Reviewing the New “Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins” Badge
Within the Admin Community, we often face challenges in our roles, at times these challenges lead to frustration, stress and even comedy. If you’ve been around long enough, you will probably have heard the slogan of “why Admins drink”. This slogan is usually attached to the usual, comical, and frustrating issues we face in our roles as Salesforce Admins. However, one important question to ask is how much of these issues is on our hands?
Answering that question is a different topic for another post, however, much of resolving the issues we all face as Admins in our roles comes back to the habits that we develop as Salesforce Administrators. Habits are patterns of behaviour that we implement in our everyday lives … including our work. Habits can be good or bad and they often have a mental component attached to them. I’m sure we can all think of examples of both and good habits, but what habits can we build in our work as Salesforce Administrators?
Well, this is where the topic of this post comes in. In this post I will be reviewing the recently Trailhead badge Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins. This new badge was announced in an Admin blog on Wednesday 19 January. I spent some time this week on the badge and completed it within the span of a couple of hours. So in today’s post, I want to offer my thoughts on this badge and encourage the #awesomeadmin community to complete it ASAP.
Understanding the Badge
The badge is made up of five modules in total. The time recommended to complete the badge is 1 hour and 50 minutes, however if you’re an experienced Admin you could probably do it in a little bit less time and still retain the knowledge that the badge offers. The modules are quiz-based and not hands-on challenges, so you won’t need a playground to complete it.
The badge covers what are deemed as the four core responsibilities of the Salesforce Admin role. Those four responsibilities being User Management, Data Management, Security and Actionable Analytics. If you attended Dreamforce back in September, you might recognise responsibilities as they were also listed in the Admin keynote, The Future of Admin Success as key skills for the Admin role. The only responsibility listed in this badge that does not directly link to one of the key Admin skills is Actionable Analytics. It does however have a noticeable link to many of the key skills that were listed.
The five modules you will complete over the course of this badge are:
- Learn About Admin Habits (10 mins)
- Understand User Management (25 mins)
- Delve into Data Management (30 mins)
- Get the Scoop on Security (20 mins)
- Get Acquainted with Actionable Analytics (25 mins)
After you complete the introductory module, the remaining module follows the same basic pattern. You will have a video to watch covering the focus responsibility of that module lasting approximately 15 minutes. After this you will be offered a scenario in which the quiz for that module will be based on. Each module is worth the standard 100 points, 50 points, or 25 points depending on how you perform in the quiz. Overall when I completed the badge, I got 450 points … I got one question wrong in my first attempt on the security module (admittedly I was half right on the answer I gave). If you’re a seasoned Admin, you should have no issue with getting all 500 points for this badge, or you might fall prey to what I did and get a single question wrong.
There are plenty of links and resources that you are linked to each module that you can refer to. So it might be worth bookmarking some of those links so that you have them to hand for later usage … it’s often good to go back at a later date and re-read content that you find along your Salesforce journey.
So that’s a somewhat practical and high-level overview of the badge. Now let’s talk about my thoughts on my experience of completing the badge itself.
What Did I Think About the Badge?
Like most badges on Trailhead, I have some mixed feelings on it. On one hand (like a lot of Salesforce content), what’s covered in the badge at times does feel like it’s been designed for larger companies. There’s nothing wrong with that at all by the way, but it does mean that you might find some of the things covered across the badge a little irrelevant depending on your organisation. Again, that is completely OK, we have to remember that every organisation is slightly different and therefore not everything applies to us equally.
Outside of that, I thought the badge was great. As the Admin role continues to evolve we need to see more badges like this developed and released for public completion. I also hope that at some point in 2021 that we will see a badge released that goes over the fourteen skills that were listed as Admin key skills at Dreamforce ’21. Over the course of the badge you will get a bit of a glimpse into how Salesforce see the Admin role. This is very significant as if we’re to be completely real here, how many companies hire an Admin and don’t really know what the role entails? This is the kind of badge that an Admin could recommend that their management team completes to help them know what kind of expectations they should be setting of you in your role. I’d argue as well that it’s the kind of badge that would be good for hiring managers and recruiters to possibly complete. I would recommend those who have a responsibility of crafting the job description of a Salesforce Admin to complete this badge. So in short, this badge has a lot of upside going for it in my view.
To all the Admins out there, new and experienced, I think this badge is well worth your time completing. I haven’t really posted about a badge before, so for this to be the first post I’ve published on a specific badge, just goes to show how important of a badge I think this is. Despite my slight criticisms of it. I’d also add that I think this badge is relevant for any Salesforce professional, no matter what role you’re in. I genuinely feel that every Salesforce role has to remain true to good principles of Salesforce Administration. This badge will help the community to have a much more significant idea of where the Admin role is going, so it certainly doesn’t help to complete this badge at all.
I have no doubt that when you complete the badge, you will find little gems sprinkled throughout and will want to look at implementing some of the recommendations into your regular working pattern. For me, the most beneficial thing I found about the badge was seeing the four core responsibilities of the Admin role mapped out. As someone who volunteers as a one of the Admin Skills group leaders on the Open Source Commons programme with Salesforce.org, this badge helps to further ratify the foundation to build the work of the group upon and the direction in which to take it as time goes on. When you complete it, you might find your highlights to be something completely different to mine. We’re all different as Admins.
So that’s on my thoughts on the badge. Overall a really good badge, one I would argue is one of the more important badges to complete on Trailhead. Have you completed it yet? If so, what did you think about it? Let’s keep the conversation going and all share our views. Tell me how you got in the responses below or on social media? Don’t forget to share the badge as well.
Recommended Resources
- Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins Is Now a Trailhead Badge
- Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins
- Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins Trailmix
- The Future of Admin Success
- Essential Habits for New Admins
- Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins Just Got Bigger and Better
- 4 Habits Every Salesforce Admin Needs to Succeed
