Day 1 - What is Salesforce Trailhead and myTrailhead?
Welcome to our series of myTrailhead blogs and videos. We’re starting the week off with the basics by making sure everyone knows the difference between Trailhead and myTrailhead before jumping into the detail in the coming days, starting you on the path to becoming a Salesforce Trailblazer!
By now if you’re using Salesforce, I am sure you have heard of Trailhead, Salesforce’s gamified, fun, bite-sized e-learning site. Whether you’re a Salesforce novice or a fluent code writer, Trailhead is for you. Let’s take a quick look at the key components, functionalities and most importantly, terminology.
Trailhead Terminology
Trailhead Playground – a practice Salesforce environment giving you the ability to put what you have learned into practice, and where your hands-on tasks take place
Unit – this is the smallest piece of learning you will take. It is a topic of Salesforce information containing either a quiz to check knowledge or a hands-on task to be completed in a Trailhead Playground
Module - a set of completed units. When you complete a module, you are rewarded with a badge. Badges display on your profile and dictate which rank within Trailhead you fall into
Trail – a set of pre-determined modules designed to guide learning on a particular topic (for example when wanting to pass the Sales Cloud Consultant certification)
Trailmix – a self-constructed variety of modules, trails or even tasks and videos to complete, put together to create a custom learning path (this can also be done by managers for their employees)
Superbadge – an advanced set of instructions to test your knowledge once you have studied a specific area of Salesforce, tested by implementing a business scenario into a Trailhead Playground. Due to the complex nature of the requirements, these can be placed on your CV or LinkedIn profile after completion!
Now let’s log in. The first component on the home page after logging in shows any badges which are assigned to you. This is done using the free Trail Tracker app found on the AppExchange, more on Trail Tracker later in the week.
Below, In Progress Trails, Trailmixes and Badges will display, giving you an easy segue into finishing any uncompleted sections.
Here, I’ve clicked into the Social Media Marketing & Engagement module. It contains three units of content which need to be read with any hands-on challenges or quizzes successfully completed in order to add this badge to my profile.
When I have read the content from the first unit, I am asked to complete a quiz to test my knowledge. The number of attempts for the correct answers will determine how many points I receive. My points are displayed in the top right-hand corner next to my profile picture alongside how many badges I have. I can continue to the next unit to learn more about the topic and earn more points! When I have completed all the units, I’ll have completed the badge and it will show on my profile.
Trailhead Profiles
Each user of Trailhead can sign up via Salesforce, Gmail, LinkedIn or Facebook. My profile displays who I am and my success with Trailhead. I have a Rank which is dictated by how many badges and points collected during my Trailhead journey. The Ranger rank is currently the highest and is achieved after completing 100 badges and gaining 50,000 points, so it’s a real badge of honour to achieve this.
If you would like to have a closer look at Trailhead, watch this video to take a guided tour.
So now that you know what Trailhead is, let’s talk about myTrailhead.
Right, so my trailhead then? Well, firstly, let’s eliminate the space between the two words as the platform name is myTrailhead without the spaces. Launched in 2019, myTrailhead gives you the opportunity to customise learning to support your organisation’s instance of Salesforce. The 600+ modules available to everyone in Trailhead are in-depth and fantastic to gain an understanding of topics or to upskill, but having customised content developed to accompany what your own Salesforce displays will mean that learning becomes even more relevant!
You’ll be happy to hear that the format and terminology for myTrailhead matches that in the standard Trailhead site. Modules are comprised of units and once completed, a badge is collected and added to your profile. You can create Trails to guide learning, which is especially useful for new employees that need to cover specific content!
You may find that some standard Trailhead modules cover what you need your employees to know, and some need to be covered by myTrailhead content. Trails can contain standard and customised content, external links to other sites and YouTube videos.
Let’s take this a step further, myTrailhead isn’t solely for learning Salesforce. You can create content on any process or system. One great use of myTrailhead is the onboarding of new employees – there is so much that a new employee needs to know, so imagine having Trails to guide them through everything they need to know about joining your company! It would save so much time having this all in one place, self-learning, and being able to assign and monitor progress on a personal basis.
Already thinking that myTrailhead may be the solution for your organisation? At Stimulus Consulting we are releasing a number of blogs to help you get to grips and understand how simple and easy myTrailhead is to configure, use and enjoy! Stay tuned for more tips and tricks to make sure you make the most out of training your staff to be as successful and Salesforce fluent as possible!
We also have a myTrailhead webinar on the 17th March where we will explain what myTrailhead is and how it can benefit your users. Don't miss out, register to attend.