Salesforce has announced a host of exciting new features and enhancements to look for in winter 2020. The release includes some changes to Salesforce Lightning, Salesforce Classic, and the Salesforce Mobile App. There are too many changes to get into all at once, so for today we’re going to focus on the Account Teams features. If you’re not using it already, it’s high time you started working with Account Teams. Keep reading to learn why.
The new Account Teams features are designed to give you greater freedom and ease. This winter, Salesforce is releasing a range of customizable options to make Account Teams run more smoothly and intuitively. They’re making it easier to create teams by adding automation. Communication and knowledge sharing is also becoming smoother and more streamlined. At the same time, Salesforce is adding a host of opportunities to customize the way you use Account Teams.
Here are some of the features you’ll definitely want to know about.
What Is Account Teams?
An account team is a way to group together everybody who works on a given account. The team can include just about everybody who touches the account in a meaningful way. That will look slightly different, depending on the make-up of each company. But it could include, for example, a project manager, an executive manager, and a number of support staff.
Account teams is a great way to bring together all the people who are involved in a given project. As with every Salesforce feature, the impact is to reduce chaos and make sure that data doesn’t slip through the cracks.
So, account teams helps you to streamline communication, and track collaboration. It also helps you to set up clear tasks and map out responsibilities to members of the team. Again, the goal is to reduce chaos by keeping everybody on the same page. This also ensures that no key information gets lost.
Just a note: sometimes people confuse Account Teams with Opportunity Teams. There’s a key difference, though. An account team is the team working on an existing account, whereas an opportunity team is the group of people working on a sales opportunity.
What’s New in Account Teams?
Salesforce is bringing increased customization to account teams. The new features allow you to collect more information on each of your team members and store the information within account teams, where you can access it with a few keystrokes at any point.
Since every business has different needs, Salesforce is now allowing you to decide exactly what kind of information you need to bring together in account teams. You now have the freedom to add custom fields, buttons, and links to your Account Team set-up.
Again, you’re going to be moving towards minimizing chaos and creating a smooth, intuitive interface. The new features make this simpler than ever. You can also bring in validation rules and Apex triggers as well as workflow rules to create clean, easily-accessible data. The new features have the added bonus of minimizing the time you’ll need to spend on manual data entry.
What Can You Customize?
You’ll now be able to add customized fields and buttons to your Account Team Member Page. You’ll also be able to add those customized fields and buttons to your Add Account Team Members multiline editor.
Obviously this is going to empower each team to create their own metrics; each team is now free to measure its goals and scope according to its own parameters.
Just one possible use for this could be adding fields to indicate the start and end date of each team member. So for example, if you’ve got a new member coming into the project midway, you’ll be able to indicate that, and build out your planning accordingly. Likewise, if another of your team members if going to be away for the end of the project, you can build that into your planning as well.
Custom Buttons
You can now add custom buttons right to the Account Team related list.
There are some differences between the Lightning Experience and the Classic. In Lightning Experience, validation rules and Apex triggers come into play every time that you create an account team member; they also apply when you edit or remove members, or when you add a “default” account team. By contrast, Salesforce Classic automatically bypasses both the validation rules and the Apex triggers
Increased Automation
Salesforce is making it possible to automate team creation. This feature is very much optional, since it’ll be a great solution in some settings but it won’t be the best choice in every single situation.
Here’s how it works. The automatic account team creation is tied to the process builder. You can set up a process action that will add team members to a specific account. At the same time, you can configure a process that will automatically run whenever an account team member is created.
If you enable Account Teams, then the Account Team Member object will be visible as soon as you set up the process trigger. Once again, all of this is optional and under your control; if this isn’t desirable for the outcome you’re looking for, then simply disable the feature.
Increased Transparency
The new features are making it easier to facilitate smooth communication and avoid misunderstanding. One of the key ways Salesforce is doing that is by allowing you to see who has access to information in Account Teams.
Salesforce Classic has had this feature for a while, so users of the classic version already know how valuable it can be. Now, Lightning Experience is adding the ability for team members to see exactly who has access to the account records.
Going forward, teams working in Lightning will be able to see which members of their team can view or edit accounts or other records. This makes for increased transparency, obviously a great benefit for teams looking to deepen their collaboration. It also speeds up communication, reducing the need to repeatedly share the same information.
Here’s how it works. Each team member will be assigned a degree of access, ranging from a minimum to a maximum. (Those with maximum access will be able to access all the account records; those with minimum access will be restricted.)
The action “team member access” will open a window that clearly shows which record each person on the team can access. You can also customize this window so that it shows more, or less, information, depending on your team’s needs.
The default setting for Account Teams has the window showing every team member’s degree of access both to the account in question, and to any related accounts or opportunities. You can broaden this if you like, by switching your organization’s default setting to “Controlled by Parent.” In that case, the window will also show each team member’s degree of access to any related contacts.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce is a dynamic product, and it’s exciting to see all the ways that it continues to grow and develop. It’s a good idea to really take the time to educate yourself about all the developments to Salesforce so that you and your team don’t miss out on any of the tools available to you.
Often, it’s a good idea to sit down with an expert who can walk you through all of the Salesforce features that might make a difference to you, and your team. A talented consultant can point you towards opportunities that you might otherwise miss out on.