, because they allow me to access the same development environment from virtually anywhere. Recently I was looking at using the AWS CLI within my Codespace and found it really easy to do so. Here are the few simple steps it takes:

GitHub Codespaces require a GitHub Organization account. In the organization account settings, find "Codespaces secrets" under Secrets > Codespaces. Here you can store encrypted environment variables that can be used within Codespaces.

Use AWS_DEFAULT_REGION, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY as names for the secrets.

Now to make the AWS CLI available within the terminal of your Codespace, edit the file .devcontainer/Dockerfile of your repository. If this file doesn't exist yet, you can use the "Add Development Container Configuration Files" option of VS Code.

Add the following lines to the Dockerfile to make the AWS CLI available within Codespaces:

After you edit the Dockerfile, Codespaces is offering to rebuild the container, which you should do. After that, AWS CLI will be available and thanks to the Codespaces Secrets we set up earlier, there's no need for further configuration.

Using AWS CLI within GitHub Codespaces

Newsletters are all the rage right now, and I see many startups launch products around newsletter publishing while existing players like Twitter are also getting into the space. At the same time, lots of people with existing audiences (e.g., on Twitter) start building up mailing lists, and there's also a ton of people starting in this space from scratch.

When thinking about the various newsletters I see and that I'm subscribed to, I see a set of distinctive types that one could categorize them into:

This type of newsletter is typically published frequently (monthly or weekly, some even daily) and summarizes the news in a specific field, often with links to more detailed articles and sometimes with some commentary. This could be technical (like 

 with updates around the React ecosystem which I follow) or just world news like published in the 

Those newsletters are often very much tied to a personality, and most of the time, they're even named after their author. They allow subscribers to follow the author's journey through private and/or professional life. Some focus on the professional aspects like projects, learning, and new insight; others have a more personal touch and include things like travel or even personal life events. One of the most popular newsletters in this category is the best-selling author 

Every email represents a proper article. This is probably a good summarization of the idea behind long-form editorials, which offer are mostly published infrequently and, for me, are very similar to many blogs: A collection of well thought out and carefully edited articles or essays which go beyond the pure collection of links or summarization of news and announcements. An example in this category would be 

, where Lenny Rachitsky publishes insightful posts about product management and growth strategy.

The promise of these newsletters is mainly that they're easy to consume as they're short and mostly consist of a few links and insights. I've mentioned Tim Ferriss already, but he actually runs a second newsletter called 

 which is named brilliantly in my opinion as the title gives you an excellent idea of what to expect: Five little tidbits in your inbox every Friday.

This is the classical email list to keep customers or potential customers up to date on developments in the company or new product features and releases. I'm, for example, subscribed to the 

 newsletter, where they just this week announced that they're working on a brand new product called "Reader."

All the above types of newsletters have the same dynamic in terms of publishing: New emails are sent to all subscribers on a more or less regular basis, and as soon as you sign up, you'll be amongst the people receiving the next issue published. However, recently I see some people setting up formats that are inspired by a marketing technique called "drip campaigns," where people are put on an email journey which then sends a sequence of prepared emails starting with the day that people enter this journey (in the case of newsletters by signing up for the newsletter). This concept lends itself to scenarios where authors teach something or want to guide their subscribers through a pre-defined journey or experience stretching over several weeks. Examples of this would be 

, who, in addition to his weekly newsletter, offers productivity training via such an email journey or 

Six Popular Types of Newsletters

Sometimes I create slides to visualize concepts just for a specific meeting or context and later think that this could be useful for a broader audience. I'm determined to share the results of my work more broadly wherever possible and put my blog to good use for that.

This is a representation of the **different tools available in Salesforce to design user access to data**. As this visualization is quite different from all the content about this topic that I've seen so far, I thought it's worthwhile to put it out there:

A user has exactly one profile and one role, additionally, they can be assigned to one or multiple territories and/or public groups.

A record on the other side has exactly one owner and has a bunch of field values (e.g. an account could have an "Industry" picklist, an opportunity has a "Stage" assigned, and so on).

The most basic method of data access is ownership - if you're the owner of a record, you have access to it. Yay! Building onto this is the Role Hierarchy, which basically enables you to give access to records to everyone above the owner using a hierarchical structure.

An alternative (or addition, if you want) to the Role Hierarchy is using territories. Records (accounts, to be exact) are assigned to territories based on certain field values (e.g. all accounts from the "Financial Services" industry could be assigned to the "Financial Services" territory and/or all accounts with more than 1,000 employees could be assigned to the "Enterprise Customers" territory). You then assign users to those territories, which gives those users access to the accounts (and related data, based on further configuration) in the respective territories.

Probably the most flexible way to give users access to records is via Sharing Rules. As always, great power comes with great responsibility, which in this case means there are some things to consider when making extensive use of Sharing Rules, especially with regards to handling performance and managing complexity. Sharing rules can be bases either on record ownership or on field values and can grant access to roles, public groups, or individual users.

All the tools described above are about giving users access to specific records. There's one important precondition to that, which is also depicted in the diagram although it's a bit grayed out because it's a different scope: Before a user gets access to records, they need to have access to the object in general and specific fields on an object. So while record access for example determines which accounts you get access to, your Profile (as well as additional Permission Sets) needs to grant you access to the account object in general and determine which fields on the account object you may read and potentially edit.

Design User Access to Data in Salesforce

As sort of a connoisseur of productivity apps and methodologies, I've used a lot of todo and note taking apps over the years and followed a couple of different methodologies around organization and overall efficiency.

With regard to note taking, I've used both 

 for some time. Lately I've experimented with 

 a lot, where I really appreciate the powerful database-like aspects that offer capabilities to organize data by linking, filtering and displaying it in a very flexible manner. With all of those solutions, there were some things I appreciated (the simplicity of Evernote, the Apple Pencil support of OneNote on the iPad, the versatility of Notion) but also a couple of significant drawbacks: Evernote feels quite clunky for the simple application that it is, although this improved somewhat with their new mobile app. OneNote feels a bit too Microsoft Office like (all of which I don't use anymore) and drives me mad with its free floating content blocks and cumbersome autocorrection. With Notion, I noticed a significant decline in app performance with all the added functionality and I think as an app that want to be a personal database for everything you absolutely need to have two-factor authentication.

Now I've been following a project called [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) for some time and finally decided to make the switch. Obsidian is a knowledge base that's based entirely on 

 files that live on your computer. That's two big advantages in my eyes, while at the same time it means that its not for everyone. I like the idea of having all my notes and written knowledge in a format that I have full control over and that is portable like Markdown, but of course having to write Markdown (which I for example do anyways when writing for this very blog) and being responsible for backing up and syncing the knowledge base yourself is probably something for the more tech-savvy users out there.

Obsidian is a startup and the beta was launched in April 2020. The app is free to use and stores all content locally on your device. They're planning to monetize the service by offering add-on subscription services like Sync (encrypted sync of Obsidian vaults between devices) and Publish (publish notes from Obsidian as weg pages). The app itself focusses on the basics of managing a knowledge base stored in Markdown files and is extensible via first party as well as community plug-ins.

Full control over content and formatting via Markdown

All content stored in local files that can be synced via iCloud, Dropbox, GitHub, etc. or via their own "Sync" offering

Notes in Obsidian can be linked, allowing to build a "network of thought" or second brain

Extensibility through plug-ins (e.g. a "Graph view" plug-in to visualize the network of linked notes)

 for me right now is that there is now mobile app yet, but this is being worked on and mobile apps are said to be coming soon.

Now what does the "second brain" in this post's title refer to? Obsidian itself starts as a blank canvas and there is no prescibed methodology how to use it. Alluding to its inherent organization principle of linked notes that function as kind of a "network of thoughts", Obsidian positions the tool as "a second brain", which makes a lot of sense to me. The "second brain" is a concept made popular by 

. It is "a methodology for saving and systematically reminding us of the ideas, inspirations, insights, and connections we've gained through our experience" by using technology to expand our memory and our intellect.

From my perspective, Tiago Forte's "second brain" approach, as well as another popular methodology called "Zettelkasten" (developed by the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, 1927-1998), are ideal approaches to an organizational system that is needed to use Obsidian effectively. I'll review and compare those approaches in a future blog post.

Obsidian as my Second Brain

Salesforce certifications are a big deal. They document your expertise in a certain area related to Salesforce and are a valuable asset when job hunting or looking to get freelance gigs.

The number of certifications avalailable is ever growing and especially the recent acquisitions done by Salesforce have added a lot of additional certification paths that are now related to the Salesforce ecosystem.

This post lists all the available certification and I'll do my best to keep this up to date. 

The current status reflects the situation on February 26, 2021.

Salesforce Field Service Lightning Consultant

Salesforce Einstein Analytics and Discovery Consultant

Salesforce Accredited B2B Commerce Administrator

Salesforce Accredited B2B Commerce Developer

Salesforce Sharing and Visibility Designer

Salesforce Data Architecture and Management Designer

Salesforce Identity and Access Management Designer

Salesforce Integration Architecture Designer

Salesforce Development Lifecycle and Deployment Designer

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist

MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect - Level 1

MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect - Level 1

Vlocity Certified Communications CPQ Developer I

Vlocity Certified Communications Order Management Developer I

Vlocity Certified Energy + Utilities Developer I

Vlocity Certified Health Quoting Developer I

Vlocity Certified Insurance Quoting Developer I

All Salesforce Certifications

The Salesforce product portfolio keeps growing, both through new product launches and company acquisitions. Combine this with the product rebrandings happen from time to time and it get's really hard to keep track. With this post I aim to give an overview of the current state (and naming) of the Salesforce product portfolio. I'll try to keep this up to date. 

The current status of this post reflects the situation at the time of publishing on January 5, 2021.

The initial product of the company, hence the name Salesforce.

[Steelbrick acquisition](https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/23/salesforce-grabs-quote-to-cash-vendor-steelbrick-for-360-million/) in 2015, previously called CPQ & Billing. Configure, price and quote capabilities as well as subscription management and billing as an add-on to Sales Cloud.

Sales Cloud add-on for efficient inside sales.

Bundle of artificial intelligence capabilities for Sales Cloud.

Formerly known as Field Service Lightning.

 in 2021, before they were acquired by Salesforce in 2013.

Initially based on Thunderhead through an OEM partnership, replaced by the 

Formerly known as Einstein Analytics formerly known as Wave.

 in 2016. Formerly known as Anywhere, formerly known as Quip. Yes, they renamed it in 2020 and then reverted the renaming in 2021.

Salesforce Product Names and Acquisitions

In the daily hustle, it is easy to forget about investing time in yourself. When I started at Salesforce three years ago, I did the usual three certifications that we need as Solution Engineers. Since then, I have learned a ton through the opportunities and projects I did but I didn't take the time to get this formally acknowledged someway. So this October I took a pledge to carve out some time to invest in even more learning and get my knowledge certified as well.

Today I'm happy to report that during the last four weeks I cleared one certification per week and am now a Salesforce Certified Community Cloud Consultant, a Salesforce Certified Service Cloud Consultant, a Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer as well as a Salesforce Certified Data Architecture and Management Designer.

I'm grateful to be working for a company that puts so much emphasis on personal development and continuous learning and that I have lots of brilliant colleagues that I can learn from and have fun with along the way!

#4weeks4certs

Salesforce major releases are a big thing for customers and partners. They happen three times a year and while there are no "upgrade projects" for Salesforce customers as the releases are rolled out by Salesforce and configurations, customizations and even custom code continue to work without going through an "upgrade project", they always come with lots of new features and changes.

The naming of those releases is a bit special though and takes some getting used to, so this post explains what it means if you start hearing of a "Winter 21" release in September 2020.

There are three major releases for the Salesforce core platform each year, named after the seasons winter, spring, and summer. There is no fall release because, in fall, Salesforce is holding their big annual customer conference Dreamforce.

The release name consists of the season and the year in which the season ends, which in the case of the winter release means that by the time the release is rolled out, it is already named after the coming year. In addition to the release name, every release has a number that is mainly used for internal purposes. Here are the numbers, names, and approximate deployment dates of the coming three Salesforce releases (exact deployment dates vary, as not all Salesforce instances are updated on the same day):

Examples: Release Name, Deployment Date, Release Number

Salesforce Release Naming

This is a Coursera course I can highly recommend if you're into well-being, mindfulness or personal development at all. Yale professor of psychology Laurie Santos is teaching the 

"most popular class in the history of Yale"

 and now brought that class to Coursera for us non-yalies to enjoy.

As with most self-help advice, the gist of it is really simple (almost trivial). The value offered by the course from my perspective is really two-folded. On the one hand understanding a lot of the psychological background of the advice given helps rationale people like me with accepting it and buying into the proposed methods. On the other hand the format of the course helps with adopting these methods and turn them into habits, the part that's probably the hardest to achieve and at the same time an absolute necessity to gain any benefits at all. So while I think it's absolutely benefical to go through the course, I'll summarize the content to serve as a reminder for myself and to provide some insight for anyone interested in learning more before committing to this (free) course.

The course is focused on a couple of "rewirement exercises" to build up habits that help to "rewire" our brain in order to think in healthier (read: optimized towards happiness) patterns.

- Week 1: Measure Your Happiness
- Week 1: Using Your Signature Strenghts
- Week 2: Daily Gratitude Journal
- Week 2: Savoring
- Week 3: Random Acts of Kindness
- Week 3: Social Connection
- Week 4: Exercise
- Week 4: Sleep
- Week 5: Gratitude Letter/Visit
- Week 5: Meditation

The Science of Well-Being

There are several tutorials on using Google Analytics with Gatsby, but I didn't find a single one that's leveraging the new Data Streams feature for the "Google Analytics 4 Property" type that allows you to combine app and web analytics data. So after figuring out how to set it up, I thought I might as well document it here for others to find.

So this is how add Google Analytics to Gastby using Data Strams and Google Tag Manager:

- Set up a new "Google Analytics 4 Property" in Google Analytics
- In the property configuration, add a new "Data Stream" of the type "Web". Enter your website URL and a name.
- This will give you a "Measurement ID" of the form "G-XXXXXXXXXX"
- Create a new container in Google Tag Manager
- Add a new tag to the Container using "Tag Configuration" and selecting the "Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration"
- Enter the Measurement ID obtained from Google Analytics
- Add a Trigger to the tag choosing the "Custom Event" trigger type
- Enter "gatsby-route-change" as the event name
- Save the trigger and the tag, publish the container
- Install the 

- Add the plugin configuration to the plugins section of gatsby-config.js:

Adding Google Analytics to Gatsby using Google Tag Manager

One very common integration requirement in Salesforce implementations is the integration with an existing email solution (and calendar and contacts by that extend). The most common use cases are straightforward: Sales or service reps should be able to log emails they receive in their inbox to the CRM where they attach them to records like accounts, contacts, opportunities, or cases. Beyond that, there often is a requirement to synchronize contacts and calendar events between Salesforce and the email solution.

While Salesforce has had powerful integration with Outlook and Gmail as the two dominant email solutions for a long time, there has been a lot of changes regarding the specific integration capabilities, their availability, and naming. This blog post aims at giving a comprehensive overview of the current status quo of these capabilities and will be kept up to date as things progress. 

The current status of this post reflects the situation at the time of publishing on October 20, 2020.

Leaving all the history and recent changes aside, the current portfolio of email integration offered by Salesforce is reasonably simple: 

There exists one capability for client-side integration on the UI-level called “Outlook Integration” (or “Gmail Integration” respectively) and one capability for server-side integration called “Einstein Activity Capture” (EAC).

 While the former one provides a plug-in within Outlook or Gmail which allows the end-user to access Salesforce data and attach emails and events to Salesforce records manually, the latter one provides synchronization of calendar events and contacts (and, optionally, automatic capturing of emails) without any user interaction.

Both capabilities come in a free and a paid version, although the free version of EAC is currently only offered for a maximum of 100 users. The premium version of the Outlook/Gmail Integration is called “Salesforce Inbox” offers advanced features like the usage of email templates, including your availability to propose time slots for meetings or scheduling emails to be sent later. The premium capabilities for EAC include storing captured activity data for 24 instead of only 6 months, the ability to create custom Einstein Email Insights, Activity Metrics, and more. EAC Premium is also required if more than 100 users need to use EAC. It can not be licensed directly but is included in either Salesforce Inbox, High Velocity Sales (HVS), or Sales Cloud Einstein (SCE).


Outlook/Gmail Integration - Free
Inbox - Paid

 - Free
Einstein Activity Capture Premium - Paid

There's one more licensing specialty: Once an organization purchases at least one additional EAC Premium capability (via Inbox, HVS, or SCE), the 100 free EAC Basic get converted into EAC premium as well. Let's clarify the existing capabilities and licensing options using a couple of scenarios:

Scenario 1: An organization has 120 Sales Cloud users that should be able to log emails from within their Microsoft Outlook client.

Scenario 2: The same organization wants to synchronize their users' calendar events and contacts between Exchange and Salesforce.

. As their Salesforce org has only 100 free EAC Basic licenses, they need to purchase 20 licenses of either Inbox, High Velocity Sales, or Sales Cloud Einstein, which will include EAC Premium. The 100 existing EAC Basic licenses will be converted to Premium as well.

In the summary above, I focussed on the state-of-the-art capabilities only to keep it as simple as possible. Of course, if you're an existing Salesforce customer, you might know about (and maybe even use) other email integration capabilities as well. So to give you a complete picture, I'm documenting the precursors to the abovementioned solutions as well, especially because they're still used by a lot of customers and will be around for some time to come.

Salesforce for Outlook was the plug-in for Outlook that was replaced by Outlook Integration. As of the Winter '19 release, Salesforce for Outlook is no longer available for new customers. For existing customers who're still using Salesforce for Outlook, product retirement was scheduled for 2021 and was just 

. Please note that the side panel action menu (also known as the New Record button) will stop functioning in June 2021.

Lightning Sync was the synchronization technology that was replaced by Einstein Activity Capture. As of the Winter '21 release, 

Lightning Sync is no longer available for new customers

. Currently, only the "End of Sale" (EOS) has been announced, a date for "End of Life" (EOL) for Lightning Sync has not been communicated. This means that for the foreseeable future, customers that are already using Lightning Sync may continue doing so, although Salesforce makes it clear that Einstein Activity Capture is their 

"long-term solution for syncing contacts and events between Microsoft or Google applications and Salesforce."

Author: Benedikt Müller