Get to Know Our Consultants: David Cheng

CRM Developer David Cheng has been with Idealist Consulting since 2008, and was recently named a Salesforce MVP for the 3rd year running. We sat down with David to hear about how he got started with Salesforce and what makes him most excited about the platform these days.

What did you want to be when you grew up?  

Hmm...I think I wanted to be a racecar driver or a baseball player. Then a concert musician a little later. These days, I dream of reviving old movie theaters if I ever strike it rich.

How did you get your start with Salesforce?

Back in 2006 I was working on an Access database for a client in Washington DC. I was adding features and stumbled across Salesforce and it seemed like a good product, with easier accessibility since it was cloud-based. I built a hybrid of Access and Salesforce and it worked pretty well. Soon after that I started attending local nonprofit user group meetings. I met Rob [CEO of Idealist Consulting] in 2008 where he pitched me (literally in an elevator) about why I should come work for him --  it was a good match at the right time.

How have things changed over that time?

One of the biggest changes is the ability to do monetary transactions: I never expected to be able to manage online donations through Salesforce! Also, the consulting side of Salesforce has seen tremendous growth. There’s always more demand for Salesforce experts. Finally, the rise of Salesforce visibility -- it’s become a huge company and product overall. I didn’t expect this -- I thought it would stay a niche with other competitors, like Microsoft, and it would fade into the sunset, but no signs of this so far!

What are some highlights of your experience as an MVP?

It is amazing to have such wide access to people inside Salesforce.  They seek out our input on anything from user design to features, and we get early access to certain things as well. It’s great seeing the huge enthusiasm among MVPs for Salesforce as a product and as a company -- I think it’s fascinating that there are so many evangelists.

The MVP Program is getting bigger and better all the time -- this year I hear there are more Asia and Europe-based folks whom I’ll meet at the summit coming up in May.

I always feel like I should be doing more but I think this is common among MVPs -- we’ve all heard of each other at this point [since Salesforce has such a transparent user support community] and it’s kind of fun to be well-known in this particular circle.

What are your top 3 favorite apps?

1. Form Assembly is always on top for me -- people always need forms [see David’s post on Why FormAssembly may be a better choice than Salesforce Web-to-Lead].

2. Apsona - It took me a long time to get into it, but I would recommend it over DemandTools for most organizations because it’s easier to use and less intimidating. It’s totally sufficient for about two-thirds of your typical needs and runs within Salesforce so you can use it on a Mac.

3. However, I also love DemandTools -- it’s so powerful and CRMFusion is very generous with their free non-profit licenses.

What advice do you have for new Salesforce admins?

1. Use the Developer edition or Sandbox edition to test things like new apps, data imports, workflow changes, etc. -- don’t make any changes in production until you've tested all your scenarios.

2. It’s all about learning: look at the documentation that’s available -- there’s a lot more now than even two years ago. It can be overwhelming but I recommend starting with the Dreamforce and Salesforce Foundation YouTube videos.

3. Use Google! It indexes Salesforce Help and the Salesforce Answers community so many common questions can be found with a focused Google search.

Pro admin tip:

I recommend an extension for Chrome browser called Salesforce Navigator.  It allows you to jump quickly to many areas of the Setup menu by typing the item you want.  It's a huge timesaver!