Welcome Your New Trailblazer ID Experience!!!

If you've been logging into the likes of Trailhead and Salesforce+ over the last few weeks, you might have seen a message saying that the site would be down for maintenance on Friday 21 July until Saturday 22 July for 24 hours. This downtime was to unveil the newly revamped Trailblazer ID, replacing the previous framework of Trailblazer.me. I can confirm that the new experience is now live, and in this post I'll be unpacking it a little bit and sharing my thoughts on it. There is already a post available on this at Salesforce Ben (check it out here ), so this post won't seek to replace that. Rather, it will be mainly around sharing my views on the new set-up and briefly unpacking what's included with the change.

In a Nutshell, What is Trailblazer ID?

In a nutshell, Trailblazer ID is an attempt to create a single-sign-on experience that allows Trailblazers easy access to everything they would want to access under the Salesforce banner via a handy single navigation experience.

The main way this is achieved is through a Global Header. This Global Header breaks down the various areas of the Salesforce online experience into categories, with the header then either providing a list of navigation items or a list of sub-categories with its own navigation items. Speaking honestly, there is a lot of items in these categories, and some of the categories may not make sense to everyone. For example all of the community links are listed under the support heading, this listing includes both the Partner Community and the IdeaExchange. So you may find that figuring out the navigation is initially a bit of a challenge.

Overall, the Global Header is broken down into the follow sections:

• Products
• Industries
• Learning
• Support
• Company
• Salesforce+

There is also a profile icon you can click on if you're logged in, clicking this profile icon will bring up the following options for you to click on and navigate to:

• Logout
• Profile
• Settings

N.B. You can also click on product links for Salesforce and Marketing Cloud via your profile icon. These links will take you to login pages for these products.

How Does the New Trailblazer ID Work?

You can log into the your new Trailblazer ID experience by going to your web browser and navigating to https://digital.salesforce.com/ . Accessing this link will take you to the new login page that is shown in the screenshot below.

From this page you will be able to login using one of the login options available (Google, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Apple or Email), or if you don't have a login, you'll be able to sign up for one for free using any of the options I just listed. If you sign up, you'll be sent a verification code that you will need to confirm to complete your registration. I am not providing screenshots of the signup process as I already have an account and I don't want to create one that I'll have to merge.

Once you have logged in or registered, you'll automatically be taken to your Trailblazer profile. If you use the URL I provided on a browser where you are already logged into your Trailblazer ID, you'll be taken directly to your profile.

When you are logged in you will instantly have access to the new Global Header and will be able to navigate around the various items within the Salesforce site.

Has Trailblazer ID Changed My Profile?

The short answer to this question is not really. When you log in to your new profile, you'll quickly notice that pretty much everything is as it was before. You can still see your profile information, Ranger Rank, Tags, Superbadges, Badges and Skills. None of the items I just listed has changed all too much. What has changed is how your certifications are displayed, and the changes are big.

Updates to Certification Listings with Trailblazer ID

When reviewing the updated Trailblazer ID, this is the main change I found outside of the Global Header. In fact, it was the only thing I could find that had really changed. I noted that the changes here are big. But what exactly are they?

Well, first off, Partner Accreditations are now listed on your Trailblazer ID. This is something that is entirely new with Trailblazer ID as it isn't something that was previously available to us under the old Trailblazer profile. You'll be glad to know that if you have certifications for Slack, Mulesoft or Tableau, these are still shown on your profile using your new Trailblazer ID. These haven't gone anywhere.

N.B. My profile probably isn't the best example to show as I only have 6 certifications in all (including my partner credential), with none of these being for Slack, Mulesoft, or Tableau. But if you want to see a good example of this, I'd encourage you to check out Gaurav Kheterpal 's post from Sunday 22 July.

When logged in, there are three ways to view your certifications:

• Most Recent (lists your certs by the dates they were achieved)
• Product (A-Z) (groups certs by products)
• Status (orders certs based on the date they are due for maintenance)

One other update that is extremely noticeable with the changes to certifications, is that when you view your certs in your profile there is a new Download Logo hyperlink available. Clicking on the relevant link will download a ZIP file with both Hi-Res and Low-Res copies of the icons for that particular cert. This addition means that you will no longer need to dig out your old emails with your result in to find your icon (or open up a case to get it), instead you can download them right from your profile. It's so handy! I'm sure everyone reading this will love it.

A final thing to note before I wrap up is that currently, your certifications will not display in mobile view when accessing your Trailblazer ID from a mobile device. I can confirm though that if you change your view from a mobile view to a desktop view that your certifications will appear. They are just not visible in a mobile view. I believe that this is a bug and it is something that will be resolved in the near future. Hopefully this will be fixed soon as seeing certs on mobile is needed.

The Elephant in the Room ... The Partner Portal

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure on this. From my experience today of navigating the various navigation items in the global header it looks like the Partner Portal is still the same as it was before. When I tried to login into the Partner Portal via the Global Header I still saw that my profile was listed as being in Limited View. So it looks like if you want to get full access to the Partner Portal using your Trailblazer ID, that you will have to still login with your work Salesforce account. Part of me understands this, but at the same time there is a part of me that feels that if your work credentials are connected to your Trailblazer ID that the system should be able to intelligently detect that you do in fact work for a Salesforce partner.

So while the change to Trailblazer ID to show Partner Accreditations is a really good one in my mind, I still feel that there is work to be done in order to get things up to speed for accessing the Partner Portal. I'm willing to have my mind changed on this, but I think if you work for partner and your partner credentials are connected to your Trailblazer ID that you should simply just be able to access the Partner Portal and Partner Learning Camp straight from the new Global Navigation without needing to log out (if you logged in via your personal email) and log back in with your work Salesforce login. Your Trailblazer ID should know that you have access to these environments and allow you to login. If you disconnect your work credentials from your account, at that stage access should be blocked. Personally I don't want to have to have to log out from my Trailblazer account to access Partner Learning Camp and the Partner Portal. Just make it simple.

Now, Over to You

And that's a wrap. What do you think about the new Trailblazer ID setup? Do you like it? Is there something that stands out that you think I've missed? I haven't gone overly into huge details about the changes, so it is entirely possible that I've missed something. Honestly, I like what I'm seeing so far. The header isn't nearly as much of an eyesore as it was before the changeover, and the update to how certifications are displayed to me is the big change that stands out most.

But what about you? What do you think. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. I'd love to hear what you think of the changes so far.