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.

7 Things I Learned in Trailhead (so far!)

(this is a post from Michelle about stuff she's been doing mostly without Alli!)

If you're reading this blog you've probably heard of Trailhead, the new interactive learning platform from Salesforce. I've been working my way through the various trails and modules over the past 10 months (39 badges earned as of this writing!), and as I go, I've kept track of some of the specific "aha" moments I've had -- tiny bits of new knowledge that have come up in the middle of an otherwise-familiar subject. (Certainly there have also been big new things I've learned, like everything about Lightning, but this post is just about those little unexpected moments.)

Password Lockout Messages

You can customize certain messages that appear when users reset their passwords, or when they're locked out from Salesforce entirely. The "Message" and "Help Link" sections of this article describe how this works.

probably this isn't the message you'd actually use

Roles as a List View

I had no idea that it was possible to view the Roles page as anything other than the "tree" view -- which is a good way to look at the hierarchy if you actually have a lot of roles and you need to see the relationship between them, but if your Roles setup is simple and you're trying to make sure than everyone has one, the "list view" option is way easier to navigate.

list>  tree

Schema Builder!

There are three amazing things about Schema Builder that I didn't know because I never really looked at it closely again after it was released! (I use it all the time, but I knew the basics and apparently never… opened my eyes? again? after a while?)

1) You can toggle between displaying object and field labels vs their names.

so many custom objects

2) You can use the "Select From" dropdown to filter the list of objects that are displayed in the sidebar. Try picking "Selected Objects" and you'll get a list of just the things you've already put on the screen.

so convenient

3) If you've ever added objects to the layout and then spent the next three minutes chasing them around the screen and dragging them into place… try clicking "Auto-Layout button instead next time.

Chatter Auto-Following

I would love for everyone in the universe (and PatronManager clients in particular) to use Chatter much more than they currently do. I thought this fact was interesting for small organizations as a built-in way to jumpstart Chatter adoption:

"When you turn on Chatter for your company ...if your company has less than 16 Chatter users, all users automatically follow each other and up to 25 most recently used records."

Hilarity

The whole Trailhead team has a GREAT sense of humor. My personal favorite joke appears in the Event Monitoring module:

Let’s consider one of the example cases from earlier. A sales representative named Rob Burgle left your company a few weeks ago and joined a major competitor. All of a sudden, you start losing deals to this other company. You suspect that Mr. Burgle downloaded a report containing confidential lead information and shared it with his new employer.

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!

Checklist: When a Contact is marked as "deceased"

Here's a discussion question that came up in our internal company Chatter today:

"How do clients tend to handle the marking of a deceased patron in a household when things like the Account Name, Salutations, Address Names, etc need to get updated. Workflow off the checkbox?"

We started thinking about this, and decided that a hybrid approach is the best. There are a few things that should happen automatically right away if a Contact is marked as "deceased" -- like checking "Do Not Mail" box, and changing their Email Status to "Opt-out' -- but for other things like Account Name and Salutation changes at the household level, it's probably a better idea for a human to do the work, to make sure it's right and that it's handled sensitively.

Here's a terrible example that one of our coworkers shared about what can happen if you're not handling this well:

"My friend James' Mother passed away last year, and this was the letter he received in the mail. Not only is the letter wrong, but it's causing all sorts of confusion and he'll have to call them and get it all straightened out."

"dear james, we're sorry you're dead"

But, okay, does that mean you need to train your entire staff on how to make the correct changes to fields on a record when you're checking the "deceased" box? Maybe not -- it could be that the person finding out about the deceased-ness and marking the record isn't necessarily a person who needs to be super-trained on a whole cascading list of other things to do.

Instead, let's create a workflow that does those things we mentioned above, but that also creates a task or series of tasks for particular staff members to take care of the name fields, and perhaps send a condolence card, depending on the relationship to the deceased person.

Overall, the takeaway here is: When you're thinking about new workflows for your organization, consider the difference between automatic changes that can happen in the background versus things where you want an actual human to use their brain… but don't overlook the benefit of a reminder task for the latter! Create a list of the things that should happen, assign it to the right person, and you'll be in the clear.