We have exciting news for our users, especially those who use our HomeKeeper support over the course of the year. This fall, two of our Support Staff, Cheryl Curry and Valerie Rogers, received new certifications from Salesforce.

What does this mean for our users? It means that we now have additional certifications to be able to better serve you. As a staff, we focus on learning as much as we can about the Salesforce platform, so that we can best answer our users questions as well as provide support. These certifications mean that we now have an in-depth knowledge on specific topics that are related to our day-to-day work as application support staff.

 

 

 

Valerie Rogers, our Marketing and Support Specialist, who many of you speak with on your journey towards the purchase of HomeKeeper, is now a Certified Salesforce Administrator. This means that she now has an in-depth knowledge on how to setup Salesforce for organization best use as well as the management of day-to-day database administration.

 

 

 

Cheryl Curry, our Training and Support Specialist, and the staff member who answers most of your questions about HomeKeeper user and Salesforce, is now a  Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder and a Certified Advanced Administrator. Cheryl had previously earned her Salesforce Certified Administrator credential. With the Platform App Builder and Advanced Administrator certification, Cheryl now has more in-depth knowledge on how to create applications and customizations in Salesforce, which helped her move HomeKeeper to be Lightning Ready and add functionality to HomeKeeper with our developers, Daizylogik. 

What does this mean for me?

Not only can staff working on applications get Salesforce certified, you can too! Getting Salesforce certified is a great way to expand your knowledge about Salesforce as well as help you organization with the every day work you are doing in Salesforce and HomeKeeper. Below are some additional resources that we found helpful as we studied for our Salesforce certifications as well as some of the benefits to getting certified.

Benefits of becoming Salesforce certified:

  • Better knowledge of the Salesforce ecosystem and what types of things can be done in Salesforce
  • An in-depth knowledge on how to configure and customize Salesforce so it works best for your specific organization.
  • Additional job opportunities if you love working in Salesforce and want to find a job directly administering for another nonprofit or organization.

Tools / Resources for becoming certified:

  • Trailhead – Trailhead learning through Salesforce is one of the best ways you can learn how to use Salesforce better. There are trailheads for learning things as basic as how to create fields as well as learning more complicated tasks like creating process and workflows. Trailhead also includes trailmixes to get you ready for Salesforce certification. For example, here is a trailmix for the Salesforce Certified Admin certification. 
  • Amplify – Amplify provides great free study groups and resources to nonprofit users to help nonprofit staff to become certified.
  • Salesforce Admin 201 class – This is Salesforce’s official 5-day class for studying for their first certification,  Certified Administrator. These classes do have a cost, so many of the resources above and below can provide you with lower cost instruction and practice.
  • Focus on Force  – Focus on Force is a great resource for all of the Salesforce certifications. It includes in-depth study guides as well as a variety of practice tests.
  • Salesforce Ben – Salesforce Ben is a Salesforce blog which includes Salesforce news, tricks and tips to using Salesforce as well as practices tests for many of the different Salesforce certifications.
  • Certified on Demand – Another great study resources for Salesforce certifications. Includes study guides and practice tests.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can brush up on your Salesforce skills or become certified and want to ask us more about our experience with getting certified, please reach out to use at info@myhomekeeper.org.