Willis

Mike and I completed a rousing week of training at the Salesforce.com DEV-531 class this past Friday. You can read about the details of the class in Mike's blog so I'll skip the what's and why's and go straight to the wtf.

Ironically, I'd written a pretty meaty trigger prior to attending the class to handle Chatter feed post updates from the Opportunity line item. After the class, I'll have to say that it makes more sense but as a gal named Debbie in the class put it, "put a blank piece of paper in front of me and ask me to write code from scratch and I'm lost."

I think that's the general sense of what everyone got from that class. To be honest, I don't know what it is about Salesforc.ecom's courses that are so confusing. I contend that it's been the stupid recruiting app that they somehow insist on using that boggles everyone's mind. Or maybe it's the 2 days of making analogies to Dogs of all things instead of something normal... like accounts... or contacts.

The abstract nature of the introduction thoroughly confused me. Not saying I'm the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm sure a lot of people found little to now value in it. Mike asked a question about updating a Contact based on an update to the Account tables on the last day of class. That one day of instruction was probably the most valuable out of the whole week as it was concret and familiar. Maybe that's a piece of information to take back to Salesforce.com.

The one thing I will say about the whole experience is that we are not alone out there in the Salesforce.com world. As Mike has shown us, there are many of us out there with the same questions; many of which have already been answered. What I encourage everyone to do is make friends, share ideas and contribute to each others' successes. If we can't talk amongst ourselves, how are we ever going to move forward.... Or in my case, how am I going to keep looking like I know something

Ready to get back to California and (for once this week) not be in heat above 95 degrees or humidity in the 50% range. Oy!

Football Non Sequitor - GO USA!