Here Comes the Salesforce Spring ‘16 Release!
The brighter days of spring are ushering in fantastic updates from Salesforce! Love and feature enhancements are in the air, and we’ve fallen head over heels for the Spring ‘16 release. Have you been waiting for the Lightning Experience enhancements to take your campaigns to the next level? With over 175 new features, the Spring ‘16 Salesforce release is focused on making the user experience faster and more intuitive. Some of the new features we’ve been waiting for have finally arrived! Here’s our roundup of some of the most exciting new developments of the recent release.
*Note that some features in this release affect all users immediately after the release goes live. Admins will want to communicate these changes with their users beforehand so everyone is prepared. Other features require direct action before they’re turned on.
Marketers are going to love the new enhancements to the marketing cloud. With robust modeling capabilities based on data science, the marketing cloud now makes the customer journey more personalized. Features like predictive email turn marketers into behavioral experts, helping you build effective customer profiles. Predictive score models and dashboards track content across digital channels, while scoring customers on engagement actions such as the likelihood to click, open, unsubscribe from email, or make a purchase. A better understanding of the customer will translate into better content, which is now even easier to create with features like drag-and-drop smart content blocks and mobile-optimized templates.
Can’t seem to rid your database of duplicate entries? Good news! New instances of Salesforce now come with account, contact, and lead duplicate rules that will help maintain high-quality data. If a user tries to enter a duplicate entry, they’ll receive an alert. You can also easily generate a report of all the duplicates in the system. Check out this video from Salesforce on best practices for managing data and dealing with pesky duplicates.
No more lugging around bulky laptops or spending all day chained to your desk. The Spring ‘16 release has improved features for Salesforce1, allowing you to be on the job while you’re on the go. For those of us with sausage fingers, features like spell check and synonym groups make search results a breeze. Synonym groups is a particularly useful feature. If you were to search USB, results would be returned for all the terms in a synonym group containing USB, thumb drive, flash stick, and memory stick. Also, users can now access business data even when you’re offline, including charts via your mobile phone. Simply tap on a chart element to see more granular data in the underlying report. Smart phones just got a whole lot smarter!
As cyber threats grow in frequency and complexity, peace of mind can be hard to come by in the digital age. The Spring ‘16 Release includes a number of bulwarks to guard against malware and other malicious hacks. The Salesforce Authenticator enables the verification of users’ identities, while Platform Encryption expands data encryption to Communities, email, and more.
Broadcast groups offer focused conversations directed by group owners and managers, while the group report function consolidates info concerning group member engagement. All this means more groups and more collaboration. A single member can belong up to 300 groups, while each Salesforce org can contain up to 30,000 groups! This release makes community engagement much more personable with cool new features like banner photos and a circular cropping tool. Check out this sample banner photo below (Salesforce recommends you use a panoramic picture to get the most out of your image).
If you’re an analytics junkie and enjoy tinkering with datasets, then the new Flex Dashboard Designer was made for you. Data visualization has never been so easy with drag-and-drop and snap-to-grid capabilities. New chart types--combo, waterfall, and stacked waterfall--will add quantitative sophistication to any report. The combo chart, in particular, will be a useful tool for anyone trying to visualize two related datasets in a single chart.
To dive deeper into the details of the Spring ‘16 Release, explore the official Release Notes. If you’re in the Portland area, bring any questions or comments on the Spring ‘16 Release to the Portland Nonprofit User Group meeting at the Idealist Consulting HQ on February 25th! And don't forget to register for Salesforce.org’s webinar on NPO and higher education specific highlights of the Spring ‘16 release.
If you want to speak with us directly, let us know when you’re available and we’ll set up a call.
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