Blog
October 25, 2024
Attain Partners expert Michelle Schafer shares insights on Education Cloud and the Winter ’25 Release
It’s been a busy 2024 for Attain Partners. As a member of our higher education consulting team, I’ve participated in multiple projects that migrated clients to the newer Education Cloud from both the EDA (Education Data Architecture) and NPSP (Non-Profit Success Pack) architectures, and a few projects that implemented Education Cloud from ground zero. It has been a lot of fun to work with our clients as they implement Education Cloud and see what exciting features Salesforce continues to roll out with each release.
Optimizing the student experience with Omnistudio
Omnistudio is a major component of our Education Cloud implementations. We’ve built a handful of customized Flexcards, Omniscripts, DataMappers, and Integration Procedures to support each client’s unique needs. An example of a Student Portal built entirely on Education Cloud with Omnistudio is the MyMU Student Portal. In fact, we highlighted this exciting initiative by Marshall University to engage its student body at Educause 2024 as part of our Education Cloud Trailblazer Forum. Custom-built components include the ability to favorite resources and utilize Omnistudio Integration Procedures to connect directly with the Student Information System and display real-time student data.
Updated designers improve user experience
With the Winter ’25 Release, Salesforce has added new designers to make building Omnistudio components easier and tailor even more to each client’s needs. The new designers offer an enhanced user experience, with data mappers and integration procedures resembling the way we currently build flows. The ability to create and update a Data Mapper directly from the Integration Procedure page will be a game changer as we continue to build out Omnistudio components. The designers also include updated styling, colors, and font features, and I am looking forward to trying out the new, but familiar, Admin experience for Omnistudio.
Flow testing to ensure seamless operations
In addition to utilizing Omnistudio capabilities, we build a lot of flows and automations to support our Education Cloud clients to keep the user experience for both internal CRM users and students a seamless one. Now, with the Winter ’25 release, building and testing our flows gets even easier. We can now see scheduled flow limits and test the flow behavior with the template-triggered prompt flow debug tool. Being able to see the limits before deploying and activating the flows will be a game changer, as we do see clients run into flow limits from time to time when automation runs on large numbers of records at once.
Increased capacity for Flow Actions
Another awesome Flow update with the Winter ’25 release is related to Flow Actions and sending emails directly from Flow. Previously, we could only send emails from flow action to five recipients at a time. To work around this, we would add recipient count functionality within the flow and take different paths in the flow depending on whether we had five or more recipients. With the new increase to 150 email addresses, we will encounter this scenario far less frequently and may be able to remove the check altogether for future clients.
I’ve only covered a few of the Winter ‘25 features I’m looking forward to utilizing with our Education Cloud clients in the near future, but there are more you can read up on in the Salesforce Winter ’25 Release Notes. Check it out here and let us know which updates are most exciting to you!
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About the Author
Michelle Schafer is a Principal Consultant at Attain Partners focused on Salesforce implementations for higher education clients. Michelle has been in higher ed for over ten years and brings expertise from both the user/client perspective and the technical side with prior experience in Registrar, Provost, and IT offices. She has a passion for helping clients produce creative solutions using Salesforce and supporting tools.
