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Hi all,

 

Our quarterly product Statement of Direction went out yesterday, giving you an advance view into the new features under development for this quarter. For the full details on recent and forthcoming changes, please see the attached page at the link, below.

 

  1. Highlights of recent and forthcoming Q2 updates:

 

  • Sales Navigator Community

We’d like to announce that we’re providing the Community interface in all Sales Navigator-supported languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Dutch, and Italian). Get to know how you can change your language preference settings. We’ll also be offering achievement badges when members hit a Community milestone or recognition from Community Moderators for standout contributions to the conversation. The Community experience is being opened up to all Team and Enterprise Edition users, so they can share best practices, network, and learn from each others’ experiences.

 

  • Smart Links

Users can now seamlessly share Smart Links while sending messages from Sales Navigator desktop and mobile platforms. Additionally, users will receive alerts when someone views their Smart Links. Admins have access to two new data points as part of Usage Reporting: the number of Smart Links each user has created, and the number of total views for Smart Links created by each user. 

 

  • Contact Creation for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales 6Only for Enterprise Edition customers]

Users can create a Contact record in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales directly from a Sales Navigator Lead Page or Lead List (CRM Sync required).*

 

  • Public/Private Notes

Comments on Custom Lists will be integrated with Notes on Lead and Account pages, so that users may take and view Notes on a Lead or an Account from both pages and Lists. Users will have the ability to set a Note to "Public" meaning visible to all colleagues on their contract, or "Private" meaning only visible to themselves. If CRM synced, users will now be able to copy Notes back to CRM from both Lead/Account Pages and Lists.*

 

  • Lead Shared Update Side Panel

All Lead Shared Update alerts will now open into a panel that slides out from the right side of the homepage, allowing users to view, comment and react to the update without leaving Sales Navigator.

 

  • Search

Introducing a new auto-fill solution that allows users to apply commonly used filters directly from the search bar for quick and relevant results.

 

  • Admin Home

Admins can now access a new Admin Home experience, which outlines recommended objectives designed to drive sales productivity as well as houses other key admin tools in an updated navigation.

 

  • Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP) Partners

We’ve updated HubSpot’s Sales Navigator integration to give users the ability to include LinkedIn connection requests and InMail as Tasks in their HubSpot Sequences, and complete these tasks without ever leaving HubSpot.

 

  • CRM Enhancements

We're making it easier to connect your CRM to Sales Navigator by providing an option to connect using "Read-Only" admin access. Note: This will not allow users to use some Sync-related features that require writeback to CRM.*

 

  • Account Center Migration

The Account Center will continue to ramp to contracts with less than 50 seats.

 

* CRM Sync is only available to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and Salesforce CRM for Sales.

 

Friendly reminder about the PointDrive transition:

A reminder that on May 30, we will fully transition PointDrive to Smart Links. Customers who have uploaded files to the PointDrive platform should copy them to an alternate location of their choosing in anticipation of the change. You can find detailed instructions on how to export your PointDrive CSV, our recommendations on how to handle the download process, and suggestions on where to store your downloaded files here.

 

To help you prepare for the planned changes, check out the video that Lindsey Edwards, Head of Product for LinkedIn Sales Solutions, recorded that includes a detailed walkthrough of each of the updates coming to Sales Navigator. 

 

2. Product Release Ramp Timeline

 

  • 1st Ramp - April 22: All Pro Contracts (excluding contracts <30 days)
  • 2nd Ramp - May 6: Online Teams Contracts (excluding contracts <30 days old)
  • 3rd Ramp - May 18: Group 1: All Admins on Field Team & Enterprise Contracts; Group 2: Field Team and Enterprise Contracts up to 15 seats (include 30 days old contracts, exclude contracts <30 days old and KAM/CEG contracts and pilot contracts and excluding Contracts < 30 days old, KAM/CEG, Pilots)
  • 4th Ramp - May 26: Field Team & Enterprise > 15 seats (excluding Contracts < 30 days old, KAM/CEG, Pilots)
  • 5th Ramp - June 15: All remaining contracts

 

Q2 QPR Exception: Admin home is ramping to different groups at different times, but on the same QPR schedule, meaning that by June 15 all contracts will have access to this enhancement.

 

3. Recommendations to Customers - Actions for PMs and Admins

 

If you're a Program Leaders you should:

  • Review the list of updates relevant to your team, and work with your account representative to determine how these will impact your team’s sales processes using Sales Navigator.

 

If you're a Sales Navigator Administrators you should:

  • Take advantage of early access provided around May 18 to familiarize themselves with the changes.
  • Remind users to review the product update details shared at the announcement around June 15.
  • Encourage users to engage in training opportunities offered by your organization and/or LinkedIn.

 

4. New Features Suggested in Community Ideas page

 

We’re proud to share that a number of this quarter’s new features, including contact creation, smart links, notes, new admin home, homepage and usage reporting enhancements were suggested by customers in Community discussions and on our Community Ideas page. Thank you to all of our Community members who reached out with suggestions and feedback related to these features! As always, if you have ideas for additional new features, please submit them via the Ideas page.

 

5. Community Ask Me Anything Session with Product Team

 

We’re delighted to announce that the Sales Navigator Community is hosting Community Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on:​

 

  • June 18th: 4PM (Dublin time) / 8AM (San Francisco time)

  

The AMA will be hosted in a live thread that will allow you to ask questions related to the CY'20 Q2 Product Update directly to our Product Marketing team.​

 

We look forward to hearing what you think of these announcements. We'll be sharing more in-depth details on each of them here in the Community in the coming weeks.

 

Also, as always, if you have additional ideas for new features, please submit them via the Community's "Ideas" page, which you can find on the Community's top navigation bar. We look forward to announcing some of your ideas as new features in coming quarters.

 

Thank you,

Nádia

Thank you @Nadia Vieira​ I have circulated within 3M chatter, Sales Navigator forum - best regards, Chris @Jon Page​ 

Great news, @Chris B​! Let us know if they have any feedback and feel free to invite other 3M users to share their thoughts here in Community. Have a great day! 😊

At this point, SmarLinks is less than 10% of the functionality that was in PointDrive. At what date do you think SmartLinks will equal the functionality we had in PointDrive?

Smart Links do not display properly the people who clicked the link. Just says 'LinkedIn Member' which is not very useful. The pop-up says that the person viewed the link without logging into LinkedIn; this is not true in all cases though: even people who definitely were not logged in dont't have their names displayed.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @Lloyd C​ . I would be happy to walk you through our rationale. 😊

 

As with the rest of the Sales Navigator product, the primary target we are building for is an individual salesperson looking to close a deal or maintain existing business. The way we saw PointDrive being used most by our primary target was to add content into a link that they could share with prospects and customers, and to receive valuable insights about how those prospects and customers interact with that content. With Smart Links, we are maintaining these capabilities.

 

The capabilities that PointDrive offered that we decided to deprecate were more related to sales enablement, content management, and demand generation. These included capabilities like branding and customizable elements that you have referenced. While we recognize these features can also be valuable for salespeople, the balance we are looking to strike is between customizability and ease of use. Our feeling is that the more customizable we make a Smart Link, the less usable it becomes for an individual salesperson.

 

However, we're currently looking at some of the funtionalites that PointDrive had and that some SN users are asking us to evaluate, like for example links and videos. This is something we are considering adding in the future, and will continue to listen for feedback from customers regarding this.

 

We appreciate your feedback and look forward to continuing to enhance Smart Links going forward. Please feel free to reach out in case you have any additional feedback.

 

Nádia

Thank you for sharing your feedback, @Jukka M​.

 

When accessing a Smart Link, in case viewers aren't logged into LinkedIn, they will always be asked to add their name and email, and only after that, they'll be able to access the Smart Link. And, just like you're saying, in case viewers aren't logged into LinkedIn, we are asking them to let us know who they are since this will help you understand who your viewers are and use that data to engage with them in the future.

 

I believe that the ''pop-up says that the person viewed the link without logging into LinkedIn'' you're referring to is this one, correct?

 

 

This pop-up only shows when viewers who are accessing the Smart Links and aren't logged into LinkedIn. And, although you can't see their LI profile details, if you mouseover the name of the viewer, you'll be able to see their name and email. This said, you will be able to identify the user and reach out to them.

 

On the other hand, and only if they are logged in, viewers won't be asked to add any details and will be redirected to the Smart Link immediately. For this scenario, in case you want to get more details on the viewers, if you mouseover the name of the viewer you will see a pop-up with the viewer's LI details and will also have the option to send them a LI message or view their profile - see example below:

 

Screenshot 2020-04-30 at 10.48.21

 

Can you please confirm if you're able to see these options and have this experience in your Smart Links' analytics?

 

Please let me know what you're experiencing and we can take it from there.

 

Thank you,

Nádia

 

 

As an admin I welcome the new reporting features  

 

  1. the number of Smart Links each user has created,
  2. the number of total views for Smart Links created by each user.

 

@Nadia Vieira​ do you know if there are plans to introduce other data points to SmartLinks similar to what PointDrive offered? For example:

 

  • Location
  • Whether the content was viewed via desktop or mobile
  • Browser used

 

It would also be nice to see within the metrics (withut clicking through to view the individuals profile) if the viewer is a 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree connection and whether any TeamLink connections exist.

@Paul L​, I'm delighted to hear that you like the new admin Smart Links reporting features. Not only, this will help admins to understand how their teams are leveraging Smart Links, but also how engaging their Smart Links might be, based on the number of views they're getting from viewers.

 

As for your questions, at the moment, there are no plans to add location, desktop/mobile, or browser. However, our product team confirmed that they can definitely entertain things like connection degree and any TeamLink connections for the future. I would invite you to share that suggestion in our Ideas page, so that our product team can investigate this further and let you know once they're ready to bring them to Smart Links.

 

Hope this is helpful and let me know in case you have any other suggestions! 😊

 

***UPDATE***

Hi all,

 

Per our most recent enhancement of Smart Links from calendar Q4 2020, Smart Links now support adding URLs as an asset and allow direct video playback. Additionally, video analytics (download and viewership) are now available.

 

Please check out this post for more information on the latest Smart Links enhancements.

 

Feel free to let us know if you have any questions. Thank you,

Eva C.

***UPDATE***

Hi all,

 

In the past year, we’ve seen our customers’ needs — and their use of Sales Navigator — rapidly evolve. Sales Navigator has become increasingly essential as the world moves online and sellers seek more effective ways to connect to the right buyers virtually.

 

If you haven't heard, we have a new Sales Navigator experience coming soon in January 2022:

 

We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the (new) features of each plan at the links above or watch the recording of the new Sales Navigator lineup experience.

 

In addition, I want to call out that CRM enhancements and Contact Creation (via CRM Sync) will be available for only the Advanced Plus plan, but Smart Links and SNAP integrations will be available for both the Advanced and Advanced Plus plans beginning in January 2022.

 

Thank you and please let us know if you have any questions,

Eva C.

***UPDATE***

Hi all,

 

Per the latest Q1 2022 product update, Admins now have the capability to choose which Sales Navigator fields they want to map to in their CRM. Take a look at this post for more details on the CRM Custom Field Mapping feature.

 

Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you,

Eva C.

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