If 2020 was the year of unprecedented change and turmoil, 2021 was the year of adaptation and growth. This was true for many companies throughout the world including Salesforce. While Salesforce had a truly remarkable 2020, in 2021 they took everything to the next level. Record setting acquisitions, expanded partnerships and new features galore headlined a massive year for the San Fransisco based giant.

As we turn the page to 2022, we're going to take a look back at the biggest stories in the Salesforce ecosystem that will shape the company going forward.

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Slack Acquisition

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Undoubtably the biggest story in the Salesforce world was the earth-shattering $27.7 billion dollar deal that brings the do-it-all messaging app under the Salesforce umbrella. Slack saw explosive growth in 2020 as most companies shifted to a remote workforce and relied on the platform to keep disparate teams all over the world in sync. But it wasn't long after Slack started to gain a foothold that the giant of Microsoft Teams started to nip at its heels. With an expanded global presence, Microsoft Teams quickly become the choice of many companies in over 41 countries.

Completing the acquisition back in July of 2021, Slack now has the full weight of Salesforce behind it ready to compete in this new digital landscape. This means a plethora of new "Slack-first" features added or to be added to Salesforce in the coming months as well increasingly tighter integration between the two platforms.

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Tighter AWS Integration

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It was only a matter of time before the the Seattle-giant increased it's partnership with Salesforce, and it finally happened back in June of 2021. It's all in an effort to reduce code consumption, complexity and increase stability between the two platforms. Consumers will soon be able to purchase out-of-the-box solutions that harness the power of AWS' voice, video, artificial intelligence, and machine learning capabilities directly into the Salesforce platform.

AWS will also enable developers to speed up the app development process through new low-code solutions that bridge Salesforce data and AWS data with ease. The goal is to reduce the amount of custom coding that needs to be done to connect the two platforms while leveraging the best aspects of both.

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Dreamforce 2021

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Dreamforce never fails to bring a slew of new announcements, and this year did not disappoint. While Dreamforce 2021 was headlined by Slack-first announcements such as Slack Digital HQ innovations across all industries (Sales, Services, Marketing, Commerce, and more), there was a ton more announced right behind it; much of it relating to the health care industry.

Health Cloud 2.0 will allow business all over the world to deliver better health and safety information to their employees. At Dreamforce NYC, just last week they announced the next version of Dreampass that can leverage the platform to ensure safe in-person experiences whether it be events, concerts or even next year's Dreamforce.

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While we have no idea what 2022 has in store for Salesforce as the paradigm is shifting under our feet at a rapid pace, we can say that if it's anything like 2021, we are in for another huge year of innovation.

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Dreamforce is back, and in many ways, just as big and bold as you remember it. While this year's events will remain virtual, the sessions are as insightful and impactful as you may expect. But there are a lot of them! So how do you know which ones to attend and which ones are worth your time? We'll run down the sessions that we think will be most worth your while.

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Day 1 - Tuesday, September 21st

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Dreamforce Main Show: Welcome to the Trusted Enterprise with Marc Benioff and special guests (9:45 a.m. PT / 12:45 p.m. ET)

This will be a great taste to see how Slack-forward Dreamforce 2021 might be and should be a great start to the show.

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Industry Success from Anywhere (11:30 a.m. PT / 2:30 p.m. ET)

Hear how Salesforce Industries solutions make it easy to succeed in a digital-first, work-from-anywhere world.

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From Idea to Exit: Build a Thriving Business on AppExchange (12:00 p.m. PT / 3:00 p.m. ET)

We love the AppExchange here at Relay, so this should be a great showcase as how others are leveraging the power of the marketplace.

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Innovation from Anywhere with Salesforce Developers (3:30 p.m. PT / 6:30 p.m. ET)

Learn how Salesforce developers all over the world are using the Salesforce platform to collaborate and innovate.

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Create User Experiences with Lightning Web Components (4:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 p.m. ET)

If you've ever been interested in the Lightning platform, this would be a great opportunity to see how it allows developers to deliver unique customer experiences across a variety of platforms.

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Day 2 - Wednesday, September 22nd

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Explore Slack & Salesforce's Successful Path to Integration (9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET)

This would be a great one to attend to see how closely integrated Salesforce and Slack might become for years to come.

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Right Here, Right Now: The Power of Community (10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET)

The Salesforce Community has played a huge role in the rapid adoption of Salesforce, but attend this one to see how nonprofits, educators, and philanthropists are using the community to change the world.

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Three New Rules Shaping the Future of Business (11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET)

Learn three rules that every leader should embrace to build Salesforce and their business for a whole new era of business.

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Build Your Digital HQ with Salesforce Architects (12:30 p.m. PT / 3:30 p.m. ET)

If you're interested in learning how Salesforce can allign stakeholders and teams, then this is the session you will want to make sure you attend.

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Health Cloud: The Solution for a New Era of Health (2:30 p.m. PT / 5:30 p.m. ET)

If you're in the Healthcare industry, this session will reveal why Salesforce is the number one connected platform for healthcare and life sciences.

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Day 3 - Thursday, September 23rd

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Digital-First Leadership: Balancing Service, Speed & Trust (9:30 a.m. PT / 12:30 p.m. ET)

Hear how global leaders are responsibly leveraging technology solutions to increase responsiveness and speed.

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The Future of Health Is Connected (10:30 a.m. PT / 1:30 p.m. ET)

Learn from Salesforce and industry Trailblazers to see how they unify the healthcare ecosystem for seamless outcomes from any place and any device.

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Success Tips to Help SMBs Find, Win, and Keep Customers (11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET)

If you're a small or mid-size business, this is the session you will want to attend. Learn how Salesforce can help you find the right customers, close more deals and keep your current customers happy.

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We're very excited for the Dreamforce events to kick off and we think you should be too. Given the amount of content and type of content, this year's Dreamforce should be one to remember.

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The much anticipated Salesforce Spring '22 release is nearly here and there are a ton of new features to be excited about. It’s important to note that not everyone will be upgraded this month as the release date is dependent on your instance of Salesforce. If you are lucky enough to be one of the first to get the upgrade this Sunday (1/16), here are a few of our most anticipated features.

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1) Enhanced Security

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In today’s work anywhere culture, it’s more important than ever to take security into consideration when working remotely. In the Spring '22 release, Salesforce seems to have done just that. From expiration dates on permission sets and permission set groups to Enhanced Personal Information Management, it’s all a very welcome sight.

If you are working with an external client and only wish for them to have certain permissions for the duration of the project, and then revert back to normal permissions after the project is completed, the Spring '22 release will allow you to do just that with expiration dates tied to permissions.

Enhanced Personal Information Management allows admins to prevent external users, such as portal or community users from accessing your internal employees information. As the Salesforce community keeps growing, this is a welcome sight to tighten up security for your internal employees.

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2) Collaborative Forecasts

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Perhaps the most anticipated feature of the Spring '22 release is the multitude of changes coming to Forecasts. Now, Forecast Types and Forecast Settings have been consolidated into one page allowing you to easily and quickly create forecast types step by step.

Two new calculated columns have also been added to be used in the forecasting grid, "Gap to Quota" and "Pipeline Coverage". Gap to Quota automatically calculate’s your team’s sales to show how close they are to achieving their quota for the quarter. Pipeline Coverage shows the ratio of opportunities in the sales pipeline compared to how much quota they have left.

There a few more changes to forecasts, but these are really the most anticipated features we can’t wait to try for ourselves.

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3) Flow Updates

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While we are still mourning the loss of Process Builder and Workflow Rules, we have come to love the number of changes that Salesforce has made to Flow. It keeps getting better with the Spring '22 release.

Auto-Layout will now allow your flows to look clean and seamless, automatically mapped and proportionally spaced for client review. Flow Trigger Explorer will now allow you to visually see all of the flows connected to an object that run when an object is created, updated or deleted. Flow Screens gets a helpful addition where you can now add phone, email and picklist fields directly to your screens.

Last but not least, and perhaps our favorite feature is you can now define the run order of record triggered flows. If you want to get very specific on flows and make sure that certain flows only run before a save and run after a save, you can now do just that.

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4) Report Type Updates

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When creating reports, it used to be pretty overwhelming and down right confusing to find the right type of report for what you were creating. No longer, as Salesforce has dramatically improved the way report types are displayed when creating a new report.

Now you can quickly see recently used reports along with the fields and objects included with the report. But beyond that you can easily see which report types are standard or custom as well as hide report types that you are team does not use often.

Streamlining report creation is long overdue and this should dramatically improve the report creation workflow.

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5) Scoping Rules

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Scoping rules have been a long time coming but they have arrived in a big way with the Spring '22 release. If you’re not familiar, scoping rules allow you to control the default records that a user sees based on criteria that you select. Scoping rules do not restrict access, but rather confine the scope of records to a user so they only see data that is relevant to them and their project.

Say you’re an agent that is assigned a different client each day. Scoping rules allows you to focus in on the records, list view, related list, reports and search results so you only see the given client for that day. This gives a coherent view for agents so they see clean, relevant results instead of results from every single client.

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We have only highlighted five of the many, many new features coming in the Spring '22 release. If you want a full rundown of each and every feature, make sure to take a look at Salesforce’s official release notes here: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.salesforce_release_notes.htm&type=5&release=236

We can’t wait to test it out and see how we at Relay can best utilize each and every new feature.

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Today, hundreds of thousands of excited Salesforce consultants, customers, and App Developers take over the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Dreamforce 2019. During the week-long conference, Salesforce will share significant updates to the platform roadmap, and expert consultants will share their approaches, best practices, and solutions. The large scale nature of the event alone is indicative of the size of the Salesforce Platform.

When you buy Salesforce, you're not just buying a CRM; you're buying a business process automation and development platform that grows more extensive and advanced every year. Salesforce releases three major updates a year - every Winter, Spring, and Summer.

The speed at which the platform grows presents significant value and opportunities, but it also can present challenges. With an ever-growing platform comes shifting solutions target. It is not uncommon for features that require custom development today to become a native feature in only a couple of releases. Likewise, solutions that use poorly constructed workarounds today may find their approach unreliable in future releases. Even though Salesforce is known for its focus on backward compatibility, a poorly designed solution rarely stands the trailblazing speed at which the platform evolves.

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Guiding Principles for Crafting Solutions That Last

Follow best practices, and it won’t break on the next release.

We strictly follow Salesforce best practices. They are the product of our team's efforts to combine guidance issued by Salesforce, experts in the community, and through our research and experience. They ensure that the solutions we implement today still work in the future and that we deliver consistently across our projects. With major releases a year, this is one of the best ways to ensure your solutions will last.

Native first, then custom.

Our expertise lies in designing solutions for complex business problems using the Salesforce Platform. We're always eager to create new, custom, and innovative solutions on the platform. We prioritize native solutions because we know that they will carry the highest degree of stability in the future. When native features don't meet the need, we use Salesforce's advanced development framework to create highly customized applications using Apex, Lightning Web Components, and APIs.

Learn and train often.

We meticulously review release notes every year to remain up-to-date on new features and changes to existing functionality. We often gain meaningful insights into future releases, helping us anticipate future changes in the platform. You can find all the release notes here. Our team also dedicates significant time to the Salesforce learning ecosystem, using Trailhead and hands-on exercises to train and increase our knowledge of the platform.

Our team members have delivered Salesforce solutions for complex business problem across many years, and we've seen the benefits of following these principles. As we listen to all the announcements, sessions, and speakers at Dreamforce this year, we'll focus on extracting learnings that will help us craft innovative solutions that grow with the ever-evolving Salesforce Platform.

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Using Monte Carlo analysis to forecast your sales pipeline can be a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. By running multiple simulations based on your data, you can better understand the potential outcomes of your sales efforts and make more informed decisions about how to allocate your resources. In this blog post, we'll walk you through the process of using Monte Carlo analysis to forecast your opportunity pipeline and generate a sales forecast.

To get started, you'll need to gather data on your opportunity pipeline. This should include information on the number of leads you have at each stage of the pipeline, the average conversion rate for each stage, and the average value of each sale. You may also want to consider factors such as the length of the sales cycle, any seasonality in your sales, and any other factors that may impact your sales.

Once you have your data, you can use a Monte Carlo simulation tool to run multiple simulations based on your data. These simulations will generate a range of potential outcomes for your opportunity pipeline, taking into account the uncertainty and variability inherent in any sales process. Some of the most common variables that you can adjust in your simulation are the size of the deals and when they are expected to close.

Using the results of your Monte Carlo simulations, you can then analyze the potential outcomes for your opportunity pipeline and use this information to make informed decisions. For example, you might use the simulations to understand the likelihood of meeting your sales targets or to identify the most effective strategies for improving your conversion rates.

In addition to helping you analyze your opportunity pipeline, Monte Carlo simulations can also be used to generate a sales forecast for your business. By running simulations based on different scenarios, you can create a range of potential outcomes and use these to inform your business planning and decision-making.

Let's recap the process of using Monte Carlo simulations for sales forecasting:

1. Define your goal: The first step in performing a Monte Carlo simulation is to define your goal. What do you want to achieve through the simulation? This could be anything from understanding the likelihood of meeting your sales targets to identifying the most effective strategies for improving your conversion rates.
2. Gather data: Next, you'll need to gather data on your sales pipeline. This should include information on the number of leads you have at each stage of the pipeline, the average conversion rate for each stage, and the average value of each sale. You may also want to consider factors such as the length of the sales cycle, any seasonality in your sales, and any other factors that may impact your sales.
3. Choose a Monte Carlo simulation tool: There are many different tools available for performing Monte Carlo simulations. Some options include Excel, Python, and specialized simulation software. If you use Salesforce, you can use Confidence, a native Salesforce app that makes it easy to run thousands of simulations on your pipeline with just a few clicks. Choose a tool that is appropriate for your needs and level of expertise.
4. Set up the simulation: Once you have chosen a tool, you'll need to set up the simulation. This will involve inputting your data and defining the parameters of the simulation. This can include the number of simulations to run, how much to vary deal sizes, how much you want to shorten or extend your sales cycle, and any other relevant variables.
5. Run the simulation: Once you have set up the simulation, it's time to run it. This will involve the tool generating a range of potential outcomes for your sales pipeline based on the data and parameters you have defined. Simulations are often visualized as a histogram that plots various outcomes and their probability, based on the number of times the outcome was achieved in the simulation.
6. Analyze the results: Once the simulation has been run, you can analyze the results to better understand the potential outcomes for your sales pipeline. You can use this information to make informed decisions about your sales efforts and allocate your resources accordingly.
7. Use the results to forecast: In addition to helping you analyze your sales pipeline, Monte Carlo simulations can also be used to produce forecasts for your business. By running simulations based on different scenarios, you can create a range of potential outcomes and use these to inform your business planning and decision-making.

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To get a full understanding of how Monte Carlo simulations can be used for real-world scenarios, take a look as Relay's own Gustavo Melendez demos Confidence for Salesforce:

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Overall, Monte Carlo analysis is a powerful tool for businesses looking to better understand and forecast their opportunity pipeline. By gathering data, running simulations, and analyzing the results, you can make more informed decisions and improve your sales efforts.

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The Notion API is finally here

It's a long time coming, but the Notion API is finally available for public beta — ready to expand the Notion ecosystem in a big way. The implications for its use and how it can interact with other applications could be absolutely game-changing for many companies.

If you missed our previous post on Notion, consider it to be the all-in-one database manager that can do pretty much anything and everything.  Asset lists, company wikis, spreadsheets, client portals and way, way more. The introduction of the public API expands the capabilities of Notion even further than that.

What can you do with the new API?

An API allows developers to make two applications talk to each other and essentially share data across platforms. With them, you can automate processes between systems or augment them with new capabilities.

The possibilities are endless, but due to the blank slate database structure of Notion it allows for real creative solutions for common issues.

Since we're intensely focused on Salesforce at Relay, we decided to hone our attention towards the use cases for the Notion API and Salesforce.

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Use Case for the Notion API and Salesforce

• Sync contact records from Salesforce into a Notion table
• Import closed deals into a Notion kanban table
• Sync tasks from Notion tables into Salesforce

No longer do you have to manually update both Salesforce and Notion separately to keep both tools in sync as now it will update automatically for you through the API. This removes hours of tedious updating, and more importantly ensures that there is a single source of truth for all your data, whether in Notion or Salesforce.

Notion API + Salesforce Showcase

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Limitations of the Notion API

Right now the Notion API is still in public beta which means it can do a lot, but there is a still a bunch of stuff it can not do—yet.

As of today, you need to create a "bot" for the Notion API to interact with and then subsequently invite the bot into the database you want it to modify. It's a bit ad-hoc and doesn't allow you to interact with, say, multiple databases at the same time or perform modifications to top level pages. Right now, it's strictly limited to database updating which is great, but there is definite room for growth.

Next Steps

As you can see, the Notion API opens up the possibilities for applications small and large to communicate with Notion. But at Relay, we are ecstatic about the future between Salesforce and Notion. Both platforms are making their mark in small businesses across the world and now that Notion can communicate with Salesforce, the growth potential is limitless.

Are you interested in using the Notion API with your Salesforce org? Feel free to reach out to us here, and we will be glad to get you started right away.

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Sales forecasting is an essential part of any business, yet it can be challenging to create meaningful forecasts. In this blog post, we will discuss a simple method for creating sales forecasts using Monte Carlo simulations. This approach relies on limited data and produces statistically meaningful forecasts with just a couple of clicks. With Monte Carlo simulations, you can model complex scenarios and get a better understanding of the range of possible outcomes and their probabilities.

A sales rep's pipeline includes every open opportunity that they are working on. In most CRM's, like Salesforce, an opportunity has 3 main data points that are used for sales forecasting: amount, close date, and stage. The opportunity stage is often associated with a win probability such that deals that are early in the sales cycle have a lower probability of closing vs those towards the end, which have a higher probability of being won. In other words, opportunity stage forecasting assumes that deals have a different likelihood of success at different sales cycle stages.

For example, if you know that you typically win about three-quarters of deals that enter the 'Negotiation' stage, you can predict that you have a 75% shot for all the deals in that stage. An expected revenue forecast will use this probability to determine an aggregate forecast amount across your pipeline.

Calculating an expected revenue forecast requires very little math:

1. For each open opportunity in your quarter, multiply the amount by the stage probability.
2. Sum each of the amount/probability products for each opportunity
3. Add in the amount of any closed won opportunities

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This method is straightforward but creates a sales forecast that is a single-point estimate. In other words, it only gives you a single number and does not take into account the range of possible outcomes. They also often produce forecasts that would not be possible. A deal can either be won or lost; there is never an outcome where your deal can close at 75% of the opportunity amount.

One common scenario that distorts expected revenue forecasts is when your pipeline has opportunities with drastically different amounts. So-called whales, or very large opportunities compared to the rest of your pipeline, can often drive an expected forecast number that would not be possible if those opportunities did not close on time. If 20 of your deals in the pipeline are around $10K each and 6 opportunities are $50K, just 1 or 2 of the bigger deals can easily sway the revenue for the quarter if they don't close on time. Visualizing the impact that each opportunity can have on the pipeline can be a time-consuming effort if done manually.

This is where Monte Carlo simulations come in. Monte Carlo simulations can be used to generate a distribution of possible revenue outcomes and their probabilities instead of a point estimate. It helps us visualize the possibilities across the pipeline and make more informed decisions.

Sales forecasting with Monte Carlo simulations is straightforward. A good monte Carlo simulation will run thousands of trials and randomly adjust variables in a model to determine the probabilities of each outcome. The outcome of each simulation is placed on a histogram, which allows us to visualize the most probable outcomes.

For example, in a pipeline with 20 opportunities slated to close this quarter, we might run 20,000 simulations where in each trial we randomly adjust 15% of our pipeline to close up to 30 days later than we currently expect. Each trial produces a new revenue forecast which is placed on the histogram. The more simulations that produce a similar outcome (forecast range), the more probable it is to happen. At the end of the simulation, we can visually see how probable each forecast is for our given scenario.

Of course, adjusting the simulation settings will produce different results, but in all cases, the insights produced by a Monte Carlo simulation will far outweigh the point estimates produced by an expected revenue forecast. You could choose to run a simulation that only adjusts a small portion of the opportunities in your pipeline, or one that adjusts all open opportunities. Simulations could be even more nuanced by focusing on opportunities with close dates near the end of the month, which are often the most likely to carry over into the next quarter or reporting period.

If you're already using Salesforce and are interested in trying out this approach to generate your sales forecasts, we've developed a simple app called Confidence, which can help you run thousands of simulations on your sales pipeline in just a couple of clicks. You could be generating sales forecast simulations in just a matter of minutes. Take a look at our walkthrough of Confidence below and sign up for free here.

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It’s that time of the year again! Last year we counted down the five features of Salesforce that we are thankful for and this year we’re back with five new features we appreciate day in and day out. Salesforce is always adding new features to enhance the customer experience, whether it’s very large such as Salesforce Genie or a tweak along the margins such as adding dynamic actions to show custom flow action buttons in the highlights panel rather than the feed panel. We’re always surprised by what Salesforce will add and this year has been no exception. Let's take a look at Relay's favorite additions of 2022.

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Redesigned AppExchange Website

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We’ve all been staring at the same AppExchange website for years now and while it’s been very serviceable, a lot has changed since the last time it was given an overhaul. With a new streamlined, sleek interface, you’re now able to find apps quicker using advanced filtering and sorting. In addition, all page loading has been made much faster and you’re able to hop around the website with ease instead of waiting for pages to load. The app pages have been given an overhaul as well allowing you to get relevant information at a glance along with the ability to filter reviews by reviewer badge ranking. We’re big fans and we’re actually looking forward to spending more time on the AppExchange website.

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Data Table Beta Arrives!

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It’s been a long requested feature, but it’s finally here - Data Tables. The Datatable component has been a very popular Lightning Web Component for a while, allowing developers to add a configurable, sortable datatable on a flow screen. It’s officially here and the integration is just as we hoped. Flows can now have a beautiful table of record data and users can select and view the exact information they want to continue with the flow. We’re very excited to give this new component a lot of heavy usage.

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Record Type Filtering for Picklists

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Another addition we’re thrilled to see is record type filtering for picklists in Dynamic Forms for Flow.  Now when a user selects a value from a picklist in Flow, the following categories will be relevant to that picklist value. This is going to be huge for case creations and allow for much more pointed data when created.

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PopUps

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One of our absolute favorite AppExchange apps of 2022 and for good reason. Without any code, users can add Flow, Modal, or Toast pop-up message to any Lightning or Community page. Whether you want to add validation to your record creation, or simply create a on-boarding wizard for new customers, PopUps will allow you to do just that. Best part of it all, it’s absolutely free.

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Dynamic Gauge Charts

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This is a small one, but in our eyes one that is super useful for dashboard creators. The top voted customer idea of the Winter ‘22 release, with 14,000 votes was dynamic gauge charts. This allows teams to view and measure their goals and KPIs on a real-time gauge that changes dynamically over time instead of remaining fixed with a specific number. Your business changes rapidly, so instead of having to update your gauges on ALL your charts each time conditions shift, dynamic gauges will adjust for you.

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2022 was a feature packed year for Salesforce, with the acquisition of Slack coming into full focus with Slack-First Customer 360, Slack Canvas and of course the possible revolution of Salesforce Genie. It was hard to narrow it down to just five, but to be honest, we might need to expand next year’s list to ten as we anticipate a very busy 2023 for Salesforce.

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