October 22, 2020

October 22, 2020 | Aaron Pacheco | Technical Solution Architect 

With the arrival of the Winter ’21 Release, Salesforce professionals are painstakingly reviewing an overwhelming barrage of new innovations to determine which features to implement.  

Do you struggle to keep up with these seasonal releases? If you answered “yes,” you’re not alone. 

I recently met with my fellow Salesforce developers and architects at Spinnaker Support to discuss the Winter ’21 Release. Overwhelmingly, we agreed that this release packs in a lot of new functionality for each Salesforce cloud.  

This looks like one of the largest updates in years. To help you sort through the Winter ’21 Release, we highlight what we believe are the two most exciting improvements. 

1. Lightning App Builder: Dynamic Forms 

Get ready for the death of page layouts. Yes, that’s right, say goodbye to traditional page layouts. Salesforce said as much during the Dynamic Forms release presentation.  

Dynamic Forms completely changes the way we think about displaying record field data. The new functionality allows us to create groups of fields that act like small, modular page layouts. Just as with any other Lightning component, you can add these groupings anywhere on a Lightning record page. 

Dynamic Forms lets us mix the groupings with other components to break up the typical “wall of fields” that plague so many CRM systems. We can now display fields and components exactly how users need to see the information. This should make system users quite happy – and drive adoption. 

This release also permits us to conditionally hide specific information located in Dynamic Forms. Administrators may permission different parts of the form for specific roles, so you no longer need to maintain multiple layouts for different users.  

The Salesforce product team summed it up perfectly in their presentation when they said, “You can still build page layouts, but why would you want to?” 

2. Salesforce Anywhere (Beta) 

Every release needs at least one “beta” offering, and this time that designation goes to Salesforce Anywhere. Created to “accelerate your business with real-time data, built-in collaboration, and timely alerts,” Salesforce Anywhere looks polished and contains so much functionality that “beta” understates the quality of this tool. 

With Salesforce Anywhere, users subscribe to records of interest and receive notifications every time any one of those records gets updated. The new chat widget on the record pages allows users to interact on that record in real-time and even launch ad-hoc video chat.  

Users see their colleagues’ cursors live on screen while they edit and add comments. At the same time, Einstein AI provides suggestions for next steps. 

These features and look great and potentially change the way teams use Salesforce – especially with remote workforces. Salesforce Anywhere could replace phone calls, emails, and instant messages apps with live collaboration. Since these interactions take place within the record, users will have quick access to historical data without researching other records or systems.  

How to Get the Most out of Your Salesforce Investment

The release schedule for Salesforce provides great opportunities for companies to develop new workflows with the latest functionality. We also know that maintaining an up-to-date CRM takes a lot of effort.  

Start your journey to a better Salesforce experience – talk to our experts today! 

Regardless of your Salesforce experience, Spinnaker Support’s team of certified Salesforce professionals (administrators, developers, and architects) have the skills and experience to help your organization manage Salesforce’s new releases and increase adoption in your Salesforce environment. 

Aaron Pacheco has spent nearly a decade designing and building custom business applications on the Salesforce platform for a broad range of industries including technology, hospitality, finance, higher education and non-profit. He has implemented technical solutions for many different areas of business such as sales, marketing, and service for companies and non-profits of all sizes.