Blog

Writing on Salesforce.

Notes from real Salesforce implementations, not slideware. Agentforce, Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud), and Marketing Cloud, with the identity resolution, consent, and CloudPages details that only show up once you ship. Written by an architect who has lived in the debug logs.

• Oct 2026 Zero Copy Isn't Zero Cost. So What? Zero copy in Data 360 skips the copy, not the bill. You pay every time the data is read, and the data lake sends its own invoice. Here's how to tell when it's the cheap option and when it isn't.
• Sep 2026 Data 360 Doesn't Build a Golden Record. So What? Identity resolution in Data 360 links records instead of merging them. That sounds like a technicality. It changes how you design, what you promise the business, and where your send-time surprises come from.
• Sep 2026 The Use Case Lives in the Overlap Every AI project starts with a list of things someone wants it to do. Two tests decide which of them are real use cases: is there a number it can move, and can the agent get to the data it needs? Miss either one and it isn't a use case yet.
• Sep 2026 Identity Resolution in a Shoebox A relative handed me 120 scanned files of family history. Census pages, ship manifests, naturalization cards, death certificates. No index, no shared key, and three pairs of relatives sharing a name. I've solved this problem before, just never on paper.
• Aug 2026 I Built a Second Brain That Writes Itself My notes used to be a graveyard. Now an agent files them, closes the loop on what I finished, and every Friday tells me what I've been avoiding. Here's the architecture, the one skill that changed how I work, and the discipline that keeps it from rotting.
• Jul 2026 Salesforce Released an MCP Server. I Used It to Cut a Marketing Cloud Build in Half. Salesforce shipped an official MCP server, so I pointed Claude at a real IP warming solution in my Marketing Cloud org. It read the live schema, recommended simplifications, and helped me cut the moving parts roughly in half. Here is what that actually looked like.
• May 2026 Fixing CloudPagesURL When SFMC Click Tracking Breaks Your Links Your CloudPage works in preview, then breaks in the live send. The culprit is click tracking corrupting CloudPagesURL parameters. Here is the two-line fix.
• Aug 2025 Planning for Identity Resolution in Salesforce Data 360 Before you touch a single matching rule in Data 360, two preparation steps will save you time, credits, and frustration.
• Aug 2025 Identity Resolution in Salesforce Data 360: The Keychain Behind the Unified Profile Most people understand why identity resolution matters. Fewer understand how it actually works, and why the keychain model beats the Golden Record.
• Apr 2025 Beyond the Checklist: Why Data 360 Is About Outcomes, Not Just Features Good implementations deliver all the features. Great implementations drive outcomes. The difference is everything.
• Dec 2024 Immediate Action Drill: Four Data Fixes to Make Before Data 360 Every Data 360 problem I've untangled traces back to data that was never ready for it. Four checks you can run this week, and what each one breaks if you skip it.