Salesforce Developer Podcast

Join us as we welcome Rob Cowell, a renowned DevOps advocate, on a journey through his personal and professional life in the world of programming and Salesforce. Starting with his early experiences tinkering with a Sord M5 computer, Rob shares how he transformed his passion for programming into a fulfilling career. We trace his evolution from working with Microsoft Access to .NET, C Sharp, and ultimately Salesforce and Apex, highlighting the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in the fast-paced tech industry. Transitioning into his current role, Rob pulls back the curtain on what it truly means to be a DevOps advocate. Emphasizing the significance of communication, collaboration, small incremental changes, and automation, he discusses how a commitment to quality is integral to delivering excellent results. The episode also explores the role of a Salesforce DevOps engineer and how to adopt the required skill set. Tune in to glean invaluable insights from Rob's vast experience and deep knowledge of

Strap in for a journey that takes you from the vibrant streets of Mumbai to the bustling tech scene of London, led by none other than Akshata Sawant, Senior Developer Advocate at Salesforce. We had the pleasure of delving into her career, starting from her time as a Newellsoft ambassador to her current influential role at Salesforce, where she's truly making a difference by connecting with community groups across the globe. We dive deep into the robust capabilities of MuleSoft’s transformation from a simple API integration tool to a comprehensive automation suite. We also shine a light on Akshata co-authored book, "MuleSoft for Salesforce Developers," which is a must-read for anyone interested in this space. Whether you're a seasoned developer or a tech newbie, this episode's got insights and conversations that you just can't afford to miss! Show Highlights: Akshata’s work as a MuleSoft ambassador and her current role as Salesforce's Senior Developer Advocate. Deep dive into MuleSoft’s evolution from a

Get set for an illuminating episode with our special guest, Jagannathan Padmanabhan, a security advocate within his current role as a Technical Architect at Salesforce. Jagan brings to the fore how he leverages Salesforce to tackle customer challenges and his fervor for platform security. He imparts his wisdom on the zero trust security model and the principle of least privilege, both key aspects in maintaining a safe platform. Prepare to be enthralled as Jagan unveils the intricate workings of event-driven architecture within Salesforce. He walks us through the various events that transpire when a user logs in, accesses a list view, generates reports, or logs out. By the closure of our engaging conversation, you'll have a deeper comprehension of file and event security in Salesforce - a pertinent skill in this digital age. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation! Show Highlights: Discussion on Salesforce's zero trust security model and the principle of least privilege. Explanation of the role of

Get ready for a lively discussion with our good friends and fellow admin evangelists, Mike Gerholdt and Gillian Bruce. Listen in as we tackle opinionated launches in the tech world and beyond, drawing from our experiences and personal thoughts. From the strange matrix of Coke Zero being the New Coke formula to the interesting fact that everyone has an opinion about Vision Pro, we share our insights and perspectives on how these launches draw attention and incite people's opinions. We explore the long-rumored Apple car, the standardized dongles and charging ports, and the irony of gasoline pumps having a standard-size nozzle. Join us as we delve into the world of self-driving cars and how current roads are built for humans, not machines. Join us as we appreciate the diversity of experiences and opinions, building a deeper understanding of product appeal and consumer behavior. Show Highlights: Opinionated product launches, including Coke Zero, Google Glass, and Vision Pro. Deep dive into the tech world with

Navigating through the tech world can feel like stepping into a labyrinth, but our guest Danielle Larregui has found her own unique path. Now a senior developer advocate for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, Danielle shares her experiences that have transformed her from an accidental admin to a ‘casual teacher’ of developers. We chat about her intriguing journey into the tech world, her engaging first public speaking experience, and how she embraces each new challenge as an opportunity for growth. We also dive deep into the world of customer data platforms (CDPs). Our conversation with Danielle is inspiring and packed with insights, offering a fresh perspective on the evolving tech industry. Show Highlights: Danielle’s journey from an "accidental admin" to a senior developer advocate for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, discussing her career trajectory and experiences. The role of customer data platforms (CDPs) in consolidating customer data from disparate sources to provide a comprehensive view of the customer

Join us in an enlightening discussion with Greg Bennett, a Director of Conversational Design at Salesforce. We cover how he applies his knowledge of interactional social linguistics and discourse analysis to create more natural and intuitive interactions with generative AIs. He also shares anecdotes from his tenure at Microsoft working on Cortana and how his insights from different writing systems in Japanese inform the design of chatbot dialogues. In the second part of our discussion, Greg takes us through his path to Salesforce and how he made the business case for starting conversation design there. He provides insights into the careful design of prompts for models and model providers and the role of context in conversational AI. We then switch gears to explore the future of conversational design, the relevance of prompt engineering, and the exciting possibilities of generative AI. Listen in as we unpack the evolution of conversational interfaces, the future of human-AI interaction, and the emerging verna

Get ready for an incredible journey as we chat with Jeremiah Peoples, a Senior Developer Advocate for Slack at Salesforce, and explore his fascinating career path. From his earliest computer encounters to joining the Air Force and teaching himself to code, Jeremiah's story will inspire you to chase your dreams. Learn how he became a freelance YouTuber and ultimately landed his dream job at Slack, where he now shares his unique perspective on the power of Slack as a development platform and its potential to make the other 98% of software more efficient. But that's not all - we'll also dive deep into the world of building modular Slack applications. Jeremiah walks us through the new tools available for Slack developers, the starting point of the Slack CLI, and the different ways you can trigger a workflow. Discover the magic of Block Kit, a tool for building surfaces with JSON, and how modularity can be used to create powerful applications. Don't miss this enlightening conversation that will leave you eager to

Join us as we chat with Nicolas Vuillamy, CTO at Cloudity, about his journey from programming on a Commodore 64 at the age of 10 to becoming a professional developer at 16. Listen in as he shares his experience of discovering Salesforce and how the Trailblazer community played a crucial role in his growth. Nicolas talks about the inception of SFDX-Hardis, an open-source project designed to help developers and administrators implement CI/CD processes efficiently, filling the gap between expensive homemade pipelines and third-party tools. In this episode, we explore how SFDX-Hardis allows administrators and developers to perform complex tasks with simple commands without needing extensive knowledge of Git or SFDX. Nicolas also highlights the importance of having a release manager with Git expertise to handle more complicated tasks like conflicts. Hear the story behind the creation of a purging flow versions command and how feedback from colleagues contributed to the SFDX-Hardis roadmap. Don't miss this fascina

Listen in as Sridhar Raghavan, a Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce, shares his journey from working in speech recognition two decades ago to generative AI today. We explore his early memories of playing Pac-Man on his dad's computer in the mid-90s, his break from Salesforce to pursue his own startup, and his strategy to get kids away from digital devices and into reading with AI. Discover how Salesforce is pushing the boundaries of AI-assisted code generation for developers. We discuss parameter sizes, Salesforce's open-sourced 16 billion parameter model, and the importance of customizing and updating language models. Learn about the GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) acronym and how it is used to create the wiring necessary for a language model to become a learning engine. Don't miss this fascinating conversation with Sridhar Raghavan! Show Highlights: Sridhar's strategy to get kids away from digital devices and into reading and how AI can help make reading more fun and engaging. Ho

Join us for a virtual coffee catch-up as we discuss our activities since the last Trailblazer DX conference, as well as the upcoming Salesforce release, along with a friendly debate on coffee versus tea. We share our excitement about sharing information about releases and share some tips on how to best prepare for it. In the second half of this episode, we explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in generating content and the need for critical thinking despite AI's ability to summarize content. We also discuss the difficulty of using AI to create content such as jokes, blog posts, and even fantasy stories. Finally, we share our experiences with ChatGPT, Bard, and Simon and Garfunkel even make an appearance! Don't miss this engaging and informative episode! Show Highlights: Covering Salesforce releases AI's potential for content generation, critical thinking, and joke/story creation Crafting quality submissions for CFPs Links: Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegerholdt/ Gillian

We are back with part two of our interview with Marisa Hambleton. In part one, we discussed entrepreneurship, its pros and cons, and how the pandemic created new challenges for her. In part two, we get into the beginning days of Cactusforce and how it organically grew from a group of developers at Happy Hour to a conference with hundreds of participants in just a few short years. She also discusses how their conference had to pivot from in-person to virtual in 2021 and how they were able to allow participants to interact with the speakers and be involved. If you missed part one, go back to episode 178 and start there. Otherwise, enjoy part two! Show Highlights: How Happy Hour amongst developers turned into a conference How people may not be dedicated to one technology The content Marisa curated at Cactusforce conferences How to solve dense problems and get advanced developers on stage How Cactusforce has grown since 2020 and managed virtual conferences in 2021 Links: Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ma

In this episode, we have a conversation with Marisa Hambleton, owner of MH2X, which helps companies achieve their strategic goals through technology by building solutions and providing consulting services. Although presented with the opportunity to work for a corporate firm, Marisa chose the entrepreneurial route. This episode is part one of a two-part interview. In part one, we discuss Marisa’s early years and how she was introduced to Salesforce. We also talk about why she chose to own her own company and the pros and cons of entrepreneurship. Get to know Marisa in this episode, and don’t miss part two in episode 179! Show Highlights: How Marisa was introduced to Salesforce The incentive to stay in a world of entrepreneurship Marisa’s advice for others who want to branch out on their own Sticking with entrepreneurship and knowing when it’s not working How the pandemic has created new challenges and solutions for her Links: Twitter account: https://twitter.com/marisahambleton LinkedIn account: https://www

In this episode, we have a conversation with Alicia Teo about Custom Property Editors and how you can use them to create powerful user interfaces to configure your web components. Alicia started as an intern at Commerce Cloud while pursuing her MBA and is now a Product Manager for Experience Builder here at Salesforce. On the Experience Builder team, Alicia makes creating websites quicker and easier for admins. Custom Property Editors enable developers to create components that are even easier to use than Experience Builder, leading to fewer user errors and fewer complaints. Enjoy! Show Highlights: What custom properties are The problem Custom Property Editor is meant to solve The new lightning property types and their benefits How to override the date time picker with a new more robust one What needs to be done to a lightning web component to make it a Custom Property Editor The possibility of reusing the code Links: Alicia’s Twitter Account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-teo/ Custom Property Editor

Ananya Jha is a Product Manager working on the IDE experience here at Salesforce. This means she gets to dive into all the cool new features that Salesforce releases in its extensions and eventually serves you through VSCode and Code Builder. In this episode, we talk about the current state of Code Builder, the Salesforce IDE, and some of its great tools that can benefit you. We also discuss the advantages of using a repository as a source of truth when using Code Builder or Salesforce IDE, PMD’s relationship with IDE, and the Apex Replay Debugger. Show Highlights: The core desktop experience with Salesforce IDE What the Code Builder technology looks like and how it can be accessed today Other tools inside the IDE Ananya recommends for people to track conflicts and changes Ananya’s favorite extensions and tools Query Builder and how it works within the IDE How the Apex Replay Debugger Works Links: Ananya on LinkedIn Ananya on Twitter Article on the Org Colors Plugin

Andrea Guzman is a Product Manager for External Services here at Salesforce. In this episode, we get an overview of the current state of External Services, which allows you to easily wrap API calls for both Flow and Apex. We learn how Andrea became involved with Salesforce and product management, the advantages of Flow versus Apex and vice versa, internal use cases, and more. We hope you enjoy this conversation! Show Highlights: What the day-to-day looks like as a Product Manager at Salesforce The elevator pitch for External Services What is the Open API spec and how it plays into External Services The structure for a developer and an admin to register these services How Named Credentials work What happens to your code if Twilio changes their API Links: Andrea on Twitter Linkedin Account Salesforce Help Documentation External Services Group: Trailblazer Community TDX23 Session: Simplify API Integration with External Services Apex Developer Guide UnofficialSF Website Salesforce Architects Blog: Data Integ

Pablo Gonzalez is a Salesforce Architect at Salto, a small Israel-based start-up that does DevOps for business applications like NetSuite, Zendesk, JIRA, Workato, and of course, Salesforce. Pablo is involved in all discussions of decision-making at Salto regarding Salesforce. Whether marketing, blog posts, product features, engineering, how we solve certain problems, the API, or anything that has to do with Salesforce, he has a say in it. In this episode, we talk with Pablo about his project, happysoup.io, and another of his projects, Not Another CI (NACI), and other topics for continuous delivery and integration. Show Highlights: How Pablo became self-trained in engineering. What is happysoup.io, and where the idea came from. What deployment boundaries are and how happysoup.io works with them. What the deployment options \ Pablo's other project, Not Another CI (NACI) Things to think about before building out pipelines when designing for CI Links: Twitter account LinkedIn account GitHub account HappySoup.i

In this episode, we have a conversation with Tyson Read, a Product Manager here at Salesforce, on the impact that administrators' and developers' implementations are having on the environment. We discuss his project and how he is sharing this information through dashboards and guides. Salesforce is a net zero company, so we are already offsetting all our emissions due to our data centers. In this discussion, our goal is to spread awareness as to what kind of cost there is so that others can understand what they can do about it. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to reach out to Tyson on LinkedIn or Twitter. Show Highlights: Salesforce’s overall efforts in sustainability so far. How to make small changes to fix our carbon footprint. The equation between the cost of doing business and implementation. The numbers developers will see if they start tracking carbon with a code. How are carbon dashboard might work The roadmap to sustainability at Salesforce. Links: Follow Tyson on Twitter Follow Tyson on Link

Greg Whitworth is a Senior Director of Product Management here at Salesforce. Greg started with Standards Committees in 2011 before getting involved in web platform testing and CSS Working Group, then Open UI. Today, Greg focuses his efforts on MWC, LWR Node, and standard web platform browser engagement. In today’s episode, we talk with Greg about some distinctions between our old component framework Aura and our new, modern framework, Lightning Web Components (LWC). We dive into how the evolution of web standards at Salesforce is driven, the different styling of LWC, Aura’s file structure compared to LWC, and much more! Show Highlights: Aura in relation to the rest of the Salesforce frameworks. Greg’s experience with JavaScript. How Aura’s eventing compares to LWC. What GraphQL is and how it compares to other API endpoints. Strategies to start moving an org into an LWC. How the language is continuing to evolve and improve the developer experience. What is on the roadmap. Links: Greg on LinkedIn Greg on

Raj Advani is the Senior Director of Product Management here at Salesforce. Raj has held a variety of different roles at the company, beginning with an Engagement Manager when he started 17 years ago. He now owns many of the event driven architectures for Salesforce, including Change Data Capture and Platform Events. In this episode, we have a conversation with Raj about various integration solutions on the platform. We discuss what Change Data Capture and Platform Events are, the advantages of a Pub/Sub API, and more! Show Highlights: Some of the internal features using Platform Events. Moving toward a bus centric world in Platform Events. The filtering conditions in Change Data Capture. The benefits of event driven architecture. The options for a distinct integrations from Salesforce. How Pub/Sub API plays into the event architecture. Links: Raj on Twitter Raj on LinkedIn Architecture Decision Guides Episode 115: Event Relays with Tyson Read Episode 93: Pub/Sub with Emmett Chan-Ran

Kevin Poorman is a Salesforce Architect over at Chief. He is joining us in this episode to talk about one of his newest projects, Apex Kit. Apex Kit is a library of tools that all help developers do repeated actions accurately and securely. In our conversation, Kevin and I talk about his backstory and some of his career history. We also dive deeper into Apex Kit and get a full understanding of it. Enjoy this intriguing conversation with Kevin Poorman! Show Highlights: Where the idea for Apex Kit came from. How Apex Kit works. The connection between Apex Recipes and Apex Kit. What promises in code are. How promises get built into Apex. What polyfills are and how they work within Apex Kit. The function of Ouroboros in Apex Kit. The difference between a ULID and a UUID and a use case for a ULID. Links: Twitter account - @Codefriar Linkedin account https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinpoorman/ Github account https://github.com/codefriar/ Apex Kit: https://github.com/codefriar/ApexKit