Salesforce Summer ’15 Release – What’s in it for you?

Three seasons in a year – we see an array of innovations and improvisations, enhancing our cloud experience with the Salesforce Spring, Summer and the Winter Releases. As the Summer ’15 release notes are already out, and users are getting ready to test the enhancements in their own environment, a cross cloud summary can really help you span the developments across the Service, Sales, Community, Marketing and Analytics Clouds. With more than 250 enhancements that the release has unveiled, let’s have a look at the most interesting ones:

Community Cloud in Summer ’15

Summer ’15 gets in improvements with Community Management tools, Community Analytics, Self-Service Templates, Case Feed, and more. Here’re the top 5 features in Community Cloud from the Summer ’15 Release:

Files Connect : As Summer ’15 extends support to Google Drive, OneDrive and Microsoft SharePoint, community users can connect files directly to Salesforce, access custom fields, and speed up authentication & searching.Community Reporting : With improved Licenses Dashboard, community managers can track license and login usage against allocations, report on Feeds themselves, and modify user attributes.

Custom Recommendations : Community managers can now create and manage recommendations within the Community Manager Console.

Reports for Community Users : Community users can create, run and save their own reports in their personal folders, only if they’re granted the access.

Enhanced Community Management : Community admins now have a more intuitive interface and controls to manage, moderate and create reports on the setup.

Community Templates : Publishing a template built community can be done from the sandbox now. Also, Napili template has an updated case view, a widget that shows the reputation scoring model to track the most knowledgeable people, and an update attach file option. Template Koa and Kokua also have updated Case list view option.

Chatter in Summer ’15

Chatter comes in with a significant set of enhancements in the Summer ’15 Release. Reporting on Chatter activity, case creation from Chatter questions, adding records to the groups, are just a few among several developments inside Chatter. Have a look here:

Edit & Modify Feeds : Users can now edit posts and comments once posted, avoiding the errors and typos that generally occurred and went unrectified. Chatter Feeds now allow users to edit posts and comments, and report on record feeds.Share more Files : You can now share and sync any file in Salesforce. There has also been an increase in share limits, along with deeper integrations with external files and data sources.

Groups : There have been new formatting options added to group emails. Also, the security options for unlisted groups have been increased and modified.

Rich Media Experience : The rich media experience gets better with option to add thumbnails, description and players for video (through a third party source). Also, the profile pic upload process gets faster with the recent release.

Service Cloud in Summer ’15

This is certainly the next level of customer service – escalating the right cases to the right agents just at the right time, and on multiple devices. With Summer ’15, the customer service experience becomes much streamlined, smarter, and faster. Have a look how:

Omni Channel Service : From setting the priority of the cases to considering the skills of the agents, everything has become smarter with the recent update. With deeper view in the case history and agent’s availability and channel of support (email, phone, chat, community, etc.), the case assignment becomes easier.SOS for Apps : Integrating an SOS chat button in the mobile app opens doors for a one-way video, two-way audio chat, real-time guidance and screen sharing options, for a more personalized and accurate resolution to customers’ problems.

Email to Case Improvements : HTML or image containing emails to Case will now display the HTML and images within Salesforce. This will help in image sharing (only that you need to switch to the new Case feed layout). Also, the signatures would work in the email to case option now.

Macros : Macros was one of the highlights in Spring ’15 Release, and with an upgrade this time, Macros can run in bulk. There’s an option of multiple selection of cases to run Macros against them.

Service Console Enhancements : The dashboard components can now be added to the sidebar. Agents can also refresh the dashboards from the components itself.

Live Agent Improvements : The live agent feed comes in with a new look & feel with better readability. The conference option is enabled wherein, a chat session can be converted into a conference for more help in case resolution. The security option also increases with an option of blocking a spam/abuse IP.

Marketing Cloud in Summer ’15

Delighting more customers, creating 1:1 customer journeys, delivering personalized content across diverse channels, and optimizing your decisions with measurable impact of customer interactions – Summer ’15 Release brings in all the enhancements to fulfil your marketing goals, have a look how:

Journey Builder : With the updates in setup wizard to add schedules, amendments in terminology, and improvements in assistance instructions, there’s more ease-of-use and more intuitive look & feel of the Journey Builder interface.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]Microsites Enhancements : From editing your microsite’s navigation, creating multiple sitemap versions, scheduling the site publishing at a specific date to tying the individual pages of your microsite together – the Summer ’15 Release gets in all the enhancements.

Content Builder Enhancements : The Content Builder emails can now be associated to campaigns. Also, the existing A/B testing app will work with the Content Builder emails. Other than this, the Content Canvas can be used to import wizard to import templates into Content Canvas for use in Content Builder.

Sales-Marketing Cloud Connector : Now, it’s easy to fragment lists in Sales Cloud, send email messages via Marketing Cloud reports and campaigns, and view the tracks in Marketing & Sales Clouds. You can keep a track of every contact, lead, or account response to email campaigns with real-time email tracking data.

Social Studio : It’s now easy to shape deeper connections with your customers across the social through listening. The Social Studio lets you make the most of real-time analytics and market intelligence by helping in more personalized and agile approach towards customer engagement.

Sales Cloud in Summer ’15

Everything from getting more leads, closing more deals to making insightful decisions, the all new Sales Cloud with Summer ’15 updates helps sales teams accelerate productivity and connect with partners & customers anytime, on any device. Let’s take a look at the new updates across Sales Cloud:

Sales Cloud Engage : A new solution that unites Salesforce1 and Sales Cloud to empower your reps to connect with customers in new, simplistic, and effective ways through detailed activity tracking and tailored Sales Campaigns. Reps can now advance customers through the sales process faster—from their mobile device or desktop instance.

Email Connect : Sync, create and view contacts and events from external records like Microsoft Outlook, right inside Salesforce.

Territory Management Enhancements : Territory Management makes it easy to assign territories to opportunities with filter-based assignment job. Now, Sales teams can even use Chatter to collaborate on territory model development.

SAQL Enhancements : The Salesforce Analytics Query Language can now help you access the data that is exactly required. With this real-time query language, you can even analyze data stored in datasets, in real time.

Notes : This is an enhanced version of note-taking tool that lets the reps take down details faster. Users can now add bulleted lists, numbered lists, and text formatting to notes by using the buttons on the toolbar.

Duplicate Management : With the new Duplicate Management in Data.com, the creation of duplicate records can be controlled, and the logic of duplicity can be customized.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column]

Analytics Cloud in Summer ’15

Building analytical apps, gaining meaningful insights, and making better decisions to move your business in the right direction – everything that you need from Analytics. This Salesforce Summer Release takes analytics to the next level by enabling immediate access to powerful data insights in an intuitive UI across multiple devices. Let’s take a look at the developments across Analytics Cloud:

Analytics for IOS : Checking insights, creating, editing and viewing reports and dashboards can all be easily done through a click, tap or give a voice command on your IOS device – and most amazingly – on your Apple Watch.

Wave on Mobile : With the Wave Mobile App, raw data can easily be imported right inside the mobile app, and transformed to intuitive visualizations.

Wave REST API : The Analytics Cloud datasets and lenses can now be accessed programmatically. With this, you can send in queries directly to the Analytics Platform, access the imported datasets and retrieve the lenses, easily.

New Filter Operators : Dimensions are essential in grouping and filtering data, and with the new filter operators for dimensions, there’s an option of customizing the visualizations easily. Arranging visualizations with these new comparison operators (Between, Greater Than, Greater Than Or Equal To, Less Than, Less Than Or Equal To, Equals, and Does Not Equal), it’s convenient to compare and predict results.

SAQL Enhancements : The Salesforce Analytics Query Language can now help you access the data that is exactly required. With this real time query language, you can even analyze data stored in datasets, in real time.

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