Salesforce Spring 17 Ideas Delivered
Once again Salesforce has delivered on Ideas. This release accounts for 71,400 points delivered; that’s right, I counted up all the points. As you can see in the release notes, Salesforce is focusing more and more on Lightning Experience. Although you’ll notice a lot of ‘Lightning Experience Only’, they are still accounting for feature adjustments in Classic as well. Let’s dive in and take a look at the Ideas delivered with this latest release:
Lightning Experience
Take More Actions from the Global Actions Menu - The Global Actions menu now displays nearly all global actions from the Salesforce1 and Lightning Experience Actions section of the global publisher layout. Salesforce says ‘nearly all’ because it doesn’t support standard chatter actions like Post, File, Poll, etc… The Idea delivered was Allow customization of the Global Actions Menu in Lightning, 480 pts.
Detect and Merge Duplicate Companies and Contacts in Lightning Experience - Ah duplicates, duplicates...There’s a Lightning component called Potential Duplicates which you can add to the Account or Contact pages using the Lighting App Builder. As long as you have enabled duplicate and matching rules for Accounts and Contacts and permission to merge records in Salesforce Classic, you can deduplicate up to 3 records. Many Ideas were delivered with a collective point count of 22,240, some of which include:
- Customize Columns on Step One of Merge Accounts (10,200 pts)
- Account Merge to Maintain Parent and Child Hierarchy (1,200 pts)
- Merge Contacts Across Accounts (9,970 pts)
- Redirect to Final Merged Account After Merge Accounts Wizard (240 pts)
- We Want to See More Than 50 Lists for Merging Accounts and Contacts (220 pts)
Knowledge: Say Hello to Lightning Knowledge (Beta) - This works just like any other object in Salesforce including the benefits of standard objects. Lightning Knowledge is best for organizations new to Knowledge or for existing organizations that can easily consolidate to one article type, have few data categories, and use single-language mode. The Idea delivered was Workflow Rules and Email Alerts for Knowledge with 3,300 pts.
Streamline Your Screen with a Unified Knowledge Home Page and List Views - Unlike the two tabs in Classic, Lightning Knowledge has one centralized home page. It has the list view feature we’re all accustomed to with other objects; custom and standard. Ideas delivered include:
- Article Management Views (990 pts)
- Knowledge: Search by Channel (380 pts)
- Add a View on Article Management page to show Articles Published by 'Me' (410 pts)
- Edit button when viewing article (220 pts)
- Ability to Rename Knowledge One TAB (670 pts)
- Make it easy to view individual user's knowledge draft queue (170 pts)
Both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic
Run Flows with a Lightning Skin (Generally Available) - I’m super excited about this one and agree with the title of the Idea delivered; Screen Layout in Visual Workflow / Flow Should Not Suck, 320 points. Flows are very useful, however, the historic UI and navigation has left something to be desired. All you have to do is go to Process Automation Settings and enable Lightning runtime.
Manage Duplicate Person Accounts - Now you can manage duplicate rules for Person Accounts just like you can for Contacts, Leads, and Business Accounts. It’s nice to see Person Accounts getting more attention. The Idea delivered was Enable Duplicate Management for Person Accounts with 3,590 pts.
There’s a lot of really good feature and enhancement suggestions continuing to come out of the IdeaExchange. Do you have other favorite Ideas delivered in this latest release I didn’t mention? Please feel free to comment below, on our Facebook page, or directly at me on Twitter @LeiferAshley or in the Success Community.
