Exploring on Salesforce

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Time saving way of preparing Salesforce certifications with value addition to projects

Motivation behind this

Many a times, I receive requests from many trailblazers on which certification to go next. After passing 30 certifications spanning across different domains, I thought of bringing this path with time saving options which will not only to prepare in lesser time but actually it will help in adding value to projects.

The path has been created not just looking into the pre-requisite to complete certain certification but actually the gathered knowledge will add value in project execution.

Effective Certification Path

Legends used

All green boxes will help to become System Architect for project executions.
All orange boxes will help to become project oriented Application Architect.

Respective blue boxes are good for B2C and B2B Solution Architect.

Solid arrow is most preferable to go next.
Dashed arrow is optional.

Justifications behind this path

Salesforce knowledge starts with preparing Admin certification which is the base certification for anyone. Aspirants can choose Developer role to become Architect or Admin to become Consultant and down the line to Domain or Solution Architect.

After gaining knowledge on Administration, aspirant can choose either PDI or App Builder

JavaScript Developer I certification plays crucial role on Lightning development so this needs to completed first before going to PDII or OmniStudio Developer or B2C Commerce Developer.

After completing PDII, it will be better to go for Integration Architect as 25% of the course content is similar.

Though Admin is pre-requisite for Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or Experience Cloud, but before that App Builder certification with hands-on experience is necessary before attempting those certifications.

Aspirant can prioritize Sales or Service Cloud based on project requirements but Sales Cloud gives bigger horizon on CRM perspective is become mandatory even if aspirant is taking Architect path.

Knowledge of Experience Cloud is vital now-a-days, it should help not only on Sharing Architect exam but also Identify & Access Architect.

A person can be better architect in a project, if he completes UX Designer during his/her journey.

CPQ Specialist and Field Service should help on B2B Solution Architect.

For marketers, Marketing Cloud Admin should be first certification to gain knowledge and work on projects instead of MC Email Specialist certification.

Conclusion

Hope it will help our community members to reach their own destination. Again, this path will vary based on own target and it is not universal to be followed but it is indicative one.

For all certifications, refer http://certification.salesforce.com/

Reference for other certifications

List of my blog posts on Salesforce Certifications

Friday, February 4, 2022

Display data from CMS using Lightning Web Component

Motivation behind this

We know that from B2B Commerce Lightning we can use readymade Lightning Web Components available through B2B Lex and use it for many purposes like Product Detail Card, Product Detail List, Cart Component, Order Summary etc. at Experience Cloud.

Refer B2B Commerce on Lightning Experience Components and it also fetches data from CMS.

What if I have to build similar LWC component which can be placed in Lightning RecordDetail page for internal users and data to be retrieved from CMS. This drives me to do a proof-of-concept and sharing you the steps to develop.

Use Case

Business wants to see the list of featured products for internal users and those product images are placed at CMS.

Developer wants to build LWC component to fetch records from CMS.

For sake of simplicity, those images will be displayed using lightning-carousel component.

Solution Approach

To start with, lets configure CMS and store images on CMS side.

Create CMS Workspace

From CMS Home Tab, Create CMS Workspace. Here given a name as Capricorn Store. Screen as follows:

Create a Channel

From Capricorn Store workspace, create a channel naming Capricorn Channel.

Add Content

Add 3 product related pictures as follows. For demo purpose I have used Coffee Machines pictures.

Sample product image and details will look like this:

Now let's create LWC component.

displayMediaFilesFromCMS.html

HTML will like below here lightning-carousel has been used.

<template>
    <lightning-card  title="Featured Products">
    <div class="slds-medium-size_1-of-4 slds-align_absolute-center">               
            <lightning-carousel>
                <template for:each={results} for:item="item">
                    <lightning-carousel-image
                        key={item.title}
                        src= {item.url}
                        header= {item.title}                
                        href= {item.url}>
                    </lightning-carousel-image>     
                </template>
            </lightning-carousel>         
        </div>    
    </lightning-card>
</template>

displayMediaFilesFromCMS.js

Few notable things as follows:

Channel Name to be passed to Apex class's retrieveMediaFromCMS() method using wire. For sake of simplicity channel name is hardcoded, it can be captured from design attributes too and using @api variable.
Loop through the array returned from Apex method and create new array with title and url as elements which will be used by carousel.

import { LightningElement, track, wire } from 'lwc';
import retrieveMediaFromCMS from '@salesforce/apex/CMSConnectHelper.retrieveMediaFromCMS';

export default class DisplayMediaFilesFromCMS extends LightningElement {
    channelName = 'Capricorn Channel';
    @track results=[];
    @wire(retrieveMediaFromCMS,{channelName: '$channelName'})
    wiredData({ error, data }) {
        if (data) {
            let objStr = JSON.parse(data);
            objStr.map(element=>{
                this.results = [...this.results,{title:element.title,
                                                url:element.url}]
            });  
            this.error = undefined;            
        } else if (error) {
            this.error = error;
            this.results = undefined;
        }
    }
}

CMSConnectHelper.cls

Salesforce provides ConnectApi.ManagedContent class and its method to retrieve data from CMS. No need to fetch data using REST APIs. Refer documentation

/**
 * @description       : This class is used to retrieve data from CMS
 * @author            : Santanu Boral
 * 
**/
public with sharing class CMSConnectHelper {
    
    @AuraEnabled (cacheable=true)
    public static String retrieveMediaFromCMS(String channelName){
        String channelId = getChannelId(channelName);

        //get the image content
        ConnectApi.ManagedContentVersionCollection obj = 
            ConnectApi.ManagedContent.getAllContent(channelId, 0, 5, 'en_US', 
                                                    'cms_image',false,
                                                    '2011-02-25T18:24:31.000Z','2021-09-25T18:24:31.000Z',true);
        
        List<ReturnWrapper> wrapperList = new List<ReturnWrapper>();
        System.debug('json value=' + JSON.serialize(obj));

        //loop through each item and prepare a wrapper list
        for(ConnectApi.ManagedContentVersion versionObj: obj.items){
            ReturnWrapper wrapper = new ReturnWrapper();
            wrapper.title = versionObj.title;
            
            //get the url
            Map<String,ConnectApi.ManagedContentNodeValue> contentNodesMap = versionObj.contentNodes;
            for(String str:contentNodesMap.keySet()){                
                if(str=='source'){
                    wrapper.url= ((ConnectApi.ManagedContentMediaSourceNodeValue)contentNodesMap.get(str)).url;
                }		
            }
            wrapperList.add(wrapper);	
        }
        return JSON.serialize(wrapperList);
    }

    @AuraEnabled (cacheable=true)
    public static String getChannelId(String channelName){
        ConnectApi.ManagedContentChannelCollection channelRepObj = 
                ConnectApi.ManagedContent.getAllDeliveryChannels(0,2);        

        //loop through the channels and return the channel Id
        for(ConnectApi.ManagedContentChannel channelObj: channelRepObj.channels){
            if(channelObj.channelName == channelName){
                return channelObj.channelId;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

    public class ReturnWrapper{
        String title {get;set;}
        String url {get;set;}
    }
}

getAllContent() returns a JSON as follows which needs to be parsed to form title and url combination for each item elements.

{
  "currentPageUrl": "/services/data/v51.0/connect/cms/delivery/channels/0ap2v000000Pu1w/contents/query?endDate=2021-09-25T18%3A24%3A31.000Z&language=en_US&managedContentType=cms_image&page=0&pageSize=5&startDate=2011-02-25T18%3A24%3A31.000Z",
  "items": [
    {
      "contentKey": "MCR6FJVMX4BRHSVJD4LPWUPPN3OI",
      "contentNodes": {
        "thumbUrl": {
          "nodeType": "Url",
          "value": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49815666003_4973d84842.jpg"
        },
        "title": {
          "nodeType": "NameField",
          "value": "TR-COFMAC-001"
        },
        "source": {
          "fileName": null,
          "isExternal": true,
          "mediaType": "Image",
          "mimeType": null,
          "nodeType": "MediaSource",
          "referenceId": null,
          "resourceUrl": null,
          "unauthenticatedUrl": null,
          "url": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49815666003_4973d84842.jpg"
        }
      },
      "contentUrlName": "tr-cofmac-001",
      "language": "en_US",
      "managedContentId": "20Y2v000000HbISEA0",
      "publishedDate": "2021-05-09T16:32:44.000Z",
      "title": "TR-COFMAC-001",
      "type": "cms_image",
      "typeLabel": "Image",
      "unauthenticatedUrl": "https://myinstance.my.salesforce.com/cms/delivery/v51.0/0ap2v000000Pu1wAAC/contents/20Y2v000000HbISEA0?oid=00D2v000002A3VoEAK"
    },
    {
      "contentKey": "MCSC6EEJVMZZB5HDHRKMTEQH6TIQ",
      "contentNodes": {
        "thumbUrl": {
          "nodeType": "Url",
          "value": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49815637818_d892f8127d.jpg"
        },
        "title": {
          "nodeType": "NameField",
          "value": "E-ESP-001-1"
        },
        "source": {
          "fileName": null,
          "isExternal": true,
          "mediaType": "Image",
          "mimeType": null,
          "nodeType": "MediaSource",
          "referenceId": null,
          "resourceUrl": null,
          "unauthenticatedUrl": null,
          "url": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49815637818_d892f8127d.jpg"
        }
      },
      "contentUrlName": "e-esp-001-1",
      "language": "en_US",
      "managedContentId": "20Y2v000000HbIIEA0",
      "publishedDate": "2021-05-09T16:32:06.000Z",
      "title": "E-ESP-001-1",
      "type": "cms_image",
      "typeLabel": "Image",
      "unauthenticatedUrl": "https://myinstance.my.salesforce.com/cms/delivery/v51.0/0ap2v000000Pu1wAAC/contents/20Y2v000000HbIIEA0?oid=00D2v000002A3VoEAK"
    },
    {
      "contentKey": "MCKPXLBGW36RDYXN75NDWFVTB5FA",
      "contentNodes": {
        "thumbUrl": {
          "nodeType": "Url",
          "value": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49816090811_622af115a8.jpg"
        },
        "title": {
          "nodeType": "NameField",
          "value": "B-C-COFMAC-001"
        },
        "source": {
          "fileName": null,
          "isExternal": true,
          "mediaType": "Image",
          "mimeType": null,
          "nodeType": "MediaSource",
          "referenceId": null,
          "resourceUrl": null,
          "unauthenticatedUrl": null,
          "url": "https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49816090811_622af115a8.jpg"
        }
      },
      "contentUrlName": "b-c-cofmac-001",
      "language": "en_US",
      "managedContentId": "20Y2v000000HbIDEA0",
      "publishedDate": "2021-05-09T16:28:55.000Z",
      "title": "B-C-COFMAC-001",
      "type": "cms_image",
      "typeLabel": "Image",
      "unauthenticatedUrl": "https://myinstance.my.salesforce.com/cms/delivery/v51.0/0ap2v000000Pu1wAAC/contents/20Y2v000000HbIDEA0?oid=00D2v000002A3VoEAK"
    }
  ],
  "total": 3
}

Finally, Create a Lightning App Builder page and place the component, it will look like this:

We are done and thanks for reading.

You can also extend this code to expose this component to Experience Cloud with some minor changes.

References
Salesforce JavaScript Developer I Certification Cheat Sheet - 6 Pager
Lightning Web Components Developer Guide
Salesforce Lightning Web Components Cheat Sheet

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Tips for passing Salesforce User Experience Designer Certification

Motivation behind this

Today 22nd January 2022, I have passed Salesforce User Experience Designer Certification and fortunately reached 30x certified. I have been trying this certification from quite a long time which gives a different dimensions of learning and exploring design options in human centric ways. This concepts behind this exam is thoughtful and definitely helps to execute project discovery, design, UI development and usability testing in proper ways.

Sharing my tips to prepare and pass this certification for trailblazers.

Exam Outline

Trailhead link: Salesforce User Experience Designer Certification Prep

Content: 60 multiple-choice / multiple-select questions

Time allotted to complete the exam: 105 minutes

Passing score: 65%

Registration fee: USD 200 plus applicable taxes as required per local law

Delivery options: Proctored exam delivered in an online proctored environment

References: No hard-copy or online materials may be referenced during the exam

Topics

Topics	Weighting
Discovery	13%
User Experience (UX) fundamentals	16%
Human-centered Design	12%
Declarative Design	27%
Testing	11%
Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS)	21%

Preparation

Trailmix: Prepare for your UX Designer Credential

Very nicely written blogs to refer:

Salesforce Certified User Experience (UX) Designer Exam Guide - by Dinesh Yadav
FOMO No Mo - Passing the Salesforce User Experience Designer Certification - by Vanessa Grant
Salesforce Certified User Experience Designer Tips(SP21) - by Palash Dubey
User Experience (UX) Designer A Must Have Certificate for all Savvy Salesforce Professionals! - by Rakesh Gupta

Be sure to practice all the questions and flashcards from the preparation trailmix.

Few Important points to cover for exam

Discovery

UX Research Basics and Good Research Method (Behavioral, Attitudinal, Qualitative and Quantitative)
Common methods like: Surveys, Card Sorting activities (grouping things into categories), Contextual inquiry, Usability Testing)
Aim and Scope of study and how to formulate questions
Gathering data in Qualitative and Quantitative ways
Importance of Open ended questions
Tips on conducting research
Storytelling
User personas and their activities

Sales Cloud Personas like Sales Leader, Deal Closer. Pipeline Builder
Service Cloud Personas like Case Solver, Expert Agent, Service Admin
Marketing Cloud Personas like Marketing Manager, Strategic Leader
Community Cloud Personas like Community End User, Community Manager, Community Admin

Process Mapping like Capability Model, Detailed Process Map, Value Stream Map and best practices

UX Fundamentals

App Designing and Prototyping - creating low-fidelity prototypes, wireframing (scenarios given when to use what), interactive mockups for high fidelity
Whiteboarding and build your story, mocking up with Journey Builder and Experience Cloud
Mobile App Branding - creating branded App and what we can change like:

App Icon, App Name, Launch Screen, Color Scheme, Application Store, Authentication URL and Help URL
Distribute App via Apple App Store and Google Playstore

Lightning Experience for Salesforce Mobile App - App Launcher, Navigation Bar, Personalization of Navigation
What are ways we can customize that can be reflected on the mobile app.

Human-centered Design

Ways of Relationship Design -

Difference and usefulness of User Experience Design and Service Design
Goals: Engagement, Connection, Social Values
How to strengthen employee relationships, community relationship
Mindsets of Relationship design - Compassion, Courage, Intention, Reciprocity

Web accessibility -

Decorative vs. Informational
Importance of color, contrast requirement (4.5:1)
Animations and when to pause
Given a use case identify component states of a button

Agile Basics - given a use case of estimation on user stories
Ethics by design - Equality and Inclusion in Salesforce Products

Transparency and accountability
Running Consequence scanning workshop

Declarative Design

Optimizing Sales Process through Path and what are the things can be included like (key fields, best practices, policy reminders, links to chatter posts)
Salesforce Adoption Strategies - given a scenario on sandbox to be identified for testing
User Engagement -

Onboading, Feature discovery & adoption, Troubleshooting help and Deeper Learning.
Components which are used and how (declarative way) for Welcome Mat, Prompts, Field-Level Help, Setup Assistant
Push vs Pull method
In-App guidance and choosing right type of prompt, M.A.P. (Message, Audience, Purpose)

Lightning Experience Features -

Setting up navigations
Use of Help menu
Service setup flows
Account, Opportunity, Lead, Kanban view, path
Creating object relationship (Lookup, Master-Detail)
Service Console and Sales Console advantages over standard one
Knowledge publishing for different sets of users
Einstein chat bot and given a use case of post implementations and training requirement
Custom Themes and Branding specially for Experience Cloud
Dynamic Forms, Screen Flows, Lightning App Builder

Lightning Experience Customizations -

Use of Compact Layout, Highlights Panel, List View with Filtering, Record visibility with field level security
Global Action, Object specific actions

Testing

Testing Web Accessibility -

Keyboard and Focus management (tab order should be logical, focus should be visible, actionable items should received focus, interactive items can be navigated etc.)

Innovation Ideation & Prototyping
Handling Unconscious Bias - one scenario given in exam

Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS)

Lightning Design System Basics -

Design with Blueprints, Tokens,
Voice vs tone
Use of Grid, Accordion

System design with SLDS - Macropattern vs. Micropattern
Use of Sketch, Styling hook and its naming convention
Basics of LWC - Documentation, Styling, Importance of Shadow DOM

That's all I can remember and thanks for reading!

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Tips for passing Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer Certification

Motivation behind this

Today 9th January 2022, I have passed Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer certification. Recently I have cleared Marketing Cloud Admin as well. As there are few concepts are common both for Developer and Admin which helps to expedite the preparation. Sharing my tips to prepare and pass this certification.

Exam Outline

Trailhead link: Study for the Marketing Cloud Developer Exam

Content: 60 multiple-choice / multiple-select questions (plus 5 unscored questions)

Time allotted to complete the exam: 105 minutes

Passing score: 63%

Registration fee: USD 200 plus applicable taxes as required per local law

Delivery options: Proctored exam delivered in an online proctored environment

References: No hard-copy or online materials may be referenced during the exam

Topics

Topics	Weighting
Data Modeling	14%
Programmatic Languages	35%
API	22%
Data Management	22%
Security	7%

Preparation

Dedicated 3 weeks focus study from Partner Learning Camp is good for preparation.

Get Started on the Marketing Cloud Developer fast path to Certification

Also, blog written by Zuzzana Jarczynska has good collection Preparing for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer certification

Few Important points to cover for exam

Data Modeling

Types of Data Extensions - Standard, Filtered, Custom
Non-sendable vs Sendable Data Extension and how records are added to Sendable DE
Contact Builder Features, use of Attribute Groups
From Contact Model - difference and usefulness of Contact Id, Contact Key and Subscriber Key
Data Retention Policies
Best practices of deleting 2 Million Contact Data
Steps of Deletion - Deletion process initiated, followed by Suppression Period, Final Deletion
Deletion using REST APIs using Contact ID, Contact Key or List

Programmatic Languages

AMPScript

Given a snippet of code to display the outcome
AMPScript Processing in this order: HTML Body -> Text Body -> Subject Line
How to use a variable and attributes
Lookup. LookupRows functions
CONVERT and CASE
Math function specially DateAdd, DateDiff, Divide, Mod, Now(), RedirectTo, RaiseError, BeginImpressionRegion, EndImpressionRegion

SSJS

We can use Arrays and advanced error handling through SSJS over AMPScript
How to use AMPScript and SSJS together: Variable.GetValue("@myAmpVariable")
Platform Object support, along with Core and when to use what
Error Handling with try-catch block

When to use it and advantages over SSJS

Exclusion Scripts

ROWCOUNT(LOOKUPROWS("Suppression", "Email Address",emailaddr))> 0;
Domain(emailaddr) != "mycompany.com"

API

Scenarios of using SOAP and REST API, their capabilities, limitations and when to use what
Use of Client Id, Client Secret and Authorization information as Header
GET and POST syntax for REST APIs
Transactional Messaging
Few important methods of SOAP: Configure, Execute, Extract, Create, Update, Delete
Few objects of SOAP: AccountUser, DataExtension, DataExtensionObject, Subscriber
When to process synchronously and asynchronously like TriggeredSends, queued calls
REST timeouts
Error Handling and how to solve errors.
Accessing Journey Builder, Content Builder, Event Notification Service from REST
Marketing Cloud SDK and where to find help

Data Management

File Import Considerations

FTP & File Drop Automation File Naming Pattern: %%BASEFILENAME_FROM_TRIGGER%%
Processing of encrypted files

Send Log and Data Retention Policies, less than 10 custom fields considerations, Contact Delete implications
SQL

Syntax of SELECT queries with different types of JOIN
Selecting All fields
Comparing with WHERE clause in performance optimized way
Data Views: Bounce, Open, Click
SQL Best practices: Staging the data, Consider when data is > 1M

Security

Encryption Methods: Asymmetric, Symmetric, Salt, Initiation Vector
Transparent Data Encryption
Tokenized Sending
Using SSL Certificate

There are around 20 sample questions can be found from fast path course at PartnerLearningCamp which are very effective.

Happy Learning!

Exploring on Salesforce

Pages

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Time saving way of preparing Salesforce certifications with value addition to projects

Motivation behind this

Effective Certification Path

Conclusion

Further Reading

Reference for other certifications

Friday, February 4, 2022

Display data from CMS using Lightning Web Component

Motivation behind this

Use Case

Solution Approach

References

Salesforce JavaScript Developer I Certification Cheat Sheet - 6 Pager

Further Reading

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Tips for passing Salesforce User Experience Designer Certification

Motivation behind this

Exam Outline

Topics

Preparation

Few Important points to cover for exam

Further Reading for other certifications

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Tips for passing Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer Certification

Motivation behind this

Exam Outline

Topics

Preparation

Few Important points to cover for exam

Further Reading for other certifications

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