With all the excitement surrounding Salesforce’s new Lightning applications, you may have missed some of the smaller, but still very innovative, new developments that were part of Salesforce’s Winter ‘16 Release. Arguably the biggest one yet, the Winter ‘16 Release has completely reimagined the user interface experience, and transformed the ways in which users will interact with and benefit from these major updates. However, I’ve noticed that many Salesforce users aren’t getting the most of the new functionality. In this blog, I will identify the top five changes introduced by the Winter ‘16 Release and why they should still be top of mind at your organization. 

1. Improved UI with Lightning 

By now, we know that Lightning Experience is newer, faster, and houses a more beautiful user experience than the original user interface, now called Salesforce Classic. Focused on reinventing the desktop environment to better support sales processes, it is intuitive and intelligent and helps sales reps close deals faster with with less effort. The most important features include:

• A new home page that allows reps to set a goal and monitor their performance in reaching that goal. 
• An Opportunity Board that visually represents the status of deals, and how many deals are at each stage of the selling cycle. You can even get alerts when action is needed on a key deal. 

It is important to note that not all functionality has been migrated to Lightning Experience yet, but will continue to transform how Sales, Service, and Marketing users interact with Salesforce over the next few releases.

2. Better Guidance with Sales Path

Sales Path guides sales reps through each stage of both lead and opportunity sales cycles. It does this by allowing you to identify the key fields a sales rep should focus on in a particular stage of the sales cycle, then provides guidance to ensure success in moving through that stage. These guided prompts can take the form of images, text, links, company guidelines, or even tips warning against potential “gotchas” that typically occur during that step.

3. Wave-Powered Dashboards

Previously, Salesforce users were limited to only three columns for dashboard components. Now with Lightning, dashboard builders can create a dashboard with the length and width of their choosing because the dashboard now is in the form of a grid, giving users more visual control and room to display more data at once. Additionally, it uses a new graphics engine, powered by the Salesforce Wave platform, so the dashboard is visually stunning and eye-catching.

4. Page Layouts Reimagined

Page layouts in Salesforce Classic had not changed for quite some time. Traditionally, page layouts had a detail section, a related lists section, and a Chatter feed at the top, and users could see a detail mode and edit mode. With Lightning, this has been completely modernized. The default layout is organized in a way that better aligns to how a user interacts with the record. The most important new feature is how Lightning page layouts now adapt to the user’s device — they can be displayed on a mobile device, tablet, or desktop monitor. 

5. More Roll-Up Summary Fields per Object

The default limit for roll-up summary fields has been increased from 10 to 25. With roll-up summary fields, you can perform calculations such as the minimum, maximum, or sum total of any number, percent, or currency fields on the child record, or even a count of the number of  related child records and display that result on a master record. Additionally, you can add a filter so that data only includes child records that meet a specific criteria. For example, if you want to display the sum of expense line items for all reimbursable expenses, a rollup summary would allow you to do that.

As evidenced by the 506 pages of release notes, the Winter ‘16 Release has many new changes and functionality, more than one blog could ever cover. However, researching all new features, and leveraging them properly, could be key to solving some of your organization’s challenges. At Bluewolf, our experts are here to help. 

Connect with us today and get the most out of Salesforce now.