It’s still the fall season in the real world… But Salesforce is unleashing the next round of features & improvements in the Winter ’19 release. There is nothing you need to do in order to get these updates (or nothing you can do to prevent them!) They get automatically pushed to you by Salesforce. However, sometimes you do need to turn settings “on” to get a feature that is mentioned below (it’s case-by-case).
Here’s what you can expect to come your way, as early as October 1st or as late as the spooky October 31st.
General Interface
- Now there is a new way to see your info! You have the ability to add a new layout for pages (called Density) – users can choose Compact or Comfy. With Compact, you could see more of your info in one screen with less scrolling.
- If you’re a big fan of using the Kanban view, it is now available for the “Recently Viewed” records (not just a particular view like “All”)
Mass Emailing from Salesforce
- Email Tracking: If you send emails through Salesforce, you’ll be able to see who has opened it and who hasn’t. Whoa! To collect and display email tracking information, you must enable Enhanced Email and Email Tracking.
- Email Bounce Back: Determine if some of the emails you have are inaccurate by the new bounce-back feature.
- Now you have the ability to add Attachments to List Emails (mass emails you send from a Contact List View) AND Email Templates (previously set up, scripted messages).
Activity Management
- Now there are added filters for the activity timeline, in the event you want to pare down the kind of history you see
- Now you can see your Tasks on your Calendar in Salesforce, and you can define which kinds of tasks appear there
Reporting
- If you’ve created many reports, and have trouble locating them, then you’ll find this feature useful. You can now search for specific reports
Integrations
There’s now an easy way to connect your LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Salesforce (Separate subscription required).
Here’s a Tip
Who decides on the features that make it to the next Salesforce release? Is it a bunch of tech billionaires locked up in a room, throwing around their brightest ideas?
As tempting as that sounds, the features that get released approx. 4 times a year are voted on by the entire Salesforce user community (about 3 million-plus users).
If you go to the IDEA EXCHANGE, you’ll find many threads representing user requests.
Those submissions are upvoted by other Salesforce users who also want that feature. After a certain # of thresholds or votes, the Salesforce committee considers including those features in the next release. That means that you could submit your own ideas or upvote others as well.
Want to learn more about AppExchange and how to select apps? Check out our post.
Authored by Chris Petersen
Image source: salesforce.com