Trailhead Superbadges expand the company’s interactive training environment to enable developers to acquire and master in-demand career-building skills. Salesforce continues to invest in the success of its developer ecosystem with a new Lightning Fund and incubator. The company will showcase these innovations and more at TrailheaDX, Salesforce’s new developer conference designed for anyone to learn new skills and unlock new opportunities building on the Customer Success Platform.
What are Trailhead Superbadges
Trailhead is a free online learning environment where anyone can develop Salesforce skills through an interactive, gamified experience. There are learning modules and guided trails for every skill level, where users test their knowledge and build new skills through a series of challenges, earning badges that can be instantly posted to their LinkedIn profile. Trailhead Superbadges are skills-based credentials awarded for solving real-world business challenges, such as scaling the infrastructure of a growing business, automating sales and customer service processes and engaging with customers using mobile apps.
Salesforce claims that more than 2.8 million Trailblazers who are Salesforce’s community of developers, have already built more than 5.5 million apps and helped to create the world’s largest business app store, the Salesforce AppExchange. Trailblazers range from expert programmers to low-code and no-code developers, such as admins, business analysts and even business users. With Lightning they can work together, across startups and Fortune 100 companies alike, applying their entrepreneurial spirit and business-savvy to drive customer success. Superbadges enable businesses and learners alike to skill up for new opportunities in the digital economy, fueled by the demand for cloud, social, mobile and intelligent apps.
Salesforce TrailheaDX
TrailheaDX is Salesforce’s new developer conference, involving more than 130 viewing parties scheduled across 24 countries that celebrate the diversity, inclusion and equality that are core values of the Salesforce developer experience. TrailheaDX will empower a new generation of developers to create social, mobile, connected and intelligent apps that are helping companies connect to their customers in entirely new ways.
The Lightning angle
Lightning creates a new continuum for app development, enabling companies to harness all the experts across their organization from coders and admins to business analysts and power users to deliver social, mobile, connected and intelligent apps.
Developers use the Lightning Component Framework to build custom components reusable pieces of functionality that form the building blocks for apps using industry standard HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web-enabled code. Summer ’16 accelerates component development with new development tools such as Lightning LockerService, Lightning Inspector and Lightning CLI.
The Lightning App Builder empowers anyone to mix and match their company’s custom components with standard components built by Salesforce, third-party developers, partners or even other Salesforce customers are all available on the AppExchange to create and customize app pages visually, without code. New tools available in Summer 2016 include the capability to create and edit Lightning Record Pages, customize Home Pages for different user profiles and assign filters to a report chart component.
With Lightning’s component-based architecture, apps no longer need to be built entirely from scratch. Pages and components are brought together with drag and drop functionality, making it easier than ever to build any kind of app and accelerating every company’s ability to drive digital transformation.
Salesforce Lightning Fund
Salesforce’s corporate investment group, Salesforce Ventures claims to have invested in more than 150 enterprise cloud startups in 14 countries. The group has announced a new $50 million Lightning Fund designated for investing in trailblazing entrepreneurs who are building transformative Lightning apps and components that extend the power of Salesforce for customers.
Fast-growing companies including FinancialForce, Kenandy and nCino are already building on Salesforce Lightning. Bessemer Venture Partners, Cloud Apps Capital Partners, Emergence Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and Lightspeed Venture Partners will partner with Salesforce Ventures to identify opportunities to jointly invest in these innovative startups.
Incubating cloud startups and consulting firms
Salesforce has also started a global program for startups designed to provide access to the technology, resources and expertise needed to become thriving customer and community-focused companies. It has helped more than 5,500 entrepreneurs in 130 countries build and grow their businesses and give back to their communities. To accelerate the development of promising startups, Salesforce is announcing an incubator for early-stage companies leveraging Salesforce Lightning to deliver innovative solutions for their customers. The incubator will provide a collaborative physical space within Salesforce offices that gives startups and services companies exclusive access to Salesforce technology and mentorship. Salesforce claims to be opening the incubator in the Bay Area by the end of 2016.
