Administration
- Forecast by territory – territories are now available in collaborative forecasts. If you have wisely taken advantage of the features of enterprise territory management, you can now configure a forecast type that uses territories instead of the forecast hierarchy. This is especially useful if you need to view forecasts through multiple lenses due to a matrix reporting environment, allowing one view that runs down the territory hierarchy while maintaining the other view that follows the org chart and management hierarchy. In addition to creating the forecast type under forecast settings, you will need to make sure the forecast manager field is added to the territory page layout, that the manager of that territory is assigned to that territory, and then that you have assigned the managers. To do this, go to setup -> territory models -> view hierarchy and click edit next to the territory and assign the manager.
- Account teams – if you haven’t enabled account teams because they were slow to use in lightning, now is the time to enable them. You can now breeze through setting up team members on an account using the new modal included in this release.
- Territory Filters – You can now filter list views and reports by territory. You might have old list views and reports that were created using workarounds that you will want to go delete, and/or update them to use the new standard functionality.
- Web-to-lead – you can now reject leads that don’t use reCAPTCHA. Simply go to web-to-lead settings and check the box that requires reCAPTCHA on incoming leads.
- Email opens – when you send HTML emails from Salesforce, you can now see the last opened info right in the activity timeline so you don’t have to run a report to get that information. The fields can also (finally) be added to the page layout, so make sure you add first opened and last opened field to your email page layouts as well. Of course, if this isn’t a feature you have been using, make sure you enable enhanced email and email tracking in setup.
- Data privacy – speaking of tracking emails, you will want to make sure you are NOT tracking when you shouldn’t be. Go to setup -> data protection and privacy and select the option for make data protection details available in records. This will enable the ability for users to request additional restrictions such as don’t process or don’t track, and those preferences will be respected within Salesforce.
- Einstein Activity Capture – First of all, if you have enterprise edition of Salesforce, and use Office 365 or Gmail, you had better have this enabled! This feature went from a paid add-on to included feature 2 releases ago now, and many companies didn’t even blink. In this release you can customize the insights Einstein identifies in emails. Be sure to go to setup -> einstein email insights and create a new one. From there you can put in up to 10 keywords that might indicate a particular insight, so that you can automatically identify key interactions in your industry or sales process. You can have up to 10 of these custom insights, so make good use! You can also now click on a recommendation to act on it.
- Lightning Dialer – if your users are using the lightning dialer, they can now record their calls right from the dialer. You will need to enable this under dialer settings in setup. Keep in mind that the file stored takes up about 15 mb per hour, which can add up quickly so you will need an automated archival strategy or be ready to pay huge storage costs to salesforce. Users can set their calls to record by default in their personal settings, under recording settings. Make sure you know if it’s legal for you to record in your location, and whether or not the caller must be informed. Honestly, this is not how I would recommend handling call recordings but it could be very useful in certain circumstances, such as recording a short exchange for compliance or legal purposes, or if you have a very low call volume, or don’t need to retain calls for very long. If your reps want to use the lightning dialer with a non VOIP phone, you can go to setup -> lightning dialer and enable bridge access, and then the user can input the phone number they want to use in their personal settings. Note that this will use double the minutes used, as it is calling your line and the client line, and then bridging the calls together.
Help your buisness leaders and executives
Territory management – I would have the conversation about enterprise territory management with your team. There might be some changes to how they approach creating and managing territories that would allow them to use standard salesforce functionality. Help them see the value of being able to model the territories using automated rules, so that ownership of accounts is automatically managed, access to territories is automated, planning via new territory models that are staged before being deployed, etc. Now that you can forecast by territory, this is a great time to get them onboard and help them see the value of using ETM in salesforce. It will likely require some process changes, training on the tools, and data model updates. But it’s worth the effort.
Inform your users
- Opportunity management – users can now maintain edit access for the last owner when they transfer an opportunity. They also have the choice to maintain the opportunity team.
- Accounts – when users edit account details, they can select a checkbox at the bottom so that the territory management rules reevaluate. This will trigger a recalculation on that one record, and properly reassign the account if the edits should push it into a new territory. One of my favorite things about this is that it’s even available on mobile.
- Forecast sharing – Forecast managers in your company will want to know how to use the new sharing features. They can click on the share icon at the top right of their forecast screen, and then in the modal, they select who to share their forecast to and whether that use has view only or edit access. This is great for organizations that want sales operations staff or others to participate in their forecast management.
- Forecast UI Enhancements – breadcrumbs are the most notable enhancements, allowing you to jump back to any level after you have drilled down. You can also hide zero value rows to focus only on the rows that have dollars associated.
- Emails – if you have sales or marketing users sending list emails from salesforce, they can now add attachments! Additionally, you can now add attachments to lightning email templates. Speaking of lightning email templates, the merge field picker now filters so you can only see fields you can actually use in the context of that template.
- Kanban – your users can now use Kanban on the recently viewed list view. You can also search for records which is helpful when you have a lot of records in a given category.
If you have other questions or need help with any of the new features in this release, please feel free to reach out to me and I am glad to help. Reach out to me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/spencerklowe or enter your contact info anywhere on this site.
