5 Summer ‘18 Salesforce Release Features that Seasoned Admins Will Love

Can you remember the Salesforce logo before there were seasonal releases? Do you remember life before Trailhead? Did you ever create an S-control? #neverforget

If any of these sound familiar, you’re a seasoned Admin, like me! Whether you’re “old school,” “new school,” or something in-between get ready because I’m about to show you some of my favorite Summer ‘18 features that I know you’ll appreciate.

1. “Don’t create an opportunity” by Default in Convert Lead Window

This was a real problem for my users when I was an Admin. They HATED unchecking the box, forgot to do it every time, and always created garbage opportunities that…surprise…I ended up having to purge at the end of every month. I remember creating a custom button that passed in a URL parameter that auto-checked the box. Well, guess what – THERE IS A BOX IN LEAD SETTINGS NOW.

2. Mass Email All Campaign Members from the Campaign

At long last, we can send a mass email to all Campaign Members right from the Campaign record itself. Although this is no replacement for Pardot or Marketing Cloud, for a very basic bulk email tool, this gets the job done. Add an HTML Email Template and some merge fields, and you have a simple mass email tool. Don’t forget about your org limits—if you have more than 5,000 emails per day, this is probably not the right tool for you.

3. Mention a Record Directly Inside a Chatter Post

In addition to going to a record and mentioning someone on the record feed, there is now the ability to mention a record directly from within a Chatter post or comment. This is very handy, and allows you to be more flexible with how you use Chatter. Give this one a try – I bet it becomes part of your regular Chatter usage very quickly.

4. Folders, sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders

I voted for Alex Sutherland’s sub-folders idea many years ago, and at long last, we have them! We can now have report folders and sub-folders along with sub-sub-folders. So start organizing your reports and dashboards! Maybe use this as an excuse to do an “Eat and Delete” lunch where you and your team audit your existing reports and dashboards by running a report on Reports, see what’s in active use, and purge the rest!

5. Lightning Report Builder

I saved the best for last. This is the future of report building in Salesforce, and it is real purty. There are too many updates to name, but just a few that have me really excited are: Run without Saving, Reorder Columns in the outline, Row and Column Grouping using the sidebar, and Picklist field filtering.  

Okay, #AwesomeAdmins: let me know what you think! Lots of great stuff coming, right? Get up to speed on ALL the new enhancements coming in Summer ‘18 by checking out the Release Notes and let us know what YOUR favorite features are in the Admin Trailblazer and Release Readiness Trailblazer Community groups! 

Don’t forget: you can get the resources you need to share all the amazing features coming in Summer ’18 by downloading your Release in a Box kit. Release in a Box is an enablement kit for Admins and User Group leaders who want to prepare and present an introduction to Summer ‘18 to their team, stakeholders, and/or community. Everything you need to deliver a 30-minute presentation on Summer ‘18 is included. Download your kit now.