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Get Started Today With Einstein Search

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Einstein Search is transforming the way we search in Salesforce, enabling your users to get personalized and actionable search results.

This post will walk you through how to get started successfully with Salesforce Einstein Search – how to set it up, what you can do with it, and help you understand how it works.

How Do I Get Einstein Search?

Einstein is free – available to Unlimited, Enterprise and Performance edition customers, with Lightning enabled. From Winter ’22 release, Einstein Search is on by default, so it’s time to help your users skill up on this awesome productivity feature. 

How Do I Setup Einstein Search?

Step 1: Check Your Settings

  1. There’s no need to enable the feature – it’s on by default! But you can check your settings by going to Setup > Einstein > Einstein Search > Settings.
  2. From here you can turn specific features on and off.

Step 2: Define Your Search Result Layouts

At this point, you may want to define your search result layouts and what actions users will be able to take.

The fields displayed are controlled by the ‘Search Layouts’ defined for each object. This can be edited by going to the object > Search Layouts. 

Any changes you make to layout, fields and actions can affect your existing set up. For example, what actions are available in search is determined by the page layout assigned to your user for that object.

Any actions you add to the ‘Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions’ area of the page layout in Setup (1), will be displayed on both the record page (2) and search (3).

Account Page Layout:

Account Record:

Search:

To find out more, check out this Salesforce Help article.

Step 3: Control Which Objects Users See

As the Admin, you can define the search-scope. In layperson’s terms? This simply means the objects that Einstein always looks at when providing search results; these objects will be included in instant and top search results. Einstein will continue to include results from “Einstein determined objects” which are based on a user’s activity. You can define the search-scope per profile.

Einstein Search is all set up, now what?

As soon as you click into the search bar you’ll notice some amazing new functionality including:

  1. Tips
  2. Suggested searches
  3. Recent items
  4. Suggested lists

You can use Einstein Search to replace the need to create many reports and list views. Your users can simply search for “My Opportunities” or “My Accounts in San Francisco”. This one’s a time saver for both Admin and end user!

(Note – the record displayed above had “Bristol” in the City field of Address.)

As well as personalized search results, you can also take actions by hovering over the record; this game-changer really does reduce the number of clicks required.

Where you are directed to a recommended result, you can see and navigate to actions and related lists without having to go into the record.

Top Tip: From Winter ‘21 Einstein Search will now return results for renamed standard objects! So, if you’ve renamed Leads to Prospects, you can now search for “My Prospects”.

How does all this work?

Personalized Search Results

Personalized search results are available for accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, and leads and are based on user activity. This means Einstein orders your search results based on:

  • Activity—how frequently or recently you’ve viewed the records.
  • Location—records that are related to a city, state, or country that you work with often.
  • Ownership—records that are owned by or modified by people that are important to you.
  • Specialization—records that are related to an industry or product area you prefer, or have a status or stage that interests you.

Source: Personalized Search Results

Natural Language Search

This feature uses what’s known as “natural language” which allows users to search in Salesforce the same way they would when using something like Google search. 

Actionable Instant Results and Recommended Results

When a user clicks into the search bar, users will see the actionable user interface. This will include:

  • Suggested natural language searches that will create custom filtered lists – these are based on recent searches and will continue to update as the user keeps typing.
  • Potential search results based on what the user has types in the search bar – when a user hovers over each record they will be able to see more information about that record, related lists and action buttons such as ‘Edit’ or ‘Clone’. 
  • Suggested list views

Einstein Search for Knowledge Articles

From the Winter ’22 release, Einstein Search is available in Pilot for Knowledge Articles. This feature is available for orgs with Lightning Knowledge enabled, using Enterprise, Essentials, Performance, Developer, and Unlimited in Lightning Experience.  

Einstein Search for Knowledge Articles is based on each user’s work and the popularity of a particular article. 

knowledge article filtering and search results

Source: Assist Your Agents and Customers to Find Knowledge Articles (Pilot)

Summary

Einstein Search continues to demonstrate that Salesforce is a platform accelerating user productivity, enabling businesses to focus on pursuing customer success.

In Salesforce’s own words “Using Einstein Search can result in an up to 50% reduction in clicks and page loads for the most frequently-used tasks, such as editing sales records.” With stats like this, perhaps it’s time you took a look.

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24 thoughts on “Get Started Today With Einstein Search”

    1. Lucy Mazalon

      Reply

      Hi Bart, I was actually talking to Christine about this the other day. Salesforce did say there was a 150 seat minimum at Dreamforce, but when we later checked the Salesforce Help article, there is no mention of the 150 licenses. Wondering if you have seen this mentioned recently?
      Thanks, Lucy

  3. John Sadler

    Reply

    New Einstein Search:
    If I’m reading it right – Only applies if you have 150+ Users which is quite disappointing. Every time I get a little excited about Lightning Salesforce finds a way to take the wind out of my sails

    1. Lucy Mazalon

      Reply

      Hi John, I was actually talking to Christine about this the other day. Salesforce did say there was a 150 seat minimum at Dreamforce, but when we later checked the Salesforce Help article, there is no mention of the 150 licenses. Wondering if you have seen this mentioned recently?
      Thanks, Lucy

  5. Guillaume BONNET

    Reply

    Hello,
    Thanks for your article very detailed.
    I have a question about this new feature:

    If a standard object has been renamed (only the label),’Case’ in ‘Request’.
    The search functionality around the boxes no longer works, is this normal?

    The search functionality around ‘Cases’ don’t works at expected, is it normal?

    My search :
    1- ‘Cases closed last week’: I have results for this sentence
    2- ‘Requests closed las week’: No results found

    How could I get around this problem, on our org ‘Case’ is not known by business users, we work only with ‘Request’.
    I tried the synonyms but it doesn’t work.

    Do you have an idea to help me ?
    Thanks in advance

    1. Christine Marshall

      Reply

      Hi Guillaume,

      I had a theory about why this wasn’t working for you and unfortunately Salesforce have confirmed it is correct:

      “Please note that changing the label name will not change the API Name. So even if we change the label from Case to Request, we still need to search for “My Cases” as the API Name will not change.”

      Not good news for you or your users I’m afraid.

      Best, Christine

  6. Amira

    Reply

    Hello,

    I’d like to activate Einstein Search on an Org in order to use the preview and quick action functionalities on the results, it will really help on reducing the number of clicks for our Sales.

    However, the documentation mentions that “Einstein Search is available in English only.” and our org and users are mainly French (and some Spanish).

    We won’t use the conversational search for which I expect the language to be a prerequisite.

    Do you know if the language limitation would have an impact on the functionalities we are interested on ?

    Thank you !
    Bests, Amira

    1. PaulaDW

      Reply

      Hi Jennifer, l was just testing few options, nope it doesn’t understand ‘My Overdue Open Opportunities’ because “overdue” will not be a logical criteria. You probably have to be a bit more specific with the date. It gets “my open opportunities created last month” though!

  8. Eve Archer

    Reply

    Hi, can you let me know how we can use Einstein Search in Production. After getting very excited after testing it in UAT we find we cannot install in Production.
    I’m confused on whether this is available as part of Salesforce releases or whether we need to pay for it. We have over 600 Users in one org and 350 in another and we plan to merge into one Salesforce org in the very near future and would value your input if this is something we can use as part of Salesforce going forward.

    1. Christine Marshall

      Reply

      Hi Eve!

      Were you testing in a sandbox linked to your production org? Can you also confirm you are using a supported edition – Unlimited, Enterprise or Performance with Lightning enabled?

  11. Jonny K

    Reply

    Hi is there a way to customize the second row of information? I have tried search layouts. We want to show our external account id next to the account name. I would upload a picture to this comment but I cant 🙁

  12. Tarleton S

    Reply

    hello. My org has a customized search component as part of a customer lightning app which is not Einstein search enabled. Is there a way to utilize Einstein search within a customized lightning app/home page? So far I’ve only seen it available as part of global search.

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