Blog
March 29, 2017
New Salesforce releases bring critical capability improvements and exciting innovation, but sometimes they also can be a bit overwhelming. With the release notes for each release now surpassing 400 pages, it can be challenging to figure out what are the most impactful enhancements your organization or institution needs to focus on. To help address that challenge, here’s a quick rundown to catch you up on a dozen new features and enhancements from the Salesforce Lightning Summer ’16 and Winter ’17 releases you should know about. The list also includes some examples of how you can take advantage of certain features. Want more? This is the first post in a 3-part series on key features for Nonprofits and Higher Ed in the most recent Salesforce Lightning releases so stay tuned!
Engagement Enhancements
*Also available in Classic. Emails are stored in a new Email object, which allows you to more easily segment emails from other activities. Emails can be reported on separately or together with other activities. You can still report on all activities—tasks and emails— using the “Activities” report type. In Classic, emails are included with completed activities in Activity History. NOTE: A corresponding Activity record is created for each email message so data storage needs to be considered when using this feature.
Do you prefer to send your emails through your email client instead of Salesforce? Well now you can configure Lightning to send your emails through your Gmail or Office 365 account. When you set up this feature, you’ll be able send emails directly via Salesforce too, and the email will appear in your Gmail or Outlook sent box.
I’m in love with this feature! There is now a very powerful email interface to send and forward emails directly from Salesforce. You can reply, reply all, or forward from the email detail page or activity timeline. Easily relate emails to multiple contacts, leads, and users. Initiate the email from the lead, contact, account, or opportunity record. Let’s say you need to send out an email to members of a household, copy staff members, and ensure the email touch is saved in Salesforce? No problem. You can now do this by simply initiating the email from the household account record and selecting both members of the household to receive the email. Additionally, you can copy staff members on the email as long as they are a user or contact in Salesforce.
*Also available in Classic. This feature simplifies the process of sharing a note with certain users or a Chatter group. Rich text provides the formatting you need to emphasize information and embed hyperlinks. Shared notes can be specified as read only to others. NOTE: Enhanced Notes must be turned on. Review the following information about enhanced notes vs classic notes and tips to establish a migration plan to activate Enhanced Notes. Activating Enhanced Notes will disable Notes from Notes and Attachments related list.
*Also available in Classic. The Send Text action switches to the messaging app on your device, opening a new message to the phone number in the record. The Send Text action is available for accounts, contacts, leads, and person accounts. The standard phone field on the record must be populated to send a text message. So, when you’re on the road and need to quickly relay a message to someone, you now have the option to send a text message directly from Salesforce1.
Efficiency Enhancements
As you start typing an account name, Salesforce will now suggest US company names for you to select and pre-populate the account information. A system administrator will need to activate this feature. It’s the “Enable Account Autofill” on the Account Settings page in Setup. This could be a time saver for users working with corporations that need to quickly enter a company into Salesforce, including basic information about the company. Additionally, the autofill works when entering the account name for a contact.
How great is this feature? You can now quickly and easily visualize your information, like upcoming recruitment events or proposals due to close, directly on a calendar. Calendar items belonging to the same object are denoted by a specific color. No third party apps needed. Note: This feature is specific for each user. It does not create a calendar that can be shared across users.
With this enhancement, you can now view filters directly from a list view. No need to page through list view results; now they are all displayed on one page. Load results (50-100 per batch) as you scroll down the page until all results are loaded, with up to 2,000 results on one page. Using this approach, you can more easily select all contacts to add to a campaign. You can also view tabular list view results and visualization of your results, side-by-side. How cool!
Assistant provides suggestions for next steps for you to take action or dismiss. The actions that appear depend on the type of recommendation. Available actions include:
- Create a task
- Create an event
- Edit an opportunity
- Send an email
After an action is completed, the related recommendation is removed from the Assistant.
This allows you to quickly edit and delete records. You’ll get prompted for required fields in the Kanban edit mode. The Kanban is great for visual people like myself. Easily visualize your pipeline, like donor prospects in each stage or students in the funnel. Salesforce has made it even easier to manage certain types of records directly from the Kanban so now, as I work to qualify a prospective lead, I can move them to a new stage without even having to open their record.
Search Enhancements
As you type in the search box, instant results are returned across multiple objects, before even performing the full search.
When performing a search, you’ll now see Top Results for relevant record matches from your most frequently used objects. An object can be selected to narrow your search results to that specific object.
Chatter Enhancements
- Chatter Gets More Powerful With New Capabilities:
- Load up your feed posts with file attachments. Attach up to 10 files!
- Edit feed posts and comments *Also available in Classic
- See view counts for your Chatter posts to gauge how interested people are in a post or how well it’s placed. The count increases any time a post is commented on, liked, or its detail page is viewed.
- Include rich content and inline images in your Chatter posts.
- Play videos inline directly in your feed*Also available in Classic
- Mute a feed item from its detail view to no longer receive notifications about activities on the post unless you’re mentioned.
For more information on these and all new or enhanced features in the Salesforce Summer ’16 or Winter ’17 Lightning releases, be sure to check out the full release notes:
As always, we recommend reading all documentation carefully and testing any new features in a sandbox prior to rolling them out to your users. And, don’t forget to make sure your users are aware of the new features and are trained to use them effectively.
UP NEXT: Key features and enhancements from the Spring ’17 Lightning release!
