Armadillo
Installation
This release is fully backwards compatible, it will not affect existing configurations and no down-time is required to accept the new release. Installation is done either through AppExchange or by requesting NC Squared to push the new release. Upgrade instructions are here.
Summary
This section lists, at a high level, the enhancements made to the application in this release. For more detail on any of these please refer to the detail section further down this page.
Stability improvements
- Automatic adjustments of record limits when Salesforce CPU limits are reached.
- Detection of conflicts in UI to reduce scheduler stoppages.
- Automatic shutdown of distributors causing multiple errors, warning Email will be sent to users on the health checker notify list.
- Ability to select up to 5 users to be notified of any health checker warnings.
- Fixes for various UI issues.
Improved visibility and tracking
- Inline VisualForce page to show assignment history on Lead, Case & Opportunity.
- Distributor test tool expanded to include team member testing.
- New user login mode (toggle history) visualisation.
- Increased logging and history limits
Lookup owner algorithm
- Addition of an optional filter to lookup owner algorithm.
- No longer case sensitive.
Team level tag based capping
- New hourly cap added.
- Allow capping at the team level, either hourly, daily or load balanced and set the cap limit by tag: E.g. A senior tag has higher limit than junior tag.
UI improvements
- Improvements to the team summary page to reduce the number of clicks required to edit team / distributors.
- Status bar showing scheduler status and any errors.
Enhancements
Area | Name | Description |
Algorithms | Lookup owner - round robin option simplified | The round robin checkbox on lookup owner will be hidden unless its already in use. This is a common cause of confusion. Previously, if the lookup owner did not find a match, the default behavior was to perform a standard round robin. The new simpler approach is for the lookup owner to do nothing where no match is found, and allow the next distributor in the team to run. |
Algorithms | Lookup owner - allow filtered search | Previously, lookup owner would attempt to find a match by searching all records within Salesforce. It is now possible to filter this lookup search with a single filter. E.g. Only lookup to accounts where Account Type = Customer. This filter can be a formula field for more complex requirements. |
Algorithms | Allow all number fields in filters | There were some field types such as "No. of Employees" on Lead which did not appear in the picklist of available fields in distributor filters. These integer field types have now been included. |
Algorithms | Make lookup owner case insensitive | Lookup owner used to require an exact case match. This has now been relaxed to be case insensitive. |
Algorithms | Distributor cap - hourly limit | A new hourly cap option has been added to distributors and to the team level cap. Please note, this cap is reset each hour on-the-hour, it is not a rolling hourly average. |
Capping & weighting | Team-level caps | In addition to the hourly, daily or load balanced caps on each distributor, it is now possible to create team wide caps. The team wide limit is set by tag e.g. Junior, Senior tags may have different limits. The team wide caps will be one of hourly, daily or load balanced and is checked in conjunction with the distributor caps. The team wide caps can be used in addition to the existing distributor level caps. Whenever a team member reaches either a distributor or a team wide cap distribution will be prevented for that team member until they return within cap limits. |
Capping & weighting | Increase max weighting to 4 | Previously the maximum weighting in the sliders was 3. This has now been increased to 4 |
History & logging | Extend user activity history to 3 months | The duration for retaining user activity history (widget toggle) logs has been extended from 30 days to a new maximum of 3 months. |
History & logging | New Account Lookup field on Distribution Log | An account lookup field has been added to the Distribution Log object and will be populated for account object distributions. This allows more custom reporting options for customers doing account distribution |
History & logging | Show history on OoO | The Distribution OoO (out of office) tab will show the history of added and removed entries when a team or a user selected. |
History & logging | Distribution Logs - changes to filters/search layout | Improved filtering and searching on the Distribution Logs tab |
History & logging | User activity visualisation | In addition to the standard User Activity report included in the package. Its now possible to view this user toggle online / offline data in a visualisation on the Distribution Analytics tab. |
History & logging | Distribution log limits | The maximum storage for distribution logs was previously 3 months. This limit has been extended to a new 6 month maximum. This can be changed on the Distribution Settings tab. |
Stability | Lock UI when scheduler running | Occasionally customers will notice the scheduler being restarted by the health checker. This is due in many cases to locking issues, where configuration changes are in progress blocking the Distribution Engine scheduler from running. The UI will warn and prevent saving when Distribution Engine is running to prevent this conflict. |
Stability | Developer orgs restricted | Developer orgs have very low storage limits and can be problematic. Developer orgs will now be blocked by default, however they can be enabled on request by contacting NC Squared support. |
Stability | CPU limit solution | With high volumes of records it has been possible for Salesforce to abort jobs due to CPU limits being reached. This typically affected customers with high volumes of records in queues while using tags. The health checker will now detect this issue and automatically adjust the number of records picked up per run to stay within Salesforce limits. Once the backlog has been cleared the limits will automatically be increased again. |
Stability | Automatic shutdown of a distributor when more than 100 errors in one hour | On occasion DE can be prevented from assigning due to issues such as validation rules blocking updates to records. These are logged as errors. When errors occur they can build up rapidly and clog up the logs. Distribution Engine will now shut down any distributor which experiences 100 errors within an hour and notify the users on the health checker notify list. Once the problem has been rectified e.g. relaxing the validation rule or fixing the data the distributor can be re-activated. |
Stability | Ability to select multiple users for health checker warning Emails. | In the Distribution Settings tab, it was previously only possible for the user who started Distribution Engine to receive Email notifications from the health checker. It is now possible for up to 5 people to be selected in this list. The available list is limited to Salesforce users licensed to use Distribution Engine (i.e. they are in a team or they have a managed package licence). |
Tracking & alerting | Time to action field on lead & case | A new time to action field has been added on lead & case. This will be auto-populated with the time in minutes for the first action. |
Tracking & alerting | Single time to action field | For simplicity, time to action will be a single value rather than selecting multiple values to track. For customers already tracking multiple values there will be no change. |
UI | Status bar | A status bar has been added under all DE pages, this shows the current status of the scheduler and notifies where problems have occurred. |
UI | Add / remove team member, improved filter search | Add / remove team member search now allows searching by first name, last name or letters within a name. |
UI | Show user login mode and change history for non-SF admins | Some users have the DE admin permission set but they are not system admins for Saleforce and therefore don’t have author apex permission, so they cannot start and stop the scheduler. At the moment the entire page is hidden for them (except licence settings) |
UI | Ability to swap between team & shift hours for team members | On team summary, it is now possible to swap between team hours and individual shift hours for team members by double clicking the pencil icon next to team members. This option will only show where shift hours have been created. |
UI | Recent assignments within preview | On the Distribution Console tab, in the Queues sub-tab, it is now possible to click on the available count for a distributor. This brings up a new preview / recent assignment pop-up to view records waiting for assignment and recent assignments by this distributor. |
UI | Pull distributor for service console | Previously when using pull distributors from within a service or sales cloud console, the agent would be redirected away from the console to view the assignment. This has now been changed to open a new tab and remain within the console. |
UI | Ability to order pull distributors | In the team summary page pull distributors can be ordered by dragging, this will control the order the show in the team summary page and also the order of the picklist in the widget. |
UI | Hours selection drop downs / text entry | Improved Hours selection UI in shift hours/team member hours/OoO/holiday. The UI has been changed to remove the loading time and also users to type specific hour and minutes rather than being forced to select only from picklist options. |
UI | Increase active status field limits | In team detail which selecting which status values were considered active some customers reached a field limit. The previous limit for the number of status fields which could be selected for the active status was limited to 255 characters. This has been increased to a new limit of 10,000. |
UI | Clone shift hours | The ability to clone shift hours has been added in the UI. |
UI | Stop team button | A stop team button has been added to the team summary page to quickly de-activate a team. |
UI | Team member test tool | The Distributor Test tool available on the Distribution Console > Queues and from Distributors previously allowed checking records against distributor filter criteria. This has now been expanded to also show the availability of team members to receive the record based on their hours, tags etc. |
UI | Lead / Case / Opportunity Inline Visualforce page | A new inline VisualForce page has been added which can be placed onto Lead, Opportunity and Case page layouts. This gives a quick insight into the Distribution History for the current record. It also provides a quick way to access the distributor test tool to check why a record is not being picked up for assignment. |
UI | Turn off all alerts / auto-reassigns from team detail | It was previously not possible to turn off alerting for a team without first disabling alerts on each distributor. This has been changed to allow disabling alerts from the team which will automatically disable alerting for all the distributors for the team |
UI | Console alert count cleared daily | On Distribution Console the alert count was previously set to remain until the alerts were resolved. This has been changed to only show alerts raised today. Older alerts can still be accessed via the Distribution Logs tab. |
UI | Hide advanced filter mode for new teams | In order to ensure stability of Distribution Engine and to avoid excessive load on Salesforce servers we have been actively engaged with Salesforce engineering teams to enforce fast performing queries among our customer base. The advanced filter mode, whilst flexible does permit inefficient queries to be developed. These can impact the performance of DE and Salesforce as a whole. For teams already using advanced filter mode there will be no change, but new teams will have the advanced mode hidden. We aim to provide more guidance and flexibility through the standard UI rather than allowing hand crafted queries in future. |
