Top Ten Gems of Salesforce Lightning Experience Summer'21 Release!

Last Updated on April 29, 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 Summer’21 release is available under the pre-release program. On the and 07th & 08th of May, Sandboxes will be upgraded, as a result, your organization will get the look and feel of the Summer’21 release. In case you have not read the entire 562 pages of Salesforce Summer’21 release notes, check out the Summer’21 release quick summary and Pardot Summer’21 Release: Top 5 Features 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 Summer’21 release.

Update Fields from the Report Run Page with Inline Editing (Beta):- Keep the data in your reports and object records up to date while saving time and clicks. When the source data for a report gets out of date, it’s not necessary to go back to the original object record to update the information. With inline editing, you can update certain types of text, numeric, and checkbox fields without leaving the Report Run page. For example, Sales reps can run an opportunity report and review and update the opportunity amounts in one place.
1. First, contact Salesforce Customer Support and request to have inline editing turned on. Then in Setup, from Reports and Dashboards Settings, select Enable Inline Editing in Reports (Lightning Experience only), and save your changes.
2. You’re now set to go. Open a report and hover over the text, numeric, or checkbox field that you want to edit. If you see a pencil icon, you can click it, modify the value, and then save. The field value is updated on the report and in the source record, and the report reruns automatically.
Create Quick Actions with Lightning Web Components:- To save your users time and clicks, create a quick action that invokes a Lightning web component. On a record page, create a screen action that shows the component in a window, or create a headless action that executes with a click.
Save time with Mass Actions in Split View: – No need to open a separate list page—act on multiple records at once, now in split view. Select items in the split view list and apply an action to all of them in standard or console view.
- A split view automatically has checkboxes if there’s a quick action available for all the items in the list, and you can apply a quick action to the selected records in the actions dropdown menu. Mass actions in the split view follow the same logic as mass actions in the table view. Inline edit isn’t supported in split view, so you see checkboxes only if the object has mass actions available.
Drive Sales Team Accountability with Pipeline Inspection: – Pipeline Inspection gives sales teams a single view of their pipelines with key metrics, opportunities, and weekly changes in close dates, amounts, stages, and forecast categories. With these insights, sales teams can focus on the most important opportunities, and sales managers can spend more time coaching reps to close more deals.
1. To enabled Pipeline Inspection Setup – From Setup in Lightning Experience, in the Quick Find box, enter Pipeline Inspection, and then select Pipeline Inspection Setup.
2. Turn on Pipeline Inspection and verify that you have Historical Trending enabled and configured for opportunities. Add the Pipeline Inspection button and assign the Pipeline Inspection permission set to the users who you want to have access to Pipeline Inspection.
3. When enabled, users access Pipeline Inspection from the Opportunities tab. This feature is only available in Sales Cloud in Lightning Experience in Performance and Unlimited editions.
See Record Access Reasons in Lightning Experience: – A user has access to a record, but why? Is it because of their role? Their territory? From a sharing rule? Now you can see why a user has the access they do, right from Record Sharing Hierarchy in Lightning Experience.

Previously, you switched to Salesforce Classic to see this information. Sharing Hierarchy is now available on the action menu, not just in the Share window.
See Event Organizer Names on Attendee Events: – When an attendee views their event details, they can see the organizer’s name. Sales reps can contact or follow up with their event organizer. Previously, attendee event details didn’t show the organizer.
Download a Dashboard Image to a File: – For an image of your dashboard that you can embed in presentations or refer to wherever you are, download the dashboard to a PNG file. Previously, you could only obtain a dashboard image by using a screen capture app. These changes apply to Lightning Experience only.
1. From the dashboard, click | Download. The dashboard is saved to your selected location in PNG format.
Measure Forecasts Your Way in Lightning Experience: – Now you can base forecasts on custom fields of the currency or number data types. This change means that you have more flexibility to reflect your business model with Collaborative Forecasts.
1. Here’s an example. Using the setup flow, create a forecast type based on the Megawatts field on the Opportunity object.
2. Then activate the forecast type to make it available to your users.
Improve Page Performance with Custom Lightning Component Analysis:- Get insights on custom Lightning components on your Lightning record pages. Updates to the Lightning page analysis tool in the Lightning App Builder give you more performance predictions for your Lightning page.
Collect Supporting Documents Through Survey Responses (Salesforce Survey):- Now participants can upload required details in their survey responses as attachments. Collect information about profile updates such as an address change, or allow customers to upload receipts in support of warranty claims. Participants can upload documents in formats such as a document, PDF, spreadsheet, or graphic.
1. In Survey Builder, add a page, click Add Question, and then select Attachment (1).
2. Define the configuration parameters for attachment upload (2). These parameters indicate the attachment types, number of attachments, and the size of each attachment that a participant can upload in the responses.

Additional enhancements worth noting!

Create a Dynamic Actions Bar for Your App Page (Pilot): – Access all your most important actions in one convenient bar. Easily add, drag, and configure the Dynamic Actions Bar component on your app page with the Lightning App Builder. Customize your bar with standard and custom global actions.
Send Multiple Emails with Unique Templates in a Single Macroe: – Bulk Macros now support Classic and Lightning Experience email templates. Use more complex macros to automatically handle repetitive emails. Your templates can now have inline images, letterhead, and merge fields to help you craft the perfect email subject and body.
Power Up Recently Viewed Lists with Customizable Actions: – Now you can add custom actions to your Recently Viewed lists. To be consistent with other list views, Recently Viewed lists now show the actions added to an object’s list view search layout. Some actions, such as Printable View, aren’t available on Recently Viewed lists. This feature originally was available in Spring ’21, then temporarily removed. It’s rereleased now with performance improvements and the option to disable custom actions.
Show Your Users Three Custom Walkthroughs for Free: – Now you can create as many walkthroughs as you want, showing your users up to three at a time. If you want to show them more, subscribe to myTrailhead. Previously, activating custom walkthroughs for your users required a myTrailhead subscription or a free trial.
- To show more than three custom walkthroughs to users, subscribe to myTrailhead to get the Walkthroughs permission set license and the Access Walkthroughs permission set. Assign the View Walkthroughs user permission to users you want to be able to see walkthroughs.
Hidden Accordion and Tabs Components Now Stay Hidden During Create, Edit, and Clone: – Visibility rules on Accordion and Tabs components in Dynamic Forms-enabled pages are no longer ignored during create, edit, and clone. For example, let’s say you have a visibility rule on an Accordion component that causes it to be hidden while a user views a record page. When the user clicks to create, edit, or clone, all fields and field sections in that hidden Accordion component now remain hidden in the create, edit, and clone windows.