With Spring '17 newly released this past weekend, I dove into the 455 pages of release notes to uncover the things I thought would make the most impact to Salesforce Customers. 1. Search Lots of Search improvements this release means finding things in Salesforce is even easier. Search for Contacts with Account Name.
Full Answer
What is the best thing about Salesforce?
Create a robust, scalable architecture The best thing about salesforce is that it’s easy to add a field. The worst thing about salesforce is that it’s easy to add a field. Over-enthusiastic creation of fields and other features quickly swamps salespeople and other users. Be judicious.
How do you build a successful Salesforce project?
There’s no shortage of advice if you Google ‘salesforce project success’. Set clear goals. Align the salesforce project with your business strategy. Get executive buy-in. Manage stakeholders. Clean up data. Deliver training – lots of it. I don’t disagree. However, I find there is a problem. This advice is too generic.
Do all these things and your Salesforce project will fail?
Do all of these things and your salesforce project might still fail. We are after something different. We need the critical factors that guarantee salesforce project success. In other words, the drivers that apply specifically to salesforce projects. The things that, if you do not do them, mean that your salesforce project is likely to fail.
How to secure full user adoption of Salesforce?
Apply these four specific steps to secure full user adoption and a successful salesforce: Create an advantage to using the system. For example, for front-line sales people, it has to be easier to do their jobs using the system, than not using it. Create a disadvantage to not using the system.
What are you trying to accomplish by using Salesforce for Advancement?
What are you trying to accomplish by using Salesforce for Advancement? Take time to engage with key staff and collaborate on goals. Ensure each team member has approved the Advancement plan before moving forward on the project.
How to connect with Salesforce?
5. Connect with a Salesforce Expert 1 Implementation partners are ready to work with you to customize and set up your Advancement solution (all are Salesforce certified). 2 There are also amazing product partners who have built a product on top of the Salesforce platform, and their solutions can be found on the AppExchange. Product partners take the highly customizable Salesforce platform and create something unique that does not come out of the box with Salesforce. 3 A Customer Success Architect is a Salesforce and industry expert who works to help your organization get the highest return on your Salesforce investment. CSAs start by aligning your teams on your overall vision and working with key stakeholders and partners to make sure your vision is executed effectively. They bridge strategy and execution and provide actionable guidance to help you innovate faster. 4 Strategic Services consultants are a part the Salesforce.org Customer Success Group. Working with Strategic services, customers implement highly impactful solutions that are built to scale and optimized for both the business and IT.
What is success metrics?
The success metrics are unique to your project and organization. How to be Successful: Have a metric for every problem you are trying to solve, and know how to measure that outcome. Let’s say one of your goals is to increase alumni engagement.
Do you need a large team to run a Salesforce project?
While you don’t need a large team to run your project, you do need the right team. It’s critical to get team members working in the same direction. Each team’s structure will look different depending on the size of the project or your organization. Many colleges and universities utilize a Center of Excellence to govern Salesforce projects on their campus, while others create a one-time project team. The most important part of either approach is understanding and assigning distinct responsibilities to members.
Improvements to Existing Features
There are various improvements to existing features (view all new features here ):
Improvements to Existing Features in Salesforce Lightning
View Account Hierarchy in Lightning – Account hierarchies give your team a bird’s-eye view of relationships between parent and subsidiary accounts. This feature is now available to Lightning Experience users with a bonus: you can customize hierarchy columns to show the information that’s most useful to your teams.
New in Salesforce Lightning
Create shortcuts to your top Salesforce Pages with Favorites – If you’re familiar with the customizing tab sets in Salesforce Classic, you’ll appreciate the way you can personalize your Lightning Experience navigation with favorites.
Chatter
Chatter home redesign in the Lightning Experience – The Chatter home tab in Lightning Experience gives you more of what you want—customization. We introduced a new Company Highlights feed, the ability to create your own feeds with streams, a list of recent groups, and a way to share posts.
HEDA Releases Highlights
The Higher Education Data Architecture (HEDA) is a community-driven data architecture and set of best practices designed to configure Salesforce out of the box for Higher Ed.
Salesforce Advisor Link
Salesforce Advisor Link delivers insights to both advisors and students — promoting smart engagement at every point of interaction.
Release Like a Pro
Be an #awesomeadmin by developing your release strategy. We recommend a three step process:
What is sales path in Lightning?
The Sales Path functionality, which was released as an Opportunity feature when Lightning was first introduced, has been extended to Quotes and Custom Objects. This expanded functionality, which has been renamed Path, places records into steps in a business process based on a picklist and groupings of values for that picklist which has been defined by an administrator. Users can then view a step-by-step dashboard which groups records based on their place in the business process.
Can you use Lightning app in VisualForce?
Developers can now start building and testing single-page Lightning apps that make use of third-party JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Ember. While this is still a developer preview, this feature will ultimately give Salesforce-based companies the power to make better use of developers with experience outside of the Force.com platform. It is worthwhile to note that any components which use this functionality can’t be utilized in Visualforce pages or Communities.
Can Salesforce be used with Gmail?
Salesforce users can now do large portions of their job functions directly from Gmail. When viewing sent or received emails, users can see relevant Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities from Salesforce. They can also view most of the information surrounding a given record that they can in Salesforce: edit the record, search for other records, or create new records. This feature is immensely valuable to any user whose role necessitates that they work from Gmail for a large portion of their workday since it eliminates the need to switch back and forth between 2 tabs in their browser.
Does Salesforce have artificial intelligence?
Salesforce has built powerful Artificial Intelligence capabilities into the platform , allowing apps, communities, and business processes to effectively learn from the data available to them. It possesses the capability to:
How does Salesforce project success depend on sales managers?
Salesforce project success depends upon sales managers and leaders using dashboards and reports to improve performance . It means each one has to be a coach, not a pundit.
What happens if you don't fully engage with your salesforce system?
If users do not fully engage with your system, then no matter what else happens, your salesforce project will not be a success. Too often, user adoption equates with training. That’s a mistake. Deliver as much training as you like and you still cannot guarantee salesforce project success.
Is full benefit realization harder to achieve?
Ironically, that means full benefit realization is harder to achieve. However when you do, the benefits are so much bigger. To secure those benefits, salesforce project success requires independent expertise, experience, advice and guidance. You’ve read the 10 specific drives of salesforce project success.
Is Salesforce a hard launch?
Salesforce project success requires a hard launch. Let’s be clear. In many businesses, a pilot with a specific group of users is a sensible thing to do. It contributes to salesforce project success. Likewise, a phased rollout is also logical.
Improvements to Existing Features
Improvements to Existing Features in Salesforce Lightning
New in Salesforce Lightning
Chatter
NPSP Releases Highlights
Heda Releases Highlights
Salesforce Advisor Link
Release Like A Pro
- Be an #awesomeadmin by developing your release strategy. We recommend a three step process: 1.Plan it out– Review available resources, log changes to existing processes or experiences, and review feature timing and new solutions. 2. Make it happen– Test in your sandbox then implement in your production org. 3. Share it– Review documentation, releas...