Open Office Hours

8:55 AM

Hi everyone !

1 hour later…

9:59 AM

Looks like we need to make this a bit more popular, though I suspect timezones will be a bit of an issue till some more of us use it.

5 hours later…

3:23 PM

Indeed! the more of us that use it the more likely conversations can bounce around> i'm usually here when I'm awake

4:04 PM

Could it be useful to create one room per timezone? Minus or plus a few hours.

I'm not living in the US :(

@MartinLezer I think trying to get as many people as possible in one place maximizes the chances someone will be around

If we can demonstrate we get one popular room with regulars, that's a great start

Then if it gets too busy, we branch! That would be awesome but we need to build some momentum first I think.

Yes you're right !
I hope you don't mind if I take advantage of the opportunity of having some of the most involved members to ask a question.

Derek F

Yep, building momentum is the hard part. I wonder if we can 'invite' people by @mentioning them

I don't think so...there are other ways to add people to a chat but I would prefer it to be more organic.

@MartinLezer Not at all a problem! Ask away!

After having worked with Salesforce for 2 years intermittently, I finally found a new job as Salesforce consultant in a new company. This is why I recently asked a question (a bit controversial) about which books to read to improve myself at working with Salesforce. I'm also working on trailhead. I'm currently at 55 badges.
So my question is: To your mind, what's the most important things to do before starting my new job in about 3 months?

Sorry for the long text....

4:15 PM

You're already on the right path, and seem like you're already pretty far ahead of most of the consultants I've worked with (or cleaned up after)

Mostly just focus on maximizing Separation Of Concerns in any given context

But also Don't Repeat Yourself, if you can avoid it

If you're not already familiar with the concepts, you might benefit from reading up on Version Control systems and Code Review practices

Those are the most important consulting topics that you won't get here on SFSE

Thanks for your answer. So you think now I must focus on generic topics to improve my development skills? I'm sorry I don't understand what is exactly the Separation of Concerns?

Yeah general skills are the best preparation you can do in advance

As an example of SOC, consider trigger design

Often times you will see someone who has written one trigger function that combines a filter, some data transformation, and a cross-object update all in one method

Whereas the filter should be its own first class function, as should the data transformation

And exception handling should be split out and genericized, ideally

For example, Selector is a great open source filter library

I also wrote a DML library to standardize exception handling

Reading through/learning from/incorporating/contributing to those projects would probably also benefit you

Oh ok I understand. Thank you very much. Is there a website listing all these types of projects?
ps: your library looks awesome

A: World's Greatest Util methods

No website really, there was a Meta post asking how we could make them more visible, but it never got a satisfactory answer as I recall

Let's see...

Open source it. If you're willing to share it with the world, GitHub is a great option. I've shared a couple there I'm fairly proud of (though they're not necessarily a finished product): SObjectFactory DML Also, some of my favorite third-party tools are on there and actually have install li...

4:31 PM

Thanks. So I supposed that the "SalesforceStackExchangeForum" repository was never created?

Martin, which end of consultancy will you be doing development or the functional/analysis end?

So i will try to explain it in english. Sorry if this is a bit bad.

@MartinLezer I'd say just one with people rolling in and out as it goes out of their timezones is best otherwise we can end up a bit siloed

@MartinLezer Je parle francais si tu veux essayer comme ça

My first job will be to handle the pre-sale with the customer. So I will have to do a lot of functional/analysis of their model. Then I will have to follow the development and help some people with less experience at the beginning.

@AdrianLarson Thanks ! You can tell me if my english isn't understandable. Are you french or canadian?

4:40 PM

Your english is certainly understandable. I just studied at Alliance Française & university

Ok, so pretty wide ranging remit of the job. @MartinLezer your English is very good.

@DaveHumm Yes this is why I'm stuying. I'm stressed. lol
Thank you both but since I come here everyday I realized that I really have to improve my english.
@AdrianLarson I don't want to ask personal question but I find it awesome that you studied french !

4:57 PM

@MartinLezer No problem!

I'm always excited to see french speakers contributing here.

@AdrianLarson Yes me too. Because french are usually bad in english (me the first). And this is funny :D

5:24 PM

@MartinLezer Haha notoriously bad. But you are strong in English! In fact if you hadn't brought it up I would have never have guessed you feel that way.

1 hour later…