Dreamforce 2017 takeaways on Einstein Analytics

4 days of Dreamforce has come to an end and what an experience! There were many sessions on Einstein Analytics, in fact too many for me to attend, so I had to do like everyone else… Prioritise! Two sessions I want to highlight is the Einstein Analytics keynote and the Einstein Analytics roadmap session. I have tried to summarise my key takeaways for us loving the analytics.

AI everywhere

I guess that one doesn’t only apply to analytics but nonetheless it is analytical insight about data. Well, it’s being embedded into Salesforce everywhere; predictive lead score, suggestions on how to close your opportunities or cases faster with success and much more. But also within Salesforce Operational reporting and Einstein Analytics, we will see more of this. During the keynote a demo on Einstein Data Insight was delivered; a button on your lightning report builder that with a click tells you what Einstein found out about your data including the functions explore, comparison, trends, and quality. An example I saw was Einstein Data Insight analyzing how to maximise % on the field isWon for opportunities.

During the roadmap, I really noticed how Einstein Discovery and Einstein Analytics is being brought more together. Several features included more analysis of your data within your dashboards. For instance, you could:

• Conversational exploration where you ask questions about your data such as “what is the predicted margin by lead source” for your opportunity data. 
• Explore your data in a time machine where you get insights on past, present, and future in terms of comparison, trends, and quality.
• Add Einstein Discovery stories to your dashboard with a click.
• Create and set goals for your KPI’s to see how they are progressing and get suggestions on how to meet them.

Improvements to Analytics Studio

During the Einstein Analytics roadmap session, we were shown a lot of new improvements to the Analytics studio.

• Conditional highlighting will be brought into the UI. So if your closed opportunity value has met your rules it will be shown in your defined color.
• It looks like lightning is coming to Einstein Analytics. So for us that have been working on the platform for a while, we need to adapt to a new UI. But it is cool to see how the overall user experience on the Salesforce platform is being brought together.
• A lot of work has gone into the templated apps for Sales and Service! With the introduction of a library, you can pick the steps/charts you want to use and add them to your dashboard with a few clicks.
• More binding in the UI. You get to within the dashboard designer to pick which steps/charts should be bound and interact with each other.
• When you are building and creating your dashboard you may not remember which fields are included in the dataset you are using – that will be more easy with a button to check fields in the dataset from the dashboard designer.

I, of course, want to highlight that most of the features (if not all) mentioned in this blog are not generally available yet – and there is no information on when it will be. So be patient and enjoy the wonderful features we got with the Winter18 release.

Written by

Rikke Hovgaard

I have worked with CRM Analytics since 2015 (back then Wave). I started this blog to help make the journey to master CRM Analytics easy by documenting tips, tricks & cool solutions.

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