That Cloud Lyfe

It’s spring and Einstein has come out to play on a bike carrying a basket of flowers. While it may not be spring quite yet (it hit 38 degrees here in Los Angeles this week!), we get to dive into a fuzzy, warm review of what the next release has in store for Salesforce Communities.

[[  I’m going to try a more “Cliff Notes” format this time, admittedly because I’ve been busy, but also to help you get the information you need quicker. This is inspired by my friends on the Salesforce Exchange Discord server. Let me know what you think!  ]]

• Give Chatter users the ability to translate posts by offering Google Translate.
• Chatter users can post links to posts and comments
• Enhance gamification by offering community users Missions to encourage interaction
• Managers can move posts from one public group to another
• The Ask button can be configured to block users from choosing a new topic in the Posting To: field
• Enhancements to CMS Content (previously known as Native Content) such as control of object access, dynamic collection curation with formulas, and new layout options
• Files related list now appears on community Knowledge Article pages
• CDN through Akamai enabled in all communities allowing faster page load times
• Provide search engines with the latest content from your community, increasing snapshots sent to every 24 hours instead of every week.
• Dynamic SEO now available for Articles, Question and Topic detail pages.
• Under Builder Settings, see a quick view of what pages are being indexed by search engines
• Custom report type available to review topics and the related posts & questions.

• Lightning Web Components! Check out the Trailhead project, too.
• Integrate external apps built on different frameworks within a Lightning Community using lightning:container
• Suggest next actions or ideas to users based on conditions set in the Strategy Builder
• Get feedback on helpfulness of an article with the Deflection Tracking component
• Enhanced case deflection through the Ask and Contact Support & Ask buttons that prompt user with relevant discussions, articles and questions
• New Contact Request button allow community users to request a call back
• Buttons get a facelift and Featured Topics can now be stylized
• Record lists can be configured to allow inline editing, show action buttons or show the list search.

• Enhanced audience editor allowing for custom logic and unlimited rows, and can leverage permission sets assigned to users as criteria for an audience and added more field data types.
• Audiences can now be surfaced as a dimension in Google Analytics

• Create sharing relationships between partner accounts for Partner & CC+ users certain standard and custom objects
• Enhancements to MDF functionality through allowing partners to manage their own budgets through budget hierarchies that roll up to an account manager.
• Internal users can manage community members under Account Management to add members, activate or reset passwords.

• Campaigns, Opportunities and Orders now available for use in sharing sets, as well as Contacts associated to multiple Accounts
• Review your external org-wide defaults under the Critical Update Console that will show a high-priority list of objects that need assessment
• Enable a strict content security policy which account for integrations through CMS Connect, so that you can whitelist URLs and review CSP errors
• Disable standard sharing of Cases to the assigned Contact for use cases where Cases should be private between locations/accounts, and then open it back up using manual sharing or apex-managed sharing.
• Preview what your community looks like as an authenticated or unauthenticated user right from the Builder
• Asynchronous email verification allowing users to enter the community without having to verify their email address right away (and the email is customizable, too!)
• New sign ups will receive a verification code via email or phone, and the page they go to to enter the code can be branded via Visualforce and Apex
• Community User visibility now controls whether a member can see other members in their own community or if they are allowed to see members of other communities.

• See views and downloads of files on the detail page of a file in the community through the File Engagement card
• Guest users can now upload files by enabling the permission in Files Settings

As always, test your communities in sandboxes before the update is applied to production to ensure nothing breaks. Speaking of which, have you been doing custom CSS overrides? Here’s a complete list of selectors you may need to check before updating your template.

Let me hear your thoughts!