Level Up with Salesforce University’s Destination Success!
An intense week focused entirely on Salesforce skill development, Salesforce University’s Destination Success is quite an experience.
If you aren’t familiar with Destination Success, this was the second annual event put on by Salesforce University, Salesforce’s training and certification business unit. It’s a week long event with multiple education and certification tracks, and it includes three opportunities to take a certification exam. The entire event is focused on learning. There’s no sales pitches, no vendors and partners, no parties, and while there is a welcome reception, even that included learning.
I went to Destination Success with a couple of goals:
- Pass the Certified App Builder Exam
- Participate in the Advanced Admin Track
- Take the Advanced Admin Exam
Destination Success starts out with an exam first thing Monday morning. No pressure, but Ready. Set. Go! and you’re off to the first of three exams. Finish that exam, and now you get 6 hours of class on top of your brain melt.
The rest of the week is a complete deep-dive into all things Salesforce. You will spend the next 5 days, and nights, immersed in your Salesforce track. Class ends around 6 PM, and then you get to go to study hall for a couple of hours. Grab some quick food, and then back to your room to study a little more. At some point, once your eyes gloss over from looking at the screen, you fall asleep. And wake up to do it all over again.
If the intensive class and study schedule isn’t enough, wait for the nerves of test taking, and more brain-fry through two more certification tests.
Each morning, if you so choose, Salesforce University also lead an early morning wellness walk. Spending all day in class, sitting, this was a nice chance to move a little, and get some fresh air. I went out on Tuesday morning for a quick walk to the Las Vegas sign. There are a lot of studies linking exercise with increased cognitive abilities, so go get some fresh air.
When it’s all done, you’ve clicked Submit on that final exam, you’ve turned in your paper and pencil, you finally, finally, have a chance to breath again.
The intensity; it was awesome!!
My main goal was pass the Certified App Builder exam, so that’s what I took Monday morning. I knew I couldn’t go in to the test without some preparation. I’ve been working through study materials and practice exams from Salesforce.study for a few months now. When I took the Administrator exam in June, I whizzed through that in about 40 minutes. App Builder, though, took considerably longer. It wasn’t too tough with the study time that I put in, just longer to think about the answers.
My next goal was to learn more by going through the Advanced Administrator Track, especially around the areas of Salesforce that my company doesn’t use today, things like Territories, Forecasting, Knowledge, Products, and Price Books were all new. And of course, keep up on Salesforce Security. I wanted to pick up new ways to do things; looking for alternatives to the way we’ve always done it. From discussion in class, I’ve got some new ideas to incorporate Knowledge and Products into what we do. And wondering why we don’t use Territories to assign our accounts.
A special thank you to my instructor, Tracy Windeknecht. She did a fantastic job. Explained concepts clearly, and managed to wrangle 60+ students all learning at different paces.
To my surprise, Advanced Admin also included information on Sandboxes and Change Sets. There were so many questions from students that we spent two hours on the subject. My opinion, but this information should be moved from Advanced Admin to Admin. Whether working declaratively or through code, using sandboxes effectively is critical to managing change and thorough testing. Admins, don’t wait until Advanced Admin to learn about this functionality.
Finally, my goal was to take the Advanced Admin exam. Now, you might be thinking, my goal should be to pass, but not having spent any prep time on Advanced Admin (remember it was all on App Builder), my expectation was just to see the exam. While the Salesforce University class covers a lot of ground, it doesn’t cover everything. And in some cases, it covers things at a too high level to be useful on the exam. My goal was take the test, and be ready to do a retake in a few weeks after Destination Success.
Destination: Success!
Did I meet my goals? No. I exceeded them.
Pass App Builder. Check.
Take the Advanced Admin Track. Check.
Take Advanced Admin Test. Check, and I even passed!
I’m over the moon! I’m 3x Certified. Admin, Advanced Admin & App Builder. I just never anticipated this would happen.
You might be wondering about that third exam included with Destination Success. For my third exam, I took Sales Cloud Consultant. While the Admin exams focus on the HOW to do things, Sales Cloud Consultant focused on the WHY. I knew it was a long-shot, and I came up just a bit short. A few weeks of studying, and I think I just might have it.
Stay tuned for Part 2…comparing Dreamforce and Destination Success.
