New Features and Enhancements in Services CPQ April 2023

The following new features have been introduced in the April 2023 release of Services CPQ.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, see Upgrading to Services CPQ April 2023. This provides a summary of the items that have been added for each feature and details of any required upgrade steps.

Vendor Line Items

We have added the Estimate Vendor Line Item object, which enables you to add the cost of working with a development partner to an estimate. When you push an estimate to an opportunity, the total bill amount of vendor line items is populated in the new Total Vendor Line Item Bill Amount field on the opportunity product. When you create a project from an estimate, a budget with a type of "Vendor Purchase Order" is created for each account associated with a vendor line item. The budget derives its account from the vendor line item, and stores the total cost of the account's vendor line items.

You can select the Create Milestone checkbox on a vendor line item record, enabling you to determine whether a milestone is created from the vendor line item when a project is created from an estimate. Your administrator can map the field values that are copied and also disable the creation of milestones using a custom setting.

Your administrator can also disable vendor line items in your org using a custom setting.

For more information, see the following topics:

Refreshing Role Request Rates

We have introduced the Refresh Rates action, which enables you to refresh the bill rates and cost rates of an estimate product's role requests. This is to ensure that they are using the current suggested bill rate and average cost rate values from the related rate cards. For more information, see Refreshing Role Request Rates.

Cloning an Estimate

You can now clone an estimate to copy the estimate details and all associated records to a new estimate. If required, any estimate fields can be excluded from cloning. For more information, see Cloning an Estimate.

If any estimates fail to clone, you'll receive a notification. Your administrator can view more information about the failure in the related app log record. For more information, see App Log.

Enhancements to Discounting

The following enhancements have been made to the way discounting is reflected in estimate values:

  • Global discounts are now reflected in the Bill Rate, Net Bill Amount, Margin (Amount), and Margin (Percent) column values in the Estimate Builder component. Discounts to tasks also now affect these values on role requests, and discounts to tasks and role requests affect these values on line sets.
  • The Bill Amount field on tasks no longer includes any discounts.
  • The Discount (Amount) and Discount (Percent) fields on the estimate now reflect all discounts on the entire estimate, rather than just on tasks and role requests.
  • The Global Discount (Amount) field on estimates no longer includes task or role request discounts. It only displays the estimate's Global Discount (Percent) field as an amount.

For more information, see the following topics:

Custom Actions

We have created an invocable method for adding estimate products to an estimate that you can use within Salesforce Flow Builder. Additionally, the custom action for creating estimates now has the option to include estimated expenses when creating an estimate from a template. For more information, see Custom Actions.

Adding from Template

Estimated expenses are now included when adding records to an estimate from template. For more information, see Adding from an Estimate Template.

Enhancements in the Builder

We have added arrow indicators which are displayed next to the bill or cost rate of a role request if the rate doesn't match the related rate card. This can happen if a discount is applied to the role request, a parent record, or the estimate globally, or the rates have been overridden. To accommodate this addition, we have removed the indicator for overridden rates. For more information, see Adding Role Requests to an Estimate and Overriding Role Request Rates.

Your administrator can now hide the Add Line Set and Add Task buttons in the Estimate Builder component. For more information, see Estimate Builder Lightning Component Properties.

Creating a Project from Estimate Flow

We have added a summary of existing resource requests for estimate products that have previously been pushed to opportunity in the Opportunity Product Preview step of the create project from estimate flow. For more information, see Creating a Project from an Estimate and Pushing an Estimate to an Opportunity.

Field Mappings

We have created the Role to Resource Request Mappings page, which enables administrators to map fields on a role request to fields on a resource request when a resource request is created from a role request. This ensures the required data is transferred from the role request to the appropriate fields on the resource request. The page can be accessed by navigating to the Role to Resource Request Mappings tab, or using the link on the Services CPQ Administration page. For more information, see Services CPQ Administration

Grouping Criteria

Lookup fields are now supported in any Grouping Criteria windows. Lookup fields in the field set specified in the Role Request Consolidation Field Set field in the Services CPQ custom setting can now be selected in the grouping criteria when pushing an estimate to opportunity or creating a project. For more information, see Managing Custom Settings from Setupand Pushing an Estimate to an Opportunity.

Deprecated Fields

In this release, we have deprecated the  Apply Discount to Expense field on the Estimate object.

Permissions

For information about the changes to permissions in this release, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.

Fixes

Fixes are listed on the Known Issues page of the Certinia Community. You can access this page from the Community Support Hub. For a brief description of the issues that have been fixed in this version of Services CPQ, see the relevant section of the Known Issues page.