TrailheaDX took place primarily over the course of two days and boy was it a whirlwind. While not nearly as people filled as Dreamforce (thank goodness for that), there are still enough people that sometimes the sessions get full and you definitely can feel overwhelmed by the sheer number and craziness around you. Despite all of that I learned some new things, met some people from the community, and got to attend a very lively concert performed by Macklemore.

Some of the items are learned are so good, that I am going to make individual posts about them in the coming weeks (new mobile platform and custom settings turned custom metadata), but for everything else, keep reading for a brief synopsis.

Day 1:

CPQ was my primary target for Day 1. I went to a session on using an APEX Rest class to connect to a Postgres Database to call information in for CPQ products. The APEX class was used in conjunction with the QCP script and the demo went pretty flawlessly. I think that if you have some external DB already in place with all of your crazy pricing and you have or are considering Salesforce CPQ, then this may a good avenue to check out.

Next up was another CPQ driven session, but this time on the Custom configurator page. If you aren’t familiar with what I am speaking of, it is a completely custom page that you create that overlays on the standard QLE. You can set a top-level bundle product to use a custom page, and then update the settings to annotate where the page lives. This is a really great functionality if the standard product selection page doesn’t work for you.

Rounding out my day I attended a relatively short session hosted by a Deloitte consultant. The topic was on facilitating 1-1 discussions from an architectural perspective. The takeaways I got from that session were: documentation, take comprehensive notes and always translate them to the next actions or outcomes; information should be always be presented in the words that the client uses to ensure a streamlined communication path; and lastly, let the client facilitate the conversation – let them drive it and you listen, giving open-ended, contextual questions as you go.

Of course to conclude Day 1 I attended the Trailhead Celebration. My only complaint here was that the time was from 7-10pm, but the reality was it was from 9:15-10:15pm. We actually sat there for two hours with no speeches, performances, or otherwise. Luckily, there was plenty of food and drink to be had. Once the show did start though, Macklemore was awesome!

Day 2

I didn’t start my rounds until 9am, but I kicked it off with what’s new in the new mobile app. I am keeping these notes to myself, for now, so you are just going to have to stay tuned.

After the mobile session, I went to a continuous integration session. I thought for those who are not already familiar with the process that it would provide a lot of valuable information, however, I did feel like I knew most of what they were talking about. Following that my goal had been to go to a VS code session, but that one filled up quickly and some 50 of us did not get in, which I think is rather unfortunate.

My last session of the day was about using the Salesforce CLI for everyday problems. This one did not go entirely as I had expected. I was hoping for different commands to use in different situations, but the session was actually more about creating a script to do some repetitive tasks. The session really didn’t delve into any commands except to explain the basic setup of one.

Day 2 was a short day for me. The afternoon held fewer sessions that I was interested in, which repeats the same experience that I had last year. I will say though that this year felt way less sales-y than last year, which I was grateful for. Most of the sessions I attended were of things I could use today and nothing I attended required that I purchase something in order to do what they showed.

Overall I would definitely go back to TrailheaDX again as I find it to be a good learning opportunity and much less crowded than Dreamforce.

Let me know what you thought of the conference in the comments below!