Roastidio.us Tagged with admin

Knowledge base is now built into your admin

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:23:01 +0000

Knowledge base is now built into your Shopify admin at Sales channels > Agentic > Knowledge base. It replaces the standalone Knowledge Base app, which will no longer be available after January 15, 2027.

Knowledge base is a single page where you review, edit and publish the facts AI agents get about your store, such as contact details, gift services and more. Shopify drafts these facts from your own published storefront pages, and each one links back to the page it came from. Nothing Shopify drafted reaches AI agents until you publish it.

If you were using the Knowledge Base app

Stores with fewer than 1,000 facts. The facts you wrote or edited moved over. We published them, so AI agents can continue to use them. You can unpublish any fact at any time. No action is required on your part.
Stores with more than 1,000 facts. Knowledge base holds up to 1,000 additional facts. If your app has more than that, your facts have not moved over, and you'll need to add the ones you want to keep before January 15, 2027. We've emailed these stores directly.

If you were not using the app, nothing is required. Knowledge base is available in your admin now, with facts drafted from your storefront and unpublished until you publish them.

Available now at Sales Channels > Agentic > Knowledge base. Learn more about Knowledge base in the Shopify Help Center.

More accurate UK VAT based on fulfillment location

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:23:01 +0000

VAT on orders shipping to customers in Great Britain is now calculated using the fulfillment location that your order routing settings select for each order, the same way tax is calculated for orders shipping to the United States. If an order totals more than £135 GBP before tax and shipping and is routed to a location outside the UK, then the order is treated as an import, so VAT isn't charged at checkout. This applies even if your store also has a UK location. Orders of £135 GBP or less, orders shipping to Northern Ireland, and existing orders aren't affected.

To charge VAT on these orders at checkout, update your order routing so they're assigned to a UK location, or collect duties and import taxes at checkout. Learn more about charging VAT on orders over £135 in the Shopify Help Center.

Schedule and test catalog changes with Rollouts

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:23:01 +0000

Rollouts now supports catalog changes, so you can schedule product availability and pricing per market. Prepare your catalogs ahead of a promotion or seasonal launch, then choose when they go live.

Schedule catalog changes: Activate, deactivate, or switch between existing catalogs at a set date and time.
Test different offers: Run experiments between catalogs on your online store.
Launch changes together: Schedule catalog changes to go live alongside your theme and checkout updates in a single rollout.

Learn more about scheduling catalog changes in our help documentation.

Offer Royal Mail pickup points at checkout

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:23:01 +0000

Royal Mail is now available as a pickup point provider across the UK. At checkout, customers choose a location from a map or a list and see its name, address, opening hours, and price before they commit.

To turn it on:
* Go to Settings > Shipping and delivery, then Pickup points under Additional delivery methods.
* Choose a UK location and turn on Ship to pickup points from this location.
* Edit the rate to include Royal Mail and set what you want to charge.

Learn more about shipping to pickup points in the Shopify Help Center.

Salesforce Winter ’27 Admin Highlights: Top Data, Security and UX Gems

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 03:59:45 +0000

When release season rolls around, flashy new toolsets and high-profile features often hog the spotlight. But if you spend your days managing user permissions, cleaning up record access, tweaking Lightning App Builder layouts, or keeping security auditors happy, the core platform updates are where the real magic happens. The Salesforce Winter ’27 Release introduces long-awaited …

The post Salesforce Winter ’27 Admin Highlights: Top Data, Security and UX Gems appeared first on Salesforce Break.

Salesforce AI Guardrails: An Admin’s Guide to Permissions, FLS, & Agentforce

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 03:59:45 +0000

By establishing clear permission set structures, relying on native FLS inheritance, and implementing human-in-the-loop validation for autonomous agents, admins can confidently deliver cutting-edge AI features while keeping their org secure and compliant.

The post Salesforce AI Guardrails: An Admin’s Guide to Permissions, FLS, & Agentforce appeared first on Salesforce Break.

A Proper Update: Many Topics

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:58:50 +0000

BDH Steve, reading this update

Happy Monday! We have topics, and answers, and anouncements.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

SPIEGEL Bestseller

We have many topics to cover today, and we will begin with happy news. This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is a bestseller in Germany.

This Kingdom is #9 on SPIEGEL, a German Bestseller list.

We are delighted and are very grateful to our German readers for taking a chance on Maggie. Carlsen have been so amazing to work with. Check this out.

Image courtesy of Thalia Stuttgard

Graphic Audio

We are planning a GA adaptation but it will be a couple of years before it will become a reality. There are contractual exclusivity periods that ensure that GA adaptations do not conflict with the traditional audio.

Sales and Spoilers

TKWNKM is officially six months old. This generated all kinds of speculation regarding sales, including the forensic accounting level of sleuthing on Reddit. I was so impressed, I broke my no Reddit rule and left a comment.

Short version: we are optimistic that TKWNKM has done well, but we will need to see a royalty statement before we can celebrate.

Also, how in the world did you guys find out that the book went into a reprint? Did I mention it accidentally somewhere?

Mod R reminded me that we permit spoilers at 6 month mark, so an official Maggie Spoiler Filled discussion thread will go up sometime this week. You will be able to ask questions in the comments, and we will do a follow up answering what we can.

Maggie the Undying #2

Copyedit

This Redacted Will Not Redacted Me has been accepted, reviewed, and sent to the copyeditor. We are delighted to work with the same copyeditor, who will be returning to save us from ourselves again and ~~can’t wait to dive~~ please don’t give us this manuscript back right away. Please. We beg you.

Audio

“Readers are very anxious about the publication queue and whether Kristen Sieh will be able to narrate Maggie 2″

Tor Audio, who have been awesome to work with, have already reached out to Kristen. Both she and the audio director have agreed to return to the sequel.

::loses all professionalism for 3 seconds: OMG OMG OMG! Kristen is coming back, yay! Giant exhale of relief.

Odds and Ends

London 2027

We are working on a plan to get to London in summer of the next year. We also have an EU tour shaping up that summer. Right now we are hoping to stick close to the original time frame, because we are scheduled for all sorts of stuff. So if you were planning to see us, unless weirdness happens, we will be visiting UK. More to come when we have firmer dates.

Spanish AI Mess

“Spanish Hidden Legacy audiobooks new release is using Virtual Voice and the BDH are VERY unhappy”

What fresh hell is this… Okay, so these titles are released by Harlequin Iberica, and we have a very limited control here. Our only recourse is to write a strongly worded email, which we will do as soon as I am done here. More to come.

Vellum and Store

So for reasons I detailed privately to the 140 people who are still waiting, we hit a delay on vellum fulfillment. This just came in. They are promising it will be in my hands by noon.

If they did not mess this up again, then we will go straight to order fulfillment. Once again, my deepest apologies. This was a harsh lesson in printing supplies’ shortages.

Once these orders are out, we will reopen the merch store. We know that you are waiting to make the holiday season purchases. We also have a winner who is still waiting for their shopping spree. My apologies. I want to make sure that the store is cleaned up and ready, and I am afraid to do this while we still have vellum orders pending.

Outstanding Items

If you emailed us, if you reached out and have not heard back, please email again.

This was a very busy year for us. The final wordcount for TC… oops, almost messed up, Maggie #2 is at 239, 973 and is likely to go up a tiny bit, because we cut a lot and the two people who have read it prior to cuts informed that they were sad some stuff was omitted. It is 1,054 MS Word pages long. For comparison, TKWNKM was at 191,045 with Acknowledgments and extra format stuff.

It’s been 4 months of extremely dense labor. The last two months were filled with 12 hour work days. I apologize if your email went unanswered. We are catching up on all the book requests, letters, etc. now.

What’s next?

Give us a week to breathe, and we will figure it out.

The post A Proper Update: Many Topics first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Automatically generated policies help you launch faster

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:14:13 +0000

You can now automate your return and refund, contact information, terms of service, shipping, and legal notice policies to help you launch your store faster and expand into new markets. Your automated policies stay up to date as your store settings change and in sync with Shopify’s recommendations. You remain responsible for your policies and your store’s compliance with applicable laws.

To activate automation, go to Settings > Policies in your Shopify admin, select the desired policy, enable Use automated policy, and then click Save.

Learn more about automating your policies in the Shopify Help Center.

Admin now supports 3 new languages

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:14:13 +0000

We’ve released improved support for 3 right-to-left languages (Arabic, Urdu, and Hebrew) in both Admin and Storefronts, including checkout, customer accounts and the Horizon family of themes.

Display language is determined based on the user’s device settings, if available. Product pages and other merchant-owned content will continue to be displayed in the languages that you have enabled. You can enable translations on your product details pages (PDPs) by using the Translate & Adapt app in the Shopify admin.

Get started with right-to-left languages by adding them in your admin.

Schedule and test discounts with Rollouts

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:14:13 +0000

You can now include discounts in Rollouts to run coordinated campaigns and test different offers before launching more broadly.

Schedule discount changes: Launch a new offer to a portion of online store traffic, then expand when you're ready.
Compare offers: Test discount changes against your existing offers and review conversion results to help decide which offer to keep.
Launch changes together: Schedule a discount to go live alongside your theme and checkout changes in a single rollout.

Your discount’s existing customer eligibility rules still apply. You can also continue using discount start and end dates to schedule standalone promotions.

Learn more about discounts scheduling and testing in our help documentation.

Shop is now at shop.com

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:14:13 +0000

Shop's web experience has moved from shop.app to shop.com. Your store, products, and channel settings are unaffected — the change only affects the web address shoppers use to reach Shop.

What's changing

Shop's web experience now lives at shop.com instead of shop.app
Existing shop.app links redirect automatically to shop.com

What you need to do

Nothing. Your store, products, and channel settings carry over exactly as they are. If you've linked to shop.app anywhere (social bios, ads, etc.), you can update those links to shop.com at your convenience, though the redirect will continue to work.

Return window overrides now available

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:14:13 +0000

You can now set return window overrides by market for specific collections, products, or variants. Overrides let you choose a different return period than your default return window - for example, 14 days for seasonal items instead of your standard 90 days.

How it works
* Overrides replace the default return window: If an item matches an override, that override's return window gets applied instead of your default or market-specific window.
* The shortest override wins: If an item matches more than one override, the shortest matching return window applies.
* Final sale still wins: Items marked as final sale can't be returned (or cancelled), even if they also match a return window override.
* Default rules apply otherwise: If an item isn’t final sale and doesn’t match an override, your market-specific return window applies. If no market-specific rules are set, your default return window applies.

Where to set it
Settings > Policies > Return and cancellation rules > Select specific market rules to modify > You can then select a target collection, product, variant to apply a return window override to.

Example
Set a 14‑day window for your “Holiday 2026” collection while keeping your storewide default at 90 days.

Learn more in return window overrides.

Site to Site VPN Using OpenVPN

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:02:05 +0000

You have 2 offices, it make sense to have a VPN to connect both sites together. OpenVPN is both easy to install and reasonably performant. It use a IP layer tunnel with UDP transport, with all traffic encrypted, so it is both transparent and secure. Howeever like any real world networking problem, there are traps.

Setup

Main office: public IP: 124.74.106.46 lan: 192.168.0.0/24 WAN gateway: 192.168.0.2 VPN gateway: 192.168.15

Branch office: No static public IP lan: 192.168.2.0/24 WAN gateway: 192.168.2.1 VPN gateway: 192.168.2.2

VPN network: 10.8.0.8/24

The procedure in http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/security/security-howto/30353-how-to-set-up-a-site-to-site-vpn-with-openvpn is easy enough to follow and clear, so I will not repeat here. the WAN gateways on both side are conmercial wireless routers and the VPN gateways are custom built PCs.

Problem 1

After setup the VPN gateway can ping each other, but other machines in the 2 LAN cannot. This is because the PC used as VPN gateways did not turn on packet forwarding among networking interfaces (a security measure, only routers need to forward packet). this is simple enough:

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

in /etc/sysctl.conf will do. sysctl -p to make effective.

Problem 2

Now other machines can ping VPN gateways on the other side, but the VPN gateways cannot ping other machines on the other side. It turns out the VPN gateway will use the 10.8.0.* ip as source IP, so the return packet goes to the WAN gateway and it either drop them or throw it over to the WAN side. So you need to add route 10.8.0.0/24 to the VPN gateway on both side to the WAN gateway.

Problem 3

Now one side can connet to the other side with no problem, but not the other way! And things got even wierder, I can traceroute but not ping! It looks like the main office WAN gateway, a TP-link router, does something funny. Although I specifically added the static route to the VPN gateway, but:

regular packet got routed correctly
ICMP echo return and TCP return handshake got dropped
it does ICMP redirect for ping from the own side, but many OSs ignore ICMP redirect (for security)

It looks like some kind of firewall I cannot disable. The only way I can think of is to setup custom route rules for every machine, so the WAN router is not getting in the way.

for DHCP clients I can do that automatically since I already control the DHCP server
for manual setup machines you will have to do it manually.

Like:

ip route add 192.168.2.0/24 via 192.168.0.15
ip route add 10.8.0.0/24 via 192.168.0.15

Future work

Conmercial routers are good only when you stay with in the intended usage model. If I can do it all over again, I will ditch the router, and combine WAN and VPN gateway in one custom built pc; this way I have full flexibility. The router will be used as just a wifi AP on the side. For all the networking functionality the router provide:

DHCP. I already disable it from the router and use my own because I want to do PXE boot.
DNS. I already disable it from the router and use my own because I have many internal DNS need.
SNAT and DNAT. It can be done with free software; if you don’t miss the web interface.
firewall. It is very limited anyway.
UPnP. it is better to disable them anyway.
traffic shaping. I’ve never made it work the way I want it to be.

Architectural Decisions in the AI Era: Flow, Apex, and Agentforce

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:45:20 +0000

Architects have too many topics on their mind nowadays: Flow, Apex, APIs and AI agents (Agentforce). How should they decide what part of the logic goes where? That is the problem. Flow can handle processes that would have required Apex years ago. Developers can combine declarative and programmatic automation instead of treating them as competing …

The post Architectural Decisions in the AI Era: Flow, Apex, and Agentforce appeared first on Salesforce Break.

Accounts and Contacts in Salesforce: The Foundation Every Admin Needs to Get Right

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:45:20 +0000

Picture a rep heading into a customer meeting. Before they walk in, they need answers. Who works at this company? What have we sold them? Who else on our team knows them? In Salesforce, accounts and contacts hold those answers. These two objects sit at the center of almost every org. Opportunities, cases, and activities …

The post Accounts and Contacts in Salesforce: The Foundation Every Admin Needs to Get Right appeared first on Salesforce Break.

How to Disable All Automatic Updates (WordPress Core, Plugins, and Themes)

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:26:20 +0000

Everyone has their own preference when it comes to automatic updates. Many folks like the idea of saving time and not having to “do” anything when updates are available. The problem is that updates don’t always go as planned. Unexpected things happen, conflicts, bugs, etc. Best-case scenario you save some time. Worst-case scenario your site goes down. Personally, I prefer to disable automatic updates for all the things: WordPress core, plugins, and themes. To do it, I use the following code snippets..

Disable automatic updates via constants
Disable automatic updates via filter hooks

Disable automatic updates via constants

This is the code snippet that I add to every site to turn off ALL automatic updates. Added via the wp-config.php file, just before the line that says, “That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging.” Here is the magic code:

// Disable auto-updates for EVERYTHING
define('AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED', true);

// Disable auto-updates for WP CORE
define('WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false);

// Disable auto-updates for PLUGINS & THEMES
define('CORE_UPGRADE_SKIP_NEW_BUNDLED', true);

Here we define three constants. The first constant disables all automatic updates. So technically that’s all you need. The second constant disables auto-updates for the WordPress core. The third constant disables auto-updates for plugins and themes. It’s as simple as that, and it just works.

Notes

By changing the values of the constants, you can define other configurations for automatic updates. For example, you can enable core updates while disabling plugin/theme updates and vice versa. In fact, the WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE constant may be one of three possible values:

true – All updates (major, minor, and dev) are enabled
false – All updates (major, minor, and dev) are disabled
'minor' – Only minor updates are enabled (major & dev are disabled)

The other two constants, AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED and CORE_UPGRADE_SKIP_NEW_BUNDLED, are strictly boolean (true or false).

Also note that “dev” updates only happen on sites running a development version of WordPress.

Disable automatic updates via filter hooks

Instead of using constants, it’s possible to configure automatic updates using filter hooks. Going the “filter” route is somewhat more flexible. Best advice is to go with constants via wp-config.php if you simply want to disable automatic updates. For alternate configurations, using filters gives you more granular control over each aspect of the update process.

Note: The code snippets below can be added via must-use plugin or custom code. Do NOT add any of the following code directly to wp-config.php.

Here are the filters that may be used to configure automatic updates:

// Disable auto-updates for EVERYTHING
add_filter('automatic_updater_disabled', '__return_false');

// Disable auto-updates for WP CORE
add_filter('auto_update_core', '__return_false');

// Disable auto-updates for PLUGINS
add_filter('auto_update_plugin', '__return_false');

// Disable auto-updates for THEMES
add_filter('auto_update_theme', '__return_false');

// Disable auto-updates for TRANSLATIONS
add_filter('auto_update_translation', '__return_false');

As written here, these filters all return false, which disables their respective auto-update feature. To instead enable any update feature, simply replace __return_false with __return_true.

Notes

The auto_update_core filter disables all core-related updates: major, minor, and dev. For more granular control, you can use the following alternate filters:

allow_dev_auto_core_updates
allow_minor_auto_core_updates
allow_major_auto_core_updates

These filters do exactly what their names imply. For more details, check out this WordPress article. As explained there, even when disabling auto-updates using auto_update_core and related filters, WordPress will continue making HTTP requests to the update endpoints:

https://api.wordpress.org/core/version-check/...
https://api.wordpress.org/plugins/update-check/...
https://api.wordpress.org/themes/update-check/...

If you want to stop WordPress from checking for updates, you can add the following code via must-use plugin, regular plugin, or via functions.php:

// Stop HTTP requests checking for updates
remove_action('admin_init', '_maybe_update_core');
remove_action('admin_init', '_maybe_update_plugins');
remove_action('admin_init', '_maybe_update_themes');

That’s all for now, I hope this tutorial helps you in your WordPress adventures :)

Codeless Way to Include External Directory in Sitemap | Digging Into WordPress

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:26:20 +0000

As of version 5.5, WordPress automatically generates an XML sitemap for your site’s content. The sitemap benefits your site by providing a simple “map” of all posts, pages, categories, tags, and more. This is useful for bots and humans, and is considered beneficial for SEO and even GEO. Even better, WordPress makes it easy to customize your sitemap as desired. For example, if you want to include or exclude certain pages, or even disable the WP sitemap completely, there are programmatic techniques (i.e., code snippets) for making it happen.

Add a directory without code

Now that we’re on the same page, so to speak. This quick DigWP tutorial explains how to add an external directory to the auto-generated WordPress sitemap. And by “external”, I’m referring to any directory that is not under the purview of WordPress (based on its URL). More specifically, any directory or folder that you add manually to your site’s files.

Step 1: Requirements

Okay let’s dig into it. For this non-code trick to work, the main requirement is that your site has permalinks enabled (via the WordPress General settings ▸ Permalinks). So instead of query-string-based URLs:

https://example.com/?p=123

..your site’s rocking keyword-rich “pretty” URLs:

https://example.com/ai-will-replace-the-internet/

Other than permalinks, there are two other caveats:

Directory name consists of alphanumeric, underscores, and hyphens
Directory location is within the site’s root directory

These requirements are explained further as we continue with the tutorial..

Step 2: Add a directory

Next add a directory to your WordPress site. Anywhere in the root directory of your site. For example, when I moved my shapeSpace WordPress theme from its own domain to Perishable Press, I added a directory named /shapespace/ to the site’s root directory. So the resulting directory path is this:

https://perishablepress.com/shapespace/

Important: for this non-code technique to work, the folder name must consist of only alphanumeric characters, underscores, and/or hyphens.

Step 3: Add new Page

Next, visit the WordPress Admin Area and create a new page (via Pages ▸ Add Page). Make sure that the page has a URL/permalink slug that matches your directory path. So continuing with the /shapespace/ directory example, we would add a new page that is named shapespace, which results in a permalink URL that matches the external directory. So both the directory and the newly added page have the same URL:

https://perishablepress.com/shapespace/

That’s all there is to it. Once you publish the new page, WordPress will do its thing and automatically add the new URL to your XML sitemap.

Check it out..

As long as the external directory and WP Page have the same URL, your WordPress sitemap will include a link to your directory. And when you (or anyone, anything) follows the link, they will be taken to the directory, not the WordPress Page. To get a better idea of how it works, check out the pages sitemap at Perishable Press, and follow the link to the external /shapespace/ directory. Instead of pointing to the blank WP Page, the sitemap link points to the shapeSpace directory, which serves the shapeSpace homepage.

A few final notes

This “codeless” way of adding directories to the WP sitemap works seamlessly. The new URL appears in your site’s local search results and links to the external directory (not the blank WP Page). That means the contents of the WP Page never are displayed anywhere on the front end of your site. So you can add a note or whatever reminding your future self why this otherwise empty page exists ;)

Note: This no-code technique works whether WordPress is installed in the root directory or subdirectory. Just FYI.

And of course, the main benefit of adding a directory to your sitemap is so the search engines can find it, pick it up, and include it in the search results. And that’s just smart SEO.

What about adding files?

Does this tricksy non-code technique also work with external files (instead of directories)? Not really, because of the limitations in how permalinks are formatted. For example, permalinks end with a forward slash /, file names do not. Also special characters like periods/dots that are included in file names are not included in permalinks. So if you add an external file named external-file.html, the closest you can get with a static page name is /external-file-html/, which won’t work for the sitemap trick.

Fortunately you always can add files and directories and just about anything using the Sitemaps API now included in WordPress core :)

Plan launches, events, and tests with clearer and more granular controls in Rollouts

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 20:36:02 +0000

Rollouts has a redesigned setup experience that makes it easier to plan a launch, run a temporary event, or test changes to your store.

Reflect your intent: Choose the timing and traffic percentage for your rollout. Rollout settings will adjust to reflect your intent as a launch, temporary event, or an experiment.
Combine multiple changes: Make changes to your theme, checkout and customer account pages in a single rollout.
Understand your audience: See what percentage of traffic your rollout reaches and how it’s split between test versions.
Review conflicts: See conflicting settings directly in the setup flow so you can address them earlier.

Learn more about the new Rollouts configuration in our help documentation.

Salesforce Timezone Offset: A Native Flow Alternative to Apex - Salesforce Break

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 19:44:36 +0000

Every system time field in Salesforce is stored in GMT. That part is simple. What complicates things is everything layered on top of it.

An org has its own timezone setting. A user can have a different timezone than the org. Salesforce uses both settings to decide how timestamps display on records and transactions. Installed packages carry their own time settings too. Field Service Lightning is a common example.

Daylight Saving Time adds another layer. And the problem grows when an external user is involved, like a guest visiting a community page. Salesforce has no built-in way to detect a guest user’s timezone, so the flow builder has to solve the conversion manually.

How to Solve the Salesforce Time Zone Problem with Apex

We ran into this problem while building a screen flow for a nonprofit client’s community page. While working on a data table flow component, we came across an invocable Apex action that returns the start of the day, midnight, for a given date in the running user’s timezone.

That single value was the missing piece. Comparing that local midnight to midnight in GMT, then multiplying the difference by 24, gives the exact hour offset between a user’s timezone and GMT, Daylight Saving Time included. Eric Smith wrote up the method in detail here.

The approach works well. The tradeoff is the dependency: it requires an Apex Action, which means deploying and maintaining a piece of Apex alongside the flow.

A Native Flow Alternative for Admins

Yossi Altein‘s version calculates the same offset without any Apex.

The flow takes a Date input. A formula builds a GMT datetime value at midnight for that date. A Text Template then renders that datetime as text, and because Salesforce formats displayed text in the running user’s timezone, the rendered string shows the local date and time instead of the GMT value.

A set of formulas parses that rendered string back into its parts: month, day, year, and hour, including AM/PM. Those parsed values get reassembled into a second datetime value. Subtracting the true GMT datetime from that reconstructed value, then multiplying by 24, produces the offset in hours. The flow assigns that number to an output variable and returns it.

No Apex Action, no external dependency. Just formulas and a Text Template doing the timezone conversion Salesforce doesn’t hand you natively. Plenty of admins want to use unofficial Salesforce tools, but their org won’t allow third-party Apex. Yossi’s formula-only version solves that. The current version now supports fractional-hour zones, so timezones like India and Nepal are covered as well.

Apex vs. Native: Which Should Teams Use?

Yossi framed the choice this way: “Do you want something that is easy to get approved, no special permissions needed, and native to Salesforce and won’t break with future releases? Or do you want Apex, which is more efficient but otherwise maintenance heavy?”

You can use the tool daily to mark time. Build a flow that lists time entries and sets the datetime on the record based on the correct timezone. You can also pair it with the new time picker component in Flow: let the user select a time, then set it on the record as a datetime using a formula built on the offset.

Download the zip file from the GitHub repo here. Use Workbench or Inspector Reloaded to deploy it into any org.

Credit to Eric Smith for the Apex-based method that started this conversation, and to Yossi for building a native alternative.

Explore related content:

Time Zone and Time Operations in Flow

Get Ready for the New Time Data Type – Summer ‘25 Flow Goodness

Flow Tool Kit | Calendar; Scheduling Component

SOQL Basics for Salesforce Admins - Salesforce Break

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 19:44:36 +0000

If you have spent any amount of time in the Salesforce ecosystem as an admin, you know this exact routine:

A stakeholder asks for a dataset. You build a custom report type, drag and drop fields, apply filters, and hit Export. Then, because Salesforce reports cannot easily pull data across non-related branches or cross-reference two unconnected objects, you open Excel or Google Sheets. You waste 30 minutes writing nested VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP functions, cleaning up blank rows, and dealing with #N/A errors.

What if you could bypass the Report Builder, skip Excel entirely, and extract precise, relational datasets straight from Salesforce in seconds?

Meet SOQL: The Admin Query Tool Hiding in Plain Sight

SOQL stands for Salesforce Object Query Language. It is a lightweight, declarative query syntax used to read data stored in your Salesforce database. Think of it as asking Salesforce a direct question: “Give me these specific fields, from this object, where these conditions are met.”

While SOQL is often labeled as a “developer tool,” it is actually one of the most powerful super-skills a Salesforce Administrator can learn. In this guide, we will cover the basics of SOQL, demonstrate how to construct powerful queries with sorting and grouping, and show you how to leverage Salesforce Inspector to execute queries faster than you ever thought possible.

Why SOQL Beats Standard Reports and Excel

No Report Limits: Standard Salesforce reports cap you at 2,000 rows in the UI, and multi-block joined reports can be clunky. SOQL lets you quickly inspect thousands of records at once.
Access “Hidden” Objects: Certain system objects, such as FieldPermissions, UserRecordAccess, ApexClass, or GroupMember, are impossible or difficult to query via standard report types. SOQL gives you direct visibility into almost every object in your org.
Say Goodbye to VLOOKUPs: Instead of exporting Contacts to Sheet A and Accounts to Sheet B to run a VLOOKUP, SOQL allows you to reach across relationships directly in a single line of query text.
Data Operations Ready: When you pull data via SOQL, you get precise 18-character Record IDs, making the export immediately formatted and ready for Data Loader or inline updates.

Understanding SOQL Query Structure

Every basic SOQL query relies on three core clauses: SELECT, FROM, and WHERE.

SELECT Id, Name, StageName, Amount 
FROM Opportunity 
WHERE IsClosed = False

Let’s break this down:

SELECT: The specific Field API Names you want to retrieve. (Tip: Always use API names, such as Custom_Field__c, not field labels).
FROM: The API Name of the Salesforce object you are querying (e.g., Account, Contact, Custom_Object__c).
WHERE: The filtering conditions. Only records meeting these criteria will be returned.

Essential SOQL Clauses and Operators

To make your queries more precise, you can append additional clauses:

ORDER BY: Sorts your records in ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC) order.
LIMIT: Restricts the maximum number of records returned (e.g., LIMIT 100).
IN: Filters against a list of values (e.g., WHERE StageName IN (‘Closed Won’, ‘Closed Lost’)).
LIKE: Performs wild-card searches using % (e.g., WHERE Email LIKE ‘%@gmail.com’).

Master Sorting with ORDER BY (Ascending vs. Descending)

When querying individual records, use ORDER BY with ASC (smallest to largest / A to Z) or DESC (largest to smallest / Z to A). If unspecified, SOQL defaults to ASC.

When you add multiple fields separated by a comma after ORDER BY, it creates a primary sort and a secondary sort (tie-breaker).

Example: Primary & Secondary Sorting (DESC / DESC)

Goal: Pull open Opportunities, sorted so the highest-value deals appear at the top (DESC), followed by the most recently created deals (DESC).

SELECT Id, Name, Amount, StageName, CloseDate 
FROM Opportunity 
WHERE IsClosed = False 
ORDER BY Amount DESC, CloseDate DESC 
LIMIT 50

How Salesforce Evaluates Multi-Field Sorting Step-by-Step

Primary Sort (Amount DESC): Salesforce first sorts all records by Amount from highest to lowest.
Secondary Sort (CloseDate DESC): If two or more opportunities have the exact same Amount, Salesforce uses CloseDate to break the tie, placing the one with the most recent CloseDate higher up.

Replacing VLOOKUPs with Relationship Queries

The real magic of SOQL lies in traversing relationships. In Excel, you use VLOOKUP to match an Account ID on a Contact sheet to fetch the Account Owner’s email. In SOQL, you traverse the relationship directly using dot notation (Parent Queries) or subqueries (Child Queries).

Parent Relationship Queries (Child-to-Parent)

When querying a child object (like Contact), you can traverse “up” to the parent object (Account) using dot notation.

Excel approach: Export Contacts, Export Accounts, run =VLOOKUP(C2, Accounts!A:D, 4, FALSE).

SOQL approach:

SELECT Id, FirstName, LastName, Account.Name, Account.Owner.Email, Account.Industry 
FROM Contact 
WHERE Account.Rating = 'Hot'

Notice how Account.Owner.Email reaches up three levels (Contact > Account > Owner) in a single query. No spreadsheets required.

Rule of Thumb for Custom Objects: For custom lookup fields, change the __c to an __r. For example, if you have a custom lookup Building__c on Contact, query it as Building__r.Name.

Child Relationship Queries (Parent-to-Child)

What if you want to pull a list of Accounts alongside all of their related Opportunities?

SOQL approach (Subquery):

SELECT Id, Name, AnnualRevenue, 
       (SELECT Id, Name, Amount, StageName FROM Opportunities) 
FROM Account 
WHERE Type = 'Customer - Direct'

This returns every Direct Customer Account and embeds an array of its related Opportunities right inside the record row.

Enter Salesforce Inspector: The Admin’s Best Friend

While you can run SOQL inside the native Salesforce Developer Console, Web Console or VS Code, the absolute best tool for admins is Salesforce Inspector (or its popular community extension, Salesforce Inspector Reloaded).

Salesforce Web Console

Salesforce Inspector is a browser extension (available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge) that adds a subtle overlay tab to your browser when logged into Salesforce.

Why Use Salesforce Inspector for SOQL?

Instant Access: You don’t need to open Setup or launch a heavy development environment. Just click the overlay, select Data Export, and start typing.
Auto-Completion: As you type your SOQL query, Salesforce Inspector auto-completes object and field API names in real time, saving you from constantly checking the Object Manager.
One-Click Export Options: Once your query executes, you can instantly copy the results as CSV, Excel, or JSON.
Direct Record Navigation: Record IDs in the Inspector results grid are clickable links. Want to inspect a returned Account? Just click its ID to open the record directly in Salesforce.
Inline Data Cleanup: If you find bad data in your query results, Salesforce Inspector allows you to update or delete those records right from the tool interface.

Salesforce Inspector Reloaded

Practical SOQL Recipes for Admins

To help you get started, here are three real-world administrative tasks solved with a simple SOQL query instead of complex reports or spreadsheets:

Recipe 1: Find Active Users with No Assigned Permission Sets

Find out which active users are missing a key organizational permission set.

SELECT Id, Name, Email, Profile.Name 
FROM User 
WHERE IsActive = True 
  AND Id NOT IN (
      SELECT AssigneeId 
      FROM PermissionSetAssignment 
      WHERE PermissionSet.Name = 'Sales_Operations_Admin'
  )

Recipe 2: Audit Contacts with Inconsistent Address Data

Locate contacts where the mailing country is missing, but the parent Account has a billing country populated.

SELECT Id, FirstName, LastName, MailingCountry, Account.Id, Account.Name, Account.BillingCountry 
FROM Contact 
WHERE MailingCountry = NULL 
  AND Account.BillingCountry != NULL

Recipe 3: Aggregate Pipeline Metrics with GROUP BY and ORDER BY

Want a quick summary of your pipeline grouped by lead source without building a summary report? Combine aggregate functions like SUM() and COUNT() with GROUP BY and ORDER BY.

The GROUP BY clause works like a Pivot Table in Excel. It collapses individual records into summary rows based on shared values in a specific field. When you group by LeadSource, Salesforce automatically organizes all open opportunities into distinct buckets (like “Partner Referral” or “Web”) and calculates aggregate metrics such as COUNT(Id) for total deal volume and SUM(Amount) for total pipeline value for each bucket in a single clean table.

SELECT LeadSource, COUNT(Id) TotalDeals, SUM(Amount) TotalPipeline 
FROM Opportunity 
WHERE IsClosed = False 
GROUP BY LeadSource 
ORDER BY SUM(Amount) DESC

Salesforce Inspector Reloaded SOQL Query Results

Become a More Efficient Salesforce Admin with SOQL

Learning SOQL is about becoming a dramatically more efficient Administrator. Once you get comfortable writing basic SELECT … FROM … WHERE queries in Salesforce Inspector, you will find yourself relying less on complex Excel formulas and spending far less time building disposable one-off reports.

Install Salesforce Inspector or spin up the Web Console initially in a sandbox org, and run your first query today. Your future self (and your spreadsheets) will thank you. Want to watch a video on this topic? Watch below:

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Claudeforce Explained: Salesforce and Anthropic's New AI-CRM Partnership - Salesforce Break

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 19:44:36 +0000

Salesforce and Anthropic announced Claudeforce on August 26, 2026, during Salesforce’s Q2 FY27 earnings call. Claudeforce brings Claude’s reasoning together with Salesforce’s data, workflows, business logic, and governance, and makes it strategically accessible from inside Claude itself.

Many people lean on AI and LLMs to get through their workday. Sellers are turning to Claude for research, drafting, and quick answers, for example. Salesforce saw an opportunity and decided to meet the users there instead of asking them to come back to Salesforce. Partnering with Anthropic let Salesforce bring its data and rules into a tool people already use every day, rather than building another interface for sellers to learn.

Claudeforce launches with 37 skills built for Sales specifically, and only works within a user’s existing Salesforce permissions, so access depends on being both a Salesforce user and someone with sales-team access today.

What Salesforce in Claude Actually Does

Traditional software puts the burden on the seller. Open the account. Click into the history. Piece together the story before you can act. Salesforce in Claude makes it easier. Sellers can ask Claude about a deal, a pipeline, or an account, and Claude reasons across Salesforce, Slack, and email to answer and act, without the seller navigating between screens.

The 37 sales skills cover the seller workflow end to end: meeting prep, deal health checks, pipeline reviews, and more. Salesforce and Anthropic built these skills specifically for Claude’s reasoning and generative UI. They are not generic prompts wrapped around an API call.

According to Salesforce, one use case could be an onboarding flow that reads a seller’s Salesforce, Slack, and connected data to build a tailored dashboard automatically, generated live inside Claude.

Image source: https://www.salesforce.com/claudeforce/

The Underlying Infrastructure: Headless 360 and MCP

Salesforce in Claude runs on AIforce, Salesforce’s trusted enterprise harness. AIforce brings business data and workflows to any agent through MCP servers, APIs, and CLI tools. It builds on the Headless 360 architecture Salesforce introduced at TDX 2026, exposing data, workflows, agents, and governance through MCP. No custom integration work required.

Image source: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2026/05/headless-360-what-it-means-for-developers

The mechanism is the same one we’ve written about since TDX: MCP turns Salesforce capabilities that used to require logging in and clicking through screens into something an agent can reach directly, wherever the seller is working.

Governance in Salesforce Gets Reused

This is the part admins will care about most: Salesforce in Claude runs through your existing Salesforce permissions and business rules. Claude sees only what a given user is authorized to see, and can only do what that user is authorized to do.

There’s no new permissions model to stand up and no per-user configuration. An admin connects Salesforce in Claude once, and it works for the whole team from day one.

Write actions come with configurable controls. You decide whether Claude checks with you before sending an external email, or sends it once you trust the workflow. When Claude updates a record, it changes only the field it said it would change.

Salesforce and Anthropic say they’re continuing to build additional enterprise controls together, including data residency and access controls, plus automated review meant to catch problems before they reach customers.

Should Salesforce Admins Care About Claudeforce?

Salesforce in Claude is live today for select pilot customers. Salesforce and Anthropic plan an open beta starting in September 2026. The initial release focuses on Sales skills, with plans to expand into other teams in the months following. If you’re a Salesforce admin, the governance model is the detail to watch. Claudeforce doesn’t ask you to build a second permissions layer or trust a black box. It routes everything through the rules you already enforce.

Image source: https://www.salesforce.com/claudeforce/

If you’re a seller, the pitch is fewer clicks and less manual digging. Whether that holds up in daily use is the question worth asking as the open beta rolls out in September.

We’ll track Claudeforce through pilot feedback and the open beta launch, and follow up with hands-on coverage once broader access opens.

What do you think, admins, does Caludeforce news fill you with excitement or anxiety?

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A new look for the Shopify admin

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 06:46:34 +0000

On September 15th, we began rolling out a new look for the Shopify admin: new color, type, spacing, and icons across every page, inside a new frame.

Search, notifications, and the store picker have moved into the side navigation, which collapses for more room on the page. Sidekick has moved from a side panel to a floating chat at the bottom of every page, so it’s in reach from wherever merchants are working.

The new look rolls out gradually and will arrive to your admin on its own with no setup needed.

Learn more about the admins new look in Shopify Help Center.

Multi-currency payouts now available in Australia and France

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 22:09:57 +0000

We've expanded Multi-Currency Payouts for eligible Shopify Payments merchants to Australia and France.

Merchants in Australia can now receive payouts in 13 currencies: AUD, NZD, USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, NOK, SEK, DKK, CHF, JPY, SGD and HKD. All 13 can be paid into an Australian bank account, or you can add an account in the US, New Zealand, the UK, Canada or the eurozone for those currencies.

Merchants in France can now receive payouts in 18 currencies: EUR, AUD, CAD, CHF, CZK, DKK, GBP, HKD, HUF, JPY, NOK, NZD, PLN, RON, SEK, SGD, USD and ZAR. EUR remains your default payout currency, and other currencies are paid into additional bank accounts you add.

Multi-currency payouts are available to stores on the Advanced and Shopify Plus plans. More info in help docs

Palomar – a registry of Lean verified mathematics | What's new

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:34:42 +0000

In recent months there has been a proliferation of AI-generated proofs of various old and new results, some of which have been formalized in the proof assistant language Lean. However, checking that a given Lean repository actually proves the claimed statement is somewhat non-trivial, especially for an audience which is not expert in the use of Lean: one has to first check that the claimed formal Lean statements have proofs that typecheck, that the proofs do not contain any “cheats” such as adding additional axioms, and that the formal statements also match (in a semantic sense) the informal description of the claimed results.

To help bring some clarity to this situation, I am happy to announce that Palomar registry of Lean verified mathematics, which is an initiative incubated by the Lean FRO and by ICARM, is now open for submissions. I am serving in several roles on this registry, including on the scientific advisory board, together with Jeremy Avigad, Matthew Ballard, Jaume de Dios, Nestor Guillen, Bryna Kra, Kim Morrison, Ravi Vakil, and Akshay Venkatesh.

A detailed motivation for Palomar can be found here, and further information about Palomar can be found here. A zeroth approximation of what Palomar intends to be is the analogue of a preprint server for Lean proofs. More precisely, Palomar (which is named after the astronomical observatory) is a registry of external Github repositories (or more precisely, “snapshots” of such repositories, as represented by a specific Github commit) containing Lean code adhering to the current best practices for such formalizations, in particular containing

A “challenge file” containing a short, human readable description in Lean of the results claimed.
A “solution module” containing an (arbitrarily long) proof of the results claimed in the challenge file.
A “formalization.yaml” file describing the results in informal language, and also containing a number of other relevant metadata and disclosures.

(There are also some additional technical requirements for the repository which I will omit here.) If a snapshot of a repository is submitted to Palomar, it will check both (a) that the solution module typechecks and proves exactly the results claimed in the challenge file, and that (b) the informal description of the result in the formalization.yaml file appears to match the result claimed in the challenge file, and that the repository meets various minimal standards required for a registry entry. The first check (a) is purely mechanical, using the Lean tool Comparator; the second check (b) is non-deterministic, being performed by a large language model. If a repository passes both checks, it can be registered on Palomar. It is worth stressing that the checks in (a) and (b) fall well short of what a proper human peer review of a submission for novelty, interest, and accuracy would give; in particular, Palomar is not a peer-reviewed journal.

The submission process is thorough, but achievable: as a test, I successfully managed to submit my own recent formalization of the proof of Sendov’s conjecture to Palomar, and also plan to submit some older formalizations to the registry soon.

In any event, the registry is now open for formalizations of both old and new results. Submissions (whether human-generated, AI-generated, or some mixture of both) are welcome; please read the (somewhat detailed) instructions here before starting a submission. (I will however note that modern AI agents are quite helpful in assisting with the mechanical details of the submission, though a human review is still strongly recommended.)

Discussion and feedback on Palomar will occur on this Zulip channel.

Bulk staff setup with CSV import

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 20:37:05 +0000

You can now create, suspend, and reactivate staff accounts in bulk by uploading a CSV file in Shopify admin.

This update helps reduce manual setup for larger teams by letting you bulk create admin or POS staff accounts with assigned PINs and suspend or reactivate existing users in one upload.

It’s especially useful for seasonal hiring, store expansion, and fast offboarding, when teams need to make staff changes quickly and accurately.

To use this feature, go to Settings > Users > Import in Shopify Admin. Download the sample CSV template there to get started.

Learn more about importing users in bulk using a CSV file.

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Bulk staff setup with CSV import