Salesforce Winter ’19 Release Highlights — Outlook Integration and Salesforce Inbox

With Halloween behind us and the Holidays on the horizon — we’re well on our way to Winter and you know what that means, there’s a new Salesforce Release to check out! The Winter ’19 Release is pumped full of helpful new features, usability improvements, and even more opportunities to streamline your business’ operations.

There’s a lot to take in and, let’s face it, release notes can get boring fast. Instead of slogging through the fine print, stick around and we’ll walk you through the best of the new features, changes, and updates — in little snack-sized servings that won’t spoil your dinner.

In today’s post we’ll take a look at email improvements: Outlook integration, Salesforce Inbox, and adding functionality right in your email client to save time, improve adoption, and track everything, automagically.

[And if you’d rather watch than read, pop down to the bottom of this post to enjoy a short demo video!]

Outlook Integration

Gone are the days of playing middle-man between your emails and your Salesforce org! Winter ’19 ushers in the era of seamless inbox integration with a consolidated add-in for Outlook. In the Microsoft Store, “Lightning for Outlook” has been retooled into “Salesforce”.

No more switching tabs back and forth — now you and your team will have full visibility into contacts, leads, accounts, opportunities, etc… right in your Outlook instance. Search and browse Salesforce records, create new ones, add emails and appointments in one click and more.

Salesforce Inbox

And if you have a Salesforce Inbox license, there are even more productivity-powering surprises! In the now-combined Outlook app you can get notifications on your email’s engagement (opens, clicks, etc…), schedule emails to be sent at the best time, and schedule appointments with ease thanks to calendar integration and a user-friendly “what’s the best time for you?” interface.

Text Shortcuts!

Even more helpfully, you can now save commonly-used phrases and insert them into emails with ease! Perfect for those situations where an email template would be overkill, or you need to quickly answer a few common questions but don’t want to send the whole FAQ. Even for internal communication, you’ll be amazed at the time you can save once you’ve got a few “macros” for your company’s common requests, memos, birthdays (just kidding, you might want to keep those heartfelt and handwritten). But the potential time savings are huge, and your fingers/hands/wrists will appreciate the break.

If you want to get a sneak peek of the new functionality in action, hit play on the video below:

And if you’d like to find out how we could bring that functionality into your office, reach out to us — we’d love to help!

In the meantime, stay tuned for more Winter ’19 Release highlights and let us know in the comments if there’s something specific you’d like us to cover!

Happy working!