Winter ’20 Release brings new Salesforce Mobile App
While not the most obvious of changes when reading the release notes, behind the scenes Winter ’20 Release brings new Salesforce Mobile App which aligns the mobile experience with Lightning Experience on desktop. Let’s take a quick look at what you can expect, and how to make the transition a smooth one for your users.
Why the change?
The short answer is, that Salesforce1 (or Salesforce Mobile) hasn’t changed much since it was released in late 2014.
The slightly longer answer though adds a bit more nuance. After Salesforce1 brought in a new way of navigation and accessing your data, Salesforce then turned its focus to building out a new desktop experience, which ultimately led to Lightning Experience.
Before this, users were able to use the Salesforce1 app via their desktop instead of using what is now referred to as Salesforce ‘Classic’ UI. The main benefit of this was to test how something would look on Mobile or to use it via browser on an iPad or similar device.
But with Lightning Experience, Salesforce has had its hands full migrating all products and features over, and ensuring improvements were delivered. Certain elements were similar across mobile and desktop now, so there wasn’t a huge need to update/refresh.
That was until late last year, when Salesforce and Apple announced a strategic partnership. With the partnership aiming to integrate voice commands (ie Siri) with Salesforce Mobile and rollout a Salesforce SDK for developers, which integrates with Swift (the preferred programming language on Apple devices).
Introducing the new Salesforce Mobile App
And so, here we are – with a new Salesforce Mobile App heading our way.
The primary focus of the app appears to integrate the mobile vs desktop experiences further. This will allow for more admin control over what is made available to users, with mobile navigation introducing the App Launcher:
Key improvements to navigation:
- Navigation Bar at the bottom of screen will now feature Favourites, Search and Notifications . This is a change from the global / quick actions.
- App Launcher finally appears on Salesforce Mobile. Allowing users to select standard/custom apps, and display the related tabs.
- Personalisation of Nav Bar, will be reflected for users on Lightning Experience (aka Desktop) and Mobile App.
What other changes are coming?
Changes to Page Layouts are also included, and now the same page will display for Lightning Experience or Mobile App. Admins will only need to create one page now.
What does this mean in the real world? It means you will have control to hide components which don’t make sense on either desktop or mobile experience.
Voice Commands
“Hey Siri, show me my dashboard.” and now Siri will actually listen… With the new Salesforce Mobile App opening up your dashboard page.
The new Salesforce Mobile App will also (and obviously) tie into the recently announced Einstein Voice and Einstein Platform Services, which will allow users to dictate notes, get Einstein recommended updates, etc on Apple/Google/Alexa devices.
What do you need to do?
This new mobile experience is opt-in, so even if users get the new mobile app – from the App Store/Play Store – without the new permissions, they will not experience any changes.
Salesforce has given control to admins to prepare for the transition, similar to Lightning Experience Transition.
From a high level, Salesforce recommend the following steps:
- Run the Salesforce Optimizer for Mobile Lightning Pages Report
- Read up on the new Salesforce Mobile App documentation
- Unlock Mobile Configuration Options in the Lightning App Builder
- Key take-away here is Admins can specify users access to new Mobile Experience, allowing you to test out new pages/apps/etc before general rollout to your users
- Roll out time, deploy to your users
When will the new app be available?
This should become available globally, starting from October 14th 2019. Users will
Additionally the new User Permissions will be available as part of Winter ’20 release, which should be rolled out globally (for majority of orgs) by the 14th October.
Resources
- Youtube: See the new app in action
- Trailhead: Lightning Experience for Mobile App
- Release Notes: Winter ’20 Mobile App Notes
- New Mobile App Quickstart
