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Tip of the Week – Salesforce Spring ‘18 Simplified (Part 3 of 3)

Tip of the Week – Salesforce Spring ‘18 Simplified (Part 3 of 3)

If you have seen our posts over the last two weeks then you already know that we have been rounding some of the top features of the Spring ‘18 Release of Salesforce. There are a lot of updates in this release and can all be a lot to sort through. That is why we decided to break it down a bit and give you a simplified guide to some of the top features.

Before diving in, If you would like to catch up with our previous articles, click here for Part 1, or Part 2.

Forest Spring Nature

Spring 18 Features – Part 3

Duplicate Jobs Feature

Rooting out duplicates in the system can be a big challenge for any organization. Anyone, from admins to users, hates dealing with dupes. Not to mention that duplicates can cause issues of efficiency and functionality issues, in addition to being plain old annoying. Salesforce is now introducing the duplicate jobs features, allowing you to report on, view, and merge duplicates in your system. Set up your validation rules and run the program in the background. This is an easy way to take control of your database, and prevent bad data from hurting your business. Previously, you could only do this through a 3rd party app, integrated to Salesforce, but it will now be a standard feature for Lightning.

LinkedIn Integration for Leads

These days, most business professionals have a LinkedIn account. The platform is a great place to network and connect with other professionals. So wouldn’t it be nice to generate leads from all those contacts? That is exactly what Salesforce thought. This new feature allows users to connect their Salesforce to LinkedIn ads. This Web2Lead style integration creates leads in Salesforce from ad clicks on LinkedIn. Available in both Salesforce Classic and Lightning, this is a great way to passively increases your daily lead flow.

Mass Quick Actions

Updating large volumes of records can be rather mind numbing for Lighting users. The default record updating function made the process slow and tedious, however, this is problem no longer. Salesforce has finally built mass actions into the system as a native feature. You can now perform mass updates for up to 200 records, all from a simple list view. Let the OCD flow through you, as you can organize and clean up all your records in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Flow Enhancements

There are quite a few enhancements for Flows in Lightning. The breakdown is as follows:

Flow Design

  • Better Flow Screens – Lightning Components allow you to build flow screens that look and operate in any way that you want them to.
  • Override the Default Header and Footer – Style customizations for both Lighting and Classic
  • Track Progress Through a Flow with Stages (Beta) – A developing feature so you can indicate a user’s point in any flow
  • Call JavaScript Directly from Your Flow with Local Actions (Pilot) – Pull data from an on-premises or private cloud database directly into your flow without going through the Salesforce server. Or do things directly in the browser, such as open a particular URL or confirm that a record was created with a toast message.
  • Upload Files Directly from a Flow – Don’t break your concentration or lose your place in the flow to add important documents
  • New Labels for Some Flow Types – Flow type changed to “Screen Flow”. Field Service Mobile is now called Field Service Mobile Flow, and Field Service Web has changed to Field Service Snap-In Flow.

Flow Distribution

  • Launch Flows as Subtabs in Lightning Console Apps (Pilot) – When records are opened in a console app and there’s an associated flow, the flow is autolaunched as a subtab.
  • Launch a Flow from an Object-Specific Action – Add flows to the action menu on your Lightning pages without hunting down the flow’s URL.
  • Start Flows Dynamically from Apex – Previously, you could start a flow interview from Apex, but you had to hardcode the flow name in your method.
  • Check Which Flow Translations Are Out of Date – When you change a flow that has translations, the affected translations are marked out of date in the UI and in bilingual export files.
  • Execute All Autolaunched Flow Interviews When Invoked in Bulk (Critical Update) – When flow interviews are invoked in bulk, they are now all executed. Previously, when multiple flow interviews were invoked in bulk, only the first interview was started and executed; the remaining interviews were discarded.

Expanded Paths

If you aren’t familiar, Paths are a feature of Salesforce Lightning that allows users to see a visual representation of where a record is in its life cycle and provides users advice  on what actions are needed based on the records current state. Starting with Leads and Opportunities, Paths have been very successful for guiding users and ensuring proper progress of objects through their life cycle.

For Spring ‘18, Salesforce is expanding the role of Paths to now include any standard object. Admins can take advantage, and ensure users have the proper directions they need for any object. Paths can now work for Accounts, Campaigns, Cases or any other standard object. A custom component setup allows you to build out your paths fairly quickly, and add an extra layer of knowledge for your users.

Conclusion

That’s it for the Salesforce Spring ‘18 Release. We hope you have enjoyed this series and that it has helped you digest all the information a little easier.

 

-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team

Tip of the Week – Simplifying Salesforce Spring ’18 (Part 2 of 3)

Tip of the Week – Simplifying Salesforce Spring ’18 (Part 2 of 3)

The Spring ‘18 release of Salesforce is big. Really big! So we have put together a 3 part series to simplify everything and highlight 15 of the top features. Welcome to part 2 of 3 of our guide to a simplified Spring ’18 Salesforce release. If you missed last week’s part 1, you can catch up here. For part 2 … read on!

Salesforce Surveys

Gathering quality feedback from clients and customers can be a key to growth and success and a source of giant headaches, all at the same time. While there are a large number of survey apps out there on the AppExchange, as part of the Spring release, Salesforce has created an intuitive survey builder. The easier it is to gather feedback, the better.

The best part about this feature, is that all your survey data is stored in your org, so you can view data, create reports and dashboards, and share insights within your company. This feature is generally available in Classic and Lightning Experience.

Data Privacy and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

Coming in May, new regulations in Europe will play a big role in shaping how companies use and collect data on individuals. Salesforce has rolled out a number of changes to help make it easy for you to approach the coming changes and remain compliant. Some specifics are:

  • New Objects
    • There are many new objects, and particularly the “Individual” object will help companies remain compliant. This object allows tracking of individual customers and their individual preferences and data.
  • Delete Log Files
    • GDPR states that individuals can request to have their data deleted, so Salesforce has added the ability to delete data, and the associated log files
  • Data Privacy Preferences
    • Spring ‘18 makes is possible to store specific preference for individuals
  • Email Read receipts
    • If desired, Salesforce now allows for preventing users from getting read receipts for email messages they send.
  • Additional Resources
    • Finally, if all of this feels complex, Salesforce has added plenty of resources to help guide you

Custom Navigation Bar

In last week’s post, we talked about the highly anticipated customization features included in myLightning, which allows users the ability to customize the look and layout of their screens. Another customization feature being added as part of this release is: users can now significantly modify their navigation bar.

In Lightning, you can now add any object, no matter how granular, to your navigation bar. Accounts, Dashboards or even individual records, or whatever object you need easy access to, can now be popped right onto your nav bar. Further navigation bar updates allow you to reorder items, rename or remove items that you’ve added and add temporary tabs for individualized sessions.

 

Image of two young businessmen using touchpad at meeting

 

CPQ (Configure Price Quote) and Billing Improvements

Salesforce CPQ and Billing offers an end-to-end solution for creating quotes, closing deals, settling invoices, and reporting revenue.  – Salesforce

What’s not to like about that? All directly in Salesforce.

For CPQ, Salesforce is adding:

  • Updated Visualforce pages and line selection abilities
  • The ability to track the status of background contracting jobs
  • Use of the Prorate Multiplier for Order Products

For Billing, Salesforce is adding:

  • Customized billing with dynamic invoice plans
  • Better tools to manage tax for credit and debit notes
  • Improved reporting tools
  • A new payment center to seamlessly manage invoices and payments
  • Pre-rated usage for order products

Community Calendars

The introduction of Community Calendars allows users to share and view calendars from their Lightning community. This is a great way to keep in touch with everyone in your community, plan group events and coordinate meetings. The details of your calendar are also customizable, so if you don’t want to see it on the side panel, no problem. Finally, you can choose who sees your calendar and add the calendars of other team members that you want to view. Simple but effective.

That rounds it up for today’s installment. We hope you learned something and will see you here next week for the final installment of Simplifying Salesforce Spring ‘18!

-Ryan and the CMB Team

Tip of the Week – Getting listed on the Salesforce AppExchange. Simplified

Tip of the Week – Getting listed on the Salesforce AppExchange. Simplified

Being on the Salesforce AppExchange is one of the hottest tickets in town (for technology solutions companies that is). After all, Salesforce is a pretty big deal. With almost 4 million users worldwide, Salesforce occupies almost 20% of the worldwide CRM market! That’s an astounding number! So if you are a company that gets your app listed with the 3000 or so other apps already on the AppExchange, you will get access to a very desirable market.

However, getting listed isn’t as easy as just filling out your name and email. Salesforce has a thorough system in place to vet potential Applications. You will need to create a profile, build a product, submit a business plan, and have your plan and product reviewed by a Salesforce rep. Not to worry, it’s a friendly process, just thorough. Of course, like most things Salesforce, they have broken down all the steps onto a simple trailhead page: making your journey to joining the AppExchange a little bit easier.

Click here to see the AppExchange Trailblazer Checklist

-Ryan and the CMB Team