Are you ready for the Winter ’18 Salesforce release? It’s right around the corner! After reviewing the release notes, here is a list of the 12 most interesting updates.
1. Business Intelligence
Einstein analysis can be produced in one click. The Einstein app analyzes best practice key performance indicators with Salesforce data and then recommends the best charts and widgets to use. Also new in Sales Cloud, Einstein opportunity scoring allows sales reps to prioritize opportunities by a score.
2. Phone Calls
With Lightning Dialer Local Presence enabled, a sales reps can make a call with a phone number that shows up on a recipient’s caller id as a local number which makes it more likely the person will pick up the phone.
3. Email
Sales reps can view a contact’s lead score and engagement history from within Outlook using a feature called Engage for Outlook. They can also track which contacts open emails by turning on open tracking.
4. Documents
Quip files are now integrated into the platform. Teams can add Quip documents to any of their Salesforce records as well as add Quip documents to Chatter.
5. Live Agent
In Service Cloud, agents can now have multiple conversations using Live Agent in Lightning. There is also a new Field Service app for Android with offline workflow and scheduling.
6. Productivity
Over 24 new components have been created including one for onboarding customers. New Lightning themes have been introduced including dynamic themes to allow you to define multiple branding sets such a different customer groups or resellers. In addition, 29 new accelerators will guide you through specific business challenges like custom field clean up, quick starts, and health assessments for Marketing Cloud and Pardot. Also check out, Salesforce DX which contains a collection of new features that improve the application lifecycle management of apps.
7. Advertising
Previously, measuring Facebook lead generation in Advertising Studio was limited to ads up to the form fill. Now Pardot and Sales Cloud can be connected to Advertising studio. A dashboard displays how ads performed on key business metrics to see the effectiveness of Facebook and Instagram campaigns. Administrators can also send an SMS to a marketing campaign.
8. E-Commerce
Commerce Cloud can now create meta tags rules to help search bots find products on their sites easier. A new catalog module also helps merchants manage product categories visually.
9. Health Cloud
Lightning is now available in Health Cloud. The Empower Timeline can be used to see a history of clinical and non-clinical events for a patient. Household mapping is new too and can be used to view relationships in a family.
10. Security
Shield has added new encryption security to PII in Leads, Accounts, and Contacts; and data posted on Chatter.
11. Big Data
Big Objects and Async SOQL lets you now store and query massive volumes of data directly within the platform, and Big Objects make it possible to keep billions of records on the platform.
12. Internet of Things
IoT Explorer is now integrated into the platform allowing you to read device data.
Review the full release notes here and don’t forget to take your release exam! Have fun exploring.
Interested in learning more from Silverline’s expert team? Connect with us in a few weeks at Dreamforce. Check out what we’re doing all week long.