Lightning Web Components Specialist
A few post back I was talking about how some Superbadges were more super than others and the differences between modern and older Superbadges. In this post I said that I was avoiding the LWC Web Components Specialist due to its intimidating length. Well I finally knuckled down and competed it
This Superbadges is really part of the Certification system (yes I know they call claim to be but most are not). It forms part of the Certified JavaScript Developer 1 Certification. As such it’s both reasonable to expect it to be quite tough and also pretty hard for Salesforce to dramatically change this badge. So this is a pretty old-school Superbadge. It definitely earns it super title!
At 16,000 points this has to be one of then highest value badges in Trailhead. There are a massive 18 assessed steps to complete. They start off reasonably varied but it soon becomes quite repetitive. You will need to authenticate VS Code with your special DE Org and pull at least one LWC to edit. Quite why this pattern was not repeated is not clear. For the next quite a few steps you have to create a LWC and copy and paste the template HTML, JS and sometimes CSS into your new LWC.
All of the LWC creation is very similar. Read the (out of order) specifications, add the various properly configured components where the HTML comments indicate. Generally this part was pretty simple. The. Update the JS replacing the comments with real code. I found this harder. Not because the JS was hard , it’s not. But because the specifications seemed quite vague in places and the checks demand you do it exactly as they expect. Of course there are many ways to achieve the same results but you have to do it exactly as they want
At the end when you put it all together I was surprised that my LWCs that had passed all the checks failed on an actual page. I was even more surprised that this then passed the final checks: as long as the correct components were on the correct page in the correct place it didn’t matter whether they actually worked!
Maybe I’ll get round to the exam one day
How Super is Super
What are the differences between older and newer Superbadges? Are all Superbadges equal? Or are some a little less super?
As I continue to rack up the points and badges in a completely pointless quest to move up the Superqbit leaderboard I’ve been on a bit of a Superbadge rip recently. I’ve not quite completed every available Superbadge on Trailhead yet but that is at least in sight. As I’ve been working my way through them I’ve noticed a few things
Modern Superbadges vs Original
You can easily and immediately tell the difference between the original style of Superbadge and the modern once. One glance at the number of points for completion of the badge and you’ll know. Old school Superbadges will be 8000+ points. Some of them range up as high as 16000 points. For one badge! Modern superbadges break this down into a series of smaller Superbadge units. Each of these will be 1500-2500 points and each counts as a Superbadge on its own.
This has somewhat devalued the Superbadge. In the past each Superbadge was a considerable investment of time and effort. Perhaps 10-20 hours. It really meant something to get one. For me this meant spending a weeks worth of evenings to get one. With the new ones I can generally bang out a Superbadge unit a night. On the third night I can probably also do the “capstone assessment” to get the overall Superbadge. As you can see this means that, at least for me, the total badge has got easier. As can be seen from the points when are now consistently down in the 9000-10000 range rather than the 16000.
However by making them a bit more bite sized (although 1-2 hours once you’ve completed all the prerequisites is still a bit of time) it makes them much more approachable. I am far more likely to take on a Superbadge that I can complete in one night that one of the old monsters that takes a bit more effort to build up to. A good example would be the Lightning Web Components Specialist Superbadge. This is one of the handful I have left to do. It’s one I can do (both technically and I’ve completed all the prerequisites), It’s in an area I am interested in, But it’s 16000 points. It’s massive. So it’s still yo be done. Were this 4 separate Superbadge units I’d have done them by now
Not all Badges are Equal
The Apex Specialist badge is 13000 points and takes some time. The Advanced Apex Specialist badge is 16000 points and even harder. The Selling with Sales Cloud Specialist is 7000 points and is 90% data entry. It can be completed in a couple of hours. This disparity in complexity is somewhat disheartening (but does make for some very cheap points if you are levelling up).
Supersets?
Why are there only 4 Super Sets? And why is one this a Billing Super Set? Is Billing really a quarter of Trailhead?
Where is the Flow Super Set? There are probably more Flow Superbadges than any other subject.
It feels like Super Sets are a concept that was launched and then somewhat abandoned.
What’s Missing
The most obvious Superbadge or badges that I’d like to see added are in the AI area. Maybe we’ll see these in 2024
Turning Off "Use Partitioned Domains" for the Data Integration Specialist Superbadge
Don’t make the same mistake I did and lose your in-progress Superbadge org!
As part of my “quest” for All Star Ranger status in Trailhead I was completing the Data Integration Specialist Superbadge recently. Nothing in the badge is particularly challenging but I did hit one slightly frustrating point that I thought would be worth pointing out. I’m not going to offer any solutions to the challenges in the Superbadge itself so if you’re looking for solutions this is not the blog for you!
The superbadge calls out that you (may) need to make a change to your org setup as shown below.
If you are like me you probably skip most of the setup text in Superbadges and jump straight to the challenges to see what you actually need to do. I don’t see a lot of value in the positioning story - it adds nothing to the challenge. So I missed this.
If you miss this you’ll be able to complete the first few challenges and will suddenly hit a wall where the test just fails. And then you’ll go back up and see this note. If this happens don’t do what I did and just rush into making the change in your org. If you do this you’ll not only disconnect the org from Trailhead but you’ll not be able to log back into it and you’ll have to create a new org and start again from the start. Annoying!
Turning off “Use partitioned domains” changes the domain. This will disconnect the org from Trailhead. So before you turn off and deploy the changes make sure you have the username and password for your org. You can then reconnect it to Trailhead and continue with the superbadge.
Good luck on the trail!