Salesforce have more than 30 Salesforce digital properties – many of which you likely use on a daily basis, including Trailhead, Salesforce Events, Salesforce Help (documentation), Trailblazer Community, Salesforce+, developer.salesforce.com, and more.
With Salesforce pioneering the next generation of CRM, and being an advocate for data harmonization and profile unification through their Data Cloud messaging, how can your profile and settings stay with you, by design, no matter which digital experience you’re using? This is where Trailblazer ID comes in to transform how we access and interact with Salesforce digital properties, with major updates arriving imminently. Let’s take a look…
What is Trailblazer ID?
Trailblazer ID is how someone authenticates (i.e. logs in to access) Salesforce digital experiences – think Trailhead, Salesforce Events, Salesforce Help (documentation), Trailblazer Community, Salesforce+, developer.salesforce.com, and the rest of the 25+ other experiences.
Practically speaking, this is a single sign-up and sign-on experience that will enable you to keep
your profile and settings with you, no matter which digital experience you’re using or wherever your career takes you, (for example, if you change jobs).
You’re not logging into Trailhead, or logging into the AppExchange, or logging into Salesforce+ – you’re logging into all of them.
Source: Trailblazer Account Sign-up Sneak Peek
Scheduled maintenance to deploy these changes will begin on July 21, 2023 at 6:00p.m. PT. During the downtime, you won’t be able to log in to any related applications – oh, the suspense!
Salesforce’s Own Data Cloud Implementation
To understand how important this concept is, we need to reflect back on what Salesforce had to solve to get to this point.
Back in October 2022, we got a glimpse into Salesforce’s own implementation of Data Cloud (formerly Genie), Salesforce’s customer data platform (CDP) offering. Salesforce’s internal Digital Experiences team demystified what it takes to implement CDP and how it can be used – “eating their own dog food” (or the more refined “drinking their own champagne”).
There were typical challenges, such as stitching together multiple back-end systems, alongside others (e.g. Snowflake), and redefining their digital experiences across multiple websites. However, there were also challenges that were unique to Salesforce – one that we’ll now explore is unifying ‘identity’ across Trailhead and the Trailblazer community.
Trailblazer ID: The Challenge
Salesforce is an industry that advocates for both professional and personal career progression. These professionals, known as ‘Trailblazers’, take pride in their accomplishments in the form of certifications, Trailhead badges, and event attendance history.
Let’s take an example of a professional interacting with Salesforce’s digital experiences, which could easily relate to many individuals:
- Individuals could sign up for Trailhead and/or Salesforce Trailblazer Community events (user group meet-ups) using their personal email address.
- However, individuals would use their work email address to log into their company’s Salesforce org, or register for larger Salesforce events (where there is a price tag attached).
Therefore, someone’s Trailblazer ID is not absolutely, definitely associated with their work email address. Salesforce solved this challenge by ‘loosely-coupling’ the individual (personal profile) to an Account (work profile).
Aligning these disparate data points offers the best of both worlds. Trailblazers can retain their history of achievements (e.g. certifications, Trailhead badges), and all the while, Salesforce are able to build up a rich profile of each individual for first-class personalization (e.g. content that’s relevant to your role, or the industry of the organization you’re working for at that point in time).
It’s worth noting that Salesforce can also perform account-based attribution – in other words, how the investments they make into each digital experience or events drive performance metrics, such as engagement and pipeline. Organizations that deliver experiences to individuals (as consumers) but also operate a B2B model will encounter this hurdle.
Trailblazer ID: Key Features
Beginning on July 21, 2023 at 6:00p.m. PT, the new single sign-up and sign-on experience will be deployed. Here are the highlights:
- Global Header: Access all Salesforce digital experiences from one header navigation, on one site, in a smooth experience. No more hopping between Trailhead, the AppExchange, and Trailblazer Community. In the images below, you can see that the user is in Trailhead, and is accessing Salesforce+, then when in Salesforce+, accessing the AppExchange.
Source: Trailblazer Account Sign-up Sneak Peek
- Unified Settings: No matter which experience you’re using, your settings will be accessible from the dropdown, including connected accounts, your profile visibility, communication preferences, and the “Hire Me” button.
- Connected Accounts: Circling back to the challenge of piecing together your personal and work profiles, connected accounts is a section in settings that clearly outlines the Salesforce orgs and email accounts you’re connected to. This gives you control over which accounts to connect/disconnect from. For example, if you leave an organization, you can disconnect from your previous Salesforce org and defunct the email address.
What’s Next?
As Salesforce are essentially rebuilding their authentication service, the URLs that you used for Trailblazer.me account login will change – so, it’s time to take note and update your bookmarks*!
*Previous URLs will automatically redirect to the new URLs.
- Trailblazer account login page: digital.salesforce.com/login
- Trailblazer Profile page: salesforce.com/trailblazer/profile
- Trailblazer account signup page (formerly Trailblazer.me signup): digital.salesforce.com/sign-up
Note: A small number of orgs will need to update their IP allow list to ensure users can access Salesforce digital properties. Instructions for admins will be shared via Salesforce Help documentation.
Summary
Salesforce have created more than 30 Salesforce digital properties over the years – many of which you likely use on a daily basis.
With Salesforce pioneering the next generation of CRM and being an advocate for data harmonization and profile unification, they’ve recognized the need for Salesforce professionals to have more visibility and control over their profile and settings. This includes which Salesforce orgs and email accounts are connected (with the option to disconnect any with one click).
By bringing access to everything into one place thanks to a new Global Header, it will be interesting to see how seamless navigation between experiences could impact our usage of Salesforce’s digital experiences – and what plans Salesforce could have in terms of hyper-personalization…
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