A Hot Summer19 Release Right Off the Press

June has approached in fact we are almost midway through June, which means it’s officially Summer. And since I have crossed the “pond” and gone to Austin Texas, I cannot help but think “Wow, this is hot” and so it the Einstein Analytics Summer19 release. Some production environments have already been updated this past weekend while others are still waiting, but I thought I would sum up 9 cool features to look out for.

#1 – Filter Logic

This list is by no means prioritized, however, I think this is one of my favorites. When you apply multiple filters and want to apply filter logic that has until now been a reason to switch to SAQL. But not anymore, directly from the UI and the filter panel you can easily add AND, OR and NOT to your filters and create a more complex query without writing SAQL.

#2 – Periodic Full Sync

When enabling connect & data sync all the local Salesforce data had the possibility to do a full sync or incremental sync. Now if you had formula fields that were controlled by other objects they wouldn’t change the last modified date, hence the incremental sync wouldn’t be trigged. The best practice was then to manually kick off a full sync once and a while. Well, no more, there is a new connection mode that allows for periodic full sync that will trigger a full sync every week.

#3 – Embedding & Filter Builder

Once you log in after the Summer19 release has kicked in you will probably notice a new facelift, where Einstein Analytics looks more like Lightning. Personally, I love the new icon though it took me a while not to look for the “Green Wave”. Now, this same icon is what you have to look for when you embed any of your dashboards to Salesforce records – it’s called Wave Dashboards no more, so look out for Einstein Analytics Dashboard in the Lightning App Builder. Also super exciting is that we no longer have to fiddle with a JSON string to get the dashboard to filter by the viewed record, you can simply use the super easy filter builder.

#4 – List Selector Style

A lot of people have asked why you couldn’t style your list selectors. I never had a good answer other than it’s not yet possible. I now get to remove the “yet”, because with Summer19 you have the option to style both the text and the background color. So if you don’t want the white box then check out the new styling possibilities.

#5 – Formula Fields

If you have followed my blog you know I love the compare tables, they are simply a very powerful tool you should leverage. The only drawback is that it demands a few clicks. And some people have told me it’s not too intuitive, but hey I know how to use it so I don’t see it. But I will say with Summer19 it’s gotten so much easier to create a calculation. You simply add a measure and choose “Add Formula” – how simple is that? Heads up it’s addictive to use!

#6 – Global Filters

Global filters are also being changed up a bit. You can now choose to have single or multiple filters in a global filter widget. Also notice that the adding of fields is happening a little differently from before and you have to select the “Pick Initial Values” in order to pre-select values for the filter. In other words, it now works more like steps.

#7 – Onboarding Videos

Sometimes you need a little guiding hand. And perhaps if you want to ensure greater adoption of your dashboard it might be interesting to do a short video to show how it all works. Now you can embed this video directly into your Einstein Analytics dashboard, so your users have a quick way to understand how to interact with your data story.

#8 – Sort Dimensions

Another reason to switch to SAQL or JSON is to apply sorting on your dimensions instead of measures. For measures, it’s been easy simply click on the arrow next to the measure and choose ‘ascending’ or ‘descending’. Now dimensions are no longer left out, you can do the same.

#9 – More Time Series Periods & Seasonality

The time series function keeps being expanded. With Summer19 you can choose to forecast on Year-Month-Day as well as Year-Week. Also, you may want to define more seasonality so now you can pick anything between 2 and 24. Great news for those that got the forecasting bug.

If you want to check out what else is new in Summer19 check out the release notes.

Written by

Rikke Hovgaard

I have worked with CRM Analytics since 2015 (back then Wave). I started this blog to help make the journey to master CRM Analytics easy by documenting tips, tricks & cool solutions.

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