Developers Lead the Conversation at TDX '23

This year, the involvement of the Trailblazer Community at TrailblazerDX has been huge! For the first time, members from the community were able to present their own content in a dedicated theater (the Trailblazer theater) — and it was a major success, with a 97% attendance rate! On top of this, we conducted a developer networking session at the Community Cove, and this post is here to tell you all about it.

In our 50-minute networking session, we prepared some topics for developers to discuss, and some amazing volunteers stepped forward to help lead the conversations at the different tables, including Adam Erstelle, Pat McClellan, Ohad Idan, and Bhavana Singh. Big thanks to these folks for leading the discussion, and as well to all of our attendees! It was a lot of fun, and we all learned from each other.?

Let’s review some highlights from the insightful conversations.

What’s the right balance between low-code, no and pro-code?

Will Johnson, Danielle Larregui, and Salesforce MVP Pat McClellan discussed the pros and cons of both low-code and pro-code development. They argued that with code, you can implement more complex use cases. Code handles bulk operations better, and can be extended in a unified way by using common design patterns available. However, they acknowledged that it is more expensive to develop, deploy, and maintain. Low-code, for them, is easier to read and update and has better speed to market, and Salesforce is investing constantly in new features around it. But, they highlighted, it has challenges with bulk processing, version control, and complexity management. Picking the right solution depends on all these factors, of course, and the combination of both is the power!

Uday Panagunti, Ryan Carmody, Hayley Tuller, and Alba Rivas also discussed this topic. In general, they start implementations with low-code, but sometimes they have to switch to code because of the limitations of low-code builders. However, they also highlighted that it’s common right now to be moving old code logic to Flow as Flow has improved significantly over the last few years. They discussed how developing with low-code as much as possible can save you from having to hire a developer (who can be difficult to find at times). The decision of whether to use code or low-code depends on the team size, and the conversation touched on the importance of properly versioning and documenting both to ensure seamless implementation in the future.

How do you see Einstein GPT and artificial intelligence working in the Salesforce ecosystem?

Jason Thompson, Robert Ruelas, Derek Wang, Nicholas Zozaya, and Adam Erstelle discussed the potential of Einstein GPT and artificial intelligence for the Salesforce ecosystem. Some of them had already tried #GitHubCopilot and found it to be a huge time-saver, and they’re looking forward to using Einstein GPT for Apex. However, they expressed concerns about preventing Einstein GPT from learning bad code that may exist in the org. The group suggested that it would be great to have Einstein GPT assist in the creation of Flows and analysis of the org by providing a summary of all the processes and triggers executed when a record is updated. Overall, the discussion provided great insights into the possibilities and challenges of incorporating AI into the Salesforce ecosystem.

Ohad’s and Bhavana's group, which included Rachel Frazer, Pratibha Sundaramoorthy, and Natalya Murphy, also shared some Einstein GPT use cases they considered interesting. For instance, Einstein GPT could help personalize the Salesforce user interface based on personal usage, deduplicate data and metadata, maintain the health of the org, and assist with code quality and code reviews. On top of all that, a human in the middle could review and apply Einstein GPT recommendations.

Pat’s table also brainstormed how Einstein GPT could be helpful for Salesforce Admins and Salesforce Developers . For admins or admin-elopers, it could assist with the creation of Flows, help with user management and other routine tasks, and create test data. For developers, it could help with writing code (as we saw in the main keynote) and writing test classes and test data.

Which development tools do you recommend using, and why?

Alba’s table discussed developer tooling and recommended a couple of tools that they use every day and find useful, such as the Salesforce Inspector and Salesforce Logins Chrome extensions, using tab groups for different logins in Chrome, and the Metadata Search AppExchange package. For development, they use the Salesforce #VSCode extensions, the Salesforce CLI, Postman , and Workbench. To check the quality of their code, they use Salesforce Code Analyzer, Checkmarx, and PMD. They also love GitHub and GitHub Actions for implementing continuous integration.

Adam’s table also suggested a lot of great tools. On top of the ones already mentioned, they highlighted Why Salesforce, Thunder Client, and Copilot Chrome extensions. In addition, they recommended the Apex Replay Debugger, the Package.xml Generator extension for VS Code, and some tools for DevOps, such as CircleCI, Gearset, Copado Essentials, and Changesets. They mentioned still using the Developer Console to run tests and debug (the “Debug Only” check is a big helper!), and they highlighted IntelliJ as a great alternative to VS Code.?

Conclusion

This session was a fantastic experience filled with valuable learning opportunities and networking. If you enjoyed this summary, we highly recommend joining our developer networking session next year for even more insights and connections.

If some thoughts came to your mind while reading, please feel free to share them in the comments below to keep the conversation going. Additionally, we encourage you to join the Salesforce Developers group on the Trailblazer Community to continue discussing topics like these. Thanks for reading!