We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. If you're a Salesforce partner, then you know the Trailhead brand. It's long been Salesforce's engine for educating partners on the company's evolving product line. But given its success, Salesforce decided to experiment with spinning Trailhead off on its own as an online learning platform. After a two-year pilot period, the project seems to be a success as Salesforce announced it's making myTrailhead available globally. The end result boils down to a personalized version of Trailhead that companies will be able to use to easily build their own learning paths. The only catch is that you still need to be a Salesforce customer to use it. The idea behind myTrailhead is to let companies use it to offer their own branded learning programs to users they designate (usually employees) in addition to helping them learn how to use Salesforce's platforms. "Trailhead was the solution we created where we needed to create a culture of learning in our own ecosystem, and that platform is what we opened up with myTrailhead for customers to go use as a learning experience platform—with their own brand and their own content to empower every one of their employees to skill up at scale," explained Sarah Franklin, Executive Vice President of Developer Relations and General Manager of Trailhead at Salesforce. Launched globally on March 5, the myTrailhead online learning platform costs $25 per user per month as an add-on to existing Salesforce platforms such as Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, or a Salesforce platform license at the Enterprise edition level or higher. (Image credit: Statista) Franklin said myTrailhead will be used primarily in three areas: onboarding, ramping up skills for sales agents, and teaching skills to service agents. The learning is part of an employee's onboarding process in which they learn the skills of the job through what Salesforce hopes will be a fun learning environment via gamification. The gamification features consist of quizzes that earn users points and badges. Salesforce has awarded 12.5 million badges (points) through the Trailhead software since it launched in 2014, and 1.2 million "learners" have trained on the platform, according to Franklin. "You normally think of training as last on your to-do list but this makes it more fun," said Saideep Raj, Global Managing Director of Cloud First Applications at Accenture, which has adopted the myTrailhead platform for its employees. The Profile page shows an employee's skills and achievements. Image credit: Salesforce Salesforce's Approach to Online Learning Employers can track employees' progress in myTrailhead by viewing the reports and dashboards in Trailtracker and the Salesforce AppExchange. Managers give feedback on what they see in the TrailTracker. To customize their own learning paths in myTrailhead, users can create "trailmixes," which are online video playlists, similar to how playlists work in Spotify. Following the initial launch of myTrailhead in 2017, Salesforce had 12 pilot customers test the product and provide feedback to help the company develop its features further. Now myTrailhead pulls companies' existing content of videos or presentations and lets them build new content. Trailhead has been a platform that lets companies train employees on how to gain insights from AI in Salesforce Einstein, and they can also take a course on how to build an Einstein bot. Brands can continue to learn these skills in myTrailhead in addition to skills for their own companies' content. In addition to Accenture, customers that piloted myTrailhead include employees at Deloitte and Telstra Enterprise, a telecommunications company. Along with AI and blockchain, myTrailhead will provide training on robotic process automation, bots, and CRM software. Trail Tracker lets you track badgers earned from completed projects. Image credit: Salesforce Training Staff on AI Using myTrailhead For Accenture, Saideep Raj describes the myTrailhead platform as providing the company with a way for Accenture to train both its employees and clients on areas such as artificial intelligence (AI). "Regarding AI, with our technology you don't have to be a coder," Franklin said. "We provide the training to help people transition from a customer service agent into a customer service bot creator, for example," Salesforce's Franklin said. Accenture has fully embraced this philosophy, using myTrailhead to build custom learning paths across multiple technologies and employee types ranging from writers to IT services professionals, noted Accenture's Raj. The consulting company liked myTrailhead because of the bite-size learning assets and its continuous learning approach. The bite-size learning makes learning more practical, according to Raj. "If you can break it down in small chunks and form a habit, then you get much better results," he said. As part of Accenture's pilot in myTrailhead, it offered three "trails" of about 10 modules each. The first trail taught users how to use the AI skills in the Salesforce Einstein Analytics Platform along with previous Salesforce content. The second trail used Accenture's own material to train people on networking and relationship development. Meanwhile, the third trail provided leadership training. The trails were a mix of video tutorials and quizzes with badges given based on the number of correct answers. Teams were challenged to get the answers faster than employees in a different location. Employees would get a multiple choice test and then earn points based on whether they answered the questions correctly. Raj noted that the team building created a bond and a sense of community around learning. Teams in Germany were "really competitive" and aimed to beat users in the UK and North America, Raj said. Raj particularly like the micro learning or learning in small segments, regarding it as highly effective as part of a pattern of continuous learning. When people start and stop their training, material can become out of date, Raj explained. "It enables micro learning that's more practical," Raj said. "If you can break it down in small chunks and form a habit, then you get much better results. The feedback from the pilot was that it was a great way of learning." He added that the employees saw a lot of value in the training rather than it being just a chore. Accenture plans to extend myTrailhead to both its employees and its clients. Clients are in industries such as technology and consumer goods. As part of the trial, Accenture provided training to clients and employees in different use cases, including how farmers are using AI to increase the yield of their crops. This type of real-life example is what users remember, Raj noted. "That's what sticks in people's minds," he said. "They don't want to think about the technical examples; they want to know what does it do. Within 15 minutes, you can get seven different examples of the types of companies [using the technology], so you get real value-added examples." For companies such as Accenture and Salesforce, the ultimate goal is to train employees for the future in skills and not leave workers obsolete with old skills. "Nobody wants to be automated out of a job. And the good news is that all this innovation brings new job opportunities but we have to bring the people to those jobs," Franklin said. "We don't want to leave people behind, and that's why we're invested in not just Trailhead for our community but with myTrailhead to help our customers."

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