On Tuesday, March 19th, the Salesforce user groups in Miami had our first annual meeting in grand style. Let’s recall that in 2023, these meetings resumed in-person after a four-year hiatus, and since then, they have been a resounding success.
Salesforce communities or groups are local networks organized by CRM users who regularly gather to exchange knowledge, skills, and experiences. They can specialize in areas such as Administration, Architecture, Development, Sales, Marketing, or Service Cloud, for instance. Alternatively, they can have a more global reach, grouping a specific region.
The Miami user group remains quite active, facilitating quarterly meetings that have become a key tradition. These meetings are free and open to all CRM users, from beginners to multi-certified experts. The idea is to provide an inclusive environment where best practices and solutions to common problems are shared.
What happened on March 19th?
On this occasion, we returned to the BIT Center, already an ally of ours, with excellent technological and logistical features for these meetings. The welcome remarks were given by Jorge Fernández and Rene R. García, leaders of the Admin and Developers user groups respectively, from the Salesforce Miami Community and Co-Directors of SkyPlanner. And then, the cream of the crop: four valuable presentations on the experience and use of Salesforce. Here’s a concise summary of what happened there.
Evolution of Expertise: Transitioning from Oracle Consulting to Salesforce Ecosystem. Presented by Tom Souza.
Tom shared his successful transition from Oracle to the Salesforce ecosystem. After years of experience in development and consulting at Oracle, he began to delve into CRM learning through Trailhead. With the support of his team, he was able to learn while maintaining his responsibilities at Oracle. He eventually completed his transition to Salesforce and was hired as a developer. In his talk, he highlighted key skills such as curiosity, self-learning, persistence, communication, and leadership.
Platform Events. Presented by Ernesto Rodríguez.
The presentation addressed integration with Platform Events, highlighting event-driven architecture, its key components, and advantages such as scalability, flexibility, and real-time responsiveness. Additionally, the concept of Platform Events within Salesforce was explained, including its use for communication between Salesforce and external systems, as well as associated limits and design considerations.
Connecting Salesforce Orgs/Communities/External Products using Salesforce SAML Capabilities. Presented by Sushil Kumar.
Sushil explained how to enable Salesforce as a SAML Identity Provider for Single Sign-On (SSO). SAML is a protocol that allows the exchange of authentication and authorization data between Identity Providers (IdPs) and Service Providers (SPs). When your organization operates as a SAML identity provider, its users can conveniently access multiple applications with a single sign-on. Sushil also relied on a practical example of how to configure this to access different Salesforce communities.
Empowering Nonprofits Orgs: Leveraging Salesforce for Church Ministries Internal Operations. Presented by Alfredo Salcedo.
Alfredo spoke about the experience of the Christian church Presence Viva in using Salesforce to optimize institutional process management and its community. He emphasized that non-profit organizations, like any other, also need to adapt their operations according to their growth while maintaining their core values. To support these organizations, Salesforce offers its Nonprofits Cloud and other specific programs. For example, the Power of Us Program is an initiative for non-profit organizations to start using Salesforce technology in their routine management, such as program management, cases, grants, and fundraising, among others.
Of course, no Salesforce Trailblazer culture gathering is complete without networking and a happy hour. The final phase of the meeting allowed participants to grab a bite while sharing and connecting with each other. This exchange always serves as the perfect closure to combine innovation, learning, and collaboration.
In conclusion, it was another successful Salesforce user meeting in Miami! If you couldn’t participate this time, don’t worry. You can join us in future meetings and immerse yourself in the best of the Trailblazer culture. As for us, in the SkyPlanner team, we are staunch enthusiasts of the Miami community, so we are highly motivated to continue supporting and strengthening it.
We encourage you to demonstrate your dedication to both Salesforce and constant professional growth. Join other passionate professionals and explore new perspectives to achieve success. We look forward to seeing you!
