(by Sparky McFuckface)
If you’ve made it this far into the storyline, seriously, do you not have anything better to do with your life? Go take a 15 minute walk right now. I’ll still be on your screen when you get back. In other news, if you are Samuel L. Jackson, MFA does not mean multi-factor authentication.
As I’ve been progressing through the courses that I purchased, I made it to the section for in-app guidance. Since I’ve publicized that I’m going to build Scout an org, the reaction has been way more positive than I anticipated, and a couple people gave me the exact reaction I was attempting to elicit, which was one of shock and general dismay.
I’ve never used in-app guidance in the org, except for the one that always pops up by default whenever I enter Setup. Seeing it in use gave me an idea….
As someone who could medically carry an ADHD diagnosis his entire life but chooses to avoid it, I know that maintaining an attention span can be a lesson in futility.
I recently had a post about making things pop on LinkedIn as a perspective to a Salesforce Admin post. To maintain and grab the attention of the youngest, it would both need to stick out and look welcoming.
In comes the in-app guidance.
I got to this area through the Setup section, as anybody reading this article (except the kids) already know this.
The original use case I wanted to cook up was the emoji – If a picture is worth a thousand words, that would theoretically mean that a thousand pictures are ONE MILLION WORDS. That’s a big story. Pictographs were one of the first forms of communication, so if it worked back then, it should work now, right? CAN I ACHIEVE MY THE TOP GOAL ON THE THING THAT RHYMES WITH BUCKET LIST?
To boost the interactive, child-friendly nature of the app itself, I want things to pop up on the screen, and generally be fun and inviting. The targeted prompt would seem to be the best action for this, as it clearly draws attention to what I want them to see, and they must interact with it one way or another to proceed. Additionally, as I’ve been touting the benefits of high-contrast visualization popping, I decided to flip the colors on the prompts themselves. I was allowed to change the context of the “Dismiss” button, so in this case, I just chose a crying emoji, as I would cry if my children were to dismiss me (spoiler alert: I keep the tissues handy). Unfortunately, the Next and Done options did not allow for customization, but they’ll be good vocab words.
The plan for this org is that I am going to delete everything that is not directly related to this app to simplify Salesforce to its most elementary concept, meaning I only needed the guidance for this page on this app. We’ll get to the other parts when we get there.
If you noticed – the only action button on the page is New Child Contact. The New Contact label would have worked just fine, however New Child Contact brings yet another wild wrinkle of context – we’re adding a gang of infants and toddlers over here. So that’s what I did. You’ll learn about “Danger” from the Face Punching Committee soon. But everything regarding the fighters themself that becomes an action will follow this same nomenclature. If it belongs to anyone under the age of 18, it will be a New Child Record, otherwise it will just be a New Record. Same exact functionality, literally only cosmetic differences.
I’ll keep on building out the guidance for the prisoners…..I mean children… as I add more sections. I ended up trashing the sections I previously built in because they are not yet relevant. It’s more of a digital tack-board in the meantime.
The first thing that Scout did when she came into this world, prior to getting her umbilical cord cut, was piss on the delivery nurse. I was hopeful that would be a one-off event given that she was just extracted from a uterus, maybe it was just nerves? Boy, was I fucking wrong. Scout hates clothes, hates diapers, and the earth has primarily been her bathroom. We’re in the early-mid stages of potty training, she just chose to do it naturally. Thank God though. When she does urinate successfully, she delivers us the pot and we give her a round of applause. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would clap for someone taking a whiz. I desire that level of adulation.
All pride aside about the toilet ride, Scout isn’t even close to taking her Defacation Certification Exam, and we’ve been studying for a little while. Practice makes perfect though, and as a supportive parent, even if she isn’t #1, she’ll be a solid #2. Sorry that all of these jokes were shit. In the meantime, we keep the spray on deck.
As my org itself just soiled its diaper, I think I need to go change my Salesforce and probably give it a sippy cup. I tried feeding my computer coffee once to make it work faster, since it works on me. Bad idea, 0/10. Lastly, to my extreme disappointment, it was a floppy DISK that you put into the A and B drives. DISK. I misunderstood that until I was about 14.
That’s all I got for you today. Hope you find these life lessons valuable and constructive. Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.
Christopher Sauer 
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