Newsletter – Issue 5- January 2021
To say that 2020 was a crazy year is an understatement, but we made it to 2021! And for that, we are all very thankful.
But 2020 wasn’t all bad…. As the world continued to grapple with COVID and social justice issues, the team at Metazoa stayed the course and finished work on several major initiatives. Not only did we launch a new turn-key service offering for things like technical debt removal and Org clones, splits and merges, we also introduced some new feature-sets for Snapshot as well – including User Connection Cleanup and User Stories.
And if that wasn’t enough, we also introduced our very own certification program. Salesforce Admins and other professionals can now become Snapshot Certified! It is the only certification program designed specifically for Salesforce professionals that want to master skills related to Org management, technical debt removal and more. BitRebels featured the program as one of the three must-have certifications for Salesforce Admins.
Despite all this activity, however, we were still able to connect with all our friends, old and new, during DreamTX. It was a warm reminder of everything we love about the Salesforce ecosystem and Dreamforce, which we know will be back bigger and better next year. I would love to hear from you if you are planning to attend? It’s never too early to plan ahead!
Connections are important, and as we head into a new year with renewed optimism, I want to share just how thankful all of us at Metazoa are for you. Without our customers, and our Salesforce friends and family, we wouldn’t have been able to create all the wonderful things I have mentioned in this note. We are thankful for that work, and we hope that we can all thrive in this new year.
However, as 2021 gets underway, let’s not forget the lessons of 2020. We are all in this world together, so let’s be kind to one another and do our best to help those less fortunate. Technology is a great way to empower those that are underserved, and that’s why our leadership is taking an active role in Pep-Up Tech, both through mentorship and sponsorship. We hope you will consider joining too!
Another great cause is Project Night Night. We recently sponsored the Virtual Dreamforce Newbie Breakfast, which supports this is a great cause. Like Pep-Up Tech, Project Night Night is well worth supporting.
Wishing all the best to you and yours!
Metazoa CEO and Co-Founder
Upcoming Events
Metazoa Live presents The Reset Button!
The Reset Button is a monthly, 45-minute virtual fireside chat that offers an informative, opinionated, and often provocative look at life under the glass ceiling. Each episode features change-makers and status quo-shakers as they offer fellow Salesforce aficionados insights from their personal experience on how to get ahead, and stay motivated and energized as we move society forward.
Join us each month as we grow our community of ecosystem innovators focused on building inclusive environments that embrace diversity, foster opportunity, and make this world of ours a better place.
The Reset Button is presented in a fun, conversational manner. No slide decks, no filters and anything goes… Well, almost anything!
Don’t miss an episode! Prizes will be given to the first 10 that join live!
Sessions:
January 26th – Breaking Down Barriers, Finding Success as an Entrepreneur with Jennifer Mercer, Metazoa CEO, and co-founder
March 2nd – Untold Stories no Longer Untold with Deepa Patel and Eric Dreshfield
March 30th – How to Take Your Admin Career to the Next Level with Emma B.F.
April 26th – How to Build Your Brand Virtually with Karen Mangia
Learn more about The Reset Button
Past Events
Aug 13th – Des Moines, IA User Group, Managing Profiles and Permission Sets with Tom Appleton
Aug 18th – Birmingham Alabama Admin User Group
September 9-10th – SAAS NORTH Conference, Case Study: Two Founders who Bootstrapped with Revenue Financing as an alternative to VC, with Jennifer Mercer.
September 10th – Evansville, IN Admin User Group
September 10th – Philly User Group
September 14th – Northeast Dreamin
September 16th – Greenwood Village, CO User Group
September 24th – Salesforce Developer Group, Omaha
September 30th – Oct 1st – Ascent Conference Ascent Conference: The Benefits of Bootstrapping with Jennifer Mercer (*)
October 19th – Salesforce Developer Group, Oklahoma City
October 27th – Salesforce Shared Discovery Webinar Series: Demand Generation for AppExchange Partners
November 10th – Salesforce Princeton Women in Tech Group
November 18th – Austin, TX Developer Group Passcode: V%q9LVL3
VIP Spotlight
With all that’s going on, we felt it necessary to bring you a special edition of our VIP Spotlight, which focuses on two incredible individuals who are working to facilitate meaningful conversations about social justice issues within corporate America through their new podcast “Untold Stories – No Longer Untold.”
We first met show hosts Deepa Patel and Eric Dreshfield the way all good Salesforce professionals meet, through the Salesforce ecosystem. Deepa is a Metazoa VIP, and is a consultant that utilizes Metazoa Snapshot for her clients. Eric is an all-around Salesforce mover and shaker, whose initiatives Metazoa helps sponsor.
Meet Deepa Patel and
Eric Dreshfield
We recently sat down with Deepa and Eric to learn more about their stories, their new podcast and what prompted them to take up the fight for social justice, giving a voice to those who do not always have one.
Read our blog to learn more about these two and their amazing endeavor.
Get Snapshot Certified
If you haven’t heard the news already, you’ll be excited to know that we’ve recently launched our very own certification program for Salesforce professionals looking to master Metazoa Snapshot. The new Snapshot Certification program is a three-part virtual course designed to teach participants how to better manage Salesforce orgs with Metazoa Snapshot. By completing the certification program, professionals have a way to showcase that they understand how to execute some of the more complex aspects of org management and maintenance.
The certification program is FREE for Metazoa VIPs and Metazoa Snapshot customers and is being offered to all others for $150 per participant for a limited time. The standard rate of $200 per participant will soon apply.
Don’t miss your chance to become Metazoa Snapshot certified, register today!
New and Improved Features
User Stories – Role-based DevOps process:
- Define sprints and associated user stories
- Assign user stories to designated users to implement new and improved features
- Associate Salesforce metadata to user stories to track conflicts
- Resolve conflicts across orgs manually or automatically
- Define pre and post deployment tasks to handle manual tasks
- Deploy and track changes across org using a single pane of glass reporting through Salesforce reports and dashboards
Append Snapshot to patch a snapshot instead of creating a brand new snapshot
Instead of creating a new snapshot (aka metadata backup) when an asset has been added/ updated to an Org, you can simply use the Append Snapshot to update an existing snapshot to move fast and continue on with your release.
Improved reporting to rollback User Connection Cleanup changes
User Connection Cleanup and Merge Profiles make direct changes to the designated Org utilizing the REST API instead of the two-stage validate/ deploy process utilized for other metadata. To provide disaster recovery and rollback capabilities, you can document changes as they are being made to the Org through this change.
Expanded coverage of standard Tabs during metadata capture
Improved Flows metadata capture to deploy either active or latest version as defined by the user
Estimation of data sizes to accommodate Developer and Developer Pro Orgs during data migration
Given the limited Org sizes in Developer and Developer Pro Orgs, there was a popular request to estimate the data sizes and potentially modify before building the data. You demanded, and we delivered. You can estimate the data sizes, filter Parent objects, limit the child Objects, and comfortably stay within the preferred limits using this change. Use the Estimate Dataset Size to run the estimation in the Select Children tab of the Build Datasets.
Coming Soon
- Major UI refresh to match Lightning
- Salesforce Metadata API V50 upgrade
- Customer360 integration
- Sharing Rules documentation
Did You Know?
Snapshot has so many amazing features that we wanted to make sure you know about some of our fan favorites, so each quarter, we will highlight one or two features in the “Did you Know” section of our newsletter.
Did you know about Documenting Role Hierarchy?
Snapshot provides various Profiles and Permission Set focused documentation. Through these reports, you can document how your metadata is secured in an expeditious and optimized fashion. But, what about your data security? Snapshot has you covered there as
well. Check out the Relationship Hierarchies report. To start with, you can view and edit your Role hierarchy in a Tree View or a List View. And I did say documentation, didn’t I? So, mosey over to Select Reports… Check out the Roles and User Count to see User counts assigned to various Roles. Or the Roles and User Names if you want to get the actual users assigned to them.
While you are at this, check with your favorite Support rep about the Sharing Rules documentation to trial run that as well.
Content you Don’t Want to Miss
- CRM in Healthcare, The Importance of Optimization
- Jennifer Mercer: Salesforce Trailblazing Entrepreneurs
- Three Certifications that every Salesforce Admin needs
- Metazoa Announces Certification Program for Salesforce Professionals Looking to Master Metazoa Snapshot
- Metazoa launches User Stories for its Salesforce org management solution
- Salesforce in Healthcare – The importance of org Maintenance
- Hot Startups: Latest News And Updates On Daily Roundup
- Metazoa Announces Turn-key Services for Salesforce Org Clones, Splits, Merges and Technical Debt Removal
- Webinar: Leveraging Snapshot’s User Stories
- Webinar: Migrating Related Data Between Orgs with Snapshot
- Webinar: Eliminate User Related Technical Debt with Snapshot
- Webinar: User Connection Cleanup with Snapshot
- Women-In-Tech: Like a BOSS with Jennifer Mercer
- Ebook: The SaaS Leader’s Playbook for Driving Scale
- Ebook: 8 Steps for a clean Salesforce Org
Congratulations! 