SFDO Advisor Link Release Announcements

Advisor Link 2.52 is scheduled to begin pushing to sandboxes tonight, March 31, 2021. Look for the update in your instance over the next couple of days. The push to production is scheduled to begin next Tuesday evening, April 6, 2021. 

This release includes the following fixes and enhancements.

• We updated the appointment card in the advisee portal so that it shows the Group badge for all group appointments, all the time. Previously, if only one advisee was signed up for a group appointment during an advisor's Group availability block, the badge displayed "Scheduled Appointment." 

• We also updated the appointment card on the SAL Launchpad Agenda component. Now, that card shows the details of the appointment location and a Join Web Meeting button just like the card does in other components in the portal.

• We removed the default value Group from the Group Availability Event Type field in Custom Settings. Now, when you open custom settings, no value is set for Group Appointments. If you're not ready to implement Group appointments, clear the value from the custom setting so that advisors don't see it in their Availability Settings page. If you've already implemented Group availability, this change doesn't affect you and you don't need to do anything. If you haven't implemented Group availability but you're ready to, see Set Up Group Advising Availability for instructions. https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/SAL-Set-Up-Group-Availability

Pathways remains on 1.8 for this release.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions about this release. Do you have suggestions for future enhancements? Head over to the Advisor Link category on the Trailblazer Community Ideas Exchange.

EDA Release 1.111 , our Spring ‘21 Major Release, is scheduled to begin pushing to sandboxes tonight, (February 25, 2021). Look for the update in your instance over the next couple of days. Because this is a major release, we are giving you more time in the sandbox environment. The push to production is scheduled to begin Tuesday evening, March 9, 2021.

With this release we are excited to to deliver the following:

Settings Health Check

Routine checkups are essential for everyone, including EDA orgs. Now you have a trusty new tool for maintaining a healthy org. We're excited to announce the availability of Settings Health Check, which identifies configuration inconsistencies and errors with settings related to Accounts, Affiliation Mappings, Reciprocal Settings, and Course Connections. Run Settings Health Check to see the passed and failed validations, along with recommended fixes for errors. For example, in Affiliation mappings, if more than one mapping specifies the same Account record type, that validation fails. Or if a mapping involves an Account record type that isn't marked active in Setup or doesn't exist, that validation fails.

Settings Health Check is included starting with EDA 1.111 if you're starting with the trial version. If you started with an earlier version or you're starting with EDA 1.111 via the installer rather than the trial, add the Lightning Component Tab. See Settings Health Check. https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/EDA-Settings-Health-Check EDA feature telemetry now collects data about when Settings Health Check was last run.

Check out the recording of Education Cloud Release Readiness Live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rv9GcNE3VU to see more about this new tool! Jump to EDA’s specific section of the video here. https://youtu.be/6rv9GcNE3VU?t=931

Enable Apex Class Access for Settings Health Check

To access the new Settings Health Check, users must have access to these EDA Apex classes: HealthCheckController and HealthCheckGroupController. If you're starting with this version of EDA via the trial version, access for the System Administrator profile is enabled automatically. If you started with an earlier version, or you're starting with EDA 1.111 via the installer, or you need to grant access to other profiles or for permission sets, see Enable EDA Apex Class Access. https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/EDA-Enable-Apex-Class-Access

Reciprocal Settings Updates

We've updated the reciprocal relationship settings for Husband and Wife to use the existing picklist value, Partner, instead of Spouse. We've also added a new reciprocal setting for Partner. If you're starting with this version of EDA, these changes are included automatically. If you started with an earlier version, and you use the List Setting method for reciprocal Relationships, make these updates in EDA Settings | Relationships | Reciprocal Settings.

Also, for the Relationship object's Type field, make sure that its picklist values reflect relevant updates from all earlier versions. Otherwise, the new Settings Health Check feature now reports any missing values as errors, which could be meaningful if you use the List Setting method for reciprocal Relationships. See Keep Up with Relationship Updates. https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/EDA-Relationship

Read About Leads in EDA

We've got new documentation resources available for those of you who are tracking suspect and prospect data in EDA. For recommendations on how to configure and use Leads, check out the Lead and Model Suspects and Prospects articles. https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/EDA-Model-Suspects Also review the import considerations we provide for Leads in Recommended Data Import Sequence for EDA. https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/EDA-Data-Import-Sequence

Please let us know if you have any questions about this release. Do you have suggestions for future enhancements? Head over to the Education Data Architecture category on the Trailblazer Community Ideas Exchange https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/ideaSearch?filter=Education+%3E+Education+Data+Architecture

Advisor Link 2.50, our Spring ‘21 Major Release, is scheduled to begin pushing to sandboxes tonight, February 25, 2021. Look for the update in your instance over the next couple of days. Because this is a major release, we are giving you more time in the sandbox environment. The push to production is scheduled to begin Tuesday evening, March 9, 2021.

With this release we are excited to expand on our group appointment and web meeting functionality. Advisors can now create recurring availability for group appointments that can be reserved by advisees through the Scheduling Wizard. We’ve also added automation to our web meeting fields. Now, if advisors provide a static URL in the Meeting Link field for a virtual Appointment Location, Advisor Link automatically enables a button to join the meeting from the appointment card in the portal and from the Appointment Manager in the app. 

Check out the recording of Education Cloud Release Readiness Live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rv9GcNE3VU to see both of these features in action and to get some tips for setting them up. Both features require that you've enabled flex scheduling. The new web meeting buttons don't need additional configuration. To learn more, see our articles Set Up Group Availability https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/SAL-Set-Up-Group-Availability and Enable Virtual Appointments. https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/SAL-Appt-Features#ariaid-title6

You may have heard that with the Salesforce.com Spring ‘21 release, Community Cloud became Experience Cloud. https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_experiences_rebrand.htm&type=5&release=230 While this doesn't affect the functionality of Advisor Link communities, we've updated our documentation to reflect the change. You'll now see our docs refer to, and hear us talk about, "Experience Cloud sites" and "advisee portals" instead of communities. 

We’ve also published a Hub article that lists the Apex classes that Advisor Link needs so that advisors and advisees don't encounter errors in the app and in the portal.  We'll keep the article up-to-date when we add new Apex classes, and we'll also let you know here in release announcements. There are no new Apex classes with this release. 

In this release, we also fixed an issue that prevented advisees from scheduling an appointment with an advisor in the portal when they have multiple advisors on multiple success teams with overlapping availability to meet about the same topic. This fix closes a known issue https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/issues_view?id=a1p4V000001nSxLQAU&title=sfdo-advisorlink-appointment-booking-wizard-not-displaying-location-availability-in-certain-circumstances

Pathways remains on 1.8 for this release.

Finally, we've been thinking as a team about ways to make managing releases easier for you. As a starting point we’d like to form a customer council with admins and end users. We’ll be posting here with more information and nomination details in the coming weeks. 

As always, please let us know if you have any questions about this release. Do you have suggestions for future enhancements? Head over to the Advisor Link category on the Trailblazer Community Ideas Exchange. https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/ideaSearch?filter=Education+%3E+Advisor+Link