It’s that time again! The Salesforce Spring ’19 release notes are out… all 432 pages. Let’s talk about the highlights: what to know, what is awesome, and what could drive big impact for organizations.
Before we discuss the outlined items below, it’s important to call out the most impactful facet of the Spring ’19 Release: Einstein AI. Almost every Salesforce category has a release item related to Einstein AI. Even the loading page icon for the Spring ’19 release is Einstein riding a bicycle. (We’re glad to see he got recognition for all his hard work). If you want to learn about Einstein AI, read more on Salesforce’s website here.
Einstein’s “Next Best Action” is a big feature in Service console, Communities, and Portals. Next Best Action helps users determine the most impactful, next “best steps” to service customers and prospects. It leverages the Salesforce data – as well as Salesforce third-party data – to make recommendations via criteria you set, with confidence thresholds, sorting capabilities, flows, and filters. This makes follow-ups, up-sells, cross-sells, and service notifications for your Salesforce users easier than ever and helps minimize decision-making time before moving on to the next task.
Check out our Salesforce Spring ’19 Release highlights below, and feel free to reach out to our rockstar team with questions or to learn more about our services.
Sales Cloud
High Velocity Sales
“High velocity sales” is a cadence feature to help automate your interactions with Leads. The automation occurs through daily work queues, almost like a smart to-do list. Sales reps know exactly how to spend their time because the cadence steps them through a simple process. Scores are provided to help reps prioritize Leads. It’s a new and improved way to do lead management. Sales cadences can incorporate pre-populated email templates which can be manually edited (if needed) before sending. Email opens and click-throughs are also visible, all within the same cadence screen. If your team works with dialers integrated with Salesforce, those also work within this new feature.
Salesforce macros help automate next steps and follow-ups.
CPQ & Billing – Usage-Based Pricing
You can price-quote your customers based on the amount of product consumption: utilities, media, services, etc. The more of a product or service the customer needs quoted, the lower the price can be. Or, regulate the price of something based on how they consume it: does the customer purchase in bulk quantities, do they pay as they go, etc.? Now, usage-based pricing allows for multiple price options on a quote for a customer, and potentially shows the benefits or savings of going with one pricing option over another. The discounting option is still available on usage-based pricing by line item.
Pardot – Einstein Behavior Scoring
Einstein AI helps marketing and sales qualify more leads and identify more deals. Now, two scores can be found on Leads. The standard Pardot “Lead Score” is already in existence and analyzes historical sales data and your specified top criteria. The “Pardot Einstein Behavior score” is new and analyzes a prospect’s readiness to buy. The Pardot Einstein Behavior score uses machine learning and looks at marketing engagement patterns. It looks at engagement history – website use, open emails, click links, and completed forms – and, ultimately, determines a prospect’s likelihood to become a customer.
Integration with Gmail
There is now a Salesforce Panel integration with Gmail! It has the same Lightning look and feel as the Salesforce Outlook Panel. With this Salesforce Panel integration, you also can schedule and send emails for a future date and time. Finally, the Gmail Salesforce Panel also provides integration options in the Google Calendar.
Service Cloud
Einstein Next Best Action for Service Cloud.
Service Cloud is now using Einstein AI to determine potential next best steps a user can take to maximize impact. By setting up Next Best Action, recommendations are automatically provided to the user as they work inside of Salesforce, and they come in the form of up-sells, cross-sell offers, service notifications, flow-ups, etc. Einstein’s back-end criteria and set up can also incorporate Salesforce third-party data to ensure holistic analysis and recommendations. Recommendations can be lightning flows, filters can weed out recommendations that may not work or apply in certain situations, and sorters can be used to prioritize multiple recommendations. Next Best Action works in Lightning service console, communities, and portals.
Einstein Case Classification
Einstein is at it, again! Now, Einstein pre-populates Case fields with data recommendations. Case reasons will be ranked with the BEST recommendation, although multiple recommendations can be provided at the same time for one field. A user can pick and choose the field value recommendations that best fits each unique situation. Admins can adjust Einstein criteria and measurements behind-the-scenes, and the confidence threshold for recommendations. Confidence thresholds impact the frequency of field pre-population.
To enable this feature, a Salesforce org needs at least 1,000 cases in the system; for best results, Salesforce recommends have at least 10,000 Cases.
Field Service Lightning: Preventative Maintenance Enhancements
You can now have multiple assets on one work order instead of creating multiple work orders (one work order for one asset). This is particularly helpful for remote or offsite employees who do visitations to different locations. Now, the owner of the work order does not have multiple work orders to update and close; he/she need only update the line item assets within one work order. This enhancement saves significant time, and increases data cleanliness, quality, and increases the percentage of record data completion.
Community Cloud
Salesforce Mobile Publisher for Community Cloud
A big request by Salesforce Community customers has been to be able to turn an existing Community into a mobile app with little-to-no development. Now, it’s possible! The Mobile Publisher for Community Cloud allows a Community to turn into a Lightning mobile app with only administration and no code, all with your organization’s custom branding.
Einstein Next Best Action for Community Cloud
This feature functions the same as Next Best Action for Service Cloud (see above). Next Best Action provides “smart” recommendations to your Salesforce users about your customers by combining business data, rules, and criteria into an automatic recommendation process. Employees will spend less time figuring out next steps and minimize decision-making time on records before moving to the next task.
Feed Translations
Communities now support translations directly within the feeds! Google Translate has an integration via Salesforce’s API that drives this new translation feature. Over 50 languages are available for translation within Salesforce. Not only does Feed Translations work for original posts, but also replies and additional comments.
Platform Services
Login Discovery for My Domain
When users forget passwords or need activation codes, they spend more time trying to login than necessary. The new Discovery for My Domain feature delivers a better login experience for users by enabling interview-style login. This means users can login with new, unique identifiers like mobile phone numbers, personal emails, or even Facebook.
Lightning
Lightning Web Components
Build a UI with the latest and greatest code… not special Salesforce code, but web standards! This is code that web developers are familiar with and can easily recognize and/or learn. It also runs much faster in web browsers, so end users and developers can be more productive.
Lightning Flow Builder
The new flow builder is getting better and better! It’s now more “point and click config” – a drag and drop functionality – and more easily understood by non-developers. A wizard navigates flow builders through a step-by-step process. The new flow builder’s look and feel helps the move from Classic to Lightning a little easier for organizations.
Pop-Out Utilities Windows
When working on a daily or continuous basis in Salesforce, especially in the Console, pop-out utilities help the user view important information in one screen without covering up other important information. This is done with a “pop-out” click icon option on the utility window.
Platform Developer Experience
Sandbox Cloning
This is a big one for developers! The new Sandbox Cloning feature allows for easy replication of a working sandbox. The clone includes all the sandboxes’ metadata and data. Salesforce states, “In the past, teams could only clone a production org, and create a sandbox copy. Now, sandbox cloning lets you create copies of an existing sandbox, providing more flexibility.”
Other Key Highlights
SALES CLOUD
- Salesforce Essentials – sales stage customization
- Lightning Scheduler
SERVICE CLOUD
- Lightning Scheduler
- Lightning knowledge migration tool
- Digital engagement: Einstein bots enhancements
COMMUNITY CLOUD
- Partner account relationships
- Lightning container component for community cloud
QUIP
EINSTEIN ANALYTICS
LIGHTNING
- Lightning Experience Transition Assistant
PLATFORM DEVELOPER
- Salesforce DX: Lightning Web Component Support for VS Code and the Salesforce CLI
- Salesforce DX: Replay Debugger
HEALTH CLOUD
FINANCIAL SERVICES CLOUD
SUCCESS CLOUD
- Proactive Monitoring for CPQ
- Implementation Architects for Marketing, Community, Service, and Field Service Lightning
- Salesforce Help Enhancements
For the full Salesforce Spring ’19 release notes, click here. To learn more about Salesforce’s products, new releases, or what other users and companies are doing with their solutions, check out Salesforce’s Trailhead or Trailblazer Community.