Introducing Nonprofit Bridge, a new Open Source Commons project focused on providing a choice for small organizations that want to use the power of the Salesforce platform to work with individual people.

Marc Benioff's recent comments in the news are extremely disappointing. In the end I'm holding my nose and continuing to use Salesforce because it's a powerful platform. But I think we should always keep the full context top-of-mind.

The five steps I take to get profiles and permissions transitioned to the future of user access.

Personas and User Access Policies allow Salesforce admins to determine what permissions people need and to automate it so that new users get the right permissions.

User access in Salesforce is based on permissions granted at several levels. This is the first in a series exploring user access and how to manage it effectively.

A few notes about how to manage platform users that I had to discover the hard way.

Can you use platform licenses with Nonprofit Cloud or Industries-based solutions. Technically, I suspect Yes. But it's probably not the right question.

An introduction to the use and pricing of Salesforce Platform Licenses.

Introducing IceTea, an extension tool for CumulusCI that helps you work with your stored datasets. (Created by my son Arden!)

The new Analytics Home that Salesforce released a few years back is not all it's cracked up to be.

With a few clicks you can turn on Chatter for reports and dashboards, which makes collaboration easy and grounded in the right context.

I learned that flows on outdated API versions can leave you in the dark when it comes to where fields are used.

Did you know that you can _stack_ Platform Licenses to save money? Depending on your system design, this can be a great use for a basic system.

Working with Files in Salesforce is hard. Users can't delete files they don't own. Here's my screen flow solution to that challenge.

The NPSP triggers that automate opportunity contact roles are built on the assumption that nobody will ever manually update those roles.

When choosing an implementation partner make sure to follow the money and ensure that you're getting unbiased advice. Caveat emptor!

Don't sign a Salesforce contract until you've found an implementation partner on your own. They can guide you to save money and not overbuy.

There are many options for gathering signatures electronically that don't have to involve an expensive e-sign platform.

This is how I built a flow-based state processing engine using platform events. It allows for high volume asynchronous processing of records

Platform events can be a powerful addition to the Salesforce Admin's toolkit. I share some learnings and limitations.

Why do I hate Nonprofit Cloud? I don't. It's just not a product that's part of my day-to-day.

Despite what Give Lively's documentation says, it's possible to use a free integration user. Here's what you need to do.

Though it used to be easier, there are now barriers to organizations self-implementing Salesforce. It can be done, but keep your eyes open.

Discussion of the use and format of Salesforce key prefixes, the three characters at the start of a record Id that tell you what object tabl

A guide to Salesforce URLs, including what's in them and how to reconfigure them to go to other records.

Salesforce has divided the nonprofit market in two: large organizations and everyone else. Nonprofit Cloud is only for large organizations.

The Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is not going away any time soon. Don't let fear cloud your decisions about Salesforce for nonprofits.

Enabling users to upload files to records in the Salesforce mobile app works...differently than you might expect. Here's how to do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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