Three times per year, Salesforce release a new version of their products, full of new and exciting features. The first and second weekend of June is when the “Summer 18” release will become available.

Every release contains new features that can be used to streamline business processes allowing businesses to operate more efficiently. The only problem is the release notes that contain the details for all these great features are 450+ pages in length! This is where Salesforce Consulting Partner KeyNode Solutions can help. Our Salesforce-certified consultants get access to this documentation at least a month before the release date and carefully check and test new features to see which ones can be utilized by our clients. We highlight some of the best new features in the Salesforce Summer ‘18 release below.

Automatic Email and Event Logging

Salesforce Einstein Activity Capture allows Sales Cloud users to automatically relate emails and events to the appropriate business and person accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, quotes, and contracts. Up to 100 Sales Cloud users can now use Einstein Activity Capture without needing additional Sales Cloud Einstein or Inbox licenses. Connect your Google or Microsoft account to Salesforce and Einstein Activity Capture does the rest.

Filtering List Views

When viewing a standard list view (e.g. “Today’s Leads”) you can now easily show just the leads you want to see with simple point-and-click filters. Perhaps you just want to see leads generated from a particular campaign or filter your Accounts by Territory?

Customize Global Search

The global search function can now be customized to show just the objects you want to search for by using the drop-down box beside the search field.

Organize Records by Topics

Topics are back in Lightning, allowing you to add topics to records via the topics component on a Lightning Record page. If you have already used topics in the classic interface, the topics will show up once the topics component is added to a Lightning record page.

GDPR and Privacy

If you have customers in any of the 32 European countries impacted by the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), you need to know what the impact is on your customer records. Salesforce introduces three important changes in Summer 18 to help support GDPR. Failure to comply with the GDPR can result in penalties of 4% of worldwide turnover or €20 million, whichever is higher so it’s important to know your responsibilities.

Lightning Report Builder

The Lightning interface is now provided (by default) for the Lightning Report Builder but the old classic report builder is still available. The new report builder supports joined reports in lightning, allows grouping by customized dates, reports can be added to a dashboard direct from the reports home page or while reading a report, sub folders are available for reports and dashboards and the list views for reports and dashboards can now be customized. If you are in the middle of editing a report and you navigate away from the page, you are now warned to save your changes first.

Service Cloud Mobile

The mobile app for Service Cloud allows you to triage, manage and resolve cases from anywhere and includes push notifications to keep agents informed. Available for both Android and Apple iOS devices.

Lightning Adoption

If your users have recently moved to the new Lightning Experience, you can now access a dashboard and reports on Lightning adoption with the new Lightning Usage App. There is even a new feature to switch off the capability of returning to the classic interface. If your users have not moved to Lightning yet, the Lightning Readiness report has been improved to help you identify any impediments to making the switch.

Intelligent Einstein Bots for Service Cloud

Einstein bots can make the life of a service agent easier by automating many of the simple customer requests they take on a daily basis. Requests for a password reset, updates on an order status or a customer balance are all tasks that Einstein bots can take care of. If the call gets too complex for the bot, it can be automatically handed over to a human operator.

There’s lots more… some other features worth exploring:

  • Duplicate Jobs can now be run on custom objects;
  • Design improvements in Lightning for Gmail and Lightning for Outlook;
  • Responsive layouts for Pardot landing pages;
  • Lightning improvements for Territory Management and Forecasting;
  • Improvements to Einstein Analytics;
  • Ready-made themes and additional components for Communities;
  • User profile pages can now show the Trailhead badges that a user has earned;
  • Polls, questions and rich text features have been added to the Salesforce mobile app;
  • Many new features in the Financial Services Cloud and Health Cloud products.

Just one of these features could make a significant difference to the productivity and efficiency of your team.

Contact KeyNode Solutions today and discuss the Salesforce features that interest you!

If you are looking for a leading Seattle Salesforce Consultant that has assisted companies around the United States, drop us a line at hello@keynodesolutions.com or call us at (858) 215-5371.

About the Author

Greg Bell is a Salesforce-certified consultant with years of experience helping numerous companies across many industries. Greg is a true business technology consultant with a passion to work closely with his clients to understand what they need and then creating a customized solution.

KeyNode Solutions is a full-service Salesforce Consulting Partner company. We deliver the ultimate Salesforce solutions to grow your business: implementation, integration, customization, and development. Our best-in-class Salesforce managed services for ongoing support available nationwide.