I have completed the Prepare for Your Salesforce Administrator Credential trailmix on Trailhead.Salesforce.com It feels good to have that over with. This trailmix has a nice variety of topics that will help someone who is new to the Salesforce ecosystem with the basics of what you need to know to approach the Salesforce Administrator certification exam. While Trailhead is a super fun way to learn technical content, moving through the modules alone is not sufficient in my estimation to pass the exam. But don’t take my word for it because I have yet to sit for the test.

Currently, I have accumulated:

43 badges

47,675 points

7 more badges until I reach the rank of Expeditioner

You can see all of this in my Trailblazer profile.

I am enjoying Trailhead, and I plan to keep taking more modules to help me become more familiar with other aspects of Salesforce.

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LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelynbourne/

Twitter @evelynwrites

I have two more Trailhead super badges under my belt. I’m not gonna lie, the Reports and Dashboards super badge was a BEAST! I worked on that project for three days! But, it was well worth it. I know more than I wanted to know about creating reports and graphs and adding them to dashboards. I learned about report logic, which was new for me, but will come in handy later. I learned about folder permissions and lots of other things that will be useful in my work as a Salesforce Administrator and beyond. But one of the biggest lessons I took away from working on this badge was where to look for help, support, and encouragement when you hit a snag.

The challenge is that your work is being checked by a computer. When you see that big, red square appear and it is telling you that you got a section wrong, you just have to try to backward engineer what you did to try to figure out how to fix it and make that red box disappear. I am grateful to those Salesforce admin wanna be’s before me who hit the same snags and posted their questions in the Trailblazer Community so the answers they received could be accessed by others. There were times when I wanted to just quit and move on to other modules, but I knew that I would not be able to complete the whole trailmix without completing the super badge, so I persevered.

When I finally finished, I was thrilled to send a celebratory email to my study groups. I am part of two study groups comprised of people who are pursuing the Salesforce Administrator certification. I cannot recommend joining a study group enough. It is one of my favorite parts of the Talent Stacker program.

The next day after completing the Reports badge, I was going to continue with the next module on the trail, but I decided that since I was in super badge mode, that I should knock off the Business Admin super badge, which would round out the three badges required to complete the trailmix. The Business Administration super badge turned out to be the easiest, most fun super badge of them all. I completed it in one day, but I still learned a lot and came away with a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

My tips for the Lightning Reports and Dashboards SuperBadge:

• Brush up on the reports modules before you begin.
• Make sure you have a clear understanding of report logic
• Brush up on how to create graphs to accompany reports
• Take good notes as you go along
• Ask for help from the Trailblazer Community if you need it

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I was poking around in Trailhead in the projects section, and I found a module that walks you through creating a handy little app that you can use to track what you are learning. The module is: Build an App to Track Your Trailblazer Journey

My purpose for starting this blog was to track my journey in preparing for my Admin certification, but I figured this would be a great exercise in building my first app. It was a fun, easy process, and it has really whetted my appetite to try building other apps now.

Aside from building my first app, I have been enjoying my journey on Salesforce’s Trailhead learning environment as I prepare for the Salesforce Administrator Certification exam. I have purchased the Admin practice exams from Focus on Force, and I immediately noticed that the content on Trailhead is excellent preparation for working as an Admin, it is not effective preparation for the test. I am in a study group through the Talent Stacker Career Development program and in our latest meeting we talked about the importance of balancing what we are learning in the Trailhead modules, and then looking at practice test questions on those topics.

If you have not already tried it, I recommend giving building an app a try. It is incredibly satisfying to build an app that works. It is quite simple, but it works. I cannot wait to build more complex apps next.

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I just completed my FIRST super badge in Trailhead. I am doing the Prepare for Your Salesforce Administrator Certification trailmix, and the Security Specialist is the first super badge on that trail. It took me 8 1/2 hours to complete although it says it takes six. If you have not yet taken it, I advise you to brush up on all the security content in the modules you have taken leading up to this point. It was a bit grueling for me because once you get used to being spoonfed all the steps in the Trailhead modules, it can be tricky to switch to a different mode of approaching the content. You are forced to draw on everything you have learned so far, and you have to get good at using all the resources available to you on Trailhead.

Now, I’m off to continue knocking down modules to learn the content so that I can start preparing for the Salesforce Administrator Certification exam. I am also planning to immerse myself in tutorials about taking IT tests because it’s been a while since I have taken a test like this. I still have nightmares about the horror show that was my first attempt at taking the GMAT! Completing this badge has given me a lot of confidence as I move through the rest of the modules. Now I am looking forward to my next super badge on Trailhead.

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Twitter @evelynwrites

This is a new blog about my journey to becoming a Certified Salesforce Admin. This journey represents a pivot from my previous background of being a writer and digital content manager. After almost a decade of being immersed in SEO content creation, I have decided to make a change and pursue a role in IT. I have always loved working with computers and technology as it has been emerging. I love working with people and using technology to make the work we do more efficient, effective, and secure.

These are still early days for me on this path. This blog shows that I am a writer at heart because one of my first thoughts was that I should write about this journey, so here I am! There will be more to come as I move through this experience of training for a whole new type of work for me. It is exciting and I can’t wait to share all of it.

I am working through Salesforce’s amazing training platform, Trailhead, so I will share my progress and the challenges I will face in getting my first certification and then landing my first Salesforce role.

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LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelynbourne/

Twitter @evelynwrites