Not so long ago, I had sent a congratulatory message to a very senior person on LinkedIn. I had worked with this person on one project. It was not a pleasant meeting. It was an Escalation call. The context of the call was why did the project go wrong, why isn't the client happy.  I congratulated him on his recent accomplishment. And as usual, as most senior people do he was polite enough to reply and his response ended with the sentence - Hope you are doing well.

I wanted to sound intelligent, smart, serious, I wanted my message to give a sense that I was doing well. But what I wrote was more of a verbal vomit - A volley of non- sequenced statements - I said something like - i am reading a lot of books, snippet below: Try not to laugh. I was being Ernest in my quest and as honest as possible . 

 I am reading Management books. 2. Blogging - I pen down my thoughts (but they are private as everything I write is not about Salesforce) to improvise on vocabulary. 3. Vlogging - ....

Since the time the message hit the send button I felt stupid, silly and needless to say embarrassed. So today I wrote one more message, a shorter one this time to say how embarrassed I felt and with a promise that if someone asks me 'Hope all is well with you' I will as a thumb rule, stick to a one-liner 'I ma doing well, thank you."

Independence Day - Created & Edited By Sushma Tiwaari

Women Empowerment - No more in Vogue

Who empowers whom? Are women in the lounge area "waiting" to be empowered? If yes by whom??

When I hear people say "We need to "empower" our women, I feel nauseous.

I hear stories like Cinderella who waited her entire life for one prince to come change her life!. She could have taken up a job a long time ago and moved out !

Sleeping beauty - waiting for that one true love's kiss, tch, tch.. Imagine waiting for "True love" in this era, sleeping beauty would never wake up!

Long story short  - Stop playing the Victim. Take control of the situation and change it. If you are unhappy in a situation, try to change it , but if unable to , Leave...
lead a fresh start. A new beginning.

The point is all these stories / fairy tales revolve around "waiting for men" to come rescue us and make our lives better. What stories are we telling our girls today? ? We need to remodel the stories that we are reading to our girls today.
Instead what need to teach our girls is how to handle situations, to be go-getters and not to wait around for someone else to come change our lives.

I have often noticed that in a meeting room full of men, there is one lady, naturally the lady is expected to take notes, to send out MOMs(Meeting Minutes); We need to put a stop at the way how women are looked at. For example I would say "Ofcouse I can take notes and send out the MOMs David, but let's take turns to take notes and sending out MOMs, afterall, the meeting was for everybody's benefit, therefore it is expected for everyone to make their own notes."
You need to Step Up. You need to Voice your opinions.

Girls, there is no perfect man out there. Maybe your man is waiting for "YOU" to rescue him !!

So this year, put your best foot forward and march towards your dreams...one by one , you'll see they will all come true, you'll see...

This year we refuse to be damsels in distress, stop playing the victim and Go rescue your man :)

This New year let's Empower Men !!

Dabur's Cinderella Man - Sunil Duggal - A two-time Best CEO winner in the FMCG category, Sunil Duggal has transformed the family-run company into a professional corporate entity.

When the CEO post was offered to Sunil Duggal who was  no novice to the FMCG sector was not easy. Many left because of his position elevation, many were asked to leave.
Mr. Sunil Duggal took over the post of CEO post the former CEO Ninu Khanna stepped down the post having fall out with the management.
The company had suffered an all time low,  a dip in the profits, despite being a known brand for years and competitors growing and the biggest one being PATANJALI which bet them at ayurvedic product.

Sunil Duggal said that they were almost tempted to invent a mint-based toothpaste to beat their other corporates but they felt it's best to stick to their DNA which is Ayurveda. But PATANJALI was growing stronger everyday with the masses following the legacy of Ram Dev Baba and his ayuvedic products. Also more, the Patanjali products were priced at much lesser than Dabur and Dabur was questioned about their product pricing. Mr. Sunil Duggal says that he does not want to get into a head to head war with Patanjali, instead strengthen their DNA. The transformation of Dabur's Laal Dantmanjan into the red toothpaste was a huge sucss. Amonsgt Dabur's product after research it was found that Dabur Hair oil Dabur Chawanprash and Dabur Honey was still people'sstrongest choice amonst other leading products in the market.
Despite Dabur's age old reputation and many yaers of presence and brand value, Dabur sure saw a dip in the profits but their CEO Mr.Sunil Duggal with his good strategy played saved the company and he continues to strive as Dabur's best CEO and is known as Dabur's Cinderlla Man - The teo time best CEO award winner in the FMCG Sector and has transformed the family-run company into a professional corporate company.
When asked about retirement , the CEO hubly replies that he doesn't know yet and retirement sounds scarey but he assures a smooth transition of the position to the next deserving candidate.
With many corporates srpinging overnight like mushrooms, even big brands like Dabur have to face tough competition and FMCG Sector has ceertainly is in the middle of a digital transformation , flux and fiervr competition.It is predicted that Patanjali will take over Dabur in the long run , but that is still far ahead. For now Dabur is still the king of the market when it comes to Dabur Chawanprash, Hairoil and Dabur Honey.
All thanks to the two time CEO winner Sunil Duggal, wishing the gentleman all the very best of whatever is left of his tenure in the company and the ground-breaking transformation that he  has done with the company is commendable.

Differences between Salesforce Workflows and Process Builders

Anybody familiar with the older version of Salesforce which is Salesforce Classic will be familiar with a very useful feature of Salesforce called Workflows.
Process Builders came into picture much later, post Salesforce Lightning,replacing workflows with better performance and many more capabilities as compared to workflows.
Why Workflows or Process Builders when we can Code? The thumb rule of Salesforce is using declarative methods – i.e. Click before Code.  If a business we are unable to achieve to set up a business process by either using Workflow or a Process Builder, we then resort to coding. But first try to use declarative methods before attempting to code.
But first let us understand what workflows in Salesforce are and what functionalities they can do for the end-user:
Workflows are basically Automate business processes based on certain defined. For example, create a Big deal alert for the VP of Sales whenever the Opportunity amount is greater than 50,000 dollars. Here, we can easily create an Email Alert to be automatically sent to the VP of Sales if the Opportunity amount meets the criteria. Now let us understand what other automations can workflows do for us; Workflows help us in the following four main objectives as stated below:
Workflows CAN:

1. Create Email Alerts
2. Field Updates (Based on Business Criteria)
3. Create Outbound Messages (Meaning messages to be sent to an Non-Salesforce User or a User who does not exist in the Salesforce system)
4. Create Tasks (For Salesforce Users); Example A Task from the Manager to his subordinate to follow-up on a prospect with setting a due date with his comments.

How to Create a Workflow Rule
If you do not already have a Developer Edition, basically attesting environment for your own R&D, you can sign up and download it for free from https://developer.salesforce.com/signup which is free.
Once you have downloaded an developer edition for yourself and set a username and password, you are ready to get started.
To create workflow rules, click on Settings on the top right hand corner of your screen. On the left panel type Workflows and rules. Click on Workflow. The system will ask you to define a Workflow Rule name for your rule, give a name and be sure to write why you are creating this rule and what it does in the Description box before saving the name as it comes handy when you re-visit this rule and do not remember what this rule exactly does. The next step is to define the business criteria in the Business Criteria provided on the same page (You can define more than 5 Business criteria based on Zip code, Region, Amount etcetera based on your needs. At a given point of time only 5 lines of Business Criteria are visible on the page; If you need to add more criteria simply click on the ADD button).
Once the Business criteria is defined, select what action should the system perform based on the criteria i.e. send an email alert or create a task or send an outbound message or even update a field from any Salesforce object. Click save button and you are done!!  It’s that easy.
Though Workflows can perform automations, why do we need Process Builders? The older editions of Salesforce which have workflows implemented will continue to support workflows but his functionality will slowly be replaced by Process Builder which can perform far more automations and tasks as compared to workflows. First let us list out what actions can Process Builder Perform:

1. Create a Record
2. Update any related record (Not just a parent record)
3. Use a quick action to create a record
4. Send an email
5. Launch an Apex Flow
6. Post to Chatter
7. Submit for Approval automatically
8. Invoke a process defined
9. Call an Apex Code.

(Process Builder has one limitation though – It cannot send an Outbound message)
The process builder works like basic computer programming language.
There is a Start Button, select an Object on which you want to perform an action, Decision making (Defining Criteria) and finally based on Yes or No complete the objective of the operation. If we were to visualize a Process builder it would look similar to the flow chart below:



The Lightning Process Builder is a new workflow tool that helps you easily automate your business processes by providing a powerful and user-friendly visual representation of your process as you build it. Instead of doing this repetitive work manually, you can configure processes to do it automatically. The Process Builder’s simple and powerful design allows you to automate processes.
You can use the Process Builder to perform more actions than with workflow:
You can think of both Workflows and Process Builders as automation tools, but workflows is old school and has limited actions, whereas Process Builder can do much more than workflow as listed above.

Let us understand when to use workflow and when to use Process Builder:

1. Since you cannot send an outbound message using Process Builder use a Workflow.
2. If you have defined many business criteria and want to control the sequence of order in which the execution of tasks is performed use Process builder. With Process Builder you will be able to evaluate criteria of the business processes using process builder.
3. Salesforce Product Team will continue to enhance Process Builder features while slowly discontinuing support to Workflows. This means no more new features being added to Workflows in the future.

So what about those scenarios where both Workflows and Process Builders fail to be the solution for your Business problem? Then you go for C-O-D-I-N-G. But before Coding, remember the Thumb rule of Salesforce Click before Code, Declarative methods before coding.
If you are from the Salesforce Classic Era and are not yet confident to use Process Builders, Trailhead covers Process Builder with some hands on activity which you can practice in your Developer Org using multiple business scenarios until you are confident to use process builder in the Production Org of Salesforce.
I hope that you are now familiar with the differences between Workflows and Process Builders and their Functionalities. If you still need to read up more on these features from Salesforce and looking for some hands-on activity, I suggest using Trailhead which is a cool and Fun way of learning Salesforce.
Hope this article helps you differenciate between Workflows and Process Builders.

Co-Hosting My First Webinar with Salesforce - My Experience

Webinars: Behind the Scenes: Co-Hosting My First Co-Hosting experience with Salesforce

There are numerous components to running a successful event, from choosing the right talent; to driving registrations and getting people to attend; to creating engagement with attendees via polls, Q&As and content downloads; to scoring leads; to meaningful follow-up after the webinar.

Join us with our journey, as we share a behind-the-scenes look at my first-time at co-hosting a Webinar.

This opportunity to co-host a Webinar came at an apt time. As is my practice, every quarter there HAS to be an achievement – Either in the form of Salesforce event promotions or a blog or Trailhead Badges. And I did not have anything that I was currently working on and that made me irritable & edgy. This opportunity gave me a way to channel all my energies into one direction; To transform boredom into productivity and to channel anger and restlessness into something constructive.

I was super excited to work with Shashank Srivatsvaaya, our Developer Relations Manager, Salesforce and Satya Sekhar – Trailhead Developer, Salesforce.

I had met Shashank during one of his presentations in a Developer’s Meet Up in Bengaluru – He spoke about Scratch Orgs and some of the other new fantastic features from the new release. Shashank needs no introduction as his contribution to the Salesforce community is widely known. He is a Speaker, blogger, Event organizer, Senior Developer Advocate and an Evangelist.

Little did I know that I would get a chance to work with one of the veterans from the Salesforce brood. Call it Serendipity!!

Prerequisites

Webinars are not as easy to conduct as they look like. A lot of hardwork and efforts go into it. And when I worked with this amazing Team I got to know how much grueling backbreaking work it is to bring a quality webinar to the community. It’s not a job, it’s a huge responsibility.

·         Webinar Topic: Choosing a right topic is as crucial as the webinar itself as most of us would see what the topic is before we hit on the ‘Register” button.

·         Timing: Timing is everything. Ensuring to host the webinar at a time time convenient to the audience becomes important to have attendees.

·         Content: Choosing the right content becomes crucial and chooses the content which is beneficial for them.

·         Duration: The average engagement time with a webinar is 60 minutes.

·         Webinar Formats: Deciding on the Format of the Webinar: Webinars can be executed in many ways – You can opt to do a Live Webinar or pre-record it. However, for this webinar Shashank decided to give the webinar a little twist to it to break the monotony; He chose a Role-Play Pattern.

·         Finding a Speaker who has communication Skills.

·         Scheduling Dry Runs: Practice makes Webinars perfect.

·         Demo: Preparing the demos around the features covered in the webinar.

·         Slides: Content creation.

Hassle Free Commute

My travel, Stay and commute were hassle free with everything taken care of by the Salesforce team. With all the accommodation and travel hassles taken care of, all I had to do now was to focus on my webinar scripts and give my 500%.

PREPARATIONS:

A List of Topics that we were supposed to cover in the webinar was shared with me.

Also Shashank and Satya were patient enough to take me through how and where to find these topics in the release notes; (It is easy to get lost in the innumerous pages of the Salesforce release notes).

I was asked to read through the release notes around these topics and was encouraged to come up with any doubts or questions I might have if I had difficulties in understanding some of the topics covered as they were purely technical in nature.

The next day I spent reading the release notes. To be frank, I can finish reading a Sidney Sheldon novel or any book on fiction in an hour, but when it comes to release notes, I get lazy and never get to finish reading the whole stack of the release notes that folks at Salesforce spend hours putting the content together for us.

Links to some of the previous Webinars conducted was shared with me to get me familiarized with the way Webinars were conducted.

I religiously did my homework reading all that I was asked to and using a voice recording app recorded my voice, a small mock-up of a one minute introduction and sent it to Shashank and Satya to give them a heads-up about how I would sound on the mike and based on what they would hear, should they have any second thoughts about replacing me with someone better. (Fingers & Toes Crossed. Gulp...)

To make the Webinar a little interesting and adding that extra-edge, Shashank decided on a Role-play pattern for the webinar which made it interesting for the listeners as well as the participants. The format was a Consultant asking a Developer questions around some of the challenges faced by them and also what new features Summer ‘ 18 release has for them to make the Developer’s lives easier.

The next step was the Dry-Run sessions were scheduled.

The more you practice the less the chances for things going wrong. Even if you forgot your lines, your brain would automatically pick-up those lines from the previous practice sessions.

Shashank wanted the conversation to be more spontaneous to break the monotony and to ensure that the webinar did not sound too slack.

Testing the Waters

We did a first dry run via Google hangouts to check if Satya and I gel as a team and would work together. Satya Sekhar had already hosted many webinars and has conducted many online Salesforce training sessions but this was my first webinar. His experience and my quirkiness worked like magic!

Challenges:

Internet Connectivity Issues – Just as the “Dry-Run” scheduled time was approaching my internet decided to act-up. I started having internet connectivity issues. The very first day I logged in with both my phone and the desktop, not to take any chances and ended up hearing my own voice echoing; it was simply the technology at fault. Shashank simply smiled and asked me to logout of any one of the devices. And at once my nervousness disappeared. And once I connected via one device things looked well, Of course for me.

Quiet Rooms: Finding a quiet room which is less frequented and available to avoid disturbances is always a challenge.

Working from different Locations

Time Constrains

Demos: And like most platforms technology comes with their own faults; If you are in IT you would have heard “…But it worked perfectly well yesterday!!” phrase way too often. Sometimes the Demos don’t go as planned. It’s like they have a mind of their own!!

Precautions

All Webinars hosted by Salesforce are recorded and made available to the community in general. All sessions are recorded which means there is no scope for goof-ups, as the recorded Webinars go directly to the Salesforce Repository & this is etched in history for years to come.

Also, Webinar means no Face-To-Face with the audience; and this means that the only way you can connect with your audience is only via your voice and the slides that you share on the screen. Therefore the communication needs to be impeccable with no slurring or usage of fillers or crutch words. Voice should be loud enough but not at screeching decibels and words to be spoken with utmost clarity.

Crutch words are basically fillers that we use in between sentences when a speaker is trying to figure out what to speak next, or how to continue, in other words, crutch words are verbal tics.

Linguists call these crutch words as fillers. Sometimes they're also called discourse markers, pause fillers, or hesitation forms. A filler word is any meaningless sound, word, or phrase used during speech to fill silence.

Examples of some crutch words are as follows:

·         Uh…

·         Um….

·         Er…

·         Aaaa…

·         Like…

·         Okay…

·         Right….

·         You know…

·         Hmmm…

·         So….

Also, the sound system would pick up the tiniest of sounds from the background. For instance I am old school, and had written notes on stacks of paper which I had numbered such as : START – INTRO, 1, 2 , 3 , and FINISH which had my introduction notes, the sequencing of the questions,  and how I would end the conversation towards the end of the webinar. During one of the Dry runs, Shashank who has hosted many Webinars & In-person sessions during Developer Meetups, decided to hear us practice via earplugs, as a participant, just the way how the webinar attendees would do. And this proved to be very insightful as he found that those paper-shifting made a lot of noise. Being a veteran and with his expertise on the subject matter, he gave a lot of tips on things that we needed to be careful about not only the background noise, but also on punctuation, pause and spacing between the sentences.

When you do not pause at the right place, the whole meaning of the sentence changes!

He also gave us heads-up on how we sound, where to pause and how to make the Webinar more “Conversational” and sound more natural, rather than someone feeling that you are reading a script. Though, both Satya and I were indeed reading from our scripts, but it had to sound as though we are conversing naturally and not sound robotic.

I flew in to Salesforce Office one day prior to the webinar to practice, this time face to face, instead of google hangouts. We were good with the scripts-practice, but we were still missing one crucial component. Since the Slides are Demos were still a Work-In-Progress, there was a need to do a complete dry-run along with the slides and the Demo to understand which demo comes after which question, duration of the demo and which slide comes after which conversation. Being in the office and practicing helped a lot.

Did you know that Salesforce has a set of colors that we have to use? And each color represents a department or a particular product? Or the fact that if you are using the color blue, you need to use the right shade of blue from the palette? There was a good amount of time invested in editing the slides to get the right font, images, background color, highlighting and even the sequencing of the slides.

What Worked For Us

Team Spirit: We worked as a "TEAM" towards a common goal of hosting a quality Webinar with minimal mistakes and ensuring people who registered for the webinar are not disappointed.

Working on Crutch Words: We worked on our “Fillers”; We marked that common spot where we would usually go wrong and focused/practiced much around areas where we were more prone to making mistakes.

Rehearsals.

Improvising: Working and improvising on the Script to increase spontaneity & X-factor.

Eye Contact: A lot of Eye contact to make it sound more conversational than reading a script.

Homework: Individual preparation before the joint rehearsals.

Captain Cool: Shashank’s calm and composed nature helped us relax immensely and reduced the pressure of performance. A leader is someone who can bring out the best in people and in Shashank, I found his patience and the way he communicated the places where we needed to work on in a manner that is not offensive, made us give our best!! And the result is a smooth –sailing Webinar J

A pressurized mind crumbles under pressure, while a creative mind works its best when given freedom & steered in the right direction. I guess it’s all thanks to our Captain Cool Shashank Srivatsvaaya.

Staying Calm & Focused: Slowing down while talking is important. Sometimes when we are anxious or nervous, unconsciously the tempo raises and the pitch while talking accelerates resulting in conversations sounding like disclaimers towards the end of an advertisement. If you pay attention to any advertisement, let’s say an advertisement for Mutual Funds, the whole advertisement is smooth and slow but towards the end, the disclaimer “...are subject to market-risks” is read out so fast that as an audience you cannot make out what is actually being said. The same happens during a webinar. The key is to stay calm and focused and talk slowly but clearly.

Sign Language: We decided on a Thumbs-Up Sign to signal the each other to move on to the next set of question. Sometimes you do not know if the person is just taking a pause before continuing or is done with the explanation. A Thumbs-Up signal made my life much easier to understand and I relied on it to wrap up the previous conversation and move to the next question.

Comfort-Level with Team: The comfort-level that you share with your team also makes an impact to the final outcome. I am fortunate to have worked with some of the finest brood from Salesforce who made me feel comfortable, despite their seniority and treated me as an equal; my voice was heard, I was involved throughout the project and Transparency was maintained. The entire programme was carried out with utmost sincerity.

Our Team

Our Team: Shashank Srivatsvaaya, Satya Sekhar, Vishwas Vikas and me.

With our Captain Cool Shashank Srivatsvaaya Developer Relations Manager - Salesforce

With Satya Sekhar - Our Tralhead Developer

I hope the webinar was insightful and you enjoyed attending it as much as I did co-hosting it.

The link to the Webinar recording will be made available soon at the same link that you used to register for the event:

https://developer.salesforce.com/events/webinars/summer-18-developerhighlights

Want To Be a Speaker?

Come join the party!! If you are interested in becoming a speaker for the upcoming Webinars, the Team is very much open to the idea and would love to accommodate you!! Interested folks from the community can reach out to Shashank on bit.ly/webinarinapac or email him at ssrivatsavaya@salesforce.com .

My take Away from the Webinar

I received a Salesforce Hoodie from Shashank, which is now my prized possession & I guard it with my life; After all, I earned it!!One other important take away from this Webinar was that my mother was happy that I invested my time learning something new. She’s a tough boss to please and doesn’t approve me wasting time. All I can say is I cannot be Thankful enough for this experience. It gave me a sense of achievement.

Picture with Maa – All Smiles!       

Writing - An Art

To me, what is important is not how well the author has written an article or a blog- As an audience I should be able to connect with the author, understand the thoughts behind the article.The Art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe – Gaustave Flaubert

Writing is an art. Writing is not mumbo-jumbo of mere words, throwing jargaon, maintaining a writing style, be within that 700 words limit, keeping the language strictly ‘Business’.The article should speak to the soul, the audience should be able to resonate with what they read, they should be able to think “Omg, that’s exactly me” or “This is what happened to me”, “this is so true…” Give your audience a taste that will linger for sometime after they finish reading, give them something to think about, impact them to change their persectives, give them a fresh outlook.

It’s all about putting your thoughts together, how you articulate it in words, bring emotions into what you write (No, you don’t have to be melodramatic in your writing), be honest, keep it simple. And most importantly, be you. Don’t try to copy someone else’s style of writing. Write only when you are so compelled by your thoughts that you HAVE to sit down and write about it, not because you have to write one article a month.

The most creative ideas come when the mind is free, not when it is under the pressure to to be liked, or under the pressure to perform.

Don’t follow the so-called ‘Trends’. Be a trend-setter. You are a Brand in youself.

Don’t write about Salesforce Lightning because 50 people are writing about it. Instead choose to write about things that matter to you, things that have impacted you. For example I am a sucker for Sunrise. I am mesmerised by this Glorious Sun-rise/ Sun set and involuntarily my hands start cliking pictures. For me a Sun-rise signifies Rising after Defeat, getting up after a fall, being at your game, a metaphor for after every darkest night there is a beautiful morning to look forward to, it’s a ray of hope, it’s a sign, it’s a belief-system; The setting sun symbolizes the completion of a journey, the human ife is often compared metaphorically with the setting sun. So instead of choosing to write about some new cool features from Salesforce, I choose to write about things that matter to me the most.

Our society still has herd-mentality. They wait for that One first person to do the thinking for them; they will wait until someone takes that first step to either Like or Dislike something. It’s like they do not have the courage to do the thinking for themselves.

Once a person, someone from a bigger designation clicks a Like button, 50 others follow. Not because they liked the content, but because ‘somebody important’ liked it, and if he liked it, it better be good.

Recently I saw a post on LinkedIn- It was about purchasing a Shoe. He even went ahead and put a picture of his bright-red-orangish shoe on LinkedIn. He’s a runner and I defintely respect the fact and I even agreed to more than what was written about how the purchase was made after reading reviews, features of the shoe and the Marathon ahead. I did not think the writing was good. It was Great!! But the post simply did’nt belong on LinkedIn. But people hit the ‘like’ button not because of the content of the writing but simply because of who is posting it. Sadly, the Designation weighs down heavily.

I read books from established authors – The content sometimes is like chewing on sand – it is crunchy and chewy, but no taste. It has texture but no soul. They simply fail to entice me. But there are some other amateur writers who don’t even call themselves as writers, but their writings strike a chord, they bring out the characters in them, make them lively and I can almost immediately within reading the first few sentences, connect with the author.

The Mantra ? – There is none. Be You. Simply you. With your jarring grammar, too loud visuals, unnecessary puntuations in between, using alphabet in capital letters where it is not required as per the rule-book – Yes, I have done it all. But yet when I write, if my audience is to able to relate, I think my purpose is served.