5 Tools for Salesforce Gurus

Oh well, this was coming.

• The majority of the Salesforce experts have not quite arrived at expertise nirvana yet
• The ones who are there, are not quite ready to teach yet
• Despite that, there are few who (try to) teach but lack the practical skills to outline concepts, scenarios & relevant solutions
• .. and do not do a good job of using the right tools to do all that explaining

I am addressing just the last item with a few (mostly) free tools. I am sure one figures out the rest, eventually.

1. Whiteboarding Software to Teach Salesforce #

I am flabbergasted each time someone opens Paint for anything remotely useful - let alone whiteboarding. Why in the Universe, would anyone want to use Paint to explain concepts?

Use Excalidraw - it looks professional, helps you draw flows, outlines concepts including architecture and is quite easy to use.

Alternatives can include -

• Draw.io
• Lucidchart. This has templates by Salesforce, but more clunky and is not free beyond the limited 3-5 diagrams

If you want to go to the extreme, try using any of the Whiteboarding software (Microsoft has one), there are open-source tools like OpenBoard or use Miro or Mural, which are also great collaborative tools that can drive whole workshops (not free though).

2. Your Own Notes #

Make your own notes in Markdown and outline Salesforce concepts and sharable materials. Use ready notes, code and configuration with VSCode. You have the added advantage of testing out stuff (ala a Jupyter notebook) while explaining clearly laid-out bullet points.

Alternatives -

• Notion. Use diagrams, have a flow within concepts, and make use of Notion AI! All on the web, and quite easy to use on a desktop or from a mobile device
• Obsidian. Personal knowledge mgt. that is becoming more popular by the day. Obsidian is a locally installed tool but has a lot of features that can help you create a great learning experience. There are competing tools like Coda, logseq, and more.

3. Any Publishing Tool #

Continuing the above point, share your notes, invaluable knowledge, links etc. with your own personal branding through any publishing platform.

• Notion can also be used for public-facing pages
• You can create free sites with Github Pages (use Jekyll) or Netlify (use Hugo / Jekyll or a thousand other static site generators)
• Wordpress is another popular choice. But be warned, WordPress with subpar hosting does not perform well, and can be a pain to manage and maintain

4. Any Quizzing Platform #

While we all have to come to love Trailhead or the super-overlapping materials in Partner Learning Camp, you will show your commitment to go the extra mile through your quizzes. 

Use ChatGPT or similar to create quiz questions, or heck, scrape a few and get your own personal quiz going.

• Quizlet is a popular choice
• Alternatives include Quiz Maker, Kahoot etc.

5. Annotation Tools #

Explaining concepts on the screen should be interactive, and what better way to do that than using annotations in real time.

One of the simplest tools I love to use is a Microsoft tool called Zoomit. You can magnify/ focus on part of a screen, draw arrows, rectangles, circles etc. on the screen.

Alternatives include -

• ScreenMarker and Epic Pen are other popular choices
• Collaboration tools can have their own annotation (or even whiteboarding tools) Zoom, Teams come to mind.

To Wrap Up #

Remember - don’t use Paint.

There are plenty of tools and platforms that do a much better job at no additional cost.