Last Updated on April 15, 2019 by Rakesh Gupta
Lighting Experience is one of the best user interfaces designed by Salesforce. It is faster, quicker and easier to maintain. If you are still using Salesforce Classic user interface, winter’18 release will give you hundreds of reasons to switch to Lighting Experience. Some of the key features, that are now available in Lightning, include – Territory Management, Collaborative Forecasts, Report folder sharing, Sharing your calendar with co-workers, Case Milestones, Service Contracts, Lightning Report Builder(beta), etc.Â
Currently, Winter’18 release is available under the pre-release program. On the 8th and 9th of September, Sandboxes will be upgraded; as a result, your organization will get the look and feel of Winter’18 release.Â
If you have not read the entire 559 pages of Salesforce Winter’18 release notes, check out Winter’18 release quick summary written by me.Â
I combed through the release notes and highlighted the most exciting, interesting, and useful Lightning Experience features. Believe me, it was hard to stop at just ten! To kick things off, here is my take on the coolest Lightning features from Winter’18 release.Â
1) Get to the Right Record Faster with Enhanced Instant Results:- Now you can find the right record even before reaching the search results page. Spell correction has arrived in instant results. And if you know the account associated with the contact or opportunity, instant results provide more relevant suggestions.Â
When a search term gets no results because of a possible misspelling, users see suggestions that match corrected spellings of the search term. Salesforce checks only the record name. Spell correction works for only one term, even when multiple terms are entered. If multiple terms are misspelled, Salesforce corrects only the first misspelled term.
For example, search for the accounts associated with word Apple, by mistake if you enter appel Salesforce will auto correct it. This feature also works with Account’s related records such as – Contacts and Opportunities.
2) Add Opportunity Team Members Faster:- Opportunity team sharing is one of the most used features in Salesforce. Now onwards, sales reps can save their time by adding multiple members to an opportunity team on one page.Â
3) Launch a Flow from an Object-Specific Action (Beta): – Everyone loves Visual workflow, easy way because it is one of the most powerful ways to automate business processes. As of now, there are several ways through which you can trigger Flow. After Winter’18 release, you will also be able to trigger a flow from an object specific action.
You can now add flows to the action menu on your Lightning pages without hunting down the flow’s URL. When you create a flow action, you can pick from a list of available flows rather than enter the flow URL manually. To work as a flow action, a flow must be active and have screens.Â
4) Merge Person Accounts in Lightning Experience: – You can now view duplicate records on person accounts in Lightning Experience just as you can on business Accounts, Contacts, and Leads. Users with appropriate permission can merge person accounts, too. You will also see an alert if there is a duplicate person account. 
5) Edit More Records at Once with Mass Inline Editing: – You can now update up to 200 records without leaving a list view. Select multiple records in a list view and then click the edit icon next to the field you want to update. Enter the new value for the field, and click Apply to update the selected records.
6) Build Macros and Save Time in Lightning Experience:- Now you can quickly and easily edit and add instructions to macros using the new Macro Builder point-and-click interface.
Macros streamline agent productivity by increasing efficiency and consistency when communicating with customers. With the Lightning Macro Builder, users can edit and add instructions to existing macros using a visual experience similar to the Lightning App Builder. The builder’s simple point-and-click interface lets macro authors capture the quick actions and fields they want to include in the macro instructions.
On the right-hand side of the builder, the macros Instructions tab show instructions for the macro. Instructions are composed of quick actions and their corresponding fields which you can select from the page on the left.
7) Chat with Customers in Lightning Experience: –Â Salesforce has redesigned Live Agent and gave it a whole new look and feel in Lightning Experience. Agents get a larger chat window, so they have more room to use the chat features they know and love.
You do not even have to regenerate your deployment code if you already use Omni-Channel routing for chats, Simply, head over to the Lightning App Manager and edit your Lightning console app. Add the Omni-Channel utility and then add Live Chat Transcripts to your selected items. Make sure you have a chat button that uses Omni-Channel routing because Live Agent routing is not supported in Lightning Experience.
8) Open Reports in Quip: – Quip is a modern word processor that enables you to create beautiful documents on any device – phones, tablets, and desktop. If you are using both, Quip and Salesforce, then you can take full advantage of Quip’s living documents by working with connected report data in a Quip spreadsheet. Plus, work with Quip’s productivity features: @Mention colleagues to discuss data through real-time discussion threads.
Opening a report in Quip connects the report with a Quip spreadsheet. Once connected, the spreadsheet automatically gets refreshed report data from Salesforce, and the spreadsheet links back to records in Salesforce. For example, Account Name columns link back to Account records.
9) Dynamic Branding: One Community, with a Different Look for Each Audience: – With branding sets, you can change the appearance and style of your community pages based on the audience viewing the page. No need to create individual communities for each customer or business need. Now you build your community once, and simply style it differently for each audience.
In Community Builder, you can:
- Manage branding sets from the Branding panel (1).
- Create a set of branding properties (2).
- Create or assign an audience to your branding set (3).
- Switch between a tile or list view of branding sets (4).
10) Embed Flows in Lightning Community Pages:- Now it is possible to add a Flow to Lightning component. Use the Flow component to embed active flows in your Lightning community.Â
Note: – You can download release notes in HTML format! , or as a PDF file.
What are your favorite Winter’18 release note gems?
Technical Editor and Proofreader: -Â Munira Majmundar
Nice blog thanks for pposting
This is a good one! Thank you.
Thank you, Jessica! I am glad you liked it 🙂
Thanks for sharing your list!