The CTA Board Exam is where you demonstrate your mastery of the Salesforce Platform and your ability to architect a successful solution. In the session we will walk through approaches and strategies for preparing yourself for the Exam.

DevOps is a reality and too many companies struggle to adopt it properly.
This 20+ minutes session will show you the basics improve your process.

Charlie Isaacs has a track record of R&D leadership at companies like Verizon, Answer Systems (acquired by Computer Associates), Broad Daylight (sold to Primus Knowledge, then ATG and then Oracle), and CTO Kana (Verint). After Kana he joined Alcatel-Lucent/Genesys as VP of Innovation. Charlie is VP/CTO for Customer Connection and claims to have “the best job at Salesforce” as he incubates customers worldwide onto the Salesforce IoTCloud platform. Charlie holds a BSEE from the UC Santa Barbara and an MBA from California Lutheran University. He holds several patents related to CRM and the Internet of Things. He volunteers at organizations helping women and underrepresented groups enter STEM fields.

We will explore a complex integration requirement from a hypothetical scenario requiring access to an external system’s data and functionality from within Salesforce. Using the Canvas SDK with an external web-based Node.js application running on Heroku, we will see how to easily integrate the two systems to create a UI mashup as well as provide a bi-directional event-driven integration, giving users the ability to perform logic and operate on data in both systems from within the Salesforce UI. There will be a demonstration on how this works at a functional level as well as looking behind the scenes at the code for both Salesforce and the Node.js app. We will also walk through how to set this all up from a technical standpoint from within Salesforce so that when you leave this session you will understand the steps that are necessary to recreate this yourself.

Come hear The Tale of the Spreadsheet of Terror. Discover the ominous story of how one department managed the workload of 12 employees and over 3,000 accounts all in Excel. With no reporting, automation or standardization the outlook was bleak to say the least. However, after only 45 days we were able to build a fully functioning application that completely overhauled the department's ability to perform, increasing opt in rates by over 108% in the first month, using only declarative features. But this story does not end here, over the next two years this application received many iterative changes using code which uplifted the application beyond its MVP status. By starting with declarative and iterating with code we were able to create an end to end application with full integrations into several other key systems and finally lay the Spreadsheet of Terror to rest.

In this session, I will show the many no code options we used to implement our MVP solution and will speak to how we were able to use code to uplift the application beyond MVP. Among the declarative tools I will showcase will be Web to Case, Omni Channel, Visual Flow, Process Builder, Workflow Rules (Email Alerts and Outbound Calls) and of course Custom Objects. I hope that by the conclusion of this session you will be inspired to go lay to rest your own Spreadsheet of Terror.

The dreaded Salesforce governor! Have you ever needed to work with large files in apex, only to be harshly and suddenly be shut down by the apex governor due to HEAP_LIMIT_EXCEEDED?

Consider this customer use case: Salesforce should callout to retrieve a 20MB file using a service account credentials for authentication and make it available to download to the user. A client-side callout is problematic for several reasons, mainly security. A callout from apex would halt attempting to manage a file of this size.

Enter the chunking pattern! By retrieving a heap-manageable chunk of the file at a time and combining on the client side, we are able to work within the apex heap limits.

In this session we review the problem statement, review several options to overcome the apex heap, showcase the chunking pattern, show its elegance and simplicity, and finally review a customer implementation recently where this was used.

The flow engine is ready to handle all of your declarative automation needs - are you? Using programmatic problem-solving patterns, we can fine-tune record-triggered flows for optimal performance (yes, even alongside apex code) and organize the logic to maintain sanity during solution design and debugging endeavors. We'll explore frameworks for before-save flows (optimized for fast field updates) and after-save flows (orchestrating actions and related record automation). As more automation is moving away from workflow rules and into the flow engine, these tips will ensure you can continue to #AutomateAllTheThings without negatively impacting the performance of your org. Find your future in the flourishing flow frenzy!

Have you ever needed to create the same record for every Opportunity, Campaign, Case, etc.? Perhaps something used to track a process that involves multiple people/groups where only certain groups can edit specific fields? If so, you know that using standard cloning functionality doesn't really work because it's virtually impossible to get all the fields set to starting values when the user lacks FLS. Then, what if the process changes? Cloning an old record leaves you with outdated information that causes inefficiency, confusion, and a poor user experience. Instead, you can use Custom Metadata to build record templates and a Flow to create records based on those templates with all fields set to the most up-to-date starting values, either automatically or at user discretion.

The Salesforce Functions Recipes Sample App gives developers a hands on look at how they can get started with Functions. But what makes this app really cool is all of the work that goes on behind the scenes, from the autogenerated user interface to generic functions invokers, we're doing some really cool stuff with Salesforce. Come and learn all of the trials and tribulations of the development process and maybe a bit about functions!

Salesforce Functions provide a mechanism for doing work off-platform, thus allowing Salesforce applications to do things that were difficult or even impossible within regular Apex code. This session will show a few quick examples of things you can do with Salesforce Functions, providing some real-world use cases for enabling them in your org.

Salesforce provides standard data APIs that have tons of capabilities. When writing lightning web components, whether you're trying to overcome an Apex limitation, or simply want to utilize the standard data API in lieu of writing Apex, you have that option.

In this session we show you what it takes to invoke the standard Salesforce data APIs from lightning web components by example.

As Salesforce has grown in capabilities, it is more important than ever to understand how to best fit Salesforce functionality into the business and technical architecture of the entire enterprise. Learn the methodology that we use at Salesforce as Enterprise Architects to assess business and technical architecture to build a Salesforce roadmap. This methodology can be used with any size or type of organization.

You've built the solution. You've poured your heart and soul into it and you are confident that it's exactly what your stakeholders have asked for (or even beyond their expectations). You couldn't be prouder of what you've accomplished. However, when you're asked to demo this thing of beauty on the Salesforce platform, you downplay the exercise. You know your own solution, right? Piece of cake! You'll just show them what you're so proud of. So, you present your solution. Your stakeholders don't seem so moved and your audience walks away without seeing the vision and impact associated with your creation. What happened? Why isn't everyone bought in? The answer? You downplayed your demo.

In this session, Salesforce MVP HoFer Jarrod Kingston and Salesforce MVP Phil Weinmeister have taken their many years of demo experience and knowledge, filtered them down to the most critical takeaways and tips, and will use them to equip you to crush your next Salesforce demo. And trust me, we'll make it fun. You'll get both the DOs *and* the DON'Ts when it comes to showing off what you have been able to build. You'll be inspired, you'll laugh, and, who knows, you may even cry.

If you plan on ever building another solution on the Salesforce platform, join us. We want others to see the same value in your solutions as you do and we want you to never give another demo that your audience can't remember the following day. Let's just make sure that your unforgettable demo is one that they'll talk about positively and not the one that becomes a figurative dartboard for jokes by the company water cooler...

Empower full document functionality and usability inside Salesforce to streamline workflows, enhance the user experience, enable scalability, and safeguard data to reduce risk. And the best part? No server-side dependencies, connectors or third-party software.

As a trusted Salesforce partner, we're committed to bringing best-in-class document experiences to all Salesforce users, which is why we offer both a high-code, fully customizable solution, and a grab-and-go, no code solution. During the session we’ll cover both and help you explore the best option for your needs.

In this session we’ll go over how to:
Optimize document management inside Salesforce
Enhance workflows to review, approve, comment, sign and collaborate on virtually any file type (including video)
Save time and effort by creating quotes, proposals, contracts, invoices, customer communications or marketing materials by automatically populating templates with Salesforce data

Take a tour through an advanced CI/CD process optimized for Happy Soup workflows. No unlocked packages in sight!

Come learn strategies for quickly evaluating changes by running in sandboxes, scratch orgs, or both. Understand how we setup environments so you can see and test changes before they are approved. See the process around "Desired State Deployments" that compares the source metadata to the target org and dynamically decides what metadata to deploy to bring the org to conform. Experience how we shard Apex tests across multiple orgs to speed up overall runtime so we can run all of our tests on every change.

Reporting on performance is a key attribute of any organization. For more complex KPIs we will need to create a more customized solution than what the out of the box options provide. If your organization evaluates sales reps on benchmarks in addition to revenue, such as new logos per quarter or meetings per month, this session is for you. In this presentation you will learn how to develop the data model, build automation to track attainment, create custom report types for accurate measurement and present visualizations in a dashboard.

Let me ask you a simple question, have you used set, map or list while working with apex? Your answer will most probably be YES. But what if I say, When was the last time you created a binary tree in apex? or a segment tree? a graph? Can you think of any scenario where you thought - ONLY A BINARY TREE CAN SOLVE IT?
If not, what approach did you use to solve such problem? What were the limitations?

In this session, we're going to solve a real life project requirement using an advanced data structure and we'll see the performance impact we're having by using it and learn why it is better than a brute force solution. So, the next time when you face such a requirement, you'll think at the first place - Which data structure should I use to solve it? and then you'll design and implement the most efficient solution.

At one time or another, we've all encountered seemingly insurmountable reporting challenges within Salesforce. These might involve perceived limits on pulling data in from multiple objects, desired changes to formatting, incorrect data types, or calculations we wish we knew how to make. In many cases, Formulas can help us either take a step closer to the solution or solve it outright. In this session we'll demo examples of specific reporting challenges and how Formulas helped resolve them, using Row-Level, Summary and Cross Block Formulas as well as Custom Formula Fields. Session participants will be offered a private AppExchange App will the full set of Formulas from the session to leverage in their own reporting efforts.

Data forms the building blocks for each piece of reporting information and analytics insight that we use related to Salesforce - whether it be Sales Forecasting, Major Donor appeals, Inventory Management KPIs, or any manner of financial rollups. Advancing yourself (or your team) into Data Literacy starts small through Seeing Your Data and ensuring it's accurate and trustworthy for those reports to share with your C-level. Using Your Data includes exploring Descriptive Analytics and establishing initial patterns in your Salesforce Org. Connecting these patterns (i.e. pattern matching) allows you to continue into tracing Why It Happened via Diagnostic Analytics. Join us to chart your own path into Data Literacy.

Flow Orchestrator is available right now in Beta. Flow Orchestrator is the newest addition to Salesforce Flow. In this session attendees will get a chance to learn a bit more what Flow Orchestrator is and to see it in action. The plan will be to give an overview of what Flow Orchestrator is, to demo a pre-built orchestration and to build an orchestration live in the session. The aim will be to serve as an introduction to Flow Orchestrator, to showcase the capabilities of the tool and to highlight how it compares to Approval Processes (which is currently what is viewed as the most likely usage of Flow Orchestrator). I will also look to include some key points around the core capabilities of Flow Orchestrator in order to give people some insight of the tool and some good ways that it could be used.

Don't you just hate it when your users get the dreaded "An unhandled fault has occurred in this flow" error followed by the debug email?

Wouldn’t it be nice if your Flows could check for and trap Validation Rule failures, missing required fields, lookup filter violations, text overruns and Duplicate Rule failures?

You could certainly take the time and effort to add a bunch of decision elements and recreate all your validation rules in your flow. I bet it would be even more exciting trying to keep all of that maintained.

No more worrying about Flows crashing. Attend this session and I'll show you a better way to avoid these types of Flow errors by using my Validation Checker Flow Action.

Do you refuse to only use Flows for just SOME things? Then you're a Flownatic! Every Flownatic has eventually run into one of Flow's 3 big limits; Iterations, CPU and Memory. Those limits and errors are a bit cryptic and hard to resolve. This session will show you how to get around those tough limits using an Event Pattern. With this you can structure your flows to run on almost unlimited records. Come learn how to shape your flows to run past normal limits and handle many more types of challenges.

Managed Packages can be a black box to architects and developers wishing to get deeper insights into how they function, and how they interact with external services. Understanding undocumented APIs, and the exact interactions between closed systems can help provide inspiration for how to implement your own apps by learning from some of the best and brightest people.

In this session, we tell the story of how a sudden brainwave around reverse proxies turned into a deep dive into the rabbit hole of undocumented APIs and reverse engineering of one of Salesforce's Managed Packages. We will also share tips and tricks for using this same technique to debug and test your own integrations.

Note this talk is being provided for educational purposes only and should not be construed as an endorsement of the activities being presented.

Have you ever had an automation error, then had a hard time finding the offending Flow or Process from the list view? Can you effortlessly identify which Flow you are calling from an Action? Are you able to easily leverage Custom Meta Data in your Flows and Processes? Well, if you use a numbering system you can do all this and more!

I'm gonna spill the beans and share my numbering convention that will take your automation to the next level. Learn how to match automation solutions to CMDT, Permission Sets and Actions to leverage functionality and save you time and headaches.You'll leave with a naming convention blueprint so you too can reap the benefits of logically organized process automation that's easy to control, track and improve.

And,don't worry, you won't even have to deactivate your existing solutions the get started. I will show you a pain free way to refactor and start using this system by updating labels even if you can't yet change the API names.

AppExchange Demo Kit (ADK) project in 10 minutes or less!
ADK projects allow Salesforce Developers to build and share rich, dynamic demo orgs in a source-centric manner without requiring batch files or shell scripts.

As organizations grow, so are their automation processes and technical debt caused constraints. Triggers and classes are mixing with Flows, Process Builder, Workflows and over time any change and improvement becomes too complex, too hard or even impossible. While we all try to write clean code and follow best practices, we can’t ignore the complexity that undeniably keeps growing, especially in highly customized orgs with a lot of integration points. In our session we will present a case study of automation refactoring in Service Cloud of Okta’s Salesforce org. Since Okta, as identity management provider, has high and very strict SLAs, customer support process is complex and requires extensive automation in order to ensure support agents’ productivity and timely response. We started with a deep technical debt on Apex side, dozens of Workflows, Flows and Processes and we re-built an automation keeping in mind that we must improve the process and that our code will be legacy code for future developers and admins working in this org. In our session we will show how we made changes to make code more readable and understandable and our declarative processes streamlined and enabled for easier maintenance and improvements based on business needs. We will also present and compare runtimes for before and after processes explaining why the changes we made are improving performance and how that impacts the whole system, not just subgroup of Salesforce users in Service Cloud. As a special treat we will provide a list of gotchas that we learned along the way and highlight edges cases that has to be considered in similar projects. Audience will leave the session better prepared to dive into their own automation refactoring projects and ready to follow best practices that ensure testability, maintainability and extensibility of the code.

Changes sets are great for most items but not field dependencies for Standard picklist fields. Manually updating these can be time-consuming and is error-prone. Faced with this dilemma, Susan went searching for a solution. After several developers told her it was not possible she kept digging and eventually found a way to do it using XML packages. She will walk you through retrieving and deploying XML packages using Workbench to move field dependencies across orgs.

Baris is a new Salesforce API library, built in Rust and designed for safe, scalable, parallelized operations. Explore the architecture of the Baris library, what makes Rust a good choice for developing integrations to Salesforce, and how to maximize performance with asynchrony. We'll look at progress towards porting an existing data loading tool from Python and compare hard numbers on performance and resource consumption.

Note: Baris is an open source project and is not endorsed or supported by Salesforce.