are you ready to learn more about how you can build awesome integrations for your environment with clicks and not code today i'm joined by ashley simons who's a product owner for mulesoft composer composer is a very innovative and exciting new tool for mulesoft that will allow you to build integrations with clicks and we're super excited to hear more from ashley and to get a sneak peek at composer please remember to make all your purchasing decisions based on currently available technologies because we will be talking about some of the composer roadmap and without any further ado let's go hear from ashley hey everyone thank you for joining us i'm super excited to be joined today by ashley simons our awesome product manager from neosoft ashley it's so nice to meet you thanks for joining us today thank you so much for inviting me on to this podcast so you're talking to an awesome audience it's our audience of awesome admins and tell our admins a little bit about yourself how long have you been with salesforce mulesoft and working with composer yeah that is a great question so i've been at mulesoft now two and a half years and i pivoted over to start working with the composer team actually at inception so we have been dreaming this up for you since january of last year really by february it had taken shape as a composer product we can talk through some of the evolutions of it i mean it's definitely taken a few exciting turns around the way along the way and really excited now to be bringing it to our audience i think by the time this airs it will have just launched which is super exciting yes so yeah by the time this airs composer we'll have just launched and so we're super excited for the admins to get hands-on with it because as you and i have talked about this is really an admin tool this is a tool that's built you know for admins um and so that's something that i know makes me super excited um about composer and just seeing all the things that happens i've been able to do with it um let's talk a little bit more about like who should be using these tools and and who have you seen um using composer and and finding value with composer yeah it's a great question i i mentioned before we've had strategy pivots along the way and actually one of the major ones is when we first decided that we were going to ship this product in salesforce i mean ulsoft has been a part of the salesforce ecosystem for oh just over three years now but our product suite has been somewhat separate and and so when we started thinking through this composer solution and trying to democratize who is building integrations and serve a different audience not the central i.t team that's really looking to visually transform their whole business but rather line of business users and other types of business users that need to do these types of integrations we said well that's a salesforce admin i mean that is our sweet spot and as soon as we sort of came to this realization we made a big strategy pivot to actually ship composer in salesforce and really design it for you for these awesome admins who have these integration needs and so that has been at the forefront since last year of who we are designing this product for it's it's for salesforce admins and that has in its influence how we've built it we have had been paying attention to other builder patterns for other salesforce builder tools so that there's familiarity with the two light composer and it's really been at the core of how we're thinking about building it you also man you mentioned who who is this for who is using this and and mulesoft today we've really been winning in the area of central i.t and the enterprise customers and those are probably what a lot of people think of when they first think of integration and digitally transforming the business but there are other companies as well smaller mid-market maybe less of a strong central i.t
presence or a line of businesses that can't rely directly on i.t and so that's who we're going after really taking a tool that allows them to self-serve and build these integrations as well i love that i love hearing about admins being able to self-serve build things on their own because so many of our admin audience you know they really are the product managers and product owners of their salesforce implementation right so they're often the ones that are managing integrations managing those kind of architecture decisions um for their orgs and so it's great to hear about tools being delivered right in salesforce that are for them to really own that from start to finish um i know that that's something that our admins are really excited about so we've talked about you know who's going to use this and why we're so excited about it but we should probably take a step back and talk a little bit about what composer is right so hopefully you caught our um some of the composer launch content we've got a blog on admins and all of that about how amazing composer is but we want to hear it you know right from the product owner um ashley can you tell us a little bit about like what is composer and you know how would an admin actually like engage with composer like where does it fit in their business use case yeah it is a great question um probably what you're wondering if you haven't seen some of the dream force videos or other awesome content that's out there but at its core composer is as a sweet spot it's just a lightweight integration automation tool and so it is meant for users that particularly have data that resides in multiple systems that you want to have integrated and or to facilitate processes that rely on data for multiple systems there might be some questions about how it compares with other core integration tools you think hey there are other tools within salesforce and we're talking about other salesforce tools not our outside competitors this is not a replacement to any sorts of tools like flow builder or salesforce connect or heroku connect or app exchange connectors they all have their own sort of niche areas and and composer is a complimentary product here and sweet spot is is lightweight on integration automations and particularly if you want to be triggering for events from other systems that are not in salesforce so if you want the event that's kicking off this flow if that's data that lives in netsuite when a new record is updated there or data that lives in workday and you want to make sure that you have a multi-leg automation flow that's working with data from multiple systems and maybe even bringing that back back into salesforce or or vice versa that's where a tool like composer is going to come and help you well we know our admins love automating things and love building and workflows and automation so like that's going to be really huge for them i think is building being able to build in some of that like business knowledge business intelligence right into um the integration that they now can actually build on their own which is really cool um so you mentioned some of the other core salesforce integration tools and and you know this is a very big topic right like looking at our integration matrix and all of the various integration tools that are available to salesforce admin salesforce developers salesforce architects but what is a good um kind of high level way for admins to think about where does this sit alongside like you mentioned flow or alongside connector like other integration tools you know how should they like you mentioned you know it's a really good fit when they want to integrate into like a business process is there any other things they should be considering about you know when would it be the right time to investigate composer for our solution yeah well first of all we are going to be providing some more materials just around that so if you're thinking about how composer fits into the broader ecosystem we're going to have some better deep dive materials but to just sort of skim the surface at least in this conversation really i think some key things you want to be thinking about is if you want that triggering event to be in a different system that is outside of salesforce and you're listening to an event happening in a netsuite in a workday in ajira outside that's probably going to be a clue to point you towards something like composer and and also if it's a multi-legged flow that has other logic in it like you need to build conditional logic out you want to be adding some looping you want to do different types of built-in like building formulas on top of it that's also another clue to point you towards composer nice um so what are some of the most common you know as you've been working on this product and as you've been doing all these research and understanding like how our customers like where this fits with our customers um what are some of the most common use cases you've come across there's you know that our admins who might be listening right now uh maybe encountering at their own companies yeah it's a great question we like like i said as soon as we made the decision to be launching in salesforce and really focusing on salesforce admins as well we started pivoting our thinking and all of our research around primarily sales and service cloud use cases and the primary needs that we're hearing in the systems you want to connect if you're a heavy sales or service cloud user and so that's how we've been focusing our research and that's also where we are starting with our ga connectors so right at ga with our mvp launch we're gonna have six connectors that are available and those are salesforce of course uh tableau also of course also part of our ecosystem and then netsuite workday google sheets and slack actually also now part of our ecosystem and part of our salesforce family and so these were primarily chosen as the the top systems that bubble up because of some of these sales service cloud use cases and so as a result if we're you know that's just right out of that at ga and so some of the things those fall into three primary buckets really one is is high level sort of quote to cash but also improving sales productivity use cases so use cases that involve your erp of netsuite and salesforce and making sure that data is is synced between those you you want to close an opportunity and it has opportunity products on it you want to make sure the necessary inventory information is available in netsuite before you close that and so you need that to be synced um sales orders when you close it you want to automatically create a sales order in netsuite so those sorts of common erp use cases as well then if we think slack coming into the mix that ties in more collaboration and so if you think about salesforce in slack hey i have a new opportunity that has just closed i want to automatically send the opportunity details to dealdesk and information about them and notify them and then the final one is i mentioned workday and so that's really around employee provisioning and and use cases that surround that area so just to summarize six connectors at ga really focused in those key areas but the thing about composer is that that's just our mvp and so we are listening to the feedback and we are growing and we have a prioritized list of the next connectors we're going to be releasing them monthly and so those are going to continue to be rounding out the sales and service cloud use cases that we're we're hearing from from users this is all coming from talking with admins like you that's awesome i'm super excited about the initial six composer um uh partnerships that are being launched but then also uh hearing that it's you know this kind of developing road map and that feedback is really important is there just for oliver evans on the call who might be getting hands-on with composers soon where is the best place for them to provide that kind of feedback and to connect with you so they can share you know use cases that they would like to see or you know just be part of that feedback loop and prioritization loop no it's a great question because we really are so you know i'll answer that question but just going back to the roadmap i i didn't stress this enough is you know we we have a roadmap of what's coming but a lot of it is being informed by users and and that's how we have the coming roadmap but we also want that input particularly around the connectors that we're going to be supporting you know that's the area where we're heavily invested in this coming year is scaling up which connectors we support and increasing that number monthly so to answer your questions specifically um there's a couple of different ways first is we have a trailblazer community that has already gone live for mulesoft composer and so since we announced it at dreamforce it's been live people have been active there so please get active there we want to hear from you we want you to engage with one another that's an exciting place also to see we post demos we post other content so that's one place but also a little more concretely within that there's also the ideas exchange which i know you all are probably familiar with and have used we're gonna have our own composer labels there and we as products are gonna be actively listening and paying attention as long as we can find it and it's labeled we will be hunting we are going to be listening and that's going to go directly into informing as we start to see there's a heavy area of interest if it's a connector that we haven't already prioritized it may in fact shift i mean it we have some planned out that are already in development but it can shift the coming coming months and quarters so um please engage and and account reps i mean we're we're listening through there too so this reinforces always engaging in the prioritization exercise it's super important like i cannot say this enough product really does listen very much to all the feedback gathered during prioritization so always engage we send out notifications when it's happening um that's awesome i love hearing that um so let's talk so you mentioned roadmap and how heavily that's informed is there anything else and of course you know safe harbor here we want to make sure that you're making all purchasing decisions based on currently available technology but we do love hearing about um roadmap and and help people get excited about all the solutions that they might be able to get access to what are some other things besides you know widening that nut of connectors that are available um other things that admins might be able to look forward to with composer yeah so i i started with connectors because i know that's an area of heavy interest right now particularly as you're saying hey this is a tool that sounds like it's for me but i have x use case and as soon as i have it i want to adopt it so that that's a heavy area of focus um we're going to also just be working on i mean it's an mvp making this a tool that you know and love and some of the not sexy stuff but the stuff that's really going to make it feel like a wow factor of the guiding you through the process and making this as as seamless to use as possible so we will be heavily investing just on some of those areas that honestly you know aren't going to come out to be totally honest on hey mega marketing release of we added in-app guidance but we'll be enhancing each of those areas you know there there's the rounding out right now round out that experience that's super important for a tool like this when we're first at launch um but but otherwise a couple of areas will be focused on one is formulas so being able to do data manipulations and transformations within the product will be rounding out areas of support there again listening for input and feedback as always and then an exciting one again safe harbor we're working through timeline here but i was going to be releasing templates and i think this one really gets me excited because templates are a way that users can get started faster can learn best practices they can see hey i have this use case someone's already built it out or hey the composer team has already built the structure i just need to plug in my credentials and and modify it and get started way faster so that's going to be an area we start to invest in this year as well so that it's just easier to get started and not have to build it all from scratch so templates meaning like taking some of those common use cases like you mentioned and kind of pre-structuring them out so people can just you know get ramped faster and maybe do some small edits and make it fit their business use case exactly the structure in there and then you come in and you you authenticate into your salesforce account your netsuite account you add a few modifications for the fields you want to map but at least the structure's in there as a starting point that really lowers the barrier to entry too i feel like you know having having tools like templates having tools that help you ramp faster with things like this because you know a lot of what we do with admins is manage a backlog manage tech debt try to prioritize work that we're doing on our own orgs right on our own environments and so anything that helps us ramp faster there is just you know number one in my book that's awesome okay great well i'm super excited i'm so excited about composer um i think that this is something that's been really meaningful to our admins i can't wait to see how they get hands-on with it but you know this wouldn't be you know admin content if we didn't also dive in and maybe get a sneak peek get a little bit hands-on take a look at this product in action i think you said you have a fun demo to show us i do i put it down put together a demo last night so i i'm going to swap over there and share my screen and and we can dive in all right so we've now swapped into mulesoft composer and you guys are getting a bit of a sneak peek this is our live environment we're currently as record recording this a few weeks before lunch but getting excited to be sharing it and live when you're all watching so um i have built a simple flow here and first the first thing you noticed is that we are embedded within salesforce and i think it's important to call attention to that first is that i you didn't see me logging in but you can see here that i am in my salesforce account that's where you will be able to install mulesoft composer and be able to begin using it and i have a pre-built flow here for the interest of time but i'm going to walk through some of the key parts of composer and explain what this is doing and then we can you know extrapolate it to other use cases as well so what i have here is i am northern trail outfitters and i am going to be hosting a pizza making competition it's and i want people to be registering for this i'm tracking all my campaign members in salesforce it could be a bigger campaign event it doesn't have to be pizza making this can be a big marketing event that you're going to be launching but i'm tracking that here but i also want to have a google sheets tracker that all of my team is coming in to look at for who is registered for this particular event and it's also the you know i have other tabs open in that spreadsheet that tell me about you know the the structure of the event the agenda everything i want to know i want that to live in google sheets but the details about attendees and their accounts that's all in salesforce and i want to automate this so every time a new member joins my campaign or my event that my tracker is updated and i want this to update in real time so i've built a composer flow for this and the first step is what's triggering and kicking off this flow i am in i've authenticated to salesforce and i am checking every time there's a new record of type campaign member i have certain fields that i care about that i know i want to track and these are which account they're from this is information like email and first name so i've specified that but what i want to open which is super cool is the sample output section this is telling me exactly what data i am getting in that i'm going to be able to use in later steps of my flow and not only is it telling me what fields or metadata i can use it's actually giving me a sample value and you wouldn't know this because you're not logged into my account but burritos for goats that company and cloudy the goat that is a real campaign member that i have added to my campaign it is pulling that from the salesforce account that i am logged into so i can confirm i'm connected to my account and this is a sample of an example of what sorts of data i'll be working with in my flow so that's super exciting now that i know what data i'm going to be pulling in i'm going to set up the rest of the steps and they're really easy to configure they're just like the first step i made this flow a little more complex by adding in a conditional statement and here i just want to make sure that every time i'm getting a new campaign member that this isn't an internal employee i don't really care as much about tracking them sorry internal northern trail outfitters but i just want my external people so i've added a really simple statement confirming that the company account doesn't equal my company's name and i can click here and show i did this all visually i was able to see the different fields associated i could select the operators i can add the statement i can add more conditions as well super easy and from there i add the steps that should happen based on if that condition is valid and here it's it's updating my spreadsheet and so i am able to search for my spreadsheet when i open this dropdown i don't want to get rid of it but it's going to show all of my spreadsheets for my account again i'm connected into my google sheets account and i selected my account it's all there it's live i'm not going off and having to search for my spreadsheet and paste it in i see all of that data coming in and from here i can do simple mappings these are the columns of my spreadsheet again composer pulls in they know what the structure of your data looks like there and i can map values in and i'm going to get rid of this and just show what i was doing is actually mapping real data from my first step and so i want to take the first name from the campaign member and i want to update the first name column using that data it's all live it's all in the product i don't need to hard code it it's just flowing through an already living in composer so super clear you notice that the format of setting up the step in google sheets similar to the format of the first step when i set it up with salesforce so regardless of what connector you're using it's a really common experience across connectors so as you're building out more and more flows and connecting the different systems it's going to be that same familiar guided quick through experience so it feels really intuitive like i love that there's the logos or the identifiers for what place i'm working with i feel like that like i'm very visual like that seems super nice and useful to make sure you're not getting you know switched up of which field or column am i working with but it feels very intuitive for sure glad to hear that that's the goal so i'm glad to hear that um now i have a flow set up and before we activate flows we always recommend and i'm sure you wouldn't want to activate without doing this test test test i mean you before you're going to have this run on your production data first of all you'll probably be designing with sandbox data and that makes sense but also you want to test it as you go along you can test you add a new step you can keep testing and so i'm going to test this flow right now and fingers crossed and so i'm going to test it and what i'm going to do then actually let me start the test you know press test and then what i'm going to do immediately is actually swap into salesforce and this was the account you saw before where cloudy the goat is living as my campaign member and i'm going to add a new contact and all right so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to go in and add a new campaign member in my salesforce account so i have a new campaign member up i'm going to add it and remember this is what sets off and triggers the flow so i'm going to create it and now i'm going to swap over to my google sheet tab where i am tracking for this event and you see voila the new data from the campaign member i just added was added as a new row and we can see the phone number the first name the email information has automatically been added this is awesome i am so excited i know i said this already but i'm so excited about this tool and we've been talking about this for quite a while this is something that's so impactful for uh for admins now i want a piece of pizza um so i loved your demo um so this has been i think our evans is gonna be really excited about it and we definitely will be sharing everything you mentioned um you know we mentioned our launch blog we mentioned um some additional content and the group all that's going to be linked in the blog um is there anything else that you want to make sure admins hear about with regards to this i know they're all gonna be really excited to be working with you is one of our you know newest kind of admin focused pm so again welcome again to the admin community but um anything else that you want to share with our admins before we wrap up oh it's like i i'm so excited to be also thank you for welcoming me into the community i i've only just heard amazing things about working with this community and i've seen that through those of you i've gotten to engage with early for some of the research but now that we've launched i i can't reiterate enough one we're just so excited to have you to be trying this tool and working with us and we want to learn from you too we want to hear about your experiences we want to make you successful and so please engage in in those methods that we we've talked about whether it be the trailblazer community submitting ideas we're going to be very active there me the rest of my product team and and more and so i we want to hear from you and so i i'm just really excited to to launch this it's been a long time coming that's been a lot of work from from many many people within mulesoft and i'm really proud of my team and i have to i can't end without saying that but we're excited for you to be beginning with the tool with us awesome well thank you so much ashley thank you for the great demo thank you for sharing some of these insights and um thank you for joining us on our video chat here thanks so much for having me on i'll see you next time bye thanks for joining us today folks that was ashley simons with mulesoft composer detailing some great ways that admins can build integrations with clicks and not code make sure to subscribe to our youtube channel so you never miss a video like this and i will see you on our next expert corner
2021-03-27