Communities: Partner Central Solution, CMS Connect, Notifications, and More

Communities makes a splash this summer with a slew of flexible new features. Extend Salesforce CRM to your partner network, and drive channel sales with the native Lightning Partner Central solution. Use CMS Connect to render content from your content management system (CMS) in your community for consistent branding and easier maintenance. Switch between communities and see real-time notifications with App Launcher and Notifications support. We’ve got lots more to show you, so dive in!

Available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

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There’s lots of Lightning striking Salesforce these days—Lightning Experience, Lightning Bolts, Lightning components—and it can be tricky to understand how it applies to Communities.

Just remember that Lightning Bolt solutions and community templates use the same underlying technology as Lightning Experience—namely, the Lightning platform and Lightning components—but you aren’t required to enable Lightning Experience to use them.

Critical Update Activation: LockerService in Communities
LockerService, which has been a critical update since Summer ’16, is enforced for all orgs in Summer ’17. However, to reduce the impact on existing communities, we adjusted the activation process. If your community uses custom Lighting components or head markup, make sure that you read the related release notes to learn how these important changes affect your community.
Extended Deadline for TLS 1.0 Disablement in Communities
On July 22, 2017, Salesforce is disabling support for TLS 1.0 (Transport Layer Security protocol) for all orgs in production. To give admins more time to prepare community users, the TLS 1.0 disablement deadline for Salesforce Communities has been extended to March 2018. The extended March 2018 deadline applies to both Lightning and Visualforce communities.
Announcing Partner Central—The New Partner Community Solution
Recruit, onboard, and manage your partner relationships from a central location built on the new, native Lightning solution: Partner Central. Extend your CRM tools and data to channel partners in a responsive, flexible community that is powered by Lightning and the Salesforce platform. Welcome to the new way to drive channel sales!
Connect Your Content Management System (CMS) to Your Community (Beta)
Is your company’s website built in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)? CMS Connect lets you bring your AEM content, such as headers, footers, and banners, into your community. Dynamically render your components, CSS, and JavaScript on community pages for consistent branding, authentication, and ease of maintenance. CMS Connect is available in communities that are based on Customer Service (Napili), Partner Central, and any Lightning Bolt solutions.
Get More Criteria-Based Audiences
Criteria-Based Audiences work with page variations to let you target specific audiences with specific pages. Previously, you had to create a whole bunch of different page variations and set criteria on each one. Now, you can create a set of criteria for an audience, and apply the same audience to multiple page variations. Starting Summer ‘17, we’re making some major tweaks and vast improvements on how you set up audiences. This functionality is available in communities that are based on the Customer Service (Napili), Partner Central, and Lightning Bolt solutions.
Community 360 Empowers Support Agents to Better Help Customers (Pilot)
Community 360 shows support agents working in the console which articles and cases customers have accessed in the community. Agents can use this information to check if customers have already looked at pertinent documentation, or already filed a case before calling support.
Protect Your Secrets by Adding a Login Form to Your Website
Enable users to log in before accessing a web page, such as your shopping cart, or your entire website with the Salesforce Identity Embedded Login feature. This feature is new in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.
Move Communities Between Orgs with Change Sets
You asked and we delivered! Change sets are now available for Lightning communities and Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce communities, making it easy to move your community between orgs that have a deployment connection. Create, customize, and test your community in your sandbox environment and then migrate the community to production when testing is complete.
Upgrade Community User Licenses in a Blink
Upgrade users with customer licenses to either the Customer Community Plus or the Partner Community license. Yes, you no longer have to create entirely new users and migrate their data. Yes, you’re very welcome!
Lightning Bolt: Package More Easily and Distribute on AppExchange
Exported and packaged Lightning Bolt solutions now include branding properties and Navigation Menu items, making it easier to reuse solutions. And if you’re a consulting partner or ISV, you can distribute Lightning Bolt solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange to connect customers to your custom offering.
Usability, Design, and Performance Improvements: Do More, More Easily
Workspaces and centralized branding let you design and manage more efficiently, while the App Launcher and Notifications provide ease of access and seamless collaboration for your users. And with the Community Page Optimizer, you can quickly assess and improve the performance of your community.
Lightning Communities: Improved Search, Updated and New Components, and More
Include topics and results from all feeds in global search, refine your content with dedicated Rich Content and HTML editors, add language support to any page, and much more.
Files in Lightning Communities: Promoting Productivity
We improved files in Communities with efficiency in mind. Now you can add multiple files to libraries, take action on files from related lists and the feed, and unshare files.
Chatter in Lightning Communities: Direct Message Enhancements, Feed View Count Reports, and More
Add and remove people from direct messages, filter groups by unread posts, and get a weekly report on the top 100 posts in your community.
Custom Lightning Components: Develop for Communities
Use the Lightning Component framework to build custom components for Communities.
Community Analytics: Service Community Scorecard, New User Participation Reports, and Sentiment Analysis
Service Community Scorecard is a community manager’s complete view of a self-service community. From measuring engagement to tracking search efficiency, the Service Community Scorecard helps you keep your community in tip-top shape. We’ve also added new reports to track the daily participation of community members. Turn on Sentiment Analysis to track the general mood of posts and comments in your community (pilot).
Take Action from the Flagged Discussions Moderation Queue
Moderating your community is now easier and faster with our new Flagged Discussions moderation queue. Optimized for productivity, you can now work through flagged posts and comments quickly while getting all the information you need in context.
Other Changes in Communities
Learn about smaller changes that improve your experience with Communities.

Communities: Partner Central Solution, CMS Connect, Notifications, and More

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