Hands-onBeginner 25 min· Platform basics · 2 of 17

Get a free Developer Edition org and start Trailhead

Create your own free Salesforce Developer Edition org, find your way around Lightning Experience and Setup, and start learning on Trailhead. Every later lesson in this track assumes you have done this.

In this tutorial you will create a free Developer Edition org (a full Salesforce environment meant for learning and building), sign in, explore the screens you will use every day, and create a Trailhead account to learn with guided modules.

You need only a laptop or desktop, a modern browser and an email address you can open. No payment details are needed. A phone is possible for reading, but building is much easier on a computer.

Two kinds of free org

Developer Edition and Trailhead Playground

Org	What it is	Best for
Developer Edition	A free, full-featured org you sign up for directly	Building your own projects (like the one in this track)
Trailhead Playground	A Developer Edition org created through Trailhead for its hands-on challenges	Completing Trailhead badges

You can use a Developer Edition org for Trailhead, and Trailhead can give you playgrounds as well. Some Trailhead modules need a special org and will tell you so. Use your own Developer Edition org for the projects in this track, so that a Trailhead reset never touches your work.

Keep your org active

Free orgs are meant for learning. Salesforce may deactivate or delete a Developer Edition org that is not logged into for a long time. Log in regularly, and keep notes or exported metadata of anything you cannot afford to lose. Do not put real customer data in it.

Create your Developer Edition org

1Open developer.salesforce.com/signup in your browser.
2Fill in the form: first name, last name, email, role, company, country and postal code. Company can be your college name. Use an email address you can access now and in future.
3Set the Username. It must look like an email address (for example yourname.sfdev@example.com) and must be unique across all of Salesforce, so add something distinctive. It does not need to be a real inbox.
4Accept the terms and click the sign-up button.
5Open the verification email, click the link, and set a password and security question when asked.
6You land in your new org. Note the web address in the browser bar: it contains your own My Domain name, and this is your org's home.

Save your login details

Store the username, password and org URL in a password manager or a notes file. Next time, you can sign in at login.salesforce.com with the username, or use the address of your own My Domain.

Find your way around Lightning Experience

Salesforce's modern interface is called Lightning Experience. These are the parts to know:

The screen at a glance

Part	Where	What it does
App Launcher	Grid of nine dots, top left	Switches apps (Sales, Service) and opens items and tabs
Navigation bar	Row of tabs below the top bar	The tabs of the current app, such as Accounts, Contacts, Reports
Global search	Top centre	Searches records across objects
Setup	Gear icon, top right, then Setup	Where admins configure the org
Setup Quick Find	Search box at the top of the Setup menu	Type a word (for example "Profiles") to jump to a setup page
Object Manager	A tab at the top of Setup	Where you edit objects, fields, page layouts and more

Take a ten-minute tour

1Click the App Launcher and open the Sales app (if it is not already open).
2Click the Accounts tab, then New. Create an account named Brew & Bean. Save it.
3On the account page, find the Related tab and the Details tab. Click Details and edit a field.
4Open the Contacts tab and create a contact Asha Rao with Account Name Brew & Bean. Go back to the account: the contact is now listed there. That is a relationship between two objects.
5Click the gear icon, choose Setup, and type Object Manager in Quick Find. Open it and click the Account object. Look at Fields & Relationships, Page Layouts and Validation Rules in the left menu. You will use all of these soon.
6Open Setup again and use Quick Find to open Users, then Users again. Find yourself in the list. Your user has a profile and a role (we cover these in the security lesson).

What you should see

Your account page shows a header with the name Brew & Bean, a highlights panel, and tabs called Related and Details. The Contacts related list shows Asha Rao. In Setup, the left menu has groups such as Administration, Platform Tools and Environments, and Quick Find narrows it as you type.

Menus in Setup get reorganised by Salesforce from time to time. If a path in this track does not match your screen, type the last name of the path into Quick Find, which is always the reliable way to reach a page.

Start Trailhead

Trailhead is Salesforce's free learning platform. It is organised into trails (a learning path), modules (a topic) and units (a short lesson, often ending in a quiz or a hands-on challenge). You earn badges and points, and you can show your profile to recruiters.

Trailhead teaches what each feature is. This track adds the why, the order to learn it in, and a project so you can practise like a working developer. Using both is the fastest route.

Set up Trailhead

1Go to trailhead.salesforce.com and choose to sign up or log in. You can sign up with email, or log in with your Developer Edition org's credentials, which links your org to your Trailhead account.
2Open your profile and set the profile to public if you want to share it later. Add a clear photo and a short line about what you are learning.
3Search for the trail Admin Beginner and open its first module. Complete one unit and one quiz.
4When you reach a hands-on challenge, Trailhead asks which org to use. Pick your Developer Edition org or a Trailhead Playground, and follow the on-screen prompts to connect it.
5Click Check Challenge. If it fails, read the message carefully: it usually names the field or setting that is wrong.

How to study on Trailhead

Do not just collect badges. After each module, close the page and recreate what it showed in your own org from memory. Interviews test whether you can build, not whether you can click Next.

Prompt · Ask AI to explain a Trailhead challenge error

I'm doing a Salesforce Trailhead hands-on challenge: [name of the unit]. The challenge checker says: "[paste the exact error]".

Here is what I did, step by step: [your steps].

Explain what the checker is probably looking for and which Setup page I should check first. Do not give me the whole solution; give me hints, one at a time.

What to expect: A good answer names a specific setting (for example a field's API name or a required checkbox). Verify against the unit instructions before changing things.

Habits that save time later

Org setup checklist

I can log in to my Developer Edition org and I saved the URL and credentials.
I know where Setup, Object Manager and the App Launcher are.
I created an account and a contact and saw them related.
I have a Trailhead account and completed at least one unit.
I know that real customer data must never go into a learning org.

Try it: Extend your tour

1. In Setup, find your Company Information page and note the org's edition, and your time zone and currency. 2. Create a second contact for Brew & Bean and an Opportunity (a possible sale) named Office coffee supply linked to the same account, with a close date and a stage. 3. Open the Opportunity and write down what related lists you can see. 4. Complete one full Trailhead module from the Admin Beginner trail.

Key takeaways

A free Developer Edition org gives you a full Salesforce environment to learn in; sign up at developer.salesforce.com/signup.
The username must be email-shaped and globally unique, but it does not need to be a real inbox.
App Launcher, Setup, Quick Find and Object Manager are the places you will use all the time.
Trailhead is free, hands-on and badge-based. Rebuild what you learn from memory.
Log in regularly and never store real customer data in a learning org.

Check yourself

Finishing the quiz marks the lesson as done.

1. Which is the best org to build your own long-term practice project in?

2. You cannot find a Setup page because the menu path in a tutorial looks different on your screen. What should you do?

3. What is the Salesforce Username requirement when you sign up for Developer Edition?

4. What does the App Launcher do?

5. Why should you rebuild what Trailhead showed you in your own org?

Saved on this device. Create a free account to keep it on every device.

What Salesforce is and the roles around it Data model: objects, fields and relationships

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