Terry’s Tidbits: Salesforce 2019 Spring Release Top Ten

As we wait for the Spring 2019 release to go live, all users across the Salesforce ecosystem excitedly look forward to new features and improvements we can test and play around with, especially for Lightning Experience.

This latest edition of Salesforce enhancements promises more personalized and integrated customer experiences while enabling your team to accomplish more with fresh insights into levels of data across your entire organization.

In October of this year, coinciding with the Winter ’20 release, Salesforce will roll out Lightning Experience for all orgs. Spring ’19 gives you huge reasons to switch to Lightning Experience so you’ll have time to adapt to the new system and prepare for a seamless migration if you’re still using Salesforce Classic.  For more information on this critical update, click here: 

For the Spring ’19 release, here are my top 10 most exciting, interesting, and useful Lightning features to watch out for:

1. Set your Default List View with Pinned Lists

Presently all list views default to “Recently Viewed” records. This created confusion and frustration for users. We’ve asked for this change and it’s finally here.  With Pinned Lists, you can make any list load as your default view when you click into the object. Great! See it in action here.

2. Printable Views for Lightning Pages

If you wanted to print a page in Lightning Experience, you needed to develop custom code to provide a printable. With the latest release, that functionality is built in. From a Lightning page, click on Printable View. The details will expand and collapse depending on the visibility of the record page. Check to see which editions it applies to here.

3. More Data Storage

As both an admin and a developer, I see so many of my clients struggle with the current storage limits. With Salesforce giving up to 10x more storage, this gives a huge boost for organizations and gives them more room for growth. Specific information on how much additional data allowance your account is getting can be viewed here.

4. More Control when Transferring Account Ownership

Currently, when transferring an account owner to a new rep, the only option we could control was whether or not to transfer open opportunities not owned by us to the new owner.  With the Spring ’19 release, Salesforce is giving us much greater control. I’d still like to see Open Activities add to this list but we are making progress.  Click here to learn more.

5. Systematically Manage Leads Through Sales Cadence

Remember the huge reasons for migrating to Lightning that I mentioned previously? Well this new feature surely is one of them, particularly for Sales Cloud admins supporting Inside Sales teams. Sales Cadence tools allow a business to build a series of best practices for nurturing Leads. The steps involved can be an Email (connected to a template), a Call (which can also be connected to a Call Script), a Wait Period, or a custom step such as sending a text or setting up a meeting.  This is a great new feature that I can’t wait to try out! See it in action here.

6. Manage Customer Privacy Requests and Sensitive Data with Privacy Enhancements

The need to manage people’s privacy has become a big deal. New features in Spring ‘19 will help us classify customers’ sensitive data and give them the exact level of privacy they want through the new Data Protection and Privacy settings. Know more about following your customers’ email communication preferences and keep your team up to speed on the rules for sending non-commercial email here

 7. Public Calendars now in Lightning

Currently, when you needed to have a public calendar, you would have to switch to back to Classic. Not anymore! Not only is Public Calendars available in Lightning but it comes with a cool new feature allowing you to schedule resources and equipment such as conference rooms, projectors! In addition, a feature that I love using in Outlook or Google Calendar which was missing in Salesforce is now available – the ability to schedule recurring events. Several of my clients use Public Calendars in Classic so it’s nice to see it finally make its debut in Lightning. See the process in action here.

8. Switch Lightning Page Templates

So picture this. You create a lightning record page but find out later that you need to have a different template design. Prior to the Spring ’19 release, you had to make a new template and re-create the page from scratch there. Now, you can just change the current template and specify a location where the existing components should be moved to. This will make the life of a Salesforce #AmazingAdmin so much easier. Switching templates versus having to recreate Lightning pages from scratch is fantastic! See where to find the new feature here.

9. Conditional Formatting on Reports

Here’s another seemingly simple addition that will be a welcome feature. The original conditional formatting in Salesforce Classic now has a slicker look and nicer display in Lightning Experience. Gathering data is more precise with up to five formatting rules and defining up to three bins for each rule. Its ability to easily identify and highlight key pieces of data makes it easier to spot a lot of opportunities for your organization. Know more about this beta feature here.

10. Faster, Easier, More Intuitive Flows with Lightning Flow Builder

It’s finally here. No more Cloud Flow! Lightning Flow is getting a major upgrade with the Flow Builder that #AwesomeAdmins and devs have been eagerly waiting for since Salesforce broke the news about the new Flow Builder earlier this year. The new Flow Builder will be easier to use, learn, and transition to. It does not need Adobe Flash to run and there is practically no migration process. When you create and save existing flows (built with Cloud Flow) in the new Flow Builder, Salesforce automatically saves it as a new version so you don’t have to worry about losing data from the original flow. Just take note, Flows or flow versions that you create and save in Flow Builder are not compatible with Cloud Flow Designer. More details on how you can maximize its capabilities here.

So when will these cool new features arrive? Take a look at the Admin Release Countdown here.

Which of the Salesforce 2019 Spring Release features are you looking forward to explore? Let us know how you like your new and improved Salesforce in the comments. Follow us on our social media channels for more interesting and useful Terry’s Tidbits!

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