Top Ten Gems of Salesforce Lightning Experience Winter’23 Release!

Last Updated on September 10, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta

With each release, Salesforce is adding many new functionalities to Lightning Experience, which makes you more productive and helps you to provide a better customer experience. 

On the 26th of August, Sandboxes will be upgraded. As a result, your organization will get the look and feel of the Winter’23 release. If you have not read the entire 577 pages of Salesforce Winter’23 release notes, check out the Winter’23 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 Winter’23 release. 

1. Set and Track After Conversation Work Time (Generally Available):- Give agents a set amount of time after a customer call or messaging session to wrap up their work before they start a new one. Agents can use this time to send follow-up emails, update a case, or finalize their notes. Supervisors can use Omni Supervisor and reports to track the amount of time agents spend on wrap-up work.
   1. When After Conversation Work (ACW) time ends, the work is considered complete regardless of whether the agent closed the record. If the agent wraps up their work before the ACW period runs out, they can click All Done or close the record tab in the console to show they’re ready to help the next customer. You can allow agents to pause the ACW timer to prevent being put back into available status before completing after-conversation work. You choose the extension time and how many times an agent can extend their ACW.
   2. You can set up ACW in the presence configuration for a group of agents or in a service channel. ACW at the service channel level overrides the setting at the presence configuration level. In the After Conversation Work Time section, click Give agents wrap-up time after conversations, and add the time in seconds. The value must be from 30 to 3,600 seconds (60 minutes). Then, add the After Conversation Work component to your call or messaging home page, which shows the ACW countdown. 
      
   3. This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise and Unlimited editions. Available in Salesforce orgs with these telephony models:
      1. Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect
      2. Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony
      3. Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony from Amazon Connect
2. Transfer Calls More Efficiently:- Get the enhanced call transfer experience. Before transferring a call, agents can gauge how busy another agent is based on their consumed capacity value. And with transferred calls added to the Omni Supervisor Queues Backlog tab, supervisors can view inbound and transferred calls awaiting agent pickup.
   1. View an agent’s consumed capacity percent value from the Phone tab of Omni-Channel. To show agent availability information for transferred calls, Salesforce users must be mapped to the telephony provider users, and Respect Agent Capacity must be turned off.
   2. View a list of inbound and transferred calls in queue and analyze queue data for these calls from the Omni Supervisor Queues Backlog tab.
   3. This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise and Unlimited editions. Available in Salesforce orgs with these telephony models:
      1. Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect
      2. Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony
      3. Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony from Amazon Connect
3. Set IAM Permissions Boundaries Through Salesforce: – Enter the AWS IAM Role Permissions Boundary Amazon Resource Name (ARN) directly through Salesforce when you set up your contact center with a new Amazon Connect instance. If a Permissions Boundary ARN is specified, its permissions boundaries are added to IAM roles as they’re provisioned.
   1.  In the AWS Permissions Boundary ARN, enter the AWS IAM Role Permissions Boundary ARN.
   2.  This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise and Unlimited editions. Available in Salesforce orgs with this Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony from Amazon Connect. 
4. Assign Leads to Territories (Generally Available): – Ensure coverage for your sales teams’ prospects when you distribute leads among territories manually. You determine access levels for the leads in your reps’ territories.
   1. Turn on Lead Access and specify access levels for your sales reps. Next, add the Assigned Territories related list to your lead page layouts.
   2. You then assign leads to territories using different methods depending on whether you assign multiple leads simultaneously or individual leads.
   3. This change applies to Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Performance and Developer editions and in Enterprise and Unlimited editions with the Sales Cloud.
5. Work Smoothly with Improved Usability of Salesforce Desktop Site Forecasts: – Sales reps and other forecast users can benefit from improved visualization and navigation on the forecasts page. Quota attainment percentages are shown as progress bars in the summary view. If a forecast value was adjusted and changed recently, you can see more information in a single popup rather than two. To keep your time frame as a reference point, the time period column is frozen as you scroll horizontally in the summary view.
   1. If you enabled quotas and your user selected the Show Quota % Attainment display option on the forecasts page, quota attainment progress bars appear above quota attainment percentages. For information on what the colors mean, see Salesforce Help. You don’t need to do any setup to freeze the first column (time period). You can’t disable it.
   2. If your user selected the Show Changes in Last 7 Days display option on the forecasts page, forecasts with a recent change and an adjustment show a single popup upon hover. The popup contains information about the change and the adjustment.
   3. These changes apply to Lightning Experience in Professional, Performance, and Developer editions and in Enterprise and Unlimited editions with the Sales Cloud.
6. Connect Google to Salesforce with a Service Account: – When setting up Einstein Activity Capture, you can now connect to Salesforce with a Google service account. With the service account authentication method, Einstein Activity Capture users don’t connect their own account, which simplifies the rollout.
   1. If you’re setting up Einstein Activity Capture for the first time, select Service Account as your authentication method.
   2. This change applies to Lightning Experience in Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions.
7. Add Contacts to Cadences from Opportunities and Pipeline Inspection: – Add opportunity contacts to cadences directly from opportunities and Pipeline Inspection. The opportunity is also related to the contacts automatically.
   1. To add contacts from an opportunity, click Add to Cadence. You can include the related opportunity or change or remove it manually. In Pipeline Inspection, specific deal insights on opportunities also include an action to add contacts to cadences.
   2. This change applies to Lightning Experience in Performance and Unlimited editions with High Velocity Sales.
8. Manage Associations Easily in Gmail or Outlook:- Emails and events that Einstein Activity Capture users create in their Gmail or Outlook integration are captured and automatically associated to related records. Now users can change these automatic associations from their Gmail or Outlook integration. You can remove some or all the associations between an email or event and related records, or add new associations. Previously, users could make these changes only in Salesforce.
   1. This change applies to Lightning Experience in Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer editions. 
9. Enhance More Object Record Pages With Dynamic Forms:- You can now make your account, including person account, contact, and opportunity record pages, more robust by configuring them with Dynamic Forms.
   1. In the Lightning App Builder, open an account, including person account, contact, or opportunity record page. Click the new Fields tab, and place fields anywhere on the page. Or automate the process by migrating your Record Detail component to use Dynamic Forms with the click of a button.
10. Help Users with More Targetable Locations and Backdrop:-  More granular elements are targetable using targeted prompts for In-App Guidance. To draw more attention to the component being highlighted, targeted prompts now come with a gray backdrop.
    1. You can control what users notice so they can easily find the item the prompt refers to.
    2. You can now target:
       1. List view dropdown menu, pin, and buttons in the header
       2. App name
       3. App Launcher
       4. Items in the navigation bar, including items in the item’s dropdown menu
       5. Record tabs and subtabs
       6. Record highlight panel fields
    3. All targeted prompts, including targeted prompts created before Winter’23, have a gray backdrop. Users click outside of the prompt to remove the backdrop.