The Salesforce Spring ‘21 Features Our Consultants Think You Should Know About
There’s a lot of good stuff for administrators and developers coming to Salesforce with the Spring ‘21 release. Here are the top features our consultants are paying attention to.
Add Accounts to Campaigns
This is functionality that’s frequently sought after, and now it’s available in beta. Organizations often want to add an entire account record to a campaign. Previously you were only able to associate leads and contacts with campaigns, but with this new feature, users will be able to add whole accounts as campaign members.
Manual Sharing Finally Arrives in Lightning
A feature that was loved in Salesforce Classic is now available in Lightning. Users can now manually share records with other users in Lightning.
There’s no reason not to turn on Lightning now, is there?
New Email-to-Case Threading Behavior
Incoming emails associated with a case will no longer be matched by a Ref ID in the subject or body of the message but instead by matching header information. This will improve the process by which emails get associated with a case and should prevent new cases from being created when emails come in without the Ref ID.
Automatically Add New Fields to Custom Report Types
Have you ever created a new field and later run a report only to get frustrated when you can’t find your new field listed in the report builder?
Begone frustration! With Spring ‘21 there’s a new feature in beta that automatically adds new fields to existing report types. Tears of joy!
Dynamic Forms Are Coming to App Builder
Perhaps one of the most intriguing features coming to Salesforce are Dynamic Forms. These will let administrators lay out record detail fields in different Lightning Component sections in the App Builder. It’s almost like Page Layout functionality in the App Builder, which kind of implies that customizing record detail pages is about to become easier and more flexible. Some of the features associated with dynamic forms are in beta and some are part of a preview.
Lightning Page Performance Analyzer
This new feature available beginning with the Spring ‘21 release allows admins to analyze how efficient and fast your Lightning Pages are. The feature reviews fields, related lists, and metadata and then provides you suggestions for improving the page for performance.
Refer to Prior Values in Flows
When a record is updated and a Flow is triggered, you can now reference the record’s prior values in the Flow. That means you could compare a field’s new value to an old value and then ask the Flow to do something under certain conditions.
Develop Screen Components in Flows that Work for Multiple Objects
Here’s another great feature in beta: you can now create screen components in a Flow that work for many different objects. You no longer need to create screen components for just one object, but can create components that work for multiple objects. This makes your Flows a little more flexible and may save you time building multiple screen components.
Lightning Email Templates Are Now Accessible in Flow
This update allows admins to access Lightning Email Templates when building Flows and other automation. Previously you could only access Classic Email Templates, but with the Spring ‘21 release you’ll be able to use the Email Template Builder in Lightning to create emails and access those templates in Flows.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) Email Builder and User Authentication Changes
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE) becomes further enmeshed with Salesforce in Spring ‘21. The same Email Builder that works to build Lightning Email Templates is now available in MCAE for sending list emails, and increasingly the email builder incorporates many of the features available in the old Pardot email builder.
But the biggest change to MCAE (powered by Pardot) is that as of February 15, 2021, Pardot user authentication is no longer supported. That means that MCAE users need to access the platform with Salesforce single sign-on (SSO) and that they need some sort of Salesforce user license. Organizations using MCAE are granted 100 Salesforce Identity licenses to accommodate MCAE-only users like web developers or integration users.
Guest User Updates
Salesforce is tightening security protocols related to guest users, which are often used to accommodate non-logged-in community users. Instead of permissions being somewhat open by default, they are closed by default. This means people have to intentionally grant guest users access to view and edit data in their system. So, if you have a community that doesn’t require users to log in, you'll just want to make sure that you've intentionally granted guest user access to view and edit data in your system.
Leave us a comment and let us know which new Salesforce features you’re most excited about. And if you’re thinking about implementing big changes in your org, download our guide to change management: “Be Prepared, Not Scared: Strategies for Technology Change.”
