Winter ’21 Release – Lets take a look! (Pt.2)

Last week we posted some of the cool new features included within the Salesforce Winter ’21 release.  As is the case with all Salesforce releases, these features cannot be covered in a single post, so we’ve decided to call out additional features that are of not this Winter.  Check out these additional features below, in part 2 of our look at the Winter feature release!

·      Dynamic Forms & Actions goes live!

o   Dynamic Forms allows for admins/consultants to create mini-page layouts that can be placed anywhere using the Lightning App Builder.  They can be filtered out on a per-user basis as well. In a similar fashion, Dynamic Actions will allow you to show/hide actions based on the logged in user viewing the page, for a tailored user experience.

These two enhancements are now generally available, meaning that they are out of beta and everyone has access to them.

·      Lightning Page Performance Indicators

o   Discover ways to make your record page perform better based on analysis right inside the Lightning App Builder. Performance Analysis in App Builder evaluates the fields, instances of the Related Lists component, and metadata of a record page. With the click of a button, get best practices and suggestions for improving page performance and the end-user experience.

·      Microsoft Teams Integration: Bring Salesforce and Microsoft Teams Together (Pilot)

o   Your sales and service teams use Salesforce to manage customer relationships. They also chat in Microsoft® Teams and discuss topics relevant to their sales pipeline and service cases. The Teams Integration provides context about Salesforce records from Teams channels and one-on-one chat conversations, eliminating switching between applications. Salesforce users can mention Salesforce records in Teams to facilitate collaboration. They can preview details of records that others post, pin records to channel tabs for easy access, and keep records up to date with inline editing. Reps can also post important moments to Salesforce record Chatter feeds, all directly from Teams.

·      Get Forecasts on the Go!

o   Now that mobile forecasting is available for Android devices, more users can see forecasts on the go. Previously, mobile forecasting was available only on iOS devices.

·      See More Record Info in Highlights Panels

o   Hovering over a lookup relationship field on a record page displays the first seven fields from the compact layout in a highlights panel. Previously, the highlights panel displayed only the first five fields.

·      Lightning Experience Engagement: In-App Guidance and Help Menu

o   Add in-app guidance to more places in your apps. Use custom theme colors to make your in-app guidance stand out. Easily share direct links to in-app guidance. And show more custom resources in the Help Menu. Users can search for Trailhead modules right inside the Help Menu.

·      Case Management: Productivity Tools and Email-to-Case Threading

o   New prebuilt macros, quick text, and flows help enhance agent productivity and get them doing better work, faster than ever before. Email-to-Case threading behavior update boosts security by matching incoming emails with their header information instead of through a Ref ID.

Winter ’21 Release – Lets take a look! (Pt.1)

The time is upon us, to take a look and review Salesforce’s third and final release of the calendar year, with the Winter ’21 release.  As always, there promises to be several new features and enhancements to help us continue to evolve our Salesforce Orgs.  In this post, we will pick out and discuss some of our favorite features within the release.  Let’s get started!

·       Salesforce Anywhere Beta Launch – with the “new normal” upon us, the importance of being operational anywhere you go is immense.  With that, the much anticipated Salesforce Anywhere was developed.  With the Winter ’21 release will include the beta launch of this new product!  Salesforce Anywhere allows users to collaborate on records and get updates on their records in real-time.

• Interactive Email Builder - Using a familiar Lightning App Builder style screen, this provides Salesforce with a major boost in the email creation department.  Users now have a whole host of options available to them when crafting that perfect email

·       View Recent trends in Opportunities - A simple but clever change to the Opportunity List views in Lightning that allow users to see if Opportunity amounts or close dates have been changed. This is particularly effective for Sales Managers who need to stay updated on the movement of deals.

Another slight change that benefits Sales users and Managers, you can now update sales stages from the Forecasting tab.

·       Salesforce Einstein Lead and Opportunity Scoring - These futuristic Einstein features used to be a paid feature, now they have been made accessible to the whole Salesforce community.  Salesforce have made some slight but major changes in the Winter ’21 Release. You can also now exclude certain records from the Einstein Opportunity Scoring model, as well as ignore fields of your choosing.

In addition, Einstein Lead Scoring used to require 1000 new leads and 120 lead conversions to start scoring your leads, now you can turn it on instantly! Bring your Org into the future with these features your users will love.

Salesforce Inbox – your Email – Calendar – CRM, all in one!

Accurately logging and relating your activities to your prospects in Salesforce is a time honored tradition – that has been solved using many different solutions.  With Salesforce retiring its original Email-to-Salesforce product, in lieu of Einstein Activity Capture, etc.  Along with that previous post, we felt it important to highlight Salesforce Inbox - a paid add-on product that delivers connectivity to your email, calendar, Salesforce Org – and so much more!

Let’s take a look at some of its very best features, that aren’t available through the standard Outlook/Gmail to salesforce integration:

·      Insert available times for internal and external meetings and schedule meetings on behalf of a colleague.  Also if your schedule changes, the times in your email will dynamically change as well.

·      Schedule emails to be sent at a later time, so they arrive at just the right moment

·       Get notifications when recipients receive & open emails

·      Get notifications when recipients click and open a link in the body of your email

·      Receive follow-up notifications on emails that you haven’t received a response from yet – helping to ensure nothing slips through the cracks

·      View, Edit, and Create text shortcuts to help improve productivity

·       Einstein Email Insights

·       Einstein recommended connections

Reps can also speed through email with templates and personalized email messaging that will streamline prospect outreach.  Inbox gives reps everything they need to stay on top of each and every opportunity on any device. Make the desktop experience more powerful with email plug-ins for Gmail and Outlook, and turn your phone or tablet into a portable sales-productivity generator with the Inbox mobile app. The mobile app will allow reps to view their activity from anywhere, not just their desktop, as well as create/send emails, create follow up tasks, and log activities within Salesforce.

Setting up a Service App? Service Cloud Assistant is coming to help!

Need help accelerating your customer service journey?  Salesforce is coming to your aid with the Service Setup Assistant.  This feature will be available with the upcoming Winter ’21 release (we will be posting a more comprehensive look at the upcoming release in the coming weeks).  Within a few minutes, the Service Setup Assistant can get you up and running with some of the most useful Service Cloud features, which includes: some pre-configured profiles and routing queues, best-in-class case layouts, frequently used and popular workflows, commonly used quick texts, and time saving macros.  The assistant can also help setup a support email address that all your agents can be added to.

Within moments, you can make some simple choices to help build & create your new Service App:

As we mentioned previously, once your app is built – your team will be prompted to review the Email-to-Case setup.  This is a much cleaner and convenient approach to getting started with Email-to-Case.  Here, you can create your email & start to add users to the support service App.

Here is an example of the pre-built case layout, which includes productivity tools already added - all in one place:

Many Organizations aren’t sure where to start when building out their Service settings in Salesforce – but now you have a quick and easy tool to get started with the optimal settings!

Integrate SharePoint and Salesforce? Here’s what you need to consider

While Salesforce stands alone as the leading CRM platform on the planet, you would necessarily want to use it as your primary document management & storage tool.  This is where SharePoint comes in.  Due to the high cost of storage, it makes sense to use a separate tool for document storage – rather than pay to store all your files directly within Salesforce.  However, will there be several instances where you will need file access within your Salesforce Org? Yes.  For this reason, the SharePoint to Salesforce integration has been one of the most popular and important.

Some of the key features for using the SharePoint to Salesforce integration tool:

·       Storage – as we mentioned previously, Salesforce’s pricing model around data storage is much higher than that of SharePoint.  Especially once you exceed Salesforce’s basic storage package.

·       SharePoint specializes in document management – whether it be document collaboration, versioning, and file sharing.  It just makes sense to have SharePoint do the heavy lifting on document storage – then connect that tool to Salesforce.

While there are a couple different options for building the integration between Salesforce and SharePoint – the tool we’ve found to be the most complete is Document Extractor.

Document Extractor automatically transfers documents saved in Salesforce to SharePoint and replaces the original documents with links pointing to them at SharePoint.  How it works is that the users still reach the files where they originally saved them – in Salesforce under the respective accounts. Running in the background, Document Extractor detects files, moves them to the corresponding libraries in SharePoint and leaves a link in Salesforce instead. The user sees a link in the exact same place in Salesforce, so the user experience does not change.

Futhermore, whenever you add a document to a new object in Salesforce, Document Extractor will automatically create the correct folder to store it on SharePoint. This works for a Standard object like an Account, Contact, Lead, or Opportunity or a Custom object.

This tool is available in AppExchange. You can study the product description and features, try it for free or buy the SaaS version.

Clean up Support Cases with Case Merging

For a long period of time support teams had been crying out for the ability to merge duplicate cases, to help consolidate all communications related to the same issue.  Salesforce recently provided this feature within Salesforce (no longer requiring the assistance of the AppExchange).  As a support person, you have probably dealt with a customer who faced a pressing issue – and their only thought was contact support in every way possible.  The customer may send an email, send a text, log a call, etc.  When this happens, it could potentially leave support with several different cases all related to the same customer & same issue.  This is where Case Merging really shows its importance.

Case Merging in Salesforce works in a very similar way to how you would merge a Contact or an Account.  However, there are some key considerations to be aware of.

Key features of Case Merging:

·      Find duplicate cases by text (fields) by case number or subject from a list view or case record page

·      Merge up to three cases in a single operation

·      Select fields from duplicate cases to update the master case values

·       Move most related objects from duplicate cases to master case

·      Support for Lightning Experience only

Case Merging can be enabled within the “Support Settings”

When a Case is merged – its important to know the following items:

·       Selected fields are merged into the master case.

·      Related records from the duplicate cases are merged into the master case.

·      Feeds from the duplicate cases are merged into the master case. Child cases of the duplicates are re-parented to the master case.

·       The master case remains.

·      Duplicate cases are deleted to the Recycle Bin.  Cases can be restored; however, the restoration will not move any of the above back to the original.

Sync your LinkedIn Account with your Salesforce CRM with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

With LinkedIn becoming the most popular social networking tool in the workplace, it was only a matter of time before and integration was created to streamline this tool with Salesforce.  Many sales professionals use social selling through LinkedIn, organically growing leads and prospects through social messaging – but all those efforts can be shared with Salesforce.  The integration is fairly seamless, and can be set up in minutes.  Let’s take a look at some of the most beneficial features of LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Key Features:

-Integrations

We’ve already mentioned how the tool can integrate with Salesforce, but also has the capability to integrate with other popular apps, such as: Lucidcharts, HubSpot, Drift, G2, Outreach, Oracle Sales Cloud, etc.

-Targeted Searches

The Sales Navigator advanced search function gives reps the power to more narrowly target their ideal leads and discover relevant connections.

Sales reps can choose from a large number of filters for prospects and/or companies including the following:

·      Keywords

·      Geographic location (by region or state)

·       Job title

·       Company name

·       Company size

·      Company type (e.g., public, private, non-profit)

·      Group membership

·       School

·      Years of experience

·       Industry

·      Job opportunities

·       Number of followers

These premium search filters save reps time by helping to target the most relevant connections, so they can spend more time selling, and less time prospecting.

-Automated lead generation

The Lead Recommendations feature suggests relevant leads based on your sales preferences, search history, profile views, and past saved leads. This is a great feature because it saves reps a step in the sales process, helping them fill their pipeline faster with relevant connections.

-Powerful sales insights

The beauty of Sales Navigator is that the more you use it, the more data it can use to deliver valuable insights.

As you search for prospects, save leads, and make connections, Sales Navigator will keep you posted on updates in your network such as:

·       Job changes

·       Company updates

·       Relevant connections and warm leads

-Access to out-of-network connections

One of the biggest benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the opportunity to extend your sales reach outside your direct network. Normally, you can only view the limited profiles of people outside your network. Sales Navigator lets members “unlock” that information (up to 25 profiles a month) so you can better understand your leads and make more meaningful connections.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator of course comes with a cost, and is not worth it for some Orgs.  If your team needs help making that determination – contact us today!

High Velocity Sales in Salesforce, what’s it all about?

Over the past year or so, the Sales Cloud has continued to extend its capabilities and product offerings around it.  If you’ve paid attention to recent Salesforce release updates – you’ve probably heard of the new product called “High Velocity Sales”.  But what exactly does that mean and/or include?  Let’s take a look.

Salesforce High Velocity Sales is a streamlined solution tailored to inside sales teams (including sales development and business development reps) and designed to speed up the sales process.

Bringing together many of Salesforce’s core technologies with new features, High Velocity Sales gives inside sales teams:

·       Insights on how to prospect smarter and faster

·       Integrated tools to eliminate busywork and multiple logins

·       New levels of best-practice automation for scalable, repeatable success

Here are some of the key features that are included in High Velocity Sales:

·      Lightning Sales Console

o   Lightning Sales Console is a unified all in one screen, that provides a sales rep all the tools they need in one layout. *Screenshot above provides a visual of how the Sales Console can look for users.

·      Sales Cadences

o   This feature enables sales managers to build their own best practices in Salesforce, and communicate them to the entire team.

·      Work Queues

o   Work Queue is a prioritized task list inside the Lightning Sales Console.  This allows a rep to know exactly what next step to trigger with each individual customer.

·      Einstein Lead Score

o   AI tool that analyzes the data, predicts which leads are most likely to convert, and displays intuitive factors behind the scores.

·      Email Integration

o   See our notes in a previous post about Einstein Activity Capture

·      Lightning Dialer (optional, additional SKU)

o   Lightning Dialer is an outbound calling system that allows you to add inbound calling functionality. That means you can call customers and prospects directly from Salesforce, as well as receive calls from new leads.

Utilize Power-ups for Salesforce with Apollo Chrome Extension

Apollo, for those that may not know, is a data-first engagement platform that houses over 200 million people and over 10 million companies in its database.  Having this volume of information at your fingertips can be very valuable – especially when the data can be shared with your CRM.

To streamline your efforts even more, Apollo has come out with a Chrome extension that allows you increased functionality.  The extension will allow you to view both Salesforce and Apollo’s database at the same time, and perform real-time syncs.

Here is a breakdown of some of the best features included with the Apollo Chrome Extension:

·       View any contact or account in Salesforce and use the Apollo extension sidebar to automatically view their full Apollo contact/account profile and add them to sequences, create and/or log new tasks, assign and/or complete calls, and more!

·       One-click shortcuts to view account or lead/contact profiles in the Apollo sidebar or call any phone number listed in Salesforce via the Apollo web dialer without leaving the page.

·       Bulk import contacts/leads from SFDC to Apollo.

·       Turn Salesforce email logging on or off for any individual email you send from Gmail.

·       Search for leads/contacts and create a lead or contact in Salesforce for anyone who emails you in Gmail.

The Apollo chrome extension doesn’t just stop with integrating with your Salesforce - it can connect and sync with both your Gmail inbox and your LinkedIn profile. Contact our team to learn more!

What is Salesforce’s new product “Work.com”?

With the world in the midst of a global-wide pandemic, Salesforce has continued to emerge as vital tool for businesses across the world to operate remotely.  Lately, Salesforce has started to highlight and advertise one of their more recent products – Work.com.  Work.com is Salesforce’s solution to address & drive organizational performance.  Work.com is suitable for companies that need to align everyone on common goals, and track performance towards individual, team, and overall goals. Work.com integrates with Salesforce's suite of CRM, service, and social tools.

With Work.com, managers can publicly acknowledge and reward their top performers, creating more driven team members focused on improving close rates. Managers can deliver real incentives via Amazon gift cards, enhancing team morale and showcasing top performers.

At the end of each evaluation period, managers can assess the performance of each individual. With 360 feedback tools, you can also incorporate feedback from other team members and cross-department managers.

Fast-forward to 2020, and Salesforce will highlight Work.com’s existing capabilities & new ones, to help companies cope with the ever-present pandemic.  Earlier this summer, Salesforce released a statement which included specific features to help businesses reopen, safely.

“Work.com includes new solutions, ranging from contact tracing and emergency response management to employee wellness assessment and shift management, for accelerating private and public sector response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Work.com Command Center is a single hub for leaders to get a 360-degree view of return-to-work readiness across locations, employees and visitors, and make data-driven decisions

Work.com leverages guidance from and solutions built by Salesforce’s trusted ecosystem of partners, including Accenture, Deloitte, PwC and more, to help businesses and communities reopen”

To learn more about this product, check out the product page here.