Articles | Free Like a Puppy

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Michael Kolodner

Oct 22 min

Free Like a Beer: Salesforce Reports

Reports and dashboards in Salesforce are so built-in that we barely even think about them as "features." They're the secret sauce!

240 views

Michael Kolodner

Sep 185 min

Whiz-Bang at What Cost?

It's not yet clear what the price is going to be for organizations to use Salesforce's genAI features like Agentforce and EinsteinGPT.

262 views

Michael Kolodner

Sep 47 min

Freebie's Dreamforce Tips

My tips for surviving and thriving at Dreamforce and other Salesforce conferences and events.

370 views

Michael Kolodner

Aug 212 min

Cooler Than Validation Rules

Before save Flows can show a custom error component to serve as validation. A powerful feature, but validation rules still have their place.

398 views

Design for User Success: Think About Text

Michael Kolodner

Aug 75 min

Design for User Success: Think About Text

Text is an important part of your Salesforce page design. Think about placement and balance in field labels, types, and even help text.

247 views

Michael Kolodner

Jul 246 min

Design for User Success: Button Order

How to apply design sensibility to the placement and order of buttons on your Salesforce pages.

239 views

Michael Kolodner

Jul 103 min

Design for User Success: Screen Flows

Screen flows can be elements you use to design your record pages, adding options beyond the standard layout controls.

367 views

Michael Kolodner

Jun 264 min

Design for User Success: Eye Movement

When designing your Salesforce page layouts, think about the ways people's eyes move around the page and use that to guide users.

481 views

🌈 Design For User Success: Add Interest through Color

Michael Kolodner

Jun 53 min

🌈 Design For User Success: Add Interest through Color

Suggested tools and ideas to add visual interest to your Salesforce pages by taking color into consideration.

367 views

Design for User Success: Field Placement

Michael Kolodner

May 226 min

Design for User Success: Field Placement

Key principles of field placement and page design to enhance user experience and efficiency in Salesforce.

534 views

Michael Kolodner

May 83 min

Band-Aid for New Cloud Reporting

I've built a workaround to allow fundraising reporting the Nonprofit Cloud otherwise doesn't support.

602 views

Extension Objects: There’s Nothing to Like

Michael Kolodner

Apr 2410 min

Extension Objects: There’s Nothing to Like

Extension Objects are the "on core" place to put fields that really belong on objects like accounts and contacts. They are a problem.

897 views

These Are Not The Components You're Looking For

Michael Kolodner

Apr 107 min

These Are Not The Components You're Looking For

Salesforce's "Industries" solutions come with access to many new components. I wish they worked better.

586 views

Michael Kolodner

Mar 276 min

Deeply Skeptical About Person Accounts

Despite being the official solution for dealing with individuals on Salesforce, Person Accounts are difficult to use.

1,207 views

Michael Kolodner

Mar 1315 min

The Emperor's New Clouds

New Nonprofit Cloud and Education Cloud are more expensive and less functional than NPSP and EDA. Most nonprofits should stay away.

4,909 views

Thing I Learned: Email Encoding Has Changed

Michael Kolodner

Feb 282 min

Thing I Learned: Email Encoding Has Changed

Salesforce's default email encoding has switched to UTF-8 (unicode). Make sure you update yourself and all existing users.

327 views

Michael Kolodner

Feb 145 min

My FlowLog Object

I use a custom object to log when automation fires and what steps are completed. Here's what I built and how I make it easy to reuse.

377 views

Email to someone not [yet] in Salesforce

Michael Kolodner

Jan 317 min

Email to someone not [yet] in Salesforce

How I solved the challenge of emailing someone that might not be in Salesforce and still relating that message to the right record.

338 views

Michael Kolodner

Jan 173 min

Things You Don’t Need: Sales+Service

Nonprofits should only pay $432/user/year, a Lighting Enterprise Edition or Sales Cloud license. They're often sold more expensive licenses.

477 views

Things You [usually] Don’t Need: A Full Sandbox

Michael Kolodner

Jan 34 min

Things You [usually] Don’t Need: A Full Sandbox

Nonprofits rarely need or should pay for a full copy sandbox. Unless you have a specific project that's going to need it, save your money.

387 views

Michael Kolodner

Dec 20, 20235 min

Things You Don’t Need: Premier Success

Nonprofits do not need to pay for Premier Success. Save your money to give your admin professional development.

300 views

Things You Don’t Need: Unlimited Edition

Michael Kolodner

Dec 6, 20233 min

Things You Don’t Need: Unlimited Edition

Why nonprofits should not pay for Unlimited Edition. Save your money because the benefits are not worth the cost.

728 views

Michael Kolodner

Nov 21, 20233 min

In Praise of "Clicks not Code"

The fact that Salesforce is easy to build and automate without code is a gift that has built community and careers.

191 views

Michael Kolodner

Nov 8, 20234 min

Prices Go Up (Discount Goes Down)

News Flash: Salesforce announces 9% price hike. Nonprofit prices rise 14.6%. I try to understand why.

776 views

Michael Kolodner

Oct 25, 202310 min

Platform Events — My New Favorite Tool

An introduction to Platform Events and the cool things I've found to do with them.

1,217 views

Michael Kolodner

Oct 12, 20232 min

Unlimited Edition Means No P10!

A quick update about an unethical AE sales tactic.

266 views

Michael Kolodner

Oct 11, 20238 min

Spoiler Alert: AEs are Salespeople

The sales incentives at Salesforce do not always result in the best outcomes for nonprofits. Buyer beware!

561 views

Michael Kolodner

Sep 27, 20233 min

No Dreamforce Wrap-up From Me

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might have noticed that I didn't publish a post-TDX wrap up, nor anything in particular...

232 views

Michael Kolodner

Sep 13, 20231 min

Smiley Faces Form

A cool javascript update to a FormAssembly that my son helped figure out. Rate something 1 to 5 using emoji faces!

174 views

Free Things I Always Install: Unofficial SF

Michael Kolodner

Aug 30, 20233 min

Free Things I Always Install: Unofficial SF

UnofficialSF is a treasure trove of flow extensions, code snippets, and more. There are some tools I always know I'll need and others I keep

1,016 views

Michael Kolodner

Aug 16, 20231 min

Free Things I Always Install: DLRS

I always install DLRS into new orgs or existing ones. It's just a great tool that can solve so many needs!

306 views

Michael Kolodner

Aug 2, 20232 min

Free Things I Always Install: Mopsy

Another free thing I always install: Mopsy. It improves upon the Today's Tasks component so your users see their To Do items.

638 views

Free Things I Always Install: Lightning Messaging Utility

Michael Kolodner

Jul 19, 20233 min

Free Things I Always Install: Lightning Messaging Utility

Lightning Messaging Utility from Salesforce Labs is a handy tool for displaying messages that fit the Salesforce design pattern.

1,314 views

Apsona: The Golden App for Bulk Data Operations

Michael Kolodner

Jun 27, 20234 min

Apsona: The Golden App for Bulk Data Operations

Apsona for Salesforce is my favorite app. I consider it so important that I require my clients to install it.

531 views

Rollup to Relationship: A Cool DLRS Trick

Michael Kolodner

Jun 14, 20233 min

Rollup to Relationship: A Cool DLRS Trick

A rollup summary trick to create a direct relationship to the last child record.

536 views

Michael Kolodner

May 31, 20235 min

FormAssembly’s Price Increase

FormAssembly is raising their pricing. A lot. It still might be worthwhile for nonprofits.

1,654 views

Always Build in a Sandbox. (Except When You Don't. Or can't.)

Michael Kolodner

Apr 26, 20235 min

Always Build in a Sandbox. (Except When You Don't. Or can't.)

We always say you should never build in production. But I say sometimes it makes sense.

423 views

Michael Kolodner

Apr 12, 202312 min

Setting Up the Free Integration Users

A step-by-step guide to using the free Salesforce integration user licenses.

3,727 views

Tools I Love: DLRS (the Declarative Lookup Rollup Summary tool)

Michael Kolodner

Mar 29, 20236 min

Tools I Love: DLRS (the Declarative Lookup Rollup Summary tool)

DLRS, the Declarative Lookup Rollup Summary Tool, gives your rollup summary fields superpowers.

1,200 views

Michael Kolodner

Mar 15, 20238 min

The TL;DR on the “New Nonprofit Cloud”

What does Salesforce.org's announcement of the new Nonprofit Cloud mean for you and your org?

4,386 views

Actual Free Stuff! Five No-cost Integration Users Announced at TDX23

Michael Kolodner

Mar 14, 20234 min

Actual Free Stuff! Five No-cost Integration Users Announced at TDX23

Salesforce is making at least five free API-only integration users available to every org. Better security and auditability for less cost!

490 views

Michael Kolodner

Mar 1, 20235 min

My First Einstein Prediction

What can you expect when you install Einstein for Nonprofits? And what will you learn about your data from the predictions?

579 views

Michael Kolodner

Feb 15, 20235 min

Naming Convention Flows

How to make text-named records have consistent and useful names.

594 views

Michael Kolodner

Feb 1, 20233 min

One Form To Rule Them All

Use a single webform for many uses with URL parameters and save yourself time.

356 views

Michael Kolodner

Jan 26, 20231 min

Sprinty's Community Resources

Announcing Sprinty’s Community Resources, an online library of Salesforce content for nonprofits.

136 views

Michael Kolodner

Jan 18, 20234 min

i++ (or For Loops) in Flow

How to create a For Loop in Salesforce Flow. (Increment a counter like i++.)

197 views

Dynamic Gauge: The First “Dynamic” Feature I’m Using

Michael Kolodner

Jan 4, 20235 min

Dynamic Gauge: The First “Dynamic” Feature I’m Using

I try out Dynamic Gauge Charts on Salesforce dashboards and then build and release tool to take advantage of them.

1,479 views

Simple, Readable, Fun 🥳 - 💦 Sprinkle Emoji in your Salesforce ☁️

Michael Kolodner

Dec 14, 20224 min

Simple, Readable, Fun 🥳 - 💦 Sprinkle Emoji in your Salesforce ☁️

Adding emoji to your Salesforce aids in comprehension and adds fun! 👾

579 views

Michael Kolodner

Nov 9, 20224 min

Test Data in Production

The truth is that we almost always have test records in production. So make them work for you.

184 views

Michael Kolodner

Oct 26, 20223 min

Still Trying to Try Einstein

My attempts to turn on and use Einstein Prediction Builder in two client Salesforce orgs.

196 views

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