Spring ‘24 has arrived in the Salesforce community!
So, what do you think? Full disclosure, I have a problem. I am one of those admins who jumps into the release notes when they come out. However, if you are like most admins—who avoid the monstrous release notes at all cost—this post is for you!
I’m going to show you some of the features that I think you will find useful for your Salesforce data management. Let’s start with Analytics.
Analytics
If you haven’t been using the Analytics Tab, you should. For starters, this saves you a tab because the Analytics tab replaces the Reports and Dashboards tab.
In Spring ‘24, folder sharing features on the tab have been enabled. It’s easy to use. From the App Launcher, find and select Analytics, then browse or search for a report or dashboard folder. Click the row-level action menu button for the folder, and click Share. It’s that simple!
Do you have a lot of dashboards? Do you have to manage them using one-by-one selections? Well, not anymore! In the new release, you can now manage them in groups at a time. All you have to do is browse or search your dashboard on the Analytics tab. Once they come up, you will see checkboxes which you can click off to change ownership for example! Here’s what that looks like:
Hyperforce
I think a lot of people have read about Hyperforce and thought, “yeah, so?”
This feature, even though we have to manage our conversion to Hyperforce, is a big deal because a couple of things happen as a result. Hyperforce is basically a new infrastructure on which Salesforce will be running. They are moving it to the Cloud! This will allow things to run faster because your data will be geographically “closer” to you. The bottom line is, Hyperforce gives you more choice and control over where your data resides. Another item of note is that release windows will be shrinking even more as well.
Lastly, if you need more information and want to know what’s really involved with a conversion to Hyperforce, check out the Hyperforce Assistant. It’s easy to find: Go to Setup and in the Quick Find box, type “Hyperforce Assistant.”
Sales
Even though I’m not currently in a situation where I’ll need to use this feature, I wanted to point it out. With Spring ‘24 you can now allow sales reps to draft AI-generated emails with Einstein.
This feature is built directly into the email composer. If you use the Gmail or Salesforce Outlook integrations, you can see Einstein generative AI in the email application pane. To get started, click “Draft with Einstein” and choose a type from the list (1. Review and edit the email. 2. Send it.)
It should look like this:
Intelligence Views
Have you heard of Intelligence Views? In case you haven’t seen this yet, here’s how it works and what it looks like for Accounts.
Account Intelligence View, in a nutshell, is a list view. However, the difference between a standard Salesforce list view and an Intelligence View is that the latter gives you some additional metrics regarding accounts.
Here’s what it looks like:
In the Account Intelligence View, you can do a number of things pretty easily:
- Quickly filter accounts
- See statistics, such as the total value of open opportunities and next close date, for resulting records
- See detailed activity, opportunity, and case data for individual records just click the side panel icon next to the record name)
- In the side panel, toggle between panes showing activity data or related records, or log activity without leaving the Intelligence View.
- Finally, it’s easily set up with a couple of clicks in setup!
Here’s a screenshot of the contacts version:
The contact metrics include:
- Not contacted—No calls or emails occurred in the last year.
- Contacted attempted—Outgoing calls or emails occurred in the last 30 days, without meaningful engagements.
- Engaged—At least one inbound engagement occurred.
- Meeting scheduled—At least one event is scheduled in the next 30 days.
- Meeting declined—A scheduled event was declined.
- Disqualified—The contact has a call result of unqualified or not interested, or has opted out of calls or emails.
I can definitely see how either or both the account and contact versions could be extremely useful to any organization.
Let me close by saying this is only a small snapshot of what is in the Spring ‘24 release. It’s definitely worth taking some time to investigate those “scary” release notes.
For more expert guidance to navigate the latest in CRM administration, tune in to Validity’s recurring Data In Sight webinar series.
Bill Hare is a guest blogger for Validity. He is 3x Salesforce Certified. Throughout his 10 years of application and operations experience, he has been in a number of roles that allowed him to see many different sides of the Salesforce world.