If you are struggling to get your kids to get some home work done and you are getting nowhere, then maybe getting them a Trailhead account, helping them through a few badges and getting them to enjoy the online learning experience MIGHT give you all a break from these challenging times!
Welcome to our latest blog. This one is maybe a little different to our usual output.
The primary aim of this blog is to get through without mentioning the C-word, NO not that one but the other one, the one that is making us all work from home!
If like us you are facing up to working from home and trying to home school then you will potentially already be facing up to the challenge of getting your little ones (and maybe not so little ones!) to do any sort of home learning.
My kids already love Salesforce, not because they have ever used it but every time there is a TV programme that features the iconic London skyline, I never miss the chance to shout ‘Ohh look there’s Salesforce tower’. In fact I do it that often they are now pre-empting it. ‘Yes, we know Dad, that’s Salesforce tower in London’
Having visited San Francisco for Dreamforce in 2019 you can imagine their delight when we watch films and I see the Salesforce mothership in the skyline!
Whilst that is fun for me to do (and I know the kids love it every single time it happens!) I really felt that there should be a much easier way for me to help the kids understand exactly what Salesforce is and how they can be influenced by it in everyday life.
Whilst my eldest was having another break from his school work, I asked him to visit the Stimulus website (www.stimulusconsulting.co.uk) I am assured by my 12 year old that www. is so 1990 and in fact there is no need to even type the www. anymore!) I asked him to fill in the contact us form. He did so and almost instantaneously he received an email back thanking him for his enquiry.
Wide eyed and amazed I saw a sparkle of interest in his eyes ‘How did that happen? that’s awesome!’. I resisted the urge to open a flip chart and start to whiteboard the order of execution and how assignment rules fire off before escalation rules, I did however ask him to think of times when he may have already seen this sort of thing working.
‘Tesco online shopping, Dominos pizza, school homework’ he replied.
Now I am not suggesting that Dominos or Tesco are Salesforce customers but they have a CRM and they do send auto-response emails when you place an order on line so clearly he had grasped the concept…School homework? How does that work then Son?
He logged onto his schools Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and showed me a list of homework that has to be completed whilst he is self-studying at home. He sent an email to one of his teachers and got an email back instantaneously, whilst this may not be exactly the same functionality as auto response rules in Salesforce, he was trying to apply it in the correct context.
He then told me that his homework was organised into a format where he could organise it by the date it is due to be handed in, what had already been handed in and what was overdue (obviously there was more in that column that I would have liked to see!).
At this stage I logged into a Salesforce Trailhead playground (trailhead.salesforce.com), and built a simple Opportunities report, grouped by Owner, Stage and Close Date. I set a scenario where ‘Opportunities’ was actually ‘Homework’ ‘Stage’ was ‘Submitted’ and ‘Close date’ was ‘Due Date’. I saw probably the biggest lightbulb I have ever seen in my career as an Instructor…
‘So, my teacher can login to their system, and they can see my homework, when(if) I have submitted it and if it is late or not?’
‘Yep and a whole lot more Son’
‘That’s really interesting Daddy, is there any way that I can start to learn about how this all works?’ *This genuinely happened, it’s not a cheesy set up line*
10 minutes later, he was set up with a Trailhead account and was working towards his first badges.
The moral of the story is, if you are struggling to get your kids to get some home work done and you are getting nowhere, then maybe getting them a Trailhead account, helping them through a few badges and getting them to enjoy the online learning experience MIGHT give you all a break from these challenging times!
‘Daaaaaad’
‘Yes Son’
“Can you help me design a flow for my computing homework?’
*Hides in a cupboard*