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As part of Salesforce’s Seasonal Release Cycle, we always see new and innovative features added to our instances. The Summer ’20 release is no exception, with some great features added to Salesforce CPQ & Billing. Let’s take a deeper dive into what we think are the top 3:

1. Resize Columns in the quote Line Editor (CPQ)

Oftentimes when quoting, users like to view a large amount of detail for each of their products. Things like unit prices, discounts, net prices, net totals, and margins are relatively standard requests in the quoting space. When you add in attributes specific to your business needs, this list can get lengthy, and with that, the horizontal scrolling needed to view all of this information in the Quote Line Editor increases.

Enter Resizable Columns! The Summer ’20 release introduces a feature in the CPQ Managed Package called “Enable Column Resizing”, found in the Line Editor Settings tab.

Once enabled, a new button appears in the Quote Line Editor that allows users to “Reset Column Widths”, as well as drag-and-drop column widths on individual columns, similar to an MS Excel or Google Sheets interface.

Changes are user-specific, so each user can resize columns to their preference without affecting the view of others.

Salesforce has also included guardrails in the form of minimum column widths, so you can never make a column so small that it gets lost or hidden.

In addition to setting the ‘Enable Column Resizing’ package setting, users need full CRED permissions on the ColumnMetadata and FieldSetMetadata objects to make use of this excellent feature.

2. Selectively Bypass ‘Preserve Bundle Structure’ on Amendments (CPQ)

In the previous version of CPQ, users could not control the Bundle structure for Amendments. Now, users are able to either break out the bundle into individual Quote Lines or choose to maintain the structure of their bundle offering.

This allows for greater flexibility when amending Quotes with Bundles, essentially offering all line items as a la carte offerings, no longer dependent on a global setting.

But be careful – introducing these changes can affect Price Rules and Product Rules dependent on the components of a bundled offering.

You can enable the “Bypass Preserve Bundle Structure” in the CPQ Managed Package settings under the “Subscriptions and Renewals” tab.

3. Automatic Usage Summaries on Evergreen Subscriptions (Billing)

Evergreen subscriptions may not always tie usage to specific start and end dates, and this new feature in the Summer ’20 release allows for the collection of usage outside of billing terms. Usage for Evergreen Subscriptions can be attributed to any time within the Contract Term as opposed to recognizing within a specific period.

Prior to Summer ’20, creating an Order for Evergreen Subscriptions produced 12 Usage Summaries with specific dates assigned according to Billing Term and any Usages uploaded outside these parameters had to be done manually.

With Billing Summer ‘20, you can upload Usages to an active Evergreen Subscription at any time.

If the Usage processing date doesn’t fall within an active, unbilled Usage Summary, Salesforce Billing creates a Usage Summary and assigns the new Usage

More information can be found here!

Bonus: Permission Set Licenses Moving to Winter’21 (CPQ)

Salesforce has announced they are transitioning from managed package licenses to Permission Set licenses for the CPQ managed package. Previously, Salesforce had said this would be automatically enforced with the Summer ’20 release, but the change has now been pushed to Winter ’21, giving you more time to prepare for these conversions.

We hope you have enjoyed reading our list of some of our top Summer’21 release functionalities and enhancements. Salesforce will release its Winter’21 notes on October 17. Make sure to read our blog post on those new features on October 23.

For more information on our Salesforce Practice, visit www.spauldingridge.com or contact us at [email protected].

About Spaulding Ridge

Spaulding Ridge is a global cloud advisory and implementation firm that helps leading companies deploy Best-in-Cloud solutions. Spaulding Ridge enables organizations to accelerate operational efficiency, drive digital transformation, and increase competitive advantage.

Spaulding Ridge partners with digitally savvy companies to help:

  • Finance gain control: Increase top-line revenue, gross margins, and profits through better insight. Connect financial planning to strategy and automate financial close processes.
  • Sales increase productivity: Manage quota and territories more consistently and effectively, automate customer contracts and onboarding.
  • Operations drive efficiency: Improve supply chain agility, automate strategic sourcing and purchasing, deliver superior customer service experiences.

To learn more, visit spauldingridge.com.

Kevin Toner
Kevin Toner
Director, Salesforce, Spaulding Ridge
About the Author

Kevin has more than 6 years of experience in the Salesforce Ecosystem, specializing in deployments of CPQ & Billing integrated with CLM and ERP applications. He takes pride in designing and implementing scalable solutions for our clients tailored to their industry needs. Kevin has expertise with implementing churn reduction techniques and change management strategies for organizations adopting cloud technologies.