Salesforce Spring '24 Release: Manufacturing Cloud Highlights

With a multitude of advantages for manufacturers of all types, Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud continues to gain traction in the industry. With Salesforce’s Spring ’24 Release, there are several impactful enhancements to Manufacturing Cloud that we’ve read the notes on and distilled here so that you don’t have to:

Sales Agreement Data Management Enhancements

Increase your data management efficiency and boost productivity through the improved usability, accessibility, and performance features of the enhanced view for sales agreements. Easily monitor and compare product metrics across different schedules with minimal scrolling, reducing the risk of data entry errors. Navigate through sales agreement cells faster, enabling easy value edits using your keyboard.

Minimize the risk of data entry errors by keeping the Product Name, Metric, and Total columns frozen as you navigate through different schedules in the agreement. Maintaining visibility of these columns during scrolling prevents the loss of context regarding products and metrics.
Streamline the identification of metrics for each product by merging cells containing product names.
Utilize keyboard commands for efficient execution of key actions, including cell editing, saving changes, and redoing modifications swiftly.

This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer editions with Manufacturing Cloud and is available to users with the Manufacturing Sales Agreements PSL. For additional info, see Salesforce Help.

Inventory Visibility Foundations

Enhance the traceability of your product and part inventory while strategizing for seamless inventory transfers and requests. Capture detailed insights into the entire inventory journey, spanning from stocks at diverse locations to transfers, returns, and shipments. Revolutionize your inventory monitoring and management practices by customizing an intuitive inventory search experience.

Inventory Management Objects

Efficiently oversee your inventory stock and movements with the newly introduced inventory management objects. Effectively manage serialized products and monitor product locations across manufacturing plants, distributors, and suppliers. Keep track of product demand, transfers, and details related to replenishment, adjustments, consumption, or transfers. Record information about returned, rejected, and repaired inventory units, and monitor the status of shipped or in-transit products. Stay informed about required and consumed products to fulfill work orders.

This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer editions with Manufacturing Cloud and is available to users with the Criteria-Based Search and Filter PSL. For additional info, see Salesforce Help.

Criteria-Based Search and Filter Feature

Enhance the traceability and control of your product and part inventory with the Criteria-Based Search and Filter feature. Provide inventory managers, customer service representatives, and service technicians with nearly real-time visibility into inventory stock across different locations, facilitating improved inventory transfer planning. Establish the search framework by configuring an object with searchable inventory data, defining search criteria, and configuring the types of actions users can take on the search results.

How:

Create a searchable object to consolidate inventory data that’s spread across multiple objects and fields.
Keep the data in the searchable object updated using a Data Processing Engine definition or any other data transfer mechanisms.
Create a search criteria configuration to select the fields to be queried for searches, the fields to be shown in the search results, and the fields to sort, group, and aggregate results by.
Set up the list of actions that the users can take on the search results.
Add the Criteria-Based Search and Filter component to the relevant page.

Quickly Import Production Forecasts from CSV Files

Suppliers can easily import program and variant forecast data from manufacturers and external research sources, facilitating the generation of component production forecasts. Suppliers’ program managers can effortlessly upload a CSV file containing forecast data, choose the target object, and seamlessly map the object’s fields with the CSV column headers. Through a few simple clicks, they can insert, update, or upsert extensive datasets while ensuring data validation.

This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer editions with Manufacturing Cloud. For more information, see Salesforce Help.

New and Enhanced Common Features for Industries

Some features that are available across other various clouds and products in Industries are now accessible with Manufacturing Cloud. Use these features to extend and customize Manufacturing Cloud for your business needs.

Action Launcher: Quickly resolve customer requests by launching button or link-based actions and the service processes associated with them. Additionally, admins can now customize the title shown on the Action Launcher component.
Actionable Segmentation: Utilize predefined DPE definitions for easy creation of actionable list definitions. Simplify the process for list creators by setting the filter input format for relevant dataset columns as Multi-Select Picklist, enabling easy filtering of dataset records for inclusion in actionable lists. Enhance efficiency further by allowing list creators to utilize filter templates, saving time and effort in the filtering process.
Batch Management: Select records from big objects to run batch jobs in Batch Management.
Business Rules Engine: Develop scalable and extensible business processes, such as warranty claim adjudication, utilizing the Business Rules Engine. Integrate executable expression set templates into flows for seamless execution. Construct precise rules incorporating operators and functions that account for null values. Simplify and streamline lookups with the enhanced decision tables. Provide users with more targeted and nuanced explanations for expression set version step results using the advancements in Decision Explainer.

Context Service: Streamline the retrieval and utilization of data in your warranty claim adjudication processes through the use of Context Service. Customize context definitions to align with your business needs by extending the standard definitions provided with Manufacturing Cloud. Effortlessly synchronize the custom definitions to upgrade the standard definition components integrated into the extended custom definitions.

Data Processing Engine (DPE): Enhance the efficiency of your forecast calculations with the DPE. Benefit from increased flexibility in your definitions within Data Cloud, offering a broader range of object types for selection in data source and writeback nodes. Opt for Data Cloud Data Spaces within your definition. Quickly troubleshoot issues with reference nodes by restoring previous field selections in your data source. Easily upload CSV file data and perform writebacks to your Salesforce org.

List Builder for Data Cloud Segment: List creators are required to choose a data space before selecting a data segment. The actionable list preview displays the default columns of the associated object. An email notification is triggered and sent to the list creator upon reaching 50,000 member records in an actionable list.

Timeline: Gain an interactive and chronological perspective of customer and asset activities through the utilization of Timeline. Configure Timeline to display engagement events from a designated data space in Data Cloud, providing a comprehensive view of interactions over time.

NEW Manufacturing Cloud Videos

Effectively oversee your manufacturing programs. This resource instructs program managers on utilizing Program-Based Business in Manufacturing Cloud to gain visibility into manufacturing programs, handle program forecasts, and strategize for business opportunities: Manage Your Manufacturing Programs (vidyard.com)

Explore the essential concepts of Program-Based Business. This instructional guide demonstrates how administrators can effectively configure and implement this feature: Set Up Program-Based Business in Manufacturing Cloud (vidyard.com)

In summary, the Spring ’24 release allows for users of Manufacturing Cloud to efficiently analyze metrics across various schedules within sales agreements, simplifying data management. Enhanced control over inventory stock and movement is facilitated through the incorporation of new inventory management objects. A customized search experience can be established for effective inventory management and planning. Lastly, streamlining the import of program and variant forecasts from CSV files enables the efficient generation of component production forecasts.

Need help making sense of Manufacturing Cloud, or optimizing any facet of your Salesforce landscape? You know where to find TruSummit Solutions.