Salesforce has done a great job of implementing new features over the last few years to help drive user productivity and adoption. Some of those features were cloud specific functionality (only available in Service Cloud for example) which have made their way to Sales Cloud. And, with the advent of the Lightning Platform, the technology stack makes for some new and exciting pieces of functionality.

User productivity is a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to driving adoption, so leveraging some of these underutilized features strategically can help move the needle and make Salesforce even more palatable for end users.

Here are some of the Salesforce features I’d encourage you to look at implementing in your org to skyrocket user productivity and adoption.

Macros

Macros are a fantastic feature for users who have repetitive button clicks to complete a specific task. By selecting a pre-built Macro, a user can execute a series of actions without any additional effort! Here’s an example.

Customer Service Reps tend to have multiple steps that need to be executed in order to close out a Case. They may need to make a few record edits, send an email to the client, and finally close the Case. As long as the process is repetitive each time the case is closed, a Macro would work perfectly to automate those clicks to close the case.

Here is a gif that shows a Macro being selected on a case record. This specific Macro sends an email to the Contact and updates the Case Status to closed, but you can add in additional steps to accommodate any processes.

While this example is based on Cases, Macros can be used across the org! So, perhaps there are macros that can be created for your Sales Reps to automate the clicks around Opportunities or Account Management. Perhaps automating clicks on the Leads or a custom object is desired.

Whatever your user case, your users will love having the this tool in their tool belt!

Quick Text

Quick text was initially released as part of the Service Cloud product as a way to drive Customer Service Agent productivity but several releases ago made its way into the Sales Cloud where I think it offers an equally compelling use case.

The concept is simple. Create a series of canned messages (much like email templates) to be used in text fields where you’re commonly typing the same or similar content repetitively. Allowing users to leverage these prebuilt templates saves time and increases efficiency.

Once Quick Text records have been created and users have the right permissions, users can quickly select canned options to complete records. Just look at how quickly comments are added to this task record!

What’s awesome is that if you’re using Lightning Experience, Quick Text is enabled by default so all you need to do is work with your users to setup some responses!

Notification Builder

Creating custom notifications in Salesforce has been a difficult process in the past and has typically required the use of Apex triggers. But now, Salesforce has provided Admins the ability to create their own push notifications!

The functionality uses Process Builder and a new configuration called Notification Types which indicates where the notification should appear (desktop, mobile, or both).

Process Builder is used to indicate under what conditions the notification should get fired off. When you think about it, this is a really cool feature which allows you to incorporate notifications into existing automation rules and build a more intuitive notification experience for users.

The notification appears in the Notifications section of the desktop and includes the title and body that you provide. Clicking on the message takes you to the record that fired the message. In this example, used the tool to create a new form of Big Deal Alerts where the entire Sales Team is notified when a deal over $5,000,000 is marked as Closed Won!

Thinking of this new functionality has my brain going overtime with all of the possibilities!

Notification Builder was released in the Summer ’19 release and is available for orgs using Lightning Experience and Classic.

How will you use Notification Builder in your org? Leave a comment below with your ideas!

Custom Help Menu

One of the most common questions I’v heard from other Salesforce Administrators and even users, is if the standard Help menu can be customized for the organization and the answer has always been “no.”

But now, with the Summer ’19 release, Salesforce has given Salesforce Admin’s the power to customize the Help Menu to provide focused and business specific content to your end users.

Here is a screenshot of the standard help menu in Lightning Experience.

As System Administrators, this help menu is invaluable and extremely helpful. But, not so helpful to end users. None of the help documentation here is relative to your business’s processes and can be confusing to end users as a result.

But now we can add custom built navigational content right into the help menu! Check out the screenshot below where I’ve added a section called Admin Hero Training Content with links out to the documentation.

As if that isn’t cool enough, you can even turn off the Salesforce content (except for some of the global and useful information like Keyboard Shortcuts) for non-Admin users. So now, the menu looks super streamlined!

While this is all very exciting, keep in mind that if you are adding this content to the help menu, you need to have the content built first, and you need to ensure it’s up to date. Otherwise, this will be no more useful to the user than Salesforce’s own documentation.

This feature set is only available in Lightning Experience. To access the feature, navigate to Setup > User Engagement > Help Menu.

In-App Guidance

In-App Guidance is a new feature released in the Summer ’19 release and it allows System Administrators to create in-app prompts and notifications to users. I had a chance to play with this for a client recently, and I have to tell you – it’s super awesome!

Let’s say that you have an internal change management process in place with a regular monthly release cycle for major updates. You’ve just deployed the monthly release, and you want to notify your users.

Using the In-App Guidance tool, you can create a custom notification which will display to users with information about the release, and a link to a release notes document, or MyTrailhead (if you’re using that or something similar), or other similar location where users can read up on what’s been launched.

Here is a screenshot of a sample prompt that I created in my developer org. Check out that notification in the bottom-right corner of the page!

A user can interact with this window and either dismiss the message (which may reappear at a later time based on your settings) or they can click on the action to view the release notes.

There are two different types of display types as well, so you can customize the messaging based on what you’re wanting to communicate. Instead of using the Floating Prompt (as pictured above) you could leverage the Docked Prompt which includes a long area text and the option to minimize the message.

To see this feature in action, take a look at the Salesforce produced video below.

This feature set is only available in Lightning Experience. To access the feature, navigate to Setup > User Engagement > In-App Guidance.

I’m super excited to discover additional use cases for In-App Guidance. If you have some ideas on how this can be used, leave a comment below and share your ideas with the rest of us!

Taking Action

These tools are some of the easiest items to implement in your org but they will have a big, lasting impact to your users!

What features are you most excited to try? What features did I miss? Leave a comment below – I would love to hear from you!