You will spot some trends as you work through this long list:
Not using Salesforce for simple B2B selling of widgets (well just the once).
Salesforce rescue projects where the client was about to give up on Salesforce.
Complex bespoke business processes that are at the heart of what the business does, all running on Salesforce.
Integrations with every app we can.
Longevity of working with my clients. One 10 years, two 8 years, one 7+ years.
Timeline
Full Nonprofit Service Cloud implementation for The Arts Law Centre of Australia. This was my first Salesforce project in 2011 after I was awarded a grant by the Australia Council of the Arts for a Geek in Residence at an Arts organisation. After determining that they needed a CRM System and finding the Salesforce P10 donation, Arts Law decided they would still like to work with me as I had done the work to get to know their organisation. I learnt Salesforce for their implementation.
I had great initial training in 2011 from Nicole Aebi-Moyo (now Salesfix) for one on one training, and Alice Hodgson (now Train the Crowd) who led the Salesforce Admin course. I still to this day use the basics they taught me.
2012 Salesforce Certified Force.com Developer (certification now retired).
After encountering many difficulties setting up Salesforce, I thought, well if I had to find this out the hard way, I don't want others to struggle like I did, so I created this wiki to share my learnings along the way.
2012 I became a Salesforce Partner, and formalised my company and The Detail Department branding.
2014 I became co user group leader for the Melbourne Salesforce User Group and retained that position until handing it over in 2023.
2014 was the first Dreamforce. A once off must do, but not for me.
2015 I was awarded Salesforce MVP. The first female Salesforce MVP in Australia (now all the current MVPs are female).
2015 I attended Dreamforce for the second time, just to experience if it was better being an MVP. Marginally, but not worth going back unless I have a job to do.
2016 the first MVP trip to the US to give feedback on the lightning platform. It was a two day event and unfortunately I remember nothing of the content as I was so jet-lagged
2016 my first Salesforce community conference, Forcelandia in Portland, Oregon. Excellent conference.
2016 Learned about Mavens Mate (no longer a product) and Salesforce Metadata and also had the most amazing session on learning about how Salesforce works at the database level. Both were extremely transformational in understanding the Salesforce platform at a deeper level.
2017 passed Platform Dev 1 two years after doing the course and being told I was not a developer so didn't belong in the course. I used a recording of the course as part of my MVP benefits to really understand the content when it was presented by someone differently.
2018 second community conference and speaker at London's Calling. Definitely the best community conference and well worth going.
2018 Rad Women Code Course - excellent course to get started on learning Apex.
2018 Salesforce DEV601 course to learn lightning components. These were Aura and really difficult. I did not retain much of the learning. LWC was released soon after.
2019 I tried TDX, and I was a speaker, which is great. Plus I was a learning helper for the Platform Dev 1 Bootcamp class, which was a great experience. Overall experience was better than Dreamforce, but it was still too much marketing to make it worthwhile to spend $10k to go to San Francisco.
2019 After TDX I helped out on the San Francisco Bootcamp being a Teaching Assistant on the Platform Dev 1 course.
2019 MVP trip to Miami to help Salesforce with Help. This time I was prepared and not jet-lagged, and it was a great session. There will be no more events like that, unfortunately.
2019 the first Salesforce Bootcamp in Australia held on the Gold Coast. I did the System Architect track.
2020 Rad Women Code 2 Course - really refined my ability to code in Apex. I still won’t do it in production much, but I know enough for validating and testing the code.
2020 speaker at Japan Dreamin' community conference. Got home just in time. Amazing experience. If they do another event with an English speaking track, just go.
2020 did the Salesforce LWC DEX-602 course during lockdown. This one stuck, and I continued by trying to build a previous Classic App in LWC. The result is Salesforce Indicators which is now on the Appexchange, and you can read all about that on our documentation site. The past two years have been dedicated to the Open Source Commons, and getting this app out onto the Appexchange.
2020 in lockdown started my cybersecurity training as it is an important facet of working with Small Business, and I want to add extra value to my clients.
2020 Certified Salesforce System Architect. 19 Salesforce Certifications in total. Now time to end my Salesforce Certification journey.
2022 second Trailblazer Bootcamp on the Gold Coast. I did the Tableau Track. Unfortunately it was not very useful as it did not involve anything to do with Salesforce.
2023 awarded MVP Hall of Fame which means I get to keep MVP status without being renewed every year.
2023 Certified in CISM and CDPSE for Cybersecurity and I am an Accredited Trainer with ISACA. See my Certifications.
2024 Certified Gold Level SMB1001 Cybersecurity certification for The Detail Department.
2024 speaker at Cybercon2024 on My Journey to SMB1001.
Projects
Multiple full Service Cloud implementations.
Community Cloud public site implementation including Chinese and English sites.
One full setup of Leads to Opportunities to Proposal to Contract, with Support Cases for a B2B business selling products eg what Salesforce CRM is designed to do. Yes I've done many implementations of Leads and Opportunities for many different businesses, but just this one classic use case.
Multiple membership and subscription services implementations.
Set up and management of Payments2Us for multiple Nonprofits, including custom forms and Event management with Table Selection, and multi session conference events.
Full custom Course Management implementation for university level CPD medical short courses delivered in English and Mandarin, and in Australia and China (in person, and online delivery).
Documentation of the existing processes of 5 departments in a business that does legal contracts. This was done using Elements Cloud, with the basis of using Elements Cloud for their internal Salesforce team to design the new solution.
For many clients, producing flow charts and documentation around the new processes that Salesforce will help with. I prefer to create living documents in Confluence with screen shots and videos of key feature areas.
Many situations where I have started working with a client about a year or two after their initial Salesforce implementation, when they get their renewal and want to justify why they are paying so much for a platform that is not working for them. So going in, cleaning up the data, fixing all the issues, then getting them back on track.
Forms and Documents
Form Assembly forms into NPSP, with payment options.
Extremely complex Word Documents with Conga and Docusign integration. 4 different document types with three different brands, and conditional displays to produce 24 different contracts.
Complex Gravity Forms WordPress forms into Salesforce.
Form Titan forms into Salesforce. Hugely complex forms.
Drawloop Excel documents with complex pricing information.
Complex Drawloop contract documents and AssureSign integration (AssureSign was not successful unfortunately, as the product was not complete at that time).
Full proposal and quotation document generation and eSigning using Opero in Google Docs. Many challenges and tricks used, but the end result is amazing.
Formstack course application forms into Salesforce.
Complex custom data entry forms for field service workers to capture data from hundreds of sites per day. This was coded by Skedulo's custom development team but full design, testing, and ongoing operations by me.
These custom forms were rebuilt into Flow at a later date. I did have help building out the Flow basics due to a short time frame to get them done, but I did all the testing and implementation, and built a custom Visualforce bridge landing page between Skedulo and Flow. (Skedulo would only support Visualforce).
Integrations
Where coding was done, I outsourced the coding, but did the full architecture, design, testing, and go live.
Multiple Zapier integrations to move data into Salesforce. I don't use Zapier unless it is already set up, or is there only reasonable option, as it takes a lot of work to deal with when it goes wrong.
High volumes of data imported daily using Skyvia from CSV files added to a SFTP site each night (the only option the other vendor offered). 4 Separate data files from two vendors imported daily. It just works every day without fail.
Web forms integration from custom Expression Engine and Cartthrob website and ECommerce to Salesforce. It was a custom integration due to the complexity of the forms and the fact that the CMS was not supported by any integration platform. This was for complex Case submission then expanded to eCommerce, memberships and ticket sales. After coming into Salesforce the data was then sent to Xero.
Full Calendar Integration to build many public calendars for a client to share with their clients. I documented the Calendar Integration on this wiki.
SproutCMS to Salesforce for ticketing data, and web forms.
Implementation of three different Xero integration tools, each with their own own issues.
Salesforce to Business Central for full Stock management solution. We had an excellent developer on the Business Commerce side, and my developer on the Salesforce side was amazing also. It was such a complex integration but worked so well with a high volume of transactions daily.
Integration with an Adobe Digital Publishing Suite DRM solution for courseware distributed to students.
Custom Integration with university application forms to come into Salesforce.
Full Board Reporting charts for every aspect of the business including data from Salesforce, Google, Excel and more, using Klipfolio. Data was updated live whenever the charts were viewed.
Integration to Moodle. No, I don't want to do that again.
Woo Commerce integration to Salesforce, which was put in after the client moved off Expression Engine. We re-used the custom integration and updated it.
Coding
... Add other items. Again, Where coding was done, I outsourced the coding, but did the full architecture, design, testing, and go live.
Visualforce email archiving solution to export thousands of emails to pdf and save the pdf document onto the Case record then delete the emails (before Salesforce increased the base level of data storage).
Complex Visualforce email template suite for events management. Details of the event were entered into a rich text field on the Campaign, and automated emails for course attendees were sent with multiple conditional sections based on the course they were attending and the student's status. These emails can still not be replicated in standard Salesforce Lightning Email functionality.
Custom SOSL based search solution to ensure searches were performed on a few key fields to check for any similar Cases to address a specific legal business need.
Custom long text history functionality and Multi Select Picklist reporting functionality back in the day before it was easier with Flows.
Custom Email addresses code. See my post and related videos about it. To ensure that email addresses were preflled in Case emails. Something that can not be done without custom Apex code.
Salesforce Bulk Batch process to summarise thousands of records to precise and different date time intervals for each record. This system worked flawlessly every night summarising thousands of records (each with a few thousand related records) that was the backbone of daily income reporting for my client.
Custom solution built on top of Skedulo by their developers to customise the way Jobs are allocated to Resources, based on the concept of a known area that the Resource looks after, and needs to inspect each site on a weekly or 4 weekly basis. Each day there was a different group of sites that were visited by the resource. It was not something that Skedulo had built before (this was many years ago), and we ended up with a great solution.
Maths, Maths, and more Maths
For all complex math calculations I ensure that my clients produce an exact replica of the calculations they want to do in Excel before I formalise anything in Salesforce.
Tax calculations for insurance and stamp duty, different for every state and multiple countries.
Workers Compensation Insurance calculations for every state in Australia that requires it.
Income, Rent, Margin calculations monthly for 2000 sites in three countries / currencies.
Rebate calculations based on volumes of sales.
Contract fee calculations with up to 15 conditional inputs, plus the ability to override with management approval. Full details of calculations and fees presented in the contract documents.
Income calculations for hundreds of credit card and cash transactions for vending machines, calculated to the minute each day, and including a checking process to ensure all cash was accounted for, and stock levels were accurate.
Using Drawloop Excel as Middleware feature to produce complex calculations and save them back to Salesforce, as well as sending a PDF of the statement to the client.
Many implementations of using Excel for complex reporting, and charting. This allows users who are familiar working in Excel to trust their Salesforce data.
Manipulating data in Excel using Excel Power Query both from exported data, and data to import into Salesforce, or both (eg run a yearly process to completely create 2000+ new contracts from existing contracts when tax conditions change. Plus they needed a lot of manual intervention, checking, and sending to multiple clients as a bulk list, for their records).
Course test marking and result calculations.
Full Stock Management solution for vending machines. High quantity, low value stock.
Construction Variation management system including complex cost, margin, and sale pricing.
Complex membership date calculator for a business with a very detailed membership structure that was tied into legalities and insurance (eg the member could not work outside of their membership period).
Apps Implemented
Skedulo
Form Assembly
Form Titan
Formstack (old version)
Gravity Forms
Formidable Forms
Woo Commerce
Mission Control
Conga Composer
Drawloop
Docusign
AssureSign
Opero Docs and eSigning
Failures
The client that took in financial data from their clients, including attachments, and then needed to send that off to their brokers. At that stage Salesforce had no way to attach files already on the record, to an outgoing email. The deal did not go ahead because of that.
The forms tool that just never worked consistently, and the support was lacking, so we were never able to go live with the form. The tool provider said the forms were too complex, but they really met the business needs of the client.
The eSignature solution that just never worked, and I lost the client because of it.
The business that was sold based on the amazing solution we had built over many years that allowed this small business to fly. The new owners then decided they were replacing everything with Dynamics (there is no way what we build would translate to Dynamics). Years later and they are still using Salesforce.
Yes I have had some failures at documentation of complex processes, especially ones using Flows. Yes it is easy to build something that is probably a little too complex by the time you finish it, and deal with all the edge cases.
Probably relying too much on free and cheap solutions rather than having my clients pay for the expensive appexchange app. But we do what we can given the knowledge and resources available at that time.
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