It’s no secret that I’m a huge Trailhead fan. I’ve written several posts about it. As much as I love Trailhead, I do find that the standard modules are a little tough for new people to see how it can be useful. That is where the Projects come in. The Trailhead Projects give you a goal and walk you through how to do something from start to finish, and in my opinion, it really helps to solidify how the platform can be used and what powerful things you can do without code.

Trailhead Project: Build a Battle Station App

This project is just a really cool one. With a new space related movie that is coming out this week (I think it has something to do with Wars in Space) this project fits right in. You get a chance to build an application on the platform that will help you monitor building battle stations. What more do you need to know?

The project consists of six steps to help you on your way to build the best battle station management app you’ve ever seen

1. First you create the app to generate the required base object, the tab as well as the app in the app menu.
2. Then you build out the fields required and the related objects to help you plan your battle station. These objects include resources (humans / aliens) as well as supplies (lasers / exhaust port covers) that you need.
3. Next you tweak the user experience to setup the page layouts, add some data and then create a roll-up summary
4. Then you’ll add business logic to help automate your data steps as well as creating validation rules to ensure data integrity.
5. Then you’ll create some reports and dashboards to help view your data
6. Lastly you’ll make it easy to create new battle stations on the fly in Salesforce1

People who are “Old Hats” at the platform may find this module a bit simplistic. Personally I think that’s ok. It’s designated as a Beginner module and it’s got enough personality in it to make it fun for the more advanced Salesforce admins.

Prizes!

There’s an awesome contest going on from December 17th 2015 until midnight on December 31st. If you collect the Build a Battle Station Trailhead badge during that time you’ll be entered to win some awesome prizes. Read here for more information, and good luck!