Winter ‘21 Release Highlights: AI, Bots, and Einstein!

Posted on September 29, 2020  (Last modified on May 15, 2025) • 3 min read • 455 words

It feels like Fall is just getting underway, but the Salesforce Winter ’21 Release is already on the horizon, and that means we’re back…

It feels like Fall is just getting underway, but the Salesforce Winter ‘21 Release is already on the horizon, and that means we’re back with another round of Release Highlights!

First up, we’ll be taking a look at some awesome improvements coming to Einstein Bots — you know, those handy automated chat-tools that’ve been making service teams’ lives simpler since Salesforce rolled out AI. Well in Winter ‘21, they’re getting even better!

Let’s dive in.

Build  

Whether you’ve been building bots since the beginning or your brand new to Einstein for Service, the new setup process is going to dramatically improve your time-to-deploy. Newer users will now be able to create a bot from templates that include popular actions such as create a case, create a lead, add a case comment, or look up an order — all with optimized conversational text and flows, so you can customize it and go live faster. And experienced builders will benefit from those same flows making it easier to quickly spin up a bot from scratch for speedy customization.

Contextualize  

Using pre-agent bots to help capture relevant data, route to the right support team, and speed up time-to-close? Then you’ll enjoy the new flexibility of custom context variable mapping for helping you suss out those specifics! With Winter ‘21, chat admins can customize the pre-chat form to deliver information to the bot, and Messaging admins can capture phone numbers to link to existing records. Every custom context variable can map to multiple channels and fields. That means smarter routing, less data entry, and more time helping customers, not fidgeting with systems.

Evaluate  

Using AI to help steer your sales efforts, gauge the accuracy of your pipeline, or forecast for the future? Then improvements to AI scoring, on Opportunities and Leads is going to make some people smile on the next Zoom call. In Einstein Opportunity Scoring, Winter ‘21 lets you choose to have Einstein look only at opportunities that meet certain conditions and also decide if you want it to exclude any custom opportunity fields from the scoring model — so you can more accurately target the metrics that matter most. And in Einstein Lead Scoring, smaller data sets will be required now to enable it, allowing even newer orgs to start making more intelligent business decisions. To accomplish that and maintain accuracy/fidelity, Winter ‘21 has Einstein taking advantage of a global scoring model that uses anonymous aggregated data to allow orgs of all sizes to accurately score their leads. Then, once an organization generates enough of their own data, Einstein switches to a scoring model built only with that!

Until next time, keep working hard, smart, and happy. We’ll see you in the cloud.