Releases

Most Wanted Salesforce Features – Full Salesforce Roadmap

By Lucy Mazalon

Most Wanted Salesforce Features – Full Salesforce Roadmap

You may have heard about the Salesforce IdeaExchange? It’s the platform that allows the Salesforce community to directly upvote which features they want to see as part of the Salesforce product. 

IdeaExchange Prioritization list takes the user wish list and marries it up with reality – how Salesforce product development actually happens and taking complexity into account.

It’s a great feedback loop that means customers get heard, but aren’t left in the dark on why popular ideas aren’t up for the roadmap development. Hopefully you will spot an enhancement, or two, that you are anticipating!


VIEW THE ROADMAP

Spring ’22 Release (~ February 2022)

Analytics: Inline Editing of Reports

“so that you don’t have to drill into each record separately to edit it” – yes, Salesforce standard reports will function like a list view, double clicking in a report to edit the record! I will certainly gain a lot of time back thanks to this one.

DELIVERED (in Beta) in Summer ’21

Idea age: 12 years

Points retired: 22,830 

Receiving almost double the votes as the other winners, this one is highly anticipated!

  • Reports to function like list views, which gained long-standing popularity due to in-line editing (reminiscent of Excel).
  • List views are restricted to one object, whereas reports can include multiple objects, and filters relating to multiple objects.
  • Reduces the need to create multiple list views and queues.
  • Predicted to have a great, positive impact on report user adoption. 




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Custom fields for dashboard gauge values

Gauge components on Salesforce dashboards are very popular with target-driven teams, displaying progress made towards the target, and whether you’re in the clear, or ‘in the red’ – literally.

DELIVERED (in Beta) in Winter ’22

Idea age: 14 years

Points retired: 14,120 

Every admin will know that the numbers for the thresholds need to be ‘hard-coded’, by editing the component and typing in the specific numbers for the green, yellow, and red values. That will no longer be the case!




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Experience Site Maintenance Mode

Provide the ability for an admin to set the Experience site in maintenance mode.

Idea age: 3 years

Points retired: 3260

Currently, deactivating the community just leaves the user on a blank loading page with no message.
There’s hope that once a community is set as “Under Maintenance”, all current active users should be logged out and redirected to the maintenance page.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Summer ’22 Release (~ June 2022)

Lightning Platform: Metadata for Declarative Change Management

“Expanded Metadata support for Declarative Change Management” – including metadata associated with standard objects.

Idea age: 10 years

Points retired: 26,590

Wow, this seems like a sore topic, so it’s great this is in development now! Here’s a flavour of the pain points that Salesforce will be working to solve:

  • “It is frustrating that we need to replicate all picklist changes on standard objects when deploying from sandbox to live as Change Sets do not support standard objects.”
  • Other items that can’t be added include eg. profiles, changes to standard fields, changes to field security,
  • Other limitations in auditing changes, eg. multiple changes across pagination, no date columns like created or modified.

Ps. the Idea thread is worth a read, some…colourful…comments that shed light on how necessary this enhancement will be.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Lightning Platform: Declarative Release Management

“Improved Declarative Change and Release Management” – cloning Change Sets (and possibly more)

Idea age: 9 years

Points retired: 19,650 (17 merged ideas)

Yes, 17 merged ideas. The community has been clamouring for this for a long time!

  • The ability to clone an Inbound Change Set to subsequently use as an Outbound Change Set.
  • This would mean you can ‘relay’ Change Sets upstream (eg. from sandbox (development) → sandbox (UAT) → production) or downstream (the other way).
  • In a nutshell: consistent migration of changes across environments.

The full details are yet to be confirmed on what this enhancement will include. Salesforce are still collecting feedback on this topic, so don’t delay in sharing your thoughts using this survey (see the idea thread for the most up to date information).




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Mass operations for picklist values in Setup

Ability to mass delete inactive unused picklist values from a picklist field. Available for Pilot in the Spring 22′ release (get details on how to join the pilot)

Idea age: 13 years

Points retired: 12,930 (4 merged ideas)


IDEA DETAILS

Additional Opportunity Forecast category

New forecast category “most likely” for the standard Opportunity field, included in Forecasting rollups. Also, allow editing of Forecast Category labels.

Idea age: 14 years

Points retired: 14,120 


IDEA DETAILS

Persistent Filters on Related Lists

The admin ability to configure and add filters to related lists in the Lightning App Builder – also known as “Intelligent Related lists (Filterable by Admin)”.

Idea age: 14 years

Points retired: 44,590 (6 merged ideas)

  • Add multiple related lists of the same object to your page.
  • Configure related lists from the Lightning App Builder, adding filters per related list.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Search enhancements

Winter ’23 Release (~ October 2022)

Multi-Object Pages (Spanning fields/multi entity)

Build multi-entity pages within the Lightning App Builder.

View/edit information in a related record on the same record page. View unrelated data from multiple entities on a single page.

Idea age: 14 years

Points retired: 32,860 (4 merged ideas)

  • The release of Dynamic Forms laid the foundation for the spanning fields capability.
  • Save admins creating formula fields to see fields from related objects.
  • Community members are calling for list views to be considered also.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Lightning Platform: Address Field Type

“Add a standard field type: Address”

Open Beta starting Summer ’22

Idea age: 12 years

Points retired: 67,730 

  • Admins can add ‘address’ as a custom field on standard and custom objects.
  • The ‘address’ field type already exists but Admins can’t create them – this will open that up.
  • Will prevent unnecessary workaround Admins have been inventive with for years.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Experience Site A/B Testing


IDEA DETAILS

Spring ’23 Release (~ February 2023)

Pardot Engagement Studio Wait Times

Currently, Engagement Studio can either move on to the next step in the sequence immediately, or ‘wait’ for X number of days. This change will enable Pardot users to have more flexibility to set wait times.

Idea age: 5 years

Points retired: 7,250 


IDEA DETAILS

Idea age: 13 years

Points retired: 9,110 (3 merged ideas)

    • This began as a request to make data in all field types searchable. The example given was how picklist fields would not be found with standard Salesforce search.
    • Enhanced search will now be baked into the Einstein Search functionality, available for free to all Salesforce customers. Seems like this request will be one of many deliverables in that feature’s roadmap.
    • To share your requirements with the product development teams, and get early access to the pilot, complete the Salesforce Natural Language Search for Custom Objects survey.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Summer ’23 Release (~ June 2023)

Einstein Search (searchable fields configuration)

Idea age: 13 years

Points retired: 9,110 (3 merged ideas)

    • This began as a request to make data in all field types searchable. The example given was how picklist fields would not be found with standard Salesforce search.
    • Enhanced search will now be baked into the Einstein Search functionality, available for free to all Salesforce customers. Seems like this request will be one of many deliverables in that feature’s roadmap.
    • To share your requirements with the product development teams, and get early access to the pilot, complete the Salesforce Natural Language Search for Custom Objects survey.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Winter ’24 Release (~ October 2024)

Limit Increase for Report Subscribes

Idea age: 6 years

Points retired: 87,000


IDEA DETAILS

To Be Determined (TBD)

Field history tracking for tasks and events

A task or event record can be edited multiple times in its life. The ability to keep track of which fields were changed when, and by who, will be a huge benefit to organisations relying heavily on Salesforce activities for managing rep/agent workload and tracking performance.

Idea age: 13 years

Points retired: 29,700

Admins will be pleased! “Follow-Up Task” and event workflows (when they’re not wanted) agitate users. Field history tracking proves why a certain workflow fired when it did, providing the evidence when you’re questioned by puzzled users!

After missing the mark in the May cycle, we see this much-needed enhancement has captured people’s attention, ranking ahead in the prioritization cycle, despite having half the IdeaExchange points that 2nd place (ability to print dashboards) built up over the same time period! Originally expected in the Spring ’22, this has now been moved out, with a new release date yet to be set.

  • Keep track of which fields were changed when, and by who.
  • Especially needed as tasks & events can be assigned to multiple users (delivered Summer ‘18).
  • Will help Admins prove why certain workflows fired when they did – providing the evidence when questioned by puzzled users!
    (now, can we have the same for Campaign Members, please?)

 




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Criteria-based Sharing Rules enhancements

Sharing rules can’t be based on the following field types: lookup/formula/dynamic values and user fields.

Idea age: 9 years

Points retired: 21,990 (5 merged ideas)

 

  • Sharing rules can’t be based on the following field types: lookup/formula/dynamic values and user fields.
  • Save admins creating text fields and automation to copy the data from these fields into text fields.
  • Ideal use case is frequently changing account owners (a user field), where sharing rules can’t tap into that field to adjust record sharing automatically.
  • Wrapped up with the Restriction Rules release (next)




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Restriction Rules (fully private sharing model)

Idea age: 13 years

Points retired: 13,320 (5 merged ideas)

Pilot began in Spring ’21

  • Private organization wide default (OWD) for activities does not remain private when parent records are shared (the example given is activities related to an account become visible when the account record is shared)
  • Already possible to create and manage restriction rules in Setup or using either the Tooling API or Metadata API.
  • Restriction Rules caught our attention – the first Admin capability that goes against the mantra “you can only open up user permissions” (ie. not restrict them)




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Salesforce Queues for Opportunities

“Allow opportunities to be assigned to a queue” – Queues in Salesforce prioritize, distribute, and assign records for teams who share workloads. 

Idea age: 5 years

Points retired: 13,990 

Queues are like holding areas in your CRM, where records wait for a user to pick them up, assign them to an owner, and work on processing them.

After entering a few prioritization cycles, it is finally time for opportunity queues to receive the limelight!

  • This enhancement will be useful for organizations who distribute opportunities without ‘hard-and-fast’ rules, but instead to whoever has capacity in the team.
  • Queues are currently available on cases, leads, tasks, contact requests, orders, service contracts, knowledge articles, and custom objects.
  • Lead queues have been indispensable to sales development/BDR teams across the globe, now it’s time to extend this capability further down the customer lifecycle.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Attachments for Web-to-Case

Why not just allow customers to attach a file when they log cases? Support attachments for Web-to-Case (including in Self Service Portal)
Also known as “Web to Flow”

Idea age: 14 years

Points retired: 18,130 (2 merged ideas)

  • Future flexibility to adapt it for customer specific flows.
  • Will require significant data model changes, more than orginally estimated.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Search Top Results – Admin control

Admins to decide which objects show up in “Top Results” when their users search with Global Search.

Idea age: 3 years

Points retired: 4,680

 

  • Global Search analyzes a user’s search behavior and decides which objects to display, but there are calls for Admins to have input, too (said the requester).
  • The example given on the idea page paints a picture of how this is an Admin pain point.




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Delivered!

Ability to print dashboards

Users can now print dashboards directly from Salesforce in an optimized format.

DELIVERED Summer ’21

Idea age: 13 years

Points retired: 50,470

  • End goal: full HTML2PDF for optimising dashboards for printing.
  • HTML2PDF is a dependency that is “at least 2 releases out”
    Interim: PNG export that will aid in getting dashboards into a printable format.
  • No more third-party workarounds, like Snagit!

If you’ve ever been asked to print a dashboard before, you will know it’s not easy to simply screenshot it and run to the printer. 

For super Admins, every dashboard ‘tells a story’, which often gets lost when formatting is changed or disrupted when delivered over email or other formats that are not print preview friendly. 

The new ability will be a huge time saver, and will keep executives – and the many people who love something tangible – happy.  

Why has it taken so long? This delivery will be wrapped into the HTML2PDF service. Although it’s in the works, the product team have been transparent that HTML2PDF is a dependency (which is at least 2 releases out). In the interim, they plan to provide a PNG export of dashboards.   




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Share Button in Lightning Experience

“Ability for users to manually share records with other users”, just as it was possible to in Salesforce Classic.

DELIVERED Spring ’21

Idea age: 3 years

Points retired: 34,980

An incredible number of votes for a relatively young idea. Since the Salesforce Lightning Experience roll-out became mainstream, the small pieces missing (compared to Salesforce Classic) are being addressed over time. It seems that some organizations have developed custom workarounds to do this – hopefully you will be able to hold on for half a year longer!

  • The ability for users to manually share records with other users.
  • Users can manage who has access to specific records they’ve shared.
  • Especially important for orgs where the OWD (org-wide default) for objects are set to ‘Private’




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

Service Cloud: Email-to-Case

“Prevent Email-to-Case from creating multiple cases on the same email thread” – an end to ‘backend mayhem’ and the ‘infinite email loop’.

DELIVERED Winter ’21

Idea age: 10 years

Points retired: 7,050

  • Will avoid creating duplicate Cases when recipients Reply-All to the first email.
  • The solution will use email headers more intelligently to identify Email-to-Case emails one the same thread as one.
  • Will prevent the ‘infinite email loop’ that’s caused headaches in orgs for years (email goes from Salesforce to a customer email address → customer replies with cc email address → generates a new email activity in Salesforce → generates a new case from the email in Salesforce)




Show All
Collapse


IDEA DETAILS

NSPS & EDA Features

 

We heard about the winners, what about the runners-up?

The leaderboards below shows us how popular each of the winning features were and which missed the mark with the coin voting. Any ideas that didn’t make the cut (and more) join the next cycle, which commences a couple of weeks following the closed round.


GET VOTING

The Author

Lucy Mazalon

Lucy is the Operations Director at Salesforce Ben. She is a 10x certified Marketing Champion and founder of The DRIP.

Comments:

    Tim Combridge
    May 11, 2020 2:07 pm
    Particularly looking forward to Address field types and more useful changes sets!! Exciting stuff. Great post, Lucy!
    Penny
    May 13, 2020 1:57 pm
    Some really useful stuff on here! Frustrating that they've all been floating around as pain points for a minimum of 9 years though

Leave a Reply