4 MOAR Features for Higher Education in the Winter ‘20 Release

Winter is nearly here, and so is the Winter ’20 release. There are so many great features in this release that we couldn’t fit it into just one blog. As you gear up for a new semester, check out even more new features and functionality from Salesforce! From streamlining your work processes with Topics and the Recycling Bin, to gathering new data with Surveys, and improving your mobile experience, these new features will give you plenty to be excited about. Here are our four additional top feature picks for higher education institutions.

1. Organize Your Success Stories with Topics

Community Cloud users already know how great topics are—they help you organize content and make information easily searchable. With the Winter ‘20 release, Topics are no longer limited to Communities–you can now use them to group your records and filter your list views by a specific theme. For example, let’s say you’d like to celebrate some accomplished alumni by highlighting their achievements in your quarterly alumni newsletter. Now you can use a topic, like #AlumniSpotlight to note which alumni contacts should be included. You can add the Topic component to your Lightning pages to see all relevant records or simply use them to filter any list views where they may apply.

Organize your records for easy searching with Topics

2. Gather Feedback and Take Action with Surveys

Gathering feedback is important, but feedback loops can be difficult to build out and incorporate into your org. Salesforce Surveys make feedback a native functionality, which means they can be easily built into your existing automations and used for actionable reporting. For example, tracking the effectiveness of academic advising can be as simple as creating a Process Builder automation that sends out a survey to students after an academic advising case has been closed. Once you have a sufficient number of responses, you can include survey results in a report that measures student satisfaction and advising efficiency. All that without having to figure out a third-party integration!

Automate a Survey send with Process Builder

3. Personalize and Engage with More Dynamic Emails

We use email so frequently that it’s hard not to take it for granted. But at Salesforce, we’re constantly redefining what a great email experience looks like. Beginning with the Winter ’20 release, you can now add related files as attachments with just a single click, copy and paste images right into the body of your emails, and even set a default font aligned to your browser font. More than that, you can design your email templates with full access to HTML and quickly lookup and add related contacts as recipients.

Select and add contacts as recipients

4. Recycle Bin in Salesforce Lightning

The Recycle Bin is a small but mighty addition to Lightning Experience. Now you no longer have to switch back to Classic to access it! Instead, you can include the Recycle Bin component on any of your Lightning Pages. Manage your deleted records, create list views right within the Recycling Bin, or use the quick undo functionality to bring back any record that should not have been deleted.

Streamline your org with improved email and recycling bin functionality, organize your records with Topics, and make everything even more accessible with the new Salesforce Mobile App. Check out the full list of new releases and watch the release webinar for education customers.

WATCH

About the Author
Natalie Vaynberg is a success content specialist, focused on building resources for nonprofit and education customers, including webinars, workbooks, and blogs. She has been with Salesforce.org for three years and prior to that worked in the higher education space. Having been a Salesforce user, Natalie is passionate about helping nonprofits and higher education institutions succeed.