Tweet

The Case of the Missing Mascot

Introduction

There's just over a day to go to help the Trailhead team in the search for missing mascot Astro, so if you haven't already pitched in, get yourself over to :

https://developer.salesforce.com/trailhead/module/wheresastro

where you can earn the badge and even get the chance to win a prize*

Where’s Astro?

This is a somewhat different module to the others - rather than learning about a particular feature of Salesforce and then answering some questions or completing a challenge, you are instead helping to solve a mystery (where is Astro) by searching for clues in the Trailhead content.

The clues will direct you to other modules, so if you don't have the badges for those (really, you don't have them all?) its a perfect opportunity to improve your Salesforce knowledge while investigating. If I'd been setting this up we'd have to complete the modules, but the Trailhead team were clearly overwhelmed with worry about their missing mascot and went easy on us.

Of course, it wouldn't be Trailhead if you didn't have to carry out some setup and configuration,so you can expect to track the progress of your investigation in a Salesforce Developer Edition, much like Sherlock Holmes would, if the modern version wasn't on the BBC and thus not allowed to advertise products :)

There's no coding involved, and the setup is pretty straightforward, so this is very much a module for all (or no!) skill sets - when a mascot's life hangs in the balance you need all the help that you can get, especially people that aren't averse to leaving their computer and going outside!

Keeping Everyone in the Loop

One aspect that I particularly liked were the tweet buttons at various points that posted out cryptic updates about progress:

a great way to get others interested and let the concerned population know that the search continues at full steam. Continuing with the Sherlock Holmes association, this is the modern equivalent of the agony columns that featured in many of the stories.

Leaving Everyone Hanging

The first rule of earning the Where’s Astro badge is that you don’t talk about the outcome of the investigation. If you don’t complete this module yourself you’ll have to wait until the Trailhead team spills the beans some time after the competition closes, and I hope you can live with yourself in the meantime.

As mentioned earlier, the search finishes on April 14th, so get your magnifying glass and deerstalker hat and join in while there is still time.

Follow @bob_buzzard

* Confession time - I didn't realise this was a competition until earlier today. What happened, as is always the case, is that I saw a new badge was available and I had to have it :)