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Mentz - The Story Continues

Introduction

It’s been over three months since I launched Mentz on an unsuspecting Salesforce ecosystem, and the results have far exceeded my expectations. I’d have been quite happy with a couple of people attempting the challenges that I mentored myself, but it’s fair to say we are well past that. At the time of writing (September 2019) we have 90 mentees, 24 mentors and 45 solutions that have been mentored. The standard of mentoring is incredible - a lot of very smart people are putting a lot of effort into helping others in their development journey.

Release, Review, Repeat

• Creating and maintaining the tooling around Mentz has been an interesting aspect for me, not least because of how wrong I’ve been about some of it. 
• My original plan was to have two stages in a solution lifecycle - mentoring and publication. A mentee would iterate on their solution based on mentor feedback and when they were completely happy with it, publish it for the wider mentee community to see and comment on. This was pretty much entirely unsuccessful and just caused confusion about where to post solutions. We now have a single place where solutions are published which anyone can access.
• Solutions were originally uploaded as chatter files until one of the Mentors asked me to turn on "Allow Inclusion of Code Snippets from UI” - now if the solution fits int the 10k chatter message limit it is uploaded as a snippet, which is a lot easier to respond to (thanks Adam Lasek).
• The challenges typically involved a class with multiple methods to be built out. While I always created my own (unpublished) reference solutions, as I’d come up with the scenario it didn’t take me very long. When a few solutions stacked up and I mentored them on a weekend, it took me almost all day! So I created a couple of short challenges to see what kind of reception they would get.
• I used to regularly post into the Mentor group to let everyone know if there were any solutions awaiting a response. This always lead to apologetic replies from the Mentors, which wasn’t what I was after at all - I just wanted to avoid them having to poll the org to see if there was anything they could help with. I replaced this with a lightning web component rendered in in the Mentors group home page that listed any unanswered solutions, which seems to have helped.

There have also been some other changes to try to make things easier/more interesting:

• A Suggestion Box repository for mentees (or anyone really) to suggest challenges they’d like to take
• The ability to lock a solution to a single mentor. The idea here is that a mentor claims a solution and is the only one (aside from the original author) that can respond to it. I haven’t turned this on yet as AFAIK we’ve only had one instance where two mentors were working on responses to the same solution at the same time.
• Mentee and Mentor leaderboards - people seem to like these so I’ve added them to the group home pages. I’m at the top of the Mentor leaderboard, but only because I mop up any solutions that haven’t had a response after a few days. I don’t have to do this, but I do feel a sense of responsibility having enticed mentees to join.
• The Mentz Salesforce CLI plugin now has a challenges topic that lists the available challenges (optionally including those already completed) and clones the repo for the user:

            $ sfdx mentz:publish --targetusername myOrg@example.com --all

              Select a challenge
              1) COLLECTION SIMPLE 1
              2) CONDITIONAL SIMPLE 1 (Completed)
              0) Quit

              Choose a challenge: 1
              Cloning repository = https://github.com/mentzbb/SimpleCollections1
              ...
             Done

What’s Next

As I wrote in my original Mentz blog post:

If things do take off, I don’t want to handle everything out of a single org myself, as that will limit scale. Instead I'll make the code available as a package so that others can host their own instance of Mentz, in their own org. We'll all use a common set of challenges, but the actual mentoring will be distributed.

With 90 mentees it feels like my first org is getting pretty close to as big as I want it to get, so it’s time to test the waters and see if anyone else wants to host Mentz. Here’s a few things to think about before you jump in:

• This will be a developer edition setup by me that you then take over - this isn’t (only) because I’m a megalomaniac, but more because I want to go through the setup a few times to get it documented before leaving people to face it on their own. The Mentz code will be deployed as unpackaged code  - it might be packaged up in the future, but at present it won’t add much and just adds more work for me :) It does also allow me to keep an eye on the standard of mentoring, as it’s been stellar so far and I’d like to keep it up there.
• There’s not very much housekeeping - mostly it’s emailing the Mentee/Mentor requestors and then executing a lightning action to convert the request to a user. I usually do half a dozen or so a week.
• The challenges are the same for every Mentee, all that changes is the org they post solutions to and who mentors.
• If you host a Mentz instance, be prepared to act as the Mentor of last resort - this doesn’t happen often, but I think it’s quite important to make sure that posts are getting answered. I usually allow about a week for the mentors to dive in and then start picking things up myself, usually over the weekend.
• Lots of people will register an interest and never even login - remember that this is Mentz where we do what we want, so this is absolutely fine. Never try to make people do anything, although it’s okay to check from time to time to make sure they aren’t trying and struggling/failing.
• You need to have some reach to attract Mentees/Mentors - I’d imagine it’s a bit dispiriting to announce this is happening and receive zero interest :)

If this sounds like the sort of thing you’d be interested in, fill in the short form at https://bobbuzz.me.uk/MentzHosting - it will almost certainly take me a week or two to do anything so don’t panic if you don’t hear back quickly.

Related Posts

• Mentz - Where We Do What We Want!
• Mentz - The Mentee Workflow
• Introducing Mentz - Salesforce Developer Mentoring

 

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Mentz - The Mentee Workflow

This post was updated on 03/08/2019 to remove the concept of separate mentoring and solutions chatter groups for a single challenge - this turned out to be confusing so we now have a single chatter group per challenge.

 

Introduction

Mentz has been around for a couple of weeks now and we’ve had our first solutions published from Jesse Twum-Boafo that received some great mentoring from Clara Perez. The one key thing that this tells me is that the process works - up until now it was only me that had been through this so I had no idea if it would work on anyone else’s setup. Now that I know it does I’ll start adding the rest of those people that have registered an interest in being a Mentor or Mentee, so if you have registered, look out for an email. 

I’m also getting rid of the ask that anybody registering be in the same timezone. I originally added this because I had some weird idea that people could only register for a single Mentz login, but I’ve since realised that this is bonkers - there’s no reason why someone can’t cut their teeth in my instance and then start/join another instance to leverage that experience. There’s also no reason why someone couldn’t have a login to every Mentz instance there is, although I’d be rather suprised if that was the case as Mentz is aimed at those that don’t necessarily have a huge amount of time. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Mentees

One area I don’t think I’ve done a fantastic job on so far is explaining the Mentee process, so a blog post dedicated to this seemed an appropriate next step.

Mentz Login

The first thing a Mentee needs is a login to a Mentz instance. Without one of these you are still free to work on the challenges, but you won’t be able to publish your solutions and receive mentoring. To sign up for a login, visit the Candidate Signup page. (I’ve also not been very consistent about what to call Mentees, but I hope to improve upon that!).

Git and Github

The Mentz challenges are hosted on Github and you need to use Git to create your local copy. If you haven’t used Git before, complete the Git and Github Basics Trailhead module.

Salesforce CLI Plugin

The next thing a Mentee needs to do is install the Mentz Salesforce CLI Plugin. This provides the solution publishing capability, ensuring that the solution is published to the correct chatter group in the appropriate format. 

If you don’t have the Salesforce CLI installed, head over to the Home Page and follow the instructions.

Once the CLI is in place, install the Mentz plugin by executing the following command:

sfdx plugins:install mentz

You can verify that the installation was successful by executing:

sfdx mentz -h

and confirming that you see the following output:

Mentz commands

USAGE
  $ sfdx mentz:COMMAND

COMMANDS
  mentz:publish publishes a solution, optionally asking for mentor feedback

Finally, authorise the Salesforce CLI to use your Mentz login:

sfdx force:auth:web:login -a MENTZ

when the browser opens, login using your Mentz instance credentials. The ‘-a MENTZ’ switch creates a shortcut alias of ‘MENTZ’ which you can use when submitting challenges - use anything you like here, but remember to replace any instances of ‘MENTZ’ in the examples below with your chosen alias.

And that’s it - you are now all set to take on a challenge.

Challenges

All Mentz challenges live at the mentzbb organisation on Github - each challenge has a brief description of what it covers:

Click into a challenge to see the underlying details and code. If you want to take a challenge you need to clone the repository and change some of the code. For the purposes of this post I’ll be using the SimpleConditional challenge as an example, but all challenges follow the same pattern.

First step is to clone the repository - there’s a helpful button on the challenge main page to steer you in the right direction

Click the ‘Clone or Download’ dropdown button and you can copy the URL you need to clone. 

I use Git from the command line, so from my home directory I execute:

$ git clone https://github.com/mentzbb/SimpleConditional1.git

which does its thing and produces the following output:

Cloning into 'SimpleConditional1'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 25, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (25/25), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (17/17), done.
remote: Total 25 (delta 7), reused 19 (delta 4), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (25/25), done.

The contents of the repository are as follows:

Where:

• CHALLENGE is a file that the Salesforce CLI plugin uses to determine which challenge this is.
• force-app contains the source format version of the challenge.
• README.md is the home page for the challenge repository on Github.
• src contains the metadata format of the challenge.

Completing a Challenge

To complete a challenge, you build out the sample class so that all the tests in the associated test class pass.

In the case of the SimpleConditional1 challenge, the sample class to be built out is SimpleConditional1.cls, and the tests from SimpleConditional1_Test.cls need to pass to complete the challenge. It doesn’t matter which of the source or metadata format classes you build out, and you only need to build out one of them.

Each method in the sample class has a comment that explains what processing it needs to carry out, e.g.

public static Boolean IsPositive(Integer num)
{
    // change this method to return true when
    // the number is greater than zero and false otherwise
    return null;
}

In order to run the unit tests, you need to send the code to a Salesforce instance. There are several ways of doing this, detailed in the following sections.

Scratch Org Development

If you want to develop against a scratch org, you’ll work on the source format code. Edit the code under the force-app directory and send to the scratch org using the command:

sfdx force:source:push

You can execute the tests in the org using the developer console, or the Salesforce CLI command:

sfdx force:apex:test:run -t SimpleConditional1_Test

Once you are happy with your code, you can request mentoring using the command:

sfdx mentz:publish -c "<comment>" -u MENTZ -m
     -f ./force-app/main/default/classes/SimpleConditional1.cls 

Where ‘<comment>’ is anything you wish to say to draw the mentor’s attention too.

Developer Edition Development

If you want to work against a developer edition, you’ll work on the metadata format code. You will need to authenticate the Salesforce CLI against the developer edition instance using the same approach as you did to authenticate against Mentz - don’t forget to set up a different alias!

Edit the code under the src directory and deploy to the developer edition using the command:

sfdx force:mdapi:deploy -d src -w 10 -u <username>

Where <username> is the alias for this org.

You can execute the tests in the org using the developer console, or the Salesforce CLI command:

sfdx force:apex:test:run -t SimpleConditional1_Test -u <username>

If you don’t want to actually deploy the code anywhere, but just run the tests, you can add the -c switch and ask the deploy command to run the tests using the following command:

sfdx force:mdapi:deploy -d src -w 10 -u <username> -c
     -t SimpleConditional1_Test

Once you are happy with your code, you can request mentoring using the command:

sfdx mentz:publish -c "<comment>" -u MENTZ -m
     -f ./src/classes/SimpleConditional1.cls 

Where ‘<comment>’ is anything you wish to say to draw the mentor’s attention too.

Using the Developer Console

If you don’t want to deploy the code, you can use the developer console as follows:

1. Open the developer console
2. Click the File menu and select New -> Apex Class
3. Name the Apex class SimpleConditional1
4. Copy the contents of the force-app/main/default/classes/SimpleConditional1.cls and paste this into the new apex class.
5. Save the class
6. Click the File menu and select New -> Apex Class
7. Name the Apex class SimpleConditional1_Test
8. Copy the contents of the force-app/main/default/classes/SimpleConditional1_Test.cls and paste this into the new apex class.
9. Save the class
10. Work on the SimpleConditional1 apex class as you usually would until all the tests in SimpleConditional1_Test pass.
11. Copy the contents of the SimpleConditional1 class from the developer console and paste this into force-app/main/default/classes/SimpleConditional1.cls in your local filesystem.

You can then publish a solution, optionally requesting mentoring using the command:

sfdx mentz:publish -c "<comment>" -u MENTZ -m
     -f ./force-app/main/default/classes/SimpleConditional1.cls 

Where ‘<comment>’ is anything you wish to draw the mentor’s attention to and the ‘-m’ switch adds a comment requesting mentoring.

Discussion

Once you have published your solution, a Mentor will pick this up when one is available. As the idea behind Mentz is that people dip in when they have time, it may take a few days before anyone responds. It will be worth the wait.  The discussion takes place in a chatter group dedicated to the specific challenge, so you just login with your Mentz credentials and start talking.

Still in Beta

Mentz is still in beta, so things are likely to change, for example:

• Now that Summer 19 is live and deployment from source format to non-scratch orgs is GA, the metadata format version of the challenges will be going away
• Separate commands and chatter groups for mentoring and publishing solutions may be merged.

Related Posts

• Introducing Mentz - Salesforce Developer Mentoring

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Introducing Mentz - Salesforce Developer Mentoring

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Introducing Mentz - Developer Mentoring

This post was updated on 03/08/2019 to remove the concept of separate mentoring and solutions chatter groups for a single challenge - this turned out to be confusing so we now have a single chatter group per challenge.

Introduction

Mentz is something I've been putting together over the last few months that is now ready to take it's first faltering steps on jelly legs into the wider world. It will allow me and others like me to share our experience with the next generation of Apex developers.

 What Mentz Is Not

Mentz is not Trailhead-like, as it there's no learning. badges or characters associated with it. There's plenty of that around already., It's more about digging deeply into various aspects of (currently) the Apex programming language to really understand it, rather than a follow-along copy/paste type of exercise, or one that sends you down a specific route without explaining why. If you just want to be able to understand enough Apex to skim read a class and figure out roughly what it does, Mentz isn't for you.

Mentz also isn't a scheduled course of sessions, as that is really hard to scale, and again there are also a number of existing options out there.

What Mentz Is

Mentz allows me to dip in and help people when I have some time, whenever that is. It allows fledgeling developers to get feedback from experienced professionals without formal sessions.

 The key drivers for me are:

• I want to encourage and assist more people to become Salesforce developers
• I can't commit to a set number of hours a week
• I can’t commit to being available at specific times

The first round of exercises are aimed at beginners, as they take a bit of time to write and I'm only one man. Hopefully others will get involved and help with this. A Mentz challenge currently consists of a stub class and a bunch of associated unit tests. You clone a repository, build out the stubbed methods and get
the tests to pass.

So far, so good, but nothing ground breaking here.

The interesting aspect is what happens next - having finished your class and passed the unit tests, using a Salesforce CLI plugin, you can then upload it to a Salesforce org and request mentoring. The class and your request then get posted to a chatter group specific to the challenge, and some point (hopefully not too much) later a mentor claims it. The mentor then takes a look at your class and comes back with some useful advice which can evolve into a discussion.

The benefits of this approach are:

• There are always going to be multiple ways to solve the same problem. Receiving guidance from a seasoned developer will help you understand the pros and cons of your approach, and what the other options are.
• As it's chatter, mentors and mentees can interact with each other wherever they are and on any supported device.
• It will be relatively straightforward to scale if there is interest - it's just a case of adding chatter users
• I can run it in a Developer Edition, as chatter posts don't consume storage and the files are very small. Obviously when my Ohana Edition idea becomes reality I'll run it out of one of those and make things a bit slicker, but for now this works fine.

What Happens Next

In the first instance I'm looking for a small number of volunteers to be mentors and mentees. If you want to mentor, you must be PD2 certified or have a solid and public track record of Salesforce development expertise. If you want to be a mentee then ideally you’ll just have started to learn to program and have chosen Apex. That will change over time as the challenges get more complex, but for now they would be trivial for an experienced developer to solve.

It will also help if you are a Mac user - I use this exclusively so I haven't tested the Salesforce CLI extension outside of MacOS. Although if you are on another OS and have experience of Salesforce CLI plugins, feel free to sign up but expect to be asked to test/fix the extension.

An additional requirement is that I'd like these people to be in much the same timezone as me if possible. It make sense to me that mentees in other timezones receive mentoring from developers reasonably local to them. If things do take off, I don’t want to handle everything out of a single org myself, as that will limit scale. Instead I'll make the code available as a package so that others can host their own instance of Mentz, in their own org. We'll all use a common set of challenges, but the actual mentoring will be distributed.

If you are interested in getting involved, then head over to the Mentz home page and follow the appropriate signup link. As I mentioned earlier, I'm looking for a small amount of volunteers to start with, so if you don't get accepted right away, don't fret, you’ll be on the list!

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