So here’s another “final” Salesforce technical article, until the next time! As a very rare occurence, there is little ADHD coaching content apart from recognising my personal journey at the very end.
I’m going to cover:
- Salesforce emergency update with Passkeys
- Salesforce using your data for training AI, with GDPR implications
- Why the Salesforce still community rocks! (some Czech Dreamin reflections)
Salesforce emergency update with Passkeys
Salesforce has just three updates a year. Predictable, reliable, tested. Except that’s never been true. There’s always been bug-fixes. Now, to bring it up to date, we have very rushed security “enhancements”.
Passkeys are coming and Admins and those with “View All Data” rights may well be locked out from 1st Julyunless you take action now. Is this guaranteed? No. Might there be a login flow prompting you to set up passkeys then and there? Possibly, no one outside Salesforce, including my informed sources, knows for sure. Will a call to Salesforce Support get you logged back in and allow you time to set one up? Definitely. Is it worth the risk, time, hassle and stress of discovering on 1st July? Absolutely not! Make this change at a time that suits you.
Ultimately we don’t want people hacking into our systems, but it’s a useful reflectionof how the rate of change seems to be ever increasing. Salesforce took years to enforce multi-factor authentication, but this login change has come with around six weeks notice. Unfortunately the rushed pace has shown in the quality of their communications. Good thing someone has produced an article to walk you through the steps you need to take right now, to avoid being locked out on 1st July.
Salesforce using your data for training AI, with GDPR implications
Salesforce has introduced a feature where all your data is automatically opted-in for AI training.I’m not making this sh*t up. Personally I would be surprised if it were legal, but I absolutely don’t have the resources to fight it, and also it’s not my battle as I’m rarely involved with Salesforce on a day-to-day basis.
Here are the steps you need to take to remedy this:
- Go to Setup
- Search for “Opt”
- Select “Opt Out of Customer Data Access”
- Untick “Allow Salesforce Access to Customer Data”
If this screen doesn’t exist, then you have not been opted in. Hurrah! This seems to be the case for a small minority of customers.
Bearing in mind that sarcasm is quite a negative tool, I try not to deploy it too often, but sometimes I can’t help myself, and because when it’s used sparingly, the reward is pure pleasure: It’s so weirdthat Salesforce has not spoken much about this topic. Huge thanks to Anthony Scrima for bringing it to my awareness.
And thenSalesforce wants to warn you about unwanted behaviour, with people gaining unauthorised access to information, sending out lots of alerts. The irony is not lost on me…
Why the Salesforce still community rocks! (some Czech Dreamin reflections)
“What this photo doesn’t show is that I spent over an hour tracking across Prague, chasing Pag’s shadow to track him down, but it was totally worth it (and I got my step count in for the day!)“
I’m so tempted to do a piece about how Salesforce community conferences are the best, but I’ve written on the subject plenty of times and I genuinely think 99% of my readership know this. Having attended another IT conference recently, where there were perhaps 5% women in attendance – not a good thing for breadth of perspective, just to be really clear – I remain forever grateful for having found the Salesforce community and its influence on my journey.
So instead some engineer notes, based on conversations at Czech Dreamin:
- Salesforce has finally figured out some useful ways of leveraging AI. The first AgentForce was a bit of a disaster and vapourware, very much like the initial rollout of Lightning, on reflection. We laugh and shake our heads in disbelieve at the wrong turns, but actually this is what experimentation and innovation look like. Not every step will be one in the right direction. Instead it’s useful to step back and look at the overall picture.
- The actual details on AI? Here I speak from what my admin spidery senses tell me, because I am no longer a power user… it’s amazing to see that you can now use AI to write flows. Genuinely time saving because I always found that slow and clunky. It is possible to read something and understand that it is correct without being able to code from scratch, and it’s something we will get used to. We all use calculators (and calculator apps) without reading every line of code, so we will get there. I fear or the technical debt though. It’s literally easier to build something new rather than maintain it, so I suspect there will be a huge cost to this approach, especially or those that don’t document why and what they do.
- Jobs. Basically the word on the street is that no one is/very few are coming into the ecosystem any more. This is sad but understandable. We – the community – aren’t recommending it to anyone, so the consequences are inevitable. Combined with the speed of changedue to AI and I, nor anyone else I know, has any clue what the jobs market will look like in five years time. It’s scary, but as there isn’t much we can do about it, we might as well head on, earn some money and have fun on the way.
- Sponsors. There are fewer sponsors to go around, and they are willing to spend less money. In truth I remain confused because Salesforce alwaysreports huge year-on-year growth, but to me it feels like a shrinking ecosystem. This will inevitably reduce the number of Dreamin eventsin the long term, or at least reimagine them. Tristan Lombard writes a good piece on how to keep sponsors happy, and it’s all about not taking them for granted; he’s also a good person to follow generally on LinkedIn. Actions speak louder than words here.
Finally, I did post online a picture of me going at a night club in Krumlov in the Czech Republic, as part of the Czech Dreamin away weekend. Looks trendy, but took my 46.99 years to get to the stage where I can persuade a group of people that I didn’t know 48 hours beforehand to go out for the night and have some fun. So if you’re not wherever you wish to be today, there is still time. I’m a slow learner, but I get “there” eventually, even if the “there” appears impossible from a distance. My younger self remains a bit in shock, but totally happy with who I am today.
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