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Trailhead GO for iOS: A First Look

By Tim Combridge

Trailhead is a fun (and free) way to learn Salesforce – an online platform provided by Salesforce that opens up access to learn about the technology and build a career in the industry. Anyone can create an account and learn, it’s that simple!

Trailhead GO is the product of Salesforce and Apple’s recent partnership. We finally have a native version of our favourite learning platform, available on the App Store! You can guess what I spent the next hour doing…

The Gifts Trailhead Keeps on Giving

Trailhead has been an incredibly valuable tool for me while I’ve been working with Salesforce. I’m driven by competition, so the fact that Trailhead is all about gamification meant I had a seemingly endless supply of points to earn (which turned into a stack of badges). In short, I ended up spending many hours outside of work trying to improve my skills and knowledge (plus, I had a lot of fun doing it!).

I’m also a very mobile-centric person. When Salesforce released Lightning Experience for iPad in Summer ’19, I was stoked! I finally had the ability to run full-fledged Salesforce Lightning on my iPad Pro, giving me more power without having to lug around a laptop all the time. As much as I was ecstatic that Salesforce was beginning to become truly mobile, I always wished my favourite Salesforce learning platform received the same treatment.

When I arrived at the office and began my usual Monday morning conversations (seriously, I LOVE Mondays!), one of my colleagues mentioned that he was testing a new app on his iPhone that I might be interested in… and after revealing the app to me, I felt like Christmas had come early once again!

What is Trailhead GO?

Trailhead GO is the same Trailhead you’ve grown to love, only now it runs on your iPhone (and iPad!) as a native iOS/iPadOS app.

The menus and animations align with Apple’s Design Guidelines and gives you an all-round smoother experience. Along the bottom of the app are five tabs: Today, Learn, Search, Profile, and More.

  • Today suggests a number of Badges, Trails, Trailmixes for you to explore as well as offering a list of your most recently viewed.
  • Learn offers a deeper dive into Trails, Modules, Projects, and Trailmixes that you’ll benefit from the most.
  • Search does what any search tab always has – allows you to find specific Trails, Modules, Trailmixes, and more that you’re looking for.
  • The Profile tab gives you a 360-degree view of your skills and lets you show off to friends (at least that’s what I use the Share button for).
  • Finally, the More tab groups all your lesser-used menu items together similar to Settings.

For those who love Lightning Dark Mode – although there’s no Dark Mode available for Trailhead GO, a new ‘Campfire Mode’ is essentially Dark Mode in disguise!

Why an App? What’s different vs. Trailhead in your Browser?

Trailhead GO feels smoother than Trailhead for the mobile browser. The menus are more fluid, the animations are smoother (full-screen confetti, anyone?!) and there’s a beautiful new app icon in my ‘Games’ folder (I’m that guy).

Aside from all that, Trailhead GO uses Handoff to open Trailhead in your Mac or iPad’s browser so you can complete hands-on challenges without having to find the right Module yourself.

I’m yet to receive an iOS notification, but I did enable them when the app prompted me to. I’m very interested to see what sort of content I’m notified about, and how frequently – perhaps it’ll be the novelty badges around festive holidays?

Any Improvements?

Trailhead GO is version 1.0, and naturally, there’s a lot of room for improvement. I’d love to see a toggle for achievements I can complete 100% inside the app (ie. no hands-on). I feel like I get blocked a bit on the mobile app and have to turn to the Mac to finish the module. I’d also love to see a native Dark Mode sync that matches up with the settings in iOS.

Summary

Trailhead has been an incredibly valuable tool for me while I’ve been working with Salesforce – and I’m stoked that I can finally run full-fledged Trailhead on my iPhone and iPad, allowing more learning without having to lug around a laptop all the time! I look forward to seeing where Trailhead GO goes in the future, but for now, I better get back to racking up the seemingly endless supply of badges to earn! Download Trailhead GO now to test it out yourself.

 

The Author

Tim Combridge

Tim is the Managing Director at Sensible Giraffe, passionately educating others via high-quality blog content and training courses including the Ultimate Salesforce Flow Foundation Course.

Comments:

    Susan Hacker
    November 18, 2019 5:34 pm
    This is exciting!! Yay!
    Fan Yang
    November 18, 2019 10:49 pm
    How do we not waste fragmentary time everyday? Music? Podcast? or probably Trailhead!! Now we can learn on the move now!
    Amanda Paquet
    November 25, 2019 4:34 pm
    Any details on an Android release?
    Tim Combridge
    September 03, 2020 1:27 pm
    Hi Amanda, a few months on and I still haven't heard anything... seems like it's going to be Apple exclusive for a little longer yet!
    Mark Jones
    October 27, 2020 8:27 pm
    TrailheadGo is now available as an "Early Version" on Android. If you search for TrailheadGo on the Google Play store you should find it no bother.

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