Tips & Tutorials

Salesforce Tips From 10+ Years in Production

Practical patterns and code examples for Flows, Apex, LWC, data management, deployment, and admin.

15 tips • Searchable • With code examples • Beginner to Advanced

15 tips found

🔄 FlowsIntermediateCode

Debugging Flows Like a Developer: Beyond the Debug Log

Most admins debug flows by clicking "Debug" in Flow Builder and stepping through manually. That works for simple flows, but the moment you have subflows, record-triggered flows, or platform events, the built-in debugger falls apart. You need a real strategy.

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🔄 FlowsAdvancedCode

Flow Performance: The Bulkification Patterns That Actually Matter

Salesforce flows run in bulk by default when triggered by data loads, but most admins build them assuming one record at a time. The flow engine tries to bulkify Get Records and Update Records elements automatically, but it fails silently when you break the pattern. Your flow works perfectly for one record and crashes at 200.

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🔄 FlowsIntermediateCode

Scheduled Flow Gotchas: The 250K Record Trap and Batch Windows

Scheduled flows look simple: pick an object, set criteria, choose a schedule, done. But there are three gotchas that will ruin your week. First, if your entry criteria matches more than 250,000 records, the flow silently fails. No error email, no debug log. It just does not run. You will not know until someone asks why their records were not updated.

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⚡ ApexIntermediateCode

Apex Bulkification: The Only Pattern You Need to Memorize

Every Apex developer learns "don't put SOQL in a loop" on day one. But bulkification goes deeper than that. The real pattern is: collect, query, map, process, DML. Every trigger handler, every batch class, every queueable should follow this exact sequence. Once you internalize it, you will never hit a governor limit again.

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⚡ ApexBeginnerCode

The Test Data Factory Pattern That Saves Hours Every Sprint

Most Salesforce projects start with test classes that create their own data inline. By sprint three, you have 40 test classes each creating Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities with slightly different field values. When a validation rule changes, you update test data in 40 places. When a required field is added, 40 test classes break. This is the #1 source of deployment failures I see.

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⚡ ApexAdvancedCode

Queueable vs Future vs Batch: When to Use Each Async Pattern

Salesforce gives you three async patterns and choosing the wrong one wastes hours. Here is the decision tree I use on every project. If you need to process more than 50,000 records, use Batch Apex. If you need to chain async jobs (job A finishes, then job B starts), use Queueable. If you just need to make a callout from a trigger and do not care about chaining, use @future.

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⚡ ApexIntermediateCode

Custom Metadata Types: Runtime Configuration Without Deployments

Custom Settings were the old way to store configuration. Custom Metadata Types are the upgrade, and the difference matters. Custom Metadata records are metadata, not data. They deploy with change sets, they are available in formula fields, they work in flows, and they are accessible in Apex without counting against SOQL limits when you use the getInstance methods.

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⚛️ LWCIntermediateCode

LWC: Wire Service vs Imperative Apex — When to Use Each

Lightning Web Components give you two ways to call Apex: the wire service and imperative calls. The wire service is reactive — it automatically re-fetches data when input parameters change and caches results. Imperative calls are manual — you call them explicitly and handle the promise yourself. Using the wrong one creates bugs that are painful to debug.

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⚛️ LWCAdvancedCode

LWC Event Handling: Parent-Child, Sibling, and Cross-DOM Communication

Event handling in LWC is where most developers get stuck. The framework gives you three patterns and choosing the wrong one creates spaghetti code. Child-to-parent: use CustomEvent. Parent-to-child: use public @api methods or properties. Sibling-to-sibling: use a shared service component or Lightning Message Service.

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⚛️ LWCAdvancedCode

Testing LWC with Jest: The Patterns That Actually Work in CI/CD

Jest testing for LWC is powerful but the setup and patterns are different from standard JavaScript testing. The key insight is that LWC Jest tests run in a simulated DOM (jsdom), not a real browser. Wire adapters are mocked. Apex calls are mocked. Navigation is mocked. You are testing your component logic and DOM manipulation, not Salesforce connectivity.

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🗄️ DataIntermediateCode

SOQL Optimization: Indexed Fields, Selective Queries, and the Query Plan Tool

Slow SOQL queries are the #1 performance killer in Salesforce orgs with large data volumes. The difference between a query that takes 200ms and one that takes 30 seconds is almost always about indexed fields and selectivity. Salesforce maintains indexes on certain fields (Id, Name, CreatedDate, SystemModstamp, RecordTypeId, and all lookup/master-detail fields), and custom indexes can be requested through Salesforce Support.

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🗄️ DataBeginnerCode

Data Loader Best Practices: Batch Sizes, Bulk API, and Surviving Large Imports

Data Loader is deceptively simple. The UI makes it look like you just pick a CSV and click Import. But the settings you choose determine whether your import takes 5 minutes or 5 hours, and whether it triggers every automation in your org or slips through cleanly. The three settings that matter most are batch size, API mode (Bulk vs SOAP), and the "Use Bulk API" checkbox.

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🚀 DeploymentBeginnerCode

Scratch Org Setup: From Zero to a Working Dev Environment in 10 Minutes

Scratch orgs changed how Salesforce development works, but the initial setup is a wall for most developers. You need Salesforce CLI, a Dev Hub org, a project configuration, and a working scratch org definition file. Skip any step and you get cryptic errors. Here is the exact sequence that works every time.

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🚀 DeploymentAdvancedCode

CI/CD for Salesforce: GitHub Actions Pipeline That Validates Every PR

Most Salesforce teams deploy by clicking "Deploy" in VS Code or using change sets. Both are manual, error-prone, and impossible to audit. A proper CI/CD pipeline validates every pull request against a scratch org, runs Apex tests, and blocks merge if anything fails. GitHub Actions makes this straightforward.

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⚙️ AdminBeginnerCode

Permission Set Groups: The Modern Approach to Salesforce Security

Profiles are legacy. Salesforce has said it publicly: profiles are going away and permission sets are the future. But managing 20 permission sets per user is a nightmare, which is why Permission Set Groups exist. A Permission Set Group bundles multiple permission sets into a single assignable unit. Assign the group to a user and they get all the permissions from every set in the group.

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