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Dreamforce Session Recap: Winter ’24 Marketing Cloud Release Highlights

Dreamforce 2023 has come and gone, and wow, it did not disappoint. Not only was this my first Dreamforce, I had the honor of co-presenting the Marketing Cloud Release Highlights session with two amazing members of Salesforce product team: Ruth Bolster, product marketing manager, and Whitni Freeman, lead solution engineer.

In this session, we covered key Winter ’24 release highlights across each of the Marketing Cloud products:

Data Cloud
Intelligence
Engagement
Account Engagement
Personalization

Here’s a recap of the Marketing Cloud Winter ‘24 release features covered…

Highlight #1: Segment Intelligence (Data Cloud)

A new Data Cloud for Marketing feature, Segment Intelligence connects and harmonizes customer and marketing performance data — like revenue data, first party data, as well as paid media data — so you can understand how your segments are interacting with your marketing.

Using out of the box dashboards, you can see how segments are performing across channels, and gives you an executive understanding of how segments are performing across channels.

Plus, you can use Einstein to optimize existing segments, or create new ones based on performance data.

With all that data in one place this allows marketers to have a more holistic view of how segments are doing, without being bogged down by time consuming data management and reconciliation. And having those insights to optimize channel performance by segment – that level of visibility and adaptability means more impactful and relevant marketing campaigns, which leads to better marketing ROI.

And the built in dashboards and connections means that marketers can get started right away!

This feature will be available for select customers starting in October, and will be available to all customers later this winter.

Highlight #2: AI-Powered Segment Creation (Data Cloud)

Another Winter ‘24 feature for Data Cloud for Marketing is Segment Creation. Powered by Einstein, this allows marketers to build complex segments using a descriptive prompt.

So, for example, I can just tell Einstein “Big spenders in North America who made a purchase in the last 3 months and love hiking”, and it will generate the segment for me, showing what that segment looks like, and the attributes used.

This means that marketers can build their segments without having to be a data scientist to do it. Being able to pull data based on specific criteria has often required technical knowledge of the data model to know where to look, and SQL skills to query the data to know how to access it. This feature will allow marketers to be more self-sufficient to get the data they need when they need it.

This will be Generally Available in October for Data Cloud Customers.

Highlight #3: Intelligence GA4 Connector (Intelligence)

As of Winter ‘24, Marketing Cloud Intelligence will have a built-in GA4 connector and pre-defined data sets available to ingest GA4 data. Marketing data is the foundation of Marketing Cloud Intelligence. Its data models, dashboards and guidance are built for marketers. There are already more than 100 native connectors available, and now with GA4 data connector this is a natural addition to the platform to have relevant marketing data in one place.

How this will work: When setting up data streams, GA4 properties will appear under the ‘Website’ dropdown. These new properties will be supported in API connectors as well as Marketplace apps.

Marketplace apps will replace previous UA 360 websites and support the new GA4 web properties, dimensions, and other fields for data retrieval.

One thing to keep in mind: Due to the differences between GA4 and UA properties, the new connector will pull different, yet very similar, datasets into the platform when the GA4 property is selected, so your visualization may need to be tweaked when setting up the data stream for the first time. Marketplace will discontinue support of UA360 properties after the GA4 support begins.

Highlight #4: Trigger Action on GA4 Data (Engagement)

Marketing Cloud Engagement has some goodies in the Winter ‘24 Release as well. The first is Google Analytics 4 Integration, which lets marketers activate journeys based on Google Analytics 4 segments and events.

This new integration will include two key features in one:

Visual dashboards embedded within Engagement reporting so that marketers can see real time impact on revenue, AOV, and conversion metrics.
Audience activation, which allows marketers to create engagement and re-engagement campaigns based on customer interactions using that GA4 data.
- So for example, if you had a customer that viewed your product pages for backpacks and hiking boots, then abandon the session, you can use audience activation to trigger an abandoned browse journey. This also allows you to get cross-channel insights across mobile, web, and email.

There is a fully paid version which includes both Reporting and Audience Activation. There is also a free version that will feature the Reporting feature only.

Highlight #5: AI-Powered Email Content Creation (Engagement)

AI is coming to Marketing Cloud Engagement with Email Content Creation, including Typeface partnership!

Marketers can set up and specify personalities with brand voice and tone, and using natural language prompts can get draft ideas on subject, body copy and images. With the ability to give feedback on what works and what doesn’t this lets the model learn and improve over time.

Marketers can consider this a tool to help them get a first draft in place. They still have control over the content throughout. They’re given choices based on their prompts, which they can use, like or dislike.

That human element and judgment is a crucial part of the whole process.

Content Creation will be available in Marketing Cloud Engagement this October, and it is currently scheduled to be in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement next February

Highlight #6: Transfer Assets from Sandbox to Production (Account Engagement)

Speaking of Account Engagement… With the Summer ‘23 Release we saw the ability to move assets between business units, which is fantastic! But that still left a gap with sandboxes. Anyone that has used Salesforce sandboxes has been used to building and promoting configurations, and unfortunately that hasn’t been possible with Account Engagement sandboxes, which has been painful to work around. Any assets built in a sandbox had to be built again in production, which is of course time-consuming and also prone to error if something is missed.

In the Winter ’24 release, marketers can now copy assets from sandbox to production using Salesforce Flow. After installing the flow on your campaign, all you need to do is select your sandbox environment and your production environment, select your assets, and then copy it over. And this supports 8 asset types, including email templates, dynamic content, form handlers, custom redirects, custom fields, landing pages, and more.

This allows for a more useful Account Engagement sandbox, to perform all asset testing and avoid conflicts – and all that test data – when trying to build in production. Not to mention saving time because you won’t have to build assets multiple times. You can even use this to set up a QA process, giving a subset of users access to build in the Sandbox only and then have another subset of users review the assets and push them to production when approved.

This was first mentioned in Erin Duncan’s post on Winter ‘23 Highlights for Account Engagement.

Highlight #7: Real-Time Event Stream (Personalization)

With Winter ‘24 Release, Personalization will now include Real Time Customer Event Stream, a Lightning component that can be added to record pages, giving users a real-time view of the marketing assets that a lead or contact has interacted with.

This gives sales and service teams better insight into the types of content their customers have been engaging with. They can then have more relevant and informed conversations with them about their current needs and interests, and provide a better overall customer experience.

Learn more about the Marketing Cloud release highlights

If you want to learn more about the Marketing Cloud release features covered, here are a few resources:

Dreamforce ‘23 Marketing Keynote
Winter ‘23 Release Feature Demos
State of Marketing Report
Marketing Cloud Release Notes – Winter ‘24 Release Notes are expected to drop September 25th.

What do you think about these Marketing Cloud release highlights? Let us know in the comments.

Original article: Dreamforce Session Recap: Winter ’24 Marketing Cloud Release Highlights

The post Dreamforce Session Recap: Winter ’24 Marketing Cloud Release Highlights appeared first on The Spot.

By Heather Rinke|2023-09-18T21:08:09+00:00September 18th, 2023|Categories: Marketing Cloud, New Features, Pardot, Release Notes, Salesforce Marketing Cloud|

It’s that time – Salesforce Winter ‘24 release notes are out! Here are the key Salesforce platform features marketers and Salesforce admins should know about.

20 Platform Highlights from the Salesforce Winter ‘24 Release

Highlight#1: Migrate to Hyperforce with Hyperforce Assistant (Generally Available)

If you haven’t heard, Salesforce is undergoing a modernization of their infrastructure with Hyperforce, and undertaking steps to move customer orgs to Hyperforce. To help prepare for the migration, Salesforce has made their Hyperforce Assistant generally available, and updated with improved features to help orgs get ready for the move.

If you’re starting your journey to make the jump to Hyperforce we have more details here: Prepare Your Salesforce Org for the Migration to Hyperforce

Permissions & Record Access

Highlight#2: Report on Custom Permission Set and Permission Set Group Assignments

This is the first of many ideas that were delivered in this release. With this update you can create a report type that you can use to report on which users are assigned specific custom permission sets or permission set groups, or look at all of the assignments by user. This is just for custom permission sets and permission set groups, no word yet on when this would be available for standard permission sets and standard permission set groups.

Highlight #3 What’s Enabled in a Permission Set More Easily (Beta)

Admins who have spent so much time trying to uncover the permissions included in a permission set are going to love this. Another idea exchange request, it’s now easier than ever to see the enabled object, user, and field permissions on one page. You can even see the permission set groups a permission set is included in!

Highlight #4 User Access Policy Filters Improved (Beta)

Until now you could create User Access Policies referencing only one permission set, permission set group, or managed package license in your user access policy filters. With this update you can reference a total of three, giving you more flexibility to define your policy criteria.

What to know more about User Access Policies? Jason Ventura covered this in the post Salesforce Summer ’23: User Access Management Updates

Highlight #5 Report on Who Has Access to Accounts from Manual Shares and Account Teams

Admins and users will have a new way to understand better who has Read or Edit Access to an Account through Account Teams or Manual Sharing. By creating a report type it’s now possible to see which users and groups have access. Another idea was delivered!

Highlight #6 Report on Public Group Members

Another helpful report that’s going to save clicks! With this new custom report type, Admins will be able to more easily view which users, roles or groups are members of public groups.

Automation Updates

Highlight #7 Reactive Components now GA

With the general release of reactive flow screen components, admins will able to build more interactive single page applications, creating a more dynamic user experience.

Highlight #8 Create Custom Error Messages in Record-Triggered Flows

Another Idea Exchange idea delivered! Flownatics everywhere will be cheering for this. Now admins can customize the error that users see on record triggered flows. You can control one or more messages that will appear, what the messages will be, and when you want them to appear. You can even set them to appear as a window on the record page, or as an inline error on a specific field, similar to validation rules.

In the example below, you can see the Custom Error message element where I’ve configured 2 messages to appear if an opportunity has been created or updated and the stage is advanced and no Opportunity Contact Roles are found. One error will appear in a window on the record page, and the other will appear inline on the Stage field.

When active, the flow will display the configured error messages when the criteria has been met:

Highlight #9 Transform Your Data in Flows (Beta)

This is a new element for flow that lets users map data from a data source to a new target data destination. This can follow the HTTP Callout action that grabs data from an external location, and transforms the data before saving to a Salesforce object. Another use can be to transform field values while mapping from one object to another.

Highlight #10 Save a Flow Without Configuring Some Elements

How many times have you started to build a flow and have partially added elements, only to find you have to exit an element before fully completing the configuration. In the past you had to lose the partial configuration already completed, or add dummy data just to get the element to save, and remember to go back and update later. With this new feature, you now exit Start and Create Record elements before fully configuring them. According to Salesforce this is the “first steps to support saving a draft of a flow at any point in the building process”.

Highlight #11 Use Wait Elements in More Types of Flows

Marketers would be familiar with the ability to add a wait step in a customer journey (Marketing Cloud) or Engagement Studio Program (Account Engagement). The new Wait for Amount of Time and Wait Until Date elements are now available in schedule-triggered flows, autolaunched flows, and orchestrations. This adds more flexibility to being able to pause a flow interview for different use cases. The previous Pause element has also been renamed ‘Wait with Conditions’ for clarity.

Highlight #12 Flow Builder user interface moved to right panel

The element properties are now displayed in a panel on the right side of the screen instead of as a popup. So far this appears to be working for Start, Get, Create, Update, Transform (Beta), and Delete.

Highlight #13 Data Cloud Triggered Flows

For orgs with access to Data Cloud, you will be able to create new Data Cloud-triggered flows from the new Flow screen. After selecting Data Cloud-triggered flow, you will be prompted to configure your Start conditions specific to your Data Cloud object.

Highlight #14 Get Data Cloud Records More Easily in Flow Builder

Another Data Cloud related enhancement, admins can more easily choose between Salesforce objects and Data Cloud objects. Based on the choice more options are provided to specify the criteria.

Highlight #15 Use Filters to Find Record-Triggered Flows Quickly

Orgs with increasing numbers of flows will benefit from this handy additional filtering capability that lets you zero in on the flows you’re looking for. You can now filter on flows by Status, Package State or Process Type.

Highlight #16 Migrate to Flow Updates

In the meantime, admins still working on moving legacy automations like workflow rules and process builder to flow may appreciate that the Migrate to Flow tool has been updated to accommodate more use cases:

If you’re in the process of migrating your workflow rules and process builders to flow, have you checked out our guide and tools to help with that migration? Check out Automation Facelift: Migrate Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Salesforce Flow

Cool Admin Updates

Highlight #17 Visualize Lightning Reports with Summary Formulas as You Create Them

I don’t know about you but I still struggle with using PARENTGROUPVAL or PREVGROUPVAL. In Classic there was a great feature that helped build the summary with these functions, and showed how they would work in your report. Now this feature is available in Lightning!

Highlight #18 Select Who Has Access To a Sandbox

When creating or refreshing a sandbox for your team to build or test a new configuration any active user in production could access the sandbox. Now, admins can limit access to specific users by adding them to a group. This then freezes all other users in that sandbox, so they can’t access it (unless you unfreeze them). Only the users in the group will be unfrozen automatically. And the “.invalid” won’t be added to their email addresses either. Bonus! Now, apparently this may not be immediately available when orgs are upgraded to WInter ’24. According to the release notes, this will be available “in production orgs when they’re upgraded to the Winter ’24 release starting in mid-October 2023.”

Highlight #19 & 20 Lead & Contact Intelligence VIews

Last but not least…. As part of Winter ’24 release, orgs will now have access to a more actionable lead and contact lists that can help users segment their leads, and take action to build their pipe and grow customer relationships. In one page you can create segments and view key metrics, prioritize important records, view activity history of individual records and make calls or send emails without leaving the list.

Other Notable Updates

Which Salesforce Winter ‘24 features are you excited about? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: Salesforce Winter ’24 Release: Platform Highlights

The post Salesforce Winter ’24 Release: Platform Highlights appeared first on The Spot.

By Heather Rinke|2023-09-07T01:35:48+00:00September 7th, 2023|Categories: New Features, Release Notes|

For Account Engagement users, the most exciting feature coming with the Salesforce Winter ‘24 release is the ability to get more precise with wait steps in Engagement Studio Programs. Gone are the days waiting a full day to trigger an action, we can now set wait steps anywhere from 2-8 hours. This provides more flexibility with our programs and what we are able to do.

How do we get started with shorter wait steps in Engagement Studio?

In Engagement Studio, we’ve always had the ability to add wait steps. We were able to do this in day long increments after an event took place. We’ve used these for things like, sending follow up emails after a form fill, or sending an additional email days after an initial send.

Sometimes, a day seemed like too long of a wait, but that was all we had to work with.

Now, we can use these new hour increments. When adding an action to an Engagement Studio Program, click “wait”, then toggle to “hours” and set the desired amount of hours. That’s it!

When you should use hour wait steps…

Wondering how you can make the most of this feature? We’ve compiled a list of scenarios that we think would be best suited for a short, hours-long wait period.

Welcome Programs
- Prospects signed up for your mailing list or were imported? Add an hour wait step to send that first welcome email instead of waiting days.
Post Form Follow Up Emails from Sales Team Members
- If your follow up emails are sent immediately, prospects know it’s automated, and waiting days to follow up can lead you to miss out on an opportunity. With a wait step of just a couple hours, it gives your prospects time to finish looking at your website, gives your internal assignment processes time to complete, and feels more personal than an automated reply.
System Processing Time For List Evaluation
- When using automations that evaluate which lists a prospect is on, a two hour wait step will ensure your dynamic lists have time to run and prospects newly added to the list are included.
Custom Redirect/ Page Action Follow Ups
- Set up custom redirects or page actions on high priority pages and have them funnel leads into an Engagement Studio Program. From there, suggest the next step a prospect should take or the next piece of content the prospect might be interested in a few hours after they have left your website.

Time to get started with shorter wait times in Engagement Studio

This feature is one that hundreds of trailblazers have been asking for because it can be so useful in customizing programs. Once it becomes available, we recommend revisiting your existing engagement studio programs and seeing if this would be a better fit for some of the current day long wait steps you are currently using.

Being able to take action in hours, rather than days can really help personalize the experience you give to prospects.

Want to learn more about how to create the most effective Engagement Studio Programs? Consider taking our Workshop: Engagement Studio for Marketers.

Original article: The Wait is Over: Shorter Wait Steps in Engagement Studio Are Here

The post The Wait is Over: Shorter Wait Steps in Engagement Studio Are Here appeared first on The Spot.

By Michelle Cornely|2023-08-31T14:18:47+00:00August 31st, 2023|Categories: Automations, Engagement Studio, New Features, Release Notes|

Salesforce winter ‘24 release notes are out! Here are the most important features coming to Account Engagement that marketers should know about.

Winter ’24 Highlights for Marketers

Highlight #1 – Engagement Studio Program wait times less than 1 day!

Marketers have been keeping their fingers crossed for this feature for a long time, and it received over 8k points in the IdeaExchange.

With the Winter ‘24 release, you’ll be able to set Engagement Studio Program wait steps to 2-8 hours. This will be especially helpful if you’d like to give other processes time to run before moving onto next steps or before syncing the Prospect to Salesforce. This feature will be available to all Account Engagement Editions.

Highlight #2 – Sandbox to Production Flow

Details are sparse on this new feature, but it appears orgs will be provided with an example flow that can be copied and used to push Account Engagement Sandbox assets to Account Engagement Production. No details on which aspects of Sandbox will be able to be pushed to Production, but I have a feeling it will be somewhat similar to the Bulk Assets Copy Flow for multiple Business Units.

Highlight #3 – Review Email Templates with Invalid Senders

New Domain restrictions took effect in the Spring ‘23 release. As a result, you will now be prevented from sending an Account Engagement email with a sender from an unverified email domain. This is aimed to help protect your sender reputation.

This new feature will allow you to identify which email templates currently have an unverified sender so you can easily update them and keep using the email template. These notifications are already showing up in Optimizer, so may be able to proactively check for this issue rather than waiting until the release is out. To check, navigate to Account Engagement Settings > Optimizer and look for any Configuration Issues with “Sender email address with an unverified domain.”

Highlight #4 – Change Monitor Histogram

Account Engagement Optimizer is also getting a new feature that will allow you to review Prospect changes. Details on this new feature are a little sparse. Optimizer already has a way to view Prospect Changes (discussed in our Everything You Need to Know About the Account Engagement Optimizer blog post), so my guess is this view is going to have new and improved ways to filter and chart the data.

Highlight #5 – Restrict which domains can iframe Account Engagement Assets

With the Winter ‘24 release you can now restrict which domains Account Engagement assets, such as forms and landing pages, can be iframed on, or restrict iframing assets all together. This helps you ensure your assets can’t be used on websites you don’t own, such as competitors or partners, as well as ensure assets are only iframed on the domains belonging to that particular Business Unit.

Business Units created after the Winter ‘24 release will have iframing restricted by default.

A Few Other Salesforce Winter ‘24 Updates

Restore Paused Prospects
Free up system bandwidth by deleting unconverted visitor activity records
Copy Marketing Assets Using API Version 5 for Flow
- This feature is available now. Read all about it in our “How to Copy Assets Between Account Engagement Business Units” blog post.

Which Salesforce Winter ‘24 features are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: Salesforce Winter ‘24 Release: Account Engagement New Features

The post Salesforce Winter ‘24 Release: Account Engagement New Features appeared first on The Spot.

By Erin Duncan|2023-08-18T21:12:10+00:00August 18th, 2023|Categories: New Features, Release Notes|

Components are a hidden gem in the CRM Analytics (formerly Tableau) toolbox. You can re-use them in any dashboard and then centrally make changes that affect any dashboard where the Component is placed. But before the Salesforce Summer ‘23 release, they had to be identical on every dashboard!

If you wanted revenue by State on one dashboard and revenue by Country on another Dashboard, you needed two different components.

Not anymore! Here we provide a step-by-step guide (with pictures) to get you feeling confident and excited about using (and re-using) these amazing widgets. Thanks to the Salesforce Summer ‘23 release, you can now use parameters to make component widgets dynamic.

How to Make Component Widgets Dynamic in CRM Analytics

Ready to get started? Here are the steps to making your CRM Analytics component widgets display dynamically using parameters.

Step 1: Create a Component

There are a few ways to do this. I’ll outline the method that flows best with dashboard creation. But like many Salesforce tasks, there is more than one way.

From a dashboard, drag the component widget to your dashboard.
From the dialog box, select Create New Component.

Add a widget to your new component.
- In our example, we are using the Account Engagement (Pardot) Prospects and grouping by country.

Save your component

2. Add a Parameter to your component

Click on the Component Widget and choose the advanced editor from the widget menu.

2. On the Query Tab, find the value you want to parameterize. In our case it’s “Country.”

Click on the pages icon (next to ID to copy the parameter to your clipboard)
Click Create (or update if altering an existing parameter). Note: The value MUST be in the correct case (NOT Country)
Click on the Parameters tab to see what you just created.

Next, change the query to use the parameter. Go to the query tab and replace the group and name with your new filter. Where you see city, replace as shown below for the group and name

Group:

      "groups": [
          "[[parameter_1]]"
        ],
        "filters": [],
        "joins": [],
        "name": "pdProspect1"
      }
    ],

Name:

  {
        "name": "[[parameter_1]]",
        "ascending": true,
        "filters": []
      }

Save your query.
Save your component.

3. Using the Component on Your Dashboard with the Parameter

Now that you have your component with a parameter created, let’s add it to a dashboard and change the parameter. This is the fun part!

Return to the dashboard tab (should be an open tab in your browser), and click on the component widget to select the new component we just created.

Pro tip: To refresh component content or edit, look for the actions in the right side toolbox when the component is selected.

Preview the Dashboard

It looks like this: It’s displaying by Country

Change parameter

Now let’s change the parameter.

Edit the dashboard.
Click on the component, and click on Parameters (right hand side).
Click on the parameter you created.
Select Static for Value Type.

Replace country with state. Click update.

The component now displays State.

You can parameterize other aspects of the component (filters, etc.), so there are lots of possibilities here.

What else can I do when I make component widgets dynamic?

The example in this blog is quite simple. However, it gives you the elements to be successful in creating and using CRM Analytics components.

These CRM Analytics enhancements give us opportunities to make dashboards more useful and allow us to finally re-use components effectively.

Some great use cases:

Sales by Group or District
Product type filtering (for different dashboard)
Scenarios where you have different revenue fields (USD or CAD for example or expected vs actual)

The Salesforce Summer ‘23 release has given us so many gems. This CRM Analytics update is a big one along with the ones we’re seeing with Account Engagement including the ability to copy marketing assets between business units, and this update to Salesforce user access management.

Need help digging into this super helpful feature? Or wondering how this can fit into your overall marketing reporting strategy? Reach out to the team at Sercante to start a conversation.

Original article: CRM Analytics: Use Parameters to Make Component Widgets Dynamic

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By Dominique Beaudin|2023-07-17T20:55:56+00:00July 17th, 2023|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Pro Tips, Release Notes|

The Salesforce Summer ’23 release includes many changes to the platform, like the ones we’re seeing with Account Engagement that include the ability to copy marketing assets between business units. However, the thing we’re going to talk about in this blog post are two new features that (hopefully) help you simplify user access management for the Salesforce platform.

First, we’re going to quickly go over the new User Access Policies (Beta) feature and then we’ll talk about setting field-level security in permission sets.

Salesforce User Access Policies (Beta)

User access policies are a new feature that allows you to control user access based on criteria such as user roles profile, or other user fields. For example, we can give users different access to the same data, depending on their role in the organization or their department.

Users can be assigned to permission set licenses, permission sets, permission set groups, package licenses, queues, and groups using user access policies.

User Access Policies are broken down into two types, Manual User Access Policies and Active User Access Policies.

Manual User Policies

Manual User Access Policies are one-time processes to grant or revoke bulk access for designated users. What this means is that you can identify users by using filters and modify, add, or remove access that you define in the policy itself.

Example: You’re migrating permissions for a group of users from profiles to permission sets. You would create filters to identify the users assigned to the profile, then create actions in the user policy to assign permission sets and permission set groups.

Active User Policies

Active User Access Policies automatically grant or revoke user access. An active user access policy runs in the background and is triggered by an event like a created or updated user record.

Example: You can have an active policy set to assign a series of permission sets permission set licenses and groups to a user when they are created and have the Sales Manager role, or grant/revoke assignments to an existing user who’s been updated with this role.

Sounds like a flow if you ask me…

Ok, that’s cool Jason. So how do I get to it?

Go to Setup > Quick Find “User Management Settings” then enable User Access Policies (Beta).
Then, Quick Find “User Access Policies” to create or manage user access policies.

Considerations before enabling User Access Policies

A couple of things to be aware of before you go and enable this setting in your org:

Each org is limited to 20 access policies in total.
This feature is in Beta and is subject to change without notice. Be sure to watch future Salesforce releases to find out when this will be made Generally Available (GA).

Set Field-Level Security for a Field on Permission Sets Instead of Profiles (Generally Available)

In the past, field-level security could only be set on profiles which, even with the Enhanced Profile User interface, could be extremely tedious. However, in the Summer ’23 release, you can now set field-level security on permission sets when creating a new custom field.

What does this mean?

When creating a field you would normally have a step that would have you pick which profiles have access to view or edit..

Now, once the Set Field Level Security for a Field on Permission Sets feature is enabled, this step (Profiles step) is replaced with something that looks like this screenshot:

This was originally a beta feature in Spring ’23 but is now Generally Available in Summer ’23.

How do you enable it?

Go to Setup>Users>User Management Settings, then Enable Field Level Security for Permission Sets During Field Creation.

Considerations for the Set Field Level Security for a Field on Permission Sets feature

Things to keep in mind when enabling Field Level Security for Permission Sets During Field Creation:

Enabling this setting will remove the profile list from view when setting or changing field level security at the profile level.
When you set or change field-level security for a field on permission sets, you can view by permission sets with object permissions, or by all permission sets.

Streamlining Salesforce user management today and beyond

Cool stuff, but how is this going to affect me now and in the future?

These changes are all part of Salesforce’s master plan to streamline User Management to make it less tedious, less challenging, and less time-consuming so we can spend more time taking the dog for a walk or enjoying the awesome Pacific Northwest Summers.

Eventually, we will see Salesforce sunset Profiles and move solely to controlling record access via permission sets as outlined in this Salesforce Admins Article.

If you would like to know more about the future of User Management I encourage you to check out this awesome blog by Cheryl Feldman and the Awesome Admin team over at Salesforce. And reach out to Sercante when you’re ready to talk about how these changes fit in with your overall marketing and technology operations strategy.

Original article: Salesforce Summer ’23: User Access Management Updates

The post Salesforce Summer ’23: User Access Management Updates appeared first on The Spot.

By Jason Ventura|2023-07-14T15:07:36+00:00July 14th, 2023|Categories: New Features, Release Notes, Strategy|

It’s here! It’s finally here! It’s the Account Engagement Business Unit Bulk Asset Copy Flow.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (f.k.a. Pardot) Business Units have become my niche over the past few years. I love setting them up and standardizing them, but I don’t love copying over assets when configuring a new Business Unit(BU).

With the Summer ‘23 release, we can now use Salesforce Flow to copy custom fields, engagement studio programs, files, custom redirects, and email templates between Account Engagement Business Units!

Access the Account Engagement Business Unit Bulk Asset Copy Flow

During the Summer ‘23 release, your org should have received a new flow called “Account Engagement Bulk Asset Copy Flow.”

To find this Flow:

In Salesforce, navigate to Setup > Flow
Select the Account Engagement Bulk Asset Copy Flow
From the Flow Builder, select Run

Note: The documentation currently states that you have to add this flow to the Campaign page before you begin. However, I did not find any way to select this flow from the Lightning Page Flow Component, I could only run it in the Flow Builder.

Set up the Flow

The flow itself is pretty straightforward. It will walk you through selecting your assets and setting the new asset details.

Select your Source and Destination Business Units, select Next

Select the assets to copy, select Next

Note: Keep in mind, all assets selected here will be copied to the same Folder, will be assigned the same Campaign, and use the same tracker domain. You may want to run the Flow multiple times if your new assets need to have different settings.

Confirm the Assets, select Next
Select your Folder, Campaign, and Tracker Domain for your new assets

Select Copy Assets

Bulk Asset Copy Confirmation Screen

If your action was successful, you will see the list of assets created on the Confirmation screen.

You don’t get an error message if your action was unsuccessful, but your confirmation screen won’t have any/all assets listed.

Considerations for Using Business Unit the Bulk Asset Copy Flow

Since this is a brand new capability for Account Engagement, there are some details and settings that do not come over when copied. I thoroughly tested each asset type and below are the considerations that I found.

Custom Fields

When you copy custom fields from one Business Unit to another, only the following information comes over

Field Name
Field API Name
Field Type

The field’s mapping to Salesforce, Salesforce sync behavior, predetermined values (for dropdowns, radio buttons, etc.), and optional settings will not be configured.

Email Templates

When copied, the email sender will be replaced by a General User with the email [email protected]. This applies even if you have a sender hierarchy specified using “Assigned User” and ‘Account Owner.”

Email Templates containing Dynamic Content will not copy over. This is because dynamic content is unique to the Business Unit. Even if you have the same Dynamic Content in each Business Unit, they will have a different asset ID and merge tag.
Watch for email template nuances between BUs. If you copy an email template from Business Unit A to Business Unit B, make changes to Business Unit A’s template, then copy the template from Business Unit A to Business Unit B again, the flow will not update the existing template in Business Unit B. Instead it will create a brand new email template with the updated changes.

Files

During my testing, I was only able to get image files to copy over view the flow. I tested .pdf, .ics, and .css files with and without Completion actions and was unable to get anything but images to successfully copy.

Engagement Studio Programs

When you copy an Engagement Studio Program (ESP) to a new Business Unit, only the ESP structure is copied. The Recipient List, Suppression lists, Send days/times, and “Allow prospects to enter more than once” settings do not come over and will need to be reconfigured in the new Business Unit.
The assets specified in a Trigger or Action node, such as email templates, landing pages, and forms, will need to be reselected in the new ESP. However, the number of wait days specified in the node will copy over.

If an Action node looks at a Prospect field (i.e. Prospect default field “Job Title” is not blank) and that field is in both business units, then the node will be copied to the new ESP with the field and value/settings specified. If the field does not exist in both business units, then the Action node will still be in the ESP but the field and value/settings will need to be reconfigured.

Custom Redirects

When a Custom Redirect is copied from one Business Unit to another, the redirect’s Completion Actions will not copy over, however, the Google Analytics Parameter values do.

Now it’s even easier to work with Account Engagement Business Units

This new Flow is a huge step toward making Business Units easier to set up and manage. My hope is that the capabilities of this Flow will continue to grow until we can make a near identical copy of an entire Business Unit.

What other capabilities would you like to see in this Flow? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: How to Copy Assets Between Account Engagement Business Units

The post How to Copy Assets Between Account Engagement Business Units appeared first on The Spot.

By Erin Duncan|2023-07-12T12:09:50+00:00July 12th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Forms, Marketing Automations, Pardot, Pro Tips, Release Notes, revive|

Account Engagement (Pardot) Optimizer BETA was released with the Spring ‘23 new features, but it has become “Generally Available” as of the Summer ‘23 release. This new feature promises to help you identify and correct issues that may be negatively affecting your Business Unit’s processing power. In this blog, we’ll dive into everything you need to know to access and use the new Account Engagement Optimizer feature.

Accessing the Account Engagement Optimizer

To access the Optimizer, go to your Account Engagement Settings tab, “Optimizer” will appear as an option on the left-hand menu.

If you are using Default User Roles, only Administrators will have access to the Optimizer. If you are using Custom User Roles, make sure your custom role has the following permissions selected (edit Custom User Roles by going to Account Engagement Settings > User Management > Roles > then selecting the role you’d like to edit).

Admin > View Optimizer
Admin > View and Edit Pending Table Actions
Marketing > View and Delete Automation Rules
Marketing > View and Delete Lists

If you opted into the Beta before the Summer ‘23 release, there is nothing you need to do to continue using the Optimizer. If you did not opt into the Beta, the Optimizer should have auto-enabled when your org was upgraded to Summer ‘23.

Analyzing Your Optimizer Report Results

The Optimizer, with the help of Brandy, will provide one of three statuses for your business unit:

Looking Good: No critical issues to address
Pay Attention: There are a few recommended actions to improve your business unit
Action Needed: There are critical issues and you should resolve them right away.

Prospect Change Monitor By Feature Chart

Next to Brandy and your Optimizer Status, you’ll see your Prospect Change Monitor By Feature chart.

This feature shows you which type of automations have made a change to Prospects in the last 24 hours. You can double click on each slice of the pie to drill into exactly which assets are making changes.

Account Engagement Optimizer - prospect change monitor

Changing Filter Views

In this view, you can also change your filters to show different date ranges and different views. I like to change my view to “All Processes” and Date Range to “Last 30 Days” to better keep an eye on which automations are running at least every month.

This view can be especially helpful in finding automations that may not have been set up in the most efficient way possible, such as an automation rule that is set to repeat every single day.

Configuration Issues

Next in the Optimizer report is your Configuration Issues. This table will show setup problems that are stopping you from full access to Account Engagement’s features. This can be issues like your sending domain not being verified or prospects being paused for bot-like behavior.

I tried to see if turning off Connected Campaigns would also trigger an issue here, but no dice. Hopefully, Salesforce will provide a list of all configuration issues that are checked in a future release, but in the meantime you can use our implementation checklist to ensure your Business Unit is configured correctly.

Performance Improvement Measures

Next is Performance Improvement Measures, this table shows you recommendations that will improve your Business Unit’s processing power. This table defaults to “Actionable Measures,” but you can change this view to “All” to see what else is being monitored.

This table is broken down into five columns:

Measure: What exactly Optimizer is reviewing.
Status: Whether the measure is in Good, Concerning, or Critical standing or if there are actions that can be taken. “Good” statuses will not show when this table is filtered to only show “Actionable Measures.”
Feature Area: Which Account Engagement Features are involved in this measure.
Recommendation: What next steps, if any, should you take. Most insights will also include links to documentation, which I personally love.
History: If there is enough data for this measure, you can select the chart icon to see the measures for the last 8 days. These charts also shed light on what the Optimizer considers good, concerning, or critical.

Maintenance Resources

Finally, you have Maintenance Resources. This section links to a few views and reports that can help your Business Unit run in tip-top shape. This includes 2 views we’re already used to: Inactive Automation Rules and Inactive Dynamic Lists, but also 2 new super useful views:

Table Action Manager: This view allows you to pause, prioritize, and cancel actions currently running in the Business Unit. For example, say you recently kicked off an Automation Rule that will update 3,000 prospects, but you are also running a Dynamic List that is needed for an email send going out in 5 minutes. Now you can prioritize that Dynamic List over the Automation Rule rather than panicking if your Dynamic List is going to complete in time.
Unused Dynamic Lists: This view shows you which Dynamic Lists have a blank Usage table. Now you no longer have to click into each Dynamic List to check if any assets are listed on the “Usage” tab, YAY!

Account Engagement Optimizer is Available Now

Now that Optimizer is available for all orgs, I would highly recommend you check the report at least monthly to keep an eye out for any potential issues. If you have any questions or neat tips about the Optimizer, let us know in the comments! Also, if you’re looking for other ways to improve your Business Unit’s processing power, check out our blog post, “4 Things to Clean in MCAE (Pardot) for Faster Processing Times.”

Original article: Everything You Need to Know About the Account Engagement Optimizer

The post Everything You Need to Know About the Account Engagement Optimizer appeared first on The Spot.

By Erin Duncan|2023-06-19T19:23:15+00:00June 19th, 2023|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Pardot, Pro Tips, Release Notes, revive|

The Salesforce Summer ’23 Release Notes are out and we’ve been combing through them to see how these changes will affect our clients and readers. This post includes what you’ll need to know as a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) admin or user.

Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release Feature #1

Data Cloud and Account Engagement

Probably the new release feature I am most excited about, an Account Engagement Connector for Data Cloud! This connector will allow you to pull in Data Cloud segments via Account Engagement Dynamic Lists, allowing you to not only market directly to your Data Cloud customers, but also reap the benefits of Data Cloud’s unified view of customer data to help support your ABM initiatives.

Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release Feature #2

Copy Assets Across Business Units

If you have multiple Account Engagement Business Units (BUs), then you probably know the pain of keeping universal assets exactly the same across all of your BUs. The Summer ‘23 release is hoping to make that pain point a thing of the past by enabling Salesforce Flow to replicate assets across BUs. This new feature will allow for replication of custom fields, email templates, engagement studio programs, files, and custom redirects! Keep an eye out for a follow up post on this, I can’t wait to try it and share some tips and tricks with all of you.

Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release Feature #3

Opt Out can again be set to “Most Recently Updated”

Back in the Winter ‘23 release, Salesforce announced they were doing away with the “Most Recently Updated” sync behavior option for Account Engagement’s “Opt Out” field. However, after hearing from the community, this change is being rolled back. So, if you didn’t prepare for this change, your procrastination has paid off! Just keep in mind new business units created after October 18th, 2023 will have the Opt Out sync behavior set to “Use Account Engagement” by default.

Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release Feature #4

External Actions are coming to Completion Actions

External Actions, which allow Account Engagement to send data to 3rd Party Applications, will now be available in Completion Actions. Now you can easily register a prospect for an event in a 3rd Party system upon form fill, or even send them a text as a completion action.

Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release Feature #5

Account Engagement Optimizer is Generally Available

Account Engagement Optimizer is moving from Beta to Generally Available! Optimizer provides easy ways to clean up your Account Engagement org but pinpointing potential issues. With the move to Generally Available, Optimizer has a couple of additional metrics, including:

Configuration Issues: diagnose problems that are blocking access to features
Performance Improvement Measures: display good measures so you can see what is working well in the Business Unit
Prospect Change Monitor: understand which features result in the most prospect changes for your Business Unit

A Few Other Summer ‘23 Updates

Which Salesforce Summer ‘23 new release feature are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release: Account Engagement New Features

The post Salesforce Summer ‘23 Release: Account Engagement New Features appeared first on The Spot.

By Erin Duncan|2023-06-09T12:22:03+00:00June 9th, 2023|Categories: New Features, Pardot, Release Notes|

Salesforce is introducing something pretty exciting for orgs that have little wiggle room while assigning licenses to Salesforce users. A new type of license called “Salesforce Integration User” is available now, and it’ll help you to save your user licenses for actual humans.

The Salesforce Integration User was introduced to facilitate best practices of using a separate license for any integrations that require an integration license to integrate with Salesforce. That includes integrations like Docusign and MuleSoft.

This license is specifically designed for System-to-System Integration types and provides the user with API Access Only.

How many Salesforce Integration User Licenses Do We Get?

All orgs will have 5 free Salesforce Integration User Licenses available to them, and additional licenses are available to purchase for about $10 each (customers should speak to their AEs regarding the purchase of additional licenses).

Salesforce Integration User License Setup

You can verify the number of integration user licenses available to you under Company Information > Setup.

In addition to the new licenses, a new standard profile called ‘Salesforce API Only System Integrations‘.

NOTE: When creating a new user with the Salesforce Integration User License, this will be the only profile available.

Creating a Custom Profile for the API Only System Integration User (System Permissions)

Since the new ‘Salesforce API Only System Integrations’ profile is a standard profile and therefore can’t be updated, it is recommended that you create a new profile by cloning the Salesforce API Only System Integrations (not System Administrator) for integration users in order to customize the permissions:

Go to Setup > Profiles
Locate the ‘Salesforce API Only System Integrations’ profile and click Clone.
In the Permission set, go to System Permissions
Enable the following permissions:
- Password never expires – doing this prevents the password from expiring while someone is out of the office with no one available to update it across integrations
- API Enabled
- Api Only User
- Chatter Internal User (optional)
(Still under System Permissions) Make sure ‘Multi-Factor Authentication Login Requirements for API Access’ is not enabled

Create a Custom Permission Set for the Integration (Object Access)

Go to Setup > (Quickfind) Permission Sets
Create a new permission set
Name your permission set to reflect the permission for this integration. For example “Integration – ZoomInfo”
Leave the License Type empty “–None–”
Add the following to the Object Settings for each object the integration needs access to:
1. Object CRUD access (Create/Read/Update/Delete/View All/Modify All)
  - This example is for adding access to just the Account object to the Integration User.
2. Field-level access (Read/Edit) for each field on the object
3. Remember the principle of least privilege – we want to grant access only for the actions that the integration needs.
  - In particular, keep in mind custom record types that are deployed by integrations’ own packages

Creating an Integration User

To use one of these licenses, it is recommended to:

Create a new user for each specific integration (if there is not a dedicated license already)
Assign the Salesforce Integration license (or you can change the license or if you already have a dedicated user for the integration)
Give the user the Salesforce Integration API permission set license.
Add the custom permission set you created above.

Validate

Once your user is set up:

Add the new integration user credentials in the integration platform (the steps may vary based on the integration)
Test the integration to confirm the integration is working the way it should.
- For example, are records being updated as expected?

Considerations

The Salesforce Integration user license is API Access Only, meaning that it is not suitable for non System to System integration uses. Users with this license will not have access to the direct user login or access the org through the UI.
With the new licenses, it is still recommended to use one integration user per integration to ensure traceability of the transactions that the integration has within Salesforce.
If you are moving an existing user to the integration user license, the new ‘Salesforce API Only System Integrations’ profile, may not have all the object permissions needed. Any specific permissions needed may need to be assigned using permission sets.
Pardot API users are usually better met with the Identity User License, but if there are reasons to use this license (Oath2 Client Credentials) the Integration Connector User permission set is what will need to be applied to grant Pardot record access. Users using this license may not appear in User Sync until after you manually create and connect a Pardot user.
A custom permission set granting object and field access is preferred over doing this in the profile as permissions in profiles is scheduled to be sunset Spring of ’26.

Additional Resources

Original article: How the Salesforce Integration User Saves Licenses for Real Humans

The post How the Salesforce Integration User Saves Licenses for Real Humans appeared first on The Spot.

By Nathalie Coles|2023-05-17T16:28:43+00:00May 17th, 2023|Categories: API & Integration, New Features, Release Notes, revive|

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