Decoding Trailhead Admin-Beginner Modules

Where to get started in Salesforce? I’m new to this ecosystem, how to learn Salesforce? What is the best way to switch to Salesforce from other technologies? People quite frequently post these kind of questions in Salesforce forums and the most common response to all these questions is an incomplete, one-line answer “Check Trailhead”!

Though the answer is right, I have seen the newbies get confused about where to get started in Trailhead.  Because when they check trailhead, there are many number of trails and modules.  They do not know which trail/module to pick first, which is the most important trail/module to get started in Trailhead.  Yes, there are filters for – “Admin | Business User | Developer” and also “Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced”.

Even if you choose the most basic “Admin – Beginner” filter, there are 48 Trails and whopping 76 Modules! That’s a lot of trails/modules to get started specially when there’s no indication which module to pick and which one is the basic-basic.

In this blog post, I’ve identified the important modules among these 76 modules for any beginner and also “sorted” them in the order in which they need to learn.  That is the key learning from this post – which modules to pick in the Admin-Beginner level.

Here’s an simplified version of this post – Salesforce for Beginners

1. SALESFORCE ECOSYSTEM

These 6 modules help you to know What/How/How of Salesforce, its ecosystem and also about the #Ohana culture.  If you already know about the Salesforce success model, its ecosystem and benefits you can skip this section.  But this is very important to know.

• Salesforce Success Model – WHO? Learn who Salesforce is and our vision for driving customer success.
• Salesforce Ecosystem – Witness the awesomeness of our incredible partner ecosystem and customer community.
• Salesforce Ohana Culture – SF WAY? Learn how Salesforce lives our Ohana values every day.
• Salesforce Cloud Benefits – WHAT? Understand the flexibility of a “complete” CRM that evolves with your business needs.
• Salesforce Technology Basics – HOW? Get a peek under the hood of our core technology model based on trust and innovation.

2. THE VERY BASICS OF SALESFORCE

• Salesforce Platform Basics – Get introduced to the platform, navigate use cases, and build your first app.
• CRM Basics – Get started with navigating Salesforce CRM and personalizing your experience.
• Salesforce Basics – Get introduced to Salesforce and Lightning Experience.

3. SALESFORCE CUSTOMIZATION

• Data Quality – Strategies for assessing and improving the quality of your data in Salesforce.
• Data Modeling – Give your data structure with objects, fields, and relationships.
• Accounts & Contacts – Discover how accounts and contacts work together in Salesforce.
• Leads & Opportunities – Power your sales process with leads and opportunities in Salesforce.
• UI Customization – Customize your app’s user interface without code.
• User Management – Set up users and control how they can view or edit your business data.
• User Authentication – Security features two-factor authentication, domains, and single sign-on.
• App Customization – Customize your app’s user interface without writing any code.
• App Customization Lite – Customize your app’s page layouts, compact layouts, and actions.
• Reports & Dashboards – Build real-time reports and charts to visualize key business metrics.
• Chatter Basics – Develop a Chatter roll out strategy, get started with social collaboration.
• Data Management – Import and export data in Force.com.
• Change Management – Safely deploy changes by developing them like apps.

4. LIGHTNING EXPERIENCE

• Lightning Experience Basics – Explore Salesforce’s new user experience and learn how to enable it for your organization.
• Lightning Experience Features – Examine new sales tools for managing Leads, Opportunities, and more.
• Lightning Experience Chatter Basics – Get started with enterprise social collaboration in Lightning Experience..
• Lightning Experience Data Management – Learn how to import & export data in LEX.
• Lightning Experience Reports & Dashboards – Visualize key business metrics in real-time using Lightning Experience.
• Lightning Experience Rollout – Develop a roll out strategy to help your users get started with our new UX.

5. EXTRAS

• Salesforce1 Mobile Basics – Customize your mobile experience with Salesforce1.
• Communities Basics – Create a Salesforce community to expand your reach and delight your customers and prospects.
• Service Cloud Basics – Deliver extraordinary customer service with multi-channel support.
• Marketing Cloud Basics – Explore our powerful suite of products and start building your digital marketing strategy.
• Wave Analytics Basics – Uncover new insights from your business data using Wave Analytics.
• Desk.com Basics – Learn the basics of Desk.com and how it can benefit your business.
• Knowledge Basics – Help employees and customers find answers fast with an online, searchable knowledge base.
• Knowledge Search Basics – Learn how search works in Salesforce Knowledge and customize search in your org for better results.
• Identity Basics – Secure your org so users can log in once to access a variety of apps, orgs, and services.
• Artificial Intelligence Basics – Learn what AI is and how it will transform CRM and the customer experience.
• Microsoft Integration Basics – Learn the basics for setting up Microsoft integration products.
• Microsoft Integration Benefits – Understand the benefits of integrating Microsoft email and Salesforce.

If you complete the above mentioned 4 categories, you can easily say you know a lot about Salesforce and most importantly you will have a strong foundation of the Salesforce basics.