Great news! I just passed the certification exam to gain my “Certified Sales Cloud Consultant” credential. Check out the snazzy new badge on the right.

Good preparation paid off here! A lot of the questions regarding account hierarchy, org-wide defaults, sharing rules, contact roles related list and the partner roles related list on Accounts, Person Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities get rather lengthy when the question is setting up the “scenario” that it will ask about it. So towards the end of my exam my head was spinning with all the different “scenarios” they set up. It’s a lot to keep straight and you have to be good at easily forgetting the “scenario” from the last question and focusing on the “scenario” for the question you are currently answering.

Now a Salesforce.com Certified Sales Cloud Consultant

Great news! I just passed the certification exam to gain my “Certified Service Cloud Consultant” credential. Check out the snazzy new badge on the right.

I highly recommend getting certified. It is a rewarding experience. I now have three of the seven certifications offered by Salesforce.com. FYI: Here is a link to the Salesforce.com Certification site to get you started.

My next targeted certification: Sales Cloud Consultant. Although, I do hope that with my background and experience working with the Sales Cloud that the certification will come a little easier than the Service Cloud certification came.

Hope isn’t a strategy, though. Back to the books!

Now a Salesforce.com Certified Service Cloud Consultant

Here is a link to my Salesforce.com Developer Profile.

I really like what SFDC is doing here. This really allows me to “show off” in an environment where others can find me easily. Kudos.

New Salesforce.com Developer Profile

Just got back from Dreamforce 2010 and have a mountain of notes and ideas to review! North of 25,000 people were at this years event, which made for an exciting time. We had typical year-end San Francisco weather (cloudy, fog, rain and dreary) and Stevie Wonder and will.i.am were both great acts.

I hope you noticed the new Administrator Certification badge. Getting the ADM201 certification means that I now have two Salesforce.com certifications!

Last year, after passing the DEV401 certification, they had a sign made in front of the exhibit hall with all the names of those who received certification at Dreamforce ’09. This year, either they didn’t make the same sign or I never saw it. So, instead, here is a pic of the hordes of people making their way to hear Bill Clinton speak.

Dreamforce 2010

Now a Salesforce.com Certified Administrator

My work on the Force.com Site I built recently was listed on the “Sites Gallery” by Salesforce.com.

Check it out – http://developer.force.com/sitesgallery

Force.com Sites Gallery

Listed on the Force.com Sites Gallery

Check it out – http://datacenters.digitalrealtytrust.com/

Screenshot of page 1 of My First Force.com Site

This Force.com Site consisted of:

• 3 visualforce pages
• 1 apex class
• 1 apex test class
• 2 custom objects and a ton of custom fields
• all images and videos were stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and served through Cloudfront
• most CSS and javascript files were stored on AWS and served through Cloudfront
• uses JW Player (http://www.longtailvideo.com/) to play the video
• uses jquery for the mouse over popup

Learns:

• the rich-text fields are still in “beta” for a reason – they don’t seem to work on visualforce pages yet
• writing test methods for an apex class is a pain! – start by writing the test method first, then write the production method

I’m glad to have this experience under my belt. In fact, I’m proud enough of the Site that the local SFDC User Group is letting me present it (and my experience) to the group at the next meeting.

My First Force.com Site

I recently sat for the DEV401 certification exam at DreamForce ’09 and passed.

The nice thing about it is I sat for the test on Tuesday and on Wednesday at DreamForce they had these boards printed up standing in the heaviest-traveled area of the show floor.

My name amongst those who passed cert exams

DreamForce '09 - My name amongst those who passed cert exams

Now a Salesforce.com Certified Developer

Podcasting on iTunes

A couple of months ago we started publishing our audio and video files on iTunes via Podcast and Video Podcast respectively.

If you have iTunes installed, you can find our channel here: Digital Realty Trust Knowledge Library

Podcasting on iTunes

This is my “Certificate of Completion” from Lynda.com for sitting through the course titled, “Creating a First Web Site with DreamWeaver CS4.”

Certificate: Adobe DreamWeaver 101

I was just putting together a list of all “systems” I use here in the Marketing department and thought I would share. My job title, officially, is ‘Marketing Information Systems Manager’.

Here is the list:

• Website – (www.digitalrealtytrust.com): built on .NET 3.5 on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008
• “Knowledge Library” – (knowledge.digitalrealtytrust.com): built on the WordPress blogging platform
• Salesforce.com – (www.salesforce.com): the sales force automation, CRM tool we use
• Engage B2B – (www.silverpop.com): the email marketing automation tool we use
• GoToWebinar – (www.gotowebinar.com): our online webinar provider
• Google Analytics – (www.google.com/analtyics): our web stats tracking tool
• Google Picasa – (www.google.com/picasa): our online photo library
• YouTube – (www.youtube.com/digitalrealtytrust): video sharing account
• Twitter – (www.twitter.com/drtdatacenters): so our users know “what [we're] doing”
• LinkedIn – (www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1898885): our social networking group
• Basecamp – (www.basecamphq.com): our online project management software
• OnStream (www.onstreammedia.com): our CDN, video hosting and serving account
• bit.ly – (www.bit.ly): our URL microformat service
• Google FeedBurner – (www.feedburner.com): our RSS feed publishing tool
• iTunes – (www.itunes.com): our podcast and video podcast listing directory
• GoDaddy – (www.godaddy.com): our domain registrar

I was making a list of all my admin passwords for the above list, saw the list continue to grow and thought it was pretty impressive list of tools and systems for which I am the admin.

Marketing “Systems” I use