New to the platform? Want to get certified but don’t know where to begin? Here are a few points to get you started:
Understand the Licensing Scheme
CRM product licenses are what most people think of when they hear Salesforce.com. These licenses include access to CRM functionality and objects such as Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, and so forth. This includes Contact Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions.
Platform licenses are designed to interface with custom built applications on the Force.com platform. Depending on the license, they have limited or no visibility to CRM objects.
Platform licenses can be purchased in addition to CRM licenses in the same org and have roughly the same core functionality (workflow, approvals, etc.) as their CRM license counterparts (excluding CRM functionality, naturally).
100 Free Platform licenses can be added to an existing Enterprise/Unlimited org. Free Platform licenses have the same core functionality as the other platform licenses but zero visibility to CRM objects. See this chart for full details.
Get Practice Accounts
Both Developer Edition and the Force.com Free Edition are both free and never expire. Developer Edition has similar functionality to Enterprise Edition but very low storage amounts and cannot be converted into a ‘live’ org. The free edition comes with 100 free licenses but no access to CRM functionality. Licensing on a free org can be upgraded. Many editions include a sandbox org, which will allow you to create a copy of your org for testing purposes.
Force.com Free Edition Sign Up
Understand the Certifications
Learn the different certification routes and choose the path that best fits your career goals (not that getting all of them is going to hurt you!). Take a peak at my certifications post for starters.
Rely on the Community
My twitter folks are always a great source for quick answers. Join the conversation – flag your tweets with the #salesforce hashtag. Oh, and feel free to drop me a line.
Salesforce.com Official Resources
This is the place to ask questions, get answers, and suggest new ideas. The old community site has plenty of great docs as well, and I’d recommend checking both until the new site reaches the same maturity.
The developer boards is your best bet to find answers to programming related questions.
Blogs
Blogs are great resources to learn a lot about various topics, and there are tons of great Salesforce blogs out there. Grab my blogroll feed to subscribe to the same list of blogs as I read daily. Feel free to drop a comment to suggest a new blog as well.
Linked In
My favorite group is Salesforce.com Certified Professionals. You can get quality answers, opinions, and advice quickly. I believe you need to have a Salesforce certification on the books to join, however.
Another great group is the Salesforce Power Users Group.
And finally for the non profit folks, join the Salesforce.com Foundation.
Vocabulary
On this site, Pro+ can be translated to mean "Professional Edition and greater", or Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions. The same is true for Ent+ (Enterprise and greater). Sometimes you will see Professional+ or Enterprise+ as well. Unless noted otherwise, these edition+ notations include Developer Edition.
GE-Group Edition
PE-Professional Edition
EE-Enterprise Edition
UE-Unlimited Edition
DE-Developer Edition
SFDC-Salesforce dot com
VF-VisualForce
org-Organization (generally refers to a single Salesforce instance. I could have a DE org for play, an EE org at work, another sandbox EE org, etc.)
A Note on ‘Versions’
Salesforce.com is typically upgraded several times yearly and named according to season (e.g Winter ‘10). Each version is typically rolled out initially only to sandboxes, then week(s) later to all production orgs.
Much of content for this site was written on the ‘Winter 08’ platform, and reflects the functionality of the platform at that time. A typical release introduces a lot of new functionality and several changes to the platform. Make sure that you are up to date on all changes to the platform before sitting for an exam!
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