Depending on your instance of Salesforce®, the remaining main release weekends for the Winter ’25 Release are October 5 and October 12, 2024.

To help get you ready for the release – on a recent Ad Victoriam Salesforce Simplified podcast – we spoke with  Salesforce Ben‘s Technical Content Director and 11X Salesforce-Certified Evangelist Christine Marshall about some of her favorite new features in the Salesforce Winter ’25 Release. Here are the seven she selected for AdVic®.

1. Optimize Your Strategic Planning with Account Plans

Salesforce Notes: Nurture existing relationships and grow key accounts strategically with Account Plans. You can research and analyze accounts, set objectives with actionable metrics, and keep tabs on growth and development, all from one repository within Salesforce.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions and Einstein 1 Sales Edition.

When: This feature will be available in production on a rolling basis after the Winter ’25 release is complete and available to all customers by October 29, 2024. The feature is only accessible in sandboxes after it’s available in production. To see the feature in sandboxes, run the Match Production Licenses tool or request a refresh after the feature is available in production.

Why: To maximize revenue potential and invest in your customers’ goals and challenges, track all your strategic planning with Account Plans.

How: Go to the new Account Plans page in Setup and turn on Account Plans. Then, configure the Account Plans object in the Object Manager, add the Account Plans related list to the Account object, and optionally set up Relationship Maps.

2. Configure Record Highlights in Lightning App Builder

Salesforce Notes: Use the new Dynamic Highlights Panel to configure your most important fields right in the Lightning App Builder. Previously, you could only configure fields in the Highlights Panel by using compact layouts in Setup. The Dynamic Highlights Panel can contain up to 12 fields. 

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

The Dynamic Highlights Panel is responsive. When you change the size of your browser window, your information stays visible and wraps instead of being truncated. You can also use visibility rules to show and hide fields in the panel.

The Dynamic Highlights Panel is a container for fields just like a Field Section. You can find it on the Fields tab in the Lightning App Builder.

You can also customize the actions that appear in the panel. The Dynamic Highlights Panel uses dynamic actions by default and is supported for all LWC-enabled objects. For a list of LWC-enabled objects, see LWC Migration for Record Home Pages.

Your users can see the Dynamic Highlights Panel immediately on desktop, but for it to appear on mobile record pages, you must enable it from Setup | Salesforce Mobile App | Dynamic Forms and Dynamic Highlights Panel on Mobile.

3. Make Record Fields Stand Out with Conditional Formatting

Salesforce Notes: Apply formatting to fields to help users quickly identify the most relevant information on a record page. In Lightning App Builder, give fields on Dynamic Forms-enabled pages custom icons and colors that can appear, disappear, and change color based on the criteria and rules that you define. The conditions can be based on the field’s value or the values of other fields on the page. You can view, edit, and delete rulesets for an object with the new Conditional Field Formatting node in Object Manager. 

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions

When: This functionality is available on a rolling basis starting with pre-release and sandbox orgs in early September 2024.

How: Conditional formatting uses rulesets, which are collections of rules. Each rule is made up of conditions that determine how and when formatting appears on a field. To apply conditional formatting to a field, open a Dynamic Forms-enabled record page in the Lightning App Builder and click the field on the canvas. In the field’s property panel, use the Conditional Formatting property to assign an existing ruleset or to create one.

4. Add Calculated Fields to Your Lightning Reports with Einstein Generative AI

Salesforce Notes: Customizing reports to meet your business needs is easier when Einstein Report Formula Generation assists with the technical work of creating row-level and summary formulas. Describe a calculation in simple terms, and Einstein discovers the relevant data and suggests a formula. Previously, constructing formulas for calculated fields required expertise in data models, objects and fields, available functions, and the various limitations of data types and formula types.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions with Einstein 1 Sales Edition or Einstein 1 Service Edition and the DC Report GPT add-on. Einstein generative AI is available in Lightning Experience.

How: From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Einstein Setup, and then select it. Enable Turn on Einstein.

When editing a report, select Create Formula in the Fields panel, or select Add Summary Formula or Add Row-Level Formula in the Columns menu.

In the formula builder, on the Einstein tab (1), describe the calculation that you want (2). You can ask questions such as, “How many days did it take each opportunity to close?” or “After deducting taxes and expenses, what are our net earnings?” If the Einstein formula looks good, click Insert Formula (3) and Einstein fills in all the fields for you (4).

Feedback can help us improve, and it’s greatly appreciated. Access the thumbs up and thumbs down icons by hovering on Einstein’s response.

5. Make Inline Edits with the Enhanced User List View

Salesforce Notes: You can now view, sort, and filter user records in a list format and directly modify new entries inline. Quickly update and modify records and simplify this experience without navigating away from the list view. 

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in all editions.

How: From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Users, and then select User Management Settings. Enable Enhanced User List View. Select Users to view the enhanced page.

6. Get Insight into How a User’s Permissions Are Granted

Salesforce Notes: To simplify user management, you now have visibility into the profile, permission sets, and permission set groups that grant permissions to a specific user. This information about a user’s assigned object, field, user, and custom permissions is available in the User Access Summary. Previously, troubleshooting where a user’s permissions came from required multiple queries or steps. Now you can get this information with a few clicks.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in all editions.

How: From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Users, and then select Users. Select a user, and then click View Summary. To see how an individual permission was granted, click the row-level action, and then click Access Granted By.

7. See How Object Access Is Granted in Object Manager

Salesforce Notes: Get a comprehensive view of the permission sets, permission set groups, and profiles that grant access to an object, and the level of access granted. Use the read-only Object Access Summary in Object Manager to quickly check object permissions when troubleshooting, completing reviews, or determining how to grant user access.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in all editions.

How: In Setup, go to Object Manager, and then select an object. In the sidebar, click Object Access.

Read more Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release features selected by Salesforce Ben’s Christine Marshall here and here.

How AdVic Can Help

If you have any questions about the Salesforce Winter ’25 Release – or anything Salesforce-related – AdVic’s U.S.-based Consulting Team – which works on your hours – is standing by to help! Reach us now, here.

*All Images courtesy of Salesforce

Related Resources:

Highlights from the Salesforce Summer ’25 Release – Podcast 

Salesforce Winter ’25 Release Notes

Sales Cloud: Top Salesforce Winter ’25 Features – Christine Marshall/Salesforce Ben Article

10 Hottest Salesforce Winter ’25 Features For Admins – Christine Marshall/Salesforce Ben Article

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The post Top Salesforce Winter ’25 Release Features: Selected By Salesforce Ben’s Christine Marshall appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Depending on your instance of Salesforce®, the first main release weekend for the Spring ’24 Release was January 12, with subsequent release weekends scheduled for February 2 and February 9. 

To help get you ready for the release – on a recent AdVic “Salesforce Simplified” podcast – we spoke with  Salesforce Ben‘s Courses & Community Director and 11X Salesforce-Certified Evangelist Christine Marshall about some of her favorite new features in the Salesforce Spring ’24 Release. Here are the six she selected for AdVic®.

1. New Dynamic Forms with Related Object Fields

Salesforce Notes: 

Drill into lookup relationship fields from the component palette in the Lightning App Builder and access fields from related objects. To display relevant data from related objects, drag the cross-object fields onto your record page. We delivered this feature thanks to your ideas on IdeaExchange.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How: We made some small enhancements to the Lightning App Builder UI to help you navigate through relationship fields.

On the Fields tab, a breadcrumb at the top shows the spans that you drilled into. The top-level breadcrumb indicates the object that the page is associated with.

Cross-object relationship fields have an arrow icon (>). You can drag them onto the page as is, or click the arrow icon to drill in.

2. Device-Specific Salesforce Dynamic Forms

Salesforce Notes: 

Previously, you could set visibility rules based on device form factor on Field Sections and other components but not on individual fields. Now, you can customize your desktop and mobile Lightning record pages even more granularly and restrict field visibility by device form factor, such as desktop or phone.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How: On a Dynamic Forms-enabled page in the Lightning App Builder, select a field on the canvas. In the properties pane, create a visibility rule filter using the Device context to set the field to display exclusively when its page is viewed in a specific experience.

3. Updated Analytics with Dashboard Ownership and Visualization

Salesforce Notes: 

Transfer Lightning dashboard ownership when responsibilities change or the current owner leaves your organization. You can change the ownership of multiple dashboards at one time and can send an email notification to the new owner. Previously, you had to clone or re-create the dashboard to provide access to a new owner.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Group, Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How: To reassign a single dashboard, on the Dashboards or Analytics tabs select Change Owner from the dashboard’s actions.

4. New Account Intelligence View

Salesforce Notes: 

See account activity, scan opportunity metrics, review cases, and log activities, all in one place in the Account Intelligence view. Previously, the account home page provided only a simple list view and required users to navigate to individual records to view opportunity, activity, or case data.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Professional, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions with Sales Cloud.

When: This feature is available in production after all instances are upgraded to Spring ’24. To see the feature in sandboxes, run Match Production License or request a refresh after the feature is available in production.

Why: The Account Intelligence view is your dedicated workspace for account management.

5. Updated Migrate to Flow Tool for Migration of More Processes

Salesforce Notes: 

The Migrate to Flow tool now supports partial migration for most actions. At a minimum, you can partially migrate all actions except for invocable actions. The migration results identify which actions need further configuration in Flow Builder for your migration to be complete.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How: From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Migrate to Flow, and then select Migrate to Flow. Select the process that you want to convert into a flow, and click Migrate to Flow. Select the criteria that you want to migrate (1). The Migrateable column indicates if the process is partially migrateable (2). Then click Migrate to Flow. When the migration is complete, click Needs Review to see the list of actions that require additional configuration (3).

6. Seller Home for Improved Sales Experience

Salesforce Notes: 

Now sales team members can start their day with a complete view of their business. Seller Home shows users an overview of their opportunities, accounts, leads, and contacts, along with their day’s agenda. Seller Home also lets users set goals, track progress, and view their to-do items, recent records, and contact suggestions from Einstein.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Professional, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions with Sales Cloud.

Why: With more useful information available at a glance, users can get oriented faster and choose what to do next. Seller Home includes:

– Opportunity Overview

– Account Overview

– Lead Overview

– Contact Overview

– Weekly or Monthly Goals

– Today’s Events

– To-Do Items

– Recent Records

– Contact Suggestions (identified by Einstein from a user’s emails and events)

Read more Salesforce Spring ‘24 Features selected by Salesforce Ben’s Christine Marshall.

How AdVic Can Help

If you have any questions about the Salesforce Spring ’24 Release – or anything Salesforce-related – AdVic’s U.S.-based Consulting Team – which works on your hours – is standing by to help! Reach us now, here.

*Images courtesy of Salesforce

Related Resources:

Highlights From the Salesforce Spring ’24 Release – Podcast

Highlights From Salesforce’s Winter ’24 Release – Selected by Salesforce Ben’s Christine Marshall – Blog

Highlights From the Salesforce Winter ’24 Release – Podcast

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The post Salesforce Ben’s Christine Marshall Highlights Top Spring ’24 Release Features appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.

To help get you ready for the Winter ’21 Release (September 18 – Release Readiness Live! and October 10 & 17 – Release Weekends), Ad Victoriam’s certified consultants have poured through the latest Salesforce innovations across mobile, industry solutions, content management, AI, and more to highlight seven of the standout new features.

1. Break Up Your Record Details with Dynamic Forms

AdVic Note: Using the Lightning App Builder, Dynamic Forms now allows you to create mini-page layouts that can be placed anywhere. In addition, they can also be hidden on a per-user basis.

Salesforce Overview: Dynamic Forms is the next step in the evolution of Lightning record pages. It adds the ability to configure record detail fields and sections inside the Lightning App Builder. This feature, which is now generally available and enabled for everyone, includes some changes since the beta release.

2. Optimize the Opportunity Scoring Model

AdVic Notes: Available to the entire Salesforce community with the Winter ’21 Release, you now have the availability to exclude certain records – and ignore fields of your choosing – from the Einstein Opportunity Scoring model.

Salesforce Overview: Fine-tuning your scoring model can yield more accurate scores. When setting up Einstein Opportunity Scoring, you can choose to have Einstein look only at opportunities that meet certain conditions. Also, decide if you want Einstein to exclude any custom opportunity fields from the scoring model.

3. Find Changed Deals at a Glance

AdVic Notes: Sales Managers who need to stay updated on the movement of deals will especially like this. Change to the Opportunity List views in Lightning allows users to see if Opportunity amounts or close dates have been changed. In addition, via the Forecasting tab, you now have the ability to update sales stages.

Salesforce Overview: Opportunity deal change highlights help your sales team prioritize work by showing recent changes to amounts and close dates. For example, knowing which deals changed helps sales managers with their weekly coaching sessions. In the opportunities list view and Kanban view, text colors and arrows indicate amounts and close dates that changed during the last seven days. And users can hover over an arrow to get details.

4. Apply Audiences to Record Detail Pages with Record-Based Criteria

AdVic Notes: Communities often require additional customization as they are external facing. This new update extends the customization to the record detail page which was previously only customizable through the use of record types.

Salesforce Overview: You can now vary what people see on a record detail page using audience criteria based on record fields. For example, you can display different theme layouts when someone is looking at a coffee machine or a box of tea, or different pages for high-value and low-value opportunities. Also, we moved record criteria from the advanced section into the main body of the editor, so you can easily combine it with user criteria to create custom formulas.

5. Display Survey Pages Based on Your Data

AdVic Notes: Do you use Salesforce Surveys? If so, you now have the ability to create unique customer journeys by defining which survey page they skip to next based on Salesforce data.

Salesforce Overview: Let data in your Salesforce org determine which survey page participants view next. Use variables to define conditions in your page branching logic. Use associated record merge field variables and participant record merge field variables to define field-level conditions. Use org variables to define conditions based on your org’s information. Use custom variables to define conditions based on values that you define.

6. Be More Efficient with the Actions Launcher Redesign

AdVic Note: This update brings more parity to the Field Service app between iOS and Android. This is a great step toward a more unified experience across the devices making training and troubleshooting easier.

Salesforce Overview: Working on iOS and Android is easier with the updated Actions launcher. The Actions launcher’s look and feel are now the same across platforms, giving users a consistent experience, no matter their device. Section headers make it faster to find what you’re looking for when navigating through action lists.

7. Analyze Your Lightning Page Performance

AdVic Notes: Ever get a complaint about page loading speeds from a Lightning user? Salesforce has now given you the ability to see what components are the culprits causing this. Locate the “Analyze” button in the Lightning App builder to get suggestions for page loading speed improvements.

Salesforce Overview: 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.

If you need help implementing any of the Winter ’21 Releases, you need a partner with extensive knowledge, depth of experience, and proven customer success. The Ad Victoriam team is ready to help you figure out your needs now! Just fill out the form below, or click here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][gravityform id=”16″ title=”true” description=”true” ajax=”false”]

7 Top Salesforce Summer ‘20 Release Highlights
6 Top Salesforce Spring ‘20 Release Highlights

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1. Trigger a Flow That Performs Actions After a Record Is Saved

AdVic Note: This allows Admins to bypass the need for a Process Builder that is only being utilized for triggering a Flow. This should help simplify some automation, by allowing more use cases of people migrating away from Workflow Rules.

Salesforce Overview: Creating or updating a record can now trigger a flow that performs actions such as sending an email after the changes are saved to the database. Use record-changed flows to perform after-save actions and make before-save updates. You can replace most of your workflows and record-change processes that you created in Process Builder.

2. Run Flows That Bypass User Permissions

AdVic Note: This allows Admins to control what is done in a Flow, without necessarily giving the User more permission outside of the context of the Flow. This should help with making Flows easier to deploy and less impactful to sharing/security rules in the system.

Salesforce Overview: Allow guest users to create or edit records they don’t have direct access to by setting your flow to run in the system context without sharing. Flows running with this setting ignore object-level security, field-level security, org-wide default settings, role hierarchies, sharing rules, manual sharing, teams, and territories.

3. Better Manage Your Community Pages

AdVic Note: This will allow Admins to have a better experience when managing a Community. It will be easier to see the different pages being utilized and how they can customize them.

Salesforce Overview: The improved Community Pages Menu makes it easier to navigate to and edit your pages. Search for a page to see the folder where a page lives and select and edit the page directly from the search results.

4. Determine Agent Capacity Based on Work Item Status

AdVic Note: Admins can now set up assignments to be more dynamic and take into account status-based capacity for Omni-Channel. This will allow for a better implementation of Omni-Channel.

Salesforce Overview: Measure agent capacity more accurately. Omni-Channel can now determine agent capacity based on the status of accepted work rather than the previous method of open tabs. If agents are unavailable, their work remains assigned, and reflected in their capacity, until the work is completed or reassigned.

5. Show Extended Record and Polymorphic Relationships with the Related Record Component

AdVic Note: This is a great way to bring in more information to a page, and it now allows us to go another level deeper on the lookup relationship making it even more powerful!

Salesforce Overview: Now your agents can look up more information with fewer clicks. Agents can use the updated Related Record component to look up two levels of record relationships to get more context for their customers.

6. Debug More Flows Faster

AdVic Note: Improves the debugging ability of Flow by allowing you to select a record and for you to rollback changes to the database so that you can continue to test with that same record.

Salesforce Overview: When you debug an auto-launched flow that saves changes to the database such as create records; you don’t have to revert those changes manually anymore. In Flow Builder, use rollback mode and let it save you the hassle. You can now use the debug option in Flow Builder for schedule-triggered flows. And the debug option includes the Lookup screen component so that you can set record variables more easily.

7. Break Up Your Record Details with Dynamic Forms

AdVic Note: This feature will give admins greater flexibility when customizing record pages allowing for an improved user interface experience.

Salesforce Overview: Dynamic Forms is the next step in the evolution of Lightning record pages. It adds the ability to configure record detail fields and sections inside the Lightning App Builder.

If you need help implementing any of the Summer ’20 Releases, you need a partner with extensive knowledge, depth of experience, and proven customer success. The Ad Victoriam team is ready to help you figure out your needs now! Just click here.

Related Articles
6 Top Salesforce Spring ‘20 Release Highlights
Salesforce Einstein Winter ‘20 Enhancements
Lightning Strikes in the Salesforce Winter ‘20 Release

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To help get you ready for the Spring ‘20 Release, Ad Victoriam’s certified consultants have poured through the latest Salesforce innovations across mobile, industry solutions, content management, AI, and more to highlight six of the standout new features.

1. Run Flows Without Worrying About User Permissions with System Mode

AdVic Note: It’s taken a while, but this Ad Victoriam-suggested idea has finally been delivered by Salesforce. We’re excited about the possibilities here within screen flows!

Salesforce Overview: Normally, how a flow is launched determines whether the flow runs in the context of the user or the system. Now you can bypass the running user’s permissions by setting your flow to run in system context with sharing. The flow still respects org-wide default settings, role hierarchies, sharing rules, manual sharing, teams, and territories, but it ignores object permissions, field-level access, or other permissions of the running user.

2. Display Questions Based on Participant Responses

AdVic Note: This gives your customers a better experience when filling out a survey. Less clicking between pages to get additional information.

Salesforce Overview: Choose which questions your participants view on a page. Based on how participants respond to the previous questions on a page, decide which questions they view next.

3. Customize When Prompts Appear to Users

AdVic Note: Admins can now customize the onboarding experience for Users.

Salesforce Overview: Quickly change the amount of time to delay prompts. Decrease the global delay time to accelerate onboarding prompts or increase the delay to spread out announcements and updates. Ignore the global delay time to show a prompt when a page first loads or to show multiple prompts a day without changing the global delay time for all prompts.

To ignore the global delay time, check Show prompt when the page loads on the Schedule page when creating a prompt.

4. Assign Tasks to a Queue to Share Work Efficiently

AdVic Note: Ad Victoriam’s certified Salesforce consultants have collectively labeled this Spring ‘20 Release “a big one!”

Salesforce Overview: Let sales reps share their workload by setting up queues for tasks. Reps can assign tasks to their shared queues, and then individuals can take ownership of those tasks from the queue’s list view.

How: In Setup, enter Queues in the Quick Find box and then select Queues. From the Queues setup page, select New. Then, create a queue and assign Task as the supported object.

5. Welcome to the New Salesforce Mobile App

AdVic Note: It’s always great to get an app update, but this Spring ‘20 Salesforce Mobile app update, in particular, offers some great admin customization options.

Salesforce Overview: The new Salesforce Mobile app is going prime time! The new app debuted in Winter ’20. In Spring ’20, all active Salesforce mobile app users, including Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience users, get upgraded to the new Salesforce mobile app. Admins get access to more customization options. End users get an intuitive UI, faster performance, and familiar Lightning features that make switching between desktop and mobile easier than ever.

6. Update and Deploy Lightning Communities with ExperienceBundle

AdVic Note: This is a step in the right direction for deploying communities. Communities have often seemed to be overlooked when it comes to deploying because the Metadata is often lacking around the Community.

Salesforce Overview: The ExperienceBundle metadata type, which was previously available as a pilot program, is now generally available. ExperienceBundle provides human-readable, text-based representations of the different Experience Builder settings and site components, such as pages, branding sets, and themes. Whether it’s for your own org or you’re a consulting partner or ISV, quickly update and deploy Lightning communities using your preferred development tools, including Salesforce Extensions for VS Code, Salesforce CLI, Workbench, or your favorite IDE or text editor.

And if those AdVic team-chosen highlights from the Spring ’20 Release haven’t whet your appetite enough, you can see even more top new features for each product category in Salesforce’s library of demo videos, here.

If you need help implementing any of the Spring ’20 Releases, you need a partner with extensive knowledge, depth of experience, and proven customer success. The Ad Victoriam team is ready to help you figure out your needs now! Just click here.

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