Top Ten Gems of Salesforce Lightning Experience Spring’21 Release!

Last Updated on January 3, 2021 by Rakesh Gupta

With each new release, Salesforce is adding tons of new functionalities to Lightning Experience. Which make you more productive and help you to provide a better customer experience.

Currently, the Spring’21 release is under the pre-release program. On the and 08th & 09th of January, Sandboxes will be upgraded, as a result, your organization will get the look and feel of Spring’21 release. In case you have not read the entire 491 pages of Salesforce Spring’21 release notes, check out the Spring’21 release quick summary written by me.

I combed through the release notes and highlighted the most exciting, interesting, and useful Lightning Experience features. Since Lightning Experience is getting faster and better with every release, it was a challenge to stop at just ten! To kick things off, here is my take on the coolest Lightning features from the Spring’21 release.

Use Lightning Email Templates in Salesforce Automations:- Now use Lightning email templates—including Email Template Builder email templates—in Salesforce automation, including email alerts, Flow, Workflow, Process Builder, Approval Processes, and more. For example, you can set up an email alert that sends an email to users about something that’s happened and includes a Lightning email template with the email alert. Previously, when you set up an email alert you used Salesforce Classic email templates only.
Analyze Performance For Lightning Pages Viewed on a Phone and Desktop:- Performance Analysis in App Builder now assesses record page performance for the phone and desktop form factor. New tabs in the Page Analysis window give you separate results for a Lightning record page when it loads on a desktop and on a phone so you can design your page for optimal performance on both.
More Support for Dynamic Actions: – Dynamic actions let you add flexibility and control to actions on your record pages. Dynamic actions for custom objects are now GA for mobile and have been GA for desktop since Winter ‘21. Dynamic actions for Account, Case, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity are now GA for desktop. Dynamic actions for all other standard objects are Beta for desktop. Assign actions in the Lightning App Builder instead of the page layout, and apply filters to control when and where actions appear for users.
Get Report Details Emailed in .XLSX Format: – Get report exports in the format you want. When exporting a report, you can select .xlsx, .xls, or .csv as the format. Previously only .xls and .csv were supported.
1. On the Reports page, select the Export row-level action for the report. Click Details Only and then select .xlsx as the Format option.
2. If security is a concern, you can hide the .xls option by selecting Hide the option to export a report in XLS format in Lightning Experience in Reports and Dashboards Settings.
Sreamline Report Creation with Multi-Field Selection: – Spend less time creating reports and more on translating results into next steps. Multi-select allows you to drag multiple fields to your reports with a single action. Plus, you can now add or remove fields and columns and preview the results without delay.
Enable Einstein Opportunity Scoring with Less Data: – Even if you have a smaller data set, you can now enable Einstein Opportunity Scoring. Einstein takes advantage of a global scoring model that uses anonymous aggregated data to allow everyone to score their opportunities. When you have enough of your own data, Einstein switches to a scoring model built only with that data.
Save Dashboard Results with Filter URL Parameters: – There’s no need to set up the same filters each time you view your dashboard in Lightning Experience. Create a custom URL that includes the filter parameters. Then when you access the URL, your dashboard opens with the filters already set. For example, you can customize your Opportunity Stages dashboard with a different URL for each account or create a custom URL for an account owner or lead source.
1. In the dashboard builder, set up the dashboard filters you want to use (1). Locate the URL for the dashboard page (2).
2. Now add the filter parameters to the end of the URL. For example, this URL sets Stage (the first filter, or fv0) to “Closed Won” and Account Name (the second filter, or fv1) to “Acme.”
```
https://company.salesforce.com/lightning/r/Dashboard/01ZRM0000005jrv2AA/view?queryScope=userFolders&fv0=Closed%20Won&fv1=Acme
```
3. To add filters to the URL, use this structure:
  - &—Denotes a new parameter in the URL. If no other parameters are present in the URL, then substitute? in place of &.
  - fv0—The fv stands for filter value, and is the name of the parameter. The number that follows represents the order in which the filter appears in the dashboard. The first filter is 0, the second filter is 1, and the third is 2.
  - =Closed%20Won—Specifies the filter value. The parameter value must be URI encoded, which means certain characters (such as spaces) must be written in a format that URLs can understand. In the example, the space (‘ ‘) between Closed and Won becomes %20 when URI encoded.
4. To open the dashboard with the filters selected, go to the URL you created. The URL is also available to share with your team or to modify and reuse.
Share Records with Manual Sharing: – With manual sharing in Lightning Experience, you now can share records and manage record shares in a new streamlined interface. Previously, you switched to Salesforce Classic to give specific users and user groups access to records.
Add Images to In-App Guidance:- Make your in-app guidance more engaging by adding a .jpg, .jpeg, .png, or .gif file. Animated .gifs can further articulate the guidance in a prompt.
1. Add images to your prompts in the In-App Guidance Builder. From Setup in Lightning Experience, in the Quick Find box, enter In-App Guidance, and then select In-App Guidance. As you create a prompt, click Upload Files or drag the file to the Or drop files area.
2. In the Image Layout, select the image location relative to your prompt’s text.
3. The image appears in one of the locations shown. For floating prompts, choose from above, below, to the right of, or to the left of your body text.
Track Accounts as Campaign Members (Beta):- Enhance your account-based marketing efforts when you use Connected Campaigns with Accounts as Campaign Members. Add account records as members of a campaign so you can focus your attention on these accounts in the tables, related lists, and reports that contain campaign members.

Additional enhancements worth noting!

Quickly Find Portal Users When Changing Record Owners: – When you want to give a portal user ownership of a record, you now can filter for customer portal users and partner users in the change owner window so you can efficiently find who you’re looking for.
Make Sure Emails Get Delivered with Soft Bounce Email Handling: – Companies use bounce handling so that their sales reps know when an email doesn’t get delivered. Now you can track an email’s soft bounce, which is a temporary delivery failure. Previously, you tracked only hard bounces, which are permanent delivery failures.
BCC Hidden from Salesforce Experience Users: – Recent security enhancements for cases restrict BccAddress information for Experience users unless they have at least read permission or they sent the original email. Internal Salesforce users can still see BCC contents. For community users, the details page always shows a blank value for the BCC field. Community users see the contents of the email’s BCC only if they’re the original email sender.
Distribute Lightning Email Templates with Packaging and Change Sets: – Now you can create managed packages containing Lightning email templates using the first-generation packaging tool. Packages let users download email templates that you can control and update. Change sets let you test Lightning email templates and automation in a sandbox environment and then move what’s successful to a production environment. Previously, these features were available only for Salesforce Classic email templates.
Power Up Recently Viewed Lists with Customizable Actions: – Want to add custom actions to your Recently Viewed lists? With customizable actions, now you can. Recently Viewed lists now show the actions added to an object’s list view search layout, making them consistent with other list views. Some actions, like Printable View, aren’t available on Recently Viewed lists.