Salesforce AppExchange Rebranded to Salesforce Store With These 7 New Features

Salesforce recently announced the rebranding of the Salesforce AppExchange to the Salesforce Store with the release of 7 new features. Salesforce stated that the new Salesforce Store is “a faster, smarter, and more personalized experience” in hopes of making it easier to find and install apps that will help improve your business.

Below is an infographic created by Salesforce to highlight the 7 new features that were added, along with our take on each of them.

1. Personalized Recommendations, just for you

Personal recommendations are a double edge sword. On one end you are being exposed to new and (potentially) useful apps that can improve your business. On the other, your admin is going to be bombarded with requests by your sales team to add a new app that is “guaranteed to quadruple your productivity” on a daily basis.

While there are some apps that could have a huge impact on your business, most of them are just nice-to-haves that are more of a pain to implement than they are worth.

2. Intelligent search. Find what you want – faster.

Finally! Salesforce has made some much-needed updates their search engine results page(SERP) for the AppExchange. The old interface was extremely cluttered and tough to navigate. The new interface is simple and provides you with all the information you need at a glance.

It’s hard to tell how much the search results themselves have improved with the new ‘intelligent search’ but the overall search experience seems to have been significantly improved.

3. App Category Pages: Explore By Department

Here is another feature aimed at improving the overall experience of the AppExchange. It seems as if Salesforce is attempting to make it easier to browse and find solutions to your problems without being an admin.

4. Lightning Data and Bolt solutions: More Ways To Extend Salesforce

Lightning bolt solutions are very similar to Appexchange apps except they are complete solutions containing industry process flows, apps, lightning components, and communities, that are all seamlessly integrated with Salesforce. This will allow users to quickly deploy communities around a product or service using pre-built templates and drag and drop development.

The lightning data release is an incredibly exciting innovation from Salesforce. Essentially, your Salesforce org will automatically pull data in from different sources to enrich your current accounts, contacts, etc.. with things like social profiles, additional contact information, and demographic info. Additionally, some of the Lightning data solutions will use your data to improve workflows and prioritize activities.

5. Embedded Learning: Know More About AppExchange

The AppExchange is an incredible tool for anyone looking to power up their Salesforce org but it’s definitely not easy to use – especially for a first time user. The new learning modules that are provided directly on the store can direct a newbie admin through the entire process of selecting, installing, testing, and deploy an AppExchange app to their Org.

6. Product and Industry Collections: More Ways to find what you love.

This is very similar to feature #3, and the feedback is the same. Anything that Salesforce does to make it easier and more intuitive to navigate through the platform gets a thumbs up from me.

7. The Ohana Tab: Learn and Connect to the community

Since it’s inception, Salesforce has done a great job at creating a community around their product. Whether that’s Salesforce professionals, partners, customers, or employees, Salesforce continues to find ways to keep everyone instilled with a strong sense of community. The “Salesforce Ohana” tab is simply another way to expose people to the incredible community that surrounds Salesforce and provide people everything they need to be successful on their Salesforce journey.

Conclusion

At first glance, this update may not seem like much. But when you start to navigate through the improved UI, read into some of the lightning data & bolt solutions, and take a look at the new tutorials, the Salesforce Store is a dramatic improvement from the previous AppExchange.

If you’re thinking about deploying your app to the new Salesforce Store, or simply need help implementing a new solution, we can help.