In the current COVID-19 era every consumer is looking for ways to get the best out of every dime spent. Organizations are no different when it comes to unstable markets and expenses for ruining operations. Many organizations recognized that they will need to make drastic changes in their spending to be able to continue being competitive in this difficult market.
Any organization that currently has a Salesforce CRM license or planning to get in the future would agree that Salesforce license cost is a major expense and will continue to grow as we add more and more users to the system.
Lightning platform (formerly known as Salesforce Platform or Force.com) license can save an organization an average of $1500/user/month. Let’s have a look at what lightning platform license users can or cannot do to evaluate if this can be a good fit for your organization.
If you are a customer of Enterprize, Unlimited, or Performance of any major salesforce cloud you may have the ability to utilize lightning platform license for some of your users if not all. This can help businesses reduce total salesforce licensing costs significantly.
Salesforce CRM licenses are developed for the user who needs that to perform any day-to-day operations. However, not all users need access to full CRM. By switching users who don’t need full access to platform licenses and after carefully designing current or future systems to platform user-friendly, businesses have been saving millions of $ every year.
How much can an organization save by switching to a Lightning platform license?
Let’s have a look at a hypothetical example of a CRM license and Platform license cost. As I am writing this article Salesforce’s website is showing how enterprise license costs $1800/year. Whereas the platform license only costs $300/year. By simply addressing which user needs full access to the system v/s which users can be a good fir for platform license can save your business $1500/user/month.
Which CRM objects do I get access to with Salesforce full CRM license?
Let’s have a look at primary standard objects that CRM (AKA full license) provides user access to
Accounts
Contacts
Leads
Opportunities
Case
Campaigns
Contracts
Products
Order
In many instances, even though users have access to all licenses, they are either not required to open most objects or have very light use of that. From a cost-benefit analysis, the cost to develop similar objects using custom objects on the lightning platform license costs significantly less. Remember that it saves you $1500/month for every user you can migrate to the platform license.
So what does the Lightning platform license provides?
The Salesforce Lightning Platform Starter user can access up to 10 custom objects with the same functionality that is available in Salesforce Enterprise Edition.
User with Salesforce Lightning Platform Starter License can access up to 10 custom objects in addition to some of the standard objects for example Account, Contact, Tasks, Event, Notes, File, etc. They also have similar access to the functionality compared with users with Salesforce enterprise CRM license users. This list includes
What kind of apps can an organization develop or convert to take advantage of this license?
Below is the list of apps that can easily be developed using custom objects and therefore possible that users with only platform licenses can also access and operate this.
Project management
Human resources management
Software development bug tracking
Attendance tracking
A hypothetical example of platform user license cost savings
For example, Let’s say you have 20 users in the sales management app, if instead of using a standard opportunity object if you utilize custom objects to develop similar functionality assuming that they would not need access to any other standard object they would perfect fir for platform license. This small group of users will save $30,000/year by migrating them to platform users.
Final thoughts on Lightning platform license
Remember that each user in salesforce required 1 license to access the system. So the cost of this license can add up fairly quickly. Instead when making development or admin decisions for your org look for the opportunity to see if any particular group of users can be migrated to a less expensive salesforce license.
If you use the internet to perform many operations, including learning, shopping, or watching tv shows, you are familiar with search engines to search pretty much anything that comes to mind.
In today’s fast-growing technology and data-driven world, consumer needs fast, improving, and accurate search results with minimum efforts. But those same consumers as salesforce CRM users use the global search bar. Search results with the standard global search can sometimes be very overwhelming and require too many clicks for the user to find the correct information. In today’s AI-ML, the user demands intelligent search results with fewer clicks required.
With AI-powered and Machine learning algorithms, einstein search is capable of providing personalized, accurate results based on the user’s role and behavior.
With the upcoming winter’21 release, Einstein search will become generally available. Please read my article about the Winter’21 release.
So, what is Einstein search?
Einstein search is nothing but enhanced Salesforce’s traditional global search. It is loaded with Einstein AI and machine learning capabilities, which allows it to provide personalized, tailored results for your user.
Do more with the search results.
With traditional global search, you need to open records to edit that or to get more information like related records. Einstien search allows you to not only view and open related records information directly from the suggested result, but it also allows you to edit the records from it too. Salesforce claims that with Einstien search, users need 50% fewer clicks and page loads to perform their most common tasks.
What makes Einstein Search more effective?
Einstein search has 3 key features that make it more effective for users.
Search using natural language
Personalized search result
Update search result records
1. Search using natural language
Let’s assume that your user wants to search all open opportunities that they own. Using natural language they can simply type “my open opportunities” which should return all open opportunities that the user owns with status as open. Which wasn’t possible with standard global search in salesforce.
Einstein Search natural language processing
2. Personalized search result
Einstein search uses machine learning to monitor and adapt to the user’s search behavior constantly. Depending on which object from the search result user is most interested in, Einstein will automatically bring that list to the top of the search result. For example, the user has opened a case record from all returned object results in few times, Einstien will automatically put that object on top of the list as the user is likely to click on the case list compared with other object lists.
3. Update search result records
This is one of the most popular functionalities among users associated directly with Einstein search. Users are now capable of editing records directly from search results instead of opening the record first and then clicking on the edit. This functionality is enormous time-saving for customer service reps who want to quickly modify the record on the fly while talking to the customer on the phone.
Please read my blog about how to enable Einstein to search for your organization.
With every seasonal release, lightning flow is becoming more robust and stronger than ever before. However, this particular release is exceptionally flow features heavy. Salesforce product manager Alex Edelstein matches this with the legendary Winter’20 release. Release in which Salesforce released a new lightning flow layout.
List of flow features in Winter-21 release
Flow Auto layout mode
Trigger on Delete
Get records custom conditional logic
Multi-column screen element
Debug as a user
Visual debugging for auto launched flow
Pills
Direct link to the element from on flow save error message
Record update trigger improvements: Query filters
Record Update Trigger Improvements: ‘Only When Record Has Just Changed’
Record Update Trigger Improvements: Traversal to Related Records
Import Flow Actions for Public Web Services Like Jira, Trello, and eBay with External Services (PILOT)
Expanded Access to Global Variables
Flow API Versioning
Now GA: Screen Components can use Generic SObject attributes
Custom Property Editor Enhancements
Alex did an excellent job of explaining all of the above features in his blog on unofficialSF. Visit this page to get more information about other winter’21 release functionalities.
It might feel like we have just been through the recent Salesforce summer release, However Winter’21 release is already around the corner. Below are some helpful links and information regarding this release.
Pre-release org signup
Pre-release orgs are available to signup since August 20th. Signup using this Link to try your hands even before it hits your sandbox. Read my other post regarding flow enhancements that I have written after using that in pre-release org.
Sandbox preview for Winter’21
Salesforce will start rolling winter’21 updates to sandbox customers from September 11, 2020. It is mandatory to have an active sandbox which is on preview instance before this date to be eligible for preview in your sandbox instance.
During the release, Salesforce splits sandbox instances into 2 groups, Preview instance, and non-preview Instance. Any sandbox which falls under preview instance categories will receive winter’21 updates prior to it hit the production and non preview instances will get the updates after winter’21 updates are deployed to production. Refer to the quick diagram below to see if your sandbox is in preview or non-preview instance.
Instance Type
Release Date
Preview Sandbox
September 11/12
Non-Preview Sandbox
October 16/17
Production
October 15/16/17
Winter’21 release date
Find Sandbox Instance Name
There are multiple ways you can find an instance name for sandbox in your org.
By login into production – Login to production and navigate to Setup. In the quick find box type Sandboxes and click on the sandbox menu item. This will open a list of all sandboxes with their instance name. Refer to the image below.
From Salesforce Trust Site – Head over to Salesforce Trust Site and enter domain name from the URL to the search box in the center of the page. This should return the instance name of your sandbox
