The Awesome Salesforce Community

Are you new to Salesforce and not sure where to start or have you been working with the platform since 1999? Are you an end user or a customer? An ISV? Partner?

Regardless which category of the above you put yourself into, one thing I am sure of, is that you will always have questions to ask and there will be something new for you to learn about the platform, every single day! There is something that keeps me motivated, something that makes me eager to learn more and that is something that we all have in common - The Awesome Salesforce Community! It is the people who spend their own personal time helping others, writing blogs, organising user groups, webinars and a whole lot more. These are the different groups of people that make this community so great (from my point of view):
    - The ones working at Salesforce and their job is to engage and help the community grow
    - The MVPs
    - The rest of us

I'd like to highlight a bunch of resources/channels in no particular order, which wouldn't exist without the help from the community and which I wish I knew of when I started working with Salesforce around 4 years ago:

Success Community

It's where you ask a question and you get an answer within the next 10 minutes (because Steve Mollis doesn't sleep).

Official Salesforce Documentation [developers]

Great place to start (and come back to), though sometimes can be poor or unclear. Let this always be your first stop before you ask questions on different channels.

Trailhead

If you chose gamification as your learning approach, then this is the right place for you. Mainly targeting Administrators and Developers (for now), it's a great tool that can help you get started (if you're a newbie), or refresh your rusty knowledge. I highly recommend you to check it out! Sandeep Bhanot has done an amazing job!

YouTube Videos

You're more of a visual person? I'm pretty sure you'll find what you're looking for pretty easily here, from tutorials to recorded presentations, webinars, examples and a lot more. Whether it's the official channel or videos uploaded by users, there is heaps of material out there.

 

 

Webinars

There is always something interesting going on, check the agenda!

Local User Groups [Salesforce and Developers]

Meet your local community - interested in networking, learning, job opportunities? With over 200 User Groups around the world, find your nearest one, start attending and socialise!

MVP Program

Individuals who continually contribute to the community and stand out from the crowd are recognised by Salesforce as MVPs. There are 125 individuals worldwide and the list changes 3 times throughout the year, with every new Salesforce release. These individuals have proven their expertise, knowledge, leadership and advocacy. Some of them are new and some are re-rewarded with the same status over and over. If you're on twitter, make sure you follow these talented people. If you have any questions hit up the advocacy program manager Matt Brown.

MVP Office hours

Another channel for advanced Salesforce administrators & developers to engage with community advocates virtually via video conferencing to ask anything about Salesforce.com!

IdeaExchange

You are not happy with certain functionality on the platform? Or you have an idea for something new, something cool? This is the place where you can submit your idea to which the community votes. If your idea is good enough and you get enough votes from the community, Salesforce will take it in consideration and implement it!

Dreamforce

If you haven't heard about Dreamforce, let this be your homework for today!

Developer Forums

It's the official Salesforce Q&A for developers. Over the years the number of questions and answers has grown exponentially and it's keeping the same trend. If you're a developer, you should have this open in one of your browser tabs.

Salesforce StackExchange

Not a big fan of the developer boards? Used to spend a lot of time on StackOverflow? Well there is a Salesforce site on StackOverflow too! With close to 20,000 questions posted within 2 years since the site matured from beta, it's one of my favourite resources. Big shout out to Matt Lacey for the initiative!

Official Salesforce Blogs 

 

 

Community blogs - growing list (Warning - XML!)

Social media

Community members are active on most social media channels, though I find most relevant and quick information on twitter. It's where I spend most of my time to stay up to date.

IRC

Unofficial Freenode Salesforce IRC Channel - it's a great place to hang out with a bunch of regulars and Daryl Shaber!

Google helpouts for Salesforce

You're really stuck or you want to talk to someone regarding business, strategy etc. face-to-face? See if any of these people can help you.

Forcify Me [Non-profits] 

Yes there are also specific NFP tailored training videos!

AppExchange

Where do you get apps for your smartphone? App Store? Google Play? What about your business? AppExchange gets you covered with over 2,500 apps (both free and paid). A couple of clicks and you have the app installed in your current Salesforce org.

Github [developers]

Want to contribute to a new tool that's currently in development, or improve an old piece of code? These are the two repositories where you can do that: Force.com and DeveloperForce


I hope you find this list of resources useful and I'm pretty sure there is more to add to this list, so if I've missed anything please contribute by leaving a comment below. If all of the above is not helpful enough for you then you should find a trusted advisor that can guide you through the maze.

Again, huge thanks to the AWESOME SALESFORCE COMMUNITY which I'm proud to be a part of!