New Features and Enhancements in Foundations Spring 2021

The following new features have been introduced in the Spring 2021 release of FinancialForce Foundations.

Compare and Merge Multiple Permissions via Permission Workbench

In this release, a Permission Workbench tab has been added to the User Management App. This allows you to easily compare and merge permission sets, permission set groups, profiles, and users in a Salesforce org and simplify the assignment of permissions to permission sets, permission set groups, profiles, and users.

From this new Permission Workbench tab, you can:

Note: To use the Permission Workbench tab from the User Management app, you must have the FDN User Management - Permission Workbench permission set assigned in Foundations. Contact your administrator if you require this Foundations permission set. For more information, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.

For more information about analyzing the permissions contained in permission sets, permission set groups, profiles, and assigned to users, see Permission Workbench.

Simplified Messaging Setup Experience

We have updated and optimized the Foundations messaging setup process. Foundations messaging enables you to transfer data to and from FinancialForce apps.

The previous messaging setup process consisted of independent message type, publication, and subscription pages, where sources and targets were defined in isolation. The new process is centered around messaging relationships, a publication and subscription pair on a message type. This enables you to view all aspects of a messaging relationship on a single page.

From the new Message Type page, you can:

For details about how to get started with Foundations messaging, see Foundations Administration App.

The new Message Type page is visible by default. If the page is not displayed when viewing a message type from the Message Types list view, re-run the Lightning Page Assignments feature for the Message Type object.

For more information, see Updating Lightning Record Pages.

Customer Engagement

We have added the Engagement object to help you track the entire lifecycle of your interaction with a given customer. An engagement record links together related products and services that can originate from multiple revenue streams, such as professional services, subscriptions, and goods. For example, you might provide yearly licenses for a software, implementation services, and accompanying hardware to a customer. An engagement links together the three revenue streams and allows you to easily access the relevant data. By leveraging the Salesforce platform and Analytics, we aim to provide you with an accurate, relevant, and visually engaging snapshot of the metrics that matter most to you.

An engagement record stores basic information that defines a single engagement you have with a customer. It collates all the relevant data from the related records. This means that the data isn't copied from other records, ensuring that the engagement automatically displays the latest data.

You can easily access the Engagements tab from the new Customer Engagement Lightning app.

For more information, see Engagements and Setting up the Engagement Functionality.

Records from Other FinancialForce Products Related to the Engagement

We have enhanced objects from other FinancialForce products to contain a lookup to the Engagement object. Depending on the FinancialForce products that you use, an engagement can be linked to:

For more information, see the following:

Engagement and Billing Documents

We have also added an Engagement lookup to the Billing Document object. The lookup is populated automatically when you create a billing document from:

In addition, we have added the Document Source picklist to help you identify where a billing document originates from. The value of the field is automatically set to:

If you use Billing Central and the Consolidated Invoicing feature, you can consolidate billing documents by engagement. This allows you to create a single billing document from all the draft billing documents related to the same engagement. You can then invoice your customers only once, for all the products and services provided within the engagement.

For more information, see Engagements and Setting up the Engagement Functionality.

Engagement Analytics

If you use FinancialForce Business Analytics, you can leverage your existing Financial Analytics and PSA Analytics apps to create visually rich dashboards for your engagements. The dashboards can then be embedded into the engagement Lightning record page. This allows you to easily view and analyze the KPIs for an engagement record.

Note:

In Spring 2021, Engagement Analytics doesn't include data from SCM. This means that the dashboards don't contain information from sales orders related to the engagement.

The dashboards allow you to view the revenue, invoiced, cost, and margin amounts at several levels:

In addition, you can easily identify the current health of the engagement. For example, the number of related projects at risk, or the total annual recurring revenue across the related active billing contracts.

For more information, see New Features and Enhancements Spring 2021 in the Business Analytics Help.

Engagement Timeline

We have also leveraged the new Engagements dataset to provide you with a timeline view of your engagement sources. You can view when specific segments of an engagement start, how long they take, and when they end. You can do this directly from the Lightning record page.

For more information, see Using the Engagement Timeline and Customizing the Engagement Lightning Record Page.

Global Navigation using the Utility Bar

In this release of FinancialForce Foundations, a new FinancialForce Navigation component is available that can be added to a utility bar. You can add the FinancialForce Navigation component to your custom apps to provide an easy-to-use global navigation solution.

For more information about adding the FinancialForce Navigation component to your custom apps, see Adding the FinancialForce Navigation Component to a Utility Bar.

In addition, the FinancialForce Navigation configuration provides global navigation links for each FinancialForce product installed in the org. This allows users to navigate quickly between FinancialForce applications and provides easy access to the most relevant tasks.

Note: The FinancialForce Navigation component and FinancialForce Navigation configuration are delivered as default with the FinancialForce Accounting Lightning Apps.

For more information about using the FinancialForce Navigation Utility Bar with Accounting, see Navigating in the Accounting Help.

Enhanced FinancialForce Alert Cards Lightning Components

The following enhancements are made to improve the functionality of the FinancialForce alert cards.

Additional Calculation Types Supported on Alert Cards

In previous releases, it was possible to display a count of records in a list view or a sum of values on the alert cards. We have extended this functionality, and you can now apply a wide range of calculation types to the major and minor KPI values on your alert cards. You can now perform different calculations to the values that are displayed on alert cards.

To find out more about the supported calculation types, see FinancialForce Alert Card Calculation Types.

Translating Calculation Type Labels on Alert Cards

You can now translate calculation type picklist values for major and minor KPIs on your alert cards. This enables you to translate and view the picklist values based on your specified languages.

To find out more about how to translate the major and minor KPI picklist values, see Adding Custom Translations.

Additional Field Types Supported on Alert Cards

In previous releases, it was possible to determine the type of record you want to display on alert cards based on selecting limited field types. We have now extended this functionality, and you can now select different field types, and based on the selection, you can display the record on your alert cards.

For more information about the different field types, see FinancialForce Alert Card Field Types.

Color Coding Major KPI Values on Alert Cards

You can now apply color coding on your alert cards based on the major KPI values. You can set a default color, and different colors for values above or below specific thresholds to help the user understand the current state of the record.

To find out more about defining the thresholds, see Setting up FinancialForce Alert Cards.

New FinancialForce Highlight Cards Lightning Components

Since the Fall 2020 release, it has been possible to add the FF Highlight Numbers Panel component to a record page to display the values of up to three number or currency fields as highlight cards in a summary panel. We have extended this functionality and new components are now available to display information from number, picklist, or date fields in highlight cards on a record page. These highlight cards provide highly configurable, at-a-glance information derived from a record and allow users to quickly review the state of the record.

Component

Description

Further Information
FF Highlight Date Card Display the value of date fields as cards on your Lightning record page layouts. Apply threshold color coding to help the user understand the current state of the record.

Setting up FinancialForce Highlight Date Cards

FF Highlight Number Card Display the value of number fields as cards on your Lightning record page layouts. Apply threshold color coding to help the user understand the current state of the record.

Setting up FinancialForce Highlight Number Cards

FF Highlight Picklist Card Display the value of picklist fields as cards on your Lightning record page layouts. Apply threshold color coding to help the user understand the current state of the record.

Setting up FinancialForce Highlight Picklist Cards

Enhancements to Navigation Configuration Builder

The following enhancements are made to improve the functionality of the Navigation Configuration Builder.

Five Levels of Group Nesting in the Navigation Configuration Builder

You can now add five levels of nested groups in the Navigation Configuration Builder and then add the FF Navigation component to the Lightning pages. You can set the first group in the list as the parent group, the second group in the list is nested one level, the third group in the list is nested two levels, and so on up to four levels. You can also rearrange and reorder multiple groups by dragging them to a valid location.

For more information, see Creating and Editing Sections, Groups, and Navigation Items.

Editing Sections, Groups, and Navigation Items in the Navigation Configuration Builder

We have extended the functionality of the edit action that we introduced in the previous release. You can now modify the sections, groups, and navigation item information by double-clicking on the row in the Navigation Builder Preview area.

For more information, see Creating and Editing Sections, Groups, and Navigation Items.

Enhancements to the FinancialForce Navigation Lightning Component

Hiding Navigation Sections

We have added a Hide Navigation Sections checkbox to the FF Navigation component to enable you to hide the navigation section labels in the navigation pane.

Showing a Search Field

We have added a Show Search checkbox to the FF Navigation component. This enables you to enter three or more characters to find matches in the navigation hierarchy. All matches are highlighted.

For more information, see Adding the FF Navigation Component to a Lightning Page.

Avalara AvaTax REST 2.0 API

FinancialForce Foundations now supports the Avalara AvaTax REST 2.0 API.

If you are upgrading and you use Avalara AvaTax with FinancialForce Foundations, you must enable the Upgrade Avalara Tax Provider feature in the Feature Console.

For more information, see Upgrading Avalara Tax Provider.

For information about how to set up your connection to Avalara AvaTax, see Tax Calculation using Avalara AvaTax.

Validating Addresses with Avalara AvaTax

If you validate addresses using Avalara AvaTax, note that the Avalara AvaTax REST 2.0 API no longer supports the following fields, so values are not returned for them:

Plugin to Assign Permission Set Groups via the User Management App

You can now assign permission set groups to users via the User Management app. To do this, when creating User Management Template Data records, set the Plugin field to UMT_PermissionSetGroups and the Value field to the API name of the permission set group. When you assign the associated user management template to a user, the permission set group is assigned along with other data included with the template.

For more information, see User Management App.

New Message Type Lookup on the Message Object

We have replaced the Message Type field on the Message object. This field was previously of type master-detail and is now a lookup. We have made this change to facilitate performance improvements in Foundations messaging.

Any messages that are not linked to a message type will be automatically deleted when you next run the Message Deletion scheduled job.

For more information about upgrading to use the new field, see Updating Message Type Lookup on Messages.

Enhancements to Billing Documents

The following enhancements are made to billing documents.

Ready for Review Status

The document status of "Ready for Review" has been added. This status is set by Billing Central's Convert to Credit Note process when it is configured to create credit notes as "Ready for Review" rather than "Complete".

You cannot manually set a billing document's status to "Ready for Review".

For more information, see Convert to Credit Note Overview in the Billing Central Help.

Warning:

You must never change a billing document's status manually. The status is changed automatically by processes in Foundations and Billing Central. This ensures that associated processes, such as system messaging and validations, are triggered correctly. If you are using custom page layouts for Billing Document, we recommend you set the Document Status field to be read-only.

Rounding Tax Values on Billing Document Line Items

Tax values on billing document line items are now rounded using Salesforce's HALF-UP rounding method. This is consistent with how values are rounded throughout FinancialForce's applications. In previous releases, tax values on billing document line items were rounded using Salesforce's HALF-EVEN rounding method (sometimes known as bankers rounding).

If necessary you can choose to retain the previous behavior, but this means that you will get differing results between Billing Central and FinancialForce Accounting. To retain the previous behavior, enable the Tax Calculation Uses Bankers Rounding field in the FDN Common Object Settings custom setting.

Changes to Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation

We have updated the way we provide information about FinancialForce permissions. Comprehensive web resources are now available to help you manage security and user access.

For more information about the permissions provided by Foundations, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.

Fixes

Fixes are now listed on the Known Issues page of the FinancialForce Community. You can access this page from the Products menu. For a brief description of the issues that have been fixed in this version of Foundations, see the related section of the Known Issues page.