Winter ’22 Salesforce Release Gem: Top 5 Changes to Experience Cloud

With 35 changes to Experience Cloud (formerly Community Cloud) and one change to CMS, Winter ‘22 is the biggest release for Experience Cloud since the Summer of ‘20.

I’m excited! Here are my top five changes to Experience Cloud in the Salesforce Winter ’22 release.

1. Capture Leads and Deliver Fresh Content with the Microsite Template

What’s New with Winter ‘22?

The Microsite Template is the BIG news of this release! Now, you can spin up a “best practice” microsite to gather user data and create leads in less time. Opportunities have never been so easy to generate.

Which Sites Does This Apply To?

This change applies to LWR (Lightning Web Runtime) sites using the Microsite template. The Microsite template is available in Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic when you purchase Salesforce CMS for Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

NOTE: If you’re not familiar with the new Salesforce terms, “LWR sites,” “Aura Sites” and “Visualforce sites,” click here for some background.

How Do You Use It?

The Microsite Template comes locked and loaded with 9 components to help you spin up a new site any time you need it:

• Lead Form
• Header
• Banner
• Tile
• Image
• Video
• Text
• Button
• Horizontal Line

2. Archive Experience Cloud Sites

What’s New with Winter ‘22?

Yay! The Beta is over. Salesforce has heard our pleas. When we have a site that is no longer useful, we can now archive it instead of keeping it live or deleting it.

Which Sites Does This Apply To?

This change applies to Aura, LWR, and Visualforce sites accessed through Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions. You must have at least one active community license in your org to use this feature.

How To Use It?

To archive a site, go to the Salesforce CMS app, access your site’s detail page, and click the “Archive Site” button. While a site is archived, anyone going to the URL will just see the “Site Under Maintenance” page. If you change your mind, you can always unarchive it. You can archive up to 100 sites, and they don’t count against your Salesforce limit of 100 sites.

3. Preview Salesforce CMS Content on Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile

What’s New with Winter ‘22?

Now, content managers and admins can preview Salesforce CMS content in desktop, tablet, or mobile mode before they publish it to a channel. Previously, you couldn’t see how CMS content appeared in different screen resolutions before publishing.

Which Sites Does This Apply To?

Content preview is available when you purchase Salesforce CMS for Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How Do You Use It?

Open the Content Details Page in Salesforce CMS and click “Preview.” The Experience Builder site will open in a new tab, and the Content Detail Page will display the site’s configuration for the content type. To preview your Experience Cloud site, select desktop, tablet, or mobile, and then select a channel.

4. Use Audiences as Criteria for Other Audiences

What’s New with Winter ‘22?

Awesome! Before this release, you could already control which pages your visitors could see by assigning them to audiences, but you could only define audiences by User field criteria, such as Department, Role, Profile, etc.  Now, you can define new audiences using your existing audiences as criteria, too. 

Say you’ve already built audiences for people who work in New York and California, and you need a new audience for everyone in those states with the “Coffee Drinker” profile. You can save time by referencing your NY and CA audiences to create the new one. (See image below.)

Which Sites Does This Apply To?

This change applies to Aura sites accessed through Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How To Use It?

Navigate to the New Audience screen and set the Criteria Type as “Audience.”  Easy!

5. Paste Images in Chatter Posts and Comments

What’s New with Winter ‘22?

Your users will thank you for this one! It was such a pain when they had to save an image to a file before they could add it to Chatter Post or Comment. Now they can post away with a simple copy and paste!

Which Sites Does This Apply To?

This change applies to Aura sites accessed through Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How To Use It?

Just copy and paste. That’s all there is to it!

For further details on all the Winter ‘22 changes, here’s a link to the Salesforce Winter ’22 Release Notes.

Author: Erin Freed, Salesforce Consultant

 

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