alexis Kingma: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Mike: Well, I am a huge fan of our exams and certifications. And you can take one, you don't have to have the other, and I like to have both. But I love that we have a lot of exams and we redo them, we update them, we refresh them, at least we try to. I feel the product now is changing super quick. But before we get into all of that, Alexis, tell us a little bit about your history and how you came to Salesforce and what you do at Salesforce. Alexis Kingma: Absolutely. So I am on the Salesforce certification team. We are a team of Salesforce employees who are solely dedicated to creating and updating the whole suite of Salesforce exams. So, historically, I come from a certification industry background. I've done software certification my entire career. And I came to Salesforce about two, two and a half years ago and just hit the ground running. I joined the team updating and creating new Salesforce certifications. So I actually started with the Tableau certifications and have since moved over into my latest, which is refreshing the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam. Mike: Ooh, yes, app builder, that's something all of us admins are near and dear to our hearts on. And that's cool. I mean, I guess there's enough tech out there in the world that there's enough people that need to write certification exams for all of it. Wow. This is one of those ideas of, I bet 20 years ago, that job maybe didn't exist, but it exists now. Alexis Kingma: It's funny, certification is such a rich industry, it's one of those jobs that I feel like nobody knows it exists until you have that job. Nobody grows up saying, "I want to write tests," but now it's all of our favorite things to do. Mike: No, I mean, you're exactly right, nobody sits down and, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" And it's, "I want to sit down and write really hard software questions for people about a cloud-based platform that they can configure declaratively." Alexis Kingma: Right. Mike: I think if you would've answered that, your teacher would've been, "And you're an astronaut today." Alexis Kingma: But it is interesting, the same principles that we use to write Salesforce software certifications are the same principles that are used for the medical boards, for firefighting certifications, for airline certifications. And so when we come together at certification industry events, it's a whole gamut of industries coming together to talk about the same certification principles. So you get to meet a lot of interesting folks. Mike: I mean, you don't ever think of that, but that is really... Wow, I bet that's really interesting to sit across the table from people that write certifications to be a rocket scientist. Alexis Kingma: Absolutely. Yes. A lot of these certifications, like for a professional roofer, that's a high-stakes certification, or an architect. So it's interesting to hear how all these different industries approach the same problems. Mike: Yeah. Well, we're still high stakes too. Alexis Kingma: Absolutely. Mike: So you mentioned Platform App Builder exam. It got a refresh, which it's probably needed, I mean, every few months, right? But I think before we get into that, what does it mean to refresh an exam? Alexis Kingma: So the Platform App Builder exam has been around for over 10 years. It predates me at Salesforce by far. We're actually in our 11th year this year, which is awesome. And so it's been around for so long and the role changes and evolves so much in that time. And so it's important for us to look at the role, look at the requirements in the industry, what are admins doing, what are app builders doing, what are architects doing, what is the most important knowledge that those roles need, and how does our exam align to that? And making sure that the things that we're testing out on the exam are actually things that are the most important for these roles in the real world. Mike: Yeah. I mean, that was always one of the hard parts, I remember, when I first got one of my certifications. At the time, we didn't use a lot of Service Cloud, Agentforce for Service, I think now, but I had to go out and learn it because it was part of the certification. And I thought, "Oh, why should I have to learn that?" And I thought, "Well, just because you don't use it or your company doesn't use it, doesn't mean it shouldn't be part of that certification as well or that exam." Alexis Kingma: Absolutely. And so when we approach doing a refresh like we did with app builder, we try to include subject matter experts from a whole range, internal Salesforce employees, external Salesforce users, a wide breadth of roles, admins, people who are solely app builders, architects, to try to say, "Okay, Salesforce might say these topics are most important, but what is the industry saying is most important?" If somebody's looking to hire an app builder, what does that person expect the app builder brings to the table and what knowledge should they already have when they start the job? And so we rely on our subject matter experts to say, "What are those most important concepts, and how do we make sure that they're reflected on the exam?" Mike: Makes sense. I mean, that's the part of getting dialed in, to me, that I think is the most important is, one thing for Salesforce to think this is important, but where does that fall in terms of your responsibilities and what you're seeing day to day? Well, let's talk about this new exam, because Platform App Builder, I bel

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Khushwant Singh, SVP of Product Management for the AI Application Development Platform at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how rethinking the Salesforce stack for AI with Headless 360 will change the way admins set up complex systems. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Khushwant Singh. Opening Salesforce to AI agents AI is changing more than how we find information or generate content. It could also change how Salesforce Admins configure the platform itself. I sat down with Khushwant "Khush" Singh, to learn about Headless 360 and the work happening behind the scenes to make Salesforce accessible to both humans and AI agents. "Headless 360 is about bringing Salesforce to wherever you need it," Khush says. In a headless platform, he explains, the frontend is separated from the backend. So you can use Salesforce data and visualizations on your website without changing the design, or change records in Slack without having to open an extra tab. But Salesforce Headless 360 is about more than portability. Khush and his team are translating the entire platform into a set of model context protocols (MCPs), skills, and metadata that can interface directly with AI agents. And that opens a world of possibilities for what admins can do with conversational tools. What if setting up Salesforce became a conversation? "For the last 27 years, layers that make up the Salesforce platform have been put in place for a human," Khush says, "so we're trying to open this up for both a human and an agent, so the agent can do that work on behalf of the admin." Setup with Agentforce, which streamlines configuration for admins with the help of an AI assistant, is a great example of what Khush is talking about. You can use natural language prompts to create objects, Lightning pages, and flows; manage users and user access; and troubleshoot formulas. Headless 360 lays the groundwork for a future where setting up Salesforce becomes a conversation about your business goals and processes. No coding required. Admins still stay in control None of this removes the admin from the process. Khush is quick to point out that the goal is for agents and admins to work together, with humans still initiating actions, validating results, and providing governance. His advice for admins right now is simple: try Setup with Agentforce and start getting familiar with what this new way of working feels like. Because the biggest shift may not be AI helping you use Salesforce faster—it may be AI changing how you build Salesforce in the first place. Listen to the full episode for more from Khush about Salesforce Headless 360 and how AI could change the way we set up our orgs. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce 360 Blog Post: Introducing Salesforce Headless 360. No Browser Required. Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Solving Sharing Mysteries with Setup with Agentforce Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Setup with Agentforce Makes Salesforce Admin Tasks Easier Salesforce Help Article: Setup with Agentforce (Beta) Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Setup with Agentforce Is Now Generally Available: Built With Admin Feedback at the Center Salesforce Admins Blog Post: What Is MCP? A Simple Guide to Model Context Protocol for Salesforce Admins Trailhead: Salesforce Headless 360: Quick Look Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Khush on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript   Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm joined by Khushwant Singh to talk about what happens when Salesforce stops just being a destination and starts becoming part of every system your business already relies on. That's right, from Headless 360 to Setup with Agentforce, Khush breaks down how admins are moving beyond configuring features and into orchestrating how data, AI agents, automation and people work together across the business. Now, we're going to dig into what Headless actually means for admins, why governance and trust matter more than ever in an AI first world, and how Salesforce is building toward a future where setting up complex systems really becomes more of a conversation than a checklist. This episode is really about systems thinking, how admins can connect experiences without forcing teams to rebuild everything from scratch. So if you've been trying to figure out where AI fits into your role or how your role is evolving alongside it, I promise you this episode gives you a practical look at what's already happening and what's coming next. So be sure to hit that subscribe button. Share this episode with your favorite architect or admin friend, and let's get Khush on the podcast. So Khush, welcome back to the podcast.   Khushwant Singh: Thank you for having me back, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: I say that because I had to look and it was 2022 back in the day you were talking Experience Cloud when we last had you on. You've since moved on, moved up, had your hands in a lot of things, did an admin keynote with me. So let's start there and let's kind of catch everybody up on some of the products you've been working on, and then we're going to talk about the newest one that we launched at TDX this year.   Khushwant Singh: Yeah, happy to. And again, great to be back. I think back in the day, started obviously with Experience Cloud. Experience Cloud really was building a product that is external-facing and again, it's built on the same platform. And again, as we looked at the product portfolio, it just made sense to start to bring things together. So we've actually sort of rolled and morphed into the application development platform, obviously within the platform organization, everything pro-code, low-code, desktop, mobile. And so there've been quite a few products leading up to here, anything from our delivery on mobile, mobile offline, the Salesforce mobile app, all the way to Agentforce Vibes, the Agentforce Experience layer, obviously a fair amount of work on the Headless side of things. So yeah, it's been quite a journey to this particular point, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, it's actually hard to point out things that aren't admin-friendly that you've had your hands on because you've always kind of championed everybody being able to build on our platform. So let's talk about TDX this year because we launched Headless 360.   Khushwant Singh: Oh yeah, we did.   Mike Gerholdt: By the way, in case you forgot.   Khushwant Singh: Yeah, it was a massive announcement. I think, look, as you think about what's happening in the market right now, you've got customers engaging through many different surface areas. We've got customers on ChatGPT, on Claude, on Gemini, Teams. At the same time, you've got developers also using a variety of different tools, different IDEs, different coding agents. And so I think Headless 360 really is a testament to acknowledging this change in the market in the industry and trying to meet the customer where they are. The customer being an end user or the customer being a developer and admin, just meeting them where they are in whichever tool, whichever interface they might be.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, do you recall ever a time in technology when it was, I hate to use the euphemism, but like the Wild West where I feel like there's so many choices for what you can do just in regards to AI?   Khushwant Singh: There is. And there is obviously a good side to it. There's also a downside to it. The good side is really your [inaudible 00:04:31] for choice. There is innovation that is helping you drive productivity day in, day out. The downside of this is you just have to be really careful about quality, about trust, about governance. And you have to ensure that while you're going fast, you're not sort of compromising on that trust aspect of things. And that's what we're trying to do here at Salesforce and just trying to be a little bit more thoughtful in our approach over here.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. So my developer friend, Josh Burke, who comes on the podcast, usually has to explain things to me every now and then. I think developers are very familiar with the term headless.   Khushwant Singh: Yes.   Mike Gerholdt: I'm not sure outside of Headless flows, which I know what those mean, I'm not sure admins could understand or could confidently buzz in on a game show and answer what is Headless 360. So can you help them kind of understand what is Headless 360 if they had to tell their manager?   Khushwant Singh: Yeah, sure. So one way to think about it is, let's say you're a customer and you've got your own website, it's built out of React, it's not built on the Salesforce platform, but there is so much of your goodness and investment that you have within the Salesforce platform that you want to be able to easily reuse in the context of this other website that you have, portal that you have, mobile application that you have. All of that may not be built on the Salesforce platform. You want to be able to reuse your investment seamlessly. And so Headless 360 really is about how do we empower you, the customer, to be able to easily use those assets, those investments within the Salesforce platform in that surface area that you've got that may not be on the Salesforce platform. So it's really about giving them that flexibility so that they can easily reuse their investments in all of these various surface areas and just meet their customers wherever they are versus bring their customers into Salesforce.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think it makes sense. I

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Skye Tyler, Principal Solution Consultant at Beyond the Horizon Technology. Join us as we chat about why clean metadata is crucial for getting the most out of AI. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Skye Tyler. Why metadata is your training manual for AI You've done it, I've done it. Sales wants a name changed on a report, so you just change the field label rather than create something new and mess with the integrations. Or maybe you have four different dates, but your marketing team knows which one they're actually looking for. What's the big deal? The problem is that while humans can get by on institutional knowledge, AI agents need a bit more help from your metadata. As my guest this week, Skye Tyler, explains, you should think of AI like an overenthusiastic intern with short-term memory problems. It really wants to answer your question, so if it sees four different dates, it's going to take a guess. Think of metadata like an onboarding manual for AI. With clear field descriptions and help texts, you can point your agents in the right direction and prevent hallucinations. How to get started with metadata cleanup Obviously, cleaning up your org's metadata is easier said than done. However, Skye has some great tips for how to get started. If your business has busy periods and slow periods, you might be able to schedule time specifically to work on your metadata. But for the rest of us, Skye recommends a clean-as-you-go approach. Any time you update an object, set aside some time to review all of the related metadata and update the description. Similarly, any time your organization is building a new business process that includes AI, you need to clean up any metadata an agent could interact with. As Skye points out, while you don't necessarily have time to deep clean your house every week, a little spot cleaning can go a long way. Skye's Salesforce journey and the value of sharing what you know We also took some time to talk about Skye's career path from nonprofit arts and what advice she has for folks who are new to the Salesforce ecosystem. AI is changing things fast, and that means there are more opportunities. "With all of these newer technologies and tools, anybody who's looking to come into the space today is learning the same things that I'm learning, having been in the space for a decade," she says. The Salesforce community is incredibly supportive, and Skye recommends putting yourself out there. You never know who you'll meet at an event, and where those connections could take you. "No matter where you are in your journey, you know something that other people don't," she says, "put yourself out there, and I guarantee you someone's going to appreciate it." Listen to my full conversation with Skye for more on how to clean up your metadata and stop AI hallucinations. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Should I Clean Metadata for Salesforce AI Agents? Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Use Metadata To Empower Salesforce Agents Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Metadata Is Your Admin Blueprint for Building Better Agents Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Skye on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm talking with Skye Tyler about the part of AI readiness that, well, it's easy to overlook. That's your metadata. We all know that clean data matters, but agents also need clear field descriptions, documentation, permissions, and context to understand what your business actually means. Skye explains why metadata acts like onboarding for an enthusiastic new employee and why a confident answer isn't always a correct one. We'll also talk about practical ways admins can improve metadata without trying to clean the entire org overnight. So give this episode a listen, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and of course share it with an admin who maybe has prepared their platform for Agentforce. And with that, let's get Skye on the podcast. So Skye, welcome to the podcast. Skye Tyler: Hi, thanks for having me back. Mike: I'm excited. Going through everything that we're doing to prepare for Dreamforce and admins are preparing for the agentic future, which is coming faster than eve, I stumbled across your session. And I thought, hey, before we get into Dreamforce, maybe we can dive into all of the stuff that you might not be able to cover in your 40-minute breakout session. So we'll talk about that because it's data related and data related is agent related. But before we get started, can you just refresh everybody on how you got started with Salesforce and what you do in the ecosystem? Skye Tyler: Oh, I'd love to. So I've been fortunate enough to be working in the Salesforce space with the nonprofit industry for a little over a decade now, and started off doing implementation work with nonprofit arts organizations, doing ticketing and donation. And then I've moved in and through the consulting space. Again, focusing primarily on nonprofits with a little bit of dipping into education along the way. And over the course of that decade, I've been fortunate enough to meet some amazing folks, yourself included, that has given me an opportunity to have the chance to share not just my journey, but my experiences, my struggles, successes, failures. And some of those avenues have included things like coaching and mentoring with super moms and the Salesforce military program, and then also just being really honored to be able to speak at community dream and events and events like Dreamforce and Trailblazer DX. Mike: I mean, that's a great answer. You know what's funny is so many people ask me, "How do I get started in the community," or, "What should I do?" And I feel like now I'm just going to point back to your answer because what you said was just perfect. Well, don't be afraid to share what you've learned, or what you're learning, or how you've learned it, or things you're working on because that's what people love to see. They love to see how you're doing it so that they can get an idea for how to do it. So thanks for answering a question I didn't have. Skye Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. I also just want to throw in, and I say this at many of my live sessions, that no matter where you are in your journey, you know something that other people don't. And everybody learns more when folks show up, and are vulnerable, and are willing to share those things. So definitely just give it a try. Put yourself out there and I guarantee you someone's going to appreciate it. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Plus the thing I add to that is there's probably somebody out there like you that really needs to see somebody like you on stage. Skye Tyler: Yes, absolutely. Mike: So we talk a lot about data with agents and cleaning data, making sure your data's up-to-date, making sure your data's fresh, which every time I use the word fresh, I always think of how that plastic comes off an iPhone. I don't know why, but that's where my brain goes, because agents and AI and LLMs do a really good job of consuming a vast amount of information and giving it back to you in what you asked for. I think one of the things that we talk less about and that I want to talk to you about is your metadata, because I'll be honest, I pay attention to my metadata for five seconds when I'm creating the field. Skye Tyler: I'd say that's four seconds more than most people. Mike: Right, because all you got to do is click outside the box and it fills in the developer name, so I'm good. And description, ah, fill it in later. Skye Tyler: Yeah. And for the longest time, that's been really standard. And again, working across several consultancies and with lots of different works, people assume, well, we know what this field means. You give it a field name, the team knows what this means. I don't need to fill in description. I don't need to fill in help text. It's fine. And again, for the longest time, that institutional knowledge was enough of a stopgap that it was fine. Nothing was going to break or go horribly wrong if you left the description field empty. But all of that changes when you start introducing agents. And an example I may reference a couple times on this podcast is, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but the idea of thinking about your agent as a really enthusiastic intern with short-term memory problems. Mike: Like memory of a goldfish. Skye Tyler: Yes, exactly. So if you've got a new intern and they don't have deep industry experience, or they don't have longer term institutional memory within your organization, and they come on site, they're excited to be there, they're energized, they're probably young and enthusiastic, and they're going to sound really confident. You're going to ask them a question. They're like, "Yeah, absolutely. I can absolutely do that." But there's a difference between sounding confident and actually knowing the answer. And where AI gets really tricky is not only does it sound confident, it usually has a certain level of fluency to it with the amazing jumps in natural language processing over the past few years, it sounds both confident and right because it's just a well-structured sentence. And there's a huge gap between the structure of the sentence and the actual understanding of the data behind it. Mike: Right. It reads to us as so confident in its own answer that we would be silly to think it's wrong. Skye Tyler: Oh, absolutely. It would be a waste of time to go back and check it because look at how c

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Michelle Wolfe, Platform Engineer. Join us as we chat about how she built a Flow-powered user management system to handle requests, approvals, user creation, permissions, communications, and even onboarding. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Michelle Wolfe. Streamlining change requests with screen flows It's a good thing when your organization is growing, right? For Salesforce Admins, however, new hires need new accounts, and that means approvals, permissions, and onboarding. My guest this week, Michelle Wolfe, found herself in exactly this situation. She turned to Flow to build an automated user management system with no code, and she's here to tell us all about it. Michelle's company was bringing in 80+ people per new hire class, but the account creation request process was a mess. Managers would email a random member of the three-person admin team, and then they would manually create the account. So the first step was to wrangle the business process with a screen flow to get the correct information into Salesforce and create a case. But Michelle was just getting started. Now that everything was in Salesforce, she knew that she could use Flow to automate the rest of the process. New account creation with autolaunched flows Once the new user's information was approved by their manager, Michelle set up an autolaunched flow to spin up the account. This took care of data validation, configuring the correct permissions, and creating a username. Finally, a second autolaunched flow would close out the case and send two email actions: one to confirm the request, and one to welcome the new user. With help from Flow and Einstein Copilot, Michelle transformed a complicated manual business process into something streamlined, simple, and scalable. Partner with your training team for a fresh perspective on your org Michelle credits her success with how closely she works with her training team on enhancements. "Because they interact with new employees, they see things differently than someone who's been here for years and knows how we use our Salesforce," she explains. That fresh perspective helps her identify improvements she might otherwise miss. Listen to my full conversation with Michelle for more on how she used Flow to automate user management—we really get into the weeds. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Michelle on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm joined by Michelle Wolf to talk about what happens when user onboarding stops being a string of emails and becomes a real platform process. So Michelle built a Flow-powered system that handles requests, approvals, user creation, permissions, communications, and even offboarding, while keeping the admin team in control. We're going to talk about the automation behind it, but also the process decisions that make it accurate, secure, and useful for her business. Now, because when admins design access and onboarding well, they're not just saving time. They're protecting trust and helping people get productive faster. So listen in, subscribe, share this episode with an admin who has one too many user requests sitting in their inbox. I'll tell you who doesn't have too many user in requests sitting in their inbox, and that's Michelle. So let's get Michelle on the podcast. So Michelle, welcome to the podcast. Michelle Wolf: Thank you for having me, Mike. Mike: I think this is exciting because I can't recall the number of times I've had people on about onboarding users. And I think it's because whatever cool tool we have come out, it's the second thing people do. They're like, "Oh, I could do this, and I need to figure out how to do X, Y, and Z when I onboard people." Because it was like that with Flow. There was stuff with Chatter when that came out, "How do I onboard people and add them to groups?" And Jennifer Lee was at your session at Midwest Dreaming, and she thought it was just phenomenal. So I had to have you on the podcast to talk about it. But before we get into that, tell me a little bit about yourself, how you got started with Salesforce and what you do. Michelle Wolf: Yeah. So my journey started as a lot of ours as an accidental admin. I was working for a small family-run business who had Salesforce, and they were paying a consultant to basically be their full-time admin. And one day my manager walked into my office and said, "I don't want to pay them anymore. I need you to learn this." And I was like, "Okay." Mike: "I suppose." Michelle Wolf: Yeah. Why not? So yeah, that's what started my journey. And I skilled up on Trailhead and I was on it two, three hours a day trying to figure out how to be an admin in Salesforce. And this was back at the initial transition from Classic to Lightning. Mike: Ooh, fun. Michelle Wolf: So half of my early batches are on Classic. There just wasn't a ton of Lightning stuff out there yet. So I would build a lot in Classic and then flip it over to Lightning to see what it looked like because they did like the Lightning interface, which was great. So that started my journey. And then when I decided to part ways with that company, I took a different position and paused my admin career. And then about five years ago or so, I had an opportunity to be a product SME for Salesforce. And I was like, "Yes, I miss this product. I miss doing this. I miss being able to make things better with just the click of the button. So let's go do this." And I jumped in both feet and never looked back. And so I've been an active admin for a little over five years now. And I'm a Flownatic. Anything I can automate, I am doing it. Mike: I love it. Active admin as opposed to passive. Michelle Wolf: Exactly. Mike: I don't know. So I love when you started because I remember those times and the reason there wasn't enough Lightning things is we were all writing it as fast as we could. Michelle Wolf: Yeah, I know it. Mike: It's kind of like learning to drive with a manual. And then they're like, "Oh, well, here's an automatic." And you're like, "Oh, I already know how to drive with a manual." I mean, if you knew how to do things in Classic, then doing stuff in Lightning was just that much easier, in my opinion anyway. Michelle Wolf: Yeah. I agree. I agree. And the user experience was better for my users. They liked the layout and the feel. It jived with their personalities better instead of that very formal grid-looking everything. Mike: I mean, that was the internet at a certain period in time. And then it grew up and it was like your eyes don't have to squint with white space. Michelle Wolf: Right. Mike: Every field just went from tight polyester pants to sweatpants. And it was like, "Yay." Michelle Wolf: Exactly. Mike: Let's talk about being a Flownatic because I've talked with Jen. I know Jen said she was in your session. I really think, I mean, outside of just it's so incredibly powerful, the amount of things that you can do on the Salesforce platform without writing a single line of code. Flow is one of those. And I remember it was 100 years ago that I saw Flow for the first time at Dreamforce when I was a customer. And I think they called it Business Process Management or something. And it was an app you had to download, and then you had to upload schemas to it. It's since graduated into a much more robust tool. But the nice thing is once you know that, I mean, caveat emptor because AI runs off of all the flows. I mean, if you're good at Flow, there's very few things you can't make Agentforce do. So tell me a little bit about why you built onboarding with Flow. Michelle Wolf: Yeah. The company I was with found themselves in a really big period of growth, which was really amazing. But the new hire classes were like 80 people. And I just could not bring myself to want to spend a week of my life just filling in these boxes to make new users. It was really so time-consuming. And one typo here, one missed field here. My validation rules didn't check out. It was just a pain. It's just very mind-numbing. And I was like, "There has to be a better way." And I went through the different variations of the Add Multiple Users. It's an out-of-the-box function, except I couldn't put my custom fields on there, which means I couldn't save my users because we had validation rules in place. And then I experimented with a bulk upload, but it was such a pain because if I would typo a field, I would mess up my entire formula. Mike: Yeah. Michelle Wolf: And I was like, "There has to be a better way. There just has to be a better way." And- Mike: Plus then all you're doing is just creating the user. Michelle Wolf: Exactly. Mike: With Flow, you can do so much more. Michelle Wolf: Exactly. So by converting it to a Flow, I had a screen. I used my screen flows, and I leveraged the fact that the onboarding team is already putting that information into an email or something. Well, just go here and put it in a case for me. Just hit this button, pull out the fields. Now I don't have to do this. And then I used that screen flow to make a case so I can track my productivity, when the requests are coming in, when the requests are due by, who's doing the request. We started with just managing cases manually and making the users off the cases. And we had built in the approval process to make sure that someone else was double checking the inputs. Did they spell their name right? Did they put in the email right? Because I don't kn

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Nikita Kothari, Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Salesforce.  Join us as we chat about using Setup with Agentforce to understand and manage record access. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nikita Kothari. Setup with Agentforce simplifies sharing Why can't I see this record? It's a simple question but, as any admin knows, finding an answer can get complicated quickly. If you've ever found yourself digging through Setup pages and running SOQL queries to troubleshoot permissions and record access issues, this episode is for you. This week, I'm talking to Nikita Kothari, a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Salesforce. She's here to tell us how Setup with Agentforce can help solve sharing mysteries. Using natural language questions, admins can trace access across org-wide defaults, role hierarchies, sharing rules, groups, and manual shares to figure out what's really going on. Troubleshooting permissions and record access issues As Nikita explains, permissions and record access issues are so complicated because they are affected by many overlapping configuration settings. Small changes can accumulate over time, especially in a reorg. Setup with Agentforce was built to help you detangle these issues with simple natural language prompts. You can put your questions about permissions and record access to an agent, instead of having to wade through 1,300 pages of Setup to figure it out on your own. Once you've got a handle on what the problem is, you can use Setup with Agentforce to help you implement changes and get everything sorted. And it's built with trust in mind: every write action requires your explicit approval, the agent is bounded by your permissions, and every configuration change is captured in the Setup Audit Trail. Plan permissions for your org If you're trying to figure out where to get started, Nikita recommends starting small. "It's very difficult to go back and fix something," she says, "so I would highly recommend trying any changes in a sandbox with the minimum set of users to see if it is working as expected or not."  And because Setup with Agentforce makes looking at permissions and record access so much easier, Nikita recommends taking advantage of it to conduct a monthly permissions review. Again, these issues accumulate over time, so an ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Nikita for more on Setup with Agentforce and how to get sharing straightened out in your org. And don't forget to subscribe for more episodes of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Mastering Your Org's Sharing Configuration with Setup with Agentforce Salesforce Admins Blog Post: 5 Use Cases To Get Started With Setup with Agentforce Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Setup with Agentforce Makes Salesforce Admin Tasks Easier Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Nikita on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Nikita Kothari, Senior Member of the Technical Staff here at Salesforce, about using Setup with Agentforce to understand and manage record access. Sharing can be one of those invisible parts of the platform until someone can see a record they shouldn't or can't see one they need to. Nikita explains how admins can use natural language questions to trace access across org-wide defaults, role hierarchies, sharing, rules, groups, and manual shares. We also discuss why validation, permissions, testing, and human approval remain essential when AI helps make configuration changes. So give this episode a listen, click that subscribe button, maybe share it with another Salesforce admin who's ever asked, "Why can this user see this record?" Let's get Nikita on the podcast. So Nikita, welcome to the podcast. Nikita Kothari: Thank you, Mike. It is amazing to be here. I'm from the engineering team, so you'll get my lot of perspective on how we are building Setup with Agentforce on sharing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to talk about. Let's first get a little acquainted with you. What do you do at Salesforce, and what are some of the things that you've worked on? Nikita Kothari: So it's been close to two years I'm working with Salesforce. And currently, I'm working with access control and sharing space. What pulled me in is the realization that sharing is one of those invisible infrastructure layer. When it works, nobody thinks about it, but when it breaks, it actually breaks the customer trust. And you know how customer-centric Salesforce is, its number one priority is trust. So there is lot of critical issues that we are dealing with and we are trying to make the sharing as the best place for the admins. And we love our admins and we are trying to make things better for them. Mike Gerholdt: I love our admins too. I used to be one for a while. I'd like to still think I am, but we'll see. Well, let's get into it. So I read your article and I'll link to that in the show notes. Tell me, I mean, before Setup with Agentforce, what did an admin have to do to answer a question of, why can this user see this opportunity and this user not? Nikita Kothari: Oh, good question. So it's the simplest way of dealing with solving the sharing's toughest problems. So just to enable the Agentforce, you don't have to do anything. It comes along with the Agentforce. So go to the setup page, search for the Agentforce agent and enable your Setup with Agentforce, and then you can start writing those questions. You don't have to know anything beforehand, that's the best part of the Agentforce setup. And sharing is the challenging domain, I won't deny that. It is very, very complex. So answering even the simplest question that you ask, like, "Who this person is having access for this thing," it requires to look into a lot of different domains like OWD, role hierarchy, sharing rules, sharing groups, manual shares, to see which layer actually give that access to that particular user. And looking that information, sometimes it's easier with the UI, but most of the time user has to run lots of SQL queries to get the correct answer. And previously, admin was spending hours of work and sometimes even the afternoons just to deal with that single questions. And with Setup with Agentforce, it just a minute of work. You just give prompt to your chatbots and it'll give you the correct answer within seconds. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, boy, it used to be a lot of archeological digging. I think you called it that in the article. I know I used to have to feel like I was going through a checkbox, but tell me, I mean, walk us through a real investigation where an admin discovers that a user can see a record, they probably shouldn't. How would they use Setup with Agentforce to trace where that access came from? Nikita Kothari: Yeah, great question. So while building these actions, we particularly divide it into two different segments. First segment is the read action and the second segment is the write action. Just to keep it, things untangled, read actions will help you to investigate. When you ask a question like, "Why Nikita has access for these things?" So our agent will go into the background, it will do all kinds of research and it will come up with the best answer. "Okay, Nikita is part of this group, and these groups provide the access to this particular record." And what a write action on the hand will do, it will help you to solve that problem. Now you know Nikita is part of the particular group. You can go ahead and ask your write action, "Can you please remove Nikita from this group?" And your write action will help you to remove that particular user from that group and boom, your problem is solved within a few minutes. It's reliable, it's fast, and I'm sure admin can save a lot of time with these two things. And you don't need to know which action or which thing you need. You just write the plain natural language and our LLM will be able to guess where to navigate and how to solve that problem. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, I hear you. I think you walked us through what a good sharing investigation looks like. But for you, is there a sequence admins should follow so that they don't just jump straight to changing configuration? Nikita Kothari: I would say I would highly recommend admin to start playing with the read action. There is no particular sequence, I would say, but mostly how the sharing is defined is like first we have the OWD, which provides the base access to the records and to the objects. And then comes the role hierarchy, then comes sharing rules, then we have public groups and queue and we have the manual shares. So at each level, sharing opens up the door for more access. So if you're going below the hierarchy, sharing will provide more and more access to the user. And if you want to close that access, it's not easier that one sharing rule will open up the access and then you create another sharing rule to close the access. It's not how it works. So in that case, you need to spend a strategic amount of time thinking how you can revoke that access. And sharing is accumulation of the small, small, small decisions over the time. Sometimes adding someone to the group, for the reorg, you have to do lot of things with the sharing, and every decision gets compound. So I highly recommend our admins to at least spend 30 minutes a month to refresh and reanalyze their sharing configuration to avoid the future problem. So this is basically the flow looks like, but I would say there is any of s

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jean Velonis, Senior Technical Program Manager at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the new Superbadge Cohort Learning pilot program and how you can get involved. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jean Velonis. Improvements to Superbadges I have to confess, I've always found Superbadges to be a little intimidating. They're locked behind requirements, without clear step-by-step instructions for how to work towards them. That's why I sat down with Jean Velonis, a Senior Technical Program Manager working to improve the Superbadge experience. The first thing Jean wants you to know is that they've overhauled the Superbadge UI. Instead of being locked behind a list of requirements, Superbadges now have a Recommended Learning section. These Trailhead modules and badges are organized into units, giving you a much clearer path to work towards your goal. What is the Superbadge Cohort Learning pilot program? In addition to the UI changes, Jean and her team are launching a new pilot program called Superbadge Cohort Learning. These sessions let you connect with other learners and subject matter experts to work towards a Superbadge together, guided by a facilitator. For now, the pilot program is focused on two of the most popular Superbadges. For admins, the Data Quality and Validation Superbadge gives you the knowledge you need to prep your org for AI. And if you're a dev or looking to improve your coding skills, there will also be groups for the Apex Callouts Superbadge. They're running both in-person and virtual versions of these sessions, so look out for them at a Dreamin' event or community group near you. Volunteer as a subject matter expert or facilitator If you already have these Superbadges, Jean highly recommends volunteering as a subject matter expert or a facilitator. When you're working with new learners, you'll run into questions and situations that deepen your understanding of the topic more than you ever thought possible. The other thing about students is that they keep learning. Teaching is an incredible opportunity to make strong connections that will last throughout your career. As Jean explains, two of her former students are now her go-to people when she has code or Flow questions. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Jean about the Superbadge Cohort Learning pilot program. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Sign up to be a subject matter expert or facilitator: Superbadge Cohort Learning Pilot Session Salesforce 360 Blog Post: How to Stand Out in the AI Era with Superbadges Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jean on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full Transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm joined by Jean Velonis to talk about the Superbadge Cohort Learning Pilot and what happens when admins stop learning alone and start solving problems together. We're going to dig into these cohorts and how they bring experts, beginners, and everyone together in the same room to work through real challenges, build confidence, and get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because for Salesforce admins, knowing how to troubleshoot, test, fail safely, and ask better questions matters just as much as knowing where to click. And as AI and agents become part of everyday platform work, well, those fundamental skills help admins validate what is correct, keep data reliable, and make sure that the platform reflects what the business actually needs. So listen in, subscribe and share this episode with an admin who learns best by rolling up their sleeves and figuring it out. Let's get Jean on the podcast. So Jean, welcome to the podcast. Jean Velonis: Thank you so much for having me. I think this is the second time I've been here, but it's been a while. Mike: I know. Well, when you do the podcast for almost 14 years now, I try not to have guests back, only if they're important like yourself. Jean Velonis: Ooh, thank you. Mike: We were Salesforce MVPs together a hundred years ago when the internet was still tubes and wires, and now we're both at Salesforce. And you're on, I would call, what, the curriculum side, the learning side? Jean Velonis: Yeah, I would categorize that. It's more Trailhead, right? So long story short, certification was my jam for so long, and superbadges were part of that. But over the last couple of years, we've decoupled from certification. We're still with Trailhead and we're still considered an assessment, but we don't have all the guardrails of certification on us anymore, which is really exciting. Mike: Gotcha. And just for reference, if anybody thinks they might have met Jean at a Dreaming event or a Salesforce event, you tend to usually have purple hair and a bedazzled Ranger hat. Is that an accurate description? Jean Velonis: These are facts. These are facts. I've had purple hair probably since six months of coming into Salesforce. And if anybody knows the famous Chris Duarte out there, she taught me everything I know about bedazzling. So I made a Ranger hat. Mike: Yeah. A lot of people bedazzle now because of her. Jean Velonis: Yes. Mike: Well, let's talk about this new Superbadge cohort learning pilot that you've kicked off because I think you're trying to bring the best of both worlds together. Jean Velonis: Absolutely. This isn't a new concept either. I'll just throw that out there. We had some amazing trailblazers before the pandemic and even through the pandemic doing Salesforce Saturdays or Salesforce Sundays and they would get together in person or virtually and work on Trailhead. So this is kind of piggybacking off that concept and really bringing some of the community magic to superbadges because I think we can all look at a superbadge and be like, oh, that's kind of intimidating. There's no step-by-step instructions. This looks really hard. There's multiple steps to it, and that just looks hard and I don't want to do it. But the cohort learning brings a facilitator, like a community group leader or a Dreamin event person to come in and help bring people together virtually or in person and work on a Superbadge together. And we've been running a couple of pilots of these. We did one at TDX and WITness Success in Indi. And it's been really successful in person just because you can pair experts and newbies together at a table and make people really uncomfortable, and then they start talking to each other and learning from each other. And I think that's what gets really excited about doing this cohort learning. And then we've done a couple of virtual events as well where we've brought community group leaders, kind of like train the trainer of like, here's how you should run this virtually to be successful, because that virtual is a little bit different beast. It's really easy to hide and stay on mute and turn your camera off where we really try and get people excited to share their skillset with each other. Mike: Yeah. No hiding in the dark corners. So I really like the idea of this. I've always really enjoyed Trailhead because I'm the type of learner that likes to do it at my own pace. Sometimes I even crazily go back and redo a badge just because I feel like if I've rushed through it, did I really learn it or was I just trying to get it done? And when I'm really trying to learn it, I really take my time. I will agree with you, I've written superbadges. I also enjoy the freedom. They're kind of like, "Here, go, do. " And you're like, "Oh yes." It's almost like the days of driver's ed when you get out from behind the desk and you finally get to drive the car in the real world. It's a little more of trying things out. So are these cohorts that you're doing now, are they open to any superbadge or are they just specific ones? Jean Velonis: That's a really good question. We looked at our whole library of Superbadges and we wanted to pick one for admins and one for developers. And that doesn't mean it's just if you have that skill set. It's more of like, here's two of the main roles we see in the community. So we have data quality and validation, which is really for anybody prepping you for this agentic ecosystem that we're in, cleaning up your org. Mike: I mean, to be honest with you, that's what we've needed to do this whole time. Even before AI, it's sweeping the floors, you know? Jean Velonis: Yeah. I mean, it's been that way for a long time. I think I made my whole Salesforce admin career of going in and cleaning up orgs, to be honest. So that was a great place for us to start. And then now we've started looking at the developer side of it and we picked Apex Callouts superbadge for all of our developers. And I was very intimidated by trying to put together a superbadge in a box for that cohort because I'm not a developer. But going through this process, I'm like, "You know what? I think I can actually do this," And that's because of all the great learning badges on Trailhead and being able to go at your own pace. Because that's a whole nother skill set for an admin to try and figure out, right? Mike: Right. I've often thought of, this is just how Mike's brain works. If I had children, I would for sure name one of them Apex because then you just gave them a shout-out. Jean Velonis: That's hilarious. I would've never thought- Mike: That's how I work. My brain today is like, "Oh yeah. Hey, did you hear you were mentioned on a Salesforce podcast?" "Of course I was. I'm an Apex Callout." Jean Velonis: I'll tell you a weird secret. I do put my children's names in superbadge content. All of us over here under

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jay Hurst, Senior Vice President of Product Management, and James Ferguson, Senior Director of Product Management, at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about MFA step-up authentication and what it means for Salesforce Admins. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jay Hurst and James Ferguson. Step-up authentication protects sensitive actions Starting next week, Salesforce is requiring all users to use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). If you're a privileged user like, for example, an admin, you'll need to use a phishing-resistant MFA. That's why I sat down with Jay Hurst, VP of Product Management, and James Ferguson, Senior Director of Product Management, to talk about why these changes are vital to protect your org's data. The first thing to know is that AI is making it easier than ever to launch targeted phishing attacks at scale. So while the MFA requirements provide a good first layer of protection, we want to make extra sure you are who you say you are before you're allowed to perform certain actions, like downloading a large number of records or running a big report. Phishing-resistant MFA uses a passkey, like a fingerprint or facial recognition biometric, to verify that it's actually you and not just someone with access to your email account. Balancing security with user friction As Jay and James acknowledge, these changes will add some friction to your users' experience. However, with the pace at which these kinds of attacks are evolving, it's more important than ever to get serious about your security posture. "We're trying to introduce a little more friction right now so that people start to think," Jay explains, "and start to build those habits of understanding when they're doing something that potentially could be considered a malicious attack, such as downloading that All Opportunities report." They're also building out compensating controls that should make things easier in the future, allowing you to trust users from a certain IP range, for example. Security is a journey, not a destination The most important thing to realize is that these requirements are about more than just jumping through some extra hoops. Phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks are growing more and more sophisticated, and you need better protections than "Well, that hasn't happened yet." Instead, James and Jay recommend viewing this as an opportunity to partner with other stakeholders in your org to develop a comprehensive security plan. As Jay says, "Security is a journey, not a destination. What is 100% secure today is not as secure tomorrow." The trick is to develop a security-focused mindset throughout your business that will protect you now and in the future. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Jay and James for more on step-up authentication and how admins can reduce friction for users. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Are Security Essentials for Salesforce Admins? Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Securing Your Org: From Reactive to Proactive Salesforce Help Article: Prepare for the upcoming Step-up Authentication requirements on Report Actions Salesforce Help Article: Prepare for MFA Enforcement for All Employee Users Salesforce Help Article: Prepare for Phishing-Resistant MFA Enforcement for Privileged Users including Admins Salesforce Help Article: Security-Related Product Updates to the Salesforce Platform: User Identity, Data Protection, and Access Controls Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jay on LinkedIn James on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Jay Hurst and James Ferguson from Salesforce Product Management about MFA step-up authentication and what it means for Salesforce admins. As you know, security isn't just a front-door login decision anymore. It's about protecting sensitive actions, understanding risk, and designing systems users can trust. So Jay and James are going to help us unpack phishing-resistant MFA, compensating controls, IP ranges, SSO, and why these changes matter in a world where data, automation and AI are all working together. For us Salesforce admins, this is a chance to think beyond features and really look at how we steward the entire system. So listen in, click that Subscribe button, and of course I would love if you could share it with fellow Salesforce admins or, hey, you know what? Let's make some friends in that security team. So with that, let's get Jay and James on the podcast. So Jay and James, welcome to the podcast. Jay Hurst: Thanks for having us, Mike. James Ferguson: Great to be here. Mike: Absolutely. Jay, let's start off with you. We kind of want to get to know a little bit about you, and James, we'll call on you second, but before we get into our topic today, can you just tell me a little bit about how you got to Salesforce and what you do? Jay Hurst: Sure, yeah. So I have been with Salesforce for almost 22 years now. I started in our customer support department, one of the first 12 phone support reps here at Salesforce. Did that for a couple years and helped found our Tier 3 organization in support. Eventually moved over to our customer-centric engineering department, stayed in there for a while. And then in 2012, had an opportunity to join the product management group for platform, and I moved over and ran a team called Force.com Canvas. And for the last, I guess, 12-ish years now, I've been kind of weaving my way upwards through platform. Currently, I lead our platform services subcloud, so all of the core foundational pieces of platform that you might think of are schema and metadata, APIs, eventing systems, connectivity systems, and also our identity area, which is what brings us here today to talk about MFA. Mike: Yeah. Boy, flashback. You called it the Force.com platform. Jay Hurst: Well, that's what it was called back then. Mike: I know. I know. Jay Hurst: And I can't remember all of the names we've had for it. Mike: Oh, that's okay. I'm sure there's a website that tracks all of them. Jay Hurst: I'm sure there is. Mike: James, fill us in. How'd you get to Salesforce, and what do you do here? James Ferguson: Well, I am, I guess compared to Jay, one of the newer members of the team. I've only been at Salesforce for about 16 and a half years, almost 17 years. Pretty much entirely on the platform product management side, working on various things people know and love like sharing and big objects and event monitoring and those things. And most recently I've taken over responsibility for the identity product team, responsible for all the login and auth and SSO and all of the wonderful things we'll talk about today. Mike: Oh, wow. Okay. So then just to be clear, I'm actually the newest person on this call. I've only been at Salesforce for a little over 12 years now, so I guess I still have my rookie stripes. Jay Hurst: Combined we're almost at 40, or just over 40. Mike: Yeah, combined. We almost get our AARP discount, right? Jay Hurst: Yeah, exactly. Mike: Jay, let's kick off. I know I did a podcast ... and I'll link back to it ... not that long ago with Laura Pelke talking about some of the new things that were coming out, and of course security is always big on admins' mind. She did a wonderful job of explaining step-up authentication to me, which was basically the airport analogy of you have to show your ID to get in and then you have to show your boarding pass to get onto the plane. I thought that really made sense to me, but let's talk about the new authentication that's coming out, if you call it that, and the new step-up concerns that Salesforce admins have. Jay Hurst: Sure. So I think as we move into the continued proliferation of agents and AI across the industry, security is obviously top of mind for a lot of our customers and for Salesforce as well, specifically because we have to help protect our customers. And so when we're thinking of that and how we ensure our customers' data is protected, with step-up authentication, it's really focused around in that same analogy, making sure you're providing your boarding pass at the right times when you're doing things. So just like you need to show your boarding pass when you go through the TSA gate and when you're on the plane and probably to the gate agent after you're on the plane, when you're doing certain things within Salesforce, we want to make sure you are who you actually are and your session hasn't been compromised. So when you're doing certain higher sensitivity-type actions such as I want to download 10,000 records out of my system, maybe run a report, putting that end user through another verification of, "Hey, is this actually you? Prove it with your step-up," so that we have that confidence that we can release the records. And so this kind of helps prevent some of those man-in-the-middle phishing attacks where somebody gets you to log in and then steals your credentials or steals your session in the background. So it's kind of that second or third or fourth level of protection in the runtime. Mike: Wow. James Ferguson: I think that's an important shift that's worth calling out, because it's no longer about just putting a stronger lock on the front door and making sure somebody has better passwords, or even the later stuff, the more recent stuff with verification. But it's when sensitive things happen, we need to do a little extra even once you're inside the airport, if we want to continue that analogy. And so i

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mofeyi Oluwalana, Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about MuleSoft, Flow, Agentforce, and what happens when agents need to take action beyond Salesforce. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mofeyi Oluwalana. MuleSoft creates agent-friendly business processes Agentforce can be truly transformative for our business processes, but sometimes it's easier said than done—especially when multiple platforms are involved. That's why I sat down with Mofeyi Oluwalana, Director of Product Management for MuleSoft. As Mofeyi explains, a problem many businesses run into when they're trying to implement AI is how to enable an agent to engage with something like a process that starts on a payment platform, goes through an OMS, and then ends up with a request to a warehouse for shipping. You can't just hand them the APIs and expect them to figure out the rest. That's where MuleSoft comes in. It gives you the building blocks you need to codify your workflows into something an agent can understand. Data mapping for real-time app integration Building an agent-friendly business process begins with data mapping. What do you need and where is it located? You also need to understand the triggers that kick off each part of the process. Does it start with a Slack message, or when an order is created? Often, these types of business processes don't start in the Salesforce ecosystem. MuleSoft allows you to translate these business requirements into APIs that an agent can use to take action. How to present to stakeholders As a product manager, Mofeyi frequently gives presentations to stakeholders, so I wanted to know if she had any advice for admins. "The most important thing when I walk into any room, regardless of the stakeholder, is who are they and what do they care about? Your ability to persuade and influence is largely due to your understanding of the three things that the people that you're talking to care about and how you align what you're talking about with those three things," she says. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Mofeyi for more about MuleSoft and mapping your business processes. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast for a new episode every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: How MuleSoft Helps Admins Get the Most out of Agentforce Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Mofeyi on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're joined by Mofeyi Oluwalana, product management director at Salesforce to talk about MuleSoft, Flow, Agentforce, and what happens when agents need to take action beyond Salesforce. Now, for Salesforce admins, this conversation matters because agents are only as useful as the data, the actions, the permissions, and the business logic they can safely reach. So Mofeyi's going to explain to us why integrations are not just about moving data from one system to another. They're about helping Salesforce connect to the real processes your business depends on. We'll talk about the questions that admins should ask when working with other platform owners, how to think about triggers and data mapping and why business context is so important when you're designing actions for humans and agents. So give this episode a listen, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, share it with another Salesforce admin who's maybe thinking about how Salesforce could connect to the rest of their business. And with that, let's get Mofeyi on the podcast. So Mofeyi, welcome to the podcast. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Thank you so much. Mike: I'm excited. We don't do a whole lot of episodes outside a core platform. And I know my Salesforce admins ... My ... The Salesforce admins of the world work everywhere and especially now with Agentforce and agents and really just the whole bringing people together and giving a complete view of data, integrating data and working with MuleSoft and tools like that are super important. So I'm glad to have you on. I'm glad we got connected, but let's start off and learn a little bit about you. What was your path to Salesforce and becoming a product management director? Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yes. So I started at Salesforce a little over four years ago. I actually came through the APM program, also known as the Associate Product Manager Program. It's a two-year rotational program for folks coming out of university, getting their start in product. So I was able to come in through that program. I did three rotations all across Salesforce. I spent some time in Commerce Cloud working on how to run promotions on Black Friday. Mike: Oh, holy cow. Mofeyi Oluwalana: And I spent a lot of time in experience services, thinking about how we can make it easier for marketers to build nice looking emails. And I ultimately landed in MuleSoft, which is where I continued working with the MuleSoft team on how to make it easier for our customers to connect the systems that they need to, both for traditional use cases, but also for the agentic ones as well. Mike: Yeah. It's funny, for the longest time in my career, I worked retail and the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday was always the busiest day. And then I got into tech and I was like, "I don't have to work Black Friday." Mofeyi Oluwalana: Guess what? [inaudible 00:03:17]. Mike: And then realized that like, "Oh man, I was a retail associate. There's still computers that have to be had." So I have a soft spot in my heart for all of the people that on Black Friday have to sweat it out and make sure that servers don't go down so that checks and barcodes and everything can happen on the other end. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. I never realized how complex it could mean to calculate hundreds of thousands of carts when there were promotions running on Black Friday, but certainly it's more complicated than one may think. Mike: Right. And then there's people like me that add stuff to a cart and I'll come back to it a little bit later like, no, there's somebody ... You're using up the last bit of ... I don't know. He probably doesn't know that. And then I'm also old school retail when you used to have to verify checks and put them through little check readers and now everything's a credit card or a tap or thumbprint. Mofeyi Oluwalana: All of the above. Mike: All of the above. But it's all of the above because we're integrating data and we're doing stuff with MuleSoft. So I threw together some questions, but let's start off with where should admin start when thinking about products like Flow and MuleSoft and Agentforce together? Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. The journey with MuleSoft starts the moment that your agent wants to do anything outside of Salesforce. I think MuleSoft is the connector, so to speak. If you have data that your agents need to reach in your ERP, if you have actions your agents need to be able to take with your payment provider, how exactly will they be able to do that? Now when agents and agentic technology became a thing, a lot of people were of this opinion that, well, agents are smart enough to just understand platform APIs or where agents can read the specifications, figure out the commands that they need to execute and do all the things that they need to do to be successful. We very quickly realized that agents are really smart, but at the end of the day, they're limited by the information that they know and the tools that they have access to. So it's not sufficient to just give your agents a platform API spec. That's not going to cut it. Your agents need integrations and APIs that they can directly invoke that map to your business logic. They need this because not every organization operates the same. For one retail provider, creating an order is very different from other retail providers. And understanding that business vocabulary is really important when building agents that actually bring value. And that's really where MuleSoft and Flow come into the picture. You have actions that your agency to be able to take in order to execute a certain business process. Well, that action is really just an API and we serve those APIs so your agents are able to do those things. Mike: Yeah. I've always thought of Josh who's on my team keeps us in check with helping us understand stuff. And what you just described would be like as if you brought somebody new on and said, "Well, here's a phone and a phone book. And if you have problems, the phone number's in the phone book." And the agent's the same way. If you're just saying, "Here's all the specs and the APIs you can call, go figure it out." It's almost like handing them this giant phone book and just saying, "Well, you're smart. You'll figure it out." Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. Exactly. And the thing is that for a retailer, creating an order may not just be creating that order record. Creating an order may be, oh, I create the order record and then I send a notification out via email that says, "Hey, this is your order." And then after that, I create an invoice. There are a number of steps that happen. And how do you codify those steps? Well, it's not enough to just give an agent, again, the phone book and the numbers. It's much better and much more reliable to give them the actual workflow or the API they can use to execute that entire process. Mike: Yeah. Now, one thing that I've run into, so back when I was doing some integrations as an admin, we had different third party tools that were being used. One thing that I didn't know to ask ... And I'm hoping you can help Salesforce admins like, here's the questions you need to ask. We had an

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kacie Molina, Salesforce Consultant at Kawaii Cloud. Join us as we chat about how admins can start small with Agentforce and still make a big impact. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kacie Molina. Why you should start small with Agentforce With all the capabilities Agentforce brings to Salesforce, it's easy to dream big. Big projects, however, require major organizational investments in time, planning, and execution. My guest this week, Kacie Molina, has some simple advice for her clients who want to get started with Agentforce: start small. Go back to the basics of listening for pain points and building solutions. Once you start piling up small wins and meaningful changes, it'll be easier to get organizational buy-in for something big and bold. Admins should listen for problems users already have Agentforce solutions don't always have to be some sort of major business process overhaul. Those types of changes require layers of approvals, budgeting, and business analysis. You end up spending as much time rethinking the business process as you do worrying about executing everything in Salesforce. Instead, look for simple use cases. For example, implementing an agent summary field to help users easily see what's going on with an account without having to scroll through a bunch of records. "All of those little use cases that maybe are too specific for a flow," Kacie says, "we can solve them with Agentforce and natural language." And over time, the simple solutions add up. Keeping AI work inside Salesforce supports better security Even if you're not already using Agentforce, people in your organization are already using AI. The problem is that they're often exporting data over to their LLM of choice, which creates all sorts of security vulnerabilities. That's why Kacie recommends enabling an agent to assist your users. You can use your model of choice, and it'll be grounded in your Salesforce data and protected by your security configuration. "It shows users that there's a safe place to get the answers they want without having to worry about breaking company policies," Kacie says.  Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Kacie about how to start small with Agentforce. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce 360 Blog Post: From the Farm to Flows: How One Trailblazer Built a Tech Career from Scratch Kacie's post on LinkedIn Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Kacie on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Kacie Molina about how admins can start small with Agentforce and still make a big impact. Kacie shares why the best AI ideas often come from listening closely to everyday user friction. The scattered preferences, repeated questions, messy exports, and those tiny gaps that slow teams down. We'll talk about building agents that are grounded in Salesforce powered by Flow and designed with trust and security in mind. Because the next generation of admins isn't just adding features, they're orchestrating safer, smarter systems where humans and agents work together. So give it a listen, click that subscribe button, share this episode with an admin who is ready to make AI even more practical for their users. And let's get Kacie on the podcast. So Kacie, welcome to the podcast. Kacie Molina: Thanks, Mike. I am super excited to be here today. Mike: Well, I'm excited to get you on. I was a rare occasion scrolling through LinkedIn and I came across a post that you had put up and it mentioned the AgentforceNow workshop that I think you were in one of mine or you'd been to one. Kacie Molina: I was in one of yours and it was done extremely well, might I say. Mike: You were. Oh, good. Well, I try hard. And you're talking about coming up with ideas and you'd had some ideas for agents and I thought, "Man, I just think we need some sort of agent brainstorm podcast." And so that's why I wanted to get you on. But we're going to talk about that. But before we get started, tell me a little bit about yourself, like how you got into Salesforce, what you do, all of the fun stuff. Kacie Molina: Absolutely. So I grew up in more rural USA, an Amish type community, so horse and buggy. Think maybe Little House on the Prairie, early 1800s. So did a lot of horse training and cheese making with my sister, tended gardens and animals. So my skills when I became an adult were fairly traditional. So as I was trying to translate, "What do I use my skills for?" I started nannying, childcare, and then I started my own sewing business. And during that phase, I was actually so bad at running a business, so I knew how to sew, but I didn't really know the business part. So keeping track of contacts and invoicing people on time was such a disaster for me. It was all little handwritten notes. So I was listening to podcasts and I heard about Salesforce. I logged into Trailhead and fell in love with the gamified learning. So it was kind of no turning back for me. I got my admin certification in about three months, landed a junior admin role shortly after. And it's been about five years and 10 certifications since then of working on all kinds of projects from in-house to consulting. And I just think like Flows, all think Salesforce. It's so much fun. And in the day and age of Agentforce, even more fun nowadays. So that's kind of how I stumbled onto the Salesforce path and it has been way too much fun. Mike: Oh man, I bet we could do a whole podcast on the skills of sewing and how they carry over to Salesforce. Kacie Molina: We probably could, although I do think Salesforce might be a little more fun. One, because you don't get poked by needles. That's a huge thing for me. I don't even like going to the doctor and getting poked by a needle and I did that for a profession. So I got poked all the time and it's much less frustrating than trying to deal with broken sewing machines. Salesforce kind of works pretty well. And when you're dealing with old-fashioned sewing machines, not so much. Mike: I could imagine. Yeah. Needleforce, that's what we'll call it. Kacie Molina: Needleforce. Mike: I bet that exists. I think that would be so cool if there was quilting or sewing at Dreamforce. Because I see people on the plane all the time with those knitting needles and stuff. I would love to have the patience to do it. Kacie Molina: It definitely takes a lot of patience. So actually, interestingly enough, when I was just getting into Salesforce, Mallory Donahue, she's such an amazing person I look up to. She was getting into Salesforce at the same time as me and she was also a seamstress. So I think there might be more sewing and needle people out there in the Salesforce world than you might think. Mike: Yep. Well, this is the diversion that Mike's squirrel brain gets on too quickly. But let's talk about ... I was so intrigued by your post, because I feel like even in the workshop that we do, the AgentforceNow workshop that I hosted, I think I'm back sometime in October because I have some vacation in July. We build an agent for Pronto, which is a food service company and it handles questions and cases and order issues. I mean, I feel like by the end of it, it's pretty complex because we've already built some Flows. There's some Apex actions that are in there. And so I feel like we're getting nitty-gritty into it, but your post kind of almost felt like a breadth mint of like, "Hey, have you ever just thought about asking your users five questions or whatever and then turning on Agentforce and giving it on action to do?" Kacie Molina: Yeah. I really like the workshop, because it gets into the more complex things and you see how the broader, the depth Agentforce can go to. But for me, when I started looking at ... Okay. So I serve multiple clients, and a lot of people are excited about Agentforce and I talk to a lot of admins about it as well, but where do you get started? For me, it was the really simple, small things where people I feel like nowadays more and more are expecting to be able to use natural language. And you don't really need to build a crazy, big agent that takes multiple sprints to complete. You can turn one on fairly simply to answer a couple simple questions and people can start to see that magic work from even a small start. Mike: Yeah. And I feel like, boy, this is me just thinking of that post, but you had really good ideas around not just what I would call the hard aspects of business, which is like invoicing and questions and emails, but also kind of like the soft aspects of business, which is just asking Agentforce to coach you that day or just kind of simple questions that you could give it that would maybe make you as a salesperson or customer service person feel better about what you're doing. Kacie Molina: Right. I do. I think it's really cool that you kind of came back to the small ideas and I'm actually very impressed you found that post because I feel like not many people see my LinkedIn post. Mike: You mentioned me in it, so I got that. But I mean, to be fair though, the small little detail, little things like that are actually kind of the bigger hooks to look for. Kacie Molina: They are in there. To me, they're everywhere. So bigger agent ideas, like there's a couple things that can be intimidating about them. One, they take a lot of time. Two, you're always looking for that big idea that is going to wow the whole company potentially. And then it also entails potentially budget and project approval, which yo

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Parth Shah, Director of Product Marketing, and Rikke Hovgaard, Director of Product Management for the Agentforce Coworker team at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about Agentforce Coworker and what it means for the way admins help teams get work done. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Parth Shah and Rikke Hovgaard. Agentforce Coworker brings AI into everyday business work AI has been a game changer for coding, but integrating it into normal business processes has proved more challenging. That's where Agentforce Coworker comes in. It's an autonomous AI teammate, grounded in your enterprise data from day one. For this episode, I sat down with with Rikke Hovgaard, Director of Product Management, and Parth Shah, Director of Product Marketing, to find out what Agentforce Coworker is and how it can help admins bring new tools to their team. Salesforce permissions remain central to trust and access Trust is central to any conversation about AI. New tools are exciting, but you need to be sure that they won't give people access to data they shouldn't be able to see. Luckily, Agentforce Coworker works around the permissions you've already configured in Salesforce. It's simple for admins, and keeps those guardrails in place. As far as configuration goes, Rikke and Parth are all about keeping it simple and transparent. While Agentforce Coworker automatically inherits the security and governance settings that are already in your org, you also have special configuration options just for the agent. Admins can connect more data through Data Cloud and Slack For Rikke, Agentforce Coworker is especially useful for summarizing her team's Slack conversations. She can quickly understand which team member is working on which issue, and where she might need to lend a helping hand. At the end of the day, Agentforce Coworker gives you a conversational interface to do more with your Salesforce data. "Coworker does the work in the background so that your team can actually focus on what matters," Parth says. Listen to the full episode for more from Parth and Rikke about Agentforce Coworker. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Introducing Agentforce Coworker Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Headless 360 Helps Admins Bring Salesforce Anywhere Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Rikke on LinkedIn Parth on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Parth Shah and Rikke Hovgaard about Agentforce Coworker and what it means for the way admins help teams get work done. Now, this isn't just about turning on another AI feature. It's about bringing trusted business context, permissions, data, and automation together so users can ask better questions and take action faster. Parth and Rikke are going to walk us through how Coworker connects to Salesforce data, how it respects existing permissions, and how it gives admins a simpler path to roll out and governance. So, be sure to listen in, press that subscribe button if you haven't already. And I would always appreciate it if you could share this episode with a fellow Salesforce admin. And with that, let's get Parth and Rikke on the podcast. So, Parth and Rikke, welcome to the podcast. Rikke Hovgaard: Thank you for having us. Parth Shah: Thank you. Mike: Well, I'm glad we could get you both on. This is the first time I've had a product manager and a product marketing major on a podcast. Usually, one of them has something too important to do that they bail out, but I'm bringing people together. It's going to be great. So, we're going to talk about Agentforce Coworker, but first I want to learn a little bit about each of you. Parth, I'm just going to start with you because you were the first one to bug me in my Slack DMs about Agentforce Coworker. So, I'd love to learn just a little bit about how you came to Salesforce and what you currently are working on.  Parth Shah: Yeah, absolutely. Slack makes it really easy to bug my Coworkers, especially my favorite ones. I sent a lot of emojis. So, sorry, Mike. Mike: Oh, I'm your favorite.  Parth Shah: Yeah. So, a bit about me. I grew up in Ohio, was a chemical engineer in undergrad, which really I love to build things and I love to, I guess, solve complex problems. And then when I graduated, I didn't want to go work in a plant, in a chemical plant. And so, I ended up going into sales within oil and gas. Did that for about three years, really understood how to actually talk to customers and what their pain points are. And then switched over to a really early stage startup in education technology, really passionate about education. Did that for about three years, which is where I learned a lot about product marketing. Then got my MBA and then joined Salesforce. So, been at Salesforce as a product marketer for about coming up to seven years. And what's been kind of interesting is I started off on the MuleSoft side of Salesforce, so all about integrations. I really learned what it means to connect data between different systems and how developers and admins go about doing that. And that's when I switched over. MuleSoft wanted to launch a new product called MuleSoft Composer at that time, which is now Flow. So, the next level of after connecting data is like, how do you actually use that data to automate processes and make it super simple for admins like our viewers out there? So, help launch that and then moved over to our Data 360, previously data cloud business. And here, I focus on everything that is around unstructured data. So, again, the through line here, if you look at data is, now we can start tapping into the unstructured data that's all out there because of AI. But the more important thing is now that AI is coming in, how do we actually bring that data, which is full of richness in audio, video, meeting notes, et cetera? How do we bring it into AI so that AI is really grounded? And so, that's been kind of my journey. Obviously, looking back at it, everything kind of connected. I didn't know at that time, but the through line I think is my curiosity of what's next within tech has kind of propelled me to go and find out and work on the cool next product that's coming up, which is also how I land on a Coworker. Mike: Wow. I would've had no idea that you started in oil and gas. Also, what's sales like in oil and gas? Hi, do you want any? Yes. Parth Shah: Cool. Yeah. It's very old. It's a very people oriented business. Mike: Yeah. All right. Well, I had to get that joke in. Rikke, I know you're letting me say your name that way, but in all fairness, being German, there's names that we just can't pronounce. So, I'd love to hear how you got started at Salesforce and obviously you're working on Coworker now. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. So, originally I'm from Denmark, which is why my name is a little hard to pronounce. Believe it or not, that's actually a pretty common name in Denmark. So, Rikke is fine here, but I started out after university working for a consultation partner. So, I started implementing Salesforce randomly, started out with Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, moved over to Pardot and Marketing Cloud when that was acquired by Salesforce and ended up also doing a little bit of data and analytics there. And then I decided it was time to move on to other things. So, I joined another partner in London and I moved to London and did that for a bit. I was working a lot on analytics at that point and also marketing. And so, it was mostly focused on what we know now as CRM Analytics and I started a blog on it as well. And so, a few years into it, I joined Salesforce in the CIM Analytics product team, helping customers get the most out of CIM analytics, deescalate some of their issues, best practices, all this kind of stuff. And I think that's where I also got a lot more involved with the community. And then I joined later in Data Cloud, moved over there and about two years ago I started the team with the search team in Data Cloud and we had this idea of Coworker and I ended up working on the admin side. And today I own the Coworker setup experience as well as search manager. Mike: Oh, wow. I mean, all roads lead through Data 360, literally and figuratively. So, Parth, let's talk about that. I mean, for anybody that hasn't heard, what is Agentforce Coworker and what is it there to help with? Parth Shah: Yeah. So, Agentforce Coworker, it is your autonomous AI teammate and it's available in Salesforce and it's also going to be available in a lot of different services like Microsoft Teams, desktop, mobile, ChatGPT, Claude, and a lot more. Fundamentally, what it is is it's an AI assistant that knows your business from day one. It's already connected to all of your enterprise data, whether it's structured, unstructured, your opportunities, your cases, your accounts, all of that context that you have within Salesforce and then what's connected to Salesforce. And of course, it respects all the permissions when you do connect those systems. So, it's grounded in your context from the first prompt that you ask. Number two is it can also orchestrate a lot of your agents. It can also execute a lot of complex tasks so that way, it moves your work forward. In other ways, it takes action on your behalf and you can actually update your CRM using Coworker. And then lastly, we built that headless. So, what's really cool about this is yes, it's available in Salesforce, but now you'll be able to take that Salesforce experience and that data and the context that you've spent so m