Everything You Need To Know About Salesforce’s Trailhead
Jenna Trott
5 min read | NOVEMBER 02, 2022
There are so many incredible things about the Salesforce Ohana but amongst the top is the support they provide for employees, customers, partners, developers and members on their journey within the Salesforce ecosystem. This includes the Trailblazer community, where individuals can learn skills to further their professional career development in, or outside of, Salesforce. Ready to blaze some trails? In this article, we’ll give a brief overview of what it means to be trailblazer, what trailheads are, as well as a breakdown of badges/superbadges and which can help to supercharge your Salesforce career!
What is a Trailblazer?
A Trailblazer is anyone with a natural curiosity and who’s driven to further develop their professional skills. Anyone can be a trailblazer! And in fact, Salesforce has many from diverse backgrounds with rich skill sets and unique roles – learn more about them here.
What is Trailhead?
Initially launched back in 2014, Trailhead is Salesforce’s free online learning portal that has since grown into a vast repository of self-paced and categorized courses. Users can choose the skills they want to learn at their preferred time and speed; plus the experience is gamified to make learning fun and competitive!
Trailhead Lingo
Before starting, here is some key terminology to be familiar with:
- Trail: This is a guided learning path containing a variety of modules and projects to help navigate a new topic or skill.
- Trailmix: These are pre-established trails, plus, you can create your own or follow others!
- Module: A specific unit that clearly maps out a particular skill or topic.
- Project: A guided hands-on experience with a Salesforce use-case. It gives users access to a demo environment to put your education to work with step-by-step instructions.
- Points: Earning points help you to advance through the Trailhead ecosystem ranks and can be earned by completing trails, modules, projects and superbadges.
- Badge: Badges are a reflection of your level of knowledge in a particular subject area. They can be earned by accumulating points from completing modules and projects and are shareable across your social networks to show your place in the Salesforce ecosystem!
- Rank: A trailblazer’s rank is determined by how many points they’ve accumulated as well as their number of badges.
- Superbadge: Show off your expertise by earning superbadges! These indicate that a trailblazer possesses a deep knowledge of a learned topic and your ability to apply it in practical settings within an industry focus.
- Certifications: Certifications prove that a trailblazer is a Salesforce-approved specialist in specific business areas. They can be procured by scheduling a proctored exam and passing. For more information on certifications, click here.
Now that we’ve gone over the basics, we can discuss why Salesforce badges and superbadges are useful for diversifying your career options. Obtaining badges exhibits your personal drive for bettering yourself, but more than that, it displays your level of knowledge in certain areas. This tells employers that you’re someone who is self-motivated and willing to keep learning. Superbadges on the other hand, exhibit an individual’s ability to adapt and excel in true-to-life problem solving scenarios. They are highly regarded within the Salesforce community and by Salesforce MVPs as they indicate a deep knowledge of the platform and indicate top tier problem solving skills. Not only that, but these skills can be transferable, so even if you’re not pursuing a career in Salesforce, they still look great on a resume! So, without further ado, let’s take a look at which Salesforce badges and superbadges can help to supercharge your career.
Badges
There are quite literally thousands of badges you can earn through Trailhead, just look at trailblazers like Chyan Yee Goh with nearly 2,000! Here are a few to help you get started:
Salesforce Flows
As you may or may not know, Salesforce is planning to retire Workflow Rules and Process Builder Automation at the end of 2022, so it’s definitely a good idea to look into some extra Flow training! Check out these Trailheads:
- Build Flows with Flow Builder (Beginner Course)
- Automate Your Business Processes with Salesforce Flow (Beginner Course – 2)
- Process Automation Specialist (Challenge)
Data Security
As we begin to hear more about companies adopting a data-first approach, it will come with a new set of challenges, particularly when it comes to sensitive information. Within the last year, Salesforce has gone to greater lengths to ensure data security with Backup and Restore, a data recovery service native to the Salesforce Platform. Keeping data secure is critical, whether you’re at Salesforce or not, and these trailheads can help deepen your understanding of cybersecurity practice:
- Introduction to Cybersecurity – Learn the fundamentals of cybersecurity and how to stay safe online.
- Salesforce Cyber Security Trailmix – Implement cybersecurity best practices in your organization. Cultivate cyber resilience in the digital age through effective leadership and design.
Growing With a CRM
Leveraging a customer relationship management (CRM) platform has a whole host of benefits for you, your clients, and businesses looking to boost customer loyalty. Get familiar with using a CRM and how you can use it to not only advance your career, but your business as well:
- Grow Faster with CRM Trailmix – Discover Salesforce CRM and how sales, service, and marketing can help your business.
- Customize Your Org to Win More Deals – Build and deploy high-impact, low-effort ways to help reps sell more effectively.
BONUS: Check out this list of “Must Have” badges Trailmix created by Salesforce
MVP and influencer, David K. Liu.
Superbadges
Become an expert and super-star problem solver with these superbadges:
Business Administration Specialist – Brighten up a new business unit with the Salesforce tools the team needs to succeed.
KEY FEATURES
- Clean and import account data
- Create users and manage access
- Create email templates for new marketing needs
- Configure UI tools for a new product type
- Create reports and dashboards
- Manage and apply Chatter tools
Lightning Experience Reports & Dashboards Specialist – Design powerful reports and dashboards to shine a light on your data.
KEY FEATURES
- Administer report and dashboard visibility and access
- Apply report types and fields
- Design a record filtering strategy
- Create and surface report charts and dashboards
- Apply buckets, groups, and custom summary formulas
- Create dashboard components
Security Specialist Superbadge – Complete the capstone assessment to earn the Security Specialist Superbadge.
KEY FEATURES
- Describe the user authentication best practices and considerations.
- Explain various methods and tools to effectively monitor a Salesforce org.
- Identify the best methods to control user access.
Admin Super Set – Complete the capstone assessment to earn the Admin Super Set.
KEY FEATURES
- Identify data quality, UI tools, and dashboard configurations.
- Demonstrate knowledge of reports and dashboards.
- Identify data security and user access best practices.
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