Compact Layouts, De-Mystified

We've been studying for our Platform App Builder Transition Exam, and one of the topics listed in the study guide (and in SalesforceBen's helpful post) is Compact Layouts.

In short, according to the Salesforce Help site, "Compact Layouts are used in SF1 and Lightning to display a record's key fields at a glance."

We were already familiar with these to some degree, as we actively use them in our own Salesforce org:

opp name, stage, close date, amount

...but in studying further and trying to learn all the details, we got a little confused! Now that we're un-confused, we are here to share our newfound knowledge.

We read the documentation (about 47 times) and noticed something strange, so we asked The Internet:

Compact layouts question -- the 1st 4 show up in SF1, the 1st 5 in Lightning Exp. But why can we add 10? What happens to the rest? #askforce

— Allison Klein (@nyalli) February 22, 2016

All the documentation talks about adding 10 fields to the Compact Layout, but all the explanations of how they get used seemed to only talk about fields 1 through 5.

Turns out we kept missing a key line in all of those help materials, which The Internet helpfully pointed out for us:

@pchittum @nyalli They drive what appears in the feed item when a record is created via publisher action: https://t.co/XKp4Vs0hZB #AskForce

— Rob Alexander (@RobAlexander) February 22, 2016

Right there in the "overview" lesson (and in the release notes), it says "In the full Salesforce site, compact layouts determine which fields appear in the Chatter feed item that appears after a user creates a record with a publisher action."  

We're still not sure how we missed that sentence every time we came back to this page! We think it's because the "definition" of these layouts is always described as being about mobile and Lightning, so we weren't expecting the fact that they get used in SF Classic as well; also, we started learning about these from the SF1 Mobile lesson in Trailhead, which doesn't talk about their application in SF classic for obvious reasons.

We tested this and sure enough, it's true:

4 fields...

...more than 4 fields! (though you still need to click "more" to see all of these)

So! There's the answer to why compact layouts support up to 10 fields!

If you're not using them yet, you totally should! It's the closest thing we have right now to this popular Idea in that it allows you to bring certain fields to the top of a record in SF1 that might not need to be at the top in SF Classic. For example, our Opportunity page layout are huge, and organized into sections that make sense and are helpful when you're using a browser on the desktop, but there are important fields scattered all over the page that we can pull together into a compact layout so they're still visible at a glance on our phones.

Spring '16 For the Rest of Us

Even though we're just getting into the thick of things winter-weather-wise here in New York, Salesforce rolled out its Spring '16 release this month. 

While there were a ton of new exciting developments made to Lightning Experience in this release, if you're like us -- not quite ready to roll it out -- you may be wondering, "what's in this release for me?" 

Here are some neat things sure to make admins everywhere pretty happy! 

Chatter Things

Broadcast Chatter Groups

Salesforce has introduced a new type of Chatter group called "Broadcast Only," which means that only the group owner or group managers can post messages to it.

This is great way to create a place for staff-wide announcements, while preventing others from posting to the group with off-topic messages. The rest of your staff will still be able to comment on the posts in a Broadcast group.

(Groups that are not meant for the whole staff--private or unlisted groups, which are "invite only"-- can also get the Broadcast Only treatment.)

"dear staff, there are valentine's day cookies in the kitchen!"

More relevant @mention suggestions

You might have already noticed this change, before you realized it was an official improvement -- we definitely did. This makes it much easier to address your posts to the right person. When you start typing @ + someone's name, instead of seeing an alphabetical list of users (including external Chatter users or Community users that you're probably not talking to most of the time), the list starts with the people you interact with the most!

Process Builder Improvements (for Intermediate/Advanced Users)

We loooooove Process Builder. Now there's a little bit more to love!

Reuse names and descriptions when creating a new version of a Process

Previously, when you cloned an existing Process to create a new version of it, you had to retype the name and description of it. Now it's smartly copied over for you and the copy is automatically assigned a version number when you save it.

"Emailing_The_Volunteer_Actual_Final_Version_Not_Broken_I_Hope"

View the names of your fields by hovering over them

It used to be virtually impossible to see the field names that were already selected in a Process Builder step. Now you can hover over the field selection box to see the whole name.

sometimes field names are much longer than this one

Reorder criteria steps by dragging and dropping

You'll also be able to easily move the parts of your Process around on the screen to change the order of the actions, instead of having to start over if you realize that your Process needs to start off differently.

magic!

Manage Everyone’s Reports and Dashboards

It used to be hard/impossible to have true administrative rights over Reports and Dashboards, because anything saved in a user's private or personal folder remained inaccessible, even if that user was deactivated. We mentioned a previous improvement that happened in Summer '15, which gave you the option of logging in as any user (and thus gaining access to their private folders) -- but now you can do even more. Using Workbench, you can write a query that will return those hidden reports and dashboards, and allow you to delete them. (Read more here in the Spring '16 release notes.)

Salesforce1 Enhanced Charts

A flash of lightning comes to Salesforce1! Even if you'e not ready to go all in with the Lightning Experience, you can benefit from some of its shiny and new chart functionality on your phone:

good job, fundraisers!

Three Reasons You Need the Salesforce1 App on Your Phone

With the Salesforce1 app, you can have access to all of your Salesforce/PatronManager data no matter where you go. For a while, we sort of forgot to emphatically recommend it to our clients, because there are a few PatronManager-specific tasks that you can't really use it for right now -- we haven't yet built a way to sell tickets or process credit card donations from within that app, so we didn't really go out of our way to promote all its other amazing features. But we should! Because it's great! So here's our excited recommendation.

Here are 3 things you can do from SF1 on your phone.

1. Look up people or companies that you encounter out in the world.

Say you're at another organization's gala, and you're introduced to a few donors that are being honored that evening. You can instantly and discreetly search your own PatronManager account for those names, to see if you also have some kind of relationship with these people and know when your last interaction was. (We do a similar thing all the time at conferences, looking up potential clients and prospects that we meet casually during lunch or in a session!) It's so helpful to be able to quickly check on the context and history of your organization's relationship with someone.

of course Peggy Olson is a VIP

2. Ask your colleagues for help, or delegate responsibilities.    

Say you run into a patron at a volunteer event and she asks for your help -- she has tickets to Thursday night's show and she can't make it and would like to switch to next Friday's. You're going to accommodate her request and waive the exchange fee. You COULD log in to PatronManager/Salesforce in your phone's browser and zoom in to painstakingly process the exchange yourself -- OR, you can simply navigate to the Ticket Order record within SF1 and Chatter at your colleague, the box office rep who's working today, and ask her to process the exchange right away instead. (Or in a similar vein, say you're expecting a package to be picked up from the office, but you're not going to be in that day! When you receive a notification of the scheduled pickup time, just Chatter at your colleagues to let them know to expect the visitor.)

teamwork, dream work, etc.

3. Get notifications about important business goals.

Say you're the development director and you're running a big annual fund campaign over the summer, with a bunch of benchmark goals through the campaign. Create a report that shows cumulative giving so far, and then "subscribe" to the report and have it send you notifications as you meet each goal. (Or if you're a sales manager with reps working toward a quarterly quota, subscribe to a report of the whole team's Closed Won opportunities so you can properly celebrate when the goal is met.)

this is some pretty powerful stuff!

We all wish that we didn’t have to constantly be “at work” when we’re on the go, but let’s face it -- we all are. The Salesforce1 app lets you be more productive and produce a much higher quality of patron interaction than you would otherwise be able to do. Here's a post from PatronTech CEO Gene Carr about working on the go.

And now that you're convinced, here's a post from our friend Christian Carter with some more specifics about how to get started (and a video of him talking about this at #DF15!).