I’ve Gone Pokémon on Trailhead

I love Trailhead.  Salesforce has applied gamification to learning their platform, and it’s brilliant.  Billed as, “the fun way to learn Salesforce,” on the Trailhead site, users can pursue learning Trails, made up of Modules and Projects, that tailor the learning experience to various domains by which one can filter content.   For example, you can select “Admin” and “Beginner” in the filter list, and start going through all the training modules tagged as such.   I’m doing that right now, as I’ve begun preparation for the Admin 201 certification exam.  I’ve decided to pursue the Administrator certification track at this point.  It’s been a little over a year since I completed the Dev 501 process, and I’m ready to get back into the certification effort (I needed a break after that programming assignment).

But, here’s why I say, “I’ve Gone Pokémon on Trailhead:”  I’ve “gotta catch ’em all!”  Giving out these badges in the gamified context is a great motivator for me, it seems.  It makes cracking open these Trails, Modules, and Projects on Trailhead a lot of fun!  That’s especially helpful since a lot of the content I’m going through right now is review.  I’ve been using Salesforce for about 4 years now, and I’ve gotten familiar with a good bit of the admin functionality.  That said, I’m learning something in almost every Trailhead module I complete!  For instance, I set up Account Teams and used Contact Roles in the “Accounts & Contacts” module this morning.  My company doesn’t use those features extensively, so I’d never had reason to play with them.  And, after finishing that experience…BADGE!

I’ve also got a project for work right now in which I’m probably going to have to figure out an integration with an external partner, and I want to use Apex web services to tailor GET / PUT requests for RESTful web service calls between us and the partner.  Recently, a new “Apex Integration Services” module showed up on Trailhead.  I ran through it, got a great refresher course on using SOAP and RESTful web services for the Salesforce API,and also how to write my own web services with Apex.  And then?  BADGE!

Oh, the joy!  The endorphin rush!!  I love getting Trailhead badges!!!

I discovered Trailhead at Dreamforce last year.  Since, I’ve learned it’s a great resource, and I’m trying to motivate my team to take advantage of  this free training option.  If you haven’t experienced Trailhead yet, get over to https://developer.salesforce.com/trailhead and try it out!