Every year, Salesforce brings out three important releases that set a definitive roadmap for its customers and their businesses.

The Summer ’22 Release preview is now live and the upcoming release notes lays out exciting new features and enhancements across the Customer 360 platform. The last two years have been eventful for Salesforce, with its acquisition of Slack and the exciting new features on its Customer 360 platform. Salesforce also announced the Marketing Cloud Intelligence Connector that you can use to aggregate data from your B2C Commerce site. You can use this feature to create logical datasets called dashboards.

Every Salesforce release is packed with numerous new features and updates that help companies elevate their user experience as well as drive sales. From a Salesforce admin perspective, it is better to have release strategies that can help you plan ahead and make the most of the new functionalities. There are also new product names for existing licenses, with My Trailhead, High-Velocity Sales, and Tableau CRM now being rebranded as Sales Enablement, Sales Engagement and CRM Analytics respectively. 

Here are 5 noteworthy highlights from the Salesforce Summer 2022 Release Notes.

1. Case swarming puts customers at the center of the support experience

One of the exciting new features from Salesforce is a new workflow for Service Cloud and Slack. The Service Slack App is part of the Summer Release ’22 and this allows case teams to leverage a ‘swarming’ capability that brings teams across the enterprise together to brainstorm in a cross-disciplinary manner thanks to its collaborative service model. They can then ‘case swarm’ to solve customer-related problems, which has a significant impact on service metrics.In September 2021 during the Dreamforce user conference, Salesforce unveiled many more new Slack integrations, taking the total to 16. Most are available now but many more will be in the market by the end of 2022.

Salesforce is a member of the Consortium of Service Information and one of CSI’s most important practices is the swarming methodology. The idea is to remove traditional barriers when it comes to brainstorming and solving technical problems. Instead of an escalation-based model, you have a collaboration-based one. Swarming enables quicker, more efficient workflows and is perfect for agile teams who need to coordinate more seamlessly with different experts and departments. It is also great for complex customer problems. With case swarming, agents will provide real-time support in a quicker manner.

Very often, it takes external consultants to attack and solve the problem. With case swarming, agents can move a case to SME channels and cast a wider net for case resolutions. The process has three parts. You can create a Slack app. You can then set up Slack in SearchUnify and finally send case details to Slack. This Slack integration will be available in Winter 2022 and also uses third-party capabilities including PagerDuty for AIOps and real-time service status updates. This integration is created to help companies work on complex customer problems and service disruptions. The Slack integration is part of the Service Cloud Customer Service Incident Management feature.  

You can also access and update Case, Account and Contact records within Slack. Using Salesforce, agents can create Slack channels to automatically create ‘swarms’ to discuss cases with other experts, and even recognize experts for their contribution and collaboration. Here are some of the features available to users.

Case swarming for service agents: Case swarming creates a slack channel for service agents who want to work on complex and important cases.

Slack-first service: With this feature, you can create specific channels for different cases. You can also bring members from outside your company into your channels and threads. 

Expert finder: Service Cloud already has a robust omni-channel routing facility, which assigns work to agents based on technical skillsets, knowledge of specific cases, and availability. You can integrate this skills-based routing software with a new feature called Expert Finder, which can bring the right expert to your swarm channel. With the Expert Finder, Swarm channels are created automatically using an OOTB (out of the box) workflow.

Salesforce-Slack marketing tools and data:  Salesforce now brings new integrations with Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud and Sales Cloud. This means that you can bring Salesforce data and tools to Slack to create data-backed marketing strategies and to drive impactful campaigns. You can also run use Salesforce-Slack marketing tools to run analytics on your marketing and ad campaigns.

Swarm pods: Swarm pods are knowledge pools of experts in and outside the organization, who can help customers with their problems. You use Service Cloud to route the case to a swarm pod lead and the lead brings in experts from across the enterprise.

2. Subscription management for self-service

If you are a B2B company that typically works with subscription-based billing models across multiple self-service channels, then Salesforce has developed new capabilities that will benefit you. According to the Summer ’22 Release notes, Salesforce will now offer new Subscription Management capabilities for Revenue Cloud. This news also impacts SaaS companies who manage subscription models. Subscription management can help companies manage subscriptions through Sales Cloud automation. In fact, you can automate your entire subscription cycle of self-service channels.  

Subscription Management uses the ‘headless’ API functionality and boasts of a setup experience that is intuitive and seamless. You can integrate Subscription Management into any app. Most businesses today operate with multiple revenue channels and a minimum of two revenue models. It is important to have a subscription management solution that makes the best use of data and resources.

Salesforce’s Subscription Management facilitates omnichannel selling and also gives you a 360-degree view of your customers.

This new feature applies to Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited and Developer editions of Lightning Experience. With the new Subscription Management API, you can automate your invoicing, selling and payment collection processes. You can create product catalogs and track what customers buy. No matter which sales channel you use, the Subscription Management API strengthens your subscription lifecycle. 

3. Triggered Campaign Messages

If you are into retail or the business of e-Commerce, you can now use your Marketing Cloud Personalization with the outbound communication system of Journey Builder and Salesforce’s new Triggered Campaign Messages. Triggered Campaign Messages are great ways to communicate effectively with your customers after significant events like cart abandonment. Important events could mean anything from price and catalog changes and purchasing patterns to customer behavioral changes and items that are back in stock. These events will trigger tailored and personalized experiences and results for customers in real time. Salesforce’s new functionality is a great way to reengage with customers on their required channel, especially during important points in their customer journey.

For example, if your customer didn’t buy an item because of the price and if the price reduces, you can instantly communicate this to the customer and re-engage. Even with cart abandonment, you can keep a product price range as your benchmark, and depending on the number of times a customer revisits abandoned items, you can set the frequency of messages to the customer, with better discounts. With Triggered Campaign Messages, you can do many of the following:

Use real-time triggers to set up Marketing Cloud Journeys: You can manage the life cycle of your customer by adding real-time triggers to your Marketing Cloud Journey builder. This will help you listen to customers and also engage with them individually.

Deliver personalized messages and campaigns: Salesforce’s Summer ’22 release offers nine configurable triggers to start customer journeys in real-time, including triggers like product price reduction and browse abandonment. The information is also available in real-time, which means you can take quick action and also trigger mobile app messages, push notifications and in-store experiences based on customer behavior. You can also run A/B tests and use built-in reports and dashboards to understand campaign trajectories.

Create subscriber segments: With Trigger Campaign Messages, Salesforce also includes AI-based segmentation options for you to create specific subscriber segments. You can also trigger and deliver customised experiences to each segment and make the content actionable. 

Use data from email reports: The Summer ’22 release allows you to access all bounced email addresses in a single report and you can now use four new fields to list email reports. 

4. Marketing Cloud Intelligence Connectors

Salesforce has new features for eCommerce companies when using Marketing Intelligence Cloud Connectors to combine disparate orders and product data. This can bring marketing and eCommerce teams together and combine sales efforts. Companies can now also use pre-built data models to unlock actionable insight from data on products, revenue, and sales performance. You can use automation to mine data and see if there were any conversions during a product promotion or how your products perform in specific demographics. 

With Marketing Cloud Intelligence Connectors, you also have access to AI-powered dashboards and insights. 

5. Updates to Einstein

The Salesforce Summer ’22 release notes also have many updates to Einstein, the AI-powered technology developed for the Salesforce Customer Success platform.

Einstein Readiness Assessor: Use this update to estimate the value of Einstein Lead Scoring to your business. You can use your present lead acquisition data and conversion numbers to determine high-level ROI for using Einstein Lead Scoring. 

New Guided Setup for Einstein Prediction Builder: Salesforce has introduced a guided wizard in setting up Einstein Prediction Builder, and this feature is available to admins with Einstein Predictions, Einstein Builder Free and Platform Plus licenses. 

Deflect Cases with Einstein’s Article Recommendation for Flow: Starting in Summer ’22, you can add article recommendations to your flow for a given case in the service console. You can also add recommendations for new automation use cases outside the service console.

Einstein Case Classification for Flows: Salesforce has also piloted its automated case triage, which enables you to combine the use of Einstein Case Classification and Flow. You can classify new cases and revert them to the correct team. 

6. Other exciting new updates and features

There are so many new features available in the Salesforce ’22 Summer Release notes. Many of these updates add a lot of value to your licenses.

Salesforce CPQ now runs on different web browsers: You can now run Salesforce CPQ even on incompatible browsers, a feature developed with Web Components V1 technology. Salesforce CPQ will run smoother and faster across platforms. 

Language and currency specifications for international customers: With Commerce Cloud, you can select a country where products will be shipped, adjusting for tax amounts and other specifications. You can also translate or shift to different languages on tables like My Account Password, My Profile, and My Account Header.

Lightning App Builder updates: Another much-anticipated update is the ability to customize and filter related lists in Lightning App Builder, leading to the support of common use cases. You can also customize these lists with the Dynamic Related List Single feature.  

Intelligence Reports Advanced: You can now create your own dashboards to optimize email messaging with Salesforce Management Cloud’s Intelligence Reports Advanced. This is an analytical tool that helps you measure and analyze email marketing campaigns and optimize it for great results.

Field Service Scheduling and Optimization: Salesforce’s new field service scheduling and optimization engine makes it simple to book appointments, gather the right field agents to perform the job and optimize travel routes for service personnel.

Codeless Query Builder: You can connect your queries with up to 30 data extensions using a Codeless Query Builder. This helps you run queries to compare the engagement performance of different subscribers in your program and understand how you can improve your email messaging. 

New product names: The Salesforce Summer ’22 is full of new product name changes. MyTrailhead is now Sales Enablement, High-Velocity Sales is now Sales Engagement and Marketing Cloud has also renamed many of its modules.

Person Accounts: You can now enable Person Accounts by combining account and contact fields in one record. You can do this without contacting Salesforce Support or raising a ticket. 

Third party integrations with Light DOM: Light DOM now makes it possible for third-party tools to integrate with the DOM. This means that you can apply custom style to all components, and enable CSS and QuerySelectors to traverse the shadow root. 

Collaborative forecasting: With this feature, custom filters allow you to include more opportunity fields or even exclude them from your forecasts. You can filter based on currency, Picklist fields and standard numbers. You can also rename the forecast categories.

Salesforce for Slack: Salesforce for Slack is now available as Beta Slack, with a more seamless integration of Salesforce and Slack enabling sales teams to work faster and more efficiently. You can use Slack-First Customer 360, which is a common platform to connect customers, partners, and stakeholders with the apps and workflows needed to complete projects. You can also work on a Salesforce record from Slack and control notifications using many automation features.

Enable a custom address field: Admins can now create multiple fields to host information related to addresses. You can now create custom address fields that are identical to the fields seen on shipping addresses. Your Salesforce users can also add and retrieve address data using custom address compound fields on both standard and custom objects. Before this, admins were forced to create individual fields for every data points entered.

Access all CMS features: Experience Cloud customers can now reap the many benefits of Salesforce CMS at no extra costs. Salesforce CMS is a highly effective hybrid CMS that helps you create content collections and playlists, broadcast this content across channels, manage an extensive content publishing schedule, and even undo a content that has been published. The new release also enables you to create and manage content more easily with updated Salesforce CMS workspaces. 

Picklist: If you are a Salesforce admin, you will enjoy many new Summer ’22 enhancements to picklists. Many of them are still in testing, including the features that allow you to clean up inactive picklist values and manage picklist values in bulk. The feature to clean up inactive picklist values helps you to keep your picklists clean and to optimize them for better performance. With Salesforce’s new picklist features, you can manage picklists in bulk with buttons to delete, deactivate, replace or activate selected picklists. Both these features are in the beta stage. There is a reason why Salesforce was named the best CRM provider by the International Data Corporation (IDC). It has new features and updates that help admins, end users, developers, designers, architects and analysts alike. Use these features to meet your business goals and use your data to generate actionable insight and to build incredible customer experiences. 

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