Winter 21 Features for Admin Superpowers

Winter releases from Salesforce are always the ones I anticipate the most and with Covid-19 we all need something to look forward to more than ever. Winter releases are typically chock-full of cool new functionality and features and this one is no exception. It’s impossible to cover them all so here are a few of my favorite new Lightning features that will give you Admin Superpowers and will save every Salesforce Admin time and stress.

Dynamic Actions to Hide or Show Buttons

Now you can control the visibility of buttons on page layouts. This new functionality allows button-click admins to use both record and user filters to determine if a page should show or hide buttons on a page. How life-changing is that?!

Just think of the use cases; You can show the Approval button on Opportunity if the Amount is over a certain amount. Or show a Reopen button only on a closed Case. You can even display buttons based on a permission assigned to the user looking at the record. So if you want to allow only specific users to see a button you can now do it.

In the works as well is a beta mobile version you can try out on custom objects. This would allow you to make mobile only buttons and hide buttons that are better suited for desktops.

Before you either had to tell users to ignore the buttons that did not apply, resort to making new page layouts just to show different buttons, or really complicate things by creating visualforce pages.

This new features is GA for Custom objects and Beta for Standard Objects. Check out all the details on Dynamic Actions here.

In-App Guidance On Edit and New Screens

I have spoken at Dreamforce several times about custom In-App Guidance so I have been watching it mature and grow over the years. Like a proud mother I am so excited about what it is capable of now compared to when it first came out.

In-App Guidance let’s button-click admins (and delegated trainers) add on-screen tips and directions for end-users. As an admin you decide what pop-up tips you want to appear based on the page and the user. It’s like being able to time-travel and sit next to your users and guide them through new features.

With Winter 21 I love that you can now add prompts on the New, Edit and Clone pages. This will allow you to create pop-up tips for the users as they are editing records. This can dramatically help improve onboarding and reduce user errors and confusion.

Also new this release is the ability to share a link to a specific prompt to allow for easier testing and training. There are a few other enhancements to In-App Guidance as well in Winter 21. If you have not tried In-App Guidance yet now is the time. You owe it to your users.

Optimizer App and Page Performance Analyzer

I’ve been preaching the importance of running the Salesforce Optimizer report for years but truth-be-told I always struggled to remember to run it at the same time monthly. Now with Winter 21 you can actually schedule your Optimizer to run monthly.

What’s the Optimizer app you say? Well, it is an Admin’s secret weapon to stay within limits and maintain best practices. Just go to Setup and run the “Optimzer” then find your results in your App Selector and you will see an analysis of your org, areas for improvement and how-to resources. For example you can see unused reports and just click the link to check the report out to decide whether to keep it.  You’ll see all kinds of metrics and new ones are being added with each release–including 7 new ones in Winter 21.

You can learn more about the Optimizer app in Trailhead

Also new in Winter ’21 is the ability to analyze your Lightning page performance. To view the assessment of your page’s performance, click Analyze from the Lightning App Builder toolbar. You’ll be presented with suggestions to improve your page performance.

With the Optimizer and Analyzer it will be like having Admin X-Ray vision into your Org.

Get Ready for Winter 21

These are just a few of the new Lightning features you can find in Winter 21 that will give you Admin Superpowers. Be sure to check out these and all the other items in the Winter 21 release notes so that you are prepared when the release hits Sandbox about September 11 and Production instances on October 9th and 16th.