Useful features with the upcoming Salesforce Summer 20 release
The Salesforce Summer 20 release notes are upon us!. It’s again that exciting time where where you trawl through pages upon pages of content trying to find useful new features which could be of benefit to your project or organisation. Luckily, Salesforce has made it a lot easier for us to find great features than the good old days of 200 page documents. But to make it even easier, we’re going to cover some of the great new content for the upcoming Summer 20 release.
You can view the full release notes here: Summer 20 Release Notes
Flow Builder
Some great updates for the flow builder this release. Lightning Flow is making it easier than ever for Salesforce admins to do the tasks which would have once required a developer, and has come a long way with the past few previous releases. If you haven’t yet experienced flow, I highly recommend looking into it and completing this trailhead module to begin you on your process automation journey. Flow is the future.. remember.
Improved New Flow Window
With Summer 20 comes an improved flow creation window. The updated guidance gives you a clear view of where and why you may use a particular flow if you’re struggling or unsure. We also have the addition of 'Record-Changed Flow’. Prior to this, for this requirement you would need to crate a process builder which was doing the same job of running the flow on record creation. I had expected to see also run on criteria based, but it doesn’t appear to have made the cut. A step in the right direction nonetheless, if you’re looking to run your flow not based upon criteria. More here
Trigger a Flow That Performs Actions After a Record Is Saved
As well as the above change, you are now presented with the option to trigger a flow, before or after save. Those developers among you will be familiar with this concept from apex triggers, running before/after save. This allows you to do things as get the newly created record ID which prior to this setting you would not be able to do. This feature is also useful for requirements such as sending emails/notifications, which you would only want to trigger after save to avoid any issues and you know that the data has been committed.
There is a great benefit to these two updates, your workflows/process builders created to trigger flows are now obsolete unless like I mentioned they’re criteria based, saving you some valuable limit space! You can view more here
Dynamic Form Elements and Actions
Probably one that stood out the most for me this release, although I should mention these are BETA and Non-GA Preview features, so no confirmed date when they will be available, but still ones to watch out for. How often have to been to clients or looked at objects with humongous page layouts, wondering what on earth some fields are or why they’re there?. I know I have. The first feature here, dynamic forms allows you to split up your fields, and conditionally show them to only the relevant users. It’s important to note this feature is only available for custom objects and not standard. Read more here
The second feature is dynamic actions. Do you only want to show the submit for approval button for one stage in the lifecycle? do you only want actions to appear once a record meets certain criteria? well with dynamic action you will be able to do this. Within the lightning page you’re able to conditionally set the visibility of actions based upon record criteria. This is extremely useful if your records have paths, showing only the relevant actions for that particular status or stage. Read more here
View Records Using Full View
Full view is a feature very similar to the classic view of Salesforce. This feature now condenses all related lists and paths into the header of the record page. Very useful for those clients who like to see all of their information within one location without switching between tabs etc.
This setting will come down to your clients needs. Some people prefer a much more spaced out and clear layout, whereas others prefer having all the data they need at the click of a button. You can see the comparison between the two views above, as well as read more here
Work Through Lists with Ease Using Split View for Standard Navigation
List views are an important part to a successful Salesforce implementation. They have many uses among giving you a filtered or full list of data. This new feature brings you split view, allowing you to view the record without navigating away from the page. Those of you used to staring at a long list of records and having to click into each one individually will be delighted with this. To access you can go to the ‘Split View’ under your display as options.
Now as you begin to click into your records, they will appear on the right hand side. A simple yet great feature which should improve efficiency when working with larger list views. Read more here
Communicate Across Salesforce UI Technologies with Lightning Message Service
For the more technical of you out there, and those who have experience with creating lightning components. Again, a general release feature, but one to note. This feature allows you use Lightning message service to communicate across between Visualforce pages, Aura components, and Lightning web components, including components in a utility bar. Currently this is a much more complex process and should save a lot of development time if you’re branching out into components.
The new Lightning Message Service works on a publish/subscribe model, for those familiar with platform events. You can read how to do this and more on this feature here
Salesforce Surveys
Salesforce surveys is a relatively new addition, but a welcomed one. Until now there have been a lot of great third party applications which have filled this void, Survey Monkey, FormAssembly among some. I’ll be honest, when I first used this feature I wasn’t blown away, it was missing a lot of great features that the others mentioned offered, but the flip side was no additional cost, so we made do. With this release it seems Salesforce are biting back with some new features for their survey solution.
Turn Responses Into Data
You can now turn your survey response data, into records. Previously, whilst the responses were stored, it was a miss match of objects in order to get to the data you were looking for. This is a great addition allowing you to map your responses to a custom object so you can do whatever you’d like with them. For example if you receive an unsatisfied response, you can create a Case record with your support team following up, nice right? Read more about this feature here
Post-Chat Feedback
One for you live chat users. Salesforce now allows you to embed your survey directly into the live chat once the conversation has ended. Instead of receiving a post chat survey, which lets be honest not many people fill out, your customers will be presented with the survey directly in the chat box once the conversation is complete. This should definitely help with response rate, allowing you to collect those important responses. Read more on how to do this here
Share Surveys With QR Codes
This is one which I thought was exciting (probably more for the geeks among us), sharing your surveys via a QR code. A lot of technology is moving in this direction, making things like surveys easier than ever to access. This should definitely increase the user experience for your customers, again increasing that ever important response rate. Read more about QR invitations here
Overall a great release with focus on usability and efficiency as well as some great new features to improve the lives of developers and admins alike. Hopefully this breakdown gives you some insight which you can use in your own organisation or client implementations. Due to Covid-19 the release for summer 20 has been postponed, but you can view the full details here
