And welcome to 2019! Just like that, we have started the new year and are about to hit the ground running with a new Salesforce release just around the corner. Salesforce’s Spring ’19 Release is just around the corner…

First up, apologies for the lateness of the post… It has been a busy few months for me, but I will talk about that in another post shortly.

As usual, we will take a look at what this release has in store and focus specifically on key features of the release which apply to Sales and Service Cloud users.

Lightning Flow Builder (retiring of Cloud Flow Designer)

Spring ’19 release will see the introduction of the new Lightning Flow Builder. This will update the UI for Flow Designer, making it HTML5 compatible. What this ultimately means, is no more clunky Flash based Cloud Flow Builder.

Particularly, no more annoying prompts to update Adobe Flash in Chrome every 5 minutes! Which is what I think I am most excited about!

Also things have been simplified. No more deciding what type of update/query you want. Do you want a ‘Fast Create’ or a ‘Record Create’?! Well, you don’t need to think about this anymore, as there is now just ‘Create’. Also variables and

You will get this by default, but if you need to switch back to Cloud Flow Designer (aka ‘the old one’) you will be able to.

Also if you use Flow and External Objects, things are about to become so much easier for data manipulation. With Flows being supported on External Objects.

More data…  Sort of.

Salesforce is finally, updating the base data storage each org gets. From a measly 1GB to a slightly less measly 10GB.

Of course, you would take the increase. But seriously, in this day and age of Google/Microsoft/AWS offering 1TB or above on generic subscriptions… Why, oh why, is this only 10GB!?

I know I should be grateful, but this has been a bug bear of mine for years now!

Lightning Experience, take note…

There are a number of tweaks and improvements in this release, as always, for things Lightning.

But one thing you need to be aware of. Salesforce have finally waved the yellow flag to let users know that Lightning Experience will become the ‘default’ user experience for your users who have the Lightning Experience permission on their profile (or permission set), or any user on a Standard profile within Salesforce.

These users will then also get moved to

This is now a critical update, and will auto-activate as part of the Winter ‘20 release.

So better get planning now! Check out the FAQ to get more answers about this upcoming change and who it will impact.

Pin the List View you actually want!

I think this was the biggest complaint we had when we switched users to Lightning: “why is ‘Recently Viewed’ always the view I get?”

Well fret no more end-users!

Salesforce Spring ’19 release now comes with added ‘pin-able’ List Views!

So now you can Pin a List View to make it the default list view. Or you can Favourite a list view, or add a list view as a favourite tab… So your users have three ways to get to the view that they want now!!!

Transferring Owner of an Account?

Now you can move more of the related records to the new owner, in one quick action in Lightning… Saving Admins (or who ever transfers accounts) so much time!!!

Service Cloud, hasn’t been forgotten…

There are a number of additions to the way Service Cloud and Lightning work better together. But overall most of the additions seem for the Field Service package.

Lightning Knowledge Migration Tool

To help streamline the transfer to Lightning for service cloud users, and to encourage people to stay on the default / generic Salesforce objects. The Migration Tool will now be able to help migrate Knowledge from Classic to Lightning.

Other Service Cloud improvements

You can see find a list of the general improvements being made as part of this release, here.

Most of the items include the changes to flow and processes for Service, or improvements to Omni-Channel in Lightning supporting new service channels. Or the new calendar scheduling feature, but that also applies across the other clouds too…

When will I get Spring ’19 Release?

Some server instances have already received the Spring ’19 release from Salesforce. A handful of NAxx Server instances…

But for the rest of the world, the next two release windows are:

• February 2nd 2019
• February 9th 2019

To find out when your instance will be upgrade:

• please go to https://status.salesforce.com
• in the search box, enter your server instance or custom domain
• click on ‘Instances’
• then on the following page, click ‘Maintenances’
• user the Quick Find to locate ‘Spring ’19 Major Release’

Here is an example of the calendar for the EU12 instance:

Time marches on and 2018 continues hurtling towards summer (or winter for the southern half of the planet).  But it is that time of year again where we get to investigate and plan for the Summer ’18 release from Salesforce, which is due to be released to most orgs within the next month.

Additionally, we see Lightning continue to be the primary focus for Salesforce with a number of key new features, as predicted, being included as part of this release.

Release Notes – New breakdown

Firstly, you may notice a subtle but helpful new format of the Release Notes.

Most features and changes included in the release notes, now appear to be broken down into easier to digest sub-headings covering the all important: Where/Why/How/When/etc.

It is a subtle but useful change, given the volume of information in the 478 page document!

Summer ’18 Release: Features Breakdown

As with any Salesforce release nowadays, there are thousands of new features, and narrowing them down to a is getting harder and harder!  But let’s dive on in, and take a look at the Top Sales & Service Cloud Features.

1) Lightning Console – To feature parity and beyond…

With Summer ’18 Release, we see Lightning Console pretty close to matching Classic Console, with some additional new features added in for good measure.

Now I know I am cheating in the top 10, as I am going to group a couple of features together in this one… But it will be worth it 🙂

For the console changes, click here.

Console specific features in the release include:

• Omni Channel Utility allowing users to set their presence status within the Console.
• Being able too copy and share your workspace and active subtabs, all by URL.
• Extended support for Javascript API via Lightning Console.

Guided Engagement with Flow

But the pièce de résistance though is the new Guided Engagement Console feature.  Allowing you to combine the power of Console and Flows, to give your users guided forms/scripts to work from:

2) Reports & Dashboards

Summer ’18 Release from Salesforce includes a bonanza of features and updates for all things Reports & Dashboards… So again, I am grouping a few distinct features under one topic here – otherwise my top 10 would just be reports and dashboards!!

For all Report & Dashboard features, click here.

Lightning Report Builder

First up, Summer ’18 Release sees Lightning Report Builder come out of beta, and become Generally Available.  With a few extra tweaks since Spring ’18 also added in!

One thing to note: the user permissions have changed due to the feature becoming ‘generally available’, and this now allows you to hide Classic Report Builder from users, if you wish to…

Lightning Joined Reports (Beta)

Additionally, we see Joined Reports enter public beta within Lightning!  There are a few limitations listed in the release notes, but the biggest appears to be having to use the Salesforce Classic Report Builder

Get organised: Folders and sub-folders

I have to admit, this one makes my inner Salesforce geek very happy!  And I wrote about it in the predictions post back in January… As soon as I heard it was on the roadmap for this year, I have been eagerly awaiting this feature!!!

Sub-Folders, within Folders!  OMG! 😀 😀 It is Lightning Experience only – but this has been a pain in the backside of many Admins, since even before I started working with Salesforce!

Export reports & keep your formatting

Lightning Experience now allows you to export your report and keep the formatting of the report.  Simple…

Filter History Reports by Old and New Values

In Classic, another bug-bear of mine (and many others) was the fact you could not filter a History Report by the old or new field values…  It would only display them in the report or the history related list if the field was tracked.

This ended up with a lot of reports being exported and then working with the data in Excel… GRRR

But GRRR no more! With the ability to now filter by these values!

Thank you Salesforce!

3) Lightning Experience improvements

Another area with a number of smaller feature improvements, Lightning Experience continues to get refined with each release.

Click here for all of them…  Otherwise, read on!

Speed up your search

Summer ’18 Release will allow your users to search by specific objects, from the global search bar…

Boom!

Dependant picklists and Path

Path is an amazing feature, allowing you to guide users through almost any process just based on a single picklist.  But with Summer ’18 release, any dependant picklists will now also prompt users when they move steps.

Group by Topics

Topics are now available in Lightning Experience!

Many users used Topics in Classic, and it is great to seem them ported over to Lightning Experience now.

If you haven’t used them before, it allows your end-users to group and organise records, by a topic.  Imagine it like a #tag on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/etc, allowing you to then search for the topic and get all related records.

4) Privacy (Support for GDPR)

With the upcoming GDPR changes, Salesforce has continued to add in features to assist businesses (and us Admins) to get ready.

Changes to Individual object

The Individual object was a little limited when it was first released in Spring ’18.  The object wasn’t like a standard object, meaning access was very limited.  And creation of records/etc Apex coding was required…

But no more!  In Summer ’18 the object is now a standard object with all the bells and whistles that comes with that – including the ability to now use workflows/process builder!

You will be able to now:

• Create custom actions, buttons, and links for Individuals
• Create different Individual record types
• Undelete an Individual that you had deleted
• Use Individuals with workflows or with Process Builder

Make a Users’ personal data unusable

As part of the new privacy regulations, and the ability to request your personal information is removed from a system, presents a bit of a challenge for anyone who has a user record within Salesforce.  These could be community users or internal users…. And is due to the fact you cannot delete a Salesforce user record, ever.

So to get around this, Salesforce is now including a new system method ‘obfuscateUser()’ , which will scramble user information.

This one definitely falls into the ‘advanced’ category, as it requires Apex knowledge (or how to invoke Apex via Process Builder/Flow).

And would require planning and testing, as Salesforce is warning: that it cannot be reversed!

Summer ’18 Release: Key Dates

There are a number of key dates you need to know for Summer ’18 Release.  So to help highlight what they are, here is a handy infographic from Salesforce.   Remember the dates shown below are in US date format though…

What is the release date for Summer ’18 Release?

The release weekend for your org will depend on the instance it is on, but the release will occur on the weekend between the 18th May – 8th June 2018.

Summer ’18 Release: Additional Resources

Official Salesforce resources

• Official Release Notes
• Salesforce Release Youtube channel
• Release Readiness group on Trailblazer Community

Other blog resources

• Salesforce Weekly – Release in Action, with an 8min video of the release
• SalesforceBen – Complete Guide to Summer ’18
• NT Balanarayan’s recap of Summer ’18 features to watch out for
• Jenna Molby’s breakdown of highlights

It is the holiday season, and it is a time for being with family and friends. It is also a time to celebrate the year that was, along with planning for the year that is to come. Can you believe it, it is now 2018…. And with a new year, comes new expectations. In the Salesforce world, this means new features and new use cases. In this post we are going to look ahead to a number of Salesforce predictions for 2018.

Salesforce Prediction #1: Salesforce revenue tops $12.5bn

This one shouldn’t be a a massive surprise, as it has been forecast in every quarterly update. But unless things go horribly wrong over the first three months, Salesforce will confirm it has sailed past the target of $10B revenue for its FY17/18 and pass $12.5bn for FY18/19!!!

Marc Benioff has been quoted in the media saying: “We did this faster than any other enterprise software company in history. Our continued momentum as the leader in CRM, the fastest-growing segment of our industry, combined with more than $15 billion in billed and unbilled deferred revenue, puts us well on the path to $20 billion and beyond.”

Why is this interesting? Firstly we could see Salesforce start acquiring more companies over the coming 12mths. Last year was all about bedding in the huge number of acquisitions from 2016. We are likely to continue to see new products and features from the purchases, but are there new ones on Benioff’s radar?

This will make the battle between the Enterprise SAAS titans all the more interesting over the coming year, as Salesforce’s competitors gear up to take on the CRM behemoth. 2018 will see this competition among CRM platforms heat up… Which can only be a good thing for us as they all push each other to further innovate.

Salesforce Prediction #2: Artificial Intelligence

Buzzword and passing fad? Or a trend to look out for? However you feel about it, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will still be all around us in 2018. Einstein has celebrated its first birthday in 2017. After a slow start, new AI-enabled features being rolled out more frequently now.

But it isn’t just about Einstein. Recently I attended the “Week of Innovation” here in the lovely Salesforce Tower (aka Heron Tower) in London. One of the sessions that caught my eye was a Salesforce Ventures presentation. In it they highlighted the venture capitalist strategy, but also their portfolio of recent investments. And a number of these are also looking to leverage AI to solve specific business problems.

For example, Digital Genius for AI in a Customer Service environment, TalkIQ for AI powered insight on call coaching your reps and Squirro for event-driven insights. All of these companies have been invested in by Salesforce Ventures, which shows that Salesforce is taking AI very seriously and looking to grow the AI & CRM ecosystem.

Salesforce Prediction #3: Dreamforce customisation features (my, my, my)

Another solid prediction… New features! My, oh my! But just bear with me…

If you have been to a Salesforce presentation… Everything starts off with the ‘Forward Looking Statement’ (used to be called the Safe Harbor Statement). And this section will be no different! 🙂

2018 will continue to see the standard 3x releases bring in a number of new features. So we will continue to be kept busy keeping up to date with all the planned features.

To start with, the big ‘my’ announcements at Dreamforce should all become available throughout 2018:

• myLightning and all the custom theme goodness, is due for release in Spring ’18 (it is in the preview notes)
• myTrailhead is expected to be generally available after a beta period. This is likely to be GA in H2 2018 (which is most likely to be the Winter ’19 release).
• mySalesforce, myIoT, myEinstein will also likely become available too either in Summer ’18 or Winter ’19.

Salesforce Prediction #4: New features keep on coming, to Lightning though…

Another prediction for 2018: Salesforce will continue the trend of “Lightning Experience only” with new features. But what features can we expect to see in 2018? I have dug through a number of online videos, presentations and roadmaps to find out what is coming our way and here are some of the best features I found:

Reports and Dashboards

Reports and Dashboards in Lightning will get a lot of attention over the coming releases:

• Dashboard tables will get reworked. Instead of being tied to the source report, the upcoming feature will allow you to have access to all the fields on your report type. (Likely Spring ’18 & Summer ’18)

• Dashboard & Chart colour configuration allowing you to essentially create a custom look for your dashboard. (This should be available in Spring ’18)
• Winter ’18 brought us Dashboard & Report folders within Lightning. But next year we will likely see the ability to create subfolders. (Likely in Summer ’18)
• The ability to create field to field filters. This will allow you to compare two fields directly within the report builder, without needing to build report formulas or custom fields. For example you could run a filter where Created Date equals any custom date field on your object. (Likely Summer ’18)
• Joined Reports in Lightning (Likely Summer ’18 via beta/pilot)
• Ability to sort columns based on aggregate (Likely Summer ’18)
• General usability updates, including ability to resize columns on reports and rename field labels in the report (Likely Winter ’19).

Dynamic Lightning Components

We saw the first iteration of this in Winter ’18 release, but there will be more ways to control dynamic components in upcoming releases. Potentially including the ability to filter the component by who the user is or by device being used.

The presentation I saw on this actually went as far to say that Salesforce are working towards being able to release dependent page layouts… Which would be fascinating in the possibilities it would unlock for Admins and Developers on the platform!

Lightning & Lists

Inline edits when in list view have been in Lightning now for a number of releases. But the ability to mass action/update records has been limited.

Moving forward, we will see a number of improvements to how you can work with lists when in Lightning. Things like the ability to mass change owner of records. Or updating multiple records from a list view with a Lightning Action…

When will we see these? Well it is on the future roadmap for post-Spring ’18 releases.

Wrap up

So that is it for now. That was a glimpse at the crystal ball for 2018.

As we all know, Salesforce is an ever-evolving beast of a platform. It will no doubt continue to drive industry-specific focus via packaged CRM features for industries (like Health Cloud or Financial Services Cloud). Are we likely to see a Retail Cloud some time soon?

The year ahead also introduces a number of challenges for Admins, Developers and Specialists in the form of new privacy regulations. The largest change coming our way is GDPR, for companies dealing with individuals within the European Union.

But as with every year, there is always a lot to look forward to. So happy new year and let the good times roll!

Share your predictions

Do you have any Salesforce predictions of your own? Feel free to share in the comments section below.

Appendix

If you want to know more, one of the most helpful videos outlining some of the new features on the roadmap, is this one: True to the Core, which was originally included in my last post Dreamforce 2017 roundup.

Also the Lightning Roadmap is available here, but a little out of date now spring ’18 is in preview, it is available here.

Hope that helps with exploring in more detail.

One struggle every Salesforce admin faces, is how to get users inputting the right data. Free form text fields with no format or structure to them. And then trying to report on these fields becomes a nightmare! So how do you then make sure your users are entering in the correct values? That is where the wondrous (yet often overlooked) field type called a ‘picklist’ comes in…

And picklists within Salesforce can help you structure data while guiding your users to complete fields as needed. While recent releases have also added to their versatility. In turn, this can help you as an Awesome Admin setup your Salesforce data more effectively.

So let’s go back to basics and dive in to Salesforce Picklists!

You keep saying picklist!!!!!

Let’s take a quick step back to make sure everyone has the same understanding of what a picklist is.
A picklist is ultimately a way to present several values to the user, and restrict what then select as a value in the field.
As an example, a status field when selected could show ‘To do’, ‘In Progress’ or ‘Done’ in the picklist.

Two types to rule them all.

Now we start getting into the fun stuff. And yes, I know I am a bit of a geek! In Salesforce there are two basic types of picklists available for an Admin to create, the regular ‘Picklist’ and ‘Multi Select Picklist’.

The primary difference is illustrated below, where a ‘Picklist’ only allows one value to be entered at a time, while Multi-Select picklists allow a user to select more than one value.

Flexibility with global control

Picklists and world domination… Not coming to a cinema near you!

Seriously though, as you can hopefully see picklists give you a fair amount of flexibility. But what if you want the same picklist options available across different objects in Salesforce?

As of Winter ’17 release, you can now define a common or global set of values for any picklist in your org to use. To do this for a new picklist you can go to:

In Classic: Setup -> Create -> Picklist Value Sets
Or in Lightning: Setup (via the little gear icon) -> Object and Fields -> Picklist Value Sets

And as added extra, the Summer ’17 release allows you to promote any existing picklist values and turn it into a global value set. Simply go to the picklist you want to promote, and you will see a button on the top of the page.

Picklist ‘gotchas’

Picklists are very handy in ensuring your users add the right value into the field. But because of the way they are structured there are a few things to remember when setting up and using picklists.

1) Record types:

Have you ever wondered why one user will see an option in the drop down, but someone else can’t see that option? The combination of record type and the profile of the user defines what she/he will see on-screen! (Don’t worry though, this one gets even the most seasoned of admins.)

2) Dependant picklists:

Alternatively, it could be a dependant picklist. This is where the value of one field, controls what options are available in the second field. An example of this could be on an Opportunity – where you have two picklists – the ‘Stage’ field and ‘Lost Reasons’.

You might want to display a list of ‘Lost Reasons’ if the user selects the ‘Stage’ of ‘Closed Lost’. Thereby allowing you to once again guide the user in what the valid options are.

3) Using Dataloader and picklists

Picklists are ultimately just text when Salesforce looks at it at the database level, so be mindful that when loading in values via Dataloader.

Any new values in the file being loaded into Salesforce may appear unless you tick the ‘restrict picklist values’ option on the field (or setup a validation rule).

4) Picklists in formulas

Picklist values are technically stored as a text value in Saleforce, however when using them in any advanced formula within Salesforce, like a validation rule, remember to use the function ‘ISPICKVAL()’.

For example, say we have a picklist field with the name ‘Industry’ and you wanted to see if a picklist value was set to ‘Financial Services’, you would use the formula like so: ISPICKVAL(Industry, “Financial Services’)

So there we have it. In a few short minutes, we have covered the basics of picklists! Exciting right 🙂 Now go forth and structure your data! Any business that values data quality will thank you for it!