Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Skip Sauls, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how Data Cloud can make it easier than ever to roll out enhancements to your org. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Skip Sauls. The challenges of working with external data sources Pulling data from external sources is always a challenge. For one thing, it usually requires a bunch of work on the backend to get things looking the way you want them to. What’s more, it opens the door to all sorts of potential problems when things don’t match up, not to mention the extra security challenges. That’s why I was excited to sit down with Skip Sauls. He’s the PM for Data Cloud, and he’s here to tell us how his team has made working with external data sources easier than ever before. How Data Cloud simplifies data management Data Cloud allows you to combine your external data sources with what’s in Salesforce without hacking together a series of customizations. Connectors allow you to import data from external sources as direct objects, or transform it into something more useful. You can run reports with it, use it in flows, embed it in Lightning pages, and much more, without needing to write specialized code. Skip’s goal is to minimize the customizations you need to make and seamlessly combine your external data with what’s in Salesforce. Using Data Cloud means that you’ll be able to deploy enhancements to your org without worrying that everything’s going to break, or rebuilding it from the ground up. As Skip says, “we don’t want people to feel like they have to radically change everything in their day-to-day lives just to access something new.” Get hands-on experience with Data Cloud Looking forward, Skip and his team are trying to further simplify how Salesforce works with external data sources. They’re rolling out tools to minimize imports, so your data lives in one place but works the same as what you have in Salesforce. They’re also working on Remote Data Cloud, which will help you consolidate data that’s spread out across multiple orgs. If you want to learn more about Data Cloud, I have good news for you. Skip and his team are releasing dozens of new hands-on challenges to Trailhead over the next few months. There’s never been a better time to get up to speed with everything that’s possible with Data Cloud. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailmix: Get Hands on with Data Cloud! Salesforceblogger.com: Demystifying Data Cloud Concepts Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Skip Sauls on Data Cloud Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Skip: @SkipSauls Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/ Mike on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@salesforce.mike Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Admins Podcast, we're talking lakes, well, not lake lakes, but I mean we do talk about lake-making kits, and I do think that would be a hilarious swag at Dreamforce. But Skip Sauls is back because data lakes and Data Cloud are on our mind, and he's got a bunch of new features that he's talking about. Not to mention, he also tells us how we can get hands-on with Data Cloud, which I'm a fan of getting hands-on anything because that really helps me understand it. That's what we're going to talk about. Before we get to the episode, just want to make sure you're following the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio. We're on all the podcast platforms. You don't have to follow them everywhere. Just one, your favorite one, and then the new episodes download automatically right to your phone. Every Thursday morning, you can get up head to work or walk the dog or go for a run and get your new episode just by pressing play. With that, let's get to our conversation with Skip. Skip, welcome back to the podcast. Skip Sauls: Thanks, Mike. I'm glad to be back, and as always, glad to talk to you and to the admin community. Mike Gerholdt: I was looking at my notes from the last time we talked, and the last real podcast that we did was about a year ago. To me, a lot of Data Cloud stuff was brand new, and also a lot of the concepts around data lakes and data silos was a new thing. It still may be new to many people in the audience, but I think we're starting to become even more exposed to it by just the sheer volume of amount of Data Cloud information that's coming out, and also the number of features that now Salesforce can support. Let's start with, what's some of the new stuff that you've been rolling out in Data Cloud since we last talked? Skip Sauls: One of the most exciting things for the admin community is how you can now leverage data from Data Cloud in your standard Salesforce org, in your lightning pages, in your ...
