Introduction

It’s the beginning of a new year, which means it’s time for a Spring release from Salesforce! Like all new Salesforce releases, Spring ’20 contains a broad range of enhancements that improve end user and administrator productivity.

The Spring ’20 release offers exciting new features and functionality for the platform’s Lightning Experience. My favorite Salesforce features from Spring ’20 are listed below. Please note that these features are based on the Salesforce preview release and are subject to change.

End User Features

App Launcher Enhancements

The Lightning Experience App Launcher has a new look! Users can find and open apps quicker with the Spring ’20 App Launcher enhancement. To open the App Launcher, click  .

To access all apps, items, and the AppExchange, click View All.

Source: https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring20/release-notes/rn_lex_app_launcher.htm

Clone Objects

Spring ’20 allows users to clone Opportunity and Campaign objects and their related records. The Clone with Related action adds every related record from the original object to the cloned object. This new feature allows users to quickly create new Opportunities and Campaigns from existing objects.

An example would be a user that wants to create a new Opportunity using an existing one as the source. In previous releases, the user would be required to manually duplicate all of the information related to the new Opportunity. Depending on the amount of information and number of the records that need to be duplicated, this can be a time-consuming task.

To use the action, navigate to the Opportunity record or Campaign and click on the Clone with Related button. Users must have the Create permission enabled on the object and Read access to the record to perform the cloning process.

View the Related Account While Searching For Contacts and Opportunities

Have you ever searched for a Contact or Opportunity without knowing which Account it belongs to? It’s not an easy process. Salesforce now displays the related Account when using the search box. The Spring ‘20 release also allows the related Accounts to be searchable, which makes the records easier to find. Once you start typing, Salesforce will automatically display the matching Accounts. Pretty cool right?

Free Opportunity Scores for Sales Cloud Einstein

In a highly competitive CRM marketplace, artificial intelligence is a core feature for vendors that want to differentiate their offerings from competitors and build market share. Einstein Opportunity Scoring uses artificial intelligence to generate a quality score from 1 to 99 for each Opportunity.

The scores help sales teams to focus on higher-quality Opportunities that have a greater chance of closing than their lower-ranked counterparts. Scores are available on records, reports, forecasts pages, and list views. The Spring ’20 release provides all Sales Cloud users with access to Einstein Opportunity Scores at no additional cost!

Source: https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring20/release-notes/rn_sales_features_core_oppty_sfx.htm

Assign Tasks to a Queue

Sales teams are now able to better distibute their workloads by configuring queues for tasks. Tasks can be assigned to shared queues and users can assume ownership from the queue’s list view. Proactively taking ownership of action items improves productivity as it allows any team member to work on a task without waiting for it to be delegated or assigned. This is a highly popular feature request and its implementation is long overdue.

Schedule Emails

Do you need to send an email on a day that you are out of the office? The Salesforce Spring ’20 release allows users with the Use Inbox permission to schedule emails. The new Scheduled Emails feature allow users to specify an email arrival date and time. To use this component, select Send Later after composing the email. Salesforce Spring ’20 users can edit emails, their send dates and times, or delete scheduled emails.

 Source: https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring20/release-notes/rn_sales_productivity_email_send_later.htm

Manage Reports and Dashboards in the Recycle Bin

Have you ever accidentally deleted a report or dashboard? That unfortunate event becomes even more stress generating when you find out that the objects can’t be restored using Salesforce’s Lightning interface.

Salesforce Spring ’20 now allows Lightning users to manage deleted reports and dashboards in the Recycle Bin. Lightning users no longer need to switch to Salesforce Classic to restore, view, and permanently delete reports and dashboards.

One Click to Empty the Recycle Bin

While we’re on the Recycle Bin topic, I think it’s appropriate to mention another cool new feature. Users can now empty their Org’s Recycle Bin in Lightning with one click! In previous releases, Lightning users had to select each item individually to delete them or switch to Salesforce Classic, which allows users to delete multiple items. The Spring ’20 release allows Lightning users to open the Recycle Bin and click Empty Org Recycle Bin. Sweet!

Use Case Hover to View and Manage Cases

A simple but effective new feature for case agents is the ability to hover over Case Subjects and edit them. Spring ’20 allows users to quickly view, edit and delete Case Subjects from the list view. This feature is beneficial for agents that have a heavy load of cases to work through.

Update Deals Simultaneously from the Forecasts Page

Forecast users are in for a treat! Inline editing now allows users to update Opportunities straight from the Forecasts page. Users are able to edit multiple Opportunities at the same time. To edit Opportunities, click on the Pencil Icon.

Report Results: Count Unique Values

Users are now able to add a unique count of values for fields in Salesforce reports. To display a count of unique values for a report field, click on the field’s Drop-Down Arrow   and select Show Unique Count. The unique count will display the number of distinct values for that report field.

Here’s a quick example of how this feature works. Opportunity reports usually display multiple Opportunities for a given Account. To view the number of Accounts in the Opportunity report, add a unique count to the Account column. The unique counts will appear at the bottom of the report as grand totals and subtotals for each group.

Report Subscription Spreadsheets (Beta)

Another Spring ‘20 new feature gives users the option to receive an informational spreadsheet attached to subscription emails when subscribing to a report. The email will include the traditional high-level information such as report names and runtimes and a link to the full report in Salesforce.

More detailed information on the report is included in the attached spreadsheet. To enable this feature, subscribe to a report and select Attach results as a formatted spreadsheet file and click Save.

URL Hacking Returns

For those unfamiliar with URL Hacking, it is the ability to create custom buttons in Salesforce Classic with pre-populated information. The information in the new record is populated from the original record’s data. Unfortunately, Lightning Experience actions replaced URL Hacking. However, Salesforce has brought the functionality back in the Spring ’20 release. The image below shows an example of URL Hacking:

Admin Features

In-App Guidance Videos

Would you like to use a video to assist users with complex processes? Or maybe you’ve found the perfect video to help them with certain tasks. The In-App Guidance new feature allows you to add short videos to docked prompts. You can customize the prompt to specify the amount of times to display the video invitation and what profiles will see it.

Using Flows to Update Records 10x Faster

Users creating or updating a record can trigger an auto launch flow to make updates to the record before saving it. The new feature called Before-Save Updates and are much faster than other triggered updates. Because of their performance, it is recommended that users execute Before-Save Updates to update fields on changed or new records. Before-Save Updates are up to 10x faster than a process that was built in Process Builder. To activate a Before-Save Update, a user has to have the View All Data permission.

Wrapup

There are many more features available in the Salesforce Spring’ 20 release. This article covers just a small set of my favorites.  To check out all of  Salesforce’s latest features, please review the Salesforce Spring ’20 release notes.

Thanks for reading!

I hope you enjoyed my article on Salesforce Spring ’20 new features.

To learn more about our Salesforce services and how RadixBay can help, please visit our RadixBay Salesforce Center of Excellence.

Jessica Deas
RadixBay Salesforce Consultant
Salesforce Certified Administrator