OREANDA-NEWS. August 15, 2016. Have you had a chance to explore some of the new features from the Summer ‘16 Release yet? With over 200 new features, this release is packed with new innovations empowering you to connect with customers, employees, and partners at Lightning speed.

Three times a year Salesforce releases new products and services, and with our 50th Release this summer, there’s a little something for everyone. Whether you work in sales, service, marketing or any other line of business, there are tools that everyone can use to work smarter and faster. For instance:

  • Sales professionals can look forward to Lightning CPQ to streamline the quoting process, and SalesforceIQ Inbox for Outlook to integrate CRM data to your email and calendar.

  • Service teams will find it easier to listen to customers and get direct feedback via Twitter.

  • Healthcare professionals can rest easier knowing that Health Cloud now fully supports Salesforce Shield, allowing customers to easily comply with regulations on apps storing sensitive data.

And the best part? So many of these new features are Salesforce1-ready, letting you run your business from your phone, anywhere you go.

We detail all these new features in our e-book Connect to Your Customers Faster with the Lightning Summer ‘16 Release; where we highlighted a handful of our favorite features that we’ll think you’ll love. Here’s a quick preview:

Get calls and make calls faster

No matter how many business emails we send and receive every day, there’s still no replacing a live conversation. A quick phone call can confirm information, explain a problem with quick clarity, and serve as a way to gather insights about a customer or partner. Now, with Lightning Voice, we’re making it easier for sales reps to receive and make calls, without leaving the Salesforce platform. By modernizing this reliable sales technique, teams can supercharge their productivity.

Deliver smarter service in the field

While it’s much easier for field techs to stay connected to the office today using mobile devices, they still don’t necessarily have all of the information they need at their fingertips to deliver smarter, faster service to customers. In having Field Service Lightning — Knowledge & Service Level Agreements, your company can deliver complete service from phone-to-field on one platform. Technicians are connected to the right reports and resources, while keeping track of important SLAs, enabling them to quickly finish the job in a single visit.

Create highly personalized emails without learning to code

Today’s smart marketers know that customers prefer to have personalized experiences with a company, and that often begins with an email contact. In fact, for many brands, email is core to their business. So for our 50th release, we’ve unveiled Email Studio, a new streamlined, intuitive email create-and-send workflow. Using pre-built content blocks, marketers can create highly personalized content without using code — just drag-and-drop dynamic content blocks into your email and you’ll be ready to hit send in no time.

Make the Lightning Experience your own

The Lightning Experience was designed to help you be more productive with it’s modern and intelligent user experience. With Lightning Pages, we’ve made it even easy to customize the Lightning Experience to deliver maximum speed, efficiency, and value to help both your customers and business flourish. Using Lightning Components’ drag-and-drop functionality, both developers and admins can have custom pages up in a flash.

These are just a few of our favorites. Ready to see more highlights from the release? Download our e-book and start connecting with your customers faster.