I finally built my first Flow today—and it worked on the first try (ok, second try, but who's counting?).

I needed to update a field automatically when a record met certain criteria, and after watching a few Trailhead videos, I dove in.

I slept on list views for way too long.

I used to think they were just alternate ways to view records, but now I get how powerful they are for users. Today I made a few custom list views for our service team and it was a game-changer.

I built my first Salesforce dashboard this week. It was both frustrating and kind of addictive.

First, I had to wrap my head around reports—how to group rows, summarize fields, and filter records. I have been building reports for a while, and never thought much about it. But while working on my first dashboard, I realized that not every report type gives you the fields you need. Once I figured that out and dropped a few report charts into a dashboard, it felt like the whole concept of a dashboard clicked for me.

This week I wrote my first validation rule that’s live in an actual org (and not just on trailhead). It was fairly simple, just:

AND(

  ISBLANK(Phone),

  ISPICKVAL(Status, "Contacted")

)

Page Layouts were one of those features I didn’t appreciate until I watched someone struggle to find a field buried at the bottom of a record page.

A good layout = a good user experience. Full stop.

Custom fields are where Salesforce starts to feel like your system.

I am constantly asked to “just add a field” for something new. That’s easy, right? Sort of. But there’s more to it:

• Always decide the data type first (checkbox, text, date, picklist, etc.)

• Think about reporting—will someone need to filter or group by this?

• Will this field need to be required, or included in validation rules?

This week I had a relatively stressful moment in Salesforce. Being relatively new as a Salesforce Administrator I was having some trouble understanding the difference between Profiles and Roles and how someone’s profile or role can grant them access to different records. And that ended with a new employee being trained in a Sandbox not being able to access the records they needed for training for a short while.

I recently made the change from being a full time photographer/videographer to being a Salesforce Administrator, and some days it feels like IT. Other days it's more like data management or tech support. And occasionally, it kind of feels like low-key coding. What I’m learning is that being a Salesforce Admin means being the person who makes Salesforce work for your team—whatever that looks like.