Salesforce.com Winter ’17 Service Cloud Release is jam packed with announcements and improvements spread across the entire platform. You’ll experience improvements for CTI, Social Customer Service, Service Console, Knowledge REST APIs, Case Feed, Entitlements, Assets and more. You’ll also notice that some functions are being retired or replaced.
Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI)
For example, for all of you who live by your CTI integration, you may or may not be pleased to hear that Desktop CTI is hanging up its jersey. The rookie, Open CTI is now on the field and works in Lightning Experience!
Let’s give a round of applause to Desktop CTI (CTI Toolkit) and enjoy one last season with it, in all of its glory. You only have until Spring ’17 to migrate your team to Open CTI, when Desktop CTI officially hangs up. Pun intended.
Service Console
Winter ’17 looks to be a tough winter. Not only does the Farmer’s Almanac predict we will get more snow (at least here in Pittsburgh), but Salesforce has removed the ability to access the Service Console from Lightning Experience.
Don’t let that forecast scare you, as you’ll still have more control in Winter ’17. Salesforce will give you the ability to hide or disable List View Hovers in Salesforce Classic. List View Hovers are turned on by default, but now you can wipe them off the screen, like snow off the road. Of course, you can use salt to get rid of snow and ice, but you’ll have to use a checkbox to get rid of the Hovers. Salt and Salesforce do not mix.
Field Service Lightning Toolbox
If you do find yourself or maybe your Field Service Reps in a tough spot this winter, Salesforce has put together a handy set of features that can help your Field Service teams. In Salesforce Classic and Lightning, you’ll be able to track your field technicians and dispatchers by using Service Resources. You’ll be able to assign a resource to an appointment, schedule additional appointments, track your technicians’ areas of expertise so you can assign the right resource to the job, and manage daily schedules for specific territories. All of this and lots more comes in Winter ’17 to Field Service. Read more of the new features here.
Chatter Answers
Another key member of the Service Cloud team is also retiring. Chatter Answers has a had a good run of solid performance providing the right answers to your and your users’ tough questions. Winter ’18 is the official end date, so we only have one more year with Chatter Answers. Chatter Questions is slated to take over the self-service position on the squad. More information about that position change will follow in the next year.
Improvements to Case Feeds, Assets and Entitlement Management
Winter ’17 calls out some great improvements to these three key areas of Service Cloud. Some of the highlights are:
- You can now see Case Owner on the Case Page and improvements to Email Quick Action in Lightning
- Updated Hierarchy Limits for Assets
- Entitlement Management brings increased limits and improved process update rules, specifically when a record update fails
As we mentioned earlier, Winter ’17 brings a lot of great change this release, and there are still a handful of other developments that we didn’t even get to today. Read about all of the Service Cloud enhancements in detail here.
