How to install custom components in Salesforce Trailhead Playground Orgs

3-minute read

(Originally published on InfoWorld)

Salesforce Trailhead trainings are a great way to learn Salesforce, and you may have noticed that some of the hands-on challenges require installing components. If you’re using a Developer org to do this, the instructions are easy to follow. However, if you’re using a Salesforce Trailhead Playground org, some components are kind of a pain to install. Salesforce thoughtfully provides instructions for how to do this in 11 steps, which I find a bit too time-consuming and confusing. I have found a slightly different approach that seems (at least to me) simpler, and I will leave it to you to decide which you prefer.

The instructions for installing the component (see screenshot below) will often be provided well before the challenge, and the trick is to avoid the frustration of trying to log in to a Playground org when prompted with the standard component installation URL.

Step 1

Decide for yourself whether you will read through the full lesson or skip right to the challenge. When you get to the challenge, open your Trailhead Playground org in a new window by right-clicking on the Launch button.

Step 2

Log in to your Trailhead Playground org.

Step 3

Go back to the lesson screen and copy the component installation URL without the domain (for example, packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04tj0000001mMYP). This is the package path.

In some cases, the installation instructions will have a link without the URL on the page. In this case, right-click on the link and copy the target to get the URL, then paste it into a text editor to extract the portion following the domain.

Step 4

With the package path in your clipboard, paste it after the domain name of your Playground in the window where you logged in and press Enter.

Step 5

Once the installation screen comes up, you can continue as instructed in the Trailhead lesson.

I have tested this on both Chrome and Firefox running in Windows 7. Your results may vary with a different combination of browsers and operating systems.

Update: The new Salesforce Trailhead UI may take you to the Salesforce Trailhead login page. No worries. Copy the login URL and strip the characters before and including “startURL=”, paste into https://www.urldecoder.org/, and strip all of the characters including and following the first “&” to get the package URL.

Senior Director Scott Nelson has over 20 years of experience working with the full delivery life cycle of solutions for system integration, process automation, and human workflow applications.