Demystifying Partner Learning Camp & Accredited Professional Exams – State of the Union After 1 Year!

It’s fair to say that the addition of Partner Learning Camp (PLC) and Accredited Professional (AP) Exams has been a great addition to the repertoire of Salesforce’s programs that allow individuals and organisations to skill up on various clouds/ offerings. I have been a huge proponent of PLC & AP from the early days – if you have not read the Part 1 and Part 2 of my ‘Demystifying PLC & AP’ blog posts, please read those to get a better context.

Now that PLC & AP have been around for a while, I felt it will be good to do a State of the Union reflection of the good, the bad and the ugly pieces of this puzzle. And while I continue to support PLC and APs strongly, I will be completely unbiased and fair (as always) in my assessment, so here we go!

My 3 Year Journey at MTX So Far – My Favourite Moments & Reflections!

Time flies, especially when you are busy! A few weeks back, I completed three years at MTX — and to say that it’s been a busy and fun journey would be an understatement. I am a compulsive reader, and a passionate writer — definitely in the club of The pen is mightier than the sword. If someone would ask me to speak about my journey at MTX, I would probably not be able to do justice to that. On the contrary, writing about this journey is something that I’ve been looking forward to for the last few months. 

I’ll try and capture my favourite moments from this journey (in chronological order), my reflections, and what’s coming next — so without any further ado, here we go!

2021 – My Salesforce Year in Review!

Year 2021 will be remembered as a challenging year, an unusual year as well as a year when our lives changed forever with a new way of living and working. There were times when it seemed like time was barely moving and other occasions where the clock was rapidly ticking along – I can’t believe we are already down to the last few weeks of December as I write this.

I have sort of an annual tradition to write about ‘My Salesforce Year in Review’ – I did that in 2015 as well as in 2016. I did make attempts in the remaining years during 2017-2020 but call it the writer’s block, procrastination, year end exhaustion, a busy work schedule, or just sheer laziness, those posts never left the draft folder. I’m starting early this year with a determination to get this posted before the end of the year.

It’s been a busy year, and as they say – busy is good. I had to think long and hard to recollect everything that’s gone on in the last 12 months, and as I reflect back on it, my heart is filled with gratitude and joy. Here we go!

Demystifying PLC, Salesforce Days & Salesforce Accredited Professional Credentials (Plus Swag Hunt) – Part 2

Please see Part 1 post if you want an introduction to what is Partner Learning Camp and what are Accredited Professional exams. In this post, I will focus a bit more on what’s changed in the world of PLC and APs and of course, the ongoing “Salesforce Days” campaign.

As in the earlier post, I will ONLY mention things which are publicly accessible to maintain and respect confidentiality as applicable. And of course, this post is written in my personal capacity and does not represent the views of my employer or any of my other affiliations.

First up, Salesforce Days – a whole new world of learning opportunities (and who doesn’t love swag!)

Pakistan Dreamin – A New Salesforce Community Rises!

Yesterday, I had the honour and pleasure of presenting at Pakistan Dreamin – Pakistan’s first ever Salesforce community conference. And to say, that I’m very impressed with what a show that Pak Dreamin team has put on – would be an understatement. So, I thought I’ll share my experience via a blog post. Read on to know more.

I’m now a ‘Mulesoft Mentor’!

“Sharing knowledge is the most fundamental act of friendship. Because it is a way you can give something without loosing something.” – Richard Stallman

I am excited to announce that I have been accepted into the new MuleSoft Mentors cohort! As a MuleSoft Mentor, I will continue to support the MuleSoft Community with my contributions, participate in MuleSoft Meetups, and much more. The earlier batch of this elite program had some of the most well respected names from the Mulesoft Community including Ravi Tamada Sarah Khalid & several others and I’m glad to be among the 120 new mentors added in the second cohort.

AWS User Group OSTech 2021 – ‘Build Your Own DevOps Stack’

Last weekend, I had an opportunity to present at OSTech Conference organised by AWS User Group, Jaipur. This was a 2-day event covering a number of tracks including Cloud Native & DevOps, Software Development, Open Source, Co-Location & Community.

The organising team put on a great show with a fabulous speaker line up and kept the event engaging with quizzes and several contests intertwined as breaks. Read on to know more about the event and my session.

Demystifying Partner Learning Camp & New Salesforce Accredited Professional Credentials – Part 1

To say that the last few months in the Salesforce Partner ecosystem have been really exciting, would be an understatement of sorts. I believe that in general, Salesforce has done a phenomenal job on enablement and training over the years and recently, it has just stepped up the game even further with Partner Learning Camp (PLC) and the launch of new Salesforce Accredited Professional (AP) exams.

While there’s a good amount of information published around PLC and APs, I get a lot of questions from people on Linkedin & Twitter around the same – so here’s an attempt to explain these from a fellow Salesforce Partner Community member perspective.

Read on if you are eager to know more. I’ll obviously be respecting confidentiality and sharing whatever is publicly available information.

Preparing for the Salesforce Certified User Experience Designer Certification

Last month, Salesforce announced a new certification called ‘Salesforce Certified User Experience Designer‘ – to allow Trailblazers all over the world to add design skills to their portfolio. Given my background on Mobile Development and Design Thinking, I had it on my to-do list for a while to appear for this exam.

I finally took the plunge and passed it yesterday – 6th July. In this post, I will share my experience of preparing for this certification – hopefully you will find these tips useful while preparing for this exam.

Mulesoft Composer – The New ‘No Code’ Integration Pattern!

Over the years, Salesforce has championed the philosophy of ‘No Code, Low Code, High Code’. The core idea is that you do not need to write code for anything and everything – and the fact that you should NOT write code where it’s NOT needed.

Integration has traditionally been an area where APIs are the norm and developers are the king makers. The landscape has changed with several no-code & low-code players popping up in the last few years. A couple of months back, Mulesoft introduced Composer – a new platform to do integrations via clicks NOT code and I was intrigued.

I had the opportunity to learn more about Composer in the last few weeks and this post is all about my perspective on Mulesoft’s latest offering. If you are curious about Mulesoft Composer as well, read on!