I am not sure about you but this winter feels like it is going on forever. With another day of wintery showers and another lockdown. I need some sort of hope that things will be getting better … eventually. So the idea of Spring 21 has cheered me up no end. So as always grab a cup of something warm and enjoy my release highlights!

Flow Enhancements

Salesforce have been making Flow the shining star of the platform by adding more and more enhancements. Salesforce have announced that Process Builder will not have any more development moving forwards. Which we were expecting them to announce. The first change is a change of name, Lightning Flow Suite (Lightning Process Builder and Lightning Flow)  is becoming Salesforce Flow and Lightning Process Builder is now known as Process Builder and Lightning Flow Builder is becoming Flow Builder.

Flow updates also include Flow and process run time improvements for API Version 51.0

For more information about the flow enhancements, please see the release  notes.

Debugging Your Flow

Another element of flow that has received attention is the debugging feature. The latest enhancement not only makes it easier to test and troubleshoot your flows. But now error emails contain a link that opens Flow Builder when you can see the interviews path and the error detail. Find out more in the release notes.

Use Lightning Email Templates In Salesforce Automation

Hooray an enhancement we have all been waiting for! Now you can reference Lightning Email templates in email alerts, workflow process, approval processes and more. Previously you were restricted to only using Salesforce Classic email templates.  Find out more in the release notes.

Monitor Login Metrics for your Org

User login security in paramount to protecting your data and the login metrics give you an insight into user login activity. The New Login Metrics ap in the Lightning Usage App provides data for your orgs identlity services, including multi factor authentication and single sign on.

You can also use the metrics to monitor new adoption of Multi Factor Authentication and Single Sign on,  to see which users are (or aren’t) loggin in. For more information, check out the release notes.

Manual Sharing

Manual sharing has been available in classic but it has now finally arrived in Lightning. The new sharing button enables users to share a record to a user or a group of users.  For more information, check out the release notes.

Lightning Page Performance

Get more information on page load time and behaviour predictions at a glance. Updates to the Lightning page analysis tool in the lightning app builder give you more accurate performance predictions for your lightning page.  A new speedometer in the main app shows your pages predicted page time and page load time. Because some components impact page performance more than others, the added component performance breakdown shows you which standard components on the page contribute the most to the predicted page time.  For more information on Lightning page performance, please read the release notes.

Learn in App with Trailhead BETA

This feature is currently in Beta. So may have additional licencing etc. 

In App Learning with Trailhead allows users to learn the skills they need without having to leave your Salesforce Org. Admins or designated trainers can add any relevant myTrailhead modules to the learning panel, which matches the learning content to the context where your user is encountering it. E.g Closing an opportunity. Users can read the content, take the quizzes and earn their Trailhead badges without having to leave Salesforce! For more information about this BETA release please see the release notes.

In App Guidance Enhancements

Salesforce in app guidance has had a bit of a makeover, you can now make the guidance much more engaging for users with images, more floating locations and Rich Text Editing.

Users are also now empowered to snooze the guidance to see it later, allowing them to get on with the day to day activities that they need to do.

Admins and Training Managers can customise a new learning panel for users. For more information on In App guidance, please check out the release notes.