Top 10 Salesforce Winter ’17 Release Highlights

Salesforce is rolling out over 300 new features and updates under the Winter ’17 Release. I checked out the release notes and found many simple enhancements and new features in Lightning Experience that will allow us to use the best CRM system more efficiently and effectively.

Here are my top 10 noteworthy features from the Salesforce Winter ’17 Release:

1. More efficient Lightning Experience navigation and custom apps 
Speed is no doubt a main consideration in any user interface. Without sacrificing the ease of usage the Salesforce Classic offered, the new Lightning Experience allows more efficient navigation through its newly designed horizontal navigation bar. The menu items are now labeled descriptively instead of the icon only display.

The redesigned App Launcher is a much welcomed change as it allows switching between apps and allows for easier access of available items and features. You can brand your apps by customizing the color and uploading a logo. An option to include a utility bar and lightning page tabs in the Lightning app is also available.

The Lightning App Manager shows connected apps and Salesforce apps, both Classic and Lightning which makes it easier to manage the apps. Faster, smarter, and better sum up the new Lightning Experience!

2. Field-Level Help in Lightning Experience
The field level help feature is a Salesforce Classic favorite. Now, it’s available in Lightning Experience and even made better. Just hover over the info icon next to the field and help can be viewed.

3. Faster multiple records creation in Lightning Experience
Another new feature in Lightning Experience is the Save & New Button that paves way for user efficiency. You can now create records repeatedly wherever page you are in the app.

4. Preserve expanded and collapsed details in the Record Details tab are preserved in Lightning Experience
Another very helpful feature that was lost in the initial Lightning release and is now back, is the preservation of the expanded or collapsed Record Details tab. You can now visit other areas in the Salesforce and come back to the record details and the sections you collapsed will remain collapsed.

5. Improved usability of the relating a Contact to Multiple Accounts feature
The Contacts to Multiple Accounts feature allows you to easily manage the relationships between people and businesses by: 1) indirectly relating person accounts to business accounts, 2) triggering actions for the Account Contact Relationship object, 3) creating validation rules for the Account Contact Relationship object, and 4) viewing, creating and editing account-contact relationships from Community Builder-based templates. There is also a new functionality called View Relationship action that will help you manage contact record relationships.

6. Merge duplicate leads in Lightning Experience
In managing huge amount of data, it is very important to have a mechanism to get rid of duplicates. With the newly improved Lightning Experience, you can now find duplicate lead records and resolve them, preventing users from contacting the same lead twice.

7. Contracts in Lightning Experience
Lightning Experience now allows you to manage and customize accounts contracts and opportunities. This functionality is available in Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience, however, there are some features unique to the latter including managing email, events, logged calls, and tasks in the activity timeline and the Kanban view.

8. Quotes in Lightning Experience
Many of the features we had in Classic are making their way into the Lightning Experience.  We can now create and edit quotes, sync them our opportunities and generate PDF files.

9. Sync Salesforce calendar with Google Calendar™
The hassle of manual data entry of your Google Calendar events into Salesforce is no longer a problem with Lightning Sync since it is compatible with Google Calendar. Work smarter without having to keep events in two different applications. You can now keep track of relevant events on Salesforce records and share event details with other users.

10. Integrate Salesforce with new Open CTI systems
With the new release comes the upgrade of the Open CTI. The integration of Salesforce with computer-telephony integration (CTI) systems is now possible both in Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience. This is deemed to impact a lot of users because migrating from Desktop CTI to Open CTI is a must by the Spring ’17 release, when the former will stop functioning.

The Salesforce Lightning Experience will bring efficiency in your business by providing relevant and user-friendly features. Sign up for a free consultation to learn more about how your business can take advantage of the Salesforce CRM system improvements.