Use Salesforce documentation, Dreamforce on demand talks, Salesforce training talks, iTunes library of Salesforce talks, and problems thrown out by team to learn Salesforce skills required for NPower implementations:
- Validation Rules
- Triggers
- Workflow
- DataImport
- Layouts
- Web-to-lead
- Apex/VisualForce
- 3rd Party Tools (Vertical Response, Demand Tools, others?)

Process & implementation experience:
- Early on in process, start a basic SF implementation planning project with a mentor.
- As developer gets up to speed and planning project turns into implementation project, handle implementation with a mentor
- Need to implement milestones and review process to ensure this stays on track and her SF skill levels match the clients needs at each phase.

Review and add documentation to DOT
- create 100% unit test coverage
- add exception handling
- document rolling DOT out to new developer account
- document removing NP Starterpack and installing NPower DOT
- Functional Requirements documentation for existing DOT implementation (this may help drive future revisions and changes)

MISCELLANEOUS
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Read/Subscribe to Salesforce Blogs
- http://gokubi.com
- http://www.davemanelski.com
- http://developinthecloud.wordpress.com/
- http://nonprofitcrm.org

- http://sfeducation.posterous.com/

Join Google groups
- NPower SF group – http://groups.google.com/group/npowersf
- general non-profit Salesforce group – http://groups.google.com/group/npsf

- new seattle oriented group: http://groups.google.com/group/seattle-non-profit-salesforce-users

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Salesforce Primer (from John Fine-Feb 09)
Some basic terminology in the SalesForce (SF) world:

• SF Instance = Your SF account that you signed up, customized and populated with your data.
• Objects = Tables, in db terms. You cannot see table data in its raw form, instead you must always see it via Forms or Reports (you can, however, export it easily if you want a spreadsheet-like view).
• Forms = How you view Objects. Unlike Access, in SF each Object has a built-in form that you can customize, but you cannot disconnect and reconnect to a different object, nor can you use them to view a query (since queries don’t exist!)
o Fields = just like Access, the text boxes, buttons, dropdown listboxes (these are called PickLists), etc, on a Form
• Tabs = the tabs you see across the top of the SF screen. Each Tab shows a Form (and thus an Object). There can be Forms which do not show up in Tabs.
• Applications = Nothing more than a set of Tabs.

App Exchange, where you find SF addons (this link filters for non-profit addons but there are many more at the home page for appexchange):
http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/category_list.jsp?NavCode__c=a0130000006P6IoAAK-86&

Where you find the 2 tools that make it easy to get your Data IN and OUT of SalesForce to/from CSV:
• DataLoader (SF’s own tool – fast and simple): http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Tools (this is where you can find all SF-provided tools. Click the Data Loader link)
• DemandTools (by a company called CRMFusion – free for non-profits – click the DemandTools link – powerful control over record import and VERY powerful record deduping) http://www.crmfusion.com/

Advanced Documentation on how to write code that customizes SF and integrates it with the outside world:
http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Documentation
• How to setup Eclipse with a Force.Com project (Called Force.Com IDE). These are the client-side tools you need in order to manipulate the code that modifies your SF instance: http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Tools Click on Force.Com IDE

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Topics for discussion:

• Data model overview (what's part of the DOT vs. standard salesforce)
• Data design (field types - master/detail, lookup, formula, rollup (limits, requesting more); custom objects - sane data model, reportability, editing page layouts, record types, custom vs. standard objects)
• Households & relationships (household names, adding/changing members, shared info among members, donor rollup fields; other donor relationships, reciprocal relationships)
• Campaigns (adding members, sending email, mail merge (household de-dupe), campaign combiner, campaign member statuses, campaign types)
• Communications - email (mass email, email templates, pros/cons of standard salesforce email)
• Communications - print (templates, mail merge, Word merge)
• Lead conversion (DOT lead conversion vs. standard vs. NPSP)
• Reports & dashboards (scheduling/run as vs. dynamic, custom report types/layouts)
• Security - profiles
• Security - roles, groups, etc.
• Conga Composer
• Demand Tools
• Email tools/Vertical Response
• Other third-party apps (Field Trip, Metadata Snapshot, inSitu Account Hierarchy)
• Nonprofit fundraising basics (in-kind gifts, tax deductibility, recurring gifts vs. pledge payments, common thank you practices, other common requests?)
• Validation rules
• Triggers