I spent some time going back through older posts looking to see if I could find gaps in what I have been writing about. As soon as I took one look at the tag cloud I realized it was training. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for how Admins think, or maybe it’s because training could be the least sexy topic to talk about. I mean, I would much rather talk about Chatter, Cross-object workflow rules, or a host of other topics. But let’s face it, without proper training of our users all we will really be doing is chasing fires and being frustrated. So let’s talk training, but let’s look at it from a user standpoint and see how we can spice it up a bit so it’s less Ben Stein-ish and more School of Rock-ish! Below are my 5 tips to put a little zing into your training class when

I want to introduce you to Robert Irvine. He is a chef, host on Food Network for Restaurant Impossible, and a great teacher that will help us be better Salesforce Admins. That’s right, whether we like to admit or not this former member of the Royal Navy with bigger than life arms is going to teach us a thing or five about being great Salesforce Admins. Robert is a great delegator, communicator, and manager. I am hooked on his shows and I think we can learn some valuable lessons from Robert based on his style of project management and apply those to our everyday jobs as System Admins. 1. Eyes Wide open Robert approaches every challenge with his eyes wide open both physically and metaphorically. What this helps him do is take in the environment around him and the possibilities. It also keeps him alert to listen to problems, issues,

A lot of people in the Salesforce Community asked why I was taking the Dev. 401 course saying most of it I would know. But I approached it with my eyes wide open! If ever there was to a be a case study on how Salesforce could actually train someone to go from zero database experience to understanding not only Salesforce but having an idea of how databases in general work- I am their guy. I’m realizing now that I have been Admininstrator island for a long time. It’s pretty comfy here. I know what I’m doing and keep my users in mind. But I could never bridge the gap and try to understand how Developers work, and their thought process. (To be honest I’m not sure I still do.) But none-the-less I jumped into the Dev. 401 class. For those of us who have taken Admin 201 & 301

This week ButtonClickAdmin.com is proud to have a guest post from Greg DeVore who is the CEO of Blue Mango Learning Systems, the creators of beautifully simple visual documentation tools like ScreenSteps Desktop and ScreenSteps Live. He also writes a lot of documentation. Creating Documentation For Follow-up Support in Salesforce Salesforce is only as powerful as your team’s ability to use it correctly. It doesn’t matter how many apps you add or how well you customize your Salesforce instance, without proper training and support your organization will only realize a fraction of the benefits Salesforce has to offer. Obviously the solution to this is better training of your users. But training isn’t the only thing that matters. Ongoing support is just as important. Mike wrote a great post about training a few weeks ago (Train Conductor) so in this post I am going to focus on ongoing support and documentation. News Flash: Your