Lightning Experience

Introduction – The Summer of Einstein

Salesforce Summer Release 2024 is fast approaching. You can check when your org is set to officially update with the new release by checking the Salesforce Maintenance Calendar. Get your Instance from the Company Information page and search it. Then scroll until you find the update:

Looking ahead to the Salesforce Summer Release 2024,  we’re eager to spotlight several key features that promise to elevate your user experience. In the post below, we have highlight just some of these features that we believe will be particularly beneficial for Admins, Devs, Muleys, and all those utilizing the power of Salesforce! Let’s get into it.

Einstein for Flow and Formulas

Of course something Einstein related is first on our list. For admins, this is a game changer.  With the power of generative AI, flows have never been more approachable and easier to build for admins.

By now, we should all be somewhat familiar with natural language prompts. It’s what allows us to interact with these LLMs in plain words. When using Einstein for Flow, an admin can simply provide instructions in the form of a prompt, and let Einstein create a draft flow:

 

For the moment, this feature is still in its early stages. More complex flows still require user configuration and understanding of the tool. However, we believe this will help admins adopt Flows because it is foundational to the education of Flow creation.

Einstein for Formulas is another generative AI tool for the Admin Toolbox. Now you can get an explanation for formulas used in Formula fields, record validation rules, and default field values. This goes for new formulas or ones that already exist.

Check out my quick demo on YouTube!

User Permission Updates

The updates to User Permissions widely came from requests in the IdeaExchange. Out of the many solutions the Salesforce team delivered this release, being able to see where a public group is used, as well as getting a summary of a User’s permissions and access are some we are anticipating the most:

The public group deep dives and shows sharing rules, reports and dashboard folders accessible by the group and more. These are going to be such useful tools when performing security audits!

Transform is GA!

The new flow element ‘Transform’ has been completed and is now Generally Available! We typically don’t utilize Beta features for our clients because they tend to change before release, so we are super excited for this feature to enter GA:

Transform is used to select the flow resources for mapping and transforming source data to target data. For example, imagine you have a bunch of addresses in different formats and you want all of them to follow a standard format before storing them in Salesforce. You can use the Transform element to make all these addresses uniform—like making sure every address has a city, state, and zip code in the correct places.

This element is extremely useful when you need to manipulate data coming from various sources or when you want to prepare data for further processing in your flow, ensuring it meets certain criteria or standards.

Additionally, mapping tips accessibility updates come with the GA Transform element that wasn’t available in the beta.

This feature, along with Data Cloud is sure to supercharge the admin workflow and increase data integrity. As we move to adopt AI, data integrity is vital!

Flow Integration

This is for the Muleys out there, but process automation and integration enthusiasts will find this immensely useful.  For all those Flownatics out there looking to make the jump from automation to integration, this may provide more insight.

MuleSoft Composer is now Flow Integration and is officially a part of Salesforce Flow.  This additional capability will surely allow for quicker and easier integrations with other systems.

Is Blank/Is Empty Checks

Here at CloudFirst Labs, we strive for proper error handling in our automated solutions. So when we found out that a new operator “Is Empty” was coming, we got excited. No more Assignment and Decision checks on collections! With the Is Empty operator, you can check if a collection is empty or not!

The Is Blank operator updates allow users to check if a text value has no characters or white space. For non-text fields, it checks for a null value:

Automation Lightning App

Monitor and manage your flows with the new Automation Lightning app, now accessible to all flow administrators and users who have been granted permissions.

Within this app, you have the ability to either create new flows or modify existing ones using Flow Builder. Additionally, new list views are available, showcasing your most recently modified flows along with those that contain errors:

Efficiently search for specific flows by keywords within the flow label, and refine your search further by filtering or sorting flows by type, progress status, the date of the last modification, the user who last modified them, and fields associated with the record.

Set Conditional Visibility for Individual Tabs in Lightning App Builder

Another delivery from the IdeaExchange, tabs on Lightning Web Component enabled record pages can show/hide tabs dynamically.

When tailoring the user experience in the Lightning App Builder, one of the key features you can leverage is customizing tab visibility to align with your business requirements. This functionality allows you to create a dynamic interface where individual tabs within the Tabs component can be set to show or hide based on specific conditions:

This means you can streamline what your users see, ensuring they have access to the tabs that are most relevant to them, depending on the criteria you define. This is a great way to keep your application clean, organized, and incredibly user-friendly.

Conclusion – Lots of new features in Salesforce Summer Release 2024

Outside of the standard plethora of updates to core clouds, like Service and Sales, there have been some notable updates to Automotive Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Financial Services clouds. You can now add secure Credit Card payments with clicks in Commerce Cloud. Automotive Cloud is now Generally Available.  In Financial Services Cloud, the Actionable Relationship Center is much easier to set up. There has also been an overhaul to some cloud-specific fields.

This is just a preview of the features expected in the Summer ’24 release. For a comprehensive list, please refer to the official release notes.

 

Talk to the Professionals!

To learn more about our MuleSoft or Salesforce services, please visit our website or fill out a Contact Us form here.

The Best Solution

In my first CPQ-focused blog post “Real World CPQ in Salesforce”, I discussed what CPQ is and what some of your options are.  In this post, I talk about the many reasons companies choose AgileQuote, including its ease of use, rich feature set, quick deployment, and low cost.  Our application can be implemented in hours and saves countless clicks when creating quotes and opportunities.  But don’t just take our word for it, let’s review some actual examples!

Speed

Three Wire Systems, a technology solutions provider for government and military, was looking for a tool that improved their speed and accuracy for processing orders.  The current crop of applications didn’t meet their criteria, so they turned to AgileQuote.  Simone Feldman, former Sr VP of the Technology Business Unit put it very succinctly: “The flexibility offered by AgileQuote has made all the difference for Three Wire Systems, allowing us to customize on the fly and streamlining our ability to go from RFQ to quote in less than 25% of the time it [used to take].  This has improved our reporting capabilities for tracking sales and quotes and made forecasting straight from the system possible.”

Not only is creating Opportunities and Quotes fast, but implementation time is also lightning quick and easy.  The goal of the tool was for customers to be able to self-implement in a few hours or a day, not in weeks or months.  All configuration is accomplished via setup screens, including quote line templates and powerful product search filtering:

Configurability

Another technology solutions provider, Moving On IT Solutions, required a quoting tool that was intuitive and flexible.  Compared to our other customers, they had a unique use case that AgileQuote and Salesforce easily managed: the ability to sell the same hardware SKU in different conditions such as New, Used, or Refurbished:

As Jan Collis, the CEO of Moving On IT states, “AgileQuote allows our team to easily create quotes for our customers based on their needs.  We are relatively new to the Salesforce platform, and AgileQuote has made adoption a breeze.  We’re able to have a quote to our customers within minutes of getting off the phone with them!” 

Functionality

AgileQuote provides functionality that you usually find in larger, more expensive applications such as product bundles, pricing discounts, dropship/fulfillment, and custom error handling.  Because AgileQuote uses the standard Salesforce quote objects, we can provide custom processing and implement business rules easily via Flows.

It was important for CloudFirst Labs to provide structured visibility and to allow processing via standard Salesforce declarative methods, using clicks not code.

Try It, You’ll Like It

Customers can always visit our AppExchange listing and start a trial in a Sandbox, which is what we recommend.  We provide configuration documentation, Quick Start guides, and YouTube videos to get you up and running, and the team is always available to answer questions or review your use cases before or during your evaluation!

Salesforce Lightning Experience comes with a slick user interface that is easy to navigate and even easier to use right from the beginning. Lightning is built entirely out of what Salesforce calls Lightning Components, which are miniature applications designed to help users accomplish tasks. Subsequently, it is quick and easy to create a custom lightning record page in Salesforce.  A Lightning Record Page is a collection of several components within a single web page. By default, each object – Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, etc. – has its own unique record page provided by Salesforce, consisting of several standard lightning components, also provided by Salesforce.

As an example, let’s look at the default Quote Record Page below:

Default Salesforce Quote Page

Customize Your Own Record Page with Lightning App Builder

Above all, as displayed in the previous example, Salesforce Lightning Experience provides a lot of great tools right out of the box to get any user up and running on their platform from day 1. However, Salesforce also gives its users full flexibility to design a record page however you’d like to through a tool called the Lightning App Builder.

The following is a quick rundown of the Lightning App Builder:

Lightning App Builder Sections

Example:
Create a New Custom Lightning Record Page

In the following example, we will first create a custom Quote Record Page, then add and customize standard components, as well as add our own exclusive CloudFirst Labs custom Agile Quote components to the page. Then we will activate the newly created page for our org. To Start:

1. In Salesforce, click the Setup icon (Gear)  and click Setup

2. While in Setup, navigate to the Object Manager tab then Click on the Quote object.

3. In the left panel, click Lightning Record Pages.

4. Click New to create a new page.

5. The Lightning App Builder opens with a Create new page wizard. Click to create a Record Page, and then click Next. 

Create a new Lightning Page

6. On the next screen, give the page a name, select Quote as the object, and then click Next.

7. Now it is time to select a page template to use. There are many to choose from, but for this example, select Header and Right Sidebar, and then click Finish.

Adding and Customizing Standard Components

Now that the Page has been created, we have a blank slate of 3 panels to add components to. To start let’s add the Highlights panel and work our way down.

1. To begin with, in the Components list on the left panel of the page, locate the Highlights Panel, click and drag and drop the component into the top most section of the Lightning Page.

2. Next, locate the Path Component and drop that also into the top most section, immediately below the Highlights.

Edit Highlights Panel and Path Control

3. Sticking with the Standard Components, simply drop a Tabs component in the Right Panel

4. The Tabs component properties will load on the right side of the screen. Click the defaulted Details tab because we are going to change the tab label to Activity.

Edit Details tab

Change to Activity

5. Select the Related Tab in the Page Preview to make it active then drop the Related Lists standard component into it.

6. Select the Activity Tab in the Page Preview to make it active then drop the Activities standard component into it.

Add Activities Related List to Lightning Record Page

Adding Custom Components

You now understand how simple and fast it is to build Lightning Pages with standard Salesforce components. With this in mind, the next example is to show how it works with custom components. Hint: it’s just as easy.

1. In the Components list, scroll down to the custom Lightning Components section.

Lightning Page now shows as a custom option

2. From here you can drop any custom-built component into your Page as long as it is Available For All Page Types. For this example, we will drop our custom Header and Lines components into the remaining left panel of the Page.

Saving and Activating the Page

Subsequently, the page is fully set up and ready for use by the users. After that, the only thing left to do is Save it and Activate it. For this example, we are just going to activate it as the default for our org.

1. Click the Activation button in the top right corner of the screen. As a result, the Activation wizard opens.

2. Look for the Assign as Org Default button and click it:

Activate your new Custom Lightning Record Page

3. Click Next on the Assign Form Factor page.

4. Click Save on the Review Assignment page.

5. As a result, you are returned to the Lightning App Builder with the Activation settings saved. Lastly, click the Save button to save the changes to the Page itself.

Congratulations, you just successfully used the Lightning App Builder to create and activate a custom Lightning Record Page!

To learn more or talk to one of our experienced consultants, contact us today!

Fully Customizable Sales Process

Salesforce gives each of its customers their own environment to work in, fully configurable so that a company can tailor their environment to meet their needs. This includes the Sales Cloud sales process. With the sales process, you can customize each of the stages of your sales – to your exact terminology – to help ensure that every member of your team is on the same page, maximizing their potential to close deals.

On top of this, Sales Cloud provides users with an effective Kanban view of all their opportunities, with drag-and-drop capabilities to move their deals among stages and automatically recalculate totals based on those stages. This allows users to move at a high velocity so they can spend less of their time working with data, and more of their time working with leads.

Automate Anything

With proper planning and a strong administrative team, Salesforce has many different options behind the scenes to automate just about anything you need to make your salespeople’s lives even easier. By using Flow, admins can write automations to help move deals along stages, update fields or move on to the next step after a deal has been won.

Best of all, Salesforce allows companies to connect email(follow the link for a YouTube video!), such as Office 365 or Gmail, to their environment using Einstein Activity Capture so that reps can send and track all email activity automatically with minimal clicks, all within the same application.

With Sales Cloud, the sky is the limit for your sales reps and company. It is just a matter of getting your environment suited to your needs. And because Salesforce is the #1 Cloud CRM provider, all this is possible from anywhere in the world, as long as the user has an internet connection. To learn more or talk to one of our experienced consultants, contact us today!

 

Sales Cloud for Sales Management

That all sounds pretty great, right? It gets better. Sales Cloud also provides out-of-the-box reporting and forecasting. This gives management the ability to keep track of their teams and put their reps in a position to maximize profits. In addition to reporting, Sales Cloud offers Dashboards, which can be customized groups of those most important reports, all on one screen. Dashboards can be made visible to all, encouraging competition among sales, and who benefits most when sales reps compete with one another? The company. Did we mention that all of this is available in real-time?

Fully Customizable Sales Process

Salesforce gives each of its customers their own environment to work in, fully configurable so that a company can tailor their environment to meet their needs. This includes the Sales Cloud sales process. With the sales process, you can customize each of the stages of your sales – to your exact terminology – to help ensure that every member of your team is on the same page, maximizing their potential to close deals.

On top of this, Sales Cloud provides users with an effective Kanban view of all their opportunities, with drag-and-drop capabilities to move their deals among stages and automatically recalculate totals based on those stages. This allows users to move at a high velocity so they can spend less of their time working with data, and more of their time working with leads.

Automate Anything

With proper planning and a strong administrative team, Salesforce has many different options behind the scenes to automate just about anything you need to make your salespeople’s lives even easier. By using Flow, admins can write automations to help move deals along stages, update fields or move on to the next step after a deal has been won.

Best of all, Salesforce allows companies to connect email(follow the link for a YouTube video!), such as Office 365 or Gmail, to their environment using Einstein Activity Capture so that reps can send and track all email activity automatically with minimal clicks, all within the same application.

With Sales Cloud, the sky is the limit for your sales reps and company. It is just a matter of getting your environment suited to your needs. And because Salesforce is the #1 Cloud CRM provider, all this is possible from anywhere in the world, as long as the user has an internet connection. To learn more or talk to one of our experienced consultants, contact us today!

 

Do you keep track of your customers and deals using notepads, sticky notes, Excel spreadsheets, emails, or all the above? Have you ever lost track of a customer or dealt with using one of those methods? Have you ever missed a follow-up due to a lack of organization? Do any of your team members or managers know the statuses of your customers or deals? Enter Sales Cloud, Salesforce CRM’s most popular product, designed specifically for salespeople. 

Sales Cloud for Sales Reps

Sales Cloud provides sales reps with the ability to keep track of all their leads, customers, deals, daily tasks, and activities; all in one smooth and easy-to-use place. When utilizing Sales Cloud to its full potential, reps can do their day-to-day work with minimal effort, thus maximizing productivity. Salesforce does most of the administrative work for the reps so that they can spend more time doing what they do best: Selling.

Sales Cloud for Sales Management

That all sounds pretty great, right? It gets better. Sales Cloud also provides out-of-the-box reporting and forecasting. This gives management the ability to keep track of their teams and put their reps in a position to maximize profits. In addition to reporting, Sales Cloud offers Dashboards, which can be customized groups of those most important reports, all on one screen. Dashboards can be made visible to all, encouraging competition among sales, and who benefits most when sales reps compete with one another? The company. Did we mention that all of this is available in real-time?

Fully Customizable Sales Process

Salesforce gives each of its customers their own environment to work in, fully configurable so that a company can tailor their environment to meet their needs. This includes the Sales Cloud sales process. With the sales process, you can customize each of the stages of your sales – to your exact terminology – to help ensure that every member of your team is on the same page, maximizing their potential to close deals.

On top of this, Sales Cloud provides users with an effective Kanban view of all their opportunities, with drag-and-drop capabilities to move their deals among stages and automatically recalculate totals based on those stages. This allows users to move at a high velocity so they can spend less of their time working with data, and more of their time working with leads.

Automate Anything

With proper planning and a strong administrative team, Salesforce has many different options behind the scenes to automate just about anything you need to make your salespeople’s lives even easier. By using Flow, admins can write automations to help move deals along stages, update fields or move on to the next step after a deal has been won.

Best of all, Salesforce allows companies to connect email(follow the link for a YouTube video!), such as Office 365 or Gmail, to their environment using Einstein Activity Capture so that reps can send and track all email activity automatically with minimal clicks, all within the same application.

With Sales Cloud, the sky is the limit for your sales reps and company. It is just a matter of getting your environment suited to your needs. And because Salesforce is the #1 Cloud CRM provider, all this is possible from anywhere in the world, as long as the user has an internet connection. To learn more or talk to one of our experienced consultants, contact us today!

 

Let’s Get Started with Sales Cloud

Do you keep track of your customers and deals using notepads, sticky notes, Excel spreadsheets, emails, or all the above? Have you ever lost track of a customer or dealt with using one of those methods? Have you ever missed a follow-up due to a lack of organization? Do any of your team members or managers know the statuses of your customers or deals? Enter Sales Cloud, Salesforce CRM’s most popular product, designed specifically for salespeople. 

Sales Cloud for Sales Reps

Sales Cloud provides sales reps with the ability to keep track of all their leads, customers, deals, daily tasks, and activities; all in one smooth and easy-to-use place. When utilizing Sales Cloud to its full potential, reps can do their day-to-day work with minimal effort, thus maximizing productivity. Salesforce does most of the administrative work for the reps so that they can spend more time doing what they do best: Selling.

Sales Cloud for Sales Management

That all sounds pretty great, right? It gets better. Sales Cloud also provides out-of-the-box reporting and forecasting. This gives management the ability to keep track of their teams and put their reps in a position to maximize profits. In addition to reporting, Sales Cloud offers Dashboards, which can be customized groups of those most important reports, all on one screen. Dashboards can be made visible to all, encouraging competition among sales, and who benefits most when sales reps compete with one another? The company. Did we mention that all of this is available in real-time?

Fully Customizable Sales Process

Salesforce gives each of its customers their own environment to work in, fully configurable so that a company can tailor their environment to meet their needs. This includes the Sales Cloud sales process. With the sales process, you can customize each of the stages of your sales – to your exact terminology – to help ensure that every member of your team is on the same page, maximizing their potential to close deals.

On top of this, Sales Cloud provides users with an effective Kanban view of all their opportunities, with drag-and-drop capabilities to move their deals among stages and automatically recalculate totals based on those stages. This allows users to move at a high velocity so they can spend less of their time working with data, and more of their time working with leads.

Automate Anything

With proper planning and a strong administrative team, Salesforce has many different options behind the scenes to automate just about anything you need to make your salespeople’s lives even easier. By using Flow, admins can write automations to help move deals along stages, update fields or move on to the next step after a deal has been won.

Best of all, Salesforce allows companies to connect email(follow the link for a YouTube video!), such as Office 365 or Gmail, to their environment using Einstein Activity Capture so that reps can send and track all email activity automatically with minimal clicks, all within the same application.

With Sales Cloud, the sky is the limit for your sales reps and company. It is just a matter of getting your environment suited to your needs. And because Salesforce is the #1 Cloud CRM provider, all this is possible from anywhere in the world, as long as the user has an internet connection. To learn more or talk to one of our experienced consultants, contact us today!

 

Let’s Get Started with Sales Cloud

Do you keep track of your customers and deals using notepads, sticky notes, Excel spreadsheets, emails, or all the above? Have you ever lost track of a customer or dealt with using one of those methods? Have you ever missed a follow-up due to a lack of organization? Do any of your team members or managers know the statuses of your customers or deals? Enter Sales Cloud, Salesforce CRM’s most popular product, designed specifically for salespeople. 

Sales Cloud for Sales Reps

Sales Cloud provides sales reps with the ability to keep track of all their leads, customers, deals, daily tasks, and activities; all in one smooth and easy-to-use place. When utilizing Sales Cloud to its full potential, reps can do their day-to-day work with minimal effort, thus maximizing productivity. Salesforce does most of the administrative work for the reps so that they can spend more time doing what they do best: Selling.

Sales Cloud for Sales Management

That all sounds pretty great, right? It gets better. Sales Cloud also provides out-of-the-box reporting and forecasting. This gives management the ability to keep track of their teams and put their reps in a position to maximize profits. In addition to reporting, Sales Cloud offers Dashboards, which can be customized groups of those most important reports, all on one screen. Dashboards can be made visible to all, encouraging competition among sales, and who benefits most when sales reps compete with one another? The company. Did we mention that all of this is available in real-time?

Fully Customizable Sales Process

Salesforce gives each of its customers their own environment to work in, fully configurable so that a company can tailor their environment to meet their needs. This includes the Sales Cloud sales process. With the sales process, you can customize each of the stages of your sales – to your exact terminology – to help ensure that every member of your team is on the same page, maximizing their potential to close deals.

On top of this, Sales Cloud provides users with an effective Kanban view of all their opportunities, with drag-and-drop capabilities to move their deals among stages and automatically recalculate totals based on those stages. This allows users to move at a high velocity so they can spend less of their time working with data, and more of their time working with leads.

Automate Anything

With proper planning and a strong administrative team, Salesforce has many different options behind the scenes to automate just about anything you need to make your salespeople’s lives even easier. By using Flow, admins can write automations to help move deals along stages, update fields or move on to the next step after a deal has been won.

Best of all, Salesforce allows companies to connect email(follow the link for a YouTube video!), such as Office 365 or Gmail, to their environment using Einstein Activity Capture so that reps can send and track all email activity automatically with minimal clicks, all within the same application.

With Sales Cloud, the sky is the limit for your sales reps and company. It is just a matter of getting your environment suited to your needs. And because Salesforce is the #1 Cloud CRM provider, all this is possible from anywhere in the world, as long as the user has an internet connection. To learn more or talk to one of our experienced consultants, contact us today!