Kik Minev

Blog
Web developer playing with clouds, LAMP, Symfony, JavaScript. Currently working as a Salesforce developer as part of the Taylor & Hart team.
Kik Minev
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01.

Hey there, I'm Kik Minev - web developer playing with clouds, LAMP, Symfony, JavaScript, Salesforce Apex. Currently working as a Salesforce developer as part of the Taylor & Hart team.

Why Salesforce? Pivoted to Salesforce when my colleagues needed a quick and efficient way to optimize business processes, sales and even manufacturing processes. That’s how I stepped into the Salesforce world, though most of my career has been focused on web with PHP. Strong love for the Symfony framework.

02.

My experience

Taylor & Hart - Salesforce and Symfony developer

Currently working as a Salesforce developer at Taylor & Hart where I help with accelerating business processes in sales and manufacturing. I spend my day mostly writing Apex code and lightning components in Salesforce or PHP/Symfony for web features.

Oxxy - CTO

As part of Oxxy I was leading the team as a CTO. We started and shipped a drag and drop website builder that allows small business owners to launch a website without any coding skills. For my tasks I used the Symfony PHP framework, MongoDB, javascript for the web builder and AWS as an ifrastructure.

Webfactory - Web Developer

At Webfactory I spent my days mostly coding with PHP and Javascript. As part of a web agency I worked on various projects for different clients up until I started working on Protect Your Bubble. Really thankful to the colleagues that gave me the chance to work on this project and helped me develop my skills.

Webfactory / Protect Your Bubble - Team Lead

I became responsible for launching the US web site and lead a team of web developers to deliver and support the project. Duties were a bit different as I needed to work in Atlanta and lead the team overseas. Also, working with a Fortune 500 company has it's perks. Thank you all for the warm welcome in Atlanta!

Digitalus - Web Developer

Digitalus was a hosting company from The Netherlands(later aquired by another company). Here we worked with PHP and Javascript.

SiteGround

Epic times! Great start in the web industry.

03.

What I work with?

Back in the days I started coding websites from scratch using PHP and some custom frameworks. Throughout time I worked with ancient frameworks like CakePHP, Zend and others. Nowadays I mostly work with Symfony. Trying to keep an eye on the Javascript world as well.

PHP
Back in time I started with PHP from around version 4. Usually with Apache and MySQL. These days we run mostly nginx.
JavaScript
The beginings was vanilla and jQuery. Later I worked with Backbone and Angular. Now I try to keep in touch mostly with the React framework.
Symfony
I love how robost Symfony is. The initial steep learning curve is paying off with the projects. During the years I've worked with Symfony for SaaS products, CMS and eCommerce systems.
AWS
My experience with the cloud is in AWS where I mostly use EC2 and S3. I also have some experience with RDS for PostgreSQL. During the years I used EC2 to scale Symfony web projects and MongoDB cluster databases.
Git
Git is what I use for version control. Checkout my GitHub. I use Gitflow in my day to day work.
Docker
For personnal projects I will use Docker to maintain my developement environment. In some companies we also worked remotely, in the cloud. In other companies even with k9s on localhost. Depends on the company;)
Salesforce Apex
In Salesforce I usually work with Apex code to develop new features. It shares the Java syntax and object-oriented features, but it's limited by the Salesforce environment.
Ligning Components
Not very often I develop lighning components to extend the Salesforce functionality.
PhpStorm
Though I started with Notepad, moved to Notepad++, Vim, Eclipse, these days I work with PhpStorm and IntelliJ with Illuninated Cloud for Salesforce development.

Author: kikminev

Marketing Cloud Next Already Looks Like a Big Step Forward

I’ve spent some time in the old Marketing Cloud to say this: it works, but it’s not exactly friendly. It can be slow, cluttered, and harder to navigate than it needs to be — especially if you’re just trying to get a campaign out the door.

That’s why Marketing Cloud Next already feels so promising, even without having used it in practice. The new interface looks cleaner, more modern, and far more intuitive. It seems like Salesforce finally focused on how marketers actually work, not just on adding more features.

Everything about Next suggests less friction — fewer clicks, clearer workflows, and a platform that doesn’t fight you at every step. If the experience lives up to how it looks, this could be a huge improvement over the old Marketing Cloud and a much nicer place to spend your day.

Here is some more information that I stumbled upon on Salesforce Ben:

https://www.salesforceben.com/6-reasons-why-marketing-cloud-next-may-really-be-the-next-big-thing-in-salesforce/

Process Automation and Its Impact on Small and Medium Businesses

Understanding Process Automation

Process automation refers to the use of technology to perform recurring tasks or processes in a business without manual intervention. This can involve the use of software, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, or other digital tools to streamline operations, reduce human error, and increase efficiency.

At its core, process automation eliminates repetitive and time-consuming tasks, allowing employees to focus on more strategic and creative activities. From small businesses to large enterprises, automation can be applied in various departments, including finance, human resources, customer service, and supply chain management.

Continue reading “Process Automation and Its Impact on Small and Medium Businesses”

Making the Case for Salesforce: From Skeptic to Supporter

Why Salesforce is Worth the Investment: Powerful Automation for Every User

At first, I was skeptical about Salesforce, mainly because of its high price tag. I wondered if it was truly worth the investment, especially when compared to building custom software solutions. Being a PHP developer capable of addressing business needs with custom solutions, I was particularly doubtful. I assumed that custom development or other affordable but basic CRMs would always be the better option. But then, I saw real-life examples of businesses cleverly using Salesforce to automate processes while focusing on their core operations—without the constant need to coordinate the development and delivery of custom software.

Over time, I realized that custom-made software comes with its own challenges—it’s expensive, takes longer to implement, and often requires multiple costly iterations to get right. Additionally, as business requirements evolve, companies relying on custom solutions remain dependent on programmers or software vendors for even the smallest updates.

Continue reading “Making the Case for Salesforce: From Skeptic to Supporter”

Evaluating Dynamic Formulas in Apex – A Game Changer for Salesforce Developers

With the Spring ’25 release, Salesforce has introduced the ability to evaluate dynamic formulas directly in Apex using the new FormulaEval namespace. This enhancement provides developers with a flexible and efficient way to work with formulas programmatically—without having to rely on hardcoded formula fields or complex workarounds.

Previously, if developers needed to evaluate formulas dynamically, they often had to rely on custom logic, additional fields, or even external processing. Now, with this new feature, Salesforce allows us to create and execute formulas on the fly, significantly improving the efficiency and flexibility of Apex code.

Continue reading “Evaluating Dynamic Formulas in Apex – A Game Changer for Salesforce Developers”

“problem: No package.xml found” when deploying to Salesforce via Workbench

Recently I had to delete apex classes and since doing so using Workbench is one of the easiest way I went for it. With Workbench you can deploy a package.zip file that contains the files you want to delete in a specially formatted destructiveChanges.xml and a package.xml. When using mac I stumbled upon a problem:

problem: No package.xml found

Continue reading ““problem: No package.xml found” when deploying to Salesforce via Workbench”

How to return an array of entities with JsonResponse in Symfony

When you work with doctrine entity methods they will usually return a collection of objects and if you try to serialize them with JsonResponse it will not work. The solution is to use getArrayResult when fetching the entities.

To return an array of entities with JsonResponse in Symfony using getArrayResult, you can follow these steps:

1. Fetch the entities: Use your repository to fetch the entities you need with getArrayResult.
2. Return the JSON response: Use the JsonResponse class to return the fetched data.

Continue reading “How to return an array of entities with JsonResponse in Symfony”

How to calculate the time between two DateTimes in Salesforce apex

Calculating the time between two `DateTime` values in Salesforce Apex is a common requirement for many applications. Whether you need to determine the duration of an event, calculate the age of a record, or measure the time elapsed between two actions, Apex provides straightforward methods to achieve this.

Continue reading “How to calculate the time between two DateTimes in Salesforce apex”

How to Get Salesforce Instance URL in Apex Code

When developing applications within Salesforce, there may be times when you need to retrieve the instance URL for various purposes, such as building dynamic links or performing API integrations. One efficient way to obtain the instance URL is by using the getOrgDomainUrl method in Apex. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to do this in a simple and straightforward manner.

Continue reading “How to Get Salesforce Instance URL in Apex Code”