Salesforce Vlocity – Building the Future for Salesforce Industries

Salesforce Vlocity – What is it?

Salesforce has always been a pioneer in solving problems across the industry and enables companies to get maximum ROI in the quickest time. It basically packs the solutions to all the common problems into cloud solutions and makes it ready to deploy and implement in individual companies.

Salesforce Vlocity is built solely on the Salesforce Platform with the vision of delivering digital, omnichannel industry-specific solutions. It is not only limited to CRM but also offers extensive integrations and processes with lightning Web, Integration procedures, Vlocity actions, Data Migration, Tracking services, and more.

Salesforce Vlocity is known to transform the complete customer experience (CX) by standing out as the global success in customer relationship marketing. It solves the needs of particular industries such as Communications, Insurance, Energy and utilities, financial services, media, and health with omnichannel sales, marketing, and CPQ solutions.

Salesforce Vlocity – What Makes it so special?

● Increased efficiency with less workload

Vlocity solutions are comparatively low in code, which is another factor that makes it easier to implement. Being a low-code product, it is easier to maintain and store but that does not hamper its effectiveness. Less lines of codes also ensures that there is less scope of errors and that the users save time and resources throughout.

● Exemplary Results and Demand

Vlocity has shown impressive results, a lot of deployers have witnessed an instant increase in sales, and have seen increased marketing agility. Vlocity is also seeing this kind of success as it is one of the finest full-fledged industry solutions out there in the market. It brings all major processes like quoting, policy administration, and claims management into a single tab and also offers pre-configured transactions which can be used efficiently in the applications once downloaded.

Salesforce Vlocity – Features offered

OmniScript
OmniStudio Data Raptors
Flexcard Designer
Functions
Actions
Groups
Display
OmniStudio Integration procedure
OmniStudio Tracking Service
OmniStudio Lightning Web Components
IDX Workbench Desktop Application.

Salesforce Vlocity – Introduction to Omni Studio

Now what exactly is Omni Studio and why should you care? Vlocity as a product is managed by the customization functionality known as Omnistudio.

It is a modular system that assists in designing reusable solutions on Salesforce which helps save a lot of time when developing complex solutions. If we break down the standard components that make this possible, we get-

Flex Cards
OmniScripts
OmniStudio Data Raptors
Integration Procedures

Omni Studio – The three layers

1) Digital Experience

Flex cards collect contextual data from multiple sources and then use the collected data to display it responsively for people viewing it on their respective platforms. These are easy to configure and set up with the health of click-based components.

An example of a flex card showing 360 information of an account that includes fields like ‘view and edit information about a customer account, including a list of contacts and cases associated with the account, also viewing current weather and weather forecast information for the account’s location and see alerts of any hazardous weather conditions, all at one place; on a single screen.

OmniScript is an illustrative tool for drilling users through complicated sales or service processes. A drag-and-drop editor helps users to design customer interactions by creating specific sequences with elements like:
1. Actions (updating data, sending an email)
2. Display (adding text, images)
3. Functions (formulas, warnings)
4. Groups (e.g., Blocks for grouping items for a one-page view or Type ahead blocks for autocomplete and search)
5. Inputs (data input or selection)

2) Service Management

DataRaptors- DataRaptors help manipulate the data. For example, users might need to submit, change, and save new information. To enable this functionality, you turn to DataRaptors (Extract, TurboExtract, Load, Transform) that access and transform data from Salesforce objects or other external sources with OmniStudio Integration Procedures getting in the act.

Compared with Apex classes that perform similar operations, DataRaptors are less time-consuming and easier to maintain. Compared with Apex classes that perform identical functions, DataRaptors are less time-consuming and easier to maintain.

Integration Procedures- IP is a click-based process for retrieving information from third-party services without additional user interaction. Server-side processing allows you to minimize client/server calls and improve overall performance.

3) Developer Experience

Vlocity offers a seamless experience for developers with features like IDX Build tool which helps in managing OmniStudio Datapacks and IDX Workbench- a desktop application for migrating Datapacks and Salesforce metadata.

Quick Setup for Vlocity Communications and Insurance Orgs – A Guide

Before users can use Vlocity components to the fullest, they shall first set it up by following-

Setup and Deploy My Domain: Users must register a custom domain before using the Lightning App Builder to build an industry console.

Setup Remote Site Settings: To enable LWC features for the respective org, remote site settings must be updated. This is most relevant when users create FlexCards.
When the user logs into their vlcoity org, there are setup tasks that they need to complete before they can start working on Vlocity. These tasks need to be completed once for each communication or Insurance org.

Steps to be followed–

1. Change your email address.

In the upper right, click the ‘Astro’ icon and then click on ‘Settings’.
In the Details block, change the Email field to your corporate email address.
Scroll down and click on ‘Save’. Click on ‘OK’ to confirm. An email is sent to your corporate email address for confirmation.
Open the email and click the link to finish changing your email address.
Click on ‘Continue’ when prompted. You shall now have two browser tabs open for your org.

2. (Conditional) If you’re using an Insurance org, set up the platform cache. This step is already done in Communications orgs.

Click the ‘Gear’ icon to go to ‘Setup’.
In the Quick Find box, type -”Platform Cache”. Click on ‘Platform Cache’.
In the Vlocity Metadata row, on the left, click on ‘Edit’.
Under Org Cache Allocation, enter “2”.
Click on ‘Save’.
Click on ‘Back to Platform Cache Partitions’.
Click on ‘Request Trial Capacity’ and then select ‘OK’.

In addition to these steps, you need to disable pop-up blockers for your org and then follow the remaining steps-

3. Set up “My Domain”

Click the ‘Gear’ icon to go to Setup.
In the Quick Find box, type “my domain”. Click ‘My Domain’.
In My Domain Step 1, enter a unique domain name. You can try the unique part of your vlocity org login plus the industry for this. For example, if your login is
name@company.com.700001@vlocityapps.com
try 70001@domain.com
Click on ‘Check Availability’.
Click on ‘Register Domain’. This process typically takes less than 30 minutes.

4. Deploy Your Domain

Refresh the tab where the My Domain page is open.
If your domain is ready to be deployed, you will see My Domain Step 3. If you do not see this, wait until your domain is ready.
Under your domain name in the middle of the page, click on the ‘Log in’ button to relaunch your browser in your domain.
Click on ‘Deploy to Users’ and then click on ‘OK’. If prompted, block pop-up messages. This stops any browser windows opening issues from happening.
Close any extra browser tabs open in the old domain.

5. Grant access to your org domains to enable LWC features. Make sure you have deployed your domain before doing this.

In your org in the Cards tab, right-click on the screen and select ‘View Frame Source’ from the menu to open the iframe in a new browser tab.
Copy your domain from the address bar. For example, copy https://ins16883–vlocityins.visualforce.com.
In your org, go to Setup > Security > Remote Site Settings.
Depending on whether you are using a CMT or INS org, click on ‘Edit’ to open the LWC_Enable_VF or EnableLwcVisual remote site setting.
Paste your domain into the Remote Site URL field and click on ‘Save’.
Copy your lightning.force.com URL, which is visible in the address browser bar on all pages in your org. For example, copy https://ins16883.lightning.force.com.
Depending on whether you are using a CMT or INS org, click on ‘Edit’ to open the LWC_Enable or EnableLwc remote site setting.
Paste your lightning.force.com URL into the Remote Site URL field and click on ‘Save’.
See below for examples of how the remote settings should be configured.

Once the above steps are done, we can start using Vlocity. Go to applications and search Omnistudio. Here, you can view, create, and edit the Vlocity components.

Wrapping up Salesforce Vlocity – Takeaways!

To summarize, Vlocity made an impact, supplying companies with an architectural floor fit for distinct industries. Its acquisition by Salesforce marked the company’s shift to industry-specific solutions that are more comfortable with customizing and short to be onboarded by users. The existing Salesforce Industry clouds deliver businesses with a flexible data model and a stable instance with reusable solutions inside for a faster digital transformation journey.