“Get Ready to Trailhead!” — A Trailblazer’s Guide to Getting Started
If you’re a Trailhead newbie wondering how to get started — there’s a trail for that! Let me show you the way.
Getting Started on Trailhead
Whether you’re learning Trailhead at home, at a Salesforce event like Dreamforce and our Global Gatherings, or at one of our community workshops you’ll want to get yourself properly set up with your Trailhead account.
Fortunately, the folks at Trailhead have created a brand new guided learning path, which we call a trail, to help you do just this: Learn Salesforce with Trailhead! The trail walks you through the steps you need to take to learn and earn with Trailhead. And, I’m going to be your guide on this trail — lace up your boots and here we go.
First, the Trailhead Basics
The first module on the trail is Trailhead Basics where you’ll learn:
- What Trailhead is, how to sign up, and how to create a Trailhead Playground
- How to navigate trails, modules, units to earn points and badges
- How to troubleshoot and find answers to common questions
Here, you’ll explore the different ways of signing up for Trailhead; with a Salesforce account, Google, or LinkedIn so you can start your learning adventure straight away.
Already have a Trailhead account and don’t want to have to worry about VPN or other authentication steps to log in at an event? No problem! Simply connect a social account to your existing Trailhead account to log in however you want. Go to your Profile > Settings > Social Login to connect your Facebook, Google, and/or LinkedIn accounts.
Next, Create a Playground (or two, or three…)
You’ll need your own hands-on org to practice your Salesforce skills, and to complete Trailhead challenges. The second module on the trail, Trailhead Playground Management, will show you how to:
- Create a Trailhead Playground
- Get your Trailhead Playground username and password
- Install apps and packages in your Trailhead Playground
If you already have a Trailhead Playground and have completed some of the same hands-on challenges or projects — we’ve got you covered! You can now redo challenge & project steps. Sorry, you won’t earn more points for doing it though. This is great news for challenges that are part of Salesforce learning events — like Dreamforce.
#Protip: If you’re attending a Hands-on Training session at Dreamforce or happen to be retaking a challenge at any other time, we recommend spinning up a fresh Trailhead Playground to avoid any pesky errors during your challenge verification. Sometimes existing configurations in an org can trip up our challenge-checking trailbots, so starting with a brand new playground is a bright idea. Select “Create a Trailhead Playground” from the drop-down box on any hands-on challenge to get your new playground.
Now, you’re ready!
If you’re coming to Dreamforce 2017 or attending any of our Global Gatherings, your Trailhead account is now ready for action. Don’t want to wait until November 6th to get hiking? Dreamforce sessions on Agenda Builder suggest relevant Trailhead badge as pre-work and now you’re all set up to get prepped. Also, almost all hands-on activities — including Camp Quick Start and Hands-on Training (HOT) sessions at Dreamforce — will be powered by Trailhead. So good news! You’ll now be ready for those too.
Now that you’re all set up, don’t forget to tell your friends and coworkers to follow your lead and get their Trailhead Playgrounds ready before they attend whatever event is next on their calendar — Dreamforce, Global Gatherings, Salesforce Saturdays…you name it.
More about me
I lead Evangelism at Salesforce, and we use Trailhead to learn new skills and to teach those skills to Salesforce Admins and Developers (have you seen our Lightning Now Tours?). I’m passionate about closing the tech opportunity gap and promoting equality. I actively support our community-led Salesforce workshops like #Trailhead4All and the Girl Develop It (GDI) Salesforce classes — check them out!
