Lightning Strikes (again) - Episode #224 of CloudFocus Weekly

Machine transcript generated in 2026 from the episode audio (Whisper speech-to-text with automatic speaker separation). Speaker labels are automatic and may be wrong in places. Timestamps shown every few minutes.

00:10 Jason Atwood: This is the 224th episode of CloudFocus Weekly for the first week of September 2015. This episode is titled Lightning Strikes. Just a reminder, CloudFocus Weekly will be live at Dreamforce in the admin zone. Tuesday, September 15th at 3.30pm. Wednesday, September 16th at 9.30am. Thursday, September 17th at 1.30pm. All Pacific Standard Time. Come by, hang out, listen to us, periscope us. I guess that's what they're doing. And otherwise... We'll sign your baby. We will? We will. What is that? I am your host, Jason Atwood, and joining me, co-host for 224 times in a row.

Justin Edelstein: Justin Elsden, Justin, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. You know, it's cool we have a guest for the, a confirmed guest for the Thursday. We'd be like our fourth guest ever.

Jason Atwood: You know what? He'll probably end up starting a podcast because I feel like of the people we've had as guests, Thanks for watching!

Justin Edelstein: Well, this is a blogger already, a product manager at Salesforce. I'm telling you, he's going to of podcast. He won't. I don't think he will. Well, who is the guest? It's Adam Tormund, the one and only. Oh, excellent. All right. on Thursday. So come by and watch us talk.

Jason Atwood: Good thing that you got on permission sets and stuff. Good thing that nobody is doing. There's no news around Salesforce or anything that they're doing.

Justin Edelstein: No big thing this time of year. Nothing huge.

Jason Atwood: So we will get to all that non-huge news in a second or two. But first, I'd like to remind you that Dreamforce is coming up. It is. And the blog, the Arkus blog, the Well-Ned blog, Arkus blog, branding.

Justin Edelstein: Has not won, but has Hashtag branding They have them out, they have them out. Sort of make the release and you get excited about a lot of them and mm-hmm But you're we'd wait till Dreamforce happened We can have a reaction to Dreamforce and then go on to release note stuff Okay, okay Solid solid. I've already kind of read I won't say the whole thing but because it's enormous Yes time around with what we'll talk about with lightning What? It's crazy. Like the first 150 pages are just, here's lightning.

03:20 Jason Atwood: I think you missed a chance to make him write 15. Top 15 reasons to- Next year's.

Justin Edelstein: Site. 20? 16 reasons to go on a dream for 16. Gotcha. Soon he'll be, yeah, be pretty hard. Yeah. So frequent fire mile accumulation. Travel. Because it rhymes with beam force. Hotel showers. Those are good. I'm fear conditioning. I don't know. 66 degrees, 66 degrees in your, in your, in the Hyatt. The weather's wonderful this time of year. Not cold out there. In San Francisco? It's perfect. It's nicer than he is here. It's nice here. Yeah, it's perfect. It's perfect today. You want to go through these top 10 and pick like one or two each? Let's pick one each. Just one? Yeah. Oh, this is tough. I'm going to choose between number four and five. Okay, go for it. Pick one. I'm going to go with number five. Like...,,,,,,,,,,,, the,, the community itself. Yep.

Justin Edelstein: It is on Wednesday morning, the 16th. at 6 30 a.m. in front of the ferry building on the Embarcadero which is great because our hotel we stay at the Hyatt so it's right across the street right so it's great not too confused with that it's a nice little 5k It's a nice. It's actually a really nice Root you run from the Ferry Building to where the Giants play to the stadium wrap around the back of it and come back It's really really nice little when I'm warning. I Just said yes, when I'm warning- cuz I'm just thinking wow, we've just been there the night before Yeah, we will so we will be running around it on Wednesday morning at 6 30. I've already registered. There is a group in the success community, linked to from this blog post.

Justin Edelstein: You have to go in, you have to register in the Eventbrite and you have to kind of sign a waiver and there's limited spots. I'm not going to hurt yourself running. For some purpose, they had to do this last year and they figured out a way to do it within Eventbrite. So go in there, see if you can still register. It might be. quote-unquote sold out a lot of people sign up for this so I'm looking forward to it as a runner I look forward to running with my fellow community members That is fun.

Jason Atwood: That'll be Wednesday probably go running........................ I don't know then Monday. No seeing people I haven't seen in a long time and I get to you know people I either see once a year which is nice or people I see once every couple years or prospects or clients or you know whatever it's just I really like the social aspect of it it so reunion is my pick there's a

06:52 Justin Edelstein: Lot of hugging at Dreamforce a lot of I give out so many hugs so many hugs you're a hugger,, I'm a hugger I give out so many hugs big hugs man hugs

Jason Atwood: And the and a-,,

Justin Edelstein: I suggest we just kind of Making Great show.

Jason Atwood: So that was one blog post. The second one is a newer blogger who can be named Mariel Espinal who writes about the, Dreamforce 2015 sessions and events that every admin should know about. Out., So, you know, there started what two years ago was the new kind of

Justin Edelstein: Focus on these be the community zone, success. Last year was the first time where it was the admin zone and there was a real focus on admins because for years now, I'd say maybe three or four, there's been the developer zone because they've had to. Get developers and evangelize to developers like hardcore developers. Hey, you can develop on this platform and sort of forgot about the fact that for the longest time there have been admins for the longest time. Thank you, Billy. And. That the admin needs to also be evangelized to and there is a community to help evangelize to those admins and There's a zone specifically for administer. I keep saying admins. I want to say administrator, but I think they're now just admin and This blog post sort of highlights for you admins out there who are listening, what you should focus on, where you should pay attention and make sure that you, you know, catch the admin keynote.

Justin Edelstein: Make sure that you go to the admin zone because there's lots of things to do at the admin zone with a theater and a podcast studio, which is where we'll be podcasting from. So true So true Where you can ask experts things where you and I may or may not even be, actually I think we are. We are staffing booths.

Jason Atwood: Right. I think I'm the backup again. Or maybe I'm, no, I'm actually staffing. I am staffing.

Justin Edelstein: Mobile admin. You and I are staffing the same booth. I think I'm this, I'm right before you or right after you. I'm first thing in the morning. So I'm right after you at the same mobile. I'll be relieving you. Call this user. We'll see you later. See you later. That's all- Yeah, I'm here, clone this user.

10:38 Jason Atwood: It's an interesting way that I mean sales force obviously changing their marketing constantly so from a you know, purely a company aspect, like you want to get the admins and celebrate them because they're kind of the core to your business. Model. Yes, the CIOs sign off on stuff and the CEOs pay the bills and whatever, but the admins are the ones the ones that kind of keep it going. And definitely as I think if you have, if you are in an organization and don't have, don't have someone internally who kind of is evangelizing, I've seen those Salesforce instances just drop off. because people are just I go, you know, it's just a tool like any tool, if you're not having someone kind of push it and help it along and sort of keep growing with it, you know, it doesn't do too well.

Jason Atwood: So so it has a bunch, a bunch of content, Dreamforce 15 content, I'm saying one, two, three, four. And I think another one's coming out next week, two more coming out next week, maybe one at the end of the week. Yeah. Right. Two more next week. And then so we got lots going on. Dreamforce. Yep. 15.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah. All right. So were you struck by lightning?

Jason Atwood: Well, not really, because.

Justin Edelstein: Because you're shrugging your shoulders.

Jason Atwood: I signed an NDA and kind of, you know. What do you mean? No. Yeah. So lightning. So the big event. I did not do the live event. I did do the live event because I did a pre-release live event earlier that day. And saw it then and had had chances to see versions of it in the past. So it's one of the things like I wish I had just been able to see it like having never seen it before just like the first time because like the first time because I've reacted a little bit differently but I'd seen conversions over here so it's hard for me to sort of react like with fresh fresh eyes although I've been in orgs with it on I played around with it I've been going to the trailhead you know certifications on it And I'm fighting myself because.

Justin Edelstein: Are you punching yourself in the face? I am, I'm punching right now.

Jason Atwood: So let's just talk about what it is. So Lightning is the new, I mean, well, first of all, Salesforce was using Lightning as a product, a product branding thing for a while. They've had Lightning connect. Lightning process builder,

Justin Edelstein: Lightning. Everything's been moving to lightning.

Jason Atwood: Lightning components. Lightning components, Lightning app builder. Right. So this is now called Lightning experience.

Justin Edelstein: I think it's actually just called the new Salesforce.

Jason Atwood: The new Salesforce Lightning.

Justin Edelstein: I think lightning goes away from what it's actually, which, which is. For the interim it'll it will. other big things like chatter rolled out. Just turn on. It's on or off. And you didn't have a choice. And this is here, you have all the power to roll it out to two users if you would like, no matter what. And even when they have it, they can still flip between it. Absolutely. That's what's nice. Because there are things that you cannot do in it. You, you can flip back you everyone listening to this right now, if you haven't seen it, go get a pre release org and go play with this. What it is is a brand new user interface for Salesforce. It looks brand spanking new and different.

14:46 Jason Atwood: I'm shaking your head. I'm kind of like if I'm explaining someone who doesn't hasn't seen it, I say you Go open up your Sales, go open up your Salesforce 1 mobile on your iPad and start with that.

Justin Edelstein: Start there but there's a lot more to it than that. Navigation goes to the left. Yeah, but abs go away. But think about your homepage. You don't have a real homepage on the mobile and think about what the homepage looks like in this new Salesforce experience versus what the homepage looks like. in today's world. Right. It's a completely different universe. You have this, this assistant where with like, what kind of like the today app almost, but, but on your, on the homepage as a component. So again, think about this as a very component driven way of building the application. Everything is just a component that can be dragged and dropped onto different pages. Right. And over time the... application will become more and more customizable. For example, on the homepage right now, there's this huge graph and homepage chart that just shows like an opportunity, like a sales to goals chart.

Justin Edelstein: And it's a little you know it's a little funky you have to figure out how to even get things into it it's like oh it works a very specific way like open or closed opportunities within a certain fiscal period that are over 70% show up in the chart. And it's like this really weird, like, wow, okay, so that's all that's showing up there, all right, and you can't really change that. So just know it's gonna be a little rigid for some time. But when you look at it, you say, okay, that looks like a modern. web application, right, with you know sliding navigation on the left, so that little cheeseburger icon on the top that you're very used to when it comes to mobile apps is now really making its way onto the onto the desktop web experience.

Justin Edelstein: All the tabs are gone off the top. They're down the left in little icons. ones. Search is at the top, search is also your recent items. So when you click into search, you get your recent items that pop down. And I think there's a few things that make this very intriguing for people immediately. The first thing that's really intriguing is the opportunities page. They really focused on sales, I think, for this first release. So the opportunities... tab if you will or the opportunities landing page is very very different. So you land on it and into a list view that can turn into a board where you can see all of the opportunities that are in that list. in a board view. I'm trying to- I can ban this and that. Yeah, but I'm trying to say it like not that way, that way so that people can- Yeah, these little, the mobile cards that you see on the mobile, mobile and across the top is like a matrix of all your different stages.

17:57 Justin Edelstein: And it totals them at the top. So whatever opportunities are in that stage, you'll see them. and there'll be a total at the top and on the card, it'll show you some information about it and you can just drag and drop a card which represents an opportunity from say like needs analysis to proposal. And all of a sudden it changes the stage. Right. And it recalculates on the fly the totals on the top. So it's kind of like, I mean, again, there's an AppExchange product out there that does this. There is.

Jason Atwood: Which will be replaced. It's sort of like forecasting. Forecasting. It's like a piece of forecasting. A piece of it. Because forecasting, if you guys don't use forecasting, it allows you to see in sort of both by month and by forecast category, which is different from stages. you know, total density, you can look and then you can underline. It's really meant more for being able to look at your teams and seeing people underneath them so I can look at what they're doing. Plus, you can override it with certain amounts. But anyway, I there are so many things in here. Again, I've only spent three hours playing with it. The opportunity detail pages themselves, things like opportunities and cases.

Justin Edelstein: And I think even leads have transformed into more of like a workspace type of experience, where it's very much more about an activity timeline and collaboration and getting, moving this thing through a process. Whereas a contact or an account is more of treated like a referential. piece of data. Right. So it has sort of a different page layout and a different experience when you're looking at it, which I think is rather smart. It's like, okay, I don't, I don't need the, the sales, what is it called? The thing that's on the mobile now, the sales path sales path. I don't need that on every layout. I need that on my account or on my opportunities so that I can go through that on the desktop experience. I don't need that on my account.

Justin Edelstein: So this is where I saw, I'll go back to what I was saying originally, is that I'm fighting my own internal feelings about change, right?

Jason Atwood: Because in one part of me, as someone who's used this system, that has almost looked the same, at least with tabs, since the day I started using it in 2000. 15 years. So part of me is kind of like whoa, you know. You know, some stuff that I'm really excited about, new features, new things. But then there are things that I, there are ways that I talk about. I train people, obviously. You train people on Salesforce. I do. We explain it. We show it. So the things that I do and say all the time that I kind of have to relearn in my vernacular. One of the things I say all the time is, well, once you learn how to deal with a lead, speed.. and you click over to an account, a contact- contact or an opportunity.

Jason Atwood: You know what? It flows with you. So I can see there's columns and sections and titles and related lists. And once you learn how to deal with one piece of data, whether it's custom or standard, you kind of can deal with everything. This changes that because the way you deal with a case and the way you look at a lead versus a custom object. they're going to look very different and these different types of functional layouts. And so now you have to explain that as well, now you're an opportunity. And that's kind of more of a functional process layout, which I'm just building this on. I'm just talking about on the fly, like a process thing. Like you're seeing the stages of an opportunity versus a referential layout, which is I'm just looking at data.

21:30 Jason Atwood: Right. But it makes logical sense. I think it makes logical sense. I don't know from a user. Until it becomes something that I use on a day-to-day basis. I can't tell you whether Well, I love it or whether I'm gonna just I'm a slam my head against the wall feeling like I can't get anything I'll tell you this.

Justin Edelstein: I'm not planning, planning on using it for a year. Oh, why? Oh, why? Because I don't want to be jumping between experiences to do different things Oh, I'll just turn it on our work as soon as we get it and I just Come for yourself and have fun. Yeah,

Jason Atwood: I'm sure they'll be turning out for me I'll just stay in the classic world I think that's gonna be my thing is I'm hoping that the flip back and forth is very easy It is okay.

Justin Edelstein: I've played with it in my pre release and flipping You just toggle.

Jason Atwood: You just toggle. Doesn't drop you back to home or something I don't know.

Justin Edelstein: I don't know why you would...

Jason Atwood: Because I'm... well, think about it. I'm dealing with a beat of sedata and I want to deal with the same decent data but I want to deal with it in the other UI. I don't want to have to like...

Justin Edelstein: I don't know because I've only sort of just flipped back in and out and in and out and not really paid attention to where I was. Sounds totally like you. Yep. But like... Where are you now? There's some cool... again, some cool things like... Charts in list view. Oh, yeah many many Columns galore in dashboards, right? Like dashboards look really cool. They're using the wave visualization And yes, they look cool have a seven column dashboard, right? Go go nuts No, they then all yes sort of things we used to say that you can't do can't have more than three cars You know what? You can make one dashboard component really really wide and then underneath it you can have sit right? I mean it's Pretty cool the way that they've done the dashboarding, but there's like weird things like you can view reports But you can't build a report in the lightning experience.

Justin Edelstein: You have to jump out build a report jump back in right? there's also tons of Earl hacks and Oh JavaScript buttons just things that will never work, right? custom button hack think actions people actions actions actions, right? No more custom buttons, just don't do it. It's not worth it. Actions are more powerful. They're way easier to even figure out to how to do than a custom button.

Jason Atwood: They really are. Well, yeah, from figuring out how to build, but from a UI perspective, I've always find it tough to get someone to go into chatter to do an action versus a button that's sitting right there. Yeah, I mean,

Justin Edelstein: Click button versus. Do things versus button up here, do things. But from a... You know, from a now put my trainer hat on, I want people to adopt chatter. And a way of getting people to adopt chatter is to remove. I remove the new buttons from related lists and say, here's how you create the new record that you want to create from this record. If it's, you know, if it makes sense and it gets them in and then. You have a really nice little compact page layout and you say now you can collaborate on this and if you're following this record you can see it in your feed and it's really nice. So let's do a prediction.

24:36 Jason Atwood: So this is coming out winter 16.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah it's in pre-release orgs right now. It's been announced, it's going to be the big thing in dream force.

Jason Atwood: Oh by the way my prediction for dream force is they're going to always lightning. Yeah. When do you think it is a, like just pick glared release, because you know how many of a year

Justin Edelstein: Considering that and that's I think it might even I might be even being a little too conservative are Aggressive on that because considering right now you can still Not have the new the current new UI right if you didn't want to turn on chatter is at least four years old But not just chatter the blue Aloha, like you can go back, right? If you back to the future, you can go back to the past and and sort of uncheck like three boxes and you're back. Back to the. Old UI. and there. There are people who R don't use chatters. and future drop nets. Yeah, they're not going to reach future parity. I think my thinking about this is a positive standpoint.

Jason Atwood: I think this framework, because again, this is not just a new UI. This is a new framework for building UIs. It's a new platform.

Justin Edelstein: It's a new framework. It's a new everything. Which allows them to...

Jason Atwood: Do lots of stuff that we want them to do, like more than one, you know, more than three columns on a dashboard. What I'm concerned about is that there are features that we have been waiting for for five years, 10 years, whatever, that are now down lower on the scale of importance because they'll now have to catch up on all these UI features. I'll tell you what,

Justin Edelstein: You're gonna be really upset when you start reading those release notes. Why? It's all lightning. Well, that's fine. No, but there's a lot to think they're conquering enlightening that we're happy about. Maybe. Sure. But that means you have to straddle this universe of living in lightning where there's only a handful still like, you know, think about the number of pages inside of Salesforce. And they've probably captured about a fraction of the number of total pages inside of Salesforce. You want to use campaigns? Have fun going back to the old thing. Straddle your universe. That's not a fun story to tell. And I, here's a question for you. When do you think, when do you think when you're a new customer and you sign up for your free trial, it's in the lightning experience. Winter 17.

Justin Edelstein: I think it's going to be winner 16.

27:38 Jason Atwood: You think there's going to push people right into it? I do. That's you mean I'm going to log into orgs like my brand new org like that I here's your org to go start up. I'm going to guess no later than spring 16. I'll have to add the two

Justin Edelstein: Things to turn out later than spring 16 is my guess on this one. I don't think so. I think there's still some marketing is so big on this. There's commercials on TV that are showing this user interface.

Jason Atwood: This is what they are so this is what is gonna be I mean kill off on the lightning and let's go to next week because now we have we actually have three major things right now. We have Dreamforce coming up, we have lightning being released in winter 16. But next week we'll be going back into more Dreamforce prep on the podcast. So we'll do that and then remember we have then three podcasts during the the actual shows and then probably will take the week after we get back and then then back into it. So next week some Dreamforce prep. I was gonna say predictions, but we don't predict anything. But let's get started this week with some conflicts at pick of the week.

Justin Edelstein: Good job. There it is. Okay, got it. Go for it. So it's US Open time here in New York, US Open tennis that is. And I, attended the other night on Wednesday. I actually got to see a, an old favorite of mine, Martina Hengis was playing mixed doubles with Leander Pace. And I was like, oh my goodness, court four, Martina Hengas, I'll be there, it it it.

30:50 Jason Atwood: It it it it it I. it it it it it it I would say offline before this that I think you've picked every sporting event app you pick the next I love it I love having an app to pay the USO.

Justin Edelstein: I love having an app that helps me Experience my sports in a deeper way. Nice. I want to be immersed you

Jason Atwood: Are you run your whole company from your phone Speaking of which, I just want to throw out the dig that campaign members still don't work on mobile. Sorry, I just had to do it. Speaking of things, the unthinkable, the terrible, but it is such a game changer in terms of the people who are about to travel to Dreamforce and maybe be in hotels and whatever. And I've been, I'm actually so excited about this. And it's the first time, kind of, this has happened. that I'm going to re-pick. I'm doing a re-pick. I'm re-picking because it had a huge update. Amazon Video. So this is an app that you can download and throw onto your, I think it's Android, iOS devices. That you can watch video, you can, I think, purchase video of TV shows and movies.

Jason Atwood: Now the reason I'm re-picking this is because they just announced a feature that... basically doesn't exist anywhere else because this is a subscription service. If you have Amazon Prime, you pay the 99 or 79 dollars a year, you have access to Amazon Prime Video, which means you can then watch, there are tons and tons and tons of movies, TV shows, including the entire HBO universe. Yes,

Justin Edelstein: Poor Justin's head just exploded. Yes, the wire is part of the HVO universe. I could put the entire series of the wire on my iPad.

Jason Atwood: I'm totally, totally, totally doing that. So the reason this is so cool is, so great, you could have streamed it and you've been able to do this for a while and I think this is when I picked it whatever, six months or a year ago whenever I picked this. But,landish. is you can now download for offline. Yeah, you can go in on an airplane movies, TV shows, HBO,

Justin Edelstein: All of Wall Street, the generation kill anything.

Jason Atwood: The Americans and show me a hero. And you can download the whole thing.

Justin Edelstein: To your iPad. So when you keep saying David Simon shows on HBO.

Jason Atwood: So then when you're on, when you're on that plane, you can then watch them. Yes. Which the only way to do this before really was to buy it or rent it through it. Buy or rent. So this is like the first time because who doesn't offer this Netflix doesn't offer this. no one else offers this ability and the airplane will not let you stream. That's right.

Justin Edelstein: So, and you wouldn't even want to anyway. Right. So they would let you No, he would not.

Jason Atwood: He would not. I can't barely load a website. So that's why I'm making this week not next week is because you have to download them. So download the app Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Video. If you're a Prime member, you sign up. This is captured. I'm totally going through this. Let me throw some things out there. First of all, again, everything on HBO. So good. I mean, all the series relenting the entire Sopranos and watch it. Some things that are out there that are part of this, they're a brand new show called Hand of God, which is out there. A whole series you can download right now, put it on your iPad. Binge Dreamforce week. Justified, amazing series, and then I was going to pick one other. What I have personally thrown on there... Workaholics season two way to be solid solid solid solid But there was a lot of really good stuff on there Vikings again You have no reason you have no reason not to watch This entire thing on your Amazon video anymore and it changed to me This is changing like where I'm gonna watch stuff now cuz like oh I can watch this offline Which again, it's just better for for everything.

34:38 Jason Atwood: So Amazon Prime Video, I'm sorry to re-pick, but this is a game changer. Star Trek Into Darkness. Download it and watch it on the on the on the on the plane. And I mean, great movie. Wolf of Wall Street. Anchorman 2. It's not it's not like what? All right. This is a crappy movie, but you don't have to pay for it. That's the beauty. The League. The entire series of the league, all six seasons are on six of the seven seasons are on here and available for download. Does it have it's always sunny in Philadelphia? It does. Yes.

Justin Edelstein: See? All right. This past season, like the most recent one, I can go look. Can you look for? This is such good podcasting. I just want to watch Charlie Work, that episode called Charlie Work again.

Jason Atwood: Cause, okay, let's see. Season one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine are available.

Justin Edelstein: Ten is not. Ten is not.

Jason Atwood: Well, it's available. We just can't download them. Everything else we can download. You can watch them, but they're not on the free version. That's kind of a shame. Oh, that's pretty good. Nine, everything. Alright, so for those of you who don't have big iPads. Maybe on Monday when they announce or when's it the eye because Apple has big announcements next week today Are we podcasting after before? Oh, you should make sure to do it after big announcements phones Watches and maybe iPads. Alright, so we'll be back next week as Always follow Justin at just Nelson follow me at Jason Matt would follow Arkus at Arca sync Facebook.com and in the Power of Us hub, we are in there for all you Power of Us hubbers. There's a group in there. You can grow in the group, join the group, and we will just post our podcasts into that group so you can know that they happen.

Jason Atwood: You don't have to follow us anywhere else. LinkedIn, Google+, subscribe and review in iTunes, of course, and Stitcher. We got a review the other day. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. We really do appreciate it. And then until next week, we'll be back with another episode. Until then. Justin and Jason saying enjoy those cloudy days. you