In December 2016 a Salesforce org was set up at my employer. There and then I got my first touch and feel what Salesforce was as a system.

My involvement was in the beginning pretty random as an admin, more of a user. Since then my work tasks have been shifted more and more towards Salesforce, and today the vast majority of my workdays is either as a Salesforce administrator, developer or internal educator.

During these 5 years my knowledge has been obtained by “do and learn” both in our sandbox, as well against all best practises, the production environment. The knowledge has also been retained by assistance of consultants, or by the unique learning portal that is Trailhead. When one registers and educates themself at Trailhead, they are called Trailblazers. The whole concept of both Trailhead and Trailblazers is genius by Salesforce.

Thru the Trailhead trails, modules and projects one learns true knowledge, while at the same time maybe competing with colleagues of points and badges. For me the points and badges has been an addition of motivation.

The levels as a Trailblazer are:

• Scout (0 badge, 0 points)
• Hiker (1 badge, 200 points)
• Explorer (5 badges, 3,000 points)
• Adventurer (10 badges, 9,000 points)
• Mountaineer (25 badges, 18,000 points)
• Expeditioner (50 badges, 35,000 points)
• Ranger (100 badges, 50,000 points)

And today I finally reached

RANGER level!

My learning has been very sporadic. At times I’ve done many hours straight over several days, and other times it’s been one module here and another one there.

So if you’re not familiar with Trailhead, I highly recommend anyone working with Salesforce to check it out, because it truly does create awesome trailblazers.

The guided Trails guide one in a logical path forward to learn things in an order that’s very helpful. Of course one can make modules from here and there, and that really supports to get specific knowledge on a at the moment important topic. But if you just want to learn in general, I’de say the trails are a good way to get started.

What’s amazing with Trailhead is the amount of information you can find there. May it be something you just need to remind yourself to, or study something completely new, you most probably will find it there. So senior admins and developers, head on over.

Compared to some other learning sites, what Salesforce has done great with the Trailhead is that’s it’s made in good packages. They are not long complicated setup text, but easy to follow, combined with true real life case examples, which eases the load of material. And the challenge at the end of every module lifts up key issues you just studied. Even the challenges are made suitable short, so you don’t feel overwhelmed by questions.

And if you can’t find in the trails or modules what you’re looking for, you most definitely will find in the active and extremely knowledgable Salesforce community. As the Salesforce systems are so widely used all around the world, there seems to be somebody able to answer your question at any time of the day.