Summer 19 is in Salesforce, but I can tell you one thing: Summer is not here in Chicago. I feels like perma-spring and I’m sick of it. But the way things go around here, when Winter 19 comes out, I’ll probably be lamenting about the weather again.
Anyways, to help me remember and to help you remember, here are the notable updates.
Confetti
Let’s start with this. This is fun and simple, and will spark joy for me every time I close an opportunity in a demo. Sadly this does not work when converting leads.
Quick Filtered on Related Lists
This is a real delight. Basically you can slice and dice and find what you need from related lists much faster now. The sad part is if you’re using enterprise territory management this only works on accounts – which makes sense in a way. I look forward to using this soon.
Notification Builder
You now can send custom notifications via process builder no matter what your use case is.
I like this and I don’t. I always like notifications in context, ala a Chatter post triggered via process builder. With this, it’s more of an FYI and alerting mechanism, especially from a mobile standpoint.
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=process_action_customnotification.htm&type=0
Process Builder
A few things are new to process builder.
First, invalid processes are prevented from being saved. This is a great time saver.
Second, let’s talk about metadata. One thing that’s always surprised me in the Salesforce world vs. workflows in Microsoft is the lack of variables. Process Builder is great, until you have to update a bunch of stuff in a couple different processes.
Now that’s a thing of the past. You can create custom metadata so you update it once.
Flow
There’s a bunch of new things in Flow. The ones that stick out to me is that lightning scheduler flows are now out of the box. This will really help with CRUD operations as it pertains to appointments.
Flows can now directly process JSON without Apex.
Also, RIP Cloud Flow Designer.
Dynamic next Best Recommendations
Einstein is always throwing down some knowledge with what to do next. Now, it’ll feel more personalized instead of canned. Previously, the next best recommendations were static and pre-created.
Now, the recommendations themselves are built with AI. The benefit here is that it’ll cut down on trying to build all of these recommendations yourself.
Quip
I’ve been seeing a lot of demand for Quip lately, and the Summer release has a few cool things around Quip.
Process Builder and Flow now included standard Quip actions. Basically, if you have a process around account creation, you can now spin up an account and pre-populate the account plan.
Second big Quip thing is that Quip notifications can now appear in Salesforce. Just add the Quip Notifications component to the page. I don’t think this is the most elegant solution, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Salesforce Surveys
You can get 300 free responses with Salesforce surveys. If you do surveys every now and then, this is a great thing to take advantage of.
Contextual Filters for Einstein Analytics Dashboards
I embed a dashboard on record pages in nearly every demo. Now I can build the filter when editing a page, and not worry about if I miss a brace with my JSON.
https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/summer19/release-notes/rn_bi_embed_filter_builder.htm
External Change Data Capture
Since every customer I talk to wants to integrate with back office systems, this is going to be of particular interest to those who do so using Salesforce Connect. Now, you can track changes on data outside your Salesforce org. And based on those changes, you can have triggers and processes kick-off. Kinda cool.
Also, you can now have picklists via Connect, which were previously only in cross-org external objects. It’s a small win, but I’ll take it.
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=external_object_change_tracking_intro.htm&type=5
Custom Objects
Lastly, you can now have up to 2500 custom objects, plus an additional 500 custom objects from packages. Get no coding y’all!